Arthur Samuel Peake
1908
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NOTE |
ARTHUR SAMUEL PEAKE (1865-1929) was an English biblical scholar at the University of Manchester. In "The Mutinous Sea," he provided one of the first accurate early analyses of the mysterious biblical passages that suggested the existence of a myth of a cosmic battle between the Hebrew God and an ocean-dwelling chaos dragon. Today, many biblical scholars understand these passages to reflect a pre-biblical Hebrew myth akin to the dragon-slaying adventures of Baal and Marduk that the compilers of the Hebrew Bible edited out, but in 1908 this was still a new idea.
"The Mutinous Sea" was the second chapter of Peake's 1908 collection Faded Myths. |
THE MUTINOUS SEA
There is a verse in Charles Wesley's hymn—"Ye servants of God, your Master proclaim," which may serve as the starting-point for this chapter.
It runs as follows--
It runs as follows--
|
"The waves of the sea have lift up their voice,
Sore troubled that we in Jesus rejoice; The floods they are roaring, but Jesus is here; While we are adoring, He always is near." |
Why should Wesley represent the waves of the sea as sore troubled on account of our joyful faith in Jesus? The answer to the question takes us a long way back in human thought, though we have parallels in modern hymns. There is Watts's fine verse--
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"Loud may the troubled ocean roar;
In sacred peace our souls abide; While every nation, every shore Trembles, and dreads the swelling tide." |
or Keble's
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"Let them roar, His awful surges,
Let them boil—each dark-browed hill Tremble, where the proud wave urges; Here is yet one quiet rill; Her calm waters, Zion's joy, flow clear and still." |
These are genuine parallels, but they are based simply on Psalm xlvi. It is, in fact, to the Old Testament that we must go back for the source, though not the ultimate source, of this conception. The sea is constantly represented as a power hostile to God. If, for example, we start with Psalm xlvi., the writer, in face of the terrible convulsions of nature, is undismayed because God is his refuge and strength. The proud swelling of the foaming waters may cause the mountains to quake, yet the believer remains untroubled. But there are other passages which suggest more strongly the sea's rebelliousness. When Job is driven desperate by the sense of God's watchfulness, he turns upon Him to ask in bitter irony if he is a sea or a sea-monster that God must needs watch him so narrowly. Here the sea is God's enemy, which is to be kept under strict control lest it use its liberty to bring in once more the ancient reign of chaos. So, too, we read in Jeremiah of the sea's vain struggles to pass its bounds, "Will ye not tremble at my presence, which have placed the sand for the bound of the sea, by a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass it? and though the waves thereof toss themselves, yet can they notprevail; though they roar, yet can they not pass over it." Similarly the Divine Wisdom in the remarkable passage in the eighth chapter of Proverbs refers to the era of creation as a time when God gave to the sea its bounds, that the waters should not transgress His commandment. Again and again we have references to God as subduing the fury of the sea with His power. When it first broke loose from the nether deep God shut it up with doors and placed its boundary, that its proud waves might be stayed.
Closely connected with the sea is the dragon or serpent. Thus we read in Amos of those who seek to escape from God. They may dig into the underworld or climb up to heaven, yet God will drag them from their retreat; and then he adds, "and though they be hid from my sight in the bottom of the sea, thence will I command the serpent, and he shall bite them." In the remarkable apocalypse, Isaiah xxiv-xxvii., we read how God with His sore and great and strong sword will punish leviathan the flying serpent, and leviathan the winding serpent, and will slay the dragon that is in the sea. These are often thought to symbolise national powers; but even if that is the case they go back for an explanation to very old ideas. We read in Psalm civ. of leviathian as one of the denizens of the deep. With this monster God had done battle in ancient days. We have frequent references to this. Thus among the great achievements of God in the past, of which His people make mention in their appeal for help in present distress, we get such passages as these, " Art not thou he that cut Rahab in pieces, that pierced the dragon?" or again, "Thou did'st break up the sea by thy strength, thou brakest the heads of the dragon in the wilderness, thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces, thou gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness," and again, "Thou rulest the pride of the sea, when the waves thereof arise thou stillest them, thou hast broken Rahab in pieces as one that is slain, thou has scattered thine enemies with the arm of thy strength." Job sadly reminds himself how futile it would be to contend with God by the recollection that the helpers of Rahab were crushed into submission by the mighty power of God. The true meaning of many of these passages has escaped attention because Rahab was a name applied to Egypt, and it was plausible to find in the allusions to the dividing of the sea a reference to the crossing of the Red Sea. But closer inspection of the passages shows that some of them are not really capable of this interpretation, and that they must be explained by reference to some still earlier conflict.
Before I pass on to consider what this conflict was, there are two or three points that deserve attention. For ourselves the sea is closely entwined with some of our dearest and proudest memories. It is natural for an Englishman to feel the spell of the ocean and to view it with friendly eyes. It is our boast that we rule the waves and that our flag floats on every sea. We must, however, divest ourselves of these prepossessions if we are to place ourselves at the Old Testament point of view. Israel was not a sea-faring people, it possessed little coast, and what it possessed provided it with no good harbours. The sea was therefore something alien to the Hebrews, whose instincts were rather those of the bedouin than of the mariner. I have elsewhere pointed out how uncongenial the sea was to the author of Job, who waxes enthusiastic in praise of the desert. Moreover, quite ignorant of science, they must have been impressed by the problem why is it that the sea is so restless? The prophet speaks of the troubled sea which cannot rest. It seems to have struck the children of the desert, accustomed to the long stretches of still and monotonous sand, that its unquiet tossing needed explanation. They saw how, when the storm arose, the waves shot upward towards the sky, foaming in their rage or beating against the cliff as if they would tear it down. Yet the sea was always foiled in its attempts; it could not pass beyond the bounds assigned to it, it could not reach heaven however high it may fling its angry waves. Hence they were led to think of the sea as a heaven-assaulting power that might be dangerous were it not chained to its place by the omnipotent hand of God.
This conception of the sea as a power hostile to God, which has survived in our hymns and is to be found in the Old Testament, goes back ultimately to Babylon. It is especially to Gunkel that our thanks are due for the detailed proof of this position. It is probably true that with the enthusiasm of a discoverer he has pushed his views too far, and referred to Babylon for the origin of conceptions which have not as yet, at any rate, been proved to have existed among the Babylonians. But in his book on Creation and Chaos he brought together a large mass of evidence both from the Old Testament and from Babylonian literature in support of his main thesis. Much of the material was, of course, already familiar to scholars—a good deal of it, indeed, to a wider public.
According to the Creation story, which circulated in Babylonia, there was a primeval conflict between Marduk, the god of Light, and Tiamat, the Chaos-Monster. Tiamat is equivalent to the Hebrew word, tehom, which is translated "the deep" in Genesis i. 2. She is also to be identified with Rahab, and probably with leviathan. "The helpers of Rahab," to whom Job refers, were the brood of monsters whom she brought into being to help her in her conflict with Marduk. In that conflict Marduk slew the monster, according to the generally accepted story, he then cut her in two, and of one-half of her body he made the sky, and of the other half the earth.
Closely connected with the sea is the dragon or serpent. Thus we read in Amos of those who seek to escape from God. They may dig into the underworld or climb up to heaven, yet God will drag them from their retreat; and then he adds, "and though they be hid from my sight in the bottom of the sea, thence will I command the serpent, and he shall bite them." In the remarkable apocalypse, Isaiah xxiv-xxvii., we read how God with His sore and great and strong sword will punish leviathan the flying serpent, and leviathan the winding serpent, and will slay the dragon that is in the sea. These are often thought to symbolise national powers; but even if that is the case they go back for an explanation to very old ideas. We read in Psalm civ. of leviathian as one of the denizens of the deep. With this monster God had done battle in ancient days. We have frequent references to this. Thus among the great achievements of God in the past, of which His people make mention in their appeal for help in present distress, we get such passages as these, " Art not thou he that cut Rahab in pieces, that pierced the dragon?" or again, "Thou did'st break up the sea by thy strength, thou brakest the heads of the dragon in the wilderness, thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces, thou gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness," and again, "Thou rulest the pride of the sea, when the waves thereof arise thou stillest them, thou hast broken Rahab in pieces as one that is slain, thou has scattered thine enemies with the arm of thy strength." Job sadly reminds himself how futile it would be to contend with God by the recollection that the helpers of Rahab were crushed into submission by the mighty power of God. The true meaning of many of these passages has escaped attention because Rahab was a name applied to Egypt, and it was plausible to find in the allusions to the dividing of the sea a reference to the crossing of the Red Sea. But closer inspection of the passages shows that some of them are not really capable of this interpretation, and that they must be explained by reference to some still earlier conflict.
Before I pass on to consider what this conflict was, there are two or three points that deserve attention. For ourselves the sea is closely entwined with some of our dearest and proudest memories. It is natural for an Englishman to feel the spell of the ocean and to view it with friendly eyes. It is our boast that we rule the waves and that our flag floats on every sea. We must, however, divest ourselves of these prepossessions if we are to place ourselves at the Old Testament point of view. Israel was not a sea-faring people, it possessed little coast, and what it possessed provided it with no good harbours. The sea was therefore something alien to the Hebrews, whose instincts were rather those of the bedouin than of the mariner. I have elsewhere pointed out how uncongenial the sea was to the author of Job, who waxes enthusiastic in praise of the desert. Moreover, quite ignorant of science, they must have been impressed by the problem why is it that the sea is so restless? The prophet speaks of the troubled sea which cannot rest. It seems to have struck the children of the desert, accustomed to the long stretches of still and monotonous sand, that its unquiet tossing needed explanation. They saw how, when the storm arose, the waves shot upward towards the sky, foaming in their rage or beating against the cliff as if they would tear it down. Yet the sea was always foiled in its attempts; it could not pass beyond the bounds assigned to it, it could not reach heaven however high it may fling its angry waves. Hence they were led to think of the sea as a heaven-assaulting power that might be dangerous were it not chained to its place by the omnipotent hand of God.
This conception of the sea as a power hostile to God, which has survived in our hymns and is to be found in the Old Testament, goes back ultimately to Babylon. It is especially to Gunkel that our thanks are due for the detailed proof of this position. It is probably true that with the enthusiasm of a discoverer he has pushed his views too far, and referred to Babylon for the origin of conceptions which have not as yet, at any rate, been proved to have existed among the Babylonians. But in his book on Creation and Chaos he brought together a large mass of evidence both from the Old Testament and from Babylonian literature in support of his main thesis. Much of the material was, of course, already familiar to scholars—a good deal of it, indeed, to a wider public.
According to the Creation story, which circulated in Babylonia, there was a primeval conflict between Marduk, the god of Light, and Tiamat, the Chaos-Monster. Tiamat is equivalent to the Hebrew word, tehom, which is translated "the deep" in Genesis i. 2. She is also to be identified with Rahab, and probably with leviathan. "The helpers of Rahab," to whom Job refers, were the brood of monsters whom she brought into being to help her in her conflict with Marduk. In that conflict Marduk slew the monster, according to the generally accepted story, he then cut her in two, and of one-half of her body he made the sky, and of the other half the earth.
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"He cleft her like a flat fish into two,
The one half of her he set up, and made a covering for the heaven, Set a bar before it, stationed a guard, Commanded them not to let its waters issue forth." |
It is from Berossus that we learn that the other half was made into the earth.
But there seem to have been other versions of the myth according to which the monster was not killed, but kept under strict guard. It is this type of the story that is reflected in some of the passages already quoted. Job's bitter reference to the sea-monster, over which God must keep watchful guard, or the reference to the serpent in the depths of the sea, or to leviathan taking his pastime in the ocean, all pre-suppose a form of the story in which the monster was not killed, but strictly confined to the deep; rage still lives in its heart, but rebellion would be unsuccessful. The sea is always troubled and restless, as the monster sullenly turns and turns within it; or when its rage burns more fiercely and it strains to be free, the tossing of the angry waves reveals its impotent fury. Just so, in other lands the earthquake is explained as the stirring of the rebel Titan beneath the mountain piled on him for punishment, while he breathes fire from the volcano. A time is to come, so the myths apparently said, when a brief spell of freedom would be restored to the monster. For the last things were to be like the first; and just as creation had been ushered in by a victory over chaos, so the world would be re-created from the wild havoc wrought by leviathan, who was once again to be subdued by Marduk.
There are parallels elsewhere to this thought, that the imprisoned evil powers break loose from their confinement. In the Persian eschatology the dragon is released by Angro-Mainu, the enemy of Ahura Madza. In the Orphic myth the Titans escape from Tartarus, kill Dionysus, and are then consumed by Zeus.
The myth was probably suggested by the physical conditions in Babylonia. Every year, with the melting of the mountain snows, the floods came; and over a vast expanse of country the flat plains lay submerged, the watery chaos reigned supreme. But as time wore on the sun grew stronger and stronger, the floods vanished before him, and soon a luxuriant vegetation took their place. Thus every year this drama was repeated: chaos was vanquished by the sun. And as men began to speculate on the origin of things, these facts suggested the line along which their thoughts went. So they said it must have been when the world was created; first of all came the reign of the watery chaos with darkness brooding all over it, and then the radiant sun-god conquered the chaos-demon and created the ordered universe.
Since the discovery of the Tell-el-Amarna tablets we have known that fourteen centuries before Christ the land of Canaan was saturated with Babylonian civilisation. The cuneiform writing is extremely difficult andcomplicated, yet it is a remarkable fact that it was used in diplomatic correspondence between parties neither of whom were Babylonian. But where Babylonian culture prevailed, the myths of Babylon must also have been known. We may, therefore, assume that at this time, and probably many centuries before, the stories which we read on the clay tablets were well known to the Canaanites. It has long been a problem how we are to account for the striking similarity between the Creation and Deluge stories that we find in Genesis and the Babylonian stories. It is probable that the Hebrews, who were comparatively a young people, derived them ultimately from Babylon; but it is highly improbable that they learnt them during the Exile. It is not likely that they learnt them during the period of the monarchy; it is also improbable that they brought them with them from Babylon. The view that most commends itself is that they learnt them from the Canaanites. And here we cannot sufficiently wonder at the difference the Hebrews have made. What is really remarkable to the student of religion is not the similarity between the stories of Genesis and the cuneiform inscriptions, but the difference. This is striking in the Deluge story. There, on the one hand, we have an unethical conception of the disaster, a gross polytheism, according to which the gods cower before the storm like dogs in a kennel, have their favourites, and crowd like flies around the sacrificer; while, on the other side, judgment selects its victims on moral principles, there is a pure monotheism and a worthy conception of God. So, too, in the story of the Creation the whole conception of Tiamat has disappeared, leaving the barest trace in the name by which the watery chaos is called. God is the omnipotent ruler, who does not need to contend with any power below Himself, and who brings all into existence by an effortless word. The more we emphasise the gross character of all this story of Marduk's conflict with the dragon of the abyss, the more we are impressed by the wonder of an inspiration which could transmute the base metal of heathenism into the pure gold of Scripture.
But while the Babylonian myth lost all its mythical features in the sober story of Creation, these still survived in Hebrew poetry. We must remember that these poems are for the most part late; they date from a period when the victory over idolatry in Israel had been definitely won. And, therefore, as I have already explained, they had become spiritually harmless. The author of Job, the Psalmists, and the Prophets were not only monotheists themselves; they were speaking to a people who knew there was no God but one. And, therefore, in the language of poetry they could, without offence and without risk of misunderstanding, use the old stories to glorify God; they could remind Him how He had broken the heads of leviathan in pieces and given the monster's flesh to be meat for the desert-dwellers; they could speak of the time when Rahab's brood of monsters were crushed into helplessness by the might of God.
This type of language is to be found even in the New Testament, especially in the Apocalypse. In the strange story of the dragon, the woman, and the man child, and of the war in heaven between Michael and the dragon which we find in the twelfth chapter we have a continuance of the same ideas. It is true that no Babylonian parallel has yet been recovered, but it is by no means improbable that a story of the birth of Marduk may be found among the cuneiform tablets. If so, it is not unlikely that it may present striking similarities to the story of the birth of Apollo, and the Egyptian story of Hathor, the mother of Horus the sun-god and the dragon Typhon. These are probably all forms of the same original myth of the conflict between the sun-god and the demon of darkness and chaos. As it appears in the Book of Revelation the story has been considerably modified. In the original the flight of the mother is to secure the child's birth in safety, in the Apocalypse the story has been so transformed, for reasons into which I need not now inquire, that the flight of the mother follows the birth of the child, and the child's safety is secured by his being caught up to the throne of God immediately after his birth.
Again, the beast who represents Antichrist is said in the thirteenth chapter to arise out of the sea. And we understand why it is that in the author's vision of final blessedness we should have a feature which appears so strange as his prediction that there should be no more sea. It is the language of poetry, not of sober prose; the author means just the same as he meant with his triumphant exclamation that the kingdoms of the world have become the kingdoms of our God and of His Messiah. The forces of evil, which have resisted so long the advent of peace and brotherhood, are crushed at last into impotence, and the unchallenged reign of righteousness has come in.
There is much that is still obscure about the Apocalypse, but some things at any rate are fairly clear. For the author the Kingdom of Wickedness is concentrated in the Roman Empire, whose last Emperor is to come up out of the abyss and reign as the incarnation of the beast. The throne of Satan is set up wherever the worship of the Emperor is carried on with exceptional enthusiasm and bigotry, and soon the fanaticism of the worshippers will grow to such a pitch that they will bear on their hand or their forehead the mark of dedication to the beast. And in this rising sea of patriotic idolatry the writer sees the followers of the Lamb standing firm amid all the wild raging of the billows.
Nor were the waves tossing in mere impotent fury, for they claimed a vast number of victims who would render the beast no homage. But the author is in no wise dismayed, the very rage of Satan proves that his time is short. He has already been conquered in heaven and cast down to earth, and the writer proclaims woe to the earth because the devil has gone down to it to wreak what suffering he can on the followers of his conqueror, spurred on to supreme exertions, since when three and a half years are past the hour of his doom will have struck and power will be wrested from his hand. Thus even out of the extremity of darkness and terror the writer plucks a hope. It is true that matters are desperate, but be of good cheer, the savage rage of the devil proves how quickly his power is to pass.
The Apocalyptist lived at a time when the floods were indeed roaring and the waves of the sea were lifting up their voice. But he sustained himself and his readers with the assurance which had sustained many Biblical writers before him, that the rage of the powers of evil was destined to swift abatement, and He who had at the beginning abolished the reign of chaos and created the ordered universe we know, would at the end eclipse His ancient achievement and create new heavens and a new earth.
We live in a very different era. Christianity has become the religion of the most highly civilised races, nominally at any rate. It is not the sea's impetuous onslaught that we have now to withstand. There is sunshine on the face of the waters and the waves murmur to us with soft voices that lure us with strange power. But at heart the world is still the same and Satan is none the less Satan because he is clad as an angel of light. The sea is our open foe no longer, but even more to be dreaded is its smooth, smiling treachery and unsuspected current. The message of the Apocalyptist cannot mean for us precisely what it meant for the earliest readers, but essentially the message is the same—a message of warning against compromise with the powers of evil, an exhortation to steadfast resistance, an assurance of sure though slow-coming victory, a conviction that the kingdoms of this world are still to become the kingdoms of our God and of His Messiah.
But there seem to have been other versions of the myth according to which the monster was not killed, but kept under strict guard. It is this type of the story that is reflected in some of the passages already quoted. Job's bitter reference to the sea-monster, over which God must keep watchful guard, or the reference to the serpent in the depths of the sea, or to leviathan taking his pastime in the ocean, all pre-suppose a form of the story in which the monster was not killed, but strictly confined to the deep; rage still lives in its heart, but rebellion would be unsuccessful. The sea is always troubled and restless, as the monster sullenly turns and turns within it; or when its rage burns more fiercely and it strains to be free, the tossing of the angry waves reveals its impotent fury. Just so, in other lands the earthquake is explained as the stirring of the rebel Titan beneath the mountain piled on him for punishment, while he breathes fire from the volcano. A time is to come, so the myths apparently said, when a brief spell of freedom would be restored to the monster. For the last things were to be like the first; and just as creation had been ushered in by a victory over chaos, so the world would be re-created from the wild havoc wrought by leviathan, who was once again to be subdued by Marduk.
There are parallels elsewhere to this thought, that the imprisoned evil powers break loose from their confinement. In the Persian eschatology the dragon is released by Angro-Mainu, the enemy of Ahura Madza. In the Orphic myth the Titans escape from Tartarus, kill Dionysus, and are then consumed by Zeus.
The myth was probably suggested by the physical conditions in Babylonia. Every year, with the melting of the mountain snows, the floods came; and over a vast expanse of country the flat plains lay submerged, the watery chaos reigned supreme. But as time wore on the sun grew stronger and stronger, the floods vanished before him, and soon a luxuriant vegetation took their place. Thus every year this drama was repeated: chaos was vanquished by the sun. And as men began to speculate on the origin of things, these facts suggested the line along which their thoughts went. So they said it must have been when the world was created; first of all came the reign of the watery chaos with darkness brooding all over it, and then the radiant sun-god conquered the chaos-demon and created the ordered universe.
Since the discovery of the Tell-el-Amarna tablets we have known that fourteen centuries before Christ the land of Canaan was saturated with Babylonian civilisation. The cuneiform writing is extremely difficult andcomplicated, yet it is a remarkable fact that it was used in diplomatic correspondence between parties neither of whom were Babylonian. But where Babylonian culture prevailed, the myths of Babylon must also have been known. We may, therefore, assume that at this time, and probably many centuries before, the stories which we read on the clay tablets were well known to the Canaanites. It has long been a problem how we are to account for the striking similarity between the Creation and Deluge stories that we find in Genesis and the Babylonian stories. It is probable that the Hebrews, who were comparatively a young people, derived them ultimately from Babylon; but it is highly improbable that they learnt them during the Exile. It is not likely that they learnt them during the period of the monarchy; it is also improbable that they brought them with them from Babylon. The view that most commends itself is that they learnt them from the Canaanites. And here we cannot sufficiently wonder at the difference the Hebrews have made. What is really remarkable to the student of religion is not the similarity between the stories of Genesis and the cuneiform inscriptions, but the difference. This is striking in the Deluge story. There, on the one hand, we have an unethical conception of the disaster, a gross polytheism, according to which the gods cower before the storm like dogs in a kennel, have their favourites, and crowd like flies around the sacrificer; while, on the other side, judgment selects its victims on moral principles, there is a pure monotheism and a worthy conception of God. So, too, in the story of the Creation the whole conception of Tiamat has disappeared, leaving the barest trace in the name by which the watery chaos is called. God is the omnipotent ruler, who does not need to contend with any power below Himself, and who brings all into existence by an effortless word. The more we emphasise the gross character of all this story of Marduk's conflict with the dragon of the abyss, the more we are impressed by the wonder of an inspiration which could transmute the base metal of heathenism into the pure gold of Scripture.
But while the Babylonian myth lost all its mythical features in the sober story of Creation, these still survived in Hebrew poetry. We must remember that these poems are for the most part late; they date from a period when the victory over idolatry in Israel had been definitely won. And, therefore, as I have already explained, they had become spiritually harmless. The author of Job, the Psalmists, and the Prophets were not only monotheists themselves; they were speaking to a people who knew there was no God but one. And, therefore, in the language of poetry they could, without offence and without risk of misunderstanding, use the old stories to glorify God; they could remind Him how He had broken the heads of leviathan in pieces and given the monster's flesh to be meat for the desert-dwellers; they could speak of the time when Rahab's brood of monsters were crushed into helplessness by the might of God.
This type of language is to be found even in the New Testament, especially in the Apocalypse. In the strange story of the dragon, the woman, and the man child, and of the war in heaven between Michael and the dragon which we find in the twelfth chapter we have a continuance of the same ideas. It is true that no Babylonian parallel has yet been recovered, but it is by no means improbable that a story of the birth of Marduk may be found among the cuneiform tablets. If so, it is not unlikely that it may present striking similarities to the story of the birth of Apollo, and the Egyptian story of Hathor, the mother of Horus the sun-god and the dragon Typhon. These are probably all forms of the same original myth of the conflict between the sun-god and the demon of darkness and chaos. As it appears in the Book of Revelation the story has been considerably modified. In the original the flight of the mother is to secure the child's birth in safety, in the Apocalypse the story has been so transformed, for reasons into which I need not now inquire, that the flight of the mother follows the birth of the child, and the child's safety is secured by his being caught up to the throne of God immediately after his birth.
Again, the beast who represents Antichrist is said in the thirteenth chapter to arise out of the sea. And we understand why it is that in the author's vision of final blessedness we should have a feature which appears so strange as his prediction that there should be no more sea. It is the language of poetry, not of sober prose; the author means just the same as he meant with his triumphant exclamation that the kingdoms of the world have become the kingdoms of our God and of His Messiah. The forces of evil, which have resisted so long the advent of peace and brotherhood, are crushed at last into impotence, and the unchallenged reign of righteousness has come in.
There is much that is still obscure about the Apocalypse, but some things at any rate are fairly clear. For the author the Kingdom of Wickedness is concentrated in the Roman Empire, whose last Emperor is to come up out of the abyss and reign as the incarnation of the beast. The throne of Satan is set up wherever the worship of the Emperor is carried on with exceptional enthusiasm and bigotry, and soon the fanaticism of the worshippers will grow to such a pitch that they will bear on their hand or their forehead the mark of dedication to the beast. And in this rising sea of patriotic idolatry the writer sees the followers of the Lamb standing firm amid all the wild raging of the billows.
Nor were the waves tossing in mere impotent fury, for they claimed a vast number of victims who would render the beast no homage. But the author is in no wise dismayed, the very rage of Satan proves that his time is short. He has already been conquered in heaven and cast down to earth, and the writer proclaims woe to the earth because the devil has gone down to it to wreak what suffering he can on the followers of his conqueror, spurred on to supreme exertions, since when three and a half years are past the hour of his doom will have struck and power will be wrested from his hand. Thus even out of the extremity of darkness and terror the writer plucks a hope. It is true that matters are desperate, but be of good cheer, the savage rage of the devil proves how quickly his power is to pass.
The Apocalyptist lived at a time when the floods were indeed roaring and the waves of the sea were lifting up their voice. But he sustained himself and his readers with the assurance which had sustained many Biblical writers before him, that the rage of the powers of evil was destined to swift abatement, and He who had at the beginning abolished the reign of chaos and created the ordered universe we know, would at the end eclipse His ancient achievement and create new heavens and a new earth.
We live in a very different era. Christianity has become the religion of the most highly civilised races, nominally at any rate. It is not the sea's impetuous onslaught that we have now to withstand. There is sunshine on the face of the waters and the waves murmur to us with soft voices that lure us with strange power. But at heart the world is still the same and Satan is none the less Satan because he is clad as an angel of light. The sea is our open foe no longer, but even more to be dreaded is its smooth, smiling treachery and unsuspected current. The message of the Apocalyptist cannot mean for us precisely what it meant for the earliest readers, but essentially the message is the same—a message of warning against compromise with the powers of evil, an exhortation to steadfast resistance, an assurance of sure though slow-coming victory, a conviction that the kingdoms of this world are still to become the kingdoms of our God and of His Messiah.
