Notes on the book of Revelations/Chapter 9

by John Nelson Darby

Layout 2

 

The first comes by apostasy letting loose the in fluences of what is beneath—what is of the abyss. The effect is to put out or darken the supreme authority and the healthful influences which acted on men’s minds.^[1] From this, a swarm of marauders spread themselves upon the earth—the prophetic earth—having a king, the angel of the bottomless pit: for though, having the active energy of imperial power, and towards others in face they were men, yet they had power on their heads, they were not behind in the open dignity of man, as governing in civil power by the image of God; they were subject to something, though they might press forward in prevailing conquest on others; and their sting was in their tail. It was not their energy that was their poisonous power of mischief, but what they brought in as a consequence: “The prophet and teacher of lies, he is the tail.”

The next woe was a more open incursion of external enemies, as such, this army of prevailing, imperial, congregated power, and from the mouths of them, they carried it before them; what was judgment came forth, only by evil, and what was of the enemy positively.^[2] They had power in their mouth, but in their tails too; for in that also, was their planned mischief more settled than before, though not the introduction of it; “and with them they hurt.” It was like Satan in form. This was more open and warlike in character; but not the original evil.

But those, the rest of men, that were not killed by them, did not repent of their idolatries and evil conduct: many would be entirely destroyed from their profession, and their place set aside and filled up by others; but even so the rest repented not. The extent of the power of these was limited. The | general objects of all the woes were earthly-minded people in the region of God’s dealings. When the originating, darkening, and tormenting evil came in, those only were excepted who were manifestly owned of God as His—manifested to be of Him.

The trumpet angel—this announcement of the full time of God’s purpose—looses these subordinate instruments of His providence, to have power of destruction for the prescribed time.

All these, however, were dealings in which, though a remnant prayed, the Church had no natural place.^[3] For the growth of the apostasy is not the subject here. It is all mere angelic providential dealing. It is not the Son of Man in judgment. It is not the Lamb in glory on the throne, but in sympathy withal with a suffering people, whom the world is against, and whom He ostensibly recognised. This was quite lost when the world recognised the Church. The Church wholly lost its place. It had gradually practically approached the world—it was now ostensibly sunk in it; such was its downward course, having lost the spiritual discernment, it was not capable of seeing its position in the outward blessing. So Abraham, when his wife was taken into Pharaoh’s court, he had gone down into Egypt first. Then the Lord acts by angelic ministrations on the profession, first in external chastenings, then in direct judgment and woes. Present facts, as we proceed, will lead us ta the extent (i.e. geographical extent) of these two woes. I reserve the course of these passages more particularly, according to the protracted sense of the times that are, as applied to the whole dispensation, for what presents itself further on.

1. In the protracted view I see no reason to deviate from the ordinary interpretation of this: in the crisis, it will have its accomplishment in the great last enemy, or Antichrist.
2. As in the first woe in the long period I take this as usually. In the crisis, it will be the inroads of the northern and eastern armies, headed up after into the Assyrian, and Gog, the prince of Magog.
3. As regards the crisis, it is viewed as actually in heaven, i.e. lost sight of on earth entirely, as it was actually, when it lost its place of testimony here below, as a city set on a hill. For all through, as to time, whatever the particular condition of the saints, from the moment the Church ceased to be owned by the Son of Man in judgment here as in the seven churches, it was viewed either mystically (which gives the protracted period), or actually in heaven when the latter day trials and judgments, the crisis, a8 it has been called, takes place. In both cases it is lost sight of on earth.