It may be noted in closing our study of this episode that many commentators interpret “the great city”, in verse eight of this chapter, as referring to Jerusalem, because of the designation “where also their Lord was crucified”—Jerusalem being regarded as a world‐city. The decisive reason against this, however, is the uniform usage of the book,(449) for the interpretation is not otherwise materially affected. Jerusalem is everywhere else in the Revelation the type of that which is holy, and is nowhere else called “the great city”, while this name is applied seven times elsewhere to Babylon (or Rome), the type of the ungodly world, in which and by which our Lord may be truly said to have been crucified; and there seems to be no adequate reason for regarding this passage as containing an exceptional use of the phrase. Whether, however, we interpret of Jerusalem or of Babylon the general sense remains the same. In the one case the apparent defeat and contempt for the church of God, or its witness and witnesses, occurs in Babylon, the type of the godless world, while in the other it happens in Jerusalem, in that case the type of unbelieving Judaism. Either symbolism, it will be seen, is suitable to the context.
IV The Vision of Conflict (A Vision of Warfare). Ch. 12:1‐14:20
A discursive view of moral and spiritual conflict as the key to man’s redemptive history, the prime thought which underlies the whole book, and which is portrayed in this central fourfold vision as a pervasive church‐ historic world‐conflict of the evil against the just, now forms the essential climax of the Revelation, disclosing a divine panorama of the world in process of redemption with the great opposing forces which contend against Christ and his kingdom; a discriminating outlook upon the significant world‐movements of all time from the spiritual point of view, for it is everywhere assumed that the forces which mould history are spiritual, and that the master key to life is found in the supernatural. And, whatever the form in which these movements became apparent to John in his time, we may rest assured that the divinely inspired prophetic insight led him to perceive, at least in some measure, that in their essence they were timeless and repeated themselves in every age. This central vision is in part the most difficult portion of the Revelation, containing seven mystic figures, viz. the Sun‐Clothed Woman, the Great Red Dragon, the All‐ Ruling Man‐Child, the First Beast (the Beast from the Sea), the Second Beast (the Beast from the Land), the Lamb on Mount Zion, and the Son of Man on the Cloud, each one of whom is invested with a special symbolism. The difficulties of interpretation belonging to this part of the Revelation, it will be seen, are scarcely lessened in any degree by referring different parts of the section to various Jewish apocalypses which are supposed to have contained the gist of the thought in this portion, according to the Apocalyptic‐Traditional view;(450) for, apart from the fact that no such apocalypses are now extant, these sections, even if they were originally derived from such a source, have an application here that is distinctively new and specifically Christian. The vision itself is properly divisible into four parts or sections, as indicated in the arrangement that follows.