Revelation Part 7

[Unless in brackets, all of the message is by Bertrand L. Comparet.] We are continuing our study of the Book of Revelation and we have covered the first two of the three woes. You’ll remember that the Saracen invasion was the first woe. Just previous to the Saracen invasion you had the breakup of the western third of the Roman Empire – the European portion of it. Then, with the first woe, the Saracen invasion, you had another third of the empire taken – all of North Africa, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, into Mesopotamia and a good deal of Asia Minor. But we saw that it developed exactly the way the Book of Revelation had prophesied. The western part of the Roman Empire had undergone complete collapse, and every part of its so-called civilization had crumbled into ruin. The Catholic “Church”, of course, remained and began gaining strength because, with the empire gone there was no authority left – nothing to bring order out of chaos except the influence of the “Church.” Hence, the Pope soon moved into that power vacuum for all practical purposes – the place formally occupied by the emperor in ruling the northwesterly third of the original Roman Empire. Despite all the things that happened to show Yahweh’s disapproval of Roman Catholicism – all the same faults remained in the eastern “church”, the Greek Orthodox “Church.” As a matter of fact, the only substantial differences between them are two: (1st) that the eastern “church” doesn’t recognize the bishop of Rome as head of their “church”, and (2nd) they allow their priests to marry. And a (3rd): they don’t use Latin as the only official language of the “church.” But aside from those, you had the same idolatry; the same worship of the images of the saints and all that. Throughout North Africa, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, parts of Asia Minor, that dominance was being pretty largely broken up and stamped out by the Saracen invasion; because the Saracen Arabs were out, not primarily as looters – although that’s always been a large part of Arab ideals – and not primarily seeking more territory to govern, but primarily out to spread their new religion, Mohammedanism. The whole origin of Mohammedanism was a protest against the total corruption of what had originally been Christianity and had ceased to be, but still masqueraded under the Christian name. [See note #’s 1 & 2 at end of lesson.]

Then the second woe was the Turkish invasion. The Turks took over what the Arabs had conquered, and in addition they took all the rest of Asia Minor. Then they moved into the Balkans and took over the southeastern European nations which had been formerly a part of the Roman Empire, and finally took Constantinople itself, the last vestige of the old eastern Roman Empire, in the year 1453. The Turks, while they were Mohammedans, were primarily out for plunder and power. They incidentally brought Mohammedanism along with them, but they were out to steal and to rule. That was their only object.

With that, you get through chapter 9 of the Book of Revelation. When you get into chapter 10, there’s a sudden change in the subject. The Book of Revelation deals with a number of great historical processes that were going on, more or less overlapping, with the one exception of the ending of persecution of Christianity by pagan Rome with the Edict of Toleration by Constantine in 313 A.D. You can say that no part of this was simply an event taking place in a single day. [See note #3 at end of lesson.] Each was an historical process that got its start while the one before it was gradually fading out, and in turn the next one was gradually beginning. It’s at least a three ring circus and you have to stop once in a while and look at what has been going on in one of the other rings. So that’s what we’re doing here when this parenthetical thing is thrown in with the beginning of Revelation chapter 10, at verse 1.

John says: “And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud, (Your King James Version says, ‘A rainbow was upon his head’, and in the Greek it says ‘the rainbow’, which evidently is a bit more important.) And his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire.” John had seen and talked with a number of angels, but he characterizes this one as especially powerful and important. The details he tells about him give a number of clues to indicate that this angel most probably was Yahshua the Christ Himself. “He was clothed with a cloud.” That is not generally a characteristic of angels as we see them in the Bible, but the appearance of Yahweh Himself has been marked by that. You remember, when He descended upon Mount Sinai, He came enveloped in a cloud with storm and thunder and lightning. When He led the Israelites in their Exodus, again He was enveloped in this pillar of cloud. When He came personally into the tabernacle in the wilderness, the cloud pillar descended upon and filled the tabernacle. When Solomon dedicated the Temple and the presence of Yahweh came into the Temple at that time, it was filled with the cloud again, and the glory of Yahweh. Thus, this is something that indicates more than just an angel. Now, “the rainbow upon His head” – rainbow, of course, was a symbol and promise of divine mercy. You remember that after the flood Yahweh said, “When you see my rainbow in the sky, this is a token to you that I will never again destroy the world with a flood.” [See note #4 at end of lesson.]

In Revelation 4, verses 1 to 3, where John receives a vision of the throne of Yahweh in heaven, there was a rainbow around it. Again, when Ezekiel was given a glimpse of the throne of Yahweh, Ezekiel 1, verse 28, he comments upon the rainbow being seen there. Then John said “His face was as it were the sun.” Well, at the transfiguration, you remember, Yahshua the Christ took two of the disciples with him up onto a mountain and allowed His divine nature to become more visible there, when Moses and Elijah came to talk with Him. It mentions then that “His face shone brightly as the sun.” Again, in the first chapter of Revelation, where John got his vision of Yahshua the Christ standing among the seven lamp stands, he comments that “His face was as the sun in brightness, and his feet like pillars of fire.”

As seen by Ezekiel in Ezekiel 1, verses 26 and 27, he mentions he got his vision of Yahweh as shining like fire. John, in Revelation 1, verse 15, mentioned how the feet of Yahshua the Christ “shone with light”, and he mentions them as being like “the glow of molten bronze.” You know how iron glows white-hot long before it melts, and even bronze, which melts at a lower temperature, would be glowing white-hot when molten. The importance of what this particular angel does is again further confirmation that this was Yahshua the Christ Himself. Then Revelation 10, verse 2, John says: “... he had in his hand a little book (and your King James Version just says ‘open’, but the exact Greek is ‘a little book having been opened’, implying that it was formerly closed and had been opened): and he set his right foot upon the sea and his left foot on the earth.” Well, we’ve run into the opening of a book or scroll, of course, earlier than this. In the 5th chapter of Revelation we have Yahshua the Christ, the Lamb of Yahweh, being the only one found worthy to open the scroll that was sealed shut with the seven seals. You’ll remember that He didn’t tell the writing on that scroll. As each seal was opened there was an historical event that took place which showed the significance of it. [See note #5 at end of lesson.]

Now, it having been opened – and by the way, while your King James Version uses the term book, the actual Greek here is biblíon, a little scroll, which is the same as it was in the fifth chapter where you had the scroll sealed with the seven seals. A book of pages bound together along one edge would have been called a codex. That came into general use much later than this. It was still a rarity, even in John’s time. Hence, he had this book, or scroll, having been opened, and now he sets his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land. The Bible, of course, was strictly a closed book under the Catholic “Church.” They were bitterly opposed to anyone but the priesthood ever getting a glimpse into the Bible, and they greatly discouraged it on the part of the priesthood, for that matter. The Vatican determined what “church” doctrine was, and as long as you’d been told by the Pope what the doctrine was, what need was there for you to look in the Bible to see whether it was there or not? You were supposed to believe that the Pope was the successor to Yahshua. Thus, they had kept it closed. In the first place, it was only in Latin, which the common people didn’t understand, and if they got a chance to look at one it therefore wouldn’t mean anything to them. Secondly, no copies were available except these great, bulky manuscript volumes in the monasteries and “churches”, and those were not made available to anybody but the priests and the monks. The Bible was very effectively kept out of the hands of the people, and deliberately, because the hierarchy of the Catholic “Church” had from the beginning been conscious of the falsity and evil of their doctrines. They didn’t want it exposed, and it certainly would have been exposed had anybody been able to get a look at the Bible. [See note #6 at end of  lesson and note #7 at Lesson #3.]

The opening of the Bible to the people was the direct cause of the Protestant Reformation. Up to this time you had only one Christian “Church” in all of western Europe – at least it called itself Christian – that was the Roman Catholic “Church.” With murder, it stamped out any attempt to worship other than under those forms in its own “churches.” You had the same thing, in substance, with the Greek Orthodox “Church” in the eastern half of the Roman Empire. Well, the Catholic “Church” had reserved to themselves the possession of the only Latin translations, all based, of course, on Jerome’s Vulgate. In addition to these, there were scattered around some of the Greek manuscripts, but there were almost none of those in western Europe. They had remained where the civilization was Greek and where the language was generally Greek, in the eastern half of the Roman Empire. Although universities had been growing up before this time, Greek was practically an unknown language in western Europe, even in the universities. After all the rest of the eastern part of the empire had fallen to the Turks and it was evident they were going to take Constantinople, and from a few years before 1453 up to a few years after, there was a great flight from Constantinople of many of the Greek scholars, who took with them their Greek manuscripts. They fled someplace to get out of the path of these barbarous Turks, so they went to western Europe. Of course, they went to the various universities. [See note #7 at end of lesson.]

The university at Paris had been established sometime in the early 10 hundreds, and there were two or three other good universities, besides several other smaller ones by that time. These scholars, with their knowledge of the Greek language and their Greek manuscripts, showed up at these universities. Greek then became a known language among the well educated scholars in western Europe. From about, say, 1458 and after, you had the teaching of the Greek language in the universities and it became more common. In all these universities there were some of the Greek manuscripts, including the Septuagint of the Old Testament and the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament available for study.

Note the importance of a series of dates and the events that happened on them. In 1454, you had the invention of printing in Germany. In 1476, William Caxton introduced printing into England. In 1516, Erasmus published his printed Greek New Testament, which probably was a substantial factor in the enlightenment of Martin Luther. In 1518, Zwingli printed the first Swiss New Testament. In 1522, Luther put out his New Testament in German, and in the next ten years that went into 57 editions. You can see how hungry the people were for the Word of Yahweh. [In 1525, Tyndale was driven from Cologne when his translation was partly printed, whereupon he fled to Worms where he published his first edition, without his name, in 1526. It was widely distributed in England before the authorities discovered and burned it. In 1534, Tyndale printed a revised edition of his New Testament which later formed the basis for the Authorized Version.] The same year (1526), the Bible was printed in Sweden. In 1535, Coverdale published the complete Bible in English. In 1537 you had the complete Bible published in Denmark, in their language. In England, you had Matthew’s Bible in English. In 1539, under royal approval and command, the Great Bible, as they called it, was printed under the supervision of Coverdale, and by royal command a copy placed in every “church” in England for the use of the parishioners. Now this was a large book and it was kept chained to the pulpit so that you didn’t have somebody taking it home for a few years of private study by himself – this was for the congregation in general.

Hence, the open book was available to be read by Yahweh’s people – and you notice, the only places where this spread were the Israel lands – the British Isles, the territories of what is now Germany, Austria and the Scandinavian nations. It was stamped out, of course, by fire and sword in all the non-Israel lands that were ruled by the Catholic “Church.” So, just as Yahshua the Christ is the one who gave John this revelation of all the history to come, it was Yahshua the Christ who caused the open book to be available, which was the means of carrying into effect the things that were to come. [See note #8 at end of lesson.]

Then, in Revelation 10, verses 3 and 4, John goes on: “And [he] (that’s the angel) cried with a loud voice, as when a lion roareth: and when he had cried, seven thunders uttered their voices. And when the seven thunders had uttered their voices, I was about to write: and I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Seal up those things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not.”

Again, this loud voice like the roaring of a lion is another confirmation that this was the lion of the tribe of Judah. You remember, Revelation 5, verse 5-b, calls Him both the Lamb of Yahweh and the Lion of the tribe of Judah. Thus, “He holds forth the open book and shouts triumphantly like a lion’s roar.” By opening the seven-sealed scroll, He is proceeding with the process of redemption, because we are told in that 5th chapter of Revelation that He had “redeemed us.” Presenting the Book after it was opened, He’s carrying into effect the results of that redemption. [See note #9 at end of lesson.]

Now about those seven thunders which were not to be written down. There have been two different interpretations of that and no conclusive evidence to support one rather than the other, so you can take your choice. Some have said “thunder and lightning normally accompany the presence of Yahweh.” In the Exodus, when Yahweh came down on the top of Mount Sinai, there were the terrible peals of thunder and flashes of lightning. In Revelation 4, verse 5, where John was given a vision of Yahweh seated on His throne in heaven, there were also lightning flashing and terrible peals of thunder coming out from the throne. Therefore, some have said these accompanying divine revelations here were the thunders from the throne of Yahshua, and John was told not to write them because this was not yet the time to reveal what they said because it would be premature to do so. Anyway, it’s a possibility, and thus arguable.

Remember, most books on Revelation have been written by people who could see no evil in anything but the Catholic “Church.” The Catholic “Church” was to blame for the fall of Adam, and Noah’s flood, and the slavery in Egypt and everything else, besides all the things happening afterward. While there’s plenty to blame the Catholic “Church” for, on the other hand, the Catholic “Church” is a symptom rather than the disease, and it was the same people who were now corrupting the Protestant “churches” as had corrupted the Catholic “Church.” They said this: “The Pope was very fond of issuing proclamations, claiming to speak with the voice of ‘God’,” and ordering this and that or preventing this and that, forbidding it. Many writers have spoken of these proclamations as “the thunders of the Vatican.” Hence, [they claim] this represented the various efforts of the Pope to condemn the reading of the Bible by the common people, [and according to their theory] therefore being falsehoods, they were not to be written down. Then they say, by way of contrast, noting that in Revelation 21, verse 5, John was told this: ‘... Write: for these words are true and faithful’, since if you’re told ‘don’t write this, but write something else’, it may well be an indication that these are not true. On the other hand, supporting the first view, that he was told not to write them because it would be premature to reveal what they said, compare Daniel 12, verses 4 and 9, where Daniel was told, “shut up the words and seal the book even unto the time of the end.” Now the things Daniel was told were direct revelations through an angel, and they were true, but the explanation was not to be given prematurely. Well, you can argue either theory very plausibly. So take your choice, and in any event John didn’t write what the seven thunders said. John didn’t just say he saw this mighty angel, but he mentioned particularly the angel, evidently facing south toward where John was: “he set his right foot upon the sea and his left foot upon the earth.” Now going up and standing on something is certainly a way of, and a symbol of, taking possession of it, isn’t it? The Angel here was taking over command and barring any further advance by the satanic forces that were trying to stamp out what he was doing.

Thus “he put his right foot upon the sea.” In 1588 you had the Spanish armada sent to conquer England expressly because England was Protestant, and at the urgings of the Pope, the king of Spain got this enormous fleet together to go and conquer England – murder all the Protestants and compel the kingdom to become Catholic. Well, what happened to it? The Spanish armada had a hundred and twenty-nine ships – sixty five of them being huge ships of over seven hundred tons. They had 8,000 sailors and 19,000 soldiers aboard. The English had a total navy with which to resist this of only 80 ships, and out of the 80 only 30 of them were what they called “ships of the line”, big enough and with enough guns to really take part in battle with some chance of accomplishing something. Well, the English sailed out bravely enough – you remember Sir Francis Drake was in his home town of Plymouth, bowling at the time the word came that this enormous fleet had been sighted out in the English Channel, and that he better go out and do something. He said “Well, all in due time,” So he finished his game of bowling, then went aboard his ship and started out to battle the Spanish fleet. The English fought bravely and they did sink or damage several of the Spanish ships. Mostly what they did was to drive the Spanish fleet into the port of Calais across the channel, in France, where the Spanish wanted to reorganize.

By the time the Spanish started out again, a terrific storm had come up. The Spanish fleet could not turn back to land on the southerly coast of England because they could make no headway into that storm. All they could do was go north in the channel, and they didn’t dare approach the coast there because they would have been wrecked. They could only hope to go up around the coast of Scotland and come down on the westerly side. In the process 2/3rds of their ships were destroyed. Fifty-four out of this original hundred and twenty-nine ships were all that avoided sinking. It’s an interesting thing to note that Queen Elizabeth had a medal struck to commemorate this. On this, she took a phrase from the song of Moses after they had successfully passed through the Red Sea. In Exodus 15, verse 10, in the song of Moses, he said: “Thou didst blow with thy wind, [and] the sea covered them: they sank as lead in the mighty waters.” That was speaking of the crossing of the Red Sea and the destruction of the pursuing Egyptians. Thus, on this medal there was the inscription, “Thou didst blow with thy wind and they were scattered.” The name of Yahweh, in Hebrew letters, also appeared on this medal. Do you need any other indication that this was truly an Israel people celebrating their deliverance?

You know, of course, how the Pope endeavored to stamp out Protestantism by land. He commanded all the kings to use their armies to kill all the heretics, and he was only able to get it done in the non-Israel lands, because the kings and nobility of what later became Austria and Germany, and up into Scandinavia, refused to have anything to do with it. Practically all of them adopted Protestantism themselves and they protected the Protestants. Hence, the advance of the forces of antichrist, under the Pope, was definitely halted as the angel planted his feet on the sea and the land. He stopped it then and there. Then John goes on in Revelation 10, verses 5 and 6: “And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, And sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, (and your King James Version goes on to say that ‘there should be time no longer’).” [See note #’s 8 & 9 at end of lesson.]

This is a good example, here, of how much wishful thinking is substituted for translation. Whatever the “church” hierarchy has determined to be its doctrine, if the Bible doesn’t say it, that’s too bad for the Bible – alter the Bible till it does say it. Some of the best modern translations that we’re accustomed to rely upon most of the time make the same blunder. I looked up a few of them here. Smith and Goodspeed, “... there should be no more delay...”; Rotherham, who ordinarily is scrupulously accurate, “delay no longer shall there be”; Ferrar Fenton, again ordinarily a stickler for accuracy, “... that time should no longer intervene...”; Moffatt, that “...There shall be no more delay...”; Weymouth, “... There shall be no further delay...”; and the recently published New Jerusalem Bible, “The time of waiting is over...” Some other writers have said of this same phrase, that it could be translated, “there shall be one more time.” They ought to make up their minds whether “time no more” or “one more time”, you would think. They have argued, “well, ‘a time’, as a prophetic expression in the Bible, is 360 years, so ‘one more time’, what would it indicate?” For example, from the Spanish armada’s destruction, 1588, plus 360 more years would bring us to 1948, and by 1948 all the illusions that anybody had about World War II were dispelled. We saw that all we had done was to break down European civilization to pave the way for Russia. Some of them say “there shall be no more time” or “no more delay.” Others, “one more time.” [See note #10 at end of lesson.]

The actual Greek, word-for-word, and not even changing their word order phrasing it: “because time not yet shall be.” Young’s Literal Translation, putting it into the easier understood English word order, is “that time shall not be yet.” That’s the actual, literal Greek. How can you make anything out of the expression “the time shall not yet be”, that “there shall be no more time”? In other words, your King James Bible is the least trustworthy thing on the subject of religion that you can read because it always has to be under suspicion. I don’t mean it’s always wrong, and you’ll notice that I quote from it a great deal after first checking up to find whether this is a place where it is right. But, it does have to be always under suspicion because there are so many of these errors in it. So, the angel swore that the time shall not yet be, and that fits in with the next verse, Revelation 10:7: “But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of Yahweh should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.” You remember, you had these seven angels, each given a trumpet, and each in turn to sound a blast on his trumpet. We had been through the first six of these angels and we saw that as each trumpet blast sounded, it signaled an historical event which took place the way the Bible described it here.

You have this parenthetical thing thrown in here, in-between, before you get to the seventh trumpet and before you get to the third of the three woes. When the seventh trumpet sounds, it says the mystery of Yahweh would be finished. Now you have to avoid getting too impatient to see all these things happen at once; because remember, that every one of these things had not been instantaneous events of one day. They had been processes which consumed, at the minimum, decades, and generally centuries to complete. Since it is presumably consistent with what had gone on before, you can expect this seventh trumpet to be a process covering a considerable period of time. We won’t get to that until after. There’s still another one of these parenthetical things thrown in here, beside the one we are working on now. Then at Revelation 10, verses 8 to 10, John goes on: “And the voice which I heard from heaven spake unto me again, and said, Go and take the little book which is open in the hand of the angel which standeth upon the sea and upon the earth. And I went unto the angel, and said unto him, Give me the little book. And he said unto me, Take it, and eat it up; and it shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey. And I took the little book out of the angel’s hand, and ate it up; and it was in my mouth sweet as honey: and as soon as I had eaten it, my belly was bitter.”

You’re constantly running into sermons and articles by various ministers (if they ever get into the Book of Revelation at all) in which they show they haven’t the slightest understanding of this symbolism. It’s for the very good reason that the symbolism is practically never new. It had been introduced earlier in the Bible, and they haven’t read the Bible, so when they come to the last use of that symbolism in the Book of Revelation, they don’t know what it’s talking about.

This matter of taking this book, which obviously was the Bible, “to eat it and it would be sweet as honey in his mouth.” You have several previous uses of that in the Bible, and we’ll touch on two of them here now. You remember that, as is always the case with organized, institutionalized religion, the worship in the Temple at Jerusalem had degenerated into total paganism. All the worship of Yahweh had ceased and there were pagan altars set up within the Temple courts, and everything was going to pot. And then you had the last good king, you might almost say the only good king except David, Josiah, who ordered the Temple cleaned up and the accumulating rubbish thrown out of it. When that was done, under some of the rubbish piled there, they found a scroll of the Law. It mentions that in particular, although probably it was the Old Testament as far as it had been written at that time.

This was brought out and read, and of course it produced consternation immediately because of the way it so bitterly condemned the things they’d been doing and said this was leading to the wrath of Yahweh as punishment for it. They took it to the king and when he read it, he was just appalled. Remember now, he had the responsibility for this nation, and he wondered, was it too late to avoid the wrath of Yahweh? Therefore, he began a reform. He ordered the pagan idols and altars and that sort of thing taken out of the Temple and the idols on the high places destroyed, and a resumption of the worship of Yahweh according to the Old Testament.

The prophet Jeremiah, speaking of that incident – the finding of this scroll and the recovery of what had been completely lost – spoke of the words of Yahweh saying (Jeremiah 15, verse 16): “Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart: for I am called by thy name, O Yahweh Elohim of hosts.” He was, his name yir-mem-yaw, Yah shall arise, and as you know, Yah is a shortened form of Yahweh. Now he doesn’t mean, of course, that he sat down and gnawed on some old dry parchment. He said, I ate them – when you eat food, it’s assimilated into your body and becomes part of you – every cell in your body gains and is nourished by a portion of that food you’ve eaten. He was using that simile there – I studied your words until they became a part of me. Well, you find a similar expression in the early part of Ezekiel. Ezekiel 2, verse 8 to Ezekiel 3, verse 3. You remember, at the beginning of his ministry Ezekiel was given a vision of Yahweh coming down to earth, and he was told: “But thou, son of man, hear what I say unto thee; Be not thou rebellious like that rebellious house: open thy mouth, and eat that I give thee. And when I looked, behold, an hand was sent unto me; and, lo, a roll of a book waswas written within and without: and there was written therein lamentations, and mourning, and woe. Moreover he said unto me, Son of man, eat that thou findest; eat this roll, and go speak unto the house of Israel. So I opened my mouth, and he caused me to eat that roll. And he said unto me, Son of man, cause thy belly to eat, and fill thy bowels with this roll that I give thee. Then did I eat it; and it was in my mouth as honey for sweetness.” therein; And he spread it before me; and it

Thus, you’ve got the same symbolism used back here. This is filled within and without with, as he says, lamentations and mournings and woe, and yet when he ate it, Ezekiel says “It was in my mouth sweet as honey.” Of course, what was all this but the process of purification, destroying out of Israel the elements that didn’t belong there that were corrupting them? It was the only possible way to save the rest of the nation, and so while these came as what appeared at the time to be calamities, they were actually blessings. If you got a cancer, the thing to do is not preach at it, but cut it out, get rid of it. You can’t tolerate a cancer because the cancer won’t tolerate you. So, John had been told, “eat this scroll – in your mouth it will be sweet as honey, but it will make your belly bitter.” Here was the discovery again, as in Jeremiah’s time, of the long lost and suppressed Word of Yahweh. What could be sweeter? Yes, a tremendous thing. But after he has this digested and he begins to see what the consequences of this will be, he will never retreat and surrender without a battle. Josiah saw clearly he had to conquer paganism by force, and that’s what was ahead for him to accomplish.

It’s perfectly true that certain periods of persecution of the Christians were bad. It’s also true that Protestants were burned alive in Italy as late as 1866. That’s later than the end of our Civil War. Hence, John was getting an understanding, “yes, here is the Word of Yahweh”, after centuries when it had been suppressed. It’s being made known to all of Yahweh’s people. Wonderful! But at the same time, anything this powerful is going to meet the combined forces of evil doing their utmost to stamp it out, and there remained – well, papal persecution was greater from this time on than it had been before. All through the centuries there had been some people who had become aware of the corruptions of Roman Catholicism and protested against it. But all those corruptions had become part of the official doctrine of the “church”, and when one protested against what was the official doctrine of the “church”, one was a heretic. If one merely said “That’s not the way to do it”, and you continued pointing out the evil, the only way to silence you was to murder you.

All through these centuries they had been murdering individuals and small groups of people who had been protesting against the corruption of Roman Catholicism, but the great battles of Roman Catholicism against Protestantism were all then in the future. It’s been estimated that the number of people murdered by the Catholic “Church” because they were Protestants, not because they were pagans (they didn’t bother killing off pagans, they tried to convert them because paganism and Catholicism were perfectly compatible), converting them was an easy job. But how could you convert a Protestant when he saw the corruption of all that you had for a religion? The estimates vary because no exact statistics were kept, but it has been estimated that the Roman Catholic “Church” is responsible for the murder of anywhere from forty to sixty million people. And this, you see, is practically all future from that time, with the publication of the Bible in the common languages of the people it had become known.

While it was sweet in John’s mouth to taste, the fact that this Book was the Word of Yahweh, by the time he got to digesting it he saw the awful persecutions that still lay ahead, it made his belly bitter. Then at Revelation 10, verse 11, he receives a new command: “And he (the angel) said unto me, Thou must prophesy again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings.” This, you see, was commanding the Protestant reformation: “Here you have the book itself to base it upon, now go out and prophesy before many nations and kings.” We really can go a verse or two over into the next chapter, 11, before we reach a breaking off point, because then we run into something that’s a big subject and needs a lot more time to cover than we have available. And to be frank, I haven’t finished my own studies on it. Therefore, we’ll just quote the first couple of verses of Revelation, chapter 11. John said: “And there was given me a reed like unto a rod: and the angel stood, saying, Rise, and measure the temple of Yahweh, and the altar, and them that worship therein. But the court which is without the temple leave out ...” (Now the Greek is much more emphatic. The Greek says “cast out.” Not merely an omission, but throw it away), “... the court which is without the temple, cast out, and measure it not, for it is given unto the nations (your King James Version says “Gentiles”, of course), and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months.”

We had just completed the transaction of the open Bible being put into circulation. John was only representative of the many great Christian leaders who were to carry on the work of the Reformation. They were (in spite of great risk to themselves and martyrdom in many cases) to carry on the work of spreading Yahweh’s Word. What is Yahweh’s Word to be spread for? To teach people to bring in, as far as they can, the Kingdom of Heaven by restoring what the Israel nations should be. Thus, he was told, “measure the temple of Yahweh, and the altar, and them that worship therein.” Careful measurement of these things obviously has to do with building. You’re to measure what serves as a pattern here, and from that you know the proportions of the structure that you are to make. The plan of the Temple – there was the Temple proper, which was divided into two rooms. You had the first room of the Temple, the Holy place. Here was contained the golden table of showbread and some of the other things, candlesticks and so on. Then, the veil divided that from the innermost chamber, the Holy of Holies, where there was the Ark and mercy seat, with a little altar of incense in front of it. At each end of the Ark stood these great figures, the two cherubs with their outstretched wings. This inner room was a cube, 30 feet on each side, and these angel figures; these cherubs, carved of wood and overlaid with gold with their wings spread out, the two wings covered the whole 30 foot width of the room. Each of these figures was 15 feet tall, with a total wing spread of 15 feet. Probably you’ve all seen drawings purporting to show what the inner chamber of the Holy of Holies looked like, where at each side of the Ark of the Covenant, the mercy seat, there was a little carved figure about 30 inches high. Instead, it was 15 feet high, according to the measurements given. So, in this innermost Holy of Holies no man could enter except the high priest, and he on only the one day of the year, the day of atonement, where he was enacting, in the ritual, the part of Yahshua the Christ presenting His Own blood as the sacrifice which atoned for the sins of all the [Israel] people. [See note #11 at end of lesson.]

Into the outer room of the Temple proper, all of the priests on duty there could come because it was their job to keep it cleaned up and to frequently change the bread on the table of showbread, and to keep the so-called candlestick (lamp stand it was), to keep it perpetually burning, always keeping it supplied with oil and so on. The Temple itself stood in a courtyard which contained, a little bit in front of the Temple, the altar of sacrifice. Off to one side was the huge bowl, the “bronze sea”, as they called it, a water reservoir, and then they had a number of basins on wheeled carts which were used, apparently to wash the meat of the sacrifice before laying it on the altar to be burned. Into this court, the court of the altar of course, all the priests could come, and the indications are that in the earlier period, at least, the people of Israel could come in there to deliver their sacrifices to the priests to be offered on the altar.

A little later, and thought to be built during the time of Solomon, there was an outer court added. This was also a feature of Herod’s Temple which was standing in Yahshua the Christ’s day. Now you remember, Yahweh did not forbid the Gentiles to worship him. They were not part of His nation and they were not entitled to participate in the Passover ceremony. Nevertheless, if they understood that He was the one true Elohim and wished to worship Him as such, that certainly was to be encouraged. Thus, there was this outer courtyard, the so-called “court of the Gentiles”, into which non-Israelites could enter for the purpose of worship, but they could not go into the inner court. [See note #12 at end of lesson.]

[Your humble transcriber highly suggests that the “Gentiles” (usually translated “nations”) would be the pure racial members from the White Genesis 10 nations, descended only from Ham, Shem and Japheth, and not the other races. C.A.E. See note #13 at end of lesson.]

Josephus gives some description of the Temple of Herod as it had stood slightly before his time, and on the walls and at the gates that led from this courtyard into the inner one there were signs in several different languages warning that the penalty for any non-Israelite going into the inner court was death. So now John is told “You go measure the temple and the altar and those that worship therein.” This is only Israel that he’s taking the measure of, and of course he’s measuring them in the ideal state that the Bible portrays they should be in. This is the pattern on which the actual nation is to be constructed. But he said: “don’t try to measure this court that’s on the outside. That’s given over to these non-Israel nations, so cast that out.” This again emphasizes, here in the last book of the Bible, that the Temple was an Israel institution from its beginning to its end. The idea that “oh, we’ve got to go out and convert all these other people, especially the Jews, the children of Satan; we’ve got to bring them in and have fellowship and brotherhood with them and so on” – that is a complete perversion of the Scriptures. [See note #’s 14 and 15 at end of lesson.]

Remember, Yahshua the Christ Himself, when He was out among the Jews, spoke only in parables which they couldn’t understand. He explained this to His disciples afterward, as both Matthew and Mark record. He said “among them I speak only in parables – lest they should understand and be converted and their sins be forgiven them.” He is trying earnestly to avoid making a convert of the Jew. Half an hour before my program on XEMO at night comes on, you have what is called The Christian Jew Hour. I never could believe in a Christian-Satanic hour – for a minute or second – as it is a contradiction in terms. Typical of the Jew, who claims to be converted – and he is always asking you: “What have you done for the Jews today?” Have you left in your pocket still a few dimes that they haven’t yet stolen from you? Thus, Yahshua the Christ Himself wanted to avoid converting them, because after you’ve converted one of them, after you’ve got his past sins wiped out, what is he? Isn’t the same nature that led him into his past sins going to lead him into the same sort in the future? He (Yahshua) wanted to avoid that. Therefore, the Bible, from beginning to end, is an Israel book. Just as, from beginning to end, it’s a Christian book. [End of Comparet’s Lesson #7.]

CRITICAL NOTES ON LESSON #7

Comments by William Finck initialed W.R.F.

Comments by Clifton A. Emahiser in brackets in lesson text as “your transcriber”

or initialed C.A.E. in critical notes.

Note #1: Nothing has happened yet – even to this very day – that can be pointed to as a judgment by Yahweh against Roman Catholicism. And the Catholic “Church”, while comprised mostly of beasts, still has many of the children of Israel among its congregants. During the Reformation it was not the Catholic “church” being judged – even though the Catholic “church” lost much of its power, authority and luster – but rather the Catholic “church” was the vehicle used as a scourge against the people of Yahweh, much like the ancient Philistines were used! Those who broke away from the Catholic “church” during the Reformation, while many of them were eventually successful, still suffered greatly on account of their breaking away. The destruction caused in parts of Germany (primarily the Rhineland) during the Catholic “church’s” 30 Years’ War there was actually even a catalyst for the emigration of many Germans to New York, circa 1708. W.R.F.

Note #2: I can not accept that “the whole origin of Mohammedanism was a protest against the total corruption of what had originally been Christianity.” Firstly, it is apparent that no one was attempting to “Christianize” the Arabs in the first place. Secondly, Mohammed came from a background which naturally despised everything Christian, being at least in part, a Jew himself. Thirdly – and Comparet had mentioned this himself – the Arab world was engaging in all kinds of pagan idolatry, their own, plus the Egyptian, plus the Greco-Roman and so on. This is natural to people of mixed heritages, and it was basically this mixed pagan idolatry which was Mohammedanism’s first target. See Comparet’s own remarks in Sermon #6, on pages 3-4, for his own discussion of this very thing. W.R.F.

Note #3: Although an edict can be signed in a day, obviously the political circumstances leading up to and allowing the signing of such an edict – and especially Constantine’s Edict of Toleration – took much longer than a day. It is quite difficult to understand why Comparet made such a distinction here. W.R.F.

Note #4: The King James Version says “A rainbow” only because many of the manuscripts which comprise the Majority Text are wanting the Article, though many others contain it. The better and older manuscripts, the great uncials, contain the Article. W.R.F.

Note #5: The verb “to open” in Rev. 10:2 is an Aorist Participle and may be rendered either “having been opened” or “being opened.” W.R.F.

Note #6: In the medieval “church”, where a parish even had a Bible, it belonged to the bishop. There was even an early Bible version called the “Bishop’s Bible.” Priests did not normally have access to a Bible. W.R.F.

Note #7: If at the time of the Reformation Greek was little-known in Europe (outside of Turkish-controlled Greece), it is only because Latin had supplanted Greek as the common language of scholars in the Middle Ages, but not in Ireland, where the Keltic church monasteries maintained Greek copies not only of Scripture, but also of many of the Classics. W.R.F.

Note #8: I would not draw the lines of Protestantism around the children of Israel. It is not at all accurate to state that Sweden and France, both of which fought on the Catholic side of the Thirty Years’ War against German Protestantism, are “non-Israel lands”, or southern Ireland, still Catholic today, or Bavaria and Baden-Wurttemberg, where the number of Catholics equal or outnumber Protestants. Even today the Catholic “church” contains many Israelites! While the Czech, Jan Huss, was an early reformer, being a Czech he was most probably a Slav, and therefore a Japhethite – and not an Israelite, yet even he was burned at the stake by the “church.” W.R.F.

Note #9: The redemption of the children of Israel occurred on the cross at Calvary when Yahshua Christ was crucified. The results of that redemption will not be evident until the Second Coming of Christ, i.e. Romans 8:11, 23 and 1 Cor. 15:51-52. While Britain was spared the onslaught of the Spanish Armada, many British Protestants still had suffered under the reign of Bloody Mary. The 30 Years’ War in Germany lasted until 1648. While Protestantism survived, it was not without a long struggle. Comparet ignores much of this, drawing a picture of sudden freedom from Catholicism for the Protestants with statements such as “He [the angel] stopped it then and there.” The process was a bit more complicated than that. W.R.F.

Note #10: Here Comparet gives several well-known Bible versions’ renderings of the last clause of Revelation 10:6, all of which are similar in meaning. Then he states that “some other writers”, whom he leaves unidentified, “have said of this phrase, that it could be translated, ‘there shall be one more time’,” and leaves the reader with the impression that this rendering by these “other writers” is of equal validity with the known writers he had quoted. Who are these “other writers”, that we may compare their work and test its validity?

In truth, there is NO WAY that hoti chronos ouketi estai could ever mean “there shall be one more time”, a rendering which adds “one” to the text and ignores the negative ouk. Chronos, literally “time”, is also “delay”, and just as properly here. The Greeks had a couple of verbs derived from chronos which meant “to delay” or “to waste time” (chronizô, chronotribeô), and at chronos, IV., Liddell and Scott have: “delay, loss, of time.” Since in context, “time” makes no sense here, “delay” would be a proper translation, and Rotherham, Smith & Goodspeed, and Moffatt have all translated the clause quite well. Comparet’s conjectural construction determining the year 1948 as some sort of landmark year is vanity, built upon error, and he did better in the following paragraph, for the clause in question here is an introduction to the text at verse 10:7. W.R.F.

Comment by Clifton A. Emahiser: I have to admit that when I obtained Comparet’s 14 audio tape series on the Book Of Revelation about a decade and a half ago, I too was persuaded by Comparet that the passage in question meant “one more time.” I am thankful to William Finck for advising me that the Greek simply does not support that rendering, as at the time I was about to quote Comparet on that theme. On the other hand, if we set aside the Greek and all other aspects concerning the incident of the Spanish Armada, one must admit that it was a major mile-marker in English history. When a prophetic “time” is used in Scripture, it alludes to a period of 360 years. For instance, “a time, times and a half time” is sometimes stated as 42 months or 1260 days meaning 1260 years. As many are aware, the tribes of Israel were to be punished seven times, or 2520 years. As all the tribes did not go into captivity at the same time, the end of the seven times punishment of the tribes did not end at the same time.

A prophetic “time” is applied to several different unrelated prophecies at different periods. Therefore, there might be a possibility of a 360 year “time” period from the time of the Spanish Armada in 1588 to 1948 A.D., but unrelated to Rev. 10:6. But one might well ask, “What important event happened to Great Britain in 1948?” Answer: It was the year that the prophecy at Ezek. 11:15 was fulfilled when the Zionists “Jews” said to Britain, “Get you far from Yahweh: unto us is this land (Palestine) given in possession.” It was also the year that the “Jewish” prince Charles was born, the devil standing as next in line to David’s throne. C.A.E.

Note #11: It is not likely that cherubim were “angel figures”, which probably came into the “church” via the winged Nike (the goddess of Victory) figures of the Greeks and Romans. There is archaeological evidence that the cherub is a winged sphinx, a creature originally depicted as having the head of a man, the wings of an eagle, the hind quarters of a bull, and the fore body of a lion: the very four symbols of Israel and the throne of Yahweh (Ezekiel 1, Revelation 4). See Biblical Archaeology Review, July-August, 2001, p. 44 and Archaeology Odyssey, September-October, 2004, p. 29. W.R.F.

Note #12: That there was an outer court in the Temple design is apparent at 1 Kings 7:9, 12, and see Ezek. 10:5 et al. W.R.F.

Note #13: Clifton, your assertion concerning the nature of “Gentiles” here is absolutely correct – the term would not include the non-Adamic races! W.R.F.

Note #14: The inscriptions at the gates to the inner court of Herod’s temple in Jerusalem – and I call it Herod’s temple because he had made many changes and additions to the one built much earlier – have come down to us through history and archaeology. These inscriptions were in Greek (for which see Biblical Archaeology Review, July-August, 2003, page 36, for example), and I cannot find where Josephus mentioned inscriptions “in several different languages” (see Antiquities 15:11:5 [15:410-420]). W.R.F.

Note #15: The statements of Comparet’s which inform us “that [it] is a complete perversion of the Scriptures” that “we’ve got to go out and convert all these other people, especially the Jews”, while certainly correct, are a striking contrast to some of his remarks concerning “missionary work” in his earlier sermons of this series. See note #3 at Lesson #3, and note #11 at Lesson #6. W.R.F.