The Son of Man on the Cloud in the Book of Revelation

Below is the 27th of multiple excerpts of commentary on the Book of Revelation from The Parousia, the late 19th-century masterpiece on the Second Coming by James Stuart Russell:

"7. The Son of Man on the Cloud. "Chap. xiv. 14-20 [Rev. 14:14-20].---‘And I saw, and behold a white cloud, and upon the cloud one sitting like unto the Son of man, having on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle. And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to him that sat on the cloud, Thrust in thy sickle and reap: because the time to reap is come; because the harvest of the land is ripe. And he that sat on the cloud cast his sickle on the land; and the land was reaped. ... "We now come to the seventh and last of the [seven] mystic figures of which this fourth vision consists, and to the denou[e]ment, where we may expect to find the catastrophe of the whole. Nor are we disappointed; for nothing can be more distinctly marked than the catastrophe under this symbol, the interpretation being so self-evident that it can hardly be misunderstood. "The scene opens with the apparition of ‘one like unto the Son of man seated on a white cloud,’ wearing a golden crown on his head and holding a sharp sickle in his hand. The weapon which he holds is the emblem of the transaction which is about to take place. It is the time of harvest, for ‘the harvest of the land is ripe; and he that sat on the cloud cast his sickle on the land; and the land was reaped.’ "There can be no misunderstanding this act. We have the original draught of the picture in our Lord’s parable of the wheat and the tares. ‘In the time of harvest ([at] the end of the age, [Greek:] sunteleia tou aionos]), I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them; but gather the wheat into my barn’ (Matt. xiii. 30 [Matt. 13:30]) "...The harvest corresponds with the reaping of the wheat and its safe gathering into the barn; in the other words, it is the fulfillment of the prediction, ‘The Son of man shall send his angels, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds’ (Matt. xxiv. 31-34 [Matt. 24:30-34]), an event which was to take place before the passing away of that generation [Matt. 10:23, 16:28, 24:34, 26:64; Mark 9:1,13:30, 14:62; Luke 9:27, 21:32, 22:69; Rev. 1:7]. ...It is worthy of remark that while the Son of man is represented as the reaper, the angel in the vision is the agent in the cutting down of the vine. It is scarcely necessary to point out the peculiar fitness of the imagery employed in the latter impressive scene. ‘The vine of the land’ is Israel, according to the well-known emblem in Psalm lxxx. 8 [Psalm 80:8], ‘Thou hast brought a vine out of Egypt,’ etc. The vintage is now come, for ‘her grapes are fully ripe’ [Rev. 14:18]; that is to say, the nation is ripe for judgment. The angel commissioned to destroy does not gather the clusters, but cuts down the vine itself, and casts it altogether into the ‘great wine-press of the wrath of God’ [Rev. 14:19]. The wine-press is trodden; and this is represented as taking place outside the city, as the sin-offering was burned outside the camp, and as the criminal was executed outside the gate, being accursed (Heb. xiii. 11-13 [Heb. 13:11-13]). Blood comes out of the wine-press, and in such torrents that it is like a river in flood, rising to the horse-bridles, and reaching a distance of ‘a thousand and six hundred furlongs' [Rev. 14:20]. "This is terrible in symbol, yet almost literal in its historic truth. It was a people [1st-century Israel] that was thus ‘trampled’ in the fury of divine wrath. Where was there ever such a sea of blood as was shed in the exterminating war [against Israel] of [Roman military leaders and later emperors] Vespasian and of Titus? The carnage, as related by [1st-century Jewish Roman historian] Josephus, exceeds all that is recorded in the sanguinary annals of warfare. ... "Such is the distinctly marked catastrophe of the vision of the seven mystic figures [i.e., the woman clothed with the sun, the great red dragon, the man-child, the beast from the sea, the beast from the land, the Lamb on Mount Zion, and the Son of man on the cloud]. Like the other catastrophes [such as the seven seals] it is an act of judgment, presenting the great consummation in a different aspect. If any doubt should still be felt as to the principle which underlies our whole system of interpretation, viz. [that is] that the Apocalypse [Book of Revelation] is a sevenfold representation of the same great providential drama [the judgment of 1st-century Israel], it must be dispelled by the next series of visions, which conclusively demonstrates this feature of the book."