The 144,000 Servants of God
These were the Christians (Jewish or otherwise) marked with a seal by Christ so that their sufferings and martyrdom would not go in vain. Not everyone who claimed to be a Christian would be recognised as such by Christ the Lamb. Constantine's sponsorship of Christianity created a new breed of career Christian. The true faith of "the vicarious and propitiatory atonement of the Son of God" was replaced by ritualism, by Platonist allegory and by superstitious practices "as if the sacraments when duly accepted from the priest's hand were potent drugs, or chemical antidotes, infallibly dispersing the poison inherited from Adam!"
When Edward Elliott revisited the topic, in connection with Revelation 14:3, it was to emphasise that, even under the Protestant dispensation, only an elect remnant understood free grace and could "learn the new song". He traced their history through Philipp Jakob Spener, Richard Hooker, Richard Baxter, George Whitefield and John Wesley.
Read more about this topic: Horae Apocalypticae
Famous quotes containing the words servants and/or god:
“The prosecution of [Warren] Hastings, though he should escape at last, must have good effect. It will alarm the servants of the Company in India, that they may not always plunder with impunity, but that there may be a retrospect; and it will show them that even bribes of diamonds to the Crown may not secure them from prosecution.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“Lo, the poor Indian! whose untutor’d mind
Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind;”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)