(c) Protestant:Jos. Mede (Clavis Apocalyptica, Cambr., 1632; Engl. transl. by More, 1643; a new
transl. by R. B. Cooper, Lond., 1833); Hugo Grotius (first, 1644); Vitringa (1705, 1719, 1721);
Bengel (1740); Bishop Thomas Newton (in Dissertations on the Prophecies, 8 vols., 1758).
This list is a small selection. The literature on the Apocalypse, especially in English, is immense,
but mostly impository rather than expository, and hence worthless or even mischievous, because
confounding and misleading. Darling’s list of English works on the Apocalypse contains nearly
fifty-four columns (I., 1732–1786).
General Character of the Apocalypse.
The "Revelation" of John, or rather "of Jesus Christ" through John,^1243 appropriately closes
the New Testament. It is the one and only prophetic book, but based upon the discourses of our
Lord on the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the world, and his second advent (Matt. 24).
It has one face turned back to the prophecies of old, the other gazing into the future. It combines
the beginning and the end in Him who is "the Alpha and the Omega." It reminds one of the
mysterious sphinx keeping ceaseless watch, with staring eyes, at the base of the Great Pyramid.
"As many words as many mysteries," says Jerome; "Nobody knows what is in it," adds Luther.^1244
No book has been more misunderstood and abused; none calls for greater modesty and reserve in
interpretation.^1245
The opening and closing chapters are as clear and dazzling as sunlight, and furnish spiritual
nourishment and encouragement to the plainest Christian; but the intervening visions are, to most
readers, as dark as midnight, yet with many stars and the full moon illuminating the darkness. The
Epistles to the Seven Churches, the description of the heavenly Jerusalem, and the anthems and
doxologies^1246 which are interspersed through the mysterious visions, and glister like brilliant jewels
on a canopy of richest black, are among the most beautiful, sublime, edifying, and inspiring portions
of the Bible, and they ought to guard us against a hasty judgment of those chapters which we may
be unable to understand. The Old Testament prophets were not clearly understood until the fulfilment
cast its light upon them, and yet they served a most useful purpose as books of warning, comfort,
and hope for the coming Messiah. The Revelation will be fully revealed when the new heavens
and the new earth appear—not before.^1247
"A prophet" (says the sceptical DeWette in his Commentary on Revelation, which was his
last work) "is essentially an inspired man, an interpreter of God, who announces the Word of God
to men in accordance with, and within the limits of, the divine truth already revealed through Moses
in the Old Testament, through Christ in the New (the ἀποκάλυψις μυστηρίου, Rom. 16:25. Prophecy(^1243) Ἀποκάλυψισ Ἰησοῦ ΧριστοῦRev. 1:1. The oldest inscription in Cod. א is αποκαλυψις ιωανου. Later MSS. add τοῦ ἁγίου
and τοῦ θεολόγου, etc.
(^1244) "Tot verba, tot mysteria."—"Niemand weiss, was darinnen steht." Zwingli would take no doctrinal proof-text from Revelation.
(^1245) The amount of nonsense, false chronology, and prophecy which has been put into the Apocalypse is amazing, and explains
the sarcastic saying of the Calvinistic, yet vehemently anti-Puritanic preacher, Robert South (Serm. XXIII., vol. I., 377, Philad.
ed., 1844), that "the book called the Revelation, the more it is studied, the less it is understood, as generally either finding a man
cracked, or making him so." The remark is sometimes falsely attributed to Calvin, but he had great respect for the book, and
quotes it freely for doctrinal purposes, though he modestly or wisely abstained from writing a commentary on it.
(^1246) Rev. 4:11; 5:8-14; 7:12-17; 11:15; 14:13; 15:3; 19:1, 2, 6, 7.
(^1247) Herder: "How many passages in the prophets are obscure in their primary historical references, and yet these passages,
containing divine truth, doctrine, and consolation, are manna for all hearts and all ages. Should it not be so with the book which
is an abstract of almost all prophets and Apostles?"
A.D. 1-100.