Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 47:187 (Jul 1890)
Article: “Nero Redivivus”
Author: William Eleazar Barton

BSac 47:187 (July 1890) p. 507

“Nero Redivivus”

William E. Barton

“The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and is about to come up out of the abyss, and to go into perdition. And they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, they whose name hath not been written in the Lamb’s book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast, how that he was, and is not, and shall come. Here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth; and they are seven kings; the five are fallen, the one is, the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a little while. And the beast that was, and is not, is himself also an eighth, and is of the seven; and he goeth into perdition” (Rev. 17:8–11, R. V.).

The Praeterist theory of interpretation of the Apocalypse, which rests on the postulated early date of the writing of the book, is now adopted by a large and increasing school of interpreters in America, England, and especially Germany, who find it, unlike the thousand far-fetched and fanciful interpretations based on the assumption of the later date, simple, consistent with itself and with other known facts, and manifestly fulfilled, for the most part, in events near at hand when the book was written, and repeatedly alluded to with statements that these things must “shortly come to pass” (1:n); that “the time is at hand “(1:3; 22:10); that these things “must shortly be done” (22:6); and closing with the emphatic and repeated assurance, “surely I come quickly” (22:7, 20). Not only does it imply what Christ foretold, a fulfilment of all these things while that generation lived (Matt. 16:28; 23:26; 25:34), but states that the generation then living had scarce time for repentance before the final catastrophe (22:11).

The book is explicit in statements from which its own date may be determined. It was written while the temple was still standing (11:1), in the city in which our Lord was crucified (11:8), before the three and one-half years’ war in which it was trodden under foot of the Gentiles (16:10). It was written during the supremacy of the seven-hilled city (17:12...