It Is Now almost exactly 20 years since the publication of the first edition of The Dragon and the Lamb, and its reappearance in a new edition is greatly to be welcomed. Described by its new publishers, the Christadelphian Scripture Study Service, as “an excellent summary of Christ’s last message to his Saints”, the booklet puts forward the ‘standard’ Christadelphian understanding of the Book of the Revelation. For any reader, young or old, it would serve as an ideal introduction to Brother Thomas’s Eureka. As the publishers claim too, “it is written in a style which even those newly baptised can understand. It also contains exhortation to encourage the reader. For these reasons, it is the first book that one should read on the subject”.
Since the publication of the first edition, one of the booklet’s joint authors, Brother George Holton, has fallen asleep in Christ. The other, Brother Graham Pearce, has left the booklet largely unchanged, but has taken the opportunity to add an extra chapter: “I sit a queen and am no widow”. This new material concerns “the final build-up of papal power”, and documents the various events of the last two decades by which “the great whore” of Revelation 17 comes to sit “upon many waters”: the worldwide travels and influence of Popes Paul VI and John Paul II; the accumulation of vast wealth, much of it by dubious means; the intriguing, behind-the-scenes rapprochement between the Vatican and Moscow.
Apart from this addition, then, the booklet is substantially unaltered (except for minor revisions here and there, mostly in diagrams and illustrations). Yet this fact in itself underlines the booklet’s unchanging message—a message which is still as relevant as ever today—that the unfolding drama of human history, mapped out in the Lord’s Revelation to John, is bringing us all inexorably nearer to the great day of crisis and judgement for the world.
When The Dragon and the Lamb first appeared it was reviewed in the warmest terms by the Testimony Reviews Editor, Brother Fred Whiteley. A new generation of readers will now perhaps be interested to hear what he had to say then, whilst those who remember the original review (September 1966) will not mind reading it again as a reminder of what this booklet contains. For some too, the reappearance of Brother Whiteley’s review will revive memories of one who served The Testimony long and faithfully, and whose opinions on matters of substance always were (and still are) well worth taking seriously.
Brother Whiteley wrote:
“Never was the need greater than at the immediate present for the publication, and prompt perusal by every member of the Brotherhood, of the excellent book which we have just been privileged to read. If the shallow insipidity by which we are surrounded is robbing us of our taste for the meaty matters of the Truth which Christ says can make us ‘free indeed’, then here is a tasty restorative which needs only to be read to rouse and reanimate each slumbering virgin. It stimulates the desire to arise and trim the lamp, for all the while the wheels of God have been grinding on, and we are made to realise that His Plan of the ages is at last nearing its fulfilment; and the depths of our souls echo His Son’s words, ‘Behold, the bridegroom cometh’ ; ‘Behold, I come as a thief’.
“The book’s objective is the rekindling, in the midst of the prevalent neglect and apathy, of an interest in the Book of Revelation; the last, and lengthy, loving communication from the Lord God Who made us, and wishes to save us from the effects of sin; a private and confidential disclosure in code-symbol, sent by Him via the Saviour-Anointed, via the angel of Jesus, via the specially-loved apostle John, by whom it may show to his bondservants the things which were about to begin their factual unfolding. To this world, they may be sure, their pierced Saviour (who had been raised from the dead and taken from them for a while) will return as King-Priest of the earth, and they will reign with him for the Age. How priceless and precious it is! With what assiduous attention should we study it! Those who read and hear the words of the prophecy, adding nothing, subtracting nothing, are promised a part in the Book of Life and the Tree of Life.
“A quotation in the preface of this booklet, from volume 2 of Brother John Thomas’ s Eureka of over a hundred years ago, well emphasises the point: ‘When Deity signified the Apocalypse to the apostle John, did He not intend it to be understood by His servants? Was it not revealed for their information, and especially for the enlightenment of that generation of them which might be contemporary with the denouement of the plot “From the completion of so many signs in our own lifetime, and from the breathtakingly swift convergence toward completion of the very few remaining, this reviewer is of the opinion that were Christ to come at any moment now, those watchers who may be overtaken ‘in such an hour as they think not’ would be without excuse in their expectation or delay’. If, then, this prime light of the Apocalypse has become hidden beneath any bushel of apathy or neglect, be it general or individual ( in part due, perhaps, to the very understandably premature expectation of Christ’s return in 1868/70), here is a very present help in Daniel’s time of trouble’, toward setting it upon a candlestick that it may once again give light, as God intended, to all that are in the House.
“Only so can the Household be prepared for any actions, individual or collective, which the minions of the draconic power may yet be moved to take against the followers of the Lamb. We heard, some time ago, of more than one instance of those who bore not the mark of the Beast being squeezed out of business, victims of the immoral pressure mentioned in Revelation 13:17 being brought to bear. One sees, in increasing number, publications appearing on ecclesial bookstalls which the responsible gatekeepers of the ecclesias should carefully exclude as poisoned pasturage. But no bookstall should be without the one before us.
“A book of this size, of course, cannot treat exhaustively of such a theme. Its subhead reads, ‘An Introduction to the Warfare of the Faith through 2,000 years of Gentile Dominion’. As to the ‘many novel interpretations which have sprung up in recent years’, it was reassuring to read that ‘they have not the consistency and harmony of the original exposition brought to light with the revival of the Truth. The interpretation brought to light by Brother John Thomas has stood the test of a century’.
“Introductory Notes’ follow on The Purpose of the Apocalypse’, which prove that any interpretation which endeavours to confine its application to the first few centuries destroys its purpose as a guidebook throughout ‘the Times of the Gentiles’. The last two-thirds of the period reveal God’s Hand in the political affairs of the nations of Christendom. The first chapter shows the value of the study of the Apocalypse, and likens the way in which Daniel’s apocalyptic prophecy bridged over the period from Malachi to Messiah and beyond (being cited by Christ) to the way in which The Revelation now meets our needs, as the angels manipulate political events leading to Armageddon. The growth of the Common Market, the rise of Roman Catholic influence, France’s intense nationalism and European East-West unity—all are seen in ‘this final epistle from heaven’. Those who respond to God’s love will not only treasure, but ceaselessly study all He has said. The searching question is posed as to whether the apostatising shown by the letters to the Seven Ecclesias of Asia Minor will repeat itself in the ecclesias of these last days. Spiritual fornication’ and ‘the depths of Satan as they speak’ are certainly with subtlety beguiling some from the simplicity of the Faith, and must be zealously rebuked with a view to repentance before it is too late.
“Other chapters deal with the seven-sealed Scroll and its progressive unsealing by the Lamb; with the expansion of the Seventh Seal into the sounding of Seven Trumpets; of the way Seven Vials are contained in the seventh trumpet, and seven undisclosed thunders in the Seventh Vial. How some of us have been thrilled to watch the latter part of the Sixth Vial in our own lifetime, and the basis laid for the seventh terrible vial of wrath to be poured upon the AIR! But not before the ‘frog spirits’ go forth to gather the peoples together unto the war of the great day of God, the Almighty; and not before Jesus, who sent the Revelation to us, comes back to earth, thief-like, to gather unto himself his watching saints. Only then will the awful seven thunders be uttered by himself as Son of God and King of kings—which is why they were not recorded. We are living at the end of the Sixth Vial, and the last and seventh one sees Jesus back as ‘the nations rage and the people imagine a vain thing’! As the Seventh Vial follows the pattern by expanding into the terrible seven thunders, Christ enters into the inheritance given him by his Father. The gospel was for the purpose of taking out of the Gentiles a people for God’s Name, the approved of whom will reign with Christ for a thousand years. But only after he has broken to shivers all systems of sin, apostasy and violence.
“Some of the material appeared in our pages in 1964, but this has been enlarged. There is a very helpful diagram, illustrative of the telescopic structure of Revelation. This renders clear a feature of the book—confusing to the superficial reader: the way in which visions of various aspects of the glory to be revealed at Christ’s appearing are interspersed between each septiform series and the next. This feature of the Revelation, of course, has served a double purpose. It has caused those for whom it had no message to rave and blaspheme at what to them appear as the mental aberrations of a lunatic; but to the saints in tribulation it brought near, in turn, a comforting sense of the nearness of the final glory.
“Three pages of additional notes have been added relative to the most difficult and perhaps debatable sections of the Apocalypse, particularly the ‘Two Witnesses’, under the heading ‘Intro duction to Revelation, chapters 11 to 13’. The only consistent and harmonious interpretation is then elaborated, with supporting evidence and illustrations. A helpful map is supplied, showing the geographical positions of the Beasts of Revelation; also the present-day development of the Scarlet-coloured Beast which is to carry the Harlot Church as depicted in Revelation chapter 17, namely, the European Common Market, initiated in 1957 on one of the seven hills of Rome. There is also a folding Chart of The Seven-Sealed Scroll at the end. (This is now a central insert. R.P. C.)
“The earlier part of the book is by our Brother W. G. Holton; chapters 7 and 8 by Brother Graham Pearce, who has added a section on prophecy fulfilling in the 20th century, including the remarkable activity of the Frog-spirit from the mouth of the False Prophet. ‘We are all inextricably bound up in the Dragon system until the power of God’s Word moves us to shake off the Beast’s claws, and become constituents of the Lamb community . . . We are greatly privileged to see the words, “Behold, I come as a thief”, in an urgent and living context respecting the working of the Frog-spirits actually being fulfilled before our eyes. Therefore we are sure the Master is about to return. His coming is expected by only a few; for most it is unexpected, it is thief-like. Are we watching, that we may be ready, and may receive the blessing?’ “.
Review of “The Early Earth” by John Whitcomb (1972)