The Vernard Eller Collection

The Most Revealing Book of the Bible (continued)

by Vernard Eller

III. The Control of History in the End-Time

4:1-14

As we move into this scene in the throne room of God, be very aware that John’s motive in writing and ours in reading is not simply the satisfaction of curiosity as to what a certain spot in heaven may or may not look like. No, John still is making an affirmation regarding the nature and meaning of history, ours as well as his own. And the essential fact about this history is that it is controlled from here. Its center is to be found here rather than in itself; it displays more of the character of a railway car that must be hitched to its engine than an automobile that is self-contained. God is Lord, and history is subject to him. Surely his lordship is powerful and glorious; but John’s picture also affirms that it is wise, benevolent, and beautiful–worthy of boundless praise and adoration. Always read John as relevant; this part of the book was addressed to the seven churches just as much as the earlier part was.

A. The Throne of God

4:1-11

1 After this I looked, and there in heaven a door stood open! And the first voice, which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet, said, “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.” 2 At once I was in the spirit, and there in heaven stood a throne, with one seated on the throne! 3 And the one seated there looks like jasper and carnelian, and around the throne is a rainbow that looks like an emerald. 4 Around the throne are twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones are twenty-four elders, dressed in white robes, with golden crowns on their heads. 5 Coming from the throne are flashes of lightning, and rumblings and peals of thunder, and in front of the throne burn seven flaming torches, which are the seven spirits of God; 6 and in front of the throne there is something like a sea of glass, like crystal.

Around the throne, and on each side of the throne, are four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind: 7 the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with a face like a human face, and the fourth living creature like a flying eagle. 8 And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all around and inside. Day and night without ceasing they sing,

“Holy, holy, holy,
the Lord God the Almighty,
    who was and is and is to come.”

9 And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to the one who is seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever, 10 the twenty-four elders fall before the one who is seated on the throne and worship the one who lives forever and ever; they cast their crowns before the throne, singing,

11 You are worthy, our Lord and God,
    to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things,
    and by your will they existed and were created.”

“After this,” opens verse 1. John customarily uses the phrase to mark a break in the action and introduce a new scene. The Revealer appears again, with details very reminiscent of his first appearance. There he came to John on Patmos; here John goes to him in heaven; the same Jesus Christ, he is the continuity between earth and heaven, the continuity of John’s entire story.

“In heaven stood a throne.” Thrones are very big in Revelation, getting mentioned in chapter after chapter. They represent, of course, sovereignty and lordship. And it is significant that John is much more interested in the fact of the throne than he is in telling us what God looks like; a little imagery of glory is all he gives; John has no room for idle curiosity about things that don’t concern us. Further, it is the case that every personage and group appearing in Revelation is represented in symbolic form, is given its own particular symbol–except God. John knows that there is no symbol great enough to express what “God” means. To call him anything other than “God” would be to falsify.

Through the scene as a whole, imagery recalling the Old Testament temple is combined with that which suggests the throne room of a royal palace. There is no conflict in this, because the heart of the temple was the Holy of Holies, in which sat the ancient Ark of the Covenant, which itself was understood to be an image of the throne of God. John consistently treats the temple as the royal “house of God” rather than as a cult center involving animal sacrifice, the activity of holy priests, and all such.

Close about God’s throne are twenty-four elders on thrones, wearing white robes and golden crowns–symbols of victory and sovereignty. Twenty-four–note well, is a twelve number that, we will see, inevitably denotes the church. In this case, it is a double twelve-most likely John’s way of affirming that the true church consists of both the twelve tribes of the Old Testament people of God and the twelve apostles of the New Testament church (in Rev. 21:12-14, John specifies the unity of these two groups).

We are told, then, that in the reality heaven represents (the reality which, at present, is “coming to be” on earth as it “already is” in heaven), the church has the sovereignty, and its place is in the front rank around the very throne of God–good things for the little congregations of Asia Minor (and us) to know. Also, we discover, the primary function of the double-twelve church is to magnify and honor the God who makes her what she is–so get with it on earth as it is in heaven!

That flashes of lightning and peals of thunder proceed from God’s throne may be meant to recall his appearance on Sinai and the pillar of cloud and fire that led Israel through the wilderness. The Holy Spirit, placed in closest conjunction with the throne of God, goes plural again; the description as “seven flaming torches” may even intend Pentecost’s “tongues like flames of fire.” The “sea of glass” may come from the sea of the Old Testament temple even though it is described in quite different terms.

The four living creatures come through as the strangest part of the picture; but they need not; there is nothing mysterious about them. They date back to the first chapter of Ezekiel, where each has four wings rather than six and has all four faces rather than each having a different one of the four. From there, they go back to Isaiah 6 and his great vision of God in the temple, where an undesignated number of seraphim (undoubtedly pictured much more like John’s and Ezekiel’s living creatures than the way we draw seraphs) had six wings each and cried, “Holy, holy, holy!” From there they go back to the old Ark of the Covenant (Ex. 25:18-20; Ex. 37:7-9; Ps. 80:1) where two cherubim (again, more like living creatures than what we call cherubs), presumably with two wings each, were made of beaten gold as decoration upon that symbolic throne of God. John’s four living creatures are a composite of these. Christian tradition comes to make each of the faces representative of one of the four Gospels; but it undoubtedly was long after John’s day this happened.

The wealth and depth of the tradition John draws upon here indicates that his is not simply a first-century Christian God; the God he would portray is the same one the ancient Hebrews knew when they set the golden cherubim to watch his throne. The living creatures form the foremost honor guard of God, indicative of his majesty and glory and also showing that he is Lord of the supernatural world as well as the natural. That they are “covered with eyes” we might choose to express by saying that God has satellites outfitted with TV sensors to keep him in touch with what is happening all over the world. The song they sing combines the thrice-holy ascription of the seraphim of old Isaiah with John’s own new threefold title of the past-, present-, and future-coming God.

And at the cue of the living creatures, the twenty-four elders (the church) join in the hymn of praise. Notice that their theme is particularly that of God’s glory as creator (and thus Lord) of all that is. When they sing to Christ the Lamb in the next chapter, their theme, appropriately, will be redemption. We would do well to learn both of these songs for ourselves, ready to join in on cue with the rest of the universe.

B. The Scroll

5:1-5

1 Then I saw in the right hand of the one seated on the throne a scroll written on the inside and on the back, sealed with seven seals; 2 and I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?” 3 And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it. 4 “And I began to weep bitterly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. 5 “Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep. See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.

In his right hand God holds a scroll which is sealed. There seems no doubt it represents that part of world history that is sealed from us, namely the future. And it is completely understandable that there should be such consternation when it is discovered that no one in heaven or on earth is competent to open and read it.

Where is the world headed? How are things supposed to come out? What is the end of it all (and “end” more in the sense of telos [purpose] than finis [when does it stop])? If the assumption is that history as a whole is a meaningful, directed sequence, then the answer to these questions is important–all-important. Of course, if the assumption is that history is not a directed sequence, then the questions ought not even be asked; they have no answers. History, in such case, amounts merely to what each generation decides to do with its moment, consists merely in independent moments, each an end in itself.

Neither John nor any Christian can buy this view of things; so for him the questions are crucial; on them, many other questions depend. “Where will it all end?” also becomes “What does it all mean?” and thus “What is the significance of this point of time within that total sequence?” and thus “What should be happening in this moment, and what should I be doing?” and thus “Who are we, and who am I?”

If no one can be found to open that scroll, it’s all over for the human race; hopeless; we have been plunked down in the middle of a maze with not so much as a sense of direction as to where “out” lies.

And yet, John tells us, there was no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth able to open the scroll. Man-with all his learning, science, and technique–still is too short-lived, too finite, too time-bound to be of any good here. The history he controls is too short a snatch out of the drama as a whole; even our shiny, new computerized science of futurology has difficulty handling decades when our ultimate concern must be with the aeons. Modern man has become a real whiz at manipulating moments; but this has no significance at all in telling us where we should be headed. No more in the twentieth century than in the first can there be found anyone competent to open the scroll. John does well to weep; and we would, too, were we alert enough to realize our situation.

But one of the elders says (and thus the church is to proclaim) that there is a Lion who has won (not “will win,” already “has won”) the right to open the scroll. And by the way, it will take a “lion” to do it–this symbol of regality and kingship, of courage, strength, and ferocity. Enter the LION!

C. The Lamb

5:6-14

6 Then I saw between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. 7 He went and took the scroll from the right hand of the one who was seated on the throne. 8 When he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell before the Lamb, each holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. 9 They sing a new song:

“You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals,
for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed for God
    saints from every tribe and language and people and nation;
10 you have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God,
    and they will reign on earth.”

11 Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels surrounding the throne and the living creatures and the elders; they numbered in myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, 12 singing with full voice,
“Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might
    and honor and glory and blessing!”

13 Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, singing,    be blessing and honor and glory and might
    forever and ever!”

14 And the four living creatures said, “Amen!” And the elders fell down and worshiped.

Enter the LION! And look what we get, a little lambkin!

There is nothing wrong with thinking of Revelation as a freaky, far-out book–as long as you spot the freakishness at the right place and the far-outness in the right direction. And here is the place, and this the direction. It’s a freakishness, by the way, not simply of Revelation, but one that lies at the very heart of the Christian gospel; it is just that John presents it more graphically than anyone else does. But “freaky”? It’s “unearthly”–or better, it’s “unworldly,” the absolute contrary of what all our knowledge of the world and all our worldly knowledge would lead us to expect. This is one good reason we needed someone bigger than ourselves to open the sealed scroll of the future: our worldly calculation has us headed in precisely the wrong direction.

The Lion is a lamb. John will use that “Lamb” as the controlling symbol of Jesus Christ from here on out; we are up against the heart of the matter. Put “the Lamb” over against “the Lion “–as John certainly invites us to do. They stand for completely opposite things. Over against the characteristics we attributed to the Lion, the Lamb represents meekness, helplessness, defenselessness, and vulnerability. And the situation is compounded when John specifies that this Lamb bears “the marks of slaughter upon him.” This Lamb, as lamb, not only looks as though he would be an easy mark; he has proved it in his inability to keep from being slaughtered. How totally vulnerable can a symbol of vulnerability get?

That’s the Lamb over against the Lion–which he also is. Now let’s try him over against his opponent, his counter image, that which he most definitely is not. John obviously intends that these two should be put into conjunctive opposition, in that he calls the one “Antichrist,” but also in the very words he uses to designate the two.

In the Greek of a sheep-oriented culture, there were many more words for “lamb” than our English language would know what to do with. The one that John chooses for his purpose is not the one used regarding Jesus elsewhere in the Bible. He uses arnion, which has been translated “lambkin”–“poor little thing” sort of creature. But his most likely reason for going to this particular term is that he plans to designate Antichrist as therion, the beast, a great big vicious MONSTER!

So the main bout on the card of history (for the heavyweight championship of the entire created universe) is to be “Arnion vs. Therion”!

Oh, no, no, no! God wouldn’t send that wee, little, slaughtered lambkin up against a monster like that! It isn’t fair! He doesn’t have a chance!

You’re right! It isn’t fair; the arnion is going to make mincemeat out of that no-good therion; the beast doesn’t have a chance. I can’t even give you odds on it, because the fact is the Lamb already has him whipped.

How do you figure that?

Do you see those marks of slaughter upon him? Well, those show that he got himself killed and so won the championship.

Man, you’re talking weird!

No, you’ve got to understand that things aren’t what they seem. That Lamb really is a Lion!

Yes, the Lamb is the Lion; and at points in Revelation Christ is presented more like a lamb, at other points more like a lion. But we need to be very careful as to how we handle this alternation. The structure of the present scene makes it plain that John does not mean to say that Jesus switches roles, sometimes taking the role of a lamb and other times that of a lion; that would make for a very undependable, Jekyll-and-Hyde Christ. But no, the Lamb’s very defenselessness is his lion-like strength; his suffering death is his victory; his modus operandi (method of operation) always is that of the Lamb, but the consequences, the results, always are a victory that belongs to the character of the Lion. (So, for example, an allusion such as the Psalm 2 phrase about ruling the nations with an iron rod must be taken as a reference to the fact of his ruling rather than as a description of its method.) John here bonds the Lion and the Lamb as being two sides of one coin; we dare never allow them to be separated or put into tension with each other. Jesus’ love, though defenseless, is a ferocious and victorious love.

That the Lamb wins true victory precisely in and through his “lambness” is indicated by the reception given him here upon his appearance in heaven. Remember that heaven is where things are seen for what they really are, regardless of how they appear in the transient actuality of earth. So nobody in this scene finds it strange that the slaughtered Lamb should be heavyweight champion of the universe. Not at all–how else would you ever expect God to do it? That the business strikes us as freakish proves only that we are not yet in heaven, that we see things from the perverted worldly perspective which says that monsters are powerful but lambs are not–this rather than seeing things as they really are. A major purpose of John’s book is to help us see on earth as it already is seen in heaven–not so much to see new realities but to see the realities of our own history in a new way, from a new perspective. And only from here can we see that the Lion who looks and acts like a Lamb is indeed the only one who can open the sealed scroll of human history, because, in his lion-lambness, he is the key to that history.

The Lamb appears “in the very middle of the throne” upon which God already is sitting. That might cause a problem for simple-minded literalists; but John plainly wants to say that there is no distinction of dignity between God and the Lamb; both hold the same position. The Lamb is given attributes in “sevens,” the God number. His eyes are the seven spirits earlier identified as the Holy Spirit. Literalists, again, will have a hard time with the Spirit’s being flaming torches at one point and Lamb’s eyes at another; but John now wants to suggest how close is the relationship between Christ and the Holy Spirit. Other New Testament writers do it by referring to the Holy Spirit on occasion as “the Spirit of Christ.”

The hymn the elders sing in praise of the Lamb is a great statement of what the whole scene is about. There are three main verbs that form a most interesting pattern.

1. “You are worthy” (present tense). As history’s Lord, Jesus even now is the one competent to open the scroll and reveal to us who we are and where we’re headed.
2. “You were slaughtered” (past tense). His present lordship as the one who opens the scroll was merited by what he did
3. “They will reign” (future tense). It is through his lordship that we shall find ours.

So the sequence is this: what Jesus did in the past gives him the status in the present that guarantees our future. And in this sequence we have what amounts to an outline of the Christian gospel.

That Christ’s act on the cross “ransomed for God saints from every tribe and language and people and nation” is a universalistic note to put into our collection. It is topped in verse 13, where “every creature” is portrayed as voicing the praise of God and his Christ. We do not demand that a conclusion be drawn even from this unambiguous a statement; but it must be given due weight in our final decision.

John’s scene, now, opens out in a way the previous description of God’s throne room did not, to include “many angels” and “every creature”–which is about as wide as matters can go. It certainly is not that John desires to ascribe greater honor to Christ than to God. For him, to praise Christ is to praise God–as the concluding song indicates. There is no possibility of competition here. But the first scene celebrated God as creator (and thus Lord of the universe). However, when the Lamb is introduced, that celebration inevitably takes on the aspect of redemption(“by your blood you ransomed for God”); and God’s lordship is not a total and perfect lordship until it includes redemption as well as creation. It is entirely proper that the scene celebrating creation plus redemption open out from that celebrating creation alone. Neither the angels in heaven nor we who live among the created things of earth know God in the fullness of his glory until we know him, not only as Creator, but, through the Lamb, as Redeemer also. “And the four living creatures said, ‘Amen,’ and the elders fell down and worshipped.” Where were you?

IV. The End-Time as Seven Seals

6:1-8:1

The seven seals, of course, are those that bind the closed scroll the Lamb has just been proclaimed worthy to open. This scene builds directly upon and is continuous with what preceded. As each seal is broken, we get more insight into what the future holds–although not necessarily as a chronological sequence of events. Our suggestion is that these seals portray the general character of the End-Time, that is, the period stretching from Christ’s death-and-resurrection to his return at the end of the age.

Before John is done, he will present three major series of “sevens”–seven seals, seven trumpets, and seven bowls. Each series is built over an identical and quite sophisticated pattern–which, we will see, in itself suggests that they are meant to be read as parallel descriptions of the same period rather than as a strict sequence of events.

The pattern proceeds as follows: The first four items form a recognizable quartet and come in quick order (not more than one or two verses each). At the close of No.4, there is a break in the rhythm. No.5 comes on in a more measured way, and more space is devoted to it. No. 6, then, consistently carries special significance; it marks the intensification of trauma which John, clearly, expects as a prelude of the parousia (see the time-line). No.6 always steps up the voltage from what it has been during the first five–and No. 7 will come on as the End itself. However, John never moves directly from No. 6 to No. 7. Regularly inserted at this point is an interlude that interrupts and stands outside the sequence that is in progress. The interlude itself falls naturally into two parts (which we shall identify as A and B); and only then is No. 7 brought in to conclude the whole. John, I think, wants to indicate that No. 7, in no sense is the natural outcome or product of what was described in Nos. 1 through 6; it is rather an intervention, a disjuncture that cuts them off. God is the Lord of history; consequently, history’s end does not evolve out of the historical process itself but comes as a special act of God which is to be marked off from what has gone before (in John’s pattern, by this interlude).

We can sum up the pattern visually:

1-2-3-4 Start

5

6 Final Intensification

Interlude A Interluce B

7 End

A. Seals 1-4: The Four Horsemen

6:1-8

1 Then I saw the Lamb open one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures call out, as with a voice of thunder, “Come!” 2 I looked, and there was a white horse! Its rider had a bow; a crown was given to him, and he came out conquering and to conquer.

3 When he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature call out, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red; its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people would slaughter one another; and he was given a great sword.

5 When he opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature call out, “Come!” I looked, and there was a black horse! Its rider held a pair of scales in his hand, 6 and I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the four living creatures saying, “A quart of wheat for a day’s pay, and three quarts of barley for a day’s pay, but do not damage the olive oil and the wine!”

7 When he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature call out, “Come!” 8 I looked and there was a pale green horse! Its rider’s name was Death, and Hades followed with him; they were given authority over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword, famine, and pestilence, and by the wild animals of the earth.

The Lamb breaks each of the first four seals in turn; and appropriately enough, each of the four living creatures has a turn at calling out a horseman. Each of these horses and riders has a distinctive (a) color, (b) weapon, and (c) function; these will be important clues in making our interpretation.

C. Seals 5-6: The Saints and the Kings

6:9-17

Verse 6, with its “spare the olive and the vine,” and verse 8, with its reference to “a quarter of the earth,” mark a principle of restraint and limitation upon which we will want to comment in just a bit.

But what history–past, present, or future–does John mean to be characterizing under these figures of the four horsemen? His own day, I am ready to say, the day of the seven hard-put congregations in Asia Minor I and our day (it would be no trick to document the contemporary presence of this foursome; any newspaper would serve)–and no telling how many days yet to come (they show no signs of packing up to leave). And this proposal creates the need for an excursus on “trauma in the book of Revelation” (see sidebar).

C. Seals 5-6: The Saints and the Kings

6:9-17

9 When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slaughtered for the word of God and for the testimony they had given; 10 they cried out with a loud voice, “Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long will it be before you judge and avenge our blood on the inhabitants of the earth?” 11 They were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number would be complete both of their fellow servants and of their brothers and sisters, who were soon to be killed as they themselves had been killed.

12 When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and there came a great earthquake; the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, 13 and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree drops its winter fruit when shaken by a gale. 14 The sky vanished like a scroll rolling itself up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. 15 Then the kings of the earth and the magnates and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, 16 calling to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of the one seated on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb; 17 for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?”

It seems evident that Seals 5 and 6 are meant to be played off against each other as part of John’s symmetry of Good and Evil. First, the “saints.”

The Saints

“Underneath the altar” is an awkward enough image, but it probably denotes nothing more than a place of particular honor close to the presence of God. The scene, of course, has shifted back to the throne room. Notice how closely the word martyria (testimony) here is associated with being killed for the faith. Now we are speaking of literal martyr-witnesses; and it is plain that John accords them the highest possible human status in his scheme of things. The fact will have crucial bearing in our interpretation at a later point.

But the impressive and important thing here is that, although these people have come through the great ordeal with white robes unsullied, and even now abide in the direct presence of God, they are not yet fully content, do not yet count their experience to be fully consummated. “Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long will it be?” or as a more literal translation has it, “Till when?” “How long until justice is done and things are set right?” In a very real sense, their personal salvation cannot be complete until the total work of salvation is complete; that closely do they feel identified with and bound to “their brothers.” “How long, O Lord?” And this, by the way, is the biblical view of salvation. If all the Christians whose interest in salvation lies only in getting themselves made secure were to learn just this one thing from Revelation, John’s writing of the book would have been well worthwhile. Not “Thank God, I’m in!” but “How long, O Lord?” is the prayer of the saved.

Even so, the answer that comes to the martyrs’ question is one of the most penetrating and revolutionary ideas to be found in the book. As clearly as it can be stated, we are told that the human activity upon which the outcome of history depends, the action by which progress toward the kingdom is marked, is not the piling up of good deeds, not our winning of men to Christ, not our consolidating of power for the Good, not our chasing out and cleaning up Evil, not our taking over or building up anything. No, we contribute to the coming of the kingdom by making like the Lamb, being willing, in love, to give ourselves, even to the slaughter. That may seem a rather backward way of overcoming the world; but John clearly says (and not only here) that this is indeed the way it must happen. If some Christians are able to pick up this idea along with the one above, Revelation 6:10-11 could rate beside anything in Scripture; more than just a play on words was involved when we called Revelation “the most revealing book of the Bible.”

The Kings

Seal 5 has given us a picture of the very best of mankind; Seal 6 will show us the very worst–and guess who leads the list. The martyred saints at the one extreme and the kings of the earth (who did the martyring) at the other.

This, recall, is Seal 6–and thus the final intensification that both completes the end-time and points to No. 7 as being the end itself. Verses 12-13 are intense enough; the imagery is borrowed from Isaiah 34:4. Please give it a Guernica-style reading.

The list of people in verse 1s clearly is meant to run from the very worst to the not quite so bad; and the kings of the earth come in just ahead of other military types. Recall that “War” was the first rider in the train of Antichrist, and it becomes evident what the kings represent for John. He knows that the source of Evil lies in apostasy from God; but he spots the most representative manifestation of Evil just where Picasso does.

The “prayer” of these people is perhaps a deliberate counter-play to the “How long?” prayer of the saints. It is taken from Hos. 10:8. Note well that the words are those of the kings, et alia, and not those of John or anyone else. What these people well expect and what they know they so richly deserve is “the vengeance of the Lamb”; but this is no proof that what they will in fact receive from the Lamb is “vengeance.” Indeed, although they are not smart enough to realize it, “the vengeance of the Lamb” is a rather glaring contradiction in terms–as it would be to speak of “the lovingkindness of the beast.” Just as the Lamb is himself a reverse sort of lion, we need to keep alert to the possibility that “the vengeance of the Lamb” might turn out to be something rather strange and wonderful.

Verse 17 makes it quite definite that John understands this scene as standing next to the close of history and looking ahead to Seal 7 as the end itself: “the great day has come!“

D. The Seal Interlude

7:1-17

John’s pattern, at this point, calls for a two-part interlude to break the sequence between Seals 6 and 7; and that is just what we get. The words “after this” with which the chapter begins, mark the break John intends. Part A and Part B of the interlude are consciously related; together they form a picture of the Christian community that is the church. John knows, however, that that church exists in two quite different states. Part A describes the church on earth–the church made up of those who are living. Part B describes the church in heaven; we could say “the church of the dead,” but that comes too close to suggesting something like second-order DEATH. Let’s call it “the church of those who have died”–they will show up as anything but “dead.”

1. Part A: The Church of the Living

7:1-8

1 After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth so that no wind could blow on earth or sea or against any tree. 2 I saw another angel ascending from the rising of the sun, having the seal of the living God, and he called with a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to damage earth and sea, 3 saying, “Do not damage the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have marked the servants of our God with a seal on their foreheads.”

4 And I heard the number of those who were sealed, one hundred forty-four thousand, sealed out of every tribe of the people of Israel:

5 From the tribe of Judah twelve thousand sealed
from the tribe of Reuben twelve thousand,
from the tribe of Gad twelve thousand,
6 from the tribe of Asher twelve thousand,
from the tribe of Naphtali twelve thousand,
from the tribe of Manasseh twelve thousand,
7 from the tribe of Simeon twelve thousand,
from the tribe of Levi twelve thousand,
from the tribe of Issachar twelve thousand,
8 from the tribe of Zebulun twelve thousand,
from the tribe of Joseph twelve thousand,
from the tribe of Benjamin twelve thousand sealed.

The fore part of this scene makes it evident that the place of the church is right in the midst of the end-time traumas that earlier have been presented as afflicting primarily the apostate men of the world. But John is right; in this world, there is no obvious, easy, outward distinction between believers and unbelievers, no visual differentiation or spatial separation; we are all in it together.

The trauma, in this vision, is portrayed as ravaging winds (tornadoes) to come from the four corners of the earth (thus suggesting the totality of their effect). Some scholars have complained that John never gets around to saying whether the winds did blow or to describing the event. No problem; end-time trauma obviously does come; it is simply that he uses imageries other than that of winds to describe it. The phrase “earth or sea or against any tree” is an intriguing one. “Earth or sea” would seem to cover the matter–so why “trees”? As some sharp thinker has suggested, trees are where one looks to determine whether or not the wind is blowing; “not even a tree” is a way of emphasizing that the winds indeed were being restrained.

The customary note of God’s restraining and limiting the depredations of Evil is particularly emphatic in this case; the timing and extent of end-time horror are in God’s hands and not Satan’s. At least one reason for the restraint is stated most explicitly. It is out of his grace that God is holding things back so that his people will have time to be prepared for the trial to come; they need to be given that which will enable them to persevere and manifest the patient endurance of Jesus. And what is that? It is one’s having an assured knowledge regarding who he is and to whom he belongs. John portrays this, appropriately, as a receiving of God’s seal on the forehead (references elsewhere–3:12 and 14:1–indicate that he thinks of the seal as incorporating the names of God and the Lamb). Modern experience might incline us to picture it as a stamp on the back of the hand proving that one is among those who rightfully belong “in” (and we shortly will suggest that it is stamped with an invisible, fluorescent ink which can be seen only in the doorkeeper’s black light).

This scene, then, is that of the sealing of the church; and it says that, in the midst of and out of the wild confusions of the end-time, there are those who have given themselves, not to the lord of that madhouse, but to the apparently absent and powerless Lamb. Consequently, they have been marked as reserved for him; and although this does not have the effect of taking them out of the madhouse, it does enable them to keep their wits and hang through the experience. Several chapters on, John will complete his symmetry with a counterpart scene in which the beast’s people receive their seals.

Together, these two scenes force an implication which we may or may not welcome but which John very much intends. For himself, John is certain that salvation is to be found only in Jesus Christ. Those who accept him as Lord and Savior, who have made him the central loyalty of their lives, bear his seal. Anyone who has failed to accept him in this way has some other loyalty at the center; and because that loyalty–whatever it may be–keeps Christ from being the center, it is anti-Christ, and the person’s mark is that of the beast. There are no more than the two options, and every person has put (and is putting) himself in the one camp or the other. Nowhere does John suggest that these seals, even now, are fixed for all eternity; people do have the freedom to switch loyalties; and indeed, one of John’s rationales for the end-time trauma is that it can nudge men to get out of the madhouse crowd and come over to the Lamb’s people. Nevertheless, at any given moment, one’s ultimate loyalty either belongs to Jesus Christ or it belongs somewhere else; you wear the one seal or the other.

But what John’s account simply will not allow is the picture many of us would prefer, namely that some people find their salvation in Jesus Christ while others find theirs in other ways. Thus the line is not drawn where John draws it but (whether the thought ever gets made explicit or not) between nice, sincere people on the one hand and “bad” people on the other. Goodness knows, it is impossible enough for us to determine the focus of another man’s ultimate loyalty; yet John’s distinction is a real and definable one. What this other way actually comes to is that people I like are considered saved and those I don’t are considered lost; it turns out to be no line at all. Granted, John’s judgment sounds very harsh against all the nice, sincere non-Christians, insisting that they bear the mark of the beast. But don’t you form such an opinion until you see where John’s story comes out; it just could be that his vision is broader and more charitable than that of people who distribute blessing and curses on the basis of their own moral (or immoral) preferences.

It is, of course, obvious that, presently, one cannot tell whom are Lamb’s people and who are beast’s, simply by looking at their foreheads; and I don’t believe John means to suggest that this ever will be so. Things just aren’t that easy. Christians who claim this sort of sight or who act as if they had it, are an affront to the gospel–whether they try to do it by counting baptismal certificates or by counting those who are willing to stand up and say, “On such-and-such a day, I opened my heart and took Jesus into my life.” God and, presumably, the beast do the sealing and thus know who belongs to whom. For the rest, it is better that the seals be kept under our hats and that each person center his attention on taking care of his own loyalty. Yet be clear, this in no way is to suggest that the seals are not real or that they are of little importance. Yours is the most real part of you (or identifies the most real part of you); and upon it hangs your entire destiny. For God’s sake, give thought to your seal!

Now a good many scholars will take exception to the entire interpretation above: this can’t be a picture of the sealing of the church as a whole; John is speaking explicitly of the twelve tribes of Israel and so Jews; these are 144,000 Jews who accept Christianity and are saved.

Our response will be: no, this is another instance of what John does frequently, taking a specific case and then de-calendarizing it so that it can represent the universal and total. But before documenting such a reading, let’s look at two of the difficulties that arise when one proposes the narrower, Jewish interpretation.

1. John’s two sealing scenes no longer form a symmetry; we have the sealing of only one special category of the Lamb’s people over against that of all the beast’s. Everything we said about a person’s having to bear the one seal or the other falls apart; John has no other scene suggesting when, how, or if Gentile Christians ever get sealed. Likewise, the symmetry between the A and B halves of this interlude is destroyed.
2. In Rev. 14 stands another scene in which a company of 144,000, bearing his seal on their foreheads, appears with the Lamb. There is no hint of their being Jews; the most pointed of their identifications is that they are those who “follow the Lamb wherever he goes” and are “the first-fruits of humanity for God and the Lamb”–plainly an undifferentiating description of Christians as such. Consequently, some commentators propose that John is presenting us with two different groups of 144,000. But that is to break up the book and make it more complicated precisely where the indication is that John wants to tie things together. And the secret of understanding Revelation lies in keeping it tied together as a book rather than letting it fall to pieces as a collection of separate rode messages.

Let us turn, then, to the defense of the proposal that this is indeed a picture of the sealing of the church as a whole. We know that the concept “Israel” is a very fluid one for John. There is, of course, the Israel of the Old Testament and Judaism. But the Christian church, the followers of the Lamb, constitutes a new Israel–the home of which is to be a “new Jerusalem.” John already has as much as named the Christians as being “true Jews.” The two groups, then, are distinct; but for John, they are not separate. There is a continuity between them; the one was produced out of the other. Further, John is convinced, the ultimate destiny of the two Israels is that they become one again. Further still, John, with Paul, knows that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile. Putting it all together, John is not inclined to allow the distinction between the two Israels to carry very much weight in his picture; at most it marks a momentary and transient detour within God’s total plan for his people. This means, too, that in John’s mind there is no difficulty in using “Israel” as a term to cover the church as a whole; the fact is, it is a more inclusive term for what John understands by the church than any other available to him.

We will give the matter detailed attention in a bit, but the number 144,000 would not be appropriate except as a reference to the church as a whole; it is a number of the church, the completed, perfect church rather than of any one faction within it. Yes, John’s terminology is meant to suggest that there are Jews in this church; it is not simply a Gentile church; it is the whole church.

The listing of the twelve tribes causes the problem; but I think careful consideration will show that the listing points precisely to an effort at de-calendarizing the scene rather than calendarizing it. John is portraying what is essentially an election of the people of God; and he knows that the Old Testament election of Israel forms his only proper model.

For one thing, John’s list does not conform to the way the tribes are named in the Old Testament lists of land allotment, etc. If he intended this as any kind of historical reconstruction, it is faulty. More important, neither for anyone to whom he was writing (whether Jew, Christian, or pagan), nor for anyone since, would this business of the twelve tribes make any sense at all. The tribal divisions had been basic to Israel’s life in the period prior to the establishment of the monarchy more than a thousand years before John’s time. But with Israel’s consolidation into a nation-state, such things as tribal identity, territory, tradition, etc., gradually had dissolved out. Later, a foreign invader captured the territory which, centuries earlier, had belonged to ten of the tribes; and the people whose ancestors had made up those tribes were entirely scattered and their identity destroyed.

At the time of John’s writing, then, historical Israel had no consciousness of tribal identity, no desire to return to a tribal organization. There had been such complete intermarrying and such complete obliteration of ten of the twelve tribes that to take contemporary Jews and divide them up as belonging to Judah or Simeon or Issachar or whatever would be an utterly futile and meaningless operation. Besides, there is nothing either in Revelation or the New Testament as a whole to suggest why the reconstitution of those twelve tribes would have any significance in a Christian (or even Christian-Jewish) dispensation.

Then John’s tribal list has no significance? Only if one insists upon reading it literally, as calling for some sort of impossible historical reconstruction. But let’s try it from another angle.

Israel did preserve the number “12”–and John was eager to make use of it–as the number that signifies her own reality. But notice how the “12” normally is handled; it is used to point, not to the individual constituents that went into making up Israel, but to the sum, the totality, which results from their merger. That Israel is “12” speaks of her fullness, her wholeness; it says that she has overcome the distinctions and separateness of the twelve individualities, rather than that she exists to preserve the distinctions. (By the way, it is the same with John’s ascribing to the Christian church the “12” of “the twelve apostles of the Lamb.” This “12,” too, points toward the fullness of the church and is not at all an invitation for Christians to try to identify themselves as belonging to Peter or James or John–or Judas.)

What, then, is John saying with his tribal list? He is saying that as, in Old Testament times, that true, twelve-numbered Israel could be such only by incorporating the totality of all twelve of her tribes, so, in the sealing of the eschatological people of God, the Israel-church must incorporate the fullness of the contributions from each and every one of her constituent parts.

Notice that we have turned the usual reading of this passage on its head–rather, those who insist on the narrow, Judaized reading have turned the true meaning on its head, and we are trying to get it back the way John had it. They have wanted to make it a picture of a partial, factionalized church; John was trying to talk of fullness, balance, and totality. Do a little experiment and substitute the names of some different denominations for the tribes John lists; you will begin to get a glimmer of the idea he is after. This John was an ecumenist (in a way that goes entirely beyond the bureaucratic, organizational efforts we call “the ecumenical movement” today). The church is not to be identified with any part of it–not with any one party or faction or tribe, not with any one race or culture or theology or creed or ritual, not with any one period of history or way of reading the Bible. “All twelve!” John shouts, “All twelve! It takes all twelve! And God knows, seals, and is going to gather all twelve, all those whose loyalty is to the Lamb–whether the different tribes recognize and love one another or not. You can’t have God’s Israel without all twelve!”

One other insight follows. That the church comes out this neat and beautiful, symmetrical and complete–twelve thousand apiece from each of the twelve tribes–is proof enough that it is of God’s creation and not man’s. No, this is not to deny the freedom of man or that his is the choice as to which seal he bears. But God’s freedom is great enough that it can incorporate, work in, around, and through man’s freedom without violating it–yet using it to build this twelve-faceted jewel which is his very own “Israel.”

And now, the 144,000–the key to the whole! Rightly understood, it is the capstone to all we have been saying. Wrongly understood it makes Revelation a mean and crabbed little book. A hundred and forty-four thousand! The response it customarily evokes is: “Hear that number; fix it in your mind and count it through. That’s the goal and limit to set your sights on. Only the top hundred and forty-four thousand make the payoff.” Preachers build an evangelistic appeal around it: “Don’t you want to be sealed in that 144,000? You had better get with it and come now. Remember, the competition is stiff–only 144,000!”

John doesn’t use numbers that way; he doesn’t know how many people have or are going to make Jesus the central loyalty of their lives–that number hangs in abeyance somewhere between the free choice of man and the persuasive power of God’s love. Things have gotten turned on their heads again. These interpreters make the number speak of God’s salvation as exclusive, elitist, prohibitive, and impossible; but John wanted the number to speak of the generosity, expansiveness, and lavishness of that salvation. Let’s look at the number in the way we know John uses numbers.

Even if the number were meant to be taken literally, it would have had a quite different significance when it was written from what it does now. Although anything like exact statistics are impossible to come by, it seems certain that 144,000 would much more than accommodate all the people in the world who made any claim to Christianity at that time; for John’s readers, this number would not cut people out but invite them in.

Yet that does not get to the heart of the matter. How does John arrive at this number? Not by consulting a crystal ball. Start with a “12”–that is the church’s number. In itself it already combines the Jews and the Christians, the twelve tribes and the twelve apostles; it already represents the fullness of God’s “Israel”; it is a rather big number to begin with. But we don’t stop just with this “12”; we begin with this fat “12” and then go: Twelve … times twelve … and that a THOUSAND times over! The number changes its aspect in a hurry when you go at it that way, doesn’t it? “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy like the wideness of the sea!” Indeed there is; and John knew it long before Frederick Faber did.

John pictures the church of the living as great, grand, and glorious, even though it is hidden within the traumas of the end-time. Mark up this one for our count of John’s universalistic passages. But then hold your breath as we head for this church’s heavenly counterpart, the church of those who have died.

Part B: The Church of Those Who Have Died

7:9-17

9 After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from tribes and peoples and languages standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. 10 They cried out in a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the lamb!”

11 And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell or their faces before the throne and worshiped God, 12 singing,

“Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom
and thanksgiving and honor
and power and might
be to our God forever and ever! Amen.

13 Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?” 14 I said to him, “Sir, you are the one that knows.” Then he said to me, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

15 For this reason they are before the throne of God,
    and worship him day and night within his temple,
    and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them.
16 They will hunger no more, and thirst no more;
    the sun will not strike them,
    nor any scorching heat;
17 for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd,
    and he will guide them to springs of the water of life,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

“After this,” John says; thus there is a break in the action, and the scene shifts from earth to heaven–yet it still is the church that is our focus of interest. Here in heaven the number of people is not just large, but “impossible to count.” And they are people from all over. Count this among the Revelator’s universalistic passages.

The crowd bears the signs of victory, being “robed in white and with palms in their hands.” Their song centers on “victory” as well. “Victory” is the theme of this church and of these Christians, because their being here signifies that, through the patient endurance of Jesus, they did not apostatize in the end-time trials but persevered through death and thus to victory. Even so, John is careful not to portray these people as inhabiting the new Jerusalem and is, in fact, explicit that there is yet more to come in their experience. The “how long, O Lord?” note is neither as prominent nor as plaintive here, but it is present even in the very midst of victory.

John gives us a wise hint and sets a helpful example in Rev. 7:13-14. If, in heaven or any other place, an angelic elder happens to ask you a factual question, answer as John did–pretending to know could prove even more embarrassing than admitting you don’t.

The victors of the heavenly church gained their victories by passing through the great ordeal (not detouring around it); but verse 14 also emphasizes that they were able to do this only because of what the Lamb had done for them in giving himself to be slain; their victory is as much or more his as it is theirs.

Beginning in the middle of Rev. 7:15, in order to indicate that these individual victories do not mark the end of the story, John has to get in front of himself and peek ahead to what is truly the end, the scene at which he will not properly arrive until Chapter 21. As long as history continues, the church still will have a ways to go; even the victorious church in heaven has a ways to go–mainly because they and we are both part of the same church, and as long as we have a ways to go, so do they. Verses 15-17 are in the futuretense.

The first and most basic element in John’s description is, “God will dwell with them.” This invariably is the primary thing with John, this closeness of personal relationship between man and God. Golden streets and all such business are secondary. May it be so for us as it was for John.

The first fruit of this relationship is the disappearance of all that to which God is opposed; man is now close enough to God that such things as death, tears, hurt, and need can’t get in between. The second fruit is simply the other side of the same coin–and perhaps should be considered heads rather than tails. Men shall be guided to “the springs of the water of LIFE.” John has not failed to touch upon his great “life” theme; and he is speaking, of course, of second–order rather than first-order life.

It almost goes without saying that the shepherd who gets his sheep to this water is the Lamb. The “shepherd” is a “lamb”? (By now we are getting used to the free-flying imagery, and almost didn’t notice the literalistic contradictions.)

E. Seal 7: The Coming of the End

8:1

1 When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.

John has worked things so as to bring the interlude out at the same point Seal 7 will now represent, namely the end itself. Having portrayed the expansiveness and fullness of the church of the living, the victory of the church of those who have died, and the LIFE of the church that is yet to come, John is ready to return to the seal sequence and complete it with No. 7.

He handles it in very brief compass–one sentence–bringing us to the end but not actually describing it. His purpose seems apparent: he is not ready to proceed into the end and beyond it, because he has in mind at this point to double back and present more material regarding the end-time period–in this case under a series of seven trumpets. With the seventh seal, then, he is locating the end but not yet exploring it.

“Silence … for about half an hour.” First, the silence. There is an old Jewish tradition that says God’s original creation of the universe was preceded by a period of complete silence. Perhaps it was like the hush that comes over playgoers when the house lights go down and all expectancy is focused on the raising of the curtain that will bring them into a new experience and a new world. Just so, this silence ends the clamor of the end-time and sets the stage for something entirely new and different. Recall, too, that this is the seventh seal and that the seventh is sabbath, the appropriate time of cessation, quietness, and rest. This deep strand of Jewish tradition also may be in John’s mind.

Why “half an hour”? This one is more difficult; but the end-time has been Evil’s hour, and we are now moving into God’s hour. Perhaps the thought is that God’s hour has two halves: a half of expectancy and one of fulfillment, a half of inhalation and one of exhalation, a half of pause and one of action. In any case, this seal has the effect of closing off the old past and putting us on tiptoe for the new future. But John isn’t ready to take us in yet; he backs off in order to lead us once more through the end-time.

V. The End-Time as Seven Trumpets

8:2-11:19

A. Introduction to the Trumpets

8:2-6

2 And I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them.

3 Another angel with a golden censer came and stood at the altar; he was given a great quantity of incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar that is before the throne. 4 And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before God from the hand of the angel. 5 Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth; and there were peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake.

6 Now the seven angels who had the seven trumpets made ready to blow them.

The series of trumpets which we are now to examine is structured over the pattern identical to that of the seals. This, plus the similarity in content of the two series, is strong evidence that John still is talking about the end-time rather than proceeding further along the sequence.

There are seven angels who are to do the blowing; these are not the seven spirits of the Holy Spirit as were mentioned earlier. John very likely has in mind the ancient Jewish tradition of seven archangels to whom actual names were given: Gabriel, Michael, Raphael, Uriel, Raguel, Saraqael, and Remiel.

Notice that “the prayers of all God’s people” are part of the contents of the golden censer, which, upon being thrown to earth, triggers the end-time traumas. In other words, our prayers and cries for the coming of God’s justice–our “How long, O Lord, how long?”–have a real part to play in this judgment’s very coming about. Perhaps modern Christians would do well to devote more of their energies to this sort of prayer than to the techniques of our own political crusades, trying, on our own, to make the world be just and righteous.

B. Trumpets 1-4: The Four Plagues

8:7-12

7 The first angel blew his trumpet, and there came hail and fire, mixed with blood, and they were hurled to the earth; and a third of the earth was burned up, and a third of the trees were burned up, and all green grass was burned up.

8 The second angel blew his trumpet, and something like a great mountain, burning with fire, was thrown into the sea. 9 A third of the sea became blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.

10 The third angel blew his trumpet, and a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. 11 The name of the star is Worm-wood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many died from the water, because it was made bitter.

12 The fourth angel blew his trumpet, and a third of the sun was struck and a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of their light was darkened; a third of the day was kept from shining, and likewise the night.

The description of the effects of these four trumpets seems to have some parallel with the ten plagues that came upon the Egyptians at the time of the exodus; John uses this frame of reference to draw these trumpets into a true quartet. We have another Picassian portrayal of trauma; that the stars somehow have gotten back into the sky after having fallen to earth earlier should give us no difficulty. Wormwood, by the way, is a plant with a very bitter-tasting root. The note once again of God’s restraint and limitation of Evil is made through the reiterated reference to “one third.”

C. Trumpet 5: The Warrior Locusts

8:13-9:12

13 Then I looked, and I heard an eagle crying with a loud voice as it flew in midheaven, “Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth, at the blasts of the other trumpets that the three angels are about to blow!”

1 And the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star that had fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit; 2 he opened the shaft of the bottomless pit, and from the shaft rose smoke like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke from the shaft. 3 Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were given authority like the authority of scorpioons of the earth. 4 They were told not to damage the grass of the earth or any green growth or any tree, but only those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. 5 They were allowed to torture them for five months, but not to kill them, and their torture was like the torture of a scorpion when it stings someone. 6 And in those days people will seek death but will not find it; they will long to die, but death will flee from them.

7 In appearance the locusts were like horses equipped for battle. On their heads were what looked like crowns of gold; their faces were like human faces, 8 their hair like women’s hair, and their teeth like lions’ teeth; 9 they had scales like iron breastplates, and the noise of their wings was like the noise of many chariots with horses rushing Into battle. 10 They have tails like scorpions, with stingers, and in their tails is their power to harm people for five months. 11 They have as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit; his name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he is called Apoliyon.

12 The first woe has passed. There are still two woes to come.

The customary break following Item 4 is particularly prominent here where an angel appears in order to announce that three “woes” corresponding to the last three trumpets are now to follow. Trumpet 5 will be an intensification over what has gone before; but No. 6 will be raised to an even higher power.

A star that is fallen to earth is given a key with which to open a shaft to the abyss, the underworld. It may be helpful to know that, in ancient times, stars often were identified as being angels. It probably is this tradition John has in mind; and this particular star is likely the angel-king named in verse Rev. 8:11.

Portraying a locust plague as though it were an invasion of war horses had been done earlier by the Old Testament prophet Joel; John is depending upon him. The details of the description might suggest that, if you squint your imagination hard enough, you can see some resemblance between locusts and John’s war horses–their antennae are “like women’s hair,” and their bodies are plated with armor. Whether John is thinking of actual locusts or of super-grotesque locusts the size of horses makes little difference; we aren’t to go out hunting for them in any case. These are locusts the way Picasso would paint them, a symbol of trauma and destruction. The “five months” of their assault could represent a “broken” year–thus, an “evil” time–or it could, perhaps more likely, be a traditional way of referring to a fairly long period.

The name of the locusts’ king ties them directly into the anti-God world of Evil. Such a spiritual malignity is, in truth, the source of the forces that are chewing up our world.

D. Trumpet 6: The Demonic Calvary

9:13-21

13 Then the sixth angel blew his trumpet, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar before God, 14 saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.” 15 So the four angels were released, who had been held ready for the hour, the day, the month, and the year, to kill a third of humankind. 16 The number of the troops of cavalry was two hundred million; I heard their number. 17 And this was how I saw the horses in my vision: the riders wore breastplates the color of fire and of sapphire and of sulfur; the heads of the horses were like lions’ heads, and fire and smoke and sulfur came out of their mouths. 18 By these three plagues a third of humankind was killed, by the fire and smoke and sulfur coming out of their mouths. 19 For the power of the horses is in thelr mouths and in their tails; their tails are like serpents, having heads; and with them they inflict harm.

20 The rest of humankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands or give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk. 21 And they did not repent of their murders or their sorceries or their fornication or their thefts.

Item 6, again, represents the ultimate intensification that brings the trauma to its climax and close–and opens the way for the end. In this instance, the movement is from the tormenting of men in Trumpet 5 to the killing of them in Trumpet 6.

The restraining power of God is given particular emphasis; the angels of death are “bound at the great river Euphrates.” In Old Testament times, almost all the great devastators of historical Israel–Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians–had come from beyond the Euphrates; so John appropriately takes this eastern territory as the symbolic source of devastation in general. But that the evil angels (and their armies) are bound, that they are loosed only at the permitted moment, and that their power extends only over “a third of mankind”–all these indicate that ultimately God and not the angels is running the show.

Except that no bulls are included, the scene is one that would do credit to Picasso.

Rev. 8:20-21 are particularly important in that they make a point we forecasted but have not actually encountered until now. As John tells us, men do not abjure the gods they created for themselves, nor cease the worship of that which is not God, nor repent of wickednesses–certainly this is to say that these things are what they should have done, what God wanted them to do and was encouraging them to do. So there is a very positive note hidden right here in the midst of what may be John’s most terrible scene. Mankind, through its sin, does bring all sorts of evil and horror upon itself. Yet, in the grace of God, that trauma could have a positive effect and outcome–if man would let it work the way God is trying to work it. (And it should be said that you don’t have to wait until you see horses of this kind–or even pink elephant–before trauma can have the desired effect. You undoubtedly have enough trauma right now to motivate a real healthy repentance. So why wait? Do it now!)

E. The Trumpet Interlude: The Scroll and its Contents

10:1-11:13

Following Item 6 comes an A-B interlude; and in every case the interlude has to do with the church. The Seal Interlude pictured the makeup and nature of the church. The Trumpet Interlude now will describe the fortunes of the church. And the Bowl Interlude, in its turn, will be an exhortation to the church.

In the Trumpet Interlude, Part A will recount an incident regarding a little scroll whose contents are to be divulged; Part B, apparently, represents the contents as they are divulged.

1. Part A: The Eating of the Scroll

10:1-11

1 And I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head; his face was like the sun, and his legs like pillars of fire. 2 He held a little scroll open in his hand. Setting his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land, 3 he gave a great shout, like a lion roaring. And when he shouted, the seven thunders sounded. 4 And when the seven thunders had sounded, I was about to write but I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Seal up what the seven thunders have said, and do not write it down. 5 Then the angel whom I saw standing on the sea and the land raised his right hand to heaven 6 and swore by him who lives forever and ever, who created heaven and what is in it, the earth and what is in it, and the sea and what is in it: “There will be no more delay, 7 but in the days when the seventh angel is to blow his trumpet, the mystery of God will be fulfilled, as he announced to his servants the prophets.”

8 Then the voice that I had heard from heaven spoke to me again, saying, “Go, take the scroll that is open in the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land.” 9 So I went to the angel and told him to give me the little scroll; and he said to me, “Take it, and eat; it will be bitter to your stomach, but sweet as honey in your mouth.” 10 So I took the little scroll from the hand of the angel and ate it; it was sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach was made bitter.

11 Then they said to me, “You must prophesy again about many peoples and nations and languages and kings.”

Although John changes a number of details, the main elements of the first part of this vision–the great angel standing above the waters and commanding the sealing of a message are taken from Dan. 12. The concluding part of the vision-namely the eating of the scroll–is based upon Ezek. 3.

The speech of the seven thunders which John starts to transcribe and then is prevented from doing is indeed a puzzler. Aside from a desire to be faithful to his Daniel source, it is difficult to see what significance John intends. It would sound as though he were preparing to do another seven-series; but the other one he does do is “bowls” rather than “thunders,” and there is no other mention of seven thunders. John does not tell us enough that we even can begin to guess what the thunders might have said; and that he is divinely commanded not to write it down certainly implies that we are not meant to know and so shouldn’t try to guess in any case. This is a passage not to hang up on.

Just the contrary, the angel’s words in verses 6-7 are of utmost importance. Many of the older translations present his first words as: “Time shall be no more!” That way, the concept is most difficult, if not entirely impossible. “Time” is nothing more than a measure of the transpiring of change, action, or movement; and to speak of the absence of time must mean that absolutely nothing is happening. And if anything is clear it is that John has no intention of saying, at this stage of the game, that his story is all over, that any and all activity (of God, man, Evil, or whatever) is ready to come to a dead halt. No, the NRSV translation undoubtedly has John’s meaning right: “There will be no more delay!”

As we have said, the holding off of the eschaton is a mark of God’s grace, his granting men time for repentance. Nevertheless, John insists, the time will come–will have to come–when the whistle blows, “Sorry, time has run out; the ball game is over!” John, decidedly, is not one of these moderns who believe that human history never will involve an accounting but will simply run on forever. For John, that would make history as meaningless as a football game without a termination or final score. And the words that follow in Rev. 10:7 make it certain that, in this Trumpet Series at least, Item 7 does definitely signify the end.

The “little scroll” appearing in this scene almost certainly is not to be identified with the scroll that the Lamb unsealed; and yet there is at least some connection: the contents of this one, too, represent information about the hidden future–in this case, the immediate future of the church rather than the ultimate future of human history. The prophet’s eating a scroll and then speaking out its message may seem a rather strange way for God to communicate his word to man; yet this seems to be what both Ezekiel and John had in mind. Probably the intended effect is to stress both the authority and importance of the message.

Rev. 10:11 likely is meant to point directly to Part B and suggest that it be understood as John’s speaking forth the scroll he has just been fed.

2. Part B: The Fate of the Church

11:1-13

1 Then I was given a measuring rod like a staff, and I was told, “Come and measure the temple of God and the altar and those who worship there, 2 but do not measure the court outside the temple; leave that out for it is given over to the nations, and they will trample over the holy city for forty-two months. 3 And I will grant my two witnesses authority to prophesy for one thousand two hundred sixty days, wearing sackcloth.”;

4 These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth. 5 And if anyone wants to harm them, fire pours from their mouth and consumes their foes; anyone who wants to harm them must be killed in this manner. 6 They have authority to shut the sky, so that no rain may fall during the days of their prophesying, and they have authority over the waters to turn them into blood, and to strike the earth with every kind of plague, as often as they desire.

7 When they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the bottomless pit will make war on them and conquer them and kill them, 8 and their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city that is prophetically called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified. 9 For three and a half days members of the peoples and tribes and languages and nations will gaze at their dead bodies and refuse to let them be placed in a tomb; 10 and the inhabitants of the earth will gloat over them and celebrate and exchange presents, because these two prophets had been a torment to the inhabitants of the earth.

11 But after the three and a half days, the breath of life from God entered them, and they stood on their feet, and those who saw them were terrified. 12 Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, “Come up here!” And they went up to heaven in a cloud while their enemies watched them. 13 At that moment there was a great earthquake, and a tenth of the city fell; seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the rest were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven.

The contents of the scroll prove to be a vision of the end-time fortunes of the church; it is one of the most important passages in Revelation.

We need to establish first that the church is indeed that of which John is speaking. For one thing, the location of the scene is Jerusalem, the holy city. With this we come to one of the basic elements of John’s symmetric symbolism. Jerusalem (and the Zion hill on which it stands) is, for him, the symbolic home of the church. I think he never mentions Jerusalem except in connection with the church. And of course, “the new Jerusalem” is his designation for the home of the perfected, eschatological church. This “Jerusalem,” then, is to stand over against “Babylon,” the home city of the apostate world. The back-and-forth comparison between the fortunes of “Jerusalem” and “Babylon” will be of utmost significance.

It will be interesting, later, to see how neatly John de-calendarizes (and de-maps) “Babylon”; and although the problem here is a much more tricky one, we will contend that such is precisely what he wants to do with “Jerusalem” as well. There is no good reason why it should be, and there is no evidence in the New Testament that it ever was the case, that the fate of the Christian church depends upon the fate of a particular plot of ground named Jerusalem. One of the striking things about New Testament Christianity, as over against the Old Testament Judaism out of which it was born, is the way it broke free from any geographical ties, from any theological focus on a particular land, city, culture, or people. And it is inconceivable that so totally Christian a thinker as John would move back to tie the outcome of his universal gospel to the fortunes of one particular human city. No, for John, “Jerusalem” identifies an idea rather than any specific place.

In this regard, it is probably deliberate that, although it obviously is Jerusalem John here has in mind, he nowhere explicitly names it as such. He calls it “the holy city” in Rev. 11:2; but in Rev. 11:8–in what would seem to be a conscious effort at “de-mapping”–he calls it “the great city that is prophetically called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified.” Jerusalem, yes; but also a Jerusalem that has been freed of any physical, geographical limitations so that it can be located anywhere at any time. Just as Picasso’s Guernica is, at one and the same time, both Guernica, Spain, 1937, and also any and every other place where war has wreaked its destruction, so John’s Jerusalem is the home of the church, thus to be located wherever the church is located. This present scene can and does take place wherever “Jerusalem” happens to be at the time; and finally, as universal, eschatological event, it will happen when, where, and how God chooses to bring it about.

“Jerusalem” is the locale; the central figure (or figures) is, of course, the two “witnesses.” That they are two creates a problem to which we will need to address ourselves; but for the moment, let’s concentrate on their common identity rather than their twoness. Notice, first of all, that although they are cited as two, throughout the scene they act, are acted upon, and are described in complete concert. No distinction is made; they are given no individuality; no significance is attributed to their duality.

That the two are identified as “witnesses” is crucial; this is the same Greek “martyr-witness” word with which John has characterized the church and its Christians since the opening of the book. Further, everything said about them and everything they do fits exactly with what John tells us about the church elsewhere.

But why two? Either one witness representing the oneness of the church or twelve witnesses incarnating the church’s number would seem more appropriate; but the witnesses are two. One consideration that may have been of decisive weight for John is that much of the imagery of this scene–including the measuring of Jerusalem, the presence of lamp stands (although one rather than two), and two olive trees who are “the two consecrated with oil who attend the Lord of all the earth”–is taken straight from Zech. 2-4. John is following his source; and this may be all that is involved.

Even so, it is quite possible that John also attributed a meaning of his own to the twoness. In his own experience, John would have been aware of a basic duality of the church to which our experience would not alert us. The church of John’s day was rather conspicuously divided into congregations of Christians, one group having come out of a Jewish background and the other out of a Gentile background. Although holding a common faith and worshipping a common Lord, their whole style and way of doing things undoubtedly was quite diverse. It seems evident, too, that there was some friction between the two groups. In light of this situation, it may well be that John is using the twoness of these figures to say that the mission of the church wants and needs the witness of both the Jewish and the Gentile Christians. It would be another case of the law of “all twelve,” a plea for ecumenicity and the fullness of God’s church.

The portion of the account dealing with the measuring of the temple probably depends more directly upon Ezekiel 40ff. than upon Zechariah, for the Zechariah vision speaks of measuring “Jerusalem” rather than the temple itself. The contrast between Ezekiel’s and John’s treatment is instructive, however, and points in the direction of de-literalizing. Ezekiel proceeds to give page after page of actual dimensions and description of the great, new temple he envisions. John shows no interest in this order of reality at all, speaks rather in terms of the people involved, and follows up the theme of “measuring” only long enough to make a point regarding the fate of the church and not the architecture of any temple.

The old Jewish temple consisted of two distinct areas:

1. The inner temple–incorporating the altar and other such sacred apparatuses–which was itself of particular holiness and into which were admitted only devout Jews (those bearing God’s seal).
2. The outer court, much less holy, the site of more secular kinds of activity, and open to the public–including Gentiles (the outsiders).

But, we are told, the prophet is to center his attention on the inner temple (the true, loyal church), because the temple itself is to be overrun by the Gentiles (the church by the world) and only the inner temple will be preserved. This situation will last for forty-two months, which is twelve hundred and sixty days, which is three and a half years (“3 1/2” is a broken “7,” thus itself the number of Evil and thus, for John, the length of the end-time).

This picture jibes with what John has been telling us all along and what he will continue to tell us. The period of the end-time (from the close of Jesus’ earthly career until his parousia) is also the period of the church on earth, the time of her martyr-witness. Her home is “Jerusalem,” the holy city; but it is there too “where also her Lord was crucified,” a most unholy act. The church does incorporate “an inner temple” which will be preserved through the end-time: but she must also endure the ravaging of her outer courts by the godless world. And of course, John also saw this bi-polarity of holiness and unholiness, fidelity and apostasy, witness and deceit, sovereignty and suffering, in the empirical church of the seven congregations of Asia Minor. So he says, “Don’t get upset. This tension is part of God’s plan for the end-time and is to be expected. But … but it is not the whole story of the church; you need to see the outcome!”

And so “Jerusalem” has a very interesting role to play in John’s scheme of things. She is the city that obviously belongs on the Good side as over against “Babylon” on the Evil side. But she nevertheless is in the agonizing situation of being the holy city where also her Lord was crucified. She must go through the end-time traumas–and she will not be untouched or uncorrupted by them. Even so, her fate is not at all that of “Babylon,” which is to collapse and disappear forever. On the contrary, “Jerusalem”–in spite of trauma and even through trauma–is destined for repentance, resurrection, and redemption until, through God’s grace, she is transformed into “the new Jerusalem,” the source and center of LIFE.

But during the three and a half years in which she now finds herself, dressed in sackcloth, the symbol of lowliness and humiliation (how many churches have you seen lately that give any appearance of being dressed in sackcloth?), the church is called to make her faithful martyr-witness She is to be an olive tree and a lamp before the Lord. Olive trees bear fruit, lamps give light; who ever has put the mission of the church any more succinctly? As lamp, we are so to live and act and speak that the truth of who Jesus is and what he does will be illuminated to the world. As olive trees, we are to engage in the same ministry of service and reconciliation that Jesus himself pursued. What else is there to say?

Rev. 11:5 calls for special comment, with its reference to fire pouring from the mouths of the witnesses and consuming their enemies. This cannot mean that the church is called to use strong-arm (or even strong-mouth) methods of threat and violence. Such is too out of character with John’s total picture and is too directly contrary to the fact that these witnesses even now are on the way to a defenseless martyrdom. John must be wanting to say that God will not allow the witness of these prophets to be cut off before its time. Again it is the principle that the power of Evil is limited and under the restraint of God. The world may be able to bloody the church’s head (both through persecution and by seducing her into betraying herself); but the world will never be allowed to stop the church’s witness and put her out of the way. “No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord” (Jn. 10:18).

Rev. 11:6, pursuing the same line of thought, speaks of two powers which apparently the witnesses possess together. Nevertheless, the power to shut up the rain in the sky points very strongly toward the Old Testament prophet Elijah; and the power of the plagues toward Moses. John very well may have been thinking of Elijah and Moses at this point–and it bothers us not at all. If he is, he is thinking of them as symbols of the church. After all, both are known primarily as leaders of the church (the people of God) who, in situations where they had to stand virtually alone and in the face of great opposition, were wonderfully preserved by God and enabled to accomplish their assigned mission and make the faithful witness. The church should follow an Elijah-Moses model.

But for a moment go the other way, as many commentators do, and put it that, at some time to come–after the Jewish temple is rebuilt–a reincarnated Elijah and Moses are to appear in the actual city of Jerusalem, there to be killed and then resurrected in sight of the citizenry, after which the city will be wracked by an earthquake. Now even if that should happen, it would be an event that has nothing to do with me, nothing to say to me; it would be an event entirely in God’s hands and not concerning me one way or another. John’s great work becomes nothing more than data for speculative gamesmanship. But read it our way and it becomes God’s word to me, God’s word involving me as much as it did John’s original hearers or it will the generation that happens to stand at the parousia. And it is a word of God that the remainder of the New Testament also confirms as being true!

When the witnesses have completed their testimony–but not before (the timing is in the hands of God)–the beast will rise from the abyss to defeat and kill them. This is the first time the beast (therion) has been introduced to us as beast. He is Antichrist; and though we will see much more of him in the beast role, we already have met him as the first of the four horsemen. The witnesses will lie dead for three and a half days. This period, rather clearly, is the intensification of trauma that closes off the end-time, corresponding to Item 6 in the various seven-series.

“The inhabitants of the earth” gloat over the dead witnesses; and Rev. 11:9 picks up the very phraseology of universalism that John elsewhere has used in reference to God and his victory. We have here, then, a universality of Evil to stand as counterpoint against the universality of the Good. The time comes when apparently Evil has picked up all the chips. It looked that way on Good Friday; it will look that way when the witnesses lie dead; it can look very much that way at any point during the end-time. The difference, of course, is that this is only an apparent universality, at best a momentary universality. True and lasting universality lies solely with God.

At the end of the three and a half days, the breath of life from God comes into the witnesses. The word “breath” is the same Greek word as “spirit”; and it would seem quite proper to read this as a reference to the Holy Spirit, the Spirit that is always and ever the life-breath of the church. The witnesses stand upon their feet and ascend to join God.

In case any reader is not getting the parallel, John reminds us in Rev. 11:8 that all this happens in the great city where also their Lord was crucified. Obviously, the experience of the witnesses is to be understood as a reiteration of Jesus’ own death and resurrection. The way the church is called to go, the way she is to take through the world of the end-time, is the way Jesus already has gone.

The way of the church is the way of Jesus. John is insistent on this point; he will make it at other places in other ways; he already has made it in the fifth seal when the saints’ “How long?” was answered, “When the tally is complete of your brothers also giving themselves to the death in Christ’s service.” Yet know for a fact that this is not the way the church, in her own wisdom, is inclined to go. The way of the church, as we can observe it, tends more in the direction of organizing for corporate efficiency and power, asserting her own status, mounting crusades, trying to sweep the world off its feet, working to manipulate and dominate society, worrying about her own doctrinal nicety, building more stately mansions. This, while our call is to be the faithful witnesses who give, who expend themselves and allow themselves to be spent, who eschew dreams of power and aggrandizement in order to love their way relentlessly toward martyrdom. This, while the trauma of the times continues to mount and the saints ceaselessly cry, “How long, O Lord? How long?”

How long? It may be that the Lord is waiting for his church, waiting for his church to become the church. Sure as anything, there can’t be a resurrection unless someone is willing to die first; if you won’t bear the cross, then you can’t wear the crown. How long, O Lord? How long?

But in John’s picture, with the resurrection of the church, “Jerusalem” goes through her final throes. Many people are lost; but “the rest do homage to the God of heaven.” Is that last word meant to suggest repentance–and thus the essential difference between “Jerusalem” and “Babylon”? In any case, Jerusalem continues to exist, exists to come back at the end of the story as the new Jerusalem. Even though what we said about her above is true–tragically true–the church will come through. John knows that; and we must have the faith to know it with him.

F. Trumpet 7: Victory to our God!

11:14-19

14 The second woe has passed. The third woe is coming very soon.
15 Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying,
“The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord
    and of his Messiah,
    and he will reign forever and ever.”
16 Then the twenty-four elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God,
17 Singing,
    “We give you thanks, Lord God Almighty,
    who are and who were,
    “for you have taken your great power
    and begun to reign.
18 The nations raged,
    but your wrath has come,
    and the time for judging the dead,
    for rewarding your servants the prophets
    and saints and all who fear your name,
    both small and great,
    and for destroying those who destroy the earth.”

19 Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his Covenant was seen within his temple there were flashes of lightning rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail.

The interlude vision has brought us through the church’s fortunes of the end-time and up to the end itself. Verse 14 now returns us to the trumpets and announces that we are ready for No. 7–which is the end itself. The two lines of action converge very neatly. The final three trumpets earlier had been characterized as “woes” and are again here. No. 7, I guess, is a woe for those who are not part of the scene, but the scene itself is anything but “woeful.”

Earlier, in the Seal Series, we found John reluctant to describe the end itself, presumably because he planned to back off and lead up to it again from another angle. Consequently, Seal 7 pictured only the hush before the end. John’s same reluctance shows itself another way here; he still does not actually describe the end but jumps over it and pictures the joyful response attending it. He will back off another time or two before showing us the end for real.

The hymn of Rev. 11:15 makes a precise statement as to what is the basic significance of that point in history which we have been calling “the end”: the sovereignty of the world changes hands. Now, of course, John knows and has sufficiently indicated that actually the sovereignty never has been anywhere except with “our Lord and his Messiah.” Nevertheless, through the end-time it has appeared as though the forces of Evil were in control. What happens, then, in the “change of hands” is that the true state of affairs finally is revealed for what it always has been.

There is a neat touch in Rev. 11:17. The earlier threefold ascription to God, “who was and is and is to come,” now has lost its final term. John sees that it is inappropriate at this point, because the heretofore “coming” God has come. The end (which is the parousia of Christ) is his coming. There is no need to look for God any longer; we see him.

Don’t get squeamish over the words in Rev. 11:18: “wrath” and “judging.” Above all, hear what John is saying before you decide what those words should imply. In the first place, notice that, most often when John uses words such as these, he is not necessarily talking about people but more likely about “the evil ones,” the demons, the horsemen, the Evil Trinity–those entities that represent unmitigated evil, nothing but evil. People, for John, even “bad” people, come off somewhat differently. Yes, people do get seduced by evil, let themselves be used by it, give themselves over to it, are corrupted by it, are guilty of it. Nevertheless, they still are more the victims of Evil than the source of it–and John portrays God’s recompense accordingly.

In the second place, take care not to read implications of cruelty, sadism, and vindictiveness into these terms until John forces you to do so. We have a responsibility to interpret each of John’s scenes as being consistent with the overall emphasis and character of the book–do this just as long as it is possible to do so.

Finally, it is entirely proper and right for John, at this point, to speak of wrath and judging. In light of the heinous crimes against the church and humanity that John has portrayed, if God now were to ignore what has been going on, he would not be a good God, and history itself would turn out a vicious deceit. “Justice” is a godly, Christian value (built into the Bible from beginning to end) and “justice” does and must involve “wrath”–not vindictiveness, of course, but “just deserts,” Evil’s getting what it has asked for, tasting a little of what it has dished out. Jesus himself, the one who was love incarnate, easily can be quoted as supporting this principle; judgment and wrath are not contradictory to love but a necessary aspect of it. Those Christians who would like to improve the New Testament by writing this unpleasant aspect out of it are not—as they are inclined to be credited–superior “lovers”; they are sentimentalists who have not experienced or faced up to the real nature of life and the radical character of Evil.

Thus, the concluding line of the passage is very much in place; there must be a time to destroy those who destroy the earth–recalling that John has not been identifying the destroyers primarily as people. But those four horsemen have got to go–otherwise John’s entire book is a mockery. Yet notice, too, that neither here nor anywhere in Revelation is there so much as a hint that the Christians are invited to organize themselves to go out and destroy the destroyers. The church–the same church that has declined the martyr-witness role for itself–often has volunteered for the role of destroyer of the destroyers–and always with the same results. Like lopping off ripe dandelions, it accomplishes only the scattering of the evil seed, with the church infesting itself in the process. “How long, O Lord? How long? For only your justice is just, and only you are great and good enough to undertake the destroying of those that destroy the earth!”

Rev. 11:19 is interesting. We see God’s temple in heaven. But when we get to the climax of the book and the new Jerusalem, it will be specified that there is no temple, because mankind is living in the direct presence of God. Perhaps the temple here is an indication that, even in heaven, the end-state is not yet achieved; there is more that must happen.

John still is working at de-literalizing. The ark of the covenant had been lost in the Babylonian holocaust some six hundred years before John’s time; but the heavenly temple has hung onto its specimen. John himself, of course, is a Christian who has rejected Jewish temple worship; and it is likely that, at the time he was writing, the Jerusalem temple itself already had been destroyed. Also, recall that his previous vision had pictured the desecration of the temple by the Gentiles. Yet, John wants to affirm, although the temple has been outmoded by Christianity and actually destroyed by the Romans, its real significance has not been lost and desecration is not the last word concerning it; it stands in heaven. Although he is very good at portraying trauma and destruction, John is a great believer in the idea that the true values of history will be and are being preserved.