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Commentaries:
People's Commentary (NT)
Revelation 10:4
When the seven thunders had uttered their voices, etc. The seven
thunders uttered their voices when the angel cried in a loud voice,
John was forbidden to record what they uttered. Certain facts will help
us to understand what is meant. (1) The apostate power which had taken
away and "closed" the book of the New Testament was called the
seven-hilled city, and his alluded to in Revelation as the woman that
sat on seven mountains (Revelation 17:9). (2) The word "thunder" has been
constantly used to describe the threatening, blasphemous, and
authoritative fulminations issued by the seven-hilled power against its
enemies. To illustrate this, Le Bas says in his life of Wycliffe, p.
198:
``The "thunders" which shook the world when they issued
"from the seven hills", sent forth an uncertain sound,
comparatively faint and powerless, when launched from a
region of less devoted sanctity.'
These ecclesiastical thunders derived their power from the fact that
they were hurled from the seven-hilled city. Very appropriately the
bulls and anathemas of Rome may then be called "the seven thunders".
(3) It is a historic fact that the "opening of the book" by the
Reformation, called forth the loudest voices of "the seven thunders".
The anathemas that had been wont to shake the nations were hurled at
Luther and his supporters.
I was about to write. John says that he was about to write what
they uttered. His act is symbolic. He becomes himself a part of the
symbolism. His act shows that the voices of the "seven thunders"
claimed a record as of divine authority. There was something uttered,
and what was uttered was so presented that John was about to record it
in the word of God.
And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, etc. Then he heard
a voice from heaven which bade him seal up what was uttered and write
it not. When we remember that the thunders that issued from the Vatican
were regarded by the nations as the voice of God, and that the Pope
claimed to be the vicar of Christ, we can understand the meaning of
John's symbolical purpose to record them as a part of the word of God,
and also that of the heavenly voice which forbade them to be written.
It simply represents what did take place among the reformers. There was
an open book offered to the world. This resulted in the voices of
thunder of the seven-hilled city. At first there was a disposition on
the part even of Martin Luther, to listen to these thunders as divine,
but finally he committed the Papal Bull issued against his teachings to
the flames to be rejected, and it was rejected by the Reformers.
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