[Photograph
above by John Armstrong: I took this photograph at sunset on the shores of
It
is a most happy fact, solving a complex and warmly debated problem with ease
and finish, that, if a single phrase in the Apocalypse
- wheat - is a symbol of the Church, a graded removal of the Church from earth,
a removal in sections, passes out of the realm of discussion into that of
certainty. This symbol is the
FIRSTFRUITS
Now the first key-fact of the drama is that the scene
opens heaven, and that all the actors in it - the
Lamb, the First-fruits, the Angels - move in and from the heavenlies. The proofs of this are unmistakable. (1) Christ is in the heavenlies. I saw, and behold, the Lamb standing (Rev. 14: 1): the Lord does not
descend to earth until the nineteenth chapter, and even later in this very chapter,
when, as Reaper, He casts His sickle to the earth (5:
14), He is still seated on
Parousia-cloud in the heavenlies. The
Lords title throughout His sojourn in the heavenlies is The Lamb:
the Son of Man is His title on descending to the earth. (2) Jerusalem throughout the
Apocalypse never means the earthly Jerusalem; and Mount Zion below, so far from
being occupied by Christ - who does not descend upon it until after the Vintage
pictured at the close of this chapter - is, at this moment in the grip of the
murderous Antichrist (Rev. 11: 8): the Mount
Zion here named is, therefore, the mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem (Heb. 12: 22) to which we have
already in spirit come. (3) The Firstfruit company
sing before the throne, and
before the four living creatures and the elders (14: 3)
and the Throne of God is indisputably in heaven.* Heaven, from which the sound comes (v. 2), includes the
*
THE HARVEST
Now
the other key-fact in the drama is the inescapable identity of firstfruits with
harvest. If the firstfruit is holy, Paul says, so is the lump (Rom. 11: 16) - the crop from which it is cut: that is, if the Firstfruits
are a heavenly body, so also is the Harvest a heavenly body, although still on
the surface of the earth. For it is
impossible to deny that the Firstfruits and Harvest in this chapter each relate
to the other, as the first-cut and the later-cut of one body of wheat: beyond
the sharply numbered firstfruits stretches the unnumbered and innumerable
harvest. Thus all is exactly square with
all other Scriptures. For as the fig stands
for
* The Harvest is the ingathering of the Good, the ingathering
of the wheat into the heavenly barn: the Vintage is the crushing of the wicked
(Bishop Wordsworth). So Bengel:- By means of the Harvest a
great multitude of the righteous, and by means of the Vintage a great multitude
of the ungodly, is removed from the world: the Vintage is expressive only of
wrath, the Harvest is entirely of a gracious character.
WHEAT
So then the sole
obstacle to a divided reaping - namely, the theory that the Firstfruits are Jewish -
collapses. For no Jewish body is ever
removed from the earth at all. Wheat is
so characteristic of the Christian that it could not be
a symbol of an earthly people: its fragile stalk, dying to earth as it ripens
heavenward, so unlike the rooted, luscious grasp on earth of fig or vine; its
annual relays moving off the field in successive pilgrim generations; its value as the supreme food for man, even as the Church is the supreme satisfaction of
God; its lack of what, to the world, would be pleasant fruit - fig or grape:
wheat is manifestly created to be Gods kindergarten of the Church; and the
theory that this body of redeemed on high is Jewish,
under investigation, melts as a mist in the sun, or a fog swept by a sea-wind.*
* How clear minds could ever
have confounded the earthly First-fruits
(Rev. 7: 4) with the heavenly Firstfruits is one of the mysteries of Apocalyptic interpretation.
For it would be difficult to find two groups of the saved more radically
distinguished by explicit statements of Scripture. The one group is in the earth, the other is
in heaven: the one is named as Jews, the other is named as catholic: the one is drawn from the
Twelve Tribes of Israel, the other from among men - mankind in general: the one escapes
into the wilderness (Rev. 12: 14) the other into the heavenlies: the
one is stationary in the desert, with Christ as the Jehovah Angel, the other
moves freely everywhere, with the Lamb: the one is sealed in the forehead as a miraculous
safeguard against assassination (Rev. 9: 4),
the other is named in the forehead in a realm where assassination is
impossible. The virginity of the Lambs body-escort
is also profoundly un-Jewish; and redemption from the earth, as
Therefore the
stupendous fact now confronts us - not an inference, nor a doctrine, but a
photograph - that not all the Church is reaped into the heavenlies at one swing
of the scythe. Between Firstfruits and
Harvest yawns an ominous drama. Between the Firstfruits reaped on high, and
the Harvest still uncut on earth, successive judgment Angels proclaim wrath on
the threshold, the accomplished overthrow of Babylon, and the Mark of the Beast
at the doors, followed by a dirge (or elegy) of the Spirit over a sudden burst
of martyrdom - all events that are close to the opening hours of the Great
Tribulation; and the Harvest
is still uncut. The
Firstfruits, garnered we are not told when, but earlier, are, as Dean Alford says, choice ones among Gods people, and not the totality of
those who shall form the great multitude that no man can number. It is a significant fact that there has never
yet been a rapture except of conspicuous saints. Without question,
there is pre-eminence in being the firstfruits of the heavenly harvest. They are not all the saved. The very word indicates that there is much
more to follow. Nor are they the mass of
the saved. Theirs is the first resurrection, of which we read in chapter 20. - that resurrection of the dead which St. Paul calls the resurrection, and the mark toward
which he pressed, if by any means he might attain unto it (Phil. 3.). Infinite mischief
is done by the belief that all will be equally blessed, equally honoured. (Pulpit Commentary).*
* Our
Lord is in their midst, and is also firstfruits (1 Cor. 15: 20) - thus proving that firstfruits are composed
of dead, and not only of living, saints; and, as reaped two thousand years
earlier, the Ascension divides the cutting even of first-cut: for the 144,000
are not the
firstfruits, but firstfruits (no
article) - a section of a far vaster throng: but each
in his own order - group, company, flight; Christ
the firstfruits, then they that are Christs in His Presence (1 Cor. 15: 23) - in
successive reapings during the Parousia.
Resurrection accompanies each rapture, both
being embodied (Rev. 11: 11, 12) in a single
graphic example. The peculiar nature, history, and functions of this particular
group of first-cut saints lie outside the scope of our present article.
MATURITY
The moral lesson now stands forth (as designed) in all
penetrating power. For the grain is
reaped solely according to its ripeness.
Earth-removal depends, for the servant of God, on spiritual maturity, as
exactly and as inevitably as harvesting is dated, not by the farmer, but by the
grain. The Lord had already warned us of
this momentous principle, in His description of the ripening Church. First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear: but
when the fruit is RIPE, immediately he putteth forth the sickle, because
the harvest is come (Mark 4: 29).
So the identical phrasing is used here.
Send forth thy sickle - the sickle is sent, for it is an
intelligent scythe of falling angels - and reap for the hour to reap - an hour which
depends solely, on the maturity of the grain - is come; for the harvest of the earth is OVER-RIPE (Rev. 14: 15); rather, perfectly ripe, so that the stalk is dry
(Alford). Wheat which never ripens would be a blasted field: but the
*A broad hint that the corners of the
field, which according to the type (Lev. 23: 22)
must be reaped later than harvest, are uncut until the neighbourhood of
Armageddon is contained in the characteristic Church warning, - Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments [works: cf. Rev. 3: 4,
18] lest he walk naked, and they see his shame (Rev. 16: 15).
HEAVENLINESS
So now we reach the momentous fact carefully designed
to revolutionize our whole Christian life.
Maturity in the spiritual realm is grace perfected in the character; and
the critical alternative unfolds before us either of maturity gained now by
grace, or a forced growth under judgment.
For firstfruits is not only a time-word, so that if reaped
simultaneously with harvest, it is not firstfruits; but it is also a quality-word, for firstfruits (in
Scripture) are invariably the pick of the crop (Num. 18: 12), peculiarly holy to God, and to be
carried bodily into the House of God (Neh. 10: 37). So of the Christian Firstfruits moral
excellence of the highest order is stated they are without blemish (Rev. 14: 5):
whereas the Harvest, although ripe at last, has no special excellence, as
wheat, stated; and its maturity, unlike that of the Firstfruits, is a maturity
not due to rapidity in reaching perfection, but is produced by the slow and
painful process of burning heat - the harvest of the earth is dried up. As the
Firstfruits are two baked loaves (Lev. 23: 17),
burnt edible - so ceasing to be raw grain - through an earlier suffering with
Christ, so the Day of the Lord burneth as an
oven (Mal. 4: 1), thus baking its Loaves: the
fierce sun of the Day of Wrath, penetrating grain which avoided the earlier
fires, destroys earthliness in the wheat at last. The root cause of maturity is fundamentally
the same in both - made perfect through suffering.
THE CRISIS
So the urgency of the issue, its summons to sanctity,
our practical peril - all lodge in selective rapture alone the rousing truth
without which the warnings of God on unwatchfulness fall flat and
unheeded. We are exotics ripening for
another soil; and sun-ripe wheat, rather than forced hot-house growth, is Gods
ideal: for it is not the pressure of coming judgments, nor any inherent
necessity that we should escape the coming perils - martyrs have had as bad -
which is the determining factor compelling removal, but a principle quite other
- our fitness for the heavenly garner.* And how solemn are the facts! In spite of the huge cataclysm of the War,
with which God shook the world, it is a fact past all denial that the great
majority of the Christian groups treat the Saviours return with derision. Is this ripeness for the sickle? Nothing short
of Tribulation horrors will shock the main mass of the converted into maturity
at last.
* The
blade is the green sprout of a living profession of Christ, a proof past all doubt
of vital standing in Him; but it is not the fruitful ear, much less the full
corn in the ear; and men do not reap blades.
It is a decisive confirmation of the interpretation here given that, in
the Feasts of the Law which are a complete history in type of the redeemed
under grace, wheat (as ever) is the symbol selected for the Church, and the
Feast of Harvest (Lev. 23: 9-22) reveals a
carefully graded reaping.
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CHAS. J.
THYNNE & JARVIS, LTD.
1928
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