THE BODY OF THE FIRST RAPT
By D. M. PANTON. B.A.
One
sentence photographs for ever the body of the first rapt at the moment of their
arrival in the heavenlies. Their
miraculous ascent, as destined supplanters of the
fallen angels, at once draws on them, in mid-air, the full fury of Hell: their
guardian and transporting Angels closing round the ascending human hosts, for
one critical moment the hostile angel-squadrons are locked in the Armageddon of
heaven: then, overborne by sheer force as well as outmatched in subtilty, the
Dragon and his hosts are cast headlong to earth. Exactly as Satan disputed (Jude 9) over the corpse of Moses, to prevent his
arrival at the Mount of Transfiguration, so Michael again forces deliverance
for a myriad corpses, as also living myriads to reach the Kingdom. This delivered body of the first rapt, thus
isolated and radiant in Heaven, are the birth out of earth, the begotten from
the tomb (cp. Acts. 13: 31-34) - the
Man-child - who are "to rule all the nations with
a rod of iron" ( Rev. 12: 5) - a sceptre, that is, which can neither
be broken nor resisted, governing, disciplining and controlling all the peoples
of the Millennial earth.*
[*That
the Woman is the Holy Jerusalem, the centre of all dispensations, see Govett's Apocalypse. "In the Apocalypse Christ Himself applies to believers
the words here used (12: 5), which are literally true of Himself alone - ‘He that overcometh and keepeth my works unto
the end, to him will I give power over the nations, and he
shall rule them with a rod of iron' (Rev. 2: 26) Thus Christ Himself interprets the vision before us."
(Bishop Wordsworth).]
THE ACCUSER
The
translated host are introduced in a triumph-song. "And a great
voice in heaven" apparently from the
victor angels - "saying, Now is come the salvation"
- a miraculous deliverance shot upward - "and the
power" - proved in the massed overthrow of Hell - "and the kingdom of our
God" - not ‘the Kingdom of the world’
(as in 11: 15) for only now is
the Kingdom arrived in heaven - "and the authority of His Chrst"
- the spear-head of the Kingdom: "for the accuser
of our brethren"- for we are brothers of the Angels -
"is cast down, which ACCUSED them before
our God" - impleading
the law courts of Heaven - "day and night"
- in a ceaseless prosecution and appeal in the council-chambers of God. Satan fastens supremely on the one vulnerable
spot in the Church - her sins: he seduces the believer on
earth, and then accuses him in heaven. It
is a masterpiece of wisdom; because, while he knows that he is powerless to
shake the Christian’s foundation, he can, by seducing him into [wilful] sin, embroil
him with God: for none knows better than Satan two things - (1) that God
compounds sin in no one; and (2) the tragic frailty of the child of God. Therefore final salvation is impossible for us
until we are above and beyond the considered charges - true or false - of the
Accuser; and until he is cast out of it, Heaven itself is not Heaven.*
[*
How secret the pavilion created by the darkness of the skies - "He made darkness His hiding
place, His pavilion round about Him; darkness of waters, thick clouds
of the skies" (Ps. 18: 11);
an airman, entering a cloud, reveals: "It was
like a huge black wall into which we dived headlong; and I had to switch on the
lights to see the instrument board a foot in front of me". So it
was "thick darkness where God was" (Ex. 20: 21) in the Parousia
of the clouds on Sinai. Recent discovery
modifies the physiological changes we imagined essential for life above the
highest
THE BLOOD
Now
therefore there follows, in a photograph taken in a heavenly exposure and of
extraordinary value, an exact moral delineation of the souls miraculously
removed, and of exactly how they successfully rebutted the
Satanic prosecution. It is a disclosure of the innermost secrets of
rapture. "And
THEY" - the ‘they’ is emphatic: they alone; they,
the Man-child just named as caught up to the Throne of God; they, in contrast
to all the undelivered down below - "OVERCAME him" - that is, they are overcomers: angels
wrestled and threw Satan above, physically; these wrestled and threw Satan
below, spiritually (Eph. 6: 12): and their
ground of victory, the inspired reason for their miraculous removal beyond
Satan’s reach into the heavenlies, is a threefold maturity before God. The first ground is the Blood. "They overcame him by" - because of, in virtue of,
on the ground of - "THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB."
It is not the blood of Christ,
but the blood of the Lamb; not the blood of a martyr
Messiah, but the blood of the slaughtered Sacrifice: for
THE TESTIMONY
But
a second weapon is revealed as vital to the victory. Passive acceptance of the Blood of Calvary,
though enough for eternal life, is not,
alone, sufficient for translation: the worthiness for which our Lord
commands us to pray (Luke21: 36) is
obviously not His worthiness, which all disciples already possess, but (as is
transparent in the context) a
worthiness, by vigilance and prayer, of the saint himself.* "And"
- as a second weapon of overthrow - "[they
overcame him] by" - because of, in
virtue of, on the ground of - "THE WORD OF
THEIR TESTIMONY;" not "the
testimony of Jesus" only, for these are
overcomers risen and rapt out of all dispensations. "The strict sense of the Greek ... with the accusative must
again be kept: it is because they have given a faithful
testimony, even unto death, that they are victorious" (Alford). The block to Satan, the exposure of his craft,
the dissolution of his plans, his spiritual paralysis - all lie in Scripture
loved, lived, preached: as with our Lord in the Wilderness, "it is written" unmasks and paralyzes every
Satanic imposture and wile. John states
the same truth elsewhere:- "I have written unto you, young men because the word
of God abideth in you, and ye have OVERCOME the evil one" (1 John 2: 14). So the second ground for rapture is lip
and life squared to the Word of God.
[*
"Prevail to escape" - Revised Version.]
"The Sacrifice of the Death of Christ," - as Dr. Swete
expresses it, "does not spell victory except for
those who suffer with Him" (Rom. 8: 17;
2 Tim. 2: 11): thus a secondary cause of the
martyrs’ victory is found in their personal labour and self-sacrifice."
THE RENUNCIATION
But
a third and final weapon, the subtilest and most
difficult of all to achieve, is also indispensable for removal in the dawn. It is
not necessarily martyrdom, but the martyr-spirit; "they LOVED NOT their life even unto death";
“did not hold their life too dear to be given up to
death” (Seiss);
“their non-attachment to life was carried to the
extent of being ready to die for their faith” (Swete); “so little did they value their present life, that they preferred death to
apostasy” (Moses Stuart). These had mastered the things that usually
master men. Pope Pius IV., on hearing of
Calvin's death, exclaimed:-"All the strength of
that proud heretic lay in this - that riches and honour were nothing to him. With a few such men our Church would soon be
mistress of both shores of the ocean." Such build
on the other side of the grave: they invest their whole wealth for God:
they risk life itself in the cause of Christ. Paul has expressed it once for all:- "I hold not my life of
any account, as dear unto myself, so that I may accomplish my course and the ministry which I
received from the Lord Jesus" (Acts 20;
24).
THE UNREMOVED
Suddenly
the camera tilts, and, in a moment's earthly exposure, it picks up a scene far
down below. The Devil, now finding all
heaven impenetrable to him, and maddened by the brevity of his chance, "went away to make war with THE REST of her seed"-
plural: two separate remainders; a double remnant: namely - they (1) "which keep the commandments of God" - regenerate
Jews and Gentiles - and they which (2) "hold the
testimony of Jesus" - unrapt Christians:
not in bodies, or in church states, regularly formed, as heretofore, but in
private families, and some here, and some there (Dr. Gill). As the Pulpit
Commentary says:- "The members of the Jewish Theocracy were they to whom ‘the commandments of God’ were
specially revealed: and Christians are they who specially ‘hold the testimony of Jesus.’"* In the
words of Dr. E. C. Craven, editor of
Lange’s Apocalypse :- “These are left on the
earth after the removal of the Firstfruits. There is a growing conviction in my mind that
the Firstfruits do not include all true Christians,
but consists of a select portion of these - the specially
faithful. These ‘remnants’ are strongly
confirmative of this view." For it is impossible to say that all the
saved - a gross backslider, for example - reach the triple standard here
revealed, or fulfil the three conditions named as the grounds of the removal:
it is impossible to deny that such believers as combine all three are, on the
whole, exceptional: moreover we are actually shown the
undelivered below; "so," as Dr. Seiss
says, "we are taught, as Ambrose, and Luther, and
Kromayer admit, that other particular resurrections
and translations of certain eminent saints occur at intervals preceding the
full completion of the glorified company."
[*
Prophetic students who believe in a universal and simultaneous harvest, with no
first-fruits but Christ, confess the difficulty of this phrase. "It might be a
difficulty to some," says Mr.
William Kelly, "that a Jewish remnant should
have ‘the testimony of Jesus’" but the difficulty, he says, is "not insuperable." But so far from being ‘Jewish'- an exposition manifestly invented to grind an axe, for it
is the reverse of the meaning of the words - the phrase is never so used; nor
could it be, for the testimony of Jesus has been entrusted peculiarly to the
Church; and John elsewhere gives it as a definition of himself as a Christian
apostle, - "who bare witness of the word of God, and
the testimony of Jesus Christ" (Rev. 1: 2). It would take very powerful reasons indeed to
dispossess it of its obviously Christian meaning. "The verse
includes all the people of God who will at that time be exposed to
malice, whether they be pious Jews, or Christians who were not found worthy to
escape the impending woes" (G,
H. Pember, M.A.). Rev. 14: 12 - a Tribulation verse - lends
remarkable confirmation.]
THE SERPENT
So
we see the exact point which at this moment we have apparently reached. With the subtilty of a python, the venom of a
rattlesnake, the crushing power of a boa-constrictor, the invisibility of a
fer-de-lance, "the
dragon stood" -all eyes - "before the
woman which was about to be delivered, that when she was delivered he might
devour her child." For Satan
is ignorant of the moment of the First Resurrection; and, as his empire
trembles to its fall, his anxiety grows to white heat; and he plants himself at
the spot of supreme peril. As the moment
of the birth out of the tomb approaches, the Dragon, dyed all over with the
hue of murder, watches, with intensity of alertness, for the first quiver in
the sleeping sod, the first flash upward of an ascending saint; and seeks to
block supremely the ripening of the firstfruits (Mark 4: 29) on which depends the exact moment of
the bursting of the tombs.*
[*I
have called the Manchild (apparently identical with
the Palm-bearers of (Rev. 7: 9) the body of the
first rapt; but it is possible (as Govett thinks)
that a prior rapture - indicated by John's summons heavenward (Rev. 4: 1) "occurs
at the moment when the throne of judgment replaces the throne of grace. The Manchild ascends somewhere between the Sixth Seal and the
Fourth Trumpet.”]
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SAINTS IN THE HIGH PLACES
In
Dan. 7: 18, 22, 25, and 27, the Authorised
Version translates, "Saints of the Most High,"
whereas it should read, "Saints of the High Places." Daniel could not of course understand who
these would be, for the mystery of the Church was not then revealed; but we can
easily recognise those who will live and reign with the Lord in the heavenly
regions, taking the place of "the host of the High
Ones that are on high." In verse 25, the reference is specially
to that portion of them which will be upon earth during the great tribulation,
but will suffer martyrdom rather than worship the Beast or his image. In verse 27,
there is also mention of another class, "the
people of the Saints of the High Places;" that is, the people which
stand in close relation to these saints, namely, the Israelites. To the latter "the
kingdom and the dominion and the greatness of the Kingdom under
the whole heaven shall be given." That is, they shall become "the Kings of the Earth upon the Earth," in the
stead of the destroyed Gentile powers (Isa. 24: 21).
In verse 21,
the simple expression, the saints, seems to embrace all the people of God who are upon Earth at the time, the believers who pass
through the tribulation, and the pious Jews. In verse 22
it includes still more, nothing less indeed than the completed Millennial Kings
and the whole Israelitish people; for the reference
is to the Millennial age, and "the Kingdom" comprehends both the heavenly and
the earthly portions of Christ's government.
-G.
H. PEMBER.