That “the word of God is quick and powerful” (Hebrews iv, 12); that it has God’s life in it (John vi, 63); that it is the great weapon of warfare, defensive and offensive, to the Church and the believer; that it is the incorruptible seed by which men are born into the kingdom (1 Peter i, 23); that it is the instrument whereby we are sanctified (John xvii, 17), is the concurrent declaration of the Scriptures themselves. That it is to be preached by apostles, prophets, pastors, and teachers is the commission binding on all: “Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature” (Mark xvi, 15). This Bible is sufficient of itself, all other things are only ancillary; “in due season we shall reap, if we faint not” (Galatians vi, 9). All literature and art and culture and science are but as “the grass” that “withereth,” or “the flower” that “fadeth;” “but the word of our God shall stand forever.” And the martyrs of the apostolical age had the inspired assurance of John to console them, that if they faithfully bore witness to the word they might fall, but “their works” would follow on after them. And in so saying he is only reëchoing the words which he himself had heard from the Master, “One soweth, and another reapeth” (John iv, 37). And John shows how completely he had gotten away from Jewish narrowness and absorbed the Master’s spirit, in his recognition of the fact that the Bible is for every nation and kindred and people. The other instrumentality of victory put within the reach of the Church, namely, the all-sufficient “blood of the Lamb,” is beautifully illustrated in the vintage vision, which has most needlessly perplexed commentators. An angel――not now the Son of man――is seen coming “out of the temple which is in heaven” with a sharp sickle. Another angel came out from the altar, who is described as having “power over fire” (the same combination as is found in Isaiah vi, 6), and at his cry the sickle was thrust into the earth, and the clusters of fully ripe grapes gathered and cast “into the great wine press of the wrath of God.” It is hardly possible to read these words without seeing in them a reference to Isaiah lxiii, 1‒6. By the great mass of believers the words are interpreted as an allusion to and a prophecy of the atoning work of Christ. It certainly seems that the writer of the Revelation so understood them, not only from the connection of this vintage scene with the blood of the Lamb, but also from Revelation xix, 11‒16, where the same connection of the two themes, the “sharp sword” issuing from the mouth of Christ, that is, the word of God, and the “vesture dipped in blood,” with the treading of the wine press, is found.