Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord

So as I was sitting listening to the music at the Taps at Twilight Memorial Day celebration, a thought occurred to me. This was one of those things where you tell people what that thought is and they respond, “Only you would think of that!” It’s probably true.

The thought was this: “Wow, there is a lot of apocalyptic imagery in this song.” The song in question was the Battle Hymn of the Republic by Harriet Beecher Stowe. If you (like me) graduated from Glynn Academy than you are probably not too fond of this school. I however, still like it, and know the words (to all four verses). I knew them long before I had to sing the song at my graduation. Anyway, a brief analysis of the lyrical content of the Battle Hymn will illustrate what I am talking about.

Most of the apocalyptic imagery is concentrated in the first and third verses but there is a good deal of insight to the mindset of the people in the other verses so I will go over them as well.

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.
He hath loosed the faithful lightning of His terrible swift sword
His Truth is marching on

The first line is fairly simple, the writer believes that the “end is nigh”, so to speak and the return of Christ is imminent. While most people associate the Apocalypse with death, mayhem and destruction on a cataclysmic and catastrophic scale, that is not the main point of the book. The word apocalypse is from the Greek apokolypsis for “unveiling, or a revealing” hence the title which the Apocalypse of St. John is better known as, the Book of Revelation. In 90 A.D. the Apostle John was imprisoned on Patmos and wrote letters to seven churches in Asia, with the goal of strengthening them in their trials and persecution under the Emperor Domitian. The main message was that in spite of all the tribulations, Christ, the Lamb, was in control and that He would return to personally defeat the evil ones and free the Christians from their persecutions. The writer of the Battle Hymn clearly believed that the abolition movement was a righteous crusade and that Christ not only approved their efforts but was actually the driving force behind them.

So the angel swung his sickle over the earth and cut the earth’s vintage. He threw it into the great wine press of God’s fury. The wine press was trodden outside the city and blood poured out of the wine press to the height of a horse’s bridle for two hundred miles -Revelation 14:19-20

This “fury of God” is then poured into seven bowls and given to seven angels, who pour this fury out onto the earth, resulting in violent plagues and other calamities which punish the enemies of God and save His servants. John Steinbeck titled his novel The Grapes of Wrath for a similar reason. It is filled with biblical references, and as the reader shares the tragic exodus of the Joad family, one fills that God’s righteous anger is rising against all those in power who are taking advantage of them and one has the expectation that by the end of the novel, justice will be served. It was the same case with those fighting to end slavery. They saw slavery as an injustice that called out to heaven for vengeance and saw in the escalating conflict on the issue and the civil war that followed the wrath of God being poured out on the nation for allowing slavery to continue.


SPOILER ALERT: at the end of Revelation, after all the judgments, Jesus gloriously returns to earth, to judge the nations and usher in a thousand years of peace.

Out of His mouth came a sharp sword to strike the nations. He will rule them with an iron rod and He Himself will tread out in the wine press the wine and the fury of God Almighty -Revelation 19:15-16

I have seen Him in the watchfires of a hundred circling camps
They have built Him an altar in the evening’s dew and damps
I can read His righteous sentence by their dim and flaring lamps
His day is marching on

In the writer’s eye, Christ is the true leader of the movement to end slavery. He is with the troops and among them and more importantly, the have built him an altar. They are honoring him by their service and their desire to end slavery. Of course, the writer does not literally see Christ in the midst of the assembled army but she sees the saving power of Christ acting through this force. The third line is most significant in the fact that their lamps, a necessary article of war, are the light that shines on Christ’s words so that they can be seen and understood. Essentially, the writer sees God through the actions of these fighting men.

He hath sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat
Oh, be swift, my soul to answer Him, be jubilant my feet
While God is marching on

In his second letter to the Thessalonians, the Apostle Paul states,

For the Lord Himself, with a word of command, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God, will come down from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them to meet the Lord in the air.
-II Thessalonians 4:16-17

A trumpet, or more accurately, a bugle, was used to call commands in war giving the signal to either charge or retreat. The writer is stating that she believes that Christ can never be defeated. Furthermore, this final trumpet is the last call for the entire world because it signals the return of Christ and, as Revelation indicates, the final judgment immediately follows His return. She knows that when this return comes, she must be ready to answer Him and prays that she will be swift because that would mean that she “is right with the Lord” and will not hesitate to answer for shame or knowing that her answer will condemn her. Further, if her feet are jubilant, than she is most likely dancing for joy.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free!
As God is marching on

I am not sure what “beauty of the lilies” refers to, since they are not native to Judea, “across the sea” where Christ was born, but they probably refer to his purity and sinlessness and that of His Virgin Mother. What is more important is the third line. Christ died to save us from the slavery of sin and this last verse equates that redemptive death with the death of the men fighting to end actual physical slavery. It is great motivation.

Behold, I am with you always, even until the end of the world.
-Matthew 28:20

In conclusion, we do not really know if Harriet Beecher Stowe actually believed that end of the world was upon her and that Christ was personally returning to lead the slaves to emancipation. People in every day and time see the Apocalypse around them, whether it was the Holocaust and World War II, or the violent wars of religion following the Protestant Revolt, or the Muslim conquest of Europe, everyone thought that their time would be the time, “The End Times,” even the Apostles. It is clear that the early church took Christ’s prophecies about the destruction of the Temple to apply to them and believed that Christ would return in their lifetimes. Peter and John say that “now is the end times” in their epistles and Paul says to “wait but a little while.” But it clearly was not the time. Even in this case, however, the lessons of Revelations apply to all times and all places. The people of God, doing his work, will always face trial and tribulation. The Church has said as much. And more importantly, the message of God’s saving power, that one day Christ will return to (literally) save the world from evil and destruction and “wipe away every tear” will always resonate and will both comfort those oppressed and inspire others to end the oppression.

Who said religion never accomplished anything good?

As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free