The Theology of the Book of Revelation Read online

  The content of the scroll is revealed in summary immediately: in 11:1–13. This passage therefore contains, in nuce, the central message of John’s whole prophecy. It is placed here to indicate how the church’s witness to the nations intervenes before the final judgment, the seventh trumpet, with which God’s kingdom finally comes (11:15–19). Then, in chapters 12–15, the church’s victorious conflict with the powers of evil is given a much more extended treatment, which is then integrated into the extended account, which follows, of the final judgment and its results (15–22). The relation between 11:1–13 and chapters 12–15 can be seen from the way a series of new images are introduced in 11:1–13 with enigmatic brevity, anticipating their fuller treatment in the following chapters: the great city (11:8), the beast and his war against the saints (11:7), the symbolic time period (11:2–3) which is the period of the church’s conflict with the beast. These images are taken up when the church’s conflict with the beast is put in a larger context in chapters 12–15. But 11:1–13 itself gives John’s fullest treatment of the way in which the church’s witness secures the repentance and faith of the nations. So we must give it some close attention.

  THE TWO WITNESSES

  The content of the scroll is not that faithful Christians are to suffer martyrdom or that their martyrdom will be their victory: these things are already clear in 6:9–11; 7:9–14. The new revelation is that their faithful witness and death is to be instrumental in the conversion of the nations of the world. Their victory is not simply their own salvation from a world doomed to judgment, as might appear from chapter 7, but the salvation of the nations. God’s kingdom is to come not simply by saving an elect people who acknowledge his rule from a rebellious world over which his kingdom prevails merely by extinguishing the rebels. It is to come as the sacrificial witness of the elect people who already acknowledge God’s rule brings the rebellious nations also to acknowledge his rule. The people of God have been redeemed from all the nations (5:9) in order to bear prophetic witness to all the nations (11:3–13).

  This is what the story of the two witnesses (11:3–13) symbolically dramatizes. Two individuals here represent the church in its faithful witness to the world. Their story must be taken neither literally nor even as an allegory, as though the sequence of events in this story were supposed to correspond to a sequence of events in the church’s history. The story is more like a parable, which dramatizes the nature and the result of the church’s witness. Thus we should not, for example, suppose the story to imply that only after all faithful Christians have completed their witness and suffered martyrdom will they be vindicated in the eyes of their enemies and the latter be converted. The story is more likely to dramatize what will be happening all the time while Christians bear faithful witness to the world.

  That the two witnesses symbolize the church in its role of witnessing to the world is shown by the identification of them as lampstands (11:4), the symbol of the churches in chapter 1, where the seven churches are represented as seven lampstands (1:12, 20). That they are only two does not indicate that they are only part of the whole church, but corresponds to the well-known biblical requirement that evidence be acceptable only on the testimony of two witnesses (Deut. 19:15). They are therefore the church insofar as it fulfils its role as faithful witness. As witnesses they are also prophets (11:3, 10), modelled especially on the Old Testament figures of Elijah and Moses (11:5–6; cf. 2 Kings 1:10–12; 1 Kings 17:1; Exod. 7:14–24).8 But they are not Elijah and Moses redivivi, since the powers of both Elijah and Moses are attributed to both witnesses (11:6). Nor do Moses and Elijah here stand for the law and the prophets. Both are prophets. As prophets who both confronted the world of pagan idolatry they set the precedent for the church’s prophetic witness to the world.

  Moses and Elijah did not suffer martyrdom, but in New Testament times this was often thought to have been the fate of most of the Old Testament prophets and virtually the expected fate of any prophet. However, 11:8 shows that the principal precedent for the death of the two witnesses is that of jesus. The parallel continues with their resurrection and ascension after three and a half days (11:11–12): John has converted the three days of the Gospel story into the conventional apocalyptic number three and a half. So it is the witness of Jesus himself that the witnesses continue, and their death is a participation in the blood of the Lamb. It is also clear from the universalistic language of 11:9–10 that it is a witness to all nations. The city which is the scene of their prophecy, death and vindication cannot be Jerusalem, in spite of the reference to Jesus’ crucifixion there (11:8), but because of that reference nor can it be only Rome, to which, under the symbol of Babylon, ‘the great city’ refers elsewhere in Revelation (14:8; 18:16, 18, 19, 21). It is any and every city in which the church bears its prophetic witness to the nations.

  Judgments alone do not lead to repentance (9:20–1). The witness of the witnesses does lead to repentance, though not independently of judgments, but in conjunction with them (11:6, 13). The point is not simply that their witness to the true God and his righteousness reinforces the evidence of judgments, though it is certainly the case that their perseverance in witness even at the cost of their lives is powerful evidence. Nor is it even simply that the judgments are only intelligible as the judgments of God when accompanied by verbal witness. The point is rather that judgments themselves do not convey God’s gracious willingness to forgive those who repent. Although the general impression of the witnesses the passage gives might seem to be severe, we should give full weight, since it is the one indication of what they say, to the fact that they are dressed in sackcloth (11:3), the symbol of repentance (cf. Jonah 3:4–10; Matt. 11:21; Luke 10:13). This means that, confronted with a world addicted to idolatry and evil (9:20–1), they proclaim the one true God and his coming judgment on evil (cf. 14:7), but they do so as a call to repentance. Therefore, once their witness is seen, not to be refuted by their death, but vindicated as the truth (11:11–13), all who see this repent. Verse 13 certainly means that all the survivors genuinely repent and acknowledge the one true God. The description of their response corresponds to the invitation of the angel who, in 14:6–7, calls on all nations to acknowledge God. It also contrasts with 9:20–1 (cf. 16:9–11). After the judgments of the trumpets, ‘the rest’ (hoi loipoi) did not repent (9:20); after the earthquake which accompanied the vindication of the witnesses, ‘the rest’ (hoi loipoi) feared God and gave him glory (11:13).

  The remarkably universal, positive result of the witnesses’ testimony is underlined by the symbolic arithmetic of 11:13. In the judgments announced by Old Testament prophets a tenth part (Isa. 6:13; Amos 5:3) or seven thousand people (1 Kings 19:18) are the faithful remnant who are spared when the judgment wipes out the majority. In a characteristically subtle use of allusion, John reverses this. Only a tenth suffers the judgment, and the ‘remnant’ (hoi loipoi) who are spared are the nine-tenths. Not the faithful minority, but the faithless majority are spared, so that they may come to repentance and faith. Thanks to the witness of the witnesses, the judgment is actually salvific. In this way, John indicates the novelty of the witness of the two witnesses over against the Old Testament prophets whom he has used as their precedents. This is especially the case in that the reference to the seven thousand alludes to the effect of Elijah’s ministry. Elijah was to bring about the judgment of all except the faithful seven thousand, who were spared (1 Kings 19:14–18). The two witnesses will bring about the conversion of all except the seven thousand, who are judged. Of course, the contrast is made in symbolic terms, and so it would be inappropriate to wonder why the seven thousand could not also have been converted.

  To be the witnesses who bring the nations to faith in the one true God is the novel role of God’s eschatological people, revealed by the scroll that only the Lamb has been able to open. If we ask how the prophetic witness of the church is able to have this effect, which that of the Old Testament prophets did not, the answer is no doubt that it derives its pow
er from the victory of the Lamb himself. His witness had the power of a witness maintained even to the point of death and then vindicated as true witness by his resurrection. The witness of his followers participates in this power when they too are faithful witnesses even to death. The symbolic narrative of 11:11–12 means not that the nations have to see the literal resurrection of the Christian martyrs before they are convinced of the truth of their witness, but that they have to perceive the martyrs’ participation in Christ’s triumph over death. In fact, the way that Christian martyrdom, in the early centuries of the church, impressed and won people to faith in the Christian God, was precisely thus. The martyrs were effective witnesses to the truth of the Gospel because their faith in Christ’s victory over death was so convincingly evident in the way they faced death and died.

  DEFEATING THE BEAST

  Of the three major symbolic motifs we have been tracing – the messianic war, the new exodus and witness – it is, of course, the third that dominates the story of the two witnesses (11:3–13), although there are hints of the messianic war (11:7) and the new exodus (11:6, 8). These hints are taken up and developed in chapters 12–15, which treat at greater length the same theme of the role of the faithful followers of Christ in the coming of God’s kingdom. In this section we shall consider the theme of messianic war in chapters 12–14.9

  The call to Revelation’s readers or hearers to ‘conquer’ is fundamental to the structure and theme of the book. It demands the readers’ active participation in the divine war against evil. Everything else that is said in the seven messages to the churches has this aim, expressed in the promise to the conquerors that concludes each (2:7, 11, 17, 28; 3:5, 12, 21): to enable the readers to take part in the struggle to establish God’s universal kingdom against all opposition. The eschatological content of the promises, as well as the single promise to the conquerors which matches them at the climax of the whole book in 21:7, shows that it is only by conquering that the members of the churches may enter the New Jerusalem (cf. 22:14). The visions that intervene between the seven messages to the churches and the final vision of the New Jerusalem are to enable the readers to move from one to the other, to understand what conquering involves.

  The verb ‘to conquer’ is left intriguingly without an object (except once, when the beast is its subject: 11:7) until chapter 12. This is because it is only in chapters 12–13 that the principal enemies of God, who must be defeated to make way for his kingdom, are introduced. They are the satanic trinity: the dragon or serpent (the primeval, supernatural source of all opposition to God), the beast or sea-monster (the imperial power of Rome), and the second beast or earth-monster (the propaganda machine of the imperial cult).10 (Babylon, the great harlot, who represents the corrupt and exploitative civilization of the city of Rome, supported by the political and military power of the empire, is not properly introduced until chapter 17, but she has a rather different status. Christians are not called to conquer her, but to ‘come out of her’ (18:4), i.e. to dissociate themselves from her evil.) The powerful mythic resonances of the images of chapters 12–13 place the coming confrontation between Christians and the power of Rome in the perspective of the cosmic war of evil against God and his faithful people. The initial confrontation between the serpent and the woman who bears the child who will defeat him in the end (12:1–5) takes the story back to the garden of Eden (cf. Gen. 3:15), and, since the woman is not only Eve but also Zion, from whom the Messiah is born (cf. Isa. 66:7–9), also takes in the history of pre-Christian Israel. Some of the oldest mythological images of the divine Warrior’s victory over the monsters of chaos are revived. The dragon is Leviathan, the seven-headed serpent whom the Lord with his great sword will punish on the last day (Isa. 27:1), while the ancestry of the beast also goes back (via the monsters of Daniel 7:2–8) to Leviathan, since he rises out of the sea. Moreover, the conjunction of the sea-monster and the earth-monster (13:1, 11) echoes the traditional pair of monsters, Leviathan and Behemoth, rulers respectively of sea and land. Thus the bestial figures are essentially primeval forces of evil, destined for ultimate defeat by the divine Warrior at the last day, but currently incarnated in the oppressive power of the Roman Empire, which surpasses in its military violence and its deification of its own power even the evil empires of the past (Dan. 7:2–8).

  It is these intimidating forces that Christians, as the Lamb’s army (14:1–5), are called on to defeat by their faithful witness to the point of death, that is, by the blood of the Lamb. They have already so defeated the dragon (12:11). Now that, cast down from heaven, he musters his forces on earth in the form of the imperial power (12:12, 18–13:2), they must defeat the beast (15:2). But the use of the verb ‘to conquer’ is not so simple. It is also said, as already anticipated in 11:7, that the beast ‘was allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer them’ (13:12). The point is not that the beast and the Christians each win some victories; rather, the same event – the martyrdom of Christians – is described both as the beast’s victory over them and as their victory over the beast. In this way John poses the question: who are the real victors? The answer depends on whether one sees things from the earthly perspective of those who worship the beast or from the heavenly perspective which John’s visions open up for his readers. To the inhabitants of the earth (13:8) it is obvious that the beast has defeated the martyrs. The political and military might of the beast, which seems to carry all before it and wins the admiration and the worship of the world, here seems triumphant even over the witnesses of jesus. That it can put the Christian martyrs to death apparently with impunity seems the final proof of the invincible, godlike might of the beast. In the judicial contest as to who is the true God – the beast or the one to whom the martyrs witness – it seems the verdict is clear: the evidence of the martyrs has been refuted.

  Even Christians must have been tempted to see it that way. They were a tiny minority of powerless people up against the overwhelming might of the state and the overwhelming pressure of pagan society. To refuse to compromise was to become even more helpless victims. What was the point of resisting the beast when he was proving irresistible? But John’s message is that from the heavenly perspective things look quite different. The martyrs are the real victors. To be faithful in witness to the true God even to the point of death is not to become a victim of the beast, but to take the field against him and win. But only in a vision of heaven (7:9–14; 15:2–3) or a voice from heaven (11:12; 14:2) can the martyrs be recognized as victors. The perspective of heaven must break into the earth-bound delusion of the beast’s propaganda to enable a different assessment of the same empirical fact: the beast’s apparent victory is the martyrs’ – and therefore God’s – real victory.

  The heavenly perspective has the power of truth. When the martyrs testify to the true God against the spurious divine claims of the beast and refuse to admit the lies of the beast even when they could evade death by doing so, they win the victory of truth over deceit. The beast’s lies cannot deceive them or even win their lip-service by coercion. He can kill them, but he cannot suppress their witness to the truth. Their death does not refute their evidence, because even in their death the power of truth to convince overcomes the power of mere physical might to suppress it. Hence perhaps the most important contrast between the forces of evil and the army of the Lamb is the contrast between deceit and truth. The dragon is the one who deceives the whole world (12:9; cf. 20:2–3, 7–8) the second beast deceives the inhabitants of the earth with its propaganda for the divinity of the beast (13:14; cf. 19:21), Babylon deceives all nations with her sorceries (18:23), but the followers of the Lamb, like the Lamb himself, are entirely without deceit (14:5; cf. 3:14).

  So the theme of messianic war has brought us back to the theme of witness to the truth. As usual, John’s major themes serve to interpret one another. But the theme of the messianic war has its own importance. By using the military image for both assessments of what is happening when the martyrs die – the beast is vi
ctorious, the Lamb is victorious – John is able to pose most effectively the crucial issue of how one sees things. Is the world a place in which military and political might carries all before it or is it one in which suffering witness to the truth prevails in the end? Thus Revelation offers its readers prophetic discernment guided by the core of Christian faith: that Jesus Christ won his comprehensive victory over all evil by suffering witness. It also calls for courageous adherence to that discernment in practice, as the calls ‘For the endurance and faithfulness of the saints’ (13:10; cf. 14:12), inserted into the portrayal of the messianic war, indicate. Whereas modern terminology calls martyrdom ‘passive resistance’, John’s military imagery makes it just as active as any physical warfare. While rejecting the apocalyptic militancy that called for literal holy war against Rome, John’s message is not, ‘Do not resist!’ It is, ‘Resist! – but by witness and martyrdom, not by violence.’ On the streets of the cities of Asia, John’s readers are not to compromise but to resist the idolatry of the pagan state and pagan society. In so doing they will be playing an indispensable part in the working-out of the Lamb’s victory.

  Does John expect that, in the impending conflict with the power of the Roman Empire, all faithful Christians will suffer martyrdom? He certainly writes as though he did. Although in Revelation the term ‘to conquer’ does not simply mean to die as a martyr, it certainly includes death (12:11). Christians conquer the beast by their faithful witness to the truth of God up to and including death for maintaining this witness. In this way their faithful witness to the point of death participates in the power of the victory Christ won by his faithful witness to the point of death: they conquer ‘by the blood of the Lamb’ (12:11; cf. 7:14). But ‘conquering’ is not represented in Revelation as something to which only some Christians are called. The promises to the conquerors at the end of each of the seven messages to the churches present conquering as the only way for Christians to reach their eschatological destiny. The point is reinforced by the promise God himself gives the conquerors in 21:7, where there are clearly only two options: to conquer and inherit the eschatological promises, or to suffer the second death in the lake of fire (21:8). The same alternatives are presented as the only choices for John’s readers in 22:14–15 (where those ‘who wash their robes’ (i.e. in the blood of the Lamb) are the martyrs: cf. 7:14).