The Book of Revelation and the Global Conflict In the Middle East
By William E. Hull, Research Professor
Samford University, Birmingham, AL
- The Lord God Omnipotent Reigns!
- The Beast From The Bottomless Pit
- A New Heaven and a New Earth
Note: This three-part sermon series was preached at the Mountain Brook Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama in April/May/June, 2003. Dr. Hull notes that "he was driven by the thrust of the book`s message to wrestle with major ethical issues: national hubris in the first sermon, systemic evil in the second sermon, and religious pacifism in the third sermon."
Sermon One: The Lord God Omnipotent Reigns!
Let`s face it: we are afraid of the Book of Revelation. It is at once the least read yet most misunderstood book in the New Testament. When we pass from the Gospels and Epistles to its pages, we are confronted with a bizarre scenario that seems to unfold in an alien land. Weird and esoteric symbolism abounds on every page. While some choose to ignore this last book of the Bible, others make it the key to their understanding of the whole of Scripture. Revelation has been the happy hunting ground for many a religious crackpot, from the Millerites who were convinced that the world would end in 1844 to the Branch Davidians whose leader, David Koresh, believed that he had been chosen to open the seven seals of the Apocalypse and launch God`s judgment on the world. It is a book of unspeakable violence in the name of God which chills the blood of those who want religion to offer a haven of safety and peace.
Lest we despair, the cryptic language that so easily confuses offers a clue to the unique genius of the book. Here we have nothing less than an attempt to peer into another world, to make visible the invisible and to utter the unutterable. It forces us out of our routine ways of thinking and asks us to discover reality through the imagination rather than the intellect. Make no mistake: the Revelation of John intends to startle us, even to shock us, for it is subversive literature with a dangerous message for an evil day when those who challenged the powers that be in the name of Christ were courting persecution and even death. The book is high drama designed to awaken buried emotions, to enlarge the boundaries of experience, to jar its readers out of complacency with God`s wake-up call. It dares to view all of life in the ultimate dimension!
One of our primary sources of confusion is the time perspective which its message intends. Was Revelation written only for its day, or to describe the subsequent sweep of human history, or to predict the ultimate end of the world? The answer is found in a formula used three times (1:4; 1:8; 4:8, reinforced by 11:17 and 16:5), where God is seen as "the One who is and who was and who is to come," the one "in whom the ultimate past and the ultimate future are comprehended in an eternal present." (1) Unlike the religious sensationalists of our day, John wrote to be relevant and intensely practical for his desperate readers who were trying to survive in an alien culture, for whom our endless speculations about the latest skirmish in the Middle East would be of little or no help. And yet John probed the depths of life so profoundly that his core convictions are just as valid in our day as in his own. It is precisely because John was so effective in guiding the embattled church of the first century as it lived on the edge of extinction that his book is worthy of our closest attention in the twenty-first century.
As is the case in most drama, the central reality of Revelation is conflict. The three great themes that dominate the book from beginning to end concern (a) the divine protagonist, God; (b) the evil antagonist, Satan; and (c) the resolution of the cosmic struggle between the two, Victory. Here two worlds are pictured as locked in a titanic battle for the loyalty of the human heart, the outcome of which will determine the character of both time and eternity. Amazing as it may be, we mortal earthlings are the prize for which the ultimate powers of the universe now contend! Revelation is profoundly theocentric, thus we look first at what it has to say about God.
God the Father
John lived in a day when the Roman Empire, then at the height of its power, was determined to control the course of history. Its imperial designs knew no limits. The ages of time would be determined by the rule of its Caesars (Luke 3:1). Rome had already crushed every other earthly power within the wider Mediterranean world, thus none dared challenge its supremacy. Intoxicated with its own self-importance, the empire moved steadily to make itself the unifying power around which political, economic, cultural, and religious life would cohere.
Over against this absolutizing of Roman authority, John dared to make the most subversive claim imaginable, namely, that history was guided, not by the Caesars, but by the sovereign Lord of heaven. Three interlocking claims made clear that God alone controlled the unfolding of the ages from creation to consummation, for he is "the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end" (22:13). The meaning of time would be determined by his eternal purposes, not by the latest ruler in Rome. Throughout the book there is an emphasis on wholeness, completeness, and ultimacy as seen, for example, in the frequent use of the number seven which, in Jewish numerology, stood for the fullness of reality, as in the seven days of the week. In Revelation we have seven letters, seven seals, seven trumpets, seven thunders, seven bowls, seven attributes of the Lamb, seven beatitudes, seven acts in the drama which unfolds, and God guides it all.
In exalting the awesome majesty and mystery of God, John goes out of his way to underscore his utter transcendence by describing him seven times as "almighty" or "omnipotent" (1:8; 4:8; 11:17; 15:3; 16:7; 19:6; 21:22). This is seen not only in his vivid descriptions of God`s glory but particularly in John`s sevenfold designation of God as "the One who sits on the throne" (4:9; 5:1; 5:7; 5:13; 6:16; 7:15; 21:5). Caesar`s throne stood for his right to rule, but John saw a greater throne than Caesar`s, not in Rome but in heaven (4:2). Everything about the description of God on his throne (4:3-6) was calculated to trump the ostentation that Rome heaped upon its Caesar in a futile effort to make him seem superhuman. In passages such as this, John is crying at the top of his voice that appearance is not reality, that the dazzling temples to Caesar being built all over Asia Minor were nothing compared to the heavenly court, and that while Caesar may rule momentarily on earth, God reigns eternally in heaven.
And yet John makes an equally important point by what he does not say about this cosmic Potentate. To be sure, God is supreme, but his sovereignty is not coercive. Despots like Nero could rigidly control events by the exercise of arbitrary and capricious power, intimidating and terrorizing whole populations with the threat of violence. But almighty God chooses to rule in a context of human freedom. In his universe, one can decide to be either friend or foe. The greatness of God is seen precisely in the fact that he is not a "control freak" like the Caesars, but accomplishes his purposes in the face of radical contingency. Revelation is animated by a breathtaking vision of the God who lets us be, who fashions his future out of our choices whether they be good or bad, a God who desires only our love, even though love is the most voluntary relationship in human experience.
God the Son
But if God does not bully his subjects with coercive power, how does he hope to win their fickle hearts? The answer to that central question is that God responded to the unpredictabilities of human freedom by sending his Son to earth to save us from self-destructive decisions. Perhaps the most incredible symbol in the entire book is that of Christ as a sacrificial Lamb. John knew that the messianic hope looked for a "Lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David" who would come to conquer the enemies of the people of God (5:5). But as soon as we move to his next paragraph, we are shocked to discover that this Lion has become a Lamb with his throat cut (5:12)! Now we begin to realize that God has given us so much freedom that we can make him bleed, that evil "can be conquered only by being allowed to conquer and so to burn itself out." (2)
How quickly we come to the heart of the plot in this drama of redemption: here is the daring claim, not only that God is going to triumph over the most hideous evil imaginable, but that his only weapon will be a vulnerable Lamb. This is John`s key image of Christ in the Apocalypse, being used as a title for Jesus twenty-nine times. But more: it is not just that this Lamb was willing to be a helpless victim. Rather, it was precisely as victim that he became victor over every malignant force in the universe, worthy "to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing," a seven-fold tribute no less (5:12)! Jesus is "worthy," not despite the fact that he had to suffer, but precisely because he had to suffer. His defeat is his victory, his shame is his glory, his humiliation is his vindication, his cross is his crown.
What an incredible claim: that Rome is going to be vanquished, not by swords and spears, but by a splintery cross! Any doubt that the crucified Christ will reign triumphant is dispelled at the outset of the book when the risen Lord is described in glorious terms reminiscent of God himself (1:12-16). Even Caesar in all of his finery never looked like that! Make no mistake: Jesus Christ, the faithful witness and first born of the dead, is "the ruler of kings on earth" (1:5). To be sure, the enemies of God "will make war on the Lamb, but the Lamb will conquer them, for he is Lord of lords and King of kings" (17:14). What a seditious thing for John to say!
God the Holy Spirit
All over Asia Minor the oppressive power of Rome was acutely felt even though the throne of the Caesar was far away in the so-called Eternal City. Just so, John and his readers could take heart that the Lord and his Lamb were already sovereign in heaven even though their throne often seemed so far away. A more immediate help for these beleaguered Christians was offered by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, another constant refrain in the Book of Revelation. Indeed, John was given a vision of heaven because he was "in the Spirit" (1:10). This momentous disclosure happened on the isolated island of Patmos, a remote military outpost some eighty-eight miles off the coast of Asia Minor. Only ten miles long and six miles wide, this rocky outcropping in the Aegean Sea was a perfect place to isolate troublemakers who needed to come to their senses. But God`s Spirit was also present on Patmos, not only to inspire the writing of John`s book, but also to serve as God`s living agent of persuasion for all who would read it (22:17).
But more than that, John could write confidently that the Holy Spirit would not only interpret his divine revelation but also strengthen the Christians to whom he was writing. Each of the letters to the seven churches ends with the refrain, "Let the one with ears hear what the Spirit says to the churches" (2:7, 11, 17, 29; 3:6, 13, 22). Since each of these seven letters begins by announcing that the words which follow are from the exalted Christ, this means that the Holy Spirit mediates the realities of heaven to those struggling here on earth. It is as if each church, regardless of its condition, has the Holy Spirit of God intimately present to function somewhat like its guardian angel (1:4, 20; 3:1; 4:5; 5:6).
Revelation constantly emphasizes that worship is the setting in which God the Father and God the Son are most intimately present with us as God the Holy Spirit. On the one hand, there are scenes of heavenly worship interspersed throughout the book with at least fifteen hymns or hymn-like fragments: (1) the thrice-holy cry (4:8); (2) three songs acclaiming God or the Lamb as "worthy" (4:11; 5:9-10; 5:12); (3) three doxologies (5:13; 7:12; 16:5-7); (4) seven "victory" songs (7:10; 11:15; 11:17-18; 12:10-12; 15:3-4; 19:1-2; 19:6-8); and (5) an exhortation to praise God (19:5). (3) These hymns help to carry the story line of the book in poetic fashion. In a profound sense, the Revelation sings its message through stanza after stanza to a grand climax.
But, on the other hand, it is precisely in earthly worship that Christians both anticipate and participate in the worship of the heavenly court. The reference to "the Lord`s day" (1:10) implies that the book began in worship and the "Amen" cry (22:20) implies that it ended in worship. To us, worship is often little more than a weekly habit, but to John`s readers it was a daring act of political protest. For one thing, its heavenly descriptions of worship were a parody of imperial court ceremonies, a way of saying that none of Rome`s impressive pageantry was worthy to be compared with the liturgy of heaven. To gather for worship on earth, and to have that heavenly worship mediated by the living Holy Spirit, was a concrete declaration that this people would bow to no other God, that only the Lord of Heaven deserves our ultimate allegiance, that any compromise with the worship of the Lamb is nothing less than treason. The inference is inescapable: if God and the Lamb are truly worthy of worship, then there can be no doubt that the Caesars are unworthy of the worship which they were demanding.
In our modern democratic culture with its emphasis on autonomous individualism, some have reacted negatively to the insistence of Revelation that the triune God is omnipotent. Far from sanctioning "authoritarian structures of power and domination in human society," however, "this is the exact opposite of the way the image of divine sovereignty functions in Revelation. There, so far from legitimizing human autocracy, divine rule radically de-legitimizes it. Absolute power, by definition, belongs only to God, and it is precisely the recognition of God`s absolute power that relativizes all human power." (4)
Our nation and its people need this message of an omnipotent God as never before in its history, for like Rome in its day, we possess unrivaled military, political, economic, and cultural power. One response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 is to conceive our strategic role as that of an imperialist empire exercising global hegemony in unipolar fashion. (5) Indeed, some feel that we are already well down that Roman road with a complicit Christianity leading the way. Listen to the stinging indictment of Wendell Berry which has so many resonances with the Book of Revelation:
Despite its protests to the contrary, modern Christianity has become willy-nilly the religion of the state and the economic status quo. . . . It has, for the most part, stood silently by while a predatory economy has ravaged the world, destroyed its natural beauty and health, divided and plundered its human communities and households. It has flown the flag and chanted the slogans of empire. It has assumed with the economists that `economic forces` automatically work for good and has assumed with the industrialists and militarists that technology determines history. . . . It has admired Caesar and comforted him in his depredations and faults. But in its de facto alliance with Caesar, Christianity connives directly in the murder of Creation. For in these days, Caesar is no longer a mere destroyer of armies, cities, and nations. He is a contradicter of the fundamental miracle of life. (6)
In its radically theocentric vision of ultimate reality, Revelation offers us an astringent reminder that we allow God to have earthly competitors only at our peril, even if those rivals be democracy and capitalism. Our nation was founded as an experiment in limited government unlike the absolute monarchies of Europe. It was to be carefully circumscribed by checks and balances, one of which was the separation of church and state so that government and religion could not control or even unduly influence each other. Our market economy was designed to protect the yeoman farmer and village shopkeeper from destructive competition by industrial and commercial behemoths. There are many ways to restrain the totalitarian impulse, including a free press in the community, a free pulpit in the church, and a free podium in the classroom. But the best way to curb the unbridled appetite for power is to affirm with Handel that the Lord God alone is omnipotent and that "he shall reign forever and ever!"
End Notes
1 Caird, G. B., A Commentary on the Revelation of St. John the Divine. Harper`s New Testament Commentaries (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 291.
2 Caird, 293.
3 Gloer, W. Hulitt, "Worship God! Liturgical Elements in the Apocalypse," Review and Expositor, vol. 98, no. 1, Winter, 2001, 40.
4 Bauckham, Richard, The Theology of the Book of Revelation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 44.
5 The centerpiece of the debate over this option is "The National Security Strategy of the United States of America" issued by President George W. Bush on September 17, 2002, with its so-called "doctrine of pre-emption."
6 Berry, Wendell, Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992), 114-115.
Sermon Two: The Beast From The Bottomless Pit
One of the most fascinating yet frightening features of the Book of Revelation is its use of grotesque symbolism to describe supernatural evil. Here we meet a beast coming up from the sea (13:1) and a great red dragon (12:3) coming down from the sky, each of them with ten horns and seven heads, reminiscent of the sea monster Leviathan and the earth monster Behemoth. They are joined by the great harlot of Babylon with whom the kings of earth have committed fornication until they and their subjects have become drunk on debauchery (17:1-2). The imagery is deliberately repulsive, never more so than today when we have ripped our Halloween masks off the face of evil and eliminated the word Satan from our vocabulary as "a medieval term that should probably be banished from civilized discourse in a multicultural world."(1)
But before we repudiate the last book of the Bible for its scare tactics, consider the enormous impact of contemporary efforts to portray evil in monstrous terms. Think of Darth Vader`s sinister minions in the "Star Wars" epic. Or of the hideous subterranean creatures that abound in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy. In the second installment, "The Two Towers," for example, the defining battle of Helm`s Deep depicts the beastly warriors of Saruman marching in vast phalanxes on the final outpost of Rohan in a manner reminiscent of Hitler`s ferocious onslaughts in World War II. Revelation has dared to construct a symbolic world adequate to depict the magnitude of evil that its readers were being called upon to oppose. Gazing into the crater that was once the World Trade Center, we dare not do less. So let us explore why John has chosen to depict the reality of evil in all of its horrid ugliness.
Cosmic Evil
What does it mean to portray evil as a kingdom ruled by a tyrant more sinister than anything human? Is John saying that we are up against a foe mightier than our human strength to withstand? Unfortunately, that troubling question must be answered in the affirmative. As if that were not bad enough, even worse is the realization that we have created the monster ourselves! For John does not posit an absolute metaphysical dualism that would divide the universe into two eternal domains, one ruled by goodness and the other by evil. In place of this Zoroastrian/Manichean heresy, what John is saying is that there is an abyss, a "dark hole" as it were, at the heart of life which acts as a vast reservoir of accumulated evil to which we have all contributed. Nazism, for example, was not the work of Adolf Hitler alone, but was the result of innumerable compromises by thousands, even millions, of people willing to embrace the lie of a Master Race. People willing to deify a deranged paper-hanger as absolute leader, willing to erect a superstructure of "principalities and powers" that perpetrated a Holocaust that snuffed out millions of lives in an orgy of gratuitous violence.
But why do such senseless things happen again and again with numbing regularity? It is because evil wears an endless number of disguises. It dresses up in immaculate uniforms, it holds impressive parades, it plays spine-tingling music, it appeals to idealistic motives, it exploits ancient resentments. And once it gains legitimacy, it begins to build its bureaucracy of horror until it becomes a totalitarian juggernaut out of control. The task of John was to unmask this monster, to strip the seductive whore called Babylon of her allurements (17:4) so that all could see her for what she really was. Irony of ironies, even though evil is like a devouring beast (13:2; cf. 1 Pet. 5:8), its strategy is not to intimidate but to fascinate, for it does not merely want to be feared but to be "worshiped" and "followed with wonder" (13:3-4). Beware, Revelation is saying, the pomp and circumstance that parades itself in surface splendor to win your allegiance, for underneath its seductive camouflage is a disgusting brute bent on your destruction.
John deliberately used the most offensive language possible in order to show that Rome was not the glittering spectacle that it presented to the world but was a loathsome beast intent on ravaging the human spirit. The beast even employed a second beast, symbolizing the imperial cult, as its public relations agent who used dazzling displays and propaganda to glamorize its atrocities, much as Hitler used Goebbels to cover the crimes of the Third Reich (13:11-15). (2) The strategy of evil is always to use deception in offering counterfeit glory. Satan is "the deceiver of the whole world" (12:9) who misleads by telling lies both about God and about himself. The Antichrist is a false messiah who utters blasphemous denials of Christ (2 Jn. 7). If you are sickened by the repulsiveness of evil in the Apocalypse, then John has accomplished his purpose. If only Germany had been sick of Adolf Hitler in 1933 rather than in 1945! Sometimes our only defense against evil is revulsion, which comes when we have seen it for what it really is.
Human Evil
Once evil is allowed to create its own superstructure, then individuals can use, and be used by, this apparatus for diabolical ends. In John`s day, each new Caesar inherited the throne of an empire that had been drunk on its own power for generations. For example, the emperor Nero gladly volunteered to become the human incarnation of the Beast, identified by the number 666 (13:18), and the Empire gladly let him do it because the people wanted their Caesar to function as the unquestioned symbol of Rome`s absolute power.
Once Nero fornicated with the harlot of national hubris, he became the kind of man who could kick his pregnant wife to death, castrate and then "marry" a boy named Sporus, murder his own young mother, and delight in being praised as a god until he was finally declared insane by the Roman Senate. If that seems extreme, think of how we are still being brutalized by pathological narcissists, such as Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and Kim Jong II. With their subjects starving, lacking the most basic necessities of healthcare, and desperately needing education and economic development, such rulers build multiple palaces and plot nuclear catastrophe. Why? Because the disenfranchised masses are willing to concentrate unlimited power in them so that they may function as reckless agents of revenge and retaliation against a world that they resent. Lord Acton was right: absolute power does corrupt absolutely, turning potentially decent humans into cunning predators.
John was particularly sensitive to the way in which cities could become the stronghold of evil. In Revelation 17:9, he pictured Babylon as a whore seated on seven mountains, a scarcely veiled reference to Rome as the city built on seven hills. The dirge for "the great city" in Revelation 18 is a lament for the way in which urban pride can finally become self-destructive. Cities in our day easily succumb to the empire building of rapacious capitalism, of technological superiority, of cultural elitism, of intoxicating pride. When John wrote, Jerusalem already lay in ruins, but he saw that one day Rome would become "a dwelling place of demons, a haunt of every foul spirit, a haunt of every fowl and hateful bird" (18:2). No wonder he closed his book with a vision of the New Jerusalem as a replacement for the Babylon that had sold its soul for power and glory.
The Consequences of Evil
Because John believed in the power of evil both to aggregate and to escalate, with no shortage of earthly agents to do its bidding, he was profoundly realistic about the ability of evil to wreck havoc on planet earth. In the middle chapters of Revelation we find a grim recitation of the horrors that depraved despots can visit on humanity. It begins in Chapter 6 with the four horsemen of the Apocalypse who ravage the earth with conquest, warfare, famine, and death (6:2-8). The devastation seems endless: first there are plagues launched by the opening of the seven seals (6:1-8:5), then havoc wrought by the blowing of the seven trumpets (8:6-11:15), then pestilence poured out by the seven bowls (16:1-18:24). Each visitation seems worse than the one before as if the carnage is cumulative. However, these three symbolic series are not so much sequential as they are simultaneous, each ending in the same fashion with a terrible earthquake (8:5; 11:19; 16:17). What John is saying by his repetition for emphasis is that evil relentlessly hammers human life over and over again until the cosmos itself comes unhinged.
Rather than indulging in fantasy to construct this chamber of horrors, John ransacked the Old Testament for lurid depictions of tragedy. (3) When we read about water turning to blood, of darkness, hail, boils, frogs and locusts (8:7-8; 9:3; 16:2-4, 10), we are reminded of the plagues that fell on Egypt (Exod. 7:8-11:10). The picture of people hiding in caves and among rocks (6:15-16) echoed Isaiah`s description of the Day of the Lord (Isa. 2:10, 19). Even such cosmic portents as the rolling up of the sky and the falling of stars (6:12-14; 8:10-11) were widely anticipated by the prophets as symbolic of the overthrow of "principalities and powers" arrayed against God (Isa. 14:12-15; 34:2-4; Joel 2:28-32; Jer. 51:25-26). The massing of great hordes from across the Euphrates to fight at Armageddon (16:12-16) gathered up repeated experiences with invading armies out of the east from the time of the Assyrians to that of the Parthians. In all of this calamitous tale of woe stretching over centuries of biblical history but now reaching its climatic expression in John`s day, the most striking feature was that even catastrophe after catastrophe could not induce humankind to repent! (9:20-21).
It is not easy to read about blood flowing "as high as a horse`s bridle for two hundred miles" (14:20), but is such apocalyptic hyperbole unrealistic? Go to Auschwitz and see the ovens that filled the sky with the human ashes of genocide. Or to Dachau where ministers were horsewhipped until their bodies were a bloody pulp only because they would not salute and say "Heil Hitler." Or to the Gulag where Stalin slaughtered upward of twenty million merely to eliminate dissent and make his regime a reign of terror. Or to the killing fields of Cambodia where the Khmer Rouge indiscriminately butchered 1,200,000 people, a fifth of the population, all in the name of social engineering driven by ideological fanaticism. Can we really claim that our capacity for cruelty has diminished over the twenty centuries since Revelation was written?
Nor are such atrocities always perpetrated by "the other side." When our family lived in Göttingen, Germany, one of our dearest friends was Herbert Caspari, a pillar in the local Baptist church. He once told me how he stood on the hills of Göttingen and saw the fires of Kassel nearly fifty miles away. On the night of October 22, 1943, 444 British planes unloaded 1,812 tons of bombs in a span of twenty-two minutes that set the entire city ablaze leaving ten thousand people dead, including two thousand children. This was part of British General "Bomber" Harris` strategy to incinerate 161 German cities, killing up to 650,000 civilians on the misguided supposition that this carnage would somehow weaken morale and hasten the end of the war. To read these chapters of Revelation in the lurid glare of Hiroshima and Nagasaki makes John`s symbolism seem almost understated.
The ultimate question, of course, is why God would allow such unimaginable suffering either in the first century or in the twentieth. The first thing to note in Revelation is that these are not capricious acts of a vengeful God upon humanity; rather, they are acts by humanity upon itself, illustrating what people are capable of doing when they turn from God to a ruthless quest for personal power. It is here that we see the terrible cost of human freedom. To be given enough liberty to love deeply, we must also be given enough liberty to hate deeply. Note how easily love can become loathing when a marriage ends in divorce, as if the two attitudes coexist side-by-side. If God kept us on a tight leash, allowing only a modest amount of rebellion, then that same leash would leave us free to give him only a modest amount of devotion. In other words, if evil is freedom misused, then the more freedom we have the more misuse is possible.
In an ultimate sense, therefore, God shares responsibility for the horror of evil because it is he who lets us self-destruct in our sin. Because he wants our freely-chosen loyalty, he permits us to engage in freely-chosen treachery. But there is no hint anywhere in Revelation that God enjoys such folly. Even when we cry to him for revenge against our enemies (6:10), his response is to give up his own Son as "the Lamb who was slain" both to share our suffering and to show us how human waywardness breaks his heart.
What have we learned from this journey into horror? Three things at least.
That evil is not just a spiritual "bad cold" that can be blown away with a box of Kleenex, but it is a deadly epidemic, a virus of the spirit much like the SARS that so quickly has blighted Asia and brought the world`s most populous nation to its knees.
That we would never choose evil if we knew what it is really like, but it always comes disguised as patriotic fervor or religious zeal or personal fulfillment.
That true freedom is costly indeed because it offers us the opportunity for compassion or cruelty, salvation or destruction, God-centeredness or self-centeredness.
The ability to choose such diametrically different options is the most dangerous gift which we possess!
If these contentions be true, confirmed both by Scripture and by contemporary experience, then how can we overcome that hideous strength that insinuates itself into our lives as counterfeit idealism but, when embraced, seeks only to exploit and enslave? Is it enough to be shocked by the lurid symbolism with which the last book of the Bible ends? John knew that many in his day had already capitulated: "they worshiped the beast, saying, `Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?`" (13:4).
What is to keep us from doing the same in a day when deception is rampant, when the most flagrant sins can be made to seem innocuous with a little media spin? To ask such questions is our first line of defense against the enticements of evil. But there must be more, for our questions only expose the reality of the beast, they do not defeat it. John dared to lay bare the hideousness of the foe because he knew one who could overcome its malevolent power and in whose strength we can do the same:
And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world . . . And I heard a loud voice in heaven saying, "Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser . . . has been thrown down . . . and they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb . . ." (12:9-11).
End Notes
1 Morrow, Lance, "The Real Meaning of Evil," Time, February 24, 2003, 74.
2 Spilsbury, Paul, The Throne, the Lamb & the Dragon: A Reader`s Guide to the Book of Revelation (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002), 98.
3 Spilsbury, 114-125.
Sermon Three: A New Heaven and a New Earth
Few things attract our attention like the suspense of an unresolved conflict. In every struggle the unspoken question brooding over the plot is, Who will be victorious? As we work through the Book of Revelation, particularly after a closer look at the way that the omnipotent God engages the satanic Beast, the outcome seems very uncertain, especially for the early Christians in Asia Minor. The Roman Empire was growing more antagonistic with each new Caesar. Overwhelming military, political, economic, and cultural power seemed to make it irresistible. The vast majority of the population had meekly surrendered to its sovereignty (13:4), and this mood of submission had made serious inroads into the seven churches addressed by John, all of which were struggling to survive. There was lovelessness in Ephesus (2:4), tribulation in Smyrna (2:9-10), heresy in Pergamum (2:14-15), immorality in Thyatira (2:20), spiritual death in Sardis (3:1), weakness in Philadelphia (3:8), and lukewarmness in Laodicea (3:16).
And yet the Book of Revelation exudes an attitude of confidence. Every one of these letters to the seven churches ends with a call to conquer (2:7, 11, 17, 26; 3:5, 12, 21). This confidence was grounded, not in some hope of future triumph, but in the fact that Christ had already conquered and was seated with his father on the throne of heaven (3:21). Because these embattled Christians could now experience in worship the glory of heaven through the presence of the Holy Spirit, the outcome of their struggle was no longer in doubt. They could fight in the certainty that the stranglehold of evil had already been broken by the death and resurrection of the Lamb.
Consider that such an incredible plot line had never been heard of in human history. Here was a tiny religious movement only one generation old, bereft of status, wealth, or legal standing, yet daring to challenge the world`s mightiest empire in a fight to the finish. Most ancient religions served to legitimate the state rather than to oppose it, but the Book of Revelation espoused a Christianity that transcended every political loyalty. How incredible that an exiled prophet on the Isle of Patmos, lacking any of the resources that make for earthly success, dared to trace the outworkings of a victory that had already been determined in a decisive battle fought on a hill called Calvary. Unless the Book of Revelation strains your credulity to the breaking point, you have not understood the audacity of its claims. Let us, in a willing suspension of disbelief, explore how John conceived of such an inconceivable triumph over evil.
The Conflict
The strangest thing about this ultimate struggle against evil is the insistence of Revelation that it is a war in which one side has chosen to fight without weapons. The depth of the paradox is seen in the apparently contradictory reference to "the wrath of the Lamb" (6:16). Here is at once an outraged but vulnerable Lamb pushed to its limit by the horror of evil. On the one hand, there is a wrath that expresses the divine revulsion over our human misuse of freedom. It is the Holy One`s recoil against everything we do that offends his love. There can be no easy tolerance or shallow compromise with the ways of the cosmic dragon and of his earthly beast. It should make our blood run cold to realize just how much God hates sin. But, on the other hand, we must ask what the Lamb does with this wrath, and the answer is that he allows himself to suffer unfairly in order to expose sin for what it really is. Unlike all his enemies, the Lamb is never violent, retaliatory, or vengeful. In contrast to the Caesars, whose towering rages were legendary, he is not a swaggering human despot wielding arbitrary power, but the Lamb is rather an innocent victim led to the slaughter (5:12). Like their Master, the followers of the Lamb were to abhor everything about the Beast, yet refuse to use his methods in opposing their enemies. Nor are we dealing here with mere symbolism. In the showdown precipitated by the Jewish War of AD 70, Christians in Palestine refused to become religious zealots and join their countrymen in the revolt against Rome, choosing rather the way of non-violence that left the outcome to God. This was not so much a political pacifism that refused to fight for one`s own country as it was a religious pacifism which refused to impose faith at the point of a sword as Rome was attempting to do in its growing insistence on emperor worship.
In the ancient world, almost every war was a holy war pitting the god of one nation against the god of another nation. Indeed, religious leaders often led the troops into battle carrying with them sacred objects designed to ensure the favor of a partisan god. By contrast, the recipients of Revelation were being encouraged to fight as the Lamb fought, allowing evil to exhaust its strength in unavailing attacks upon the people of God. That is why John`s "wrath" against Rome was expressed with words rather than with a sword. He was willing to expose evil in no uncertain terms, but not use coercion to control the outcome.
The problem with all of this, of course, is that, in our kind of world, the contest between truth and power seems always to be won by power. Lambs are simply no match for beasts, raising the specter of martyrdom which had taken the life of Jesus and was beginning to take the lives of his followers (2:10, 13; 3:2, 10). Already John`s readers were questioning the fate of those who had resisted Rome to the point of death. As the martyrs cried, "How long, O Lord, before Thou wilt judge and avenge our blood" (6:10), they were immediately given a white robe (6:11) which entitled them to stand before the throne of God (7:9, 13-14). Note here the alchemy of grace: robes washed in red blood become white as snow. Note also that, even though they had made the supreme sacrifice of life itself, it was not their blood that transforms but the blood of the Lamb.
Martyrdom was not a heroic reach for sainthood, or an effort to escape into a better world, but was the ultimate form of political protest against power structures seeking to usurp the place of God. The martyrs were willing to wager their lives that Rome was wrong. In refusing to accept the claims of those in control, they named them as a fraud. The martyrs knew that the books would not be balanced either by this world or in this world, but they viewed the world above as more real than anything this world had to offer. The logic of their ultimate sacrifice was well expressed by Jim Elliott, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."[i]
Does not the Book of Revelation gain contemporary resonance in its emphasis on martyrdom? Never before have so many Christians been persecuted for their beliefs. Estimates run as high as 200-250 million believers living today under threat of torture, rape, enslavement, imprisonment, or even death.[ii] Mass murders in Ambon and Indonesia, have swollen to genocidal proportions in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan. Nor is our immediate spiritual family spared this carnage beginning with the recent death of our own Martha Myers of Montgomery, cut down with two others at the Jibla Baptist Hospital in Yemen, soon joined by Bill Hyde in the Philippines and fourteen year-old Abigail Little in Israel.
Even though we enjoy a remarkable degree of religious freedom in this country, we cannot escape the question of whether, in a showdown with evil, we would be willing to die for our faith, certain of vindication in the world beyond. The very possibility of such a choice forces the question of why God would allow martyrdom to happen. Caird answers insightfully: "Why does God not cut short the suffering of his persecuted people? Sooner or later evil must be allowed to run its destructive course to a close. The answer is that God holds his hand, not willing that any of his creatures should perish, and as long as he does so the martyrs must suffer. Martyrdom, like the Cross, is the cost of divine patience."[iii]
The Conquest
In this messianic war with the Beast, John cherished no illusions that victory would come either quickly or easily. Even though Christ had triumphed over evil in his death and resurrection, and even though his followers were continuing to conquer in the witness of martyrdom, the final triumph of God`s kingdom would not come until the end of history. The stages in this great conflict were seen as somewhat parallel to the exodus in the Old Testament. You may remember that when the children of Israel were allowed to escape Egypt, there followed a long period of wilderness wanderings when they were beset by many foes. The redemption from slavery that began with the crossing of the Red Sea was not completed until the twelve tribes finally crossed the river Jordan and claimed the promised land. Just so, the early Christians would have to fight against the satanic trinity of the dragon or serpent symbolizing supernatural evil, the beast or sea monster symbolizing the imperial power of Rome, and the second beast or earth monster symbolizing the cult of emperor worship before victory would finally be theirs.[iv]
At last, in the great Battle of Armageddon (16:16), followers of the Lamb will find themselves up against all of the earthly power structures that oppose the Kingdom of God, whether they be political, economic, or religious. But there is an ironic note of hope even in this desperate struggle, for the greater the number of foes that converge upon the faith, the more opportunity that gives for faithful witness and loving sacrifice which can lead to repentance and faith. Tragically, all of the enemies of God will not choose to believe, but at least they will all have a chance to face clearly the ultimate alternatives of eternity, namely, whether humans are made for violence and enmity or whether they are made for forgiveness and reconciliation. As Paul put it (Romans 11:32), God condemns everyone who uses their freedom to serve the Beast, but he does so in order that he may have mercy on everyone who responds in faith to the witness of the faithful. His deepest desire is for a victory without any victims, however costly it may be.
If the first stage of conquest is the redemptive work of the Lamb, and the second stage is the faithful witness of his people, then the final stage is the triumphant return of Christ to earth when truth shall reign supreme. Then all will know that the cosmos is an incubator of justice, love, and peace, that deception, intimidation, and exploitation were never meant to control human affairs. Those who have learned to love the truth will welcome the coming of Christ, while those who have built their lives on lies will find their foundations swept away.
Closely connected to the coming of Christ will be the millennium, or thousand year period, which defines that final "day of the Lord" to which the prophets eagerly looked. Then the Beast will be seen to be defeated (20:3) and the martyrs will be seen to be triumphant (20:4), a state of affairs which will usher in the Kingdom of God "on earth as it is in heaven," for which Jesus taught us to pray (Matthew 6:10). This symbolism provides a way of affirming that God is both creator and redeemer, that he is Lord both of this world and of the world to come, and that he will make a new earth as well as a new heaven (21:1), thereby removing the dualistic antagonism between the two realms.
It may seem strange that, when this millennium of earthly peace ends, the devil will be released and given a final chance to deceive the nations once again (20:7-8). This tells us that evil never learns anything, even if given a thousand years to brood in the prison of a bottomless pit. But, when the Beast resorts to its old bag of tricks, it can no longer prevail, even if it arouses the multitudes to fight, for the victory of the saints is now impregnable (20:9-10). In other words, Christ`s triumphant kingdom, both in heaven and on earth, is one that evil cannot overthrow even when given a second chance. Once the Lamb has finally prevailed, the Beast will never again have the upper hand. This was John`s way of saying that God`s redemption is eternally dependable!
The Consummation
Once the millennium declares God`s determination to create a New Earth, then we are ready to be told how he also intends to create a New Heaven (21:1). When we ask what could be "new" about a heaven that is eternal, the answer is that now, for the first time since the Garden of Eden, it is in perfect harmony with God`s earth and includes all of the redeemed of the ages for whom the Lamb came to suffer and die. The only thing that surpasses John`s hideous description of evil is his beautiful description of heaven in the closing chapters of Revelation. He exhausts hyperbole to describe what God has always wanted to provide for his own. Images of precious and semi-precious stones are employed to depict a kingdom where the highest values are treasured and preserved rather than desecrated and destroyed.
In contrast to the evil city of Babylon, which was likened to a harlot, John describes heaven in terms of a holy city called the New Jerusalem, which will be the antithesis of Rome in his day. It has been helpfully described it as a place where earth is truly joined to heaven, where the people dwell together in harmony with God, and where they enjoy his presence without any of the barriers that kept the emperors at arm`s length from their subjects.[v]
This heavenly Jerusalem is to be open and inclusive (21:25), a place where all may gather for worship without temple walls to segregate one group from another (21:22). Supreme in this vision, as Kathleen Norris put it, is "a God who comes to be with those who have suffered the most in a cruel, unjust, and violent world. A God who does not roar and strut like the ultimate dictator but who gently wipes away all tears from their eyes`" (21:4).[vi] No other god in the ancient world did a mother`s work of drying tearful eyes.
Most of all, heaven will be a place of life. In pride of place are the tree of life and the river of life, showing that God is the giver of life. The river of life flows through the midst of the city where all may gain access to it, and on either side it nourishes the tree of life, bearing fruit throughout the year, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations (22:1-2). Here the "culture of death" spawned by sin is overcome by redeemed relationships that nourish a "culture of life" (22:3).
Looking back over this three-part series, we see that the Book of Revelation compels us to focus on one key issue: where is a power mighty enough to subdue evil yet gentle enough to leave us free? Through the centuries we have tried many solutions that did not work. War can bring victory to the powerful, but it leaves a legacy of bitterness and fear among its victims. Wealth can purchase influence and bolster reputation, but it causes jealousy to fester beneath the surface. Education can create a learned elite, but all too often the sophisticated exploit the ignorant for their own advantage. These options offer powerful temptations to America today because we are by far the strongest, richest, and most educated country in the world. Rome became an imperium mighty enough to conquer everything in its domain except evil. Let those who would turn America into a modern empire take heed!
The deepest insight of the Apocalypse is that evil can be defeated only by "the Lamb who was slain" (5:12). That is, we shall never finally subdue the Beast that ravages planet earth except by living and dying as Jesus did. That is as difficult a message in the twenty-first century as it was in the first century. But lest it be dismissed as hopelessly impractical, remember that this was precisely the strategy used by the early Christians to conquer the Roman Empire. For a quarter of a millennium, Rome did its worst to stamp out the Christian movement, accusing it of being atheistic because it would not deify the State, yet never once did the faithful fight back with force. At last, when pomp and power, intimidation and violence had done its worst, it was the followers of the Lamb rather than the Caesars who had won! Incredible as it may seem, they won without ever lifting the sword, without ever strutting in the marketplace, without ever exploiting the vulnerable. Mystery of mysteries, the Beast really was defeated by not being resisted. What John had to believe as an audacious hope, we may now verify as a fact of history.
Doubtless there are many of us who devoutly hope that in some remote future the kingdom of Christ will vanquish the kingdom of the Beast. But John would not have it so. His times were so desperate that he was impelled by a breathtaking sense of urgency to plead for radical change sooner rather than later (1:1-3; 22:20), which was the hardest possible time for change to come. Even though Rome was in total control of his earthly existence, he dared to ask for relief then and there without delay (10:6). There was nothing that Rome could offer that he yearned to possess even for a moment. And what about us? Are we ready-right now!-for every kingdom of this world, whether it be political or economic or social or religious, to "become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, that he may reign forever and ever" (11:15)? If we are unwilling to let anything in time and space stand between us and eternity, then let us cry with the prophet of Patmos, "Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus!" (22:7, 10, 12, 20).
Footnotes
1 Cited by Jere Van Dyk, "A Noble Calling," Wall Street Journal, January 17, 2003, W-13.
2 Bennett, Ralph Kinney, "The Global War on Christians," Reader`s Digest, August, 1997, 51-55.
3 Caird, G. B., A Commentary on the Revelation of St. John the Divine, Harper`s New Testament Commentaries (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 295.
4 Bauckham, Richard, The Theology of the Book of Revelation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 89.
5 Bauckman, 26-144.
6 Norris, Kathleen, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith (New York: Riverhead Books, 1998), 321.
