The Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 3

IV. Elliott-Contributes History of Apocalyptic Interpretation

EDWARD BISHOP ELLIOTT (1793 1875), scholarly prophetic expositor, received his education at Trinity College, Cambridge, graduating in 1816. After traveling in Italy and Greece he was given the vicarage of Tuxford, Nottingham, in 1824, and later was made prebendary of Heytesbury, Wiltshire. In 1849 he became incumbent of St. Mark’s Church, Brighton. A member of the Evangelical school, he was an earnest promoter of missionary enterprise and an ardent advocate of premillennialism. Elliott was thoroughly equipped as a scholar and was deeply interested in prophecy, spending a lifetime in investigation and seeking to understand God’s mind thereon. PFF3 716.2

His Horae Apocalypticae (Hours with the Apocalypse) is doubtless the most elaborate work ever produced on the Apocalypse. Without an equal in exhaustive research in its field, it was occasioned by the Futurist attack on the Historical School of interpretation launched by Maitland, Burgh, and Todd. Begun in 1837, ⁷⁰ (tm) its 2,500 pages of often involved and overloaded text are buttressed by some 10,000 invaluable references to ancient and modern works bearing on the topics under discussion. It ran through live editions (1844, 1846, 1847, 1851, and 1862). PFF3 716.3

Elliott stressed the evidence of the illustrative coins and medallions of the centuries as an original contribution in the field of prophetico-historical evidence. ⁷¹ He engaged in controversies with Candlish, Keith, and others, and exposed the fallacies of false interpretations which involved abandonment of the Protestant position on popedom as the intended Antichristian power of Scripture prophecy. He also wrote The Question “What is the Image of the Beast?” Answered (1838), and The Delusion of the Traclarian Clergy. His last contribution on the subject of prophecy was the Warburton Lectures for 1849-53 on The Christian Church’s Institution and Declension into Apostasy; the Apostate Church’s Heading by the Romish Antichrist (1856). PFF3 717.1

Doubtless his greatest contribution was a 288-page “History of Apocalyptic Interpretation.” A most complete and scholarly work, it appears as Appendix I in volume 4 of the fifth edition of his Horae Apocalypticae. ⁷² This truly monumental treatise is invaluable for grasping the background and development of prophetic interpretation of the Apocalypse. Expositions on Daniel are touched only incidentally. Divided into seven parts, it covers the leading interpreters from John’s to Constantine’s day, from Constantine to Rome’s division, from the fall of Rome to the twelfth century, from the twelfth century to the Reformation, the era of the Reformation, from 1600 to the French Revolution, and from 1790 to his own time. ⁷³ In addition to its methodical and dependable nature, abundant documentation makes it of exceptional service to the investigator. PFF3 717.2

Perhaps its most unique feature is the concluding sketch of the rise and spread of the Jesuit countersystems of interpretation that had made such inroads upon Protestantism. Holding unswervingly to the Historical School of interpretation, Elliott gives the most complete exposure of these counterinterpretations to be found. ⁷⁴ A clear grasp of eighteenth-century German rationalism’s espousal of Preterism, that has become the character istic of Modernism, and the nineteenth-century acceptance of Futurism, that is now the almost universal belief of Fundamentalism, places a key in the hand of the student that unlocks the mystery of the otherwise baffling conflict of opposing positions in present-day Protestant exposition. PFF3 717.3

Elliott’s familiarity with the witness of the centuries was phenomenal, as shown by the fullness of his discussion concerning the Vaudois teaching, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, that the Roman church is the very Babylon and harlot of the Apocalypse, and that the Romish system was of Antichrist;” ⁷⁵ similarly concerning Luther’s great discovery of Christ and Anti christ, his reviving the cry of Wyclif and Huss that had almost died away, and his burning of the papal hull as the bull of Anti christ; ⁷⁶ or concerning the presumptuous claims of the developing Papacy, ⁷⁷ and the recognition by the old writers-such as Brightman, Cressener, and Mann, prior to the French Revolution-of Justinian as the first to recognize the primacy of the Papacy. ⁷⁸ It was his masterful grasp of the whole historical development of prophetic interpretation that gave weight to his own expositions-which were not, however, without certain serious defects. PFF3 718.1

1. PRECEDES TRUMPETS WITH SEVEN SEALS

Elliott makes the seven seals precede the seven trumpets, the two together covering the Christian Era. ⁷⁹ In this he differs from Campbell, Bickersteth, Birks, and others. However, his views on the trum pets were sharp, clear, and standard. The first four effected the Western Empire’s downfall, starting with Alaric and his Goths, ⁸⁰ then Genseric and his Vandals, ⁸¹ next Attila and his Huns, ⁸² and finally the extinction of the West by Odoacer and his Heruli. ⁸³ The fifth and sixth trumpets cover the destruction of the Eastlern Empire-the fifth, or first woe, trumpet indicating the Islamic Saracens, ⁸⁴ and the sixth the Osmanli Turks. ⁸⁵ PFF3 718.2

2. A PROPHETIC PERIOD NOT A POINT OF TIME

Elliott’s exposition of the time element of the “hour day month and year” of the second woe of Revelation 9:15, is important technically. He declares that these time nouns are all to be “aggregated together.” ⁸⁶ That is, they indicate a period of prophetic: time, and not a point of literal time. The latter construction he considers “inadmissible: I mean that which, taking them each separately, would render the clause thus; that at the destined hour, and destined day, and destined month, and destined year, they should slay the third part of men.” ⁸⁷ A footnote refers to those holding such an exposition as “Vitringa, Daubuz, Heinrichs, M. Stuart, & c.” ⁸⁸ expositors who had abandoned the Historical School of prophetic interpretation, along with the year-day principle for all prophetic time periods. Elliott refutes such a view by saying: PFF3 719.1

“The article prefix, standing at its head, may be understood not only to govern all the accusatives that follow, so as we find done elsewhere, but also to be a means for the better uniting of them, as it were under a bracket, as an hour day month and year, all added together; at the same time that it may mark them also as making up the period; i.e. the period fore ordained and fore-shown in the divine councils.” ⁸⁹ PFF3 719.2

This time prophecy of the Turks he takes to be a period of 396 years, from 1057 to 1453, on the basis of a 365-day year, a month of thirty days, and the one day-or 396 year-days. ⁹⁰ PFF3 719.3

3. THE BEAST, His HEADS, AND His NUMBER

Elliott proves convincingly that the Papacy answers the symbolic descriptions given in Revelation 13 and 17. He also holds that by the organization of the secular and regular clergy it had become the two-horned beast. He stresses the fact that along with the discovery of the Antichrist of prophecy and the conviction of its predestined final destruction, the establishment of Christ’s kingdom at His second advent had been revived by students of prophecy as the climax of God’s great prophetic mystery. ⁹¹ PFF3 719.4

“The dragon of Revelation 12 is clearly pagan Rome, and the woman clothed with the sun is the church. ⁹² Constantine’s concept of his own casting down of paganism is noted. ⁹³ The common identity of Daniel’s little horn, John’s beasts, and Paul’s Man of Sin, as Rome, is clearly established, ⁹⁴ as well as their identical prophesied time period. The beast’s seven heads are listed as kings, consuls, dictators, decemvirs, military tribunes, the Caesars, and the popes ⁹⁵ the seventh the one to be wounded. ⁹⁶ PFF3 720.1

The beast’s development as Antichrist, his legalization following, and then his suppression, are all depicted and thoroughly documented. ⁹⁷ The various attempts to decipher the 666 are noted, with a strong leaning toward Lateinos. ⁹⁸ PFF3 720.2

4. THE TEN KINGDOMS AND THE UPROOTED THREE

Elliott lists the ten kingdoms of Western Rome, found between A.D. 486 and 490, as the Anglo-Saxons, Franks, Alemanni, Burgundians, Visigoths, Suevi, Vandals, Bavarians, and Ostrogoths, and Lombards. ⁹⁹ This and other listings he discusses at length. ¹⁰⁰ PFF3 720.3

5. HOLDS Two WITNESSES NOT Two TESTAMENTS

The Two Witnesses were held to be the Eastern and Western human witnesses rather than the two Testaments, ¹⁰¹ and the “earth quake” of Revelation 11 is referred to as the Protestant Reformation, and not the French Revolution. ¹⁰² PFF3 720.4

6. APPLIED YEAR-DAY PRINCIPLE TO 1260 YEARS

Elliott makes a masterful argument for the year-day principle that leaves little to be said. ¹⁰³ Having demonstrated its soundness and logic, he immediately applies it to the 1260 year-days of the Apocalyptic beast, with primary application from the time of Justinian to the French Revolution. ¹⁰⁴ Elliott recognized the stroke of the sword at Rome in 1798, and the “spoliation of the harlot church as the aged pish vi was apprehended in the Sistine Chapel and carried capital into France. ¹⁰⁵ PFF3 720.5

7. HAZY ON DATING OF THE 2300 YEARS

In one of his brief discussions of the 2300 years Elliott applies the little horn of Daniel 8 to the Turk and the king of the north of Daniel 11. ¹⁰⁶ But on the location of this long time period Elliott is hazy, dating it as possibly from 480 B.C. to A.D. 1820. ¹⁰⁷ However, to Elliott the 2300 prophetic days are “years distant from that which marked its beginning, probably the successful pushing of the Persian ram.” ¹⁰⁸ He then observes that “Antiochus’ death occurred between 300 and 400 years after it,” and no satisfactory explanation is to be found on a “day-day basis.” He believed the ending of the 2300 years from the date of the vision had some connection with papal Rome. ¹⁰⁹ The sixth vial involves the drying up of the Euphrates, or Turks, with the plagues falling in the French Revolution. ¹¹⁰ PFF3 721.1

8. BECOMES “CONTINUATIONIST,” SHIFTING TO SECONDARYDATE

Eliott later became a “continuationist” on the prophetic time periods. He began to reconstruct the prophetic dates, referring to “primary” and “secondary” fulfillments. As 1793-98 and 1843-14 had only realized the beginning of what had been expected at the end of the 391, 1260, and 2300 years, he assigned later dates. He mentions the fact that since the days of Cellarius (1555) some had counted the 1260 years from the decree of Phocas in 606, and ended the time period in 1866. ¹¹¹ This terminal year Elliott began to stress. PFF3 721.2

When 1866 had passed, Elliott wrote a “Counter-Retrospect” in The Christian Observer, calling attention to the fact that as there were several decrees from Cyrus to Artaxerxes to mark the beginning of the seventy weeks, and several events marking the beginning of the captivity, so also several events marked the beginnings and endings of the 1260 years. This he said, was given added emphasis because of the difference of seventy-five years between the 1260 and the 1335 years. ¹¹² PFF3 721.3

As the interval between the decrees of Cyrus and Artaxerxes served to excite and keep up the lively expectation of the first advent as near at hand, so do the seventy-five years between the decrees of Justinian and Phocas concerning the nearness of the second advent. Elliott concludes that the final end of the Papacy and Mohammedanism, designed by the 1260, 1290, and 1335 years, “would ‘end,’ about 1866, 1896, and 1941 A.D. respectively.” ¹¹³ So continuationism was increasingly stressed by voice and pen “to keep up the lively expectation” of Christ’s second advent in glory. PFF3 722.1

Such is the testimony of one of the last of the leading Old World prophetic expositors of the first half of the nineteenth century, as he shifted from the primary to the secondary dates of continuationism. PFF3 722.2