The Vernard Eller Collection

The Most Revealing Book of the Bible (continued)

by Vernard Eller

4:1-14

VI. The End-Time in Freehand Sketch

12:20

John now is ready to go through an end-time account for the third time; but in this instance he chooses to discard his pattern of the seven-series and do it freehand We can be glad he does, because it produces what is probably the most meaningful treatment of all. The freehand approach carries a number of advantages. John can let the story make its own way. He will now set the end-time into a somewhat larger perspective, recounting a bit of what preceded the period and what follows it. Also, he will now develop his basic symmetry far beyond what he has done thus far. These chapters constitute a very important portion of Revelation.

A. The Woman and her Child

12:1-6

1 A great portent appeared in the sun: a woman clothed the sun, with the moon under her feet and on her head a crown of twelve stars. 2 She was pregnant and was crying out in birthpangs, in the agony of giving birth. 3 Then another portent appeared in heaven: a great dragon, with seven heads and horns, and seven diadems on heads. 4 His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. Then the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, so that he might devour child as soon as it was born. 5 And she gave birth to a son, a male child is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. But her child was snatched away and taken to God and to his throne; 6 and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, so that there she can be nourished for one thousand two hundred sixty days.

There appears the woman robed with the sun–a beautiful and glorious figure. She is the church–not only her crown of twelve stars but everything else we are told about her makes this plain. Here she is presented specifically as mother of the Christ; but John also may intend her later when he describes “the bride of Christ”–which also is the church. Normally, of course, for one’s mother to be his bride would be the greatest of scandals–but not when John is doing things his way.

Although John never has them meet, this woman, most likely, is meant to be placed in conscious juxtaposition over against the great whore, the woman of the world, who enters a few chapters on down the line. Their distinctions are these: this one has beauty, that one has glamor (there’s a difference); this one is pregnant, that one is sterile; this one bears life, that one bears death. John is on target.

We already have seen how fluid is John’s concept of the church; and here it is particularly so. The woman who gives birth to the child obviously must be Old Testament Israel, the Jewish people of God. The woman who must then flee into the wilds is just as obviously the Christian, New Testament church. The woman who is the bride of Christ is a Christianity that includes the Jews. Yet all three are the same woman. And by the way, John is correct that it was out of “the anguish of her labor” that Israel brought forth the Christ–that is what the Old Testament story is all about. We seldom think in these terms; but profound insight is involved in the suggestion that God chose Israel to be the bearer of his Son and that Jesus was mothered and brought up in the faith she represents. There is no anti-Semitism in John.

A great red dragon, out to get the child, takes his stand before the woman (and the stars come unglued again). A few verses later, the dragon is specifically named as being Satan, or the Devil. Surely John means to present him as the anti-God and head of the Evil Trinity; we will see a good deal more of him before we are done. (We already have discussed the “iron rod” which the child is to wield. It comes from Psalm 2:9; but in John’s mind, it cannot mean simply brutality.)

Satan is well aware that this child is the key to universal history. If he can get the babe, he’s got the ball game; if he misses the babe, he loses everything. It is shrewd of John not to have introduced Satan until now; his appearance at this moment pinpoints it as being the most critical of all history. The child is born, and the dragon makes his grab; but he misses, the baby is snatched up to God, and it is all over! The snatching up can be nothing but Jesus’ resurrection. John has collapsed the entire career of Jesus into his birth and resurrection; but the move is entirely proper in this sort of symbolic presentation.

The scene was so set that, when the dragon missed his grab, it was all over; and in what follows, John will make it plain that this is just what he meant to say. But how can Jesus’ resurrection be taken to signify that it is all over, when it leads directly into the end-time where, as John has so graphically portrayed it, things proceed from bad to worse? It is precisely to this paradox John now will speak; and it is precisely the understanding cf this paradox that will enable John’s original readers (and us) to handle the history that must be lived through. We are at the heart of John’s argument.

Although her child has been saved, the woman must flee into the wilds (namely the trials of the end-time), there to spend the three and a half years of Evil’s domination.

B. The Dragon Thrown Down

12:7-17

7 And war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fought back, 8 but they were defeated, and there was no longer any place them in heaven. 9 The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world–he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.

10 Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, proclaiming,
    “Now have come the salvation and the power
    and the kingdom of our God
    and the authority of his Messiah,
    for the accuser of our comrades has been thrown down,
    who accuses them day and night before our God.
11 But they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb
    and by the word of their testimony,
for they did not cling to life even in the face of death.
12 Rejoice then, you heavens
    and those who dwell in them!
But woe to the earth and the sea,
    for the devil has come down to you
    with great wrath,
    because he knows that his time is short!”

13 So when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. 14 But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle, so that she could fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to her place where she is nourished for a time, and times, and half a time. 15 Then from his mouth the serpent poured water like a river after the woman, to sweep her away with the flood. 16 But the earth came to the help of the woman; it opened its mouth and swallowed the river that the dragon had poured from his mouth. 17 Then the dragon was angry with the woman, and went off to make war on the rest of her children, those who keep the commandments of God and hold the testimony of Jesus.

The scene shifts to heaven, because that perspective is necessary in order to understand what is happening on earth. Recall what heaven represents in John’s thought; it is the locus of the throne, the control room from which earthly history is ordered, the place where the sealed scroll of the future is opened. What we see here tells us much more about the reality of things than does a look at the actuality of earthly events. Noting a racing car’s fuel gauge may tell you much more about who is winning the race than to see who is out front at the moment.

Jesus’ resurrection both triggers and decides the war in heaven. The dragon and his angels are cast out and no foothold is left them. Thrown out of the control room and with absolutely no possibility of getting back in, it is all over! The matter is decided once for all; there is no way the dragon can save himself or anything of his cause.

The first line of the hymn in verse 10 interprets the event precisely: “Now, have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Messiah.” These words come with Jesus’ resurrection, which is the beginning of the end-time. But recall that in the chapter just previous we were given a scene from the end, at the close of the end-time, in which the hymn read: “The sovereignty of the world has passed to our Lord and his Christ.”

There is no problem; John has his hymnody well in hand. What was accomplished in Jesus’ death-and-resurrection was the decisive victory-none other is necessary. Whatever power and sovereignty the dragon henceforth may show is illusory. And what the hymn from the end celebrates is not any new victory but simply the inevitable working out and being made apparent of the heavenly victory that had gone before. Both moments are significant, of course, but only the first is decisive; the second follows from and is dependent upon it.

But where the cast-out dragon lands is upon earth. And he’s mad; he comes down clawing and spitting-ready to fight! Yet his fight is not that excited by any prospect of winning; he can’t win, and he knows it. No, he is moved by the kind of despair that throws all plan or prudence to the wind and is out simply to be mean for meanness’ sake–aware that he has nothing to lose because he’s lost it all already). As verse 12 has it, he is in great fury, because he knows his time is short. As those of us realize who have had enough farm experience to have seen it, the most active period of a chicken’s life is the first few moments after it is dead; with the cutting off of its head, the body goes into most violent spasms of flopping and lurching around–“like a chicken with its head cut off,” as the old phrase so appropriately puts it. John relates that a dragon dies the same way–particularly when it is Jesus who administers the decisive blow.

This tells us something. During the end-time in which we live, as we see the tantrums and traumas growing ever more wild and reckless, it is not an indication that Evil is growing in strength and about to take over. Quite the contrary, it is evidence that the dragon already has been decapitated and can’t last much longer. This knowledge, of course, does not change the seriousness of his depredations or the reality of the damage he yet can wreak; but it does enable us the better to stand up under them. Through John, he word of God comes to us: “Hang in, fellow! Hang in! You’ve got it won, just stay in there until the bell!” And the final bell, be assured, will ring soon!

Rev. 12:11–a great one–tells us what hanging-in Christians can and should do to help hasten the demise of the devil.

1. It is by the sacrifice of the Lamb, his death-and-resurrection, and only by his, that the conquest takes place. This is the fundamental and necessary factum.
2. Yet, it is through the testimony, the maryria Jesu, Christians make to him that his victory is kept active and the dragon kept confronted with it.
3. And this witness, finally, is full powered only when it is supported by and includes the willingness “not cling to life even in the face of death.” This victory cost the Lamb everything, and he was willing to give it for our sakes; why do we think it should cost us nothing?

In Rev. 12:13ff., the scene shifts from heaven back to earth, where we see the end-time in progress as Evil focuses its attention on the persecution of mother church. God preserves her, although not in any easy, complacent security. The dragon launches his worst at her, but friends come to her aid. The earth itself and the course of history are on the side of the church. Yet notice carefully that nothing is said or hinted about the church’s fighting–or even resisting–the dragon. She is to take care of her martyr-witness and let God do the “sustaining.”

With Rev. 12:17, John apparently distorts his analogy a bit in order to introduce a new idea. Historically it seems correct that persecution against the church first focused on the Jewish Christians; later it moved on to engulf the Gentile Christians (among whom most of John’s hearers would be counted). This probably is as much as John has in mind with his reference to “the rest of her children”–and would tend to confirm our earlier interpretation of “the two witnesses.”

C. Enter, The Beast

13:1-10

18 Then the dragon took his stand on the sand of the seashore. 1 And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads; and on its horns were ten diadems, and on its heads were blasphemous names. 2 And the beast that I saw was like a leopard, its feet were like a bear’s, and its mouth was like a lion’s mouth. And the dragon gave it his power and his throne and great authority. 3 One of its heads seemed to have received a death-blow, but its mortal wound had been healed. In amazement the whole earth followed the beast. 4 They worshiped the dragon, for he had given his authority to the beast, and they worshipped the beast, saying, “Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?”

5 The beast was given a month uttering haughty and blasphemous words, and it was allowed to exercise authority for forty-two months. 6 It opened its mouth to utter blasphemies against God, blaspheming his name and his dwelling, that is, those who dwell in heaven. 7 Also it was allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer them. It was given authority over every tribe and people and language and nation, 8 and all the inhabitants of the earth will worship it, everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb that was slaughtered.

9 Let anyone who has an ear listen:
10 If you are to be taken captive,
    into captivity you go;
    if you kill with the sword,
    with the sword you must be killed.

Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints.

The previous scene brought on stage the great, red dragon. It is significant that, in John’s book, he lasted a grand total of six verses before he was dead. But from here on out we need always to bear in mind that it is a dead–although quite active, even hyperactive–dragon with whom we have to deal. He now takes his stand by the seashore, in order to introduce to us his colleagues. John, from his Old Testament background, understands the sea as a soupy place of chaos, darkness, and monstrosity. It is as if this new character stuck his head up out of a garbage can.

This is therion, the beast, the Fancy Fake in a different getup–or perhaps the Fancy Fake seen for who he really is. Yet notice that virtually every detail we are told about him suggests a counter comparison with arnion, the Lamb; Fancy Fake he still very much is.

John constructs the forepart of this beastly description out of the four beasts described in Dan. 7. But then, “the dragon gave it his power”–as God had upon the Lamb. The beast, although living, bears a mark of slaughter upon him–as does the Lamb. The beast leads the world to worship the dragon–as the Lamb leads the church to worship God. The beast has the right to reign (in appearance) for the three and a half years of the end-time–as the Lamb will (in reality) for the thousand years of the millennium. And finally, the beast commands a pseudo-universality that corresponds to the true universality of the Lamb.

Rev. 13:8, then, confirms the point we argued earlier: a person’s loyalty belongs either to the Lamb or to the beast–there is no other option. The urgency and cruciality of this choice–plus the fact that the vote seems currently to be going for the beast–moves John to close off the scene with an exhortation: “Be very clear! If you go with the beast, you go with the beast. What he stands for, you stand for; what he gets, you get! God’s people had better be ready to stand by and hang in at all costs!” And note that the Lamb’s people are identified as those whose names have been written “in the book of life.” Here, again, is the basic distinction: those who are in the Lamb have LIFE; outside of him, all is DEATH.

D. And Another, The Unholy Spirit

13:11-18

11 Then I saw another that rose out of the earth; it had two horns like a lamb and it spoke like a dragon. 12 It exercises all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and it makes the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose mortal wound had been healed. 13 It performes great signs, even making fire come down from heaven to earth in the sight of all; 14 and by the signs that it is allowed to perform on behalf of the beast it deceives the inhabitants of earth, telling them to make an image for the beast that had been wounded by the sword and yet lived; 15 and it was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast so that the image of the beast could even speak and cause those who would not worship the image of the beast to be killed. 16 Also it causes all, both small and great, both rich and poor, both free and slave, to be marked on the right hand or the forehead, 17 that no one can buy or sell who does not have the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name.

The dragon made his entrance out of the air (accidentally, as it were, falling on his tail from heaven). Therion arose out of the garbage-can sea. Number Three now comes out of the ground (he’s the dirty one); and his, obviously, is intended as a counter description of the Holy Spirit.

This Unholy Spirit is called “another beast” That could make for confusion; but whenever John talks about “the beast” it seems evident that he has in mind the Antichrist. Elsewhere he calls this third member of the Evil Trinity “the false prophet”; inasmuch as the Holy Spirit acts primarily as teacher and communicator in behalf of God and Christ, so does this one serve his colleagues–although, of course, in a false way. That he has “horns like a lamb’s” establishes his relationship to Antichrist, who is a fake lamb. That he “spoke like a dragon” establishes the relationship in that direction.

This beast wields the authority of the first beast and leads men to him–as the Holy Spirit does with Christ. He performs miracles–as does the Holy Spirit (and the coming down of fire could be a reference to the Pentecost miracle of the Holy Spirit’s coming in tongues as of fire). Catch the implication; the sheer occurrence of miracle is no proof that the Holy Spirit is at work; the Unholy Spirit can fake that sort of thing. Through his miracles he wins men, leads them into the worship of Antichrist, and even breathes life (false life) into that worship–as the Holy Spirit wins men for Christ, leads them to worship him, and inspires (breathes into them) their spiritual life.

Verse 16, then, brings John to the counterpart of his earlier scene, namely the sealing of the Lamb’s people. Again the implication is plain that every person bears one seal or the other; he carries the brand of either arnion or therion; none is unclaimed.

With the observation that “no one was allowed to buy or sell unless he bore this beast’s mark,” John may be saying something quite profound. “Buying and selling,” the whole business of economics, is, of course, one of the central activities of this world; John knows this and will make that knowledge explicit at a later point. “Buying and selling” is the world’s big operation; the world has set up the game, defined its rules, and is running the tables; and never forget, the beast is lord of “this world.” You won’t get very far at these tables, then, John is saying, unless you can show proof that the boss has okayed you. You’ll never win at this game unless you’re willing to play according to the way of the world.

Now I am confident that John does not mean to say that, if you so much as go to the supermarket, you have sold out to the beast. He probably does not even mean to say that the fact that a person has chanced to amass some worldly riches necessarily is proof that he wears the mark of the beast. Nevertheless, John’s observation is true, and we need to be greatly alerted by it: “buying and selling” is the world’s game, and you can’t go far in it without selling your soul to the boss who runs it.

The parenthesis of Rev. 13:18–and it is significant that the translators have understood it as being a parenthesis–is one of the most difficult passages in Revelation. It is a riddle which, quite plainly, goes along with some similar material in Chapter 17. We can be more effective if we handle the two passages together; let’s hold this verse in abeyance for now and come back to it then. Such a procedure will not affect our understanding of the present scene.

E. The Lamb and His Hundred Forty-Four Thousand

14:1-5

1 Then I looked, and there was the Lamb, standing on Mount Zion! And with him were one hundred forty-four thousand who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads. 2 And I heard a voice from heaven like the sound of many waters and like the sound of loud thunder; the voice I heard was like the sound of harpists playing on their harps, 3 and they sing a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and before the elders. No one could learn that song except the one hundred forty-four thousand who have been redeemed from the earth. 4 It is these who have not defiled themselves with women, for they are virgins; these follow the Lamb wherever he goes. They have been redeemed from humankind as first fruits for God and the Lamb, 5 and in their mouth no lie was found; they are blameless.

John’s introduction of the hierarchy of Evil closed with the picture of those who were sealed into that company. The matter immediately recalls those who had been sealed the other way. John moves, then, to the positive side of his counter play. In the process, this move will take us beyond the end-time (which belongs to the side of Evil) and into the end (which is a transition into the Good). We stand now at what would be the spot between Items 6 and 7, if this account were one of the seven-series.

The scene opens upon the hundred forty-four thousand whom we met earlier; they stand upon Mount Zion (Jerusalem), which is their proper location, the home of the church. With them stands the Lamb. This is most significant, being the first time he has appeared on earth since John undertook to portray the end-time. With that, another very interesting thing happens: the scene shifts to heaven–but without any sense of a shift.What is happening is that the line between heaven and earth is beginning to dissolve which is what occurs as Evil disappears. The church on earth and the church in heaven show signs of coming together. That the church–the united church–now sings “a new song” indicates that something is taking place that never has happened before.

By now it is becoming clear that John’s “interludes” are not interludes at all, in the sense of being a break in the action for the sake of a break; they are an integral part of his sequence. Think back: In the Seal Series, Part A of the “Interlude” was a picture of the church on earth, the sealing of the 144,000; Part B was a picture of the church in heaven, the numberless throng of those who had washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb. The two churches were presented in juxtaposition but as being quite distinct from each other. The “Interlude” of the Trumpet Series, then, gave us a picture of the church on earth being martyred and then resurrected and called up to heaven. The church in heaven was not mentioned, but certainly something was beginning to happen in their relationship.

The Freehand Sketch which we presently are treating, although it is not structured as a series of seven, follows the same sequence of action as the others. The dragon’s fall from heaven, his chasing of the woman, and the descriptions of the works of Antichrist and the Unholy Spirit, all correlate with the earlier accounts of the traumas of the end-time. Indeed, the sealing of the beast’s people and their domination of the world may be meant as corresponding to the final intensification normally presented as Item 6. The present scene of the church on earth “blending into” the church in heaven comes, then, at the proper spot for the “Interlude.” And notice that John’s interludes are making progress each time they are repeated; the two churches are moving into convergence–and we will have more to say on that point in a moment. From here, then, we move directly into the two events that consistently characterize the end (normally Item 7): the collapse of Evil’s kingdom, Babylon, and the parousia of Christ.

John has been moving the earthly church toward the heavenly church until now the 144,000 stand on Mount Zion. From heaven is heard a song; and behold, it is a new song, the song of the 144,000 alone.

The way John has led up to and now performs this dissolution of the line between earth and heaven tells us a great deal about his concept of the two. He has never understood the basic distinction between them as being a space gap, heaven being up there and earth down here. Rather, “earth” is the historical situation as it actually is; and given the presence of some of the characters we have just met, that means the situation inevitably has a considerable degree of “wrongness” about it. “Heaven,” on the other hand, represents the rightness that is coming to be. So, of course, any development toward the elimination of Evil can be portrayed as earth’s moving into heaven or a dissolving of the line between them. And this happens, John tells us, through the church.

Yet it is important to note–as we have done previously–that even heaven itself does not represent final perfection, the absolute end of God’s work. It represents that which is coming to be rather than the firm accomplishmentof that perfect state. Heaven is sufficiently with earth that, as long as earth is wrong, heaven cannot be entirely right (just as we observed earlier that, as long as any of my brothers are still lost, I cannot be saved to the uttermost; there is too much of me that is of a part with them).

And thus John’s heaven still has a temple, a symbol of mediation and thus distance between God and man (11:19); it still has saints crying, “How long, O Lord?” (6:10); it still has talk about what God must yet do for his people (7:15-17).

When, then, at the close of his book, John does present the final perfection that is the end of God’s work, it is not simply “heaven.” It is “the new Jerusalem,” the city come down from heaven. It cannot be identified directly with either heaven or earth, although it includes something of both. It is neither simply earth redeemed nor heaven completed. It is a new work of God which catches up both of these and yet is a new thing. The new Jerusalem is “rightness” in the situation of an “actually now is. ” Yet this new Jerusalem is also a “12”-numbered city and a “Jerusalem,” the home of the church. It is in and through the church that all this is to happen. Of course, we are not at that point in our story yet; but when the line between earth and heaven begins to go, things are moving in the right direction.

In verses 4-5, we are given a definition of the church of which we speak. What we are told fits completely with what we have been told of the church all along; but this is probably John’s most succinct and penetrating statement. At first blush it seems way off the mark–male chauvinism raised to the power of blasphemy. Not only is the Lamb’s church exclusively male, but these are men “who did not defile themselves with women”–both sexual intercourse and women themselves are directly equated with evil. But this reading cannot be allowed to stand; if it is, the whole book of Revelation is compromised, in that it would then contradict the gospel which clearly proclaims that “there is no longer male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28).

To this point we have seen nothing indicating that John shared the mentality seemingly betrayed here. Sex distinctions would seem to have been the farthest thing from his mind; he has presented people simply as people.

Almost certainly, then, John now is harking back to the very familiar Old Testament model in which idolatry and other forms of apostasy are portrayed as sexual promiscuity. But no, the church is the virgin bride of Christ, a bride who never has had and never wants any other Lover (except that in this passage–contrary to what we find elsewhere–the church is male; it just goes to show how oblivious John is to sex distinctions). Indeed, John may have it in mind, here, that the particular woman with which the church does not defile itself is the great world whore, to be introduced a few chapters on. In any case, John is speaking of “fidelity” rather than “sex.”

Such an interpretation is virtually assured by the next line, which specifies that the 144,000 “follow the Lamb wherever he goes”–which is what “fidelity” means. Also, it goes without saying that the “way” the Lamb goes is that of the self-giving martyr-witness which leads even to death and resurrection. This is the quality and content of the loyalty that typifies the church of the Lamb.

And then, in a new and mind-boggling note, we are told that this church is “the first-fruits of humanity for God and the Lamb.” We need to know, first, what a “first-fruit” is; it is a basic biblical concept. With apples or any other crop, it is not the case that one night every fruit is still green and the next morning every one is ripe. No, some naturally will ripen a little ahead of the rest. This first-ripe fruit is the “first-fruit”; and it is very precious in the eye of the farmer, because it is as much as a guarantee that he is going to get a crop. The first-fruit is considered as bringing the entire harvest in its train. Further, in Old Testament practice, this fruit-fruit was dedicated to the Lord as a “thank offering” and an expression that the harvest as a whole was his doing and belonged to him.

This little phrase, then, tells us that the church is not merely that community out of the world which is moving toward heaven–and, with heaven, toward the new Jerusalem. Not at all; the church also is the vehicle by which God means to move “humanity,” the world itself, along that course; the church’s experience is also the sign of what the experience of mankind is to be. Put these words into the collection of John’s universalistic references.

It later will become evident that the primary way in which the church acts as vehicle, the means by which the world is brought along, is by the church’s incorporating men into herself; the world is saved by becoming church. Nevertheless, the church dare never act as though she exists only for her own sake, as though her only goal were to get herself saved. Her need to be faithful is a double one, because humanity itself, and not simply her own salvation, is dependent upon it–the first-fruits determine the harvest.

In all this, of course, we are talking more precisely about what the Lamb is doing and will do through the church than about what the church can or will do on her own. Yet this in no way lessens the church’s responsibility to he his faithful instrument. And so, as Rev. 14:5 has it, she must be the church of truth; the gospel–and never any lie–must be found on her lips; the fate of humanity hangs on it.

F. Collapse of Evil’s Kingdom

14:6-13

6 Then I saw another angel flying in midheaven, with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth–to every nation and tribe and language and people. 7 He said in a loud voice, “Fear God and give him glory, for the hour of his judgment has come; and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water.”

8 Then another angel, a second, followed, saying, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.”

9 Then another angel, a third, followed them, crying with a loud voice, “Those who worship the beast and its image, and receive a mark on their foreheads or on their hands, 10 they will also drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured unmixed into the cup of his anger, and they will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. 11 And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and its image and for anyone who receives the mark of its name.”

12 Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and hold fast to the faith of Jesus.

13 And I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Write this: Blessed are the dead who from now on die in the Lord.” “Yes,” says the Spirit, “they will rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them.”

We come now to John’s first description of the events of the end itself; recall that, in both the Seal and the Trumpet Series, he backed off from or jumped over the spot without actually describing it. As the TimeLine indicates, the end is signaled by two different events:

1. the collapse of Evil’s kingdom, and
2. the parousia of Christ.

The present scene portrays the first of these. In the scene just previous, we saw at least the beginning of a movement of the church (the Lamb’s people) toward heaven. Now in what is probably a deliberate counter play, we see a movement of the beast’s crowd in a different direction.

It is highly significant that the scene opens as it does with “an eternal gospel (good news)” being proclaimed universally “to those on earth.” The good news, obviously, is the possibility of repentance: “Even if you have been part of this evil kingdom right up until now, to the very point of its collapse, you don’t have to go down with it. It is not too late; turn to God and be saved!” Yes, the proclamation does have an urgency about it and does itself call for action on the part of the hearer; but if it isn’t good news for those to whom it is addressed, I don’t know what would be. Ask yourself, also, whether it would be accurate for John to term this possibility of repentance an “eternal gospel” if he has in mind that the invitation will terminate the next moment in the fall of Babylon. The eternal gospel proclaimed to the whole earth belongs in our collection of universalistic texts.

A second angel follows the first, proclaiming that Babylon, the great whore who symbolizes promiscuity (as opposed to fidelity), has fallen. As a much more detailed scene will establish later, Babylon is the city of this world, of “worldliness,” and thus the very capital of therion’s realm. Babylon falls–but notice carefully that neither here nor anywhere else is there a hint that she was attacked by outsiders. There are no armies from heaven, not even a thunderbolt. More significant, there is no suggestion that the Christians had been working to subvert her, that they had plotted a revolution designed to overthrow the regime of Evil, not even that they had huffed and puffed in an effort to blow the house down with their railing.

John’s book customarily is classified as apocalyptic.Likewise, the mood of the revolutionist, liberationist movements that have swept both society and the church in our own day customarily has been identified as apocalyptic. Yet if that connection has any validity at all, it obviously does not hold on this most central point: our modern movements organize to overthrow wicked regimes; John stands by to watch them collapse.

John’s picture here fits in beautifully with his earlier scene of the dragon’s fall from heaven. A headless chicken can’t sustain its frenzy for very long–and inevitably that whirl is going to end in total collapse. Just so, structures built upon evil cannot stand for very long; they have no foundations. In our own history, we have seen the relatively weak and insignificant communities of God’s people–both Jewish and Christian–outlast the imposing edifices and impressive power alignments of regime after regime, civilization (so-called) after civilization. Yes, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great!” And we do not simply have to take John’s word for it that this will happen in a grand smash at the end of history; we have seen Babylon fall time and again. And that being the case, John makes it plain that the Christian’s call is to be doing the self-giving service and making the self-giving witness that moves the church toward heaven and makes it the firstfruits of humanity–this, rather than being out trying to engineer things in Babylon itself.

The third angel comes with a message which, both in its placement and basic content, clearly is appropriate and as much as inevitable. The word of warning must be heard: “You people who have chosen to build your pleasant homes in Babylon, who have found the life of the world so attractive and convenient, who either through deliberate choice or carelessness have let yourselves be marked for the beast–you must know that, when Babylon goes, you go. The situation is of utmost seriousness; please, please give some thought to it!”

That much certainly is in place-and even part of the good news. It is a favor to a person to warn him of a danger he has not seen. But even so, most of us will feel that John has overdone it when he talks about “the wine of God’s wrath,” “the cup of his anger,” “tormented in fire and sulfur before the Lamb,” “the smoke of their torment goes up for ever and ever.” The issue no longer has to do simply with whether punishment is a proper and necessary part of justice and how much and what kind of punishment is enough. Now it becomes a question of the basic character of God and the Lamb; the language is the sort that has been associated with the dragon and beast up to this point.

I do not at all claim to have a neat solution for this problem; I will try to offer what help I can.

1. The easy move–and one a number of scholars are inclined to take–is to suggest that John did not write this passage; someone else stuck it in. I do not feel it justified to go such a route in this case. In the first place, regarding the overall structure of John’s thought, this entire scene of the fall of Babylon is just too “right” to suggest that he did not have it here. In the second place, the three angelic messages together–and even the basic idea behind the third message–are so much a part of one another and so typically “John” that it is hard to believe they are not all original.
2. Whoever wrote these words, we must not let them determine our own understanding of God and Christ; the whole thrust of the Bible is too much the other way.
3. We dare not even allow these verses (and a few others yet to come) determine what we will accept as being John’s understanding of God and Christ. The book of Revelation, in and of itself, has too much evidence pointing another direction–evidence that includes our entire collection of “universalistic” texts, plus much other material. Both in amount and emphasis, that material far outweighs anything of the tenor of what we find here.
4. Although we must take care to be honest about the actual wording that appears, it also is incumbent upon us to do everything we can to interpret the words so as to make them as consistent with the rest of John’s thought as is possible. In relation to any speaker, it is we who have the control of our own bias as to what construction we will put upon his words; try your best, now, to hear John as a teacher of the Christian gospel–which we have abundant proof he is.
5. In this regard, even if the passage carries implications we cannot accept, we dare not allow them to turn us off to the truth that is present.
6. At any number of places, the Bible speaks about “the wrath of God.” Scholars have given a great deal of attention to the phrase and come to the conclusion that it should not be read as carrying the implications we normally give to the word “wrath.” When applied to God, “wrath” does not describe an emotional state with overtones of rage, irrationality, self-assertion, and destructiveness. God’s “wrath” is rather an aspect of his deep sense of justice. His concern is wholly that things be made right; but he also knows that the only way this can happen is to let evildoers feel the “wrath” they have created for themselves. If God did not let men know that he has this concern and feels this way about evil, they could never know what love is represented in his efforts at saving them from that evil. Even a very small child, found playing in the street, catches on that the consequent parental “wrath”–including even a swat or two–is the expression of a love that cannot stand to see the child destroyed. This consideration is not adequate entirely to resolve the difficulty of this passage; but use it as far as it will go.
7. In Rev. 14:11, the phrase “for ever and ever” should be translated “for the aeons of the aeons”; it does not necessarily denote endlessness. If the torment has the possibility of an end, it can be understood as redemptive in character. If it has no possibility of an end, then, of course, there is no way it can be understood as redemptive.
8. This passage will need to be put alongside some others yet to come suggesting that even punishment after death has a redemptive purpose behind it.
9. Rev. 14:12 shows us where John wants the main thrust of this passage to come. His primary purpose is not in giving us the satisfaction of seeing bad people fry (and we ought not try to deny that there is in us that which does take satisfaction in such a scene). Many of the people who would be most upset over this passage from Revelation are quite willing to use a rather similar sort of language in regard to this or that public official or some other favorite target of their own “righteous indignation.” But John is not indulging such feelings; he is warning God’s people of what can happen if they relax in their endurance and lose their loyalty to Jesus.
10. It may be that John’s language has distorted his thought–and to whom has this not occurred? In such case, let’s go with his thought!

The third angel spoke of what is in store for those who bear the beast’s mark. In Rev. 14:13, a voice from heaven appropriately winds up the scene with a beatitude regarding those who belong to Christ: “Blessed are the dead who from now on die in the Lord” [i.e., since faith in Christ was made possible through his death and resurrection]. “Yes,” says the Spirit, “They may rest….” They have nothing to fear from all the punishment now taking place; their forehead-seals attest that they have accepted the lordship of Christ and lived in loyalty to him.

G. The Parousia as Harvest

14:14-20

14 Then I looked, and there was a white cloud, and seated on the cloud was one like the Son of Man, with a golden crown on his head, and a sharp sickle in his hand! 15 Another angel came out of the temple, calling with a loud voice to the one who sat on the cloud, “Use your sickle and reap, for the hour to reap has come, because the harvest of the earth is fully ripe.” 16 So the one who sat on the cloud swung his sickle over the earth, and the earth was reaped.

17 Then another angel came out of the temple in heaven, and he too had a sharp sickle. 18 Then another angel came out from the altar, the angel who has authority over fire, and he called with a loud voice to him who had the sharp sickle, “Use your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth, for its grapes are ripe.” 19 So the angel swung his sickle over the earth and gathered the vintage of the earth, and he threw it into the great wine press of the wrath of God. 20 And the wine press was trodden outside the city, and blood flowed from the wine press, as high as a horse’s bridle, for a distance of about two hundred miles.

The fall of Babylon is the first event of the end; the parousia of Christ is the second; we are now at the second. It is presented here as a harvest (a most appropriate figure), based upon a suggestion from Joel 3:13 and with much of the imagery taken from Isa. 63. It is a double harvest: a positive grain harvest of blessing and a negative grape (wine) harvest of “wrath.”

In the first instance, the harvester is “one like the son of man” (the phrase from Daniel which John already has used as identifying Christ); he wears “a golden crown on his head”; and it is, by the way, appropriate that he uses a “sickle” rather than his two-edged sword (this is a harvest and not a battle scene; judgment is not involved). There would seem to be no doubt at all that John intends this as an account of the parousia. That an angel must come from the heavenly temple to give the signal may be John’s way of affirming what Jesus himself had said, that not even the Son knows the day and hour but only the Father.

Particularly in light of the previous scene, it is important to note that John very explicitly dissociates Christ from the grape harvest of wrath; a mere angel is the harvester there. Yes, the wrath is a proper and necessary aspect of God’s plan; but it is not the proper work of Jesus Christ; he is to be preserved as the symbol of forgiveness and redemption. This is somewhat different than people being tortured by fire before the Lamb.

The wine that flows from this winepress is, of course, human blood; people are being killed. Yet we need to realize that “getting killed” does not have quite the same significance for John as it does for us. We tend to see death as signifying finality. But “dead and gone” was never John’s phrase; he paints on a canvas large enough that he can include characters who would be off the edge for other artists.

With John, the dead go on playing their roles almost as though nothing had happened. We already have seen this regarding the saints of the earth-and-heaven church; but we will see it regarding bad people as well. For John, death (first-order death) is a transition of comparatively minor theological significance. Certainly John intends the bloody winepress as a symbol of punishment; but just as certainly, it is not for him a symbol of annihilation.

For calendarizers who might be interested, I can report that some clever head has figured out the amount of blood that could be squeezed from an average human being and divided that into the volume of a puddle two hundred miles in radius and as deep as a horse’s bridle. His conclusion is that, even if everyone went through the press of wrath, the cumulative population of the world still has not been nearly enough to provide the juice. It’s a bloody shame!

VII. The End-Time Intensification as Seven Bowls

15:1-16:21

Having completed the freehand sketch that ran from the child’s being born of the woman to his return as harvester, John now is ready to give the end-time as a final go. Indeed, with this series, he does not even propose to describe the end-time as a whole. Although he will again make use of the familiar rhythm of a seven-series, he makes it clear that he is treating only that interval running from item 6 on through the end, namely the final intensification of trauma, the rescue of the church, and the end itself. This compression means also that he will noticeably quicken the pace of the series as a whole; he deliberately is building to a climax.

Rev. 15:1-16:1, A. Introduction to the Bowls

15:1-16:1

1 Then I saw another portent in heaven, great and amazing: seven angels with seven plagues, which are the last, for with them the wrath of God is ended.

2 And I saw what appeared to be a sea of glass mixed with fire, and those who had conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name, standing beside the sea of glass with harps of God in their hands. 3 And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb:

“Great and amazing are your deeds,
4 Lord God the Almighty!
Just and true are your ways,
    King of the nations!
Lord, who will not fear
    and glorify your name?
For you alone are holy.
    All nations will come
    and worship before you,
for your judgments have been revealed.”

5 After this I looked, and the temple of the tent of witness in heaven was opened, 6 and out of the temple came the seven angels with the seven plagues, robed in pure bright linen, with golden sashes across their chests. 7 Then one of the four living creatures gave the seven angels seven golden bowls full of the wrath of God, who lives forever and ever; and the temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power, and no one could enter the temple until the seven plagues of the seven angels were ended.

1 I heard a loud voice from the temple telling the seven angels, “Go and pour out on the earth the seven bowls of the wrath of God.”

Unlike the earlier series, John gives this one a comparatively lengthy introduction and a very positive one. The bowls will be full of terrible things, and perhaps John wants to make us aware of the positive side of things in order to help carry us through the negative.

Within this scene are enough reminiscences of the Old Testament account of the exodus from Egypt to indicate that John most likely intends it as a conscious model. The exodus was a journey through trauma to liberation; and just so is the church’s experience of the end-time. The important thing is not to become so overwhelmed by the trauma as to forget that it is liberation that is taking place.

Rev. 15:1 tells us that the bowls represent the final intensification, “which are the last.” That the scene opens beside “the sea of glass” recalls the exodus scene of victory that took place on the far side of the Sea of Reeds (the Red Sea). The singers are “those who had won the victory over the beast”; the account in 12:11 already has told us how this was accomplished–by the sacrifice of the Lamb, by their testimony to that act, and by their willingness to put their lives where he had put his.

The song they sing is that “of Moses” and “of the Lamb” and it is but one song. As Moses led that people of God out of the bondage of slavery in Egypt, so the Lamb leads the new people of God out of their slavery to Evil and this world; the Lamb is a new and greater Moses. The song is a hymn of praise to God for the wonder of his deeds, the justice, truth, and holiness of his ways. The note of universalism in Rev. 15:4 belongs in our growing collection of such passages.

Because this scene is built on exodus motifs, the old Tent of Testimony, the tabernacle, makes a more appropriate setting than the temple used heretofore. That no one can enter the sanctuary until the plagues are over may be recognition that, although necessary, the “wrath” of God is not his true work of holiness; as long as the bowl plagues are in progress, the “sanctuary” is not a completely appropriate location.

B. Bowls 1-5: The Worst Plagues of All

6:2-11

2 So the first angel went and poured his bowl on the earth, and a foul and painful sore came on those who had the mark of the beast and who worshiped its image.

3 The second angel poured his bowl into the sea, and it became like the blood of a corpse, and every living thing in the sea died.

4 The third angel poured his bowl into the rivers and the springs of water, and they became blood. 5 And I heard the angel of the waters say, “You are just, 0 Holy One, who are and were,
6 for you have judged these things;
because they shed the blood of saints and prophets,
    you have given them blood to drink.
It is what they deserve!”
7 And I heard the altar respond,
“Yes, 0 Lord God, the Almighty,
    your judgments are true and just!”

8 The fourth angel poured his bowl on the sun, and it was allowed to scorch them with fire; 9 they were scorched by the fierce heat, but they cursed the name of God, who had authority over these plagues, and they did not repent and give him glory. 10 The fifth angel poured his bowl on the throne of the beast, and its kingdom was plunged into darkness; people gnawed their tongues in agony, 11 and cursed the God of heaven because of their pains and sores, and they did not repent of their deeds.

Following up the exodus theme, these bowl plagues show perhaps even more dependence upon the Old Testament account of the Egyptian plagues than those of the Trumpet Series did. Note that here the elements of restraint and limitation which marked the earlier end-time descriptions have all disappeared; Rev. 16:3 even specifies that “every living thing in the sea died.” We are right at the end now; and John is intensifying the trauma with all stops out.

The break that normally comes after the fourth item, in this instance follows the third, for no clear reason. The content of that break (verses 5-7) includes important insights. The threefold ascription to God again has lost its final “who cometh,” future term–we are close enough to the end that John considers that God has arrived. The thrust of the words from heaven is the assurance that, no matter how severe these punishments appear, they are just–in true proportion to the evil that infests the earth and the crime committed. The measure of that crime is specified as being the world’s treatment of the church. The world crucified Jesus in the first place and has continued that enormity by slaughtering his saints, the very people who have most lovingly given themselves in service and witness for the world. The “altar” that cries in verse 7 may intend the saints underneath the altar who, in Rev. 6:9-10, cried, “How long, O Lord?”; the cry does celebrate the answering of that prayer.

In both Rev. 15:9 and 11–Bowls 4 and 5–there are references to the possibility of repentance. Even at this late point, no man’s fate is finally fixed; the purpose behind even these terrible bowls is to move men to change their ways so that they can be saved; no one has to suffer these bowls if he chooses not to.

C. Bowls 6 (Interlude) and 7: Collapse at Armageddon

16:12-21

12 The sixth angel poured his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up in order to prepare the way for the kings from the east. 13 And I saw three foul spirits like frogs coming from the mouth of the dragon, from the mouth of the beast, and from the mouth of the false prophet. 14 These are demonic spirits, performing signs, who go abroad to the kings of the whole world, to assemble them for battle on the great day of God the Almighty. 15(“See, I am coming like a thief! Blessed is the one who stays awake and is clothed, not going about naked and exposed to shame.”) 16 And they assembled them at the place that in Hebrew is called Harmagedon.

17 The seventh angel poured his bowl into the air, and a loud voice came out of the temple, from the throne, saying, “It is done!” 18 And there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, and a violent earthquake, such as had not occurred since people were upon the earth, so violent was that earthquake. 19 The great city was split into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. God remembered great Babylon and gave her the wine-cup of the fury of his wrath. 20 And every island fled away, and no mountains were to be found; 21 and huge hailstones, each weighing about a hundred pounds, dropped from heaven on people, until they cursed God for the plague of the hail, so fearful was that plague.

Evidently Rev. 15:12-14 and 16 constitute Bowl 6, and the parenthesis of Rev 15:15 is the A-B Interlude. That the interlude is just a little out of place in this instance may be deliberate; it is important that Bowls 6 and 7 be read in continuity rather than as independent scenes.

Let us review how John handled this sequence in his freehand sketch and see its relationship to what he does here. There the Evil Trinity were introduced to seal their people with the beast’s mark and give them domination over the commerce of the world; here, in Bowl 6, the Evil Trinity musters a great army from all over the world–at least something of a parallel. There, then, the Lamb and his people appeared on Mount Zion and sang a duet with heaven; here, in the interlude, the Lamb calls upon his people to be ready for his imminent coming to them–at least something of a parallel. There, finally, an angel proclaimed that Babylon had fallen; here, in Bowl 7, there is a fall of cities of somewhat wider scope than before, although Babylon is mentioned specifically and in language almost identical with that used in the previous scene–a very definite parallel.

The important thing to notice is that there is here no more of a war or an attack upon Babylon than there was previously. Granted, it looks for a while as though there will be, what with Evil’s gathering its great army for battle; but the battle does not come off. John’s picture still supports the view that Jesus’ death-and-resurrection, the battle that got the dragon kicked out of the control room, was sufficient to do the job.

Let’s look first at verse 15, the Interlude, so that we then can be free to treat Bowls 6 and 7 as a unit. The two sentences can be understood as the customary Parts A and B. John will not describe the parousia in connection with the Bowl Series; but here it is specified that that parousia is coordinate with the fall of Babylon, which is being described. Jesus’ statement implies most strongly that Christians do not know and are not supposed to know ahead of time about the “when” of the end; the plea is rather for what we have been calling “perpetual expectancy.”

Now to Bowl 6. Verse 12 indicates that Evil’s big, last try is to be launched from beyond the Euphrates–where Babylon also is located, by the way–the traditional source for depredations against God’s people. In verse 13, for the first time, John lists the three bosses of Evil as a definite trio–as much as positive proof that he intends them as a conscious counterpart of the Trinity. Their appearing together at this time indicates something of the importance of this scene.

Look who form the first rank of Evil’s armies! The kings of the earth–wouldn]t you know?–very much in character! We haven’t seen this crew for a while; but they will be very much with us from here on out.

The name of the place where the muster takes place is “Armageddon.” (NRSV, “Harmagedon,” which is closer to the Greek original). When John makes a deliberate effort to tell us that the word is Hebrew, he is as much as pointing us to an Old Testament source; but the reference is a real puzzle. The name combines two Hebrew terms–the first meaning “Mount” and the other being the place name “Megiddo” or “Megiddon.” In the Old Testament, “Megiddo” is the name both of a plain and a city located on it. Two important battles did take place on this plain (one of which Israel won and one she lost), so the assumption is made that the spot was seen as a traditional site for battles fought in defense of Israel. But the biblical support for this view is very slight indeed. The term “Megiddo/Megiddon” occurs in the Old Testament a total of eight times. None of these has the remotest connection with a mountain; indeed, two of them refer to Megiddo as a “vale” or “valley.” Only three of the eight references have to do with battle or war.

Mathias Rissi has proposed an entirely different interpretation of “Armageddon.” He sees it as a reference to Isa. 14:12-15. The passage is speaking about “the king of Babylon” (Isa. 14:4) which, in John’s terminology, would be an apt title for Antichrist. It reads:

How you are fallen from heaven,
    O Day Star, son of Dawn!
How you are cut down to the ground,
    you who laid the nations low!
You said in your heart, “I will ascend to heaven;
    I will raise my throne above the stars of God;
I will sit on the mount of assembly on the heights of Zaphon;
I will ascend to the tops of the clouds,
    I will make myself like the Most High.”
But you are brought down to Sheol,
    to the depths of the Pit.

Elsewhere (Rev. 22:16) John has Jesus refer to himself as “the bright day star”; and according to his principle of symmetry, he easily could take Isaiah’s as being a reference to the fake day star, Antichrist. Isaiah’s scene itself fits perfectly into what John is doing here; it is a picture of Evil strutting and vaunting itself against God, attempting even to set itself up over him. Yet the effort has no chance of success; it will eventuate (or has eventuated) only in grand and total collapse. “How you have fallen!”

In the sixth line of the Isaiah quotation we find the words “on the mount of assembly.” And if just one letter of that Hebrew phrase is changed, it will read “Armageddon.” Rissi’s theory is that John wrote “mount of assembly” but that an early copyist misunderstood the reference and so put it down to make the best sense he could understand, namely, “Armageddon.”

Realize, first of all, that the matter is not a crucial one–except for calendarizers who may want to sell seats and thus need to know just where the scene is to transpire. Otherwise, John’s basic picture is not affected by one’s interpretation of “Armageddon.” But we have the choice of sticking with the text as it has come to us, even though it results in a rather meaningless puzzle–or of being forced to change one letter, but getting a reading filled with the kind of symbolic significance for which John is noted. Personally, I am not inclined to push the matter; but I do find Rissi’s argument quite convincing.

But here they are. The forces of Evil, like a bunch of street brawlers, have gathered under the drunken notion that they can “call out” God himself and take him on his own ground (I will sit on the mount of assembly [i.e., Armageddon] I will ascend to the tops of the clouds, I will make myself like the Most High”). Evil has been getting along so well on earth that the dragon has forgotten he can’t even get to God any longer (“and there was no longer any place for them in heaven”). But then, I suppose it must be difficult to remember anything after your head has been cut off!

With Bowl 7, then–since frequently it is the only action required to break up so ill-conceived a venture–there comes an authoritative voice from the speaker on the squad car, “All right, boys, the party’s over!” And it is! There isn’t any fight; there doesn’t have to be. The whole challenge simply collapses. As verse 20 has it, “and no mountains were to be found”–the mount of assembly has become a hole in the ground. “How you are fallen from heaven, O [fake] Day Star, son of Dawn!”

Rev. 16:29 says that “The great city was split into three parts.” Earlier, in Rev. 11:8, John had used that phrase to designate “Jerusalem”; later in Rev. 17:18, he will use it in reference to Babylon.” However, because Babylon is here named in series with “the great city,” it makes sense to take it as intending Jerusalem. In that earlier scene where Jerusalem was called “the great city,” after the two witnesses had been resurrected and called up to God, Jerusalem did take a terrific blow–which resulted in some repentance, you will recall. Although “Jerusalem” is the home of the church, she also has been sufficiently invaded by the world and involved with the world that she cannot escape its holocaust unscathed. Yet she is only split in three and will survive to become the new Jerusalem; it later will become clear that Babylon’s destruction is total and final.

VIII. The Events of the End

17:1-20:3

With the completion of the Bowl Series, John now is finally ready to leave the end-time period. As was suggested earlier, it likely is because he knows that this is the time in which his readers actually must make their decisions and live out their Christian lives that he has given it so much space and attention. Certainly his treatment has been relevant to our problems regarding the relationship of Good and Evil, the nature of the church and the Christian life, the meaning of the time in which we live.

Recall how that Bowl Series concluded–with a picture of the collapse of Evil’s kingdom and a note that this also is the time of Christ’s parousia (“See, I am coming like a thief!”). The parousia itself, however, was not described. Now John will back up once more–although not very far. He will describe the collapse in greater detail than before, proceed into an account of the parousia, and then keep on going. The book is a straight shot, a direct sequence, from here on out (or almost so).

A. The Great Whore: Babylon

17:1-6

1 Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the judgment of the great whore who is seated on many waters, 2 with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and with the wine of whose fornication the inhabitants of the earth have become drunk.” 3 So he carried me away in the spirit into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns. 4 The woman was clothed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her fornication; 5 and on her forehead was written a name, a mystery: “Babylon the great, mother of whores and of earth’s abominations.” 6 And I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of the witnesses to Jesus.

That it is one of the bowl-angels that introduces this scene is a way of tying it to the one that just concluded. That scene closed with a reference to Babylon and her fall; now we are to get a closer look at the event.

The phrase in verse 1 reads “seated on many waters” and seems to be a direct reference to Jer. 51:13, “You who live by mighty waters.” In Jeremiah, the city being characterized is Babylon and the “great waters” are those of the Euphrates River upon which the city was located. But when the older translations are made to read “ocean,” the interpreters have tended to land on Rome. And this is a crucial point. Almost all commentators on Revelation assume that when John talks about “Babylon” he means “Rome.” In other words, they take for granted that John intended a calendarizing of this symbol: “Babylon” is a symbolic name that is to be understood as a reference to the actual city of Rome. We are going to challenge this customary interpretation and not allow a “Rome” reading until there is compelling evidence for doing so. And this present phrase is not to be allowed among that evidence; it is all “Babylon.”

The explanation usually given as to why John says “Babylon” when he means “Rome” is that he wants to hide his true meaning from the eyes of Roman police so that he will not be accused of subversion. But if every would-be scholar who has read the book can decide in an instant that “Babylon” means “Rome “even when he is as far as we are from the first-century situation–then surely the Roman police would have been able to see the truth as well.

We already have more than enough evidence to indicate that John uses symbols as a means of communicating his message, not obfuscating it. Now if someone were to have asked John which city of his day was most Babylon-like, the chances are that he would have answered, “Rome!” But this is not at all the same thing as suggesting that he wrote his book as a prediction that, at the end of history, the fate of the world would be determined there. Rather, as a de-calendarized (de-mapped) symbol, “Babylon” is the perfect choice. Historically, in John’s own Old Testament tradition, Babylon did represent everything he attributes to her. But at the time John wrote (and ever since) there was no Babylon; that city was long gone. And thus was the symbol freed from calendarizing implications.

So make “Babylon” Babylon; John’s picture is accurate–it fell! Make “Babylon” Rome; right again–it fell! Make “Babylon” New York or Washington or Las Vegas or Hollywood (or a combination of all of them); still right–they will fall, you can depend upon it! And in the end, worldliness will fall finally and completely. Where? In “Babylon,” of course; but how and when and where John doesn’t presume to tell us–that is in God’s hands, where it belongs!

But this Babylon is a great whore–and with that, John intends to say a great deal. (And recall that she is to be seen in contrast to the woman clothed with the sun.) She seduces people into promiscuity, into giving their love and attention to things other than Jesus Christ. And who is first in line among her customers? The kings of the earth, again. Undoubtedly what they love in her is power, authority, and glory; they are continually drunk on the stuff.

(In Rev. 17:3, John tells us that he was taken “into a wilderness” to see this woman–a reference that is entirely appropriate for Babylon but not at all for Rome. The beast she rides, it later will be made plain, is therion, the Antichrist.)

Her garb speaks of wealth, luxury, glamour, sophistication, and culture. She also seduces men with and to these values. She is a sex-hungry drunkard; pleasure, sensuality, and wantonness are other of her attractions.

Finally, the wine she drinks is made from the blood of God’s people. The whore is an opponent, subverter, and persecutor of the church, hating what the church stands for.

An important implication follows from what we have found here. Certainly, in her dalliance with the kings, it is suggested that the symbol of the whore includes something of that which we commonly associate with government, or the state. But just as certainly, it would be much too narrow to take the whore as signifying merely the state-and least of all, merely the state of first-century Rome. If the whore is given the full significance John implies, it is not nearly as easy to dissociate oneself from her and stand over against her, as some contemporary leftist movements would propose. Those groups frequently have latched onto these passages of Revelation as their rationale. However, although their exegesis obviously has considerable truth in it, it is too narrow and oversimplified to do justice to John’s concept. John’s is a more complex picture and thus calls for a much more radical response–not merely mounting worldly opposition to the state and forming a counterculture but building the only truly counter-whore community, which is the church of Jesus Christ.

B. The Whore and Beast Explained

17:7-8 and 18

When I saw her, I was greatly amazed. 7 But the angel said to me, “Why are you so amazed? I will tell you the mystery of the woman, and of the beast with seven heads and ten horns that carries her. 8 The beast that you saw was, and is not, and is about to ascend from the bottomless pit and go to destruction. And the inhabitants of the earth, whose names have not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, will be amazed when they see the beast, because it was and is not and is to come.

18 The woman you saw is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth.”

We are going to suggest that the intervening material was not part of the original version of Revelation. Please try not to make any evaluation of that proposition until we have had opportunity to examine it in detail. The only thing to note now is how logical and well constructed the passage is without Rev. 17:9-17. In Rev. 17:7, the angel indicates that he will explain the secret “the beast … that carries her.” In verse 8, he gives a brief explanation of “the beast you saw.” In verse 18, he gives a brief explanation of “the woman you saw.” As easy as that!

In verse 8, the occurrences of the word “alive” that appear at the beginning of the verse and at the end in some translations should not be there; there is nothing in the Greek to correspond to them. The more accurate reading in the early instance is “he who once was, and is no longer, but has yet to ascend out of the abyss” and in the later, “he once was, and is not, and will be present.” John may have “death” in mind; but we need to be careful not to read in more than he actually says.

The issue involved is that this wording can be read as a reference to the Nero Myth (which we will discuss presently). Our concern is to show that it does not necessarily betray any knowledge of that myth and probably does not refer to it; it makes perfectly good sense on its own.

Recall John’s penchant for symmetric counterpart and that it is Antichrist who is here being portrayed. Christ, of course, has a death-and-resurrection as a prominent aspect of his being. The Antichrist already has been noted as bearing the mark of having had a head cut off, a parallel to the Lamb’s mark of slaughter. Now John apparently wants to comment upon the beast’s equivalent of death-and-resurrection. It cannot be precisely equivalent, of course, for “resurrection” (graduation into second-order LIFE) is one of John’s most precious terms and one he could in no way grant to the beast. (As we noted, John does not use the word “life” or “alive” in this passage.) The beast’s, then, is fake resurrection that takes the form of disappearance and reappearance. But note carefully that it is the men of the world who are “astonished” at the beast’s reappearance and explicitly not the Christians, who are ready for it. This is the opposite of what we would expect, seeing that the men of the world are the beast’s own people. Also, as we will learn, the Nero Myth was a product of the world rather than the church. If this myth, then, was what John had in mind, it should not be the world that is surprised at the beast’s reappearance.

I take John to be saying that there have been and will be times when things seem to be running quite smoothly and men of the world are able to convince themselves that they have engineered the “beastliness” out of history. “Yes, there were a lot of bad things in the past; but we have outgrown all that; this is a new generation, a new and much more humane and civilized breed!” Christians, however, from the many warnings in their New Testament, know that the world does not change its fundamental character. Any disappearance of the beast is only an illusion; he can be back in full fury in no time at all. And how often has it happened that–with the beginning of a war, an economic recession, a drought or plague, the disclosure of scandal, or whatever–a society’s veneer of civilization suddenly has dropped away. The world always is surprised to discover such beastliness in itself; the Christian has known that it was lurking there beneath the surface all along. It does not require recourse to a Nero Myth to explain John’s “explanation of the beast.”

The woman, on the other hand, we are told in Rev. 17:18, is not a symbol for the city of worldliness. The passage, Rev. 17:9-17, is not essential to the structure of the scene as a whole.

This seems the place to comment on the relationship between the whore and the beast. John, obviously, sees them as very closely related; the whore rides the beast. But does he see any distinction between them? Perhaps they are two symbols for the same thing. Not precisely, I would suggest. I see the Babylon-whore as representing more the outward, empirical manifestations of worldliness. She actually is visible; one can see her (or at least her footprints) in our cities, our activities, our newspapers, our movies, anywhere. The beast, on the other hand, I see as representing more the spiritual power that lies behind worldliness. Our analysis is too shallow if we think of worldliness consisting only in the sum total of all the worldly things people do. No, “the world” also denotes a particular philosophy or faith, a demonic spirit. Worldliness has the function of a religion and is indwelt by a power, a motive, a tendency, and a directive of its own. Men not only do worldly things; their loyalty is captured by “the prince of this world.” This, I think, is whom John is calling “Antichrist.” And we, for our part, are headed for trouble if we try to deal with the world simply as “whore” and fail to recognize the reality of the “beast” she rides.

C. The Nero Ciphers

13:18 and 17:9-17

13:18 This calls for wisdom: let anyone with understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a person. Its number is six hundred sixty-six.

17:9 “This calls for a mind that has wisdom: the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman is seated; also, they are seven kings, 10 of whom five have fallen, one is living, and the other has not yet come; and when he comes, he must remain only a little while. 11 As for the beast that was and is not, it is an eighth but it belongs to the seven, and it goes to destruction. 12 And the ten horns that you saw are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom, but they are to receive authority as kings for one hour, together with the beast. 13 These are united in yielding their power and authority to the beast; 14 they will make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them, for he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those with him are called and chosen and faithful.”

15 And he said to me, “The waters that you saw, where the whore is seated, are peoples and multitudes and nations and languages. 16 And the ten horns that you saw, they and the beast will hate the whore; they will make her desolate and naked; they will devour her flesh and burn her up with fire. 17 For God has put it into their hearts to carry out his purpose by agreeing to give their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God will be fulfilled.

We have come to a most crucial point in our treatment; I invite you to give me a very open mind and very close attention. Two different passages are quoted above. The one, which we skipped over at the time, is from the scene of the beast’s people being sealed and given control of the commerce of the world. The second comes from within the explanation of the beast and the whore just examined. The two passages belong with each other and together represent a sort of material much different from anything else in Revelation. They are riddles, ciphers, code puzzles, whatever they might be called, which the reader is challenged to unravel and solve. They can represent nothing other than sheer calendarizing–an effort to hook the Revelation account to localized events involving historically known personages at a predictable time.

The greater number of scholars decipher the passages as referring to the Roman Emperor Nero, even though getting to that solution by somewhat different routes. The interpretation here owes most to Mathias Rissi, although Rissi himself also makes use of earlier scholarship. Our final conclusion will be that these passages are not by John and were not part of the original edition of Revelation. Rather, they were inserted some years later by an unknown person whom we will call “the Interpolator.” He, clearly, was a person of calendarizing mentality who read Revelation as being crystal-ball type prediction and sincerely felt he could improve the book by making it point specifically to the date he was confident would bring the end of the age. However, before examining the evidence regarding this interpolator, we need to work on the ciphers themselves.

In the first cipher we are told that the number 666 can be made to produce a man’s name. The most obvious way to go at this is by a mode of calculation that was very familiar to the ancient world. The letters of the alphabet are given numerical values–the first letter being a 1, the second letter a 2, and so on through 10; the eleventh letter is then a 20, and so on through 100; the twentieth letter is then 200, etc. By this method, the name “Nero Caesar,” if written in Hebrew (not Greek or Latin), will add up to 666. Of course, Revelation itself is in Greek and the cipher has absolutely no Old Testament connections that would point the decipherer to Hebrew; so the solution seems somewhat fantastic. And of course, many other names–including Hitler’s–can be made to produce 666; the trick must lie in making the solution to this cipher fit the second cipher as well.

However, there is a totally different approach to the problem that produces what strikes me as a much more likely solution. It uses another mathematical game familiar to the ancients, that of triangular numbers. The diagram shows how it works.

Triangular Numbers

Rank		Total number of Dots
1		1
2		3
3		6
4		10
5		15

According to this method of calculation, any number of dots that forms a perfect triangle is a triangular number; and in a triangular number, the total number of dots and the number of the rank are taken as equivalents. Now if the diagram were extended until it comprised a total of 666 dots, this would be discovered to be a triangular number of the rank 36; so 666 => 36. However, 36 dots also form a triangle–this to the rank 8; so 36 => 8. And things that correspond to the same thing correspond to each other; so 666 => 8. And the second cipher makes it entirely clear that Antichrist is an eighth; 8 is the secret number that identifies him. The first cipher is meant to point us directly to the second.

Thus far the scholars have taken us; but I now intend to show you that I can do a thing or two on my own, too. What follows is “scholarship”–and I did it by my very own self. If you make a triangle to the total of 8 dots, it comes out at the rank 3–how about that? Seriously, I don’t think partial triangles are allowed by the rules; and it probably is just an accident that things work out that way; but I couldn’t let the opportunity pass.

The second cipher is more complicated than the first but produces a much more assured solution; it will confirm the first, rather than the other way around. But before we even look at it, we need to be aware of what we have been calling “the Nero Myth,” the Roman tradition regarding Nero redivivus (come back to life). Be clear that this is a story of Roman, not Christian, origin; first-century Christians would have become aware of it, of course, but it did not start with them.

All our historical information indicates that the Emperor Nero–whom the chart below shows as having reigned AD 54-68–was decidedly out of the ordinary. A real maniac, who murdered both his mother and his wife, he was deeply feared and hated by his own people, let alone the Christians on whom he loosed persecution. So despicable was he that the memory lived on after him. Following his death, the folk myth arose that, in time to come, he would come back from the underworld, raise an army among the hated Parthian kingdoms of the east, and move to sack and destroy Rome. It seems clear that our cipher is built over this myth.

Verse 9, in mentioning that the whore sits on “seven hills,” immediately tells us that the cipher has to do with Rome; for centuries already before this time, Rome was known as “the City of Seven Hills.” Yet note that it is only here in the cipher that “Babylon” is tied specifically to Rome. In the lament over Babylon in the next chapter, John will have sea-captains and sailors watching the fall of the city and bemoaning it–a detail that does not accord very well with historical Babylon. However, in the passage it is evident that John is depending very heavily upon Ezekiel 27, which is a description of the fall of Tyre. Only in the cipher is “Babylon” calendarized directly and inevitably as Rome.

When the very same symbol that signifies the seven hills of Rome also is specified as representing “seven kings,” there is little place else to look but to the sequence of Roman emperors. And when contemporary calendarizers start with these “kings” and stretch the reading to mean “kingdoms” and then stretch “kingdoms” to include modern nation-states with no monarchial tradition at all and then build an arbitrary chronology of world history divided into a neat sequence of “kingdoms”–when they do this, they are playing games with the very scripture for which they profess such great reverence.

CHRONOLOGY OF THE ROMAN EMPERORS
1	27 BC – AD 14	Augustus
2	AD 14 – 37	Tiberius
3	AD 34 – 41	Caligula
4	AD 41 – 54	Claudius
5	AD 54 – 68	Nero	PERSECUTION
Inter- regnum	AD 68 – 69	Galba L Otho Vitellius
6	AD 69 – 79	Vespasian	Date of Revelation
7	AD 79 – 81	Titus
8	AD 81 – 96	Domitian	PERSECUTION
			Date of the Interpolation

Although there had been many Roman rulers before the time of Augustus, he was the first upon whom the Senate conferred the title “Emperor”; and secular history, right down to the present day, identifies him as the founder of “the Roman Empire” as such. From a Christian point of view, the additional fact that he was the ruler under whom Jesus was born also would mark him as No.1. There would seem little grounds for doubting that the Interpolator intends that his sequence begin with Augustus.

The five kings who “have already fallen,” then, would take us through Nero. Notice the three names that appear on the chart at that point; they are claimants who tried for the throne but who–as their dates would indicate–got themselves killed off as fast as they could get there. It seems clear that the tradition–even of that day–would not have considered these men as true emperors but rather explain the situation as an “interregnum,” an interval of confusion between reigns. Vespasian, then, would be No.6, “who is now reigning.” Be clear as to what this implies. The Interpolator is writing some time after Revelation was composed, but he wants his insertion to be taken as part of the original; thus “now reigning” should apply to the time of John’s original composition of the book. Our theory would suggest, then, that the Interpolator had knowledge that the book originally had come out during the reign of Vespasian; and this is our best evidence for dating Revelation–some time between AD 69 and 79.

No. 7, Titus, then is to come and “to last only for a little while” three years, as the chart indicates. But remember that, although the Interpolator writes as though it were John making a prediction, the Interpolator himself actually is looking back on the reign of Titus, knowing exactly how long it had been.

These, then, are the “seven kings”; but the point of it all is that the beast himself, Antichrist, will appear as “an eighth” (666 => 8, 8 being his special code number). John already has told us that the beast disappears and reappears, although without giving any evidence that he had the Nero Myth in mind. But the Interpolator now picks up that detail and uses it to suggest that, wonder of wonders, this eighth king is also one of the earlier seven. Who but Nero redivivus?

Yes, as per the Nero Myth, he will amass an army out of other kingdoms. By the way, although John regularly has had “the kings of the earth” associated with the beast, it is only here in the cipher that they are calendarized into a particular group of “ten kings”; the Interpolator has tried to make specific what John used simply as a general symbol. And yes, verse 16 indicates, as per the Nero Myth, that No.8 with his kingly following will attack and devastate Babylon-Rome. The Nero Myth would seem the only possible key for making sense out of this cipher.

According to the chart, Emperor No.8 turns out to be Domitian (AD 81-96). We know that Domitian was a “bad” emperor with traces of insanity about him, that he exacted “emperor worship” in a stricter way than ever before, and that, consequently, widespread and severe persecution came upon the church during his reign. At the onset of these troubles, then, the Interpolator would have had at least as good grounds for thinking that Domitian was the beast and the last days were at hand as contemporary calendarizers have in thinking that they are at hand now. Both probably act out of sincere motives, the desire to make Revelation speak directly, urgently, and helpfully to the readers of their own day. The only difference between them (and I don’t mean to minimize it) is that, whereas the moderns add to Revelation a great deal of calendarizing interpretation to support their time prediction, the Interpolator was willing to add a bit of text to support his.

This has been our attempt to break and solve the two ciphers; now let’s look at evidence indicating that neither were they written by John nor were they part of the original version of Revelation.

1. We have seen that neither of the ciphers is essential to or integral with the scenes in which they appear; they display a parenthetical character.
2. They demand a calendarizing type of interpretation that is not indulged–and is, in fact, resisted–in the remainder of the book.
3. The ciphers are introduced with sentences that are most unlike John; they sound like formulas. In the first case, Rev. 13:18 reads literally: “This calls for wisdom: let anyone with understanding calculate….” In the second case, Rev. 17:9 reads literally, “This calls for the mind that has wisdom….” Now we know that in the course of time there grew up a version of Christianity which saw the faith as centering in a secret knowledge of the things of God, which secrets were made known only to initiates, the “insiders” who had been granted special powers of esoteric understanding. These formula-sentences would be most congenial to this sort of “gnostic” mentality; but there is no evidence that John was such a person or thought in such terms. He does not use this sort of phraseology anywhere else.
4. Looking at the second cipher in particular, the device in verse 9 of giving one symbol two different referents is something John nowhere does.
5. In Rev. 17:14, the cipher says, “They will make war upon the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them.” We have not yet come to John’s last word on this subject (in Chapter 19); but we have seen that he studiously avoids saying the very thing that is said here. To suggest that it is necessary for the Lamb to defeat the beast again inevitably is to imply that the victory he won the first time–in his death-and-resurrection, booting the dragon out of heaven–was not adequate for the job. It is hard to envision John writing this line.
6. Rev. 17:16, with its description of the beast and his kings turning against the whore to attack and destroy her, fits the Nero Myth very well but runs counter to everything we find outside the cipher. Indeed, just ten verses beyond this point we find the statement: “And the kings of the earth who committed fornication and lived in luxury with her, will weep and wail over her, when they see the smoke of her burning.” That hardly jibes with what the cipher says.

We have looked at the evidence and at the theory that attempts to account for it; what are our options in making a final decision?

1. What we have called the “ciphers” clearly are riddles we explicitly are invited to solve. I have never seen any proposal other than one using the Nero Myth that even begins to provide a convincing explanation of the clues contained in the ciphers.
2. If we both accept the Nero Myth solution to the ciphers and maintain that John is the author of them, we’ve got ourselves big problems. The entire view of Revelation we have been presenting goes down the tube; it becomes clear that John is a calendarizer and his purpose is to tell us the when, how, and who of the end–and we should try to read him that way throughout. But what is worse, he is a mistaken calendarizer. He said that the Emperor Domitian was to be the beast who would destroy Rome and signal the end of history. That, of course, turned out not to be true; Domitian was only another bad Roman emperor. Yet, if John wrote Revelation primarily to predict matters of last things, and if his predictions were manifestly wrong, then there is no good reason for us to give attention or weight to Revelation at all. If the book is wrong regarding its fundamental purpose, it hardly can be rated as Scripture on other counts.
3. Many people, as a matter of principle, cannot even entertain the idea of an interpolator; they can’t believe that God would allow anyone to add material to the original text of a book of the Bible (although, in our theory, the Interpolator would have done his adding before Revelation had come to be considered a biblical book). I don’t know how these people envision God as preventing this–whether by instantly striking dead anyone who threatens to take a pen to the sacred script or by giving subsequent readers the power immediately to recognize the added passages as false. But never mind; I do respect the position.
   
   Many such people, then, will insist that John must have written the ciphers along with the remainder of the book–but for the rest, they simply deny that they have any idea as to what the cipher passages may mean. And this is a solution I can buy! “No, John was not a mistaken calendarizer; he was not speaking of Nero and Domitian. Beyond that, I don’t know what he was talking about. I don’t know that he was calendarizing; I simply don’t know what he was doing. I certainly am not going to try to use these cipher-passages to make predictions of my own. I am not going to use them to draw any conclusions about either John or Revelation; I simply don’t know what they mean.”
   
   The position is an honest one. In effect, it brackets out the cipher passages as being sheer mystery; yet it lets the rest of Revelation stand as it is, leaves the interpretation open for the sort of non-calendarizing, perpetual-expectancy approach the New Testament itself calls for.
4. Personally, the suggestion of an interpolator makes good sense to me and does not threaten my view of the Bible’s being the inspired word of God. In addition, it has the advantage of explaining some things which, I guess, I simply cannot be content to leave as sheer mystery. My hope, however, is that those who cannot conscientiously accept the interpolator theory will nevertheless understand that those who do accept it are motivated, not by any desire to destroy Scripture, but precisely by the desire to preserve it and allow it to speak most meaningfully and truly. And that is the most important consideration–whether one takes the “mystery” route or the “interpolator” route for getting there!

D. The Fall of Babylon

18:1-8

1 After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority; and the earth was made bright with his splendor. 2 He called out with a mighty voice,

“Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great!
    It has become a dwelling place of demons,
a haunt of every foul and hateful bird,
    a haunt of every foul and hateful beast.
3 For all the nations have drunk
    of the wine of the wrath of her fornication,
and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her,
    and the merchants of the earth have grown rich from the power of her luxury.”

4 Then I heard another voice from heaven saying,

“Come out of her, my people,
    so that you do not take part in her sins,
and so that you do not share in her plagues;
5 for her sins are heaped high as heaven,
    and God has remembered her iniquities.
6 Render to her as she herself has rendered,
    and repay her double for her deeds;
mix a double draught for her in the cup she mixed.
7 As she glorified herself and lived luxuriously,
    so give her a like measure of torment and grief.
Since in her heart she says,
    I rule as a queen; I am no widow
and I will nev’er see grief,’
8 therefore her plagues will come in a single day–
    pestilence and mourning and famine–
and she will be burned with fire;
    for mighty Is the Lord God who judges her.”

From the complicated contortions of the ciphers we come into some of the best of John’s writing; a welcome relief. Not so much from a theological point of view, but from a literary standpoint, this description of the fall of Babylon–and particularly the lament that follows–marks a climax. John’s graphic realism and poetic force come through in a great way; this chapter really calls for a dramatic actor to read it aloud.

The theme of the whole is powerfully expressed in the opening proclamation: “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has be come a dwelling for demons, a haunt for every unclean spirit, for every foul and loathsome bird.” Plainly, one aspect of Babylon’s fall is nothing more than the stripping away of her glamour so that she can be seen for what she truly is; her outward state now reflects what her inner being always has been, a haunt for every foul and loathsome bird.

In Rev. 18:3, “the kings of the earth” are mentioned again–but, along with them, “merchants the earth.” Part of Babylon’s evil centers in “the state,” in its making of war and its pretension of power. But just as much it centers in “commerce” and everything that involves. Indeed, the latter gets the major attention throughout this scene. There is, of course, no point in trying to separate and proportion these different aspects of worldliness; but we do need to keep in mind that all are involved. Certainly, one of the purposes behind John’s description is to help us spot and contemplate our own involvement in worldliness. (Notice, again, that neither here nor elsewhere is there evidence indicating that mandatory Caesar-worship was a major concern at the time of John’s writing.)

Rev. 18:4 presents the command that, in itself, states the primary lesson of the scene: “Come out of her, my people!” There is nothing to suggest that John was recommending either to his original readers or to us that Christians should pack up, move away from the cities of this world, and go out somewhere to form monasteries, communes, or holy communities of our own. Even so, we need to keep alert to the possibility that historical situations might arise or the time of the end may be such that God will call his people to do the very thing of separating themselves physically from the world. Nevertheless, the major thrust of the command is that Christians take care not to become involved in the sin of the world, not to drift into an acceptance of its values and ends. The warning carries real weight: if you “take part in her sins” you are bound to “share in her plagues.”

In Rev. 18:4, the angelic voice clearly is speaking to God’s people; but by verse 6 it would seem that this is no longer so. There probably is not intended any suggestion that the Christians are being invited to take matters into their own hands and pay Babylon back in her own coin. Rather, the lines likely should be understood more in the nature of a prayer: “May she be repaid!” Certainly the thrust of John’s thought has been to leave the work of punishment in the hands of God. As soon as human beings take it upon themselves to act as God’s agents of wrath, they are sure to bungle the matter. To apply punishment in a truly just and helpful way is a very delicate operation at best; and we human beings are ourselves too sinful and too emotionally involved to do it right. This must be God’s work.

Also, here where the language of retribution is getting pretty strong, we need to be reminded that the subject of it all is “worldliness.” Now John, of course, would not try to deny that “people” are involved and do get hurt in the fall of Babylon–that is inevitable. Nevertheless, read carefully and it becomes plain that his account is focused, not upon the hurting of people, but upon the destroying of evil–a somewhat different thing. Of course, it is not possible to make a neat and clear separation between evil and the people who give themselves to it; yet for John to call down all sorts of retribution upon the whore Babylon is not at all the same thing as his asking God to torment other human beings. And as his book proceeds, we will see that John (and God) takes a much different stance toward even wicked people from what he does toward the powers of Evil itself.

E. Lament over Babylon

18:9-24

9 And the kings of the earth, who committed fornication and lived in luxury with her, will weep and wail over her when they see the smoke of her burning; 10 they will stand far off, in fear of her torment, and say,

“Alas, alas, the great city,
    Babylon, the mighty city!

For in one hour your judgment has come.”

11 And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn for her, since no one buys their cargo anymore, 12 cargo of gold, silver, jewels and pearls, fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet, all kinds of scented wood, all articles of ivory, all articles of costly wood, bronze, Iron, and marble, 13 cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, olive oil, choice flour and wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots, slaves–and human lives.

14 “The fruit for which your soul longed
    has gone from you,
and all your dainties and your splendor
    are lost to you
never to be found again!”

15 The merchants of these wares, who gained wealth from her, will stand far off, in fear of her torment, weeping and mourning aloud,

16 “Alas, alas, the great city,     clothed in fine linen, in purple and scarlet, adorned with gold,     with jewels, and with pearls!     17 For in one hour all this wealth has been laid waste!”

And all shipmasters and seafarers, sailors and all whose trade is on the sea, stood far off 18 and cried out as they saw the smoke of her burning,

“What city was like the great city?”

19 And they threw dust on their heads, as they wept and mourned, crying out,

“Alas, alas, the great city,
    where all who had ships at sea grew rich by her wealth!
For in one hour she has been laid waste.
20 Rejoice over her, 0 heaven,
    you saints and apostles and prophets!
For God has given judgment for you against her.”

21 Then a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying,

“With such violence Babylon the great city
    will be thrown down,
    and will be found no more;
22 and the sound of harpists and minstrels and of flutists and trumpeters
    will be heard in you no more;
and an artisan of any trade
    will be found in you no more;
and the sound of the millstone
    will be heard in you no more;
23 and the light of a lamp
    will shine in you no more;
and the voice of bridegroom and bride
    for your merchants were the magnates of the earth,
will be heard in you no more;
    and all nations were deceived by your sorcery.
24 And in you was found the blood of prophets and of saints,
    and of all who have been slaughtered on earth.”

As was mentioned earlier the basic pattern for this segment of John’s work is taken from the lament over Tyre in Ezek. 26-27; but John far outstrips his predecessor. This passage is one of the masterpieces of world literature in its evocation of pathos and poignancy.

And from a theological standpoint, also, we can be grateful for this passage. The emphasis and mood of John’s treatment of evil thus far has been one of condemnation and the cry that justice be done; he has anticipated the fall of evil and exulted in that expectation. All that is quite proper, of course; but now comes a new note: in spite of the propriety of evil’s collapse, the event itself nevertheless carries overtones of tragedy. It is not that anything good goes down in the fall of Babylon; for John, “Babylon” is itself the symbol of that which is sheer and unrelieved evil. It will yet become apparent that one of John’s ground principles is that God redeems whatever is redeemable; he does not destroy anything of good. So the tragedy of Babylon is not that anything good is lost but rather the dissipation of all that might have been good, the human investment, the energy and resources that had been poured into Babylon. Not “How sad to see Babylon go!” but “How sad to realize now how much Babylon has wasted and ruined!” The consequence of this pathos is not sympathy for Babylon nor will it prove any inhibition to the celebration of her demise; but it does contribute an important insight into John’s mind and an important aspect of the Christian relationship to the world.

The listing of “cargoes” in verses Rev. 18:12-13 is very effective. More than any accusation could do, it manifests the opulence, display, luxury, comfort, and pride of ownership that lie at the heart of the world’s standard of values. And you can be sure it is not accidental on John’s part that “slaves and the lives of men” come at the bottom of the list, following “sheep and cattle, horses, chariots.” This is accurate; the world does not value persons, it uses them; it consumes, exploits, and manipulates people for the sake of the “higher values” of gold and silver, jewels and pearls. The splendor of the world customarily is bought at the expense of the people of the world. How right and just and necessary, then, that “all the glitter and the glamour be lost, never to be yours again!”–how right and yet how sad!

How sad! And yet Rev. 18:20 is correct, too! How can the mood be anything other than exultation when wrong is being made right, when falsehood is being revealed, its power and threat being taken from it, when the truth is being justified?

But then, back on the other side, the “no more” passage returns to pathos-perhaps the most moving segment of the entire scene. Yet, again, in response comes the conclusion of verse 24: in truth, the judgment is altogether just, for both the most accurate and most damning thing that can be said about Babylon is that she eats people–that is the wrong that cannot be allowed to stand; it must be countered and put to an end.

F. Exultation and the Promise of the Wedding Supper

19:1-10

1 After this I heard what seemed to be the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, saying,

“Hallelujah!
Salvation and glory and power to our God,
2 for his judgments are true and just;
he has judged the great whore
    who corrupted the earth with her fornication,
and he has avenged on her the blood of his servants.”

Once more they said,

“Hallelujah! The smoke goes up from her forever and ever.”

4 And the twenty-four elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God who is seated on the throne, saying,

“Amen. Hallelujah!”

5 And from the throne came a voice saying,

“Praise our God,
    all you his servants,
and all who fear him,
    small and great.”

6 Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty thunder peals, crying out,

“Hallelujah!
For the Lord our God
    the Almighty reigns.
7 Let us rejoice and exult
    and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
    and his bride has made herself ready;
8to her it has been granted to be clothed
    with fine linen, bright and pure”–
for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.

9 And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These are true words of God.” 10 Then I fell down at his feet to worship him, but he said to me, “You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you and your comrades who hold the testimony of Jesus. Worship God! For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”

The direct counter-scene to the lament sung by the whore’s lovers on earth is the hymn of victory sung by the hosts of heaven. They exult in God’s just judgment of the whore; there is no suggestion here of some people exulting over the calamity come upon other people. The theme-word of this scene is “Hallelujah!” The word–a transliteration of the Hebrew for “Praise God!”–although familiar from the Psalms of the Old Testament, is found only in this passage within the whole of the New Testament.

Rev. 19:7 introduces the idea of the wedding of the Lamb and the great supper that attends it. John picks up for neither of these events more than passing reference; but there is no mystery about what they represent. The “bride of Christ,” it will be made explicit, is the church–and by that token could be taken as “the woman clothed with the sun,” although John does not himself draw the connection. However, he does seem to intend a deliberate counter-comparison between, on the one hand, therion and his whorish lover-rider who wind up together in the ditch and, on the other, arnion and his virgin bride who proceed to the glory of wedding and feast. In his reference to “the wedding-supper,” John may very well have in mind the Lord’s supper of the church’s practice, which the New Testament Christians understood as itself being a preview and sign of the great eschatological banquet that marks the final reunion of God with his people. Verse 9 makes it clear that the real purpose behind the passage is to encourage readers to make themselves part of the scene; you are invited!

Rev 18:10 may indicate that John was aware of a tendency of some of his intended readers to indulge in angel-worship; he took the opportunity to combat it. In the concluding sentence, although it is not absolutely clear, the angel probably means to say, “I, the angel, like you, John, the prophet, have significance only in the testimony I bear to Jesus; so let’s keep our attention on that martyria Jesu rather than upon the bearers of it!”

G. The Parousia of the Rider

19:11-20:3

11 Then I saw heaven opened, and there was a white horse! Its rider is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. 12 His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems; and he has a name inscribed that no one knows but himself. 13 He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is called The Word of God. 14 And the armies of heaven, wearing fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. 15 From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron; he will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. 16 On his robe and on his thigh he has a name inscribed, “King of kings and Lord of lords.” 17 Then I saw an angel standing in the sun, and with a loud voice he called to all the birds that fly in midheaven, “Come, gather for the great supper of God, 18 to eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of the mighty, the flesh of horses and their riders–flesh of all, both free and slave, both small and great.” 19 Then I saw the beast and the kings of the earth with their armies gathered to make war against the rider on the horse and against his army. 20 And the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who had performed in its presence the signs by which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped its image. These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur. 21 And the rest were killed by the sword of the rider on the horse, the sword that came from his mouth; and all the birds were gorged with their flesh. 1 Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. 2 He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, 3 and threw him into the pit, and locked and sealed it over him, so that he would deceive the nations no more, until the thousand years were ended. After that he must be let out for a little while.

We are now come to one of the key scenes of the book, John’s central treatment of the parousia of Christ. Let us recall the ways in which he has handled it earlier, with a particular view to establishing the relationship between it and the fall of Babylon.

• At the conclusion of the Freehand Sketch, in Chapter 14, an angel first announces that Babylon has fallen (though the event is not portrayed) and then the parousia is described under the image of Christ as harvester.
• At the conclusion of the Bowl Series, in Chapter 16, Bowl 6 shows the forces of Evil gathering for the battle at Armageddon. Christ does not appear in that scene, although the interlude specifies, “See, I am coming like a thief!” Bowl 7, then, recounts the fall of Babylon.

In the present case, of course, the fall of Babylon is described at length, and then we move to an event that is very like that of Armageddon except that Christ appears on the scene in his parousia.

It might seem as though we have a chronological problem, but I think that is not the case. John is not concerned with fine details of sequence; he wants to say that the fall of Babylon and the parousia of Christ are, in effect, simultaneous. The end consists in both events, and it would be fruitless to try to separate them, whether chronologically or in any other way. In particular, they are not arranged so as to make either one dependent upon the other. It does not take the parousia, an attack by Christ, to bring down Babylon; the momentum of his previous death-and-resurrection action is sufficient to do that. But neither, on the other hand, dare it be assumed that it is the course of world history that controls the time of Christ’s return. No, the chronology of both these events and of the entire situation lies solely in the hands of God; it is not for us to try to calculate either of them or from one of them to the other.

It seems correct to assume that this scene is meant to take the same spot and play the same role as the earlier Armageddon scene, even though, in detail, the two are quite different. Because John does not mean to present a photographic, calendarized picture in either case, there is no difficulty (but indeed, considerable advantage) in using variant imageries and scenarios for making the same point. Only calendarizers will feel the need to argue about which way it actually is going to happen.

In the earlier instance the Evil Trinity took the initiative in mustering the kings of the earth and their armies at Armageddon, for an attack upon God. However, the entire effort collapsed without Christ or any opposing army even putting in an appearance. In the present instance, conversely, Christ and his armies come from heaven and take their stand on an undesignated battlefield. The Evil Trinity, with the kings of the earth, then muster their forces in response–and promptly collapse! “Take it either way,” John seems to be saying, “it comes to the same thing”–although, as usual, John’s repetitions add insight and depth to the earlier references.

John regularly has pictured Christ and referred to him as “the Lamb” “the Lamb with the marks of slaughter upon him”–and this image has been made very rich in theological content regarding his gracious, loving, longsuffering, self-giving character. Yet recall that, at the time John first introduced the Lamb, he was able also to describe him as “the Lion”–and without in any way compromising his lamblike character. Now, in the present scene, he pictures Christ as “the Rider,” a warrior king. But if anything is certain, it is that, in doing so, John has no intention of deserting or betraying all his careful efforts in establishing Jesus as the Lamb. This Rider is the Lamb, just as the Lion was earlier; and just as the Lamb image took priority and controlled the Lion image there, so must the Lamb control the Rider image here. This scene can be interpreted in consistent “lamb” terms; and we have an obligation to do so.

Recall that, clear back with the opening of the first seal on the scroll of the hidden future, John introduced the period of the end-time with the appearance of a crowned rider on a white horse. Here, to introduce a new period, is another. In fact, the new Rider will now face down the first one–although, truth to tell, that first one does not present a very kingly picture in this scene. The two riders, clearly, are meant to show some parallels; but it is their contrasts that are telling. The first one carried a bow, this one carries (and uses) a sharp sword. The first one brought in his train War, Famine, and Death–and all the trauma of the end-time. This one brings justice, righteousness, and redemption. The first one actually was therion, the beast; this one actually is arnion, the Lamb. The first one has had his time; this one’s time is yet to come. The first one we named “the Fancy Fake”; this one John names “Faithful and True.”

“Faithful and True”; recall that, at the opening of his book, the very first title John gave to Jesus was “the faithful witness.” And the name John gives him now is as important as anything that can be said concerning him. So much of the picture to this point has been dominated by falsehood, deceit, corruption, and seduction. But the parousia of Jesus marks also the parousia of truth. With him present, things become “trued” in a way that simply was not possible before his coming.

Rev. 18:12 indicates that he is wearing “a name known to none but himself.” John has referred to this name several times previously, as a suggestion that, in our time, we cannot yet know Jesus fully, cannot know him for all he is and represents. But here, in the parousia, that name is written for all to see; here, in the climax and completion of his work, we can begin to comprehend him in his “fullness.”

He is robed in “a garment drenched with blood”-here is the key line of the entire scene (if not the entire book). This description usually is taken as just one more bloody detail out of the whole gruesome scene; but it deserves closer attention than that. Notice several things concerning it:

1. The Rider’s garment is bloodied as soon as he appears. The blood cannot come as a result of the present engagement; no enemy has arrived on the scene; he doesn’t even get mustered until verse 19.
2. At no earlier point in Revelation has there been described an engagement in which the Rider’s robe could have been bloodied. In a previous account of the parousia, a crowned figure appeared in order to conduct the grain harvest, the gathering of the saints; but he very explicitly was dissociated from the grape harvest with its blood to the depth of a horse’s bridle–perhaps John’s deliberate move to preserve the symbolism of this scene. No, the one and only time John has put Jesus in direct contact with Evil or any representative of it was when the dragon stood by to snatch the child–an event that took place some time before John’s own story opened.
3. So let’s look at that event. This Rider is the Lamb, remember. The Lamb is one with the marks of slaughter upon him. It might be expected that blood from the slaughter would be on his robe. John knows all of this about the Lamb; he does use symbolism just this carefully and skillfully; and there is every reason to believe this is the way he is using it here. The blood on the Rider’s robe is that which he shed on Calvary. It is true, as John elsewhere has told us, that the saints wash their robes white in the blood of the Lamb; but that his own robe retains the stain is most vital to John’s story; we shall see how in a moment.

In Rev. 18:14, the description of the Rider continues with details that, for the most part, already are familiar to us. There are the white robes of the saints. There is the sharp sword of judgment in his mouth. There is the Psalm 2 reference to ruling with an iron rod–with which we have wrestled several times already. There is “the wrath and retribution of God,” concerning which we already have said all we know to say.

The Rider and his armies now have taken the field and been presented. Verses 17-18 form an interlude before the opposing armies are introduced. The content of the interlude is an invitation (or perhaps an anti-invitation) to another eschatological supper, a post-battle banquet that almost certainly is intended as a counter comparison to the wedding supper of the Lamb, for which invitations were extended just a few verses earlier. You have your choice; either you can go to the Lamb’s supper as guests, friends of the bride (better, members of the bride), or you can go to this other supper as part of the menu, food for the vultures. I really believe John set it up that way as a means of urging people to accept the Lamb’s invitation.

Now in this post-battle supper (which happens, then, in verse 21) it is plain that those who get eaten are not, in this case, the supernatural representatives of Evil, but “people.” Specifically, it is those kings of the earth (who always turn up right where we have come to expect them), along with their militarist sidekicks and all such types–listed, by the way, in almost the identical fashion they were in Seal 6, when they wanted the mountains to hide them from the vengeance of the Lamb.

But, although being eaten by vultures is, I would guess, a somewhat discomposing experience (and is meant to be), as “the vengeance of the Lamb” it is very mild indeed. The picture is much more that of cleaning up litter than it is of torturing people. The kings and their cronies are not thrown into the lake of fire (at this point); neither does their being eaten take them out of the action; and the Lamb is not through with them yet–not by a long shot!

But talking about this supper has us ahead of the action; verse 19 is where we must pick it up again. The combatants are lined up in readiness; but by the time we get to verse 20, it’s all over, the prisoners are being carted off, and the hungry crew of vultures already is at work. There just isn’t any battle; and since we already have witnessed the Armageddon scene dissolve in almost the same way, it would seem that John is being anticlimactic on purpose.

But why no battle, when everything was all set for one? We have suggested the reason before: John is convinced that Jesus, in his death-and-resurrection, did all that needed to be done, won the only victory that needs to be won in order to take care of Evil once and for all. To portray Jesus in another battle necessarily would be to say that his first victory wasn’t good enough; and this, of course, John will by no means say.

Yet, if there wasn’t a battle, what did happen here? I think John means it something like this: Recall the memory problems of a dragon with its head cut off. He, the Deceiver, has deceived himself into thinking that his successes in the world indicate that he is ready to take on anybody. He’s not afraid of any “armies of heaven.” He leads his force onto the field … and who should be the first person he lays eyes upon but a rider “robed in a garment drenched in blood.” Memories begin to awaken–and his tail begins to throb in consequence. He’d seen that blood before! Oh, yes, that was the day and that the way in which he had gotten “thrown down to earth, and his angels with him.” There is no sense in even trying it with that one again! “Forget it, troops; we’re dead!“

And so they were–and had been all along; it is just that it took a parousia of the Truth to make the fact of the matter clear to them and everyone else! Christ’s “victory” here is simply the revelation of the one sufficient victory he already has won over death, the world, and the devil.

Without any “fight” at all, then, the Evil Trinity is taken prisoner and their dead armies “go to supper.” The beast (Antichrist) and the false prophet (the Unholy Spirit) are thrown into the lake of fire; and when any one of the supernatural representatives of Evil goes into the lake of fire it is the end of him–he will not be seen or heard from again. The dragon (Satan) is preserved from that fate–at least for the moment. This is not because the Lamb’s power is not yet complete or because the dragon himself still has a chance of reversing his situation. No, as Rev. 20:3 indicates, he simply has been put into storage so he can appear in a particular role a bit later. But for all practical purposes, the parousia of Christ marks the end of the threat and power of Evil; from here on out, it’s God all the way!

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