find ourselves face to face with the last great administrations of divine wrath. And the nature and machinery of those administrations is the matter which now comes before us. The more specific details are given in the succeeding chapters, but a general summation is first presented in two visions, the Harvest and the Vintage, which, for awful brevity of narration and expressiveness of imagery, are perhaps the most wonderful in all this wonderful Book. God help us to consider them with reverent and believing hearts!

I. THE VISION OF THE HARVEST.

Some worthy expositors take this as a foreshowing of the final gathering home of the people of God. That the Scriptures often speak of such a harvest of the good seed of the Saviour's sowing there can be no question. John the Baptizer spoke of a time of threshing, when the Lord "will gather the wheat into His garner." (Luke 3: 17.) The Saviour commenced His heavenly instructions with an account of His sowing and husbandry, the harvest of which he said would be "the end of the age," when He "will say to the reapers, Gather the wheat into my barn." (Matt. 13.) He also said, "So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground, and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how; for the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself; first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in

the ear. But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come." (Mark 4:26-29.) But that this is the harvest foreshown in the text seems to me very improbable, if not entirely out of the question. According to the record up to this point, the great harvest of the good seed has already been reaped. The Living Ones, the Elders, the innumerable multitude, the Man-child, and the 144,000, all of whom are of the good seed, are in heaven before this reaping comes. This reaping is also immediately preceded by the gathering of a great company to glory, which is very unaccountably separated from the harvest of saints directly to follow, if so we are to understand it. Ordinarily, indeed, we would think of harvest as a thing of gladness and blessing. The Scriptures also speak of harvest as a great joy. But it is the same with respect to the vintage, which all accept as here applying exclusively to the punishment of the wicked. Any argument of that character bears as strongly against taking the vintage in the sense of a destruction as the taking of the harvest in that sense.

It must be remembered that evil has its harvest as well as good. There is a harvest of misery and woe, a harvest for the gathering, binding, and burning of the tares, as well as for the gathering of the wheat into the garner of heaven. And this harvest of punishment has quite as prominent a place in the Scriptures as the harvest of the gathering home of the saints. "Thus saith the Lord

of hosts, the God of Israel; the daughter of Babylon is like a threshing floor, it is time to thresh her; yet a little while and the time of her harvest shall come." (Jer. 51: 33.) Here is a harvest of judgment, a harvest of woe to Babylon, and the harvest of the text follows as the direct consequence of the proclamation of great Babylon's fall. Is it not, therefore, most naturally to be taken as the same in both cases? So again in Joel (3: 11– 16), looking to the very time and events with which we are here concerned, the word is: "Assemble yourselves, and come, all ye heathen, and gather yourselves together round about; thither cause thy mighty ones to come down, O Lord. Let the heathen be awakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat: for there will I sit to judge all the heathen round about. Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: come, get you down, for the press is full, the vats overflow; for their wickedness is great. Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision for the day of the Lord is near in the valley of decision. The sun and the moon shall be darkened, and the stars shall withdraw their shining. The Lord also shall roar out of Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem, and the heavens and the earth shall shake." Here is both a harvest and a vintage; the one like and part of the other, and both exclusively applicable to the destruction of the wicked. This harvest and this vintage are unquestionably the same described in the text. They belong to the same period of time, they are called for after the same manner, and for

the same activities; and they respect the same parties, whether as to the bearer of the sickle, the reapers, or the persons whom the reaping touches. It seems to me impossible, therefore, rightfully to take this harvest as anything else than the final cutting off of the hosts of the wicked, the visitation upon them of the fruits of their sowing. That harvest of which the 144,000 are a first-fruit is a very different matter from this. That is a harvest of gathering to the Lamb on Mount Zion; this is a gathering to the Valley of Jehoshaphat for destruction. Verse 15 is a literal allusion to Isaiah 27: 11, which refers to a scene of breaking and burning, and final withdrawal of all mercy. The express mention of the sharpness of the sickle also shows that we have to do with a scene of judgment. The mention of the cloud likewise points to a work of judgment, for wherever Christ appears on a cloud, the work immediately in hand is always a judgment. The name of the Son of man also points in the same direction; for it is as the Son of man that all judgment has been committed to Christ. (Jno. 5: 27.) And such a contrast as would make only the vintage expressive of wrath and punishment, and the harvest one of a purely gracious character, has not a single trait or item of the account to support it.* The harvest is simply

* Mede, Bishop Newton, Lowman, Doddridge, Bengel, Hengstenberg, Faber, Stuart, W. Robinson, William Jones, etc., agree that the harvest as well as the vintage here denotes a harvest of wrath. Mede well observes, "that the idea of harvest includes three things: the reaping of the corn, the gathering of it in, and the threshing of it;

one phase of a great final visitation upon the apostate world, of which the vintage is another phase.Let us look at it, then, a little more particularly.

"I saw, and behold a white cloud." From this we may be quite sure of what is coming. That cloud is the signal of the second advent of the Lord Jesus. When He ascended, "a cloud received him out of their sight;" and at the same time it was told from heaven, "This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven." (Acts 1.) The cloud took Him, and the cloud shall bring Him. "They shall see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory." (Luke 21: 27.) And what was thus predicted, the Apocalyptic seer here beholds fulfilling. That cloud is "white," like fire at its intensest heat, like the lightning itself, portending the purest as well as the hottest wrath towards the powers which have usurped the dominion of the earth.

"On the cloud is seated one like a Son of man." No one else is here to be thought of but our blessed Lord Jesus. In John's first vision he saw, in the midst of the golden candlesticks, "One like to a Son of man ;" and that One said, "I am the First and the Last, and the Living One; and I became dead, and behold I am living for the ages of the

whence it is made a type in Scripture of two direct opposites; of destruction, when the reaping and the threshing are considered; of restitution and salvation when the ingathering is considered." It is here the reaping only.