The Theology of the Book of Revelation Read online

  It is remarkable how the meaning of this passage (15:2–4) thus coincides exactly with that of 11:11–13, even though a quite different set of images is used in each passage. This confirms our interpretation of both. However, our interpretation, which recognizes a quite remarkably positive universal hope in Revelation, must also face a difficulty. After the passage we have just studied, Revelation continues, in 15:5–19:21, with a series of visions of the final judgment: first, the series of seven last plagues culminating in the fall of Babylon (15:5–16:21), then a vision of the fall of Babylon (18:1–19:8), and finally a vision of Christ’s coming to judgment and the battle of Armageddon (19:11–21).

  At the first sight we might suppose that the seven last plagues are the judgments to which the song of the martyrs refers (15:4), especially since they are modelled on the plagues of Egypt. But this cannot be. They are total judgments, not even limited like the ineffective warning judgments of the seal-openings and the trumpets, certainly quite unlike the salvific judgment of 11:13. Therefore their effect is that people curse God (16:9, 11, 21). This is not only an advance on the mere failure to repent which is noticed after the sixth trumpet (9:20–1; cf. 16:9). It is the precise opposite of fearing God, giving him glory and worshipping him (11:13; 14:7; 15:4; cf. 16:9). It is true that none of the seven plagues is said to have killed anyone, but this is because the final doom of the unrepentant who curse God comes at the battle of Armageddon, at which the kings of the whole world gather with their armies (16:12–16), in alliance with the beast, to oppose Christ (17:12–14), who finally comes as king of kings to destroy them (19:19–21). The grim picture of slaughter in 19:18–19 uses strikingly universalistic language: ‘the flesh of all, both free and slave, both small and great’ (19:19; cf. 6:15; 13:16). This is no image of the nations coming to worship God, but of the destruction of those who refuse to worship him. The judgments of chapters 16–19 are primarily aimed at destroying the systems – political, economic and religious – which oppose God and his righteousness and which are symbolized by the beast, the false prophet, Babylon, and the kings of the earth. But those who support these systems, who persist in worshipping the beast, heeding neither the call to worship God nor the threat to those who worship the beast (14:6–11), evidently must perish with the evil systems with which they have identified themselves.

  There is at least a tension here. The way the seven last plagues follow the martyrs’ singing of the song of Moses and the Lamb was already anticipated at the end of chapter 14, in the way the positive image of the harvest of the earth was followed by the negative image of the winepress. John seems content to place indications of the universal conversion of the nations alongside references in equally universal terms to final judgment. But he is not making the kind of statements which need to be logically compatible to be valid. He is painting pictures which each portray a valid aspect of the truth. He depicts the faithful witness of the church leading to the repentance and faith of all the nations. He depicts the world which rejects their witness, unrepentant in its final adherence to the beast, necessarily subject to final judgment. The two pictures correspond to the choice presented to the nations by the proclamations of the angels in 14:6–11. It is no part of the purpose of John’s prophecy to pre-empt this choice in a prediction of the degree of success the witness of the martyrs will have. Even if this could be known, it is not what his readers need to know. For them, the prophecy is a call not to be identified with the beast or with Babylon and to share their doom, but to bear courageously and faithfully the testimony of jesus to the point of death. In this way they fulfil their calling to be God’s special people for the salvation of all the peoples.

  If this positive aspect of the prophetic future necessarily falls out of view, while the visions of final judgment take their course, it returns to prove its theological priority – and therefore eschatological ultimacy – in the vision of the New Jerusalem. The voice from the throne in 21:3 proclaims:

  Behold, the dwelling of God is with humans.

  He will dwell with them as their God;

  they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them.13

  In a characteristic use of the Old Testament, these words combine two sources. Ezekiel 37:27–8 reads:

  My dwelling place shall be with them [Israel]; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Then the nations shall know that I the LORD sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary is among them for evermore.

  But this vision of God’s people among the nations is taken a step further in Zechariah 2:10–11:

  Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion! For lo, I will come and dwell in your midst, says the LORD. Many nations shall join themselves to the LORD on that day, and shall be my people; and I will dwell in your midst.

  As in his version of the song of Moses, John takes up the most universalistic form of the hope of the Old Testament. It will not be Israel alone that will be God’s people with whom he dwells. It will not even be the eschatological Israel, redeemed from every people. Rather, as a result of the witness of the special people, all the peoples will be God’s peoples (see also 21:24–6).

  THE PAROUSIA

  It will be useful to sum up the first two stages of Christ’s work of establishing God’s rule. In the first stage, by his faithful witness to death as the Passover Lamb of the new exodus, he won the comprehensive victory over all evil. The immediate result was the creation of a people, drawn from all the nations, who are already God’s kingdom in the midst of opposition in this rebellious world. But this elect people is called to a role in the achievement of God’s universal kingdom which is revealed by the opening of the sealed scroll and which it is the central purpose of John’s prophecy to communicate to the churches. The people called from all nations are to participate in Christ’s victory by bearing witness, as he did, as far as death, in a great conflict with the idolatrous power of the Roman Empire. In this way they will witness to all the nations and bring them to repentance and faith in the true God. Revelation sets side by side, without qualifying one by the other, the two possible outcomes: the conversion of the nations and their inclusion in God’s kingdom or the judgment of the unrepentant nations.

  This second possibility means that there is a third and final stage of Christ’s work, which, like the first and second, is also described as victory – in Revelation 17:14. Although the syntactical connexion of the final words of that verse (referring to ‘those with him’) with the rest of the statement is not unambiguous, the meaning must be that the Lamb’s followers (almost certainly the martyrs triumphant with him over death) share in his victory. They accompany him in the battle as the kings accompany the beast (17:12). They are the armies of heaven who ride with him (19:14), when he appears as the divine Warrior from heaven riding to victory (19:11). He comes as ‘king of kings and lord of lords’ (17:14; 19:16) to crush all political power that does not acknowledge the rule of God that he implements on earth.

  But again we need the image of witness to supplement that of war in understanding Revelation’s picture of the parousia. Witness to the truth is double-edged. On the one hand, it is the only means of winning people from lies and illusion to the truth. So it can convert people from the worship of the beast to the worship of the true God. But, on the other hand, witness which is rejected becomes evidence against those who reject it. Those who love lies and cling to delusion in the face of truth can only be condemned by truth. This is why Revelation characteristically joins truth to justice in speaking of God’s judgments on evil (15:3; 16:7; 19:2; cf. 6:10).

  While the devil and the beast reign, the earth is the sphere of deceit and illusion. Truth is seen first in heaven and then when it comes from heaven to earth. At 19:11, heaven opens and truth himself, the Word of God (19:13), rides to earth. This is the point at which the perspective of heaven prevails on earth, finally dispelling all the lies of the beast. It must finally be evident to all who has the true divine sovereignty, and so although Christ in this passage is given
several names, the name which is visible for all to see, blazoned on the side of his robe is: ‘Kings of kings and lord of lords’ (19:16). The military imagery is controlled by judicial imagery. The sword with which he slays is the sword that comes from his mouth (19:15, 21): his word of true judgment (cf. 1:16; 2:12, 16). His eyes of flame (19:12) are those of the divine judge who sees infallibly into hearts and minds (1:14; 2:18, 23). So this is not the slaughtered Lamb turned slaughterer, but it is the witness turned judge. The ‘faithful and true witness’ (3:14) is now ‘called faithful and true’ (19:11), but not witness. His same faithfulness to the same truth now makes him the judge of those who persist in lies. Similarly, although he is not portrayed as the Lamb (but cf. 7:14), the blood of his faithful witness to death still marks him (19:13a) and qualifies him to be the Word of God in person (19:13b). So it is the truth of God, to which the Lamb and the martyrs have witnessed, which here finally prevails over those who would not be won to it, condemning them to perish with their lies (19:20). In consequence of this victory over deceit on earth, the devil himself, the source of all lies, is bound so that he may not deceive the nations (20:1–3).

  With this understanding of the witness of jesus to the truth of God, which is salvific, intended to liberate people from error, but which must in the end condemn those who reject it, it is instructive to compare John 12:46–9: exactly the same thought in an idiom rather different from Revelation’s. It helps to explain why early Christians commonly understood Jesus as both Saviour now and Judge at the end, without feeling any of the incongruity modern minds often find in that combination.

  THE MILLENNIUM

  Mention must finally be made of the millennium, because in the theology of Revelation the millennium is to be understood in very close connexion with the parousia. This is shown by the fate of the devil, who finally shares the same fate as the beast and the false prophet, but only after a delay of a thousand years (19:20; 20:1–3, 7–10). The consequence of the parousia is the destruction of all evil, but the destruction of evil at its deepest level is portrayed not as an immediate consequence, but one delayed a thousand years. Before asking why this is, we must notice that another effect of the millennium is to separate one aspect of the last judgment (20:4) by a thousand years from the last judgment itself (20:11–13). Comparing Revelation 20 with one of its major sources, the vision of the divine judgment in Daniel 7:9, we see that the thrones of Revelation 20:4 come from Daniel 7:9, and the opening of the books in Revelation 20:11 from Daniel 7:10.

  Daniel 7 concerns the destruction of the beast that has persecuted the people of God and the transference of his kingdom to the Son of Man and his people. It is this which Revelation depicts in 19:11–21 (the destruction of the beast) and 20:4–6 (the transference of the kingdom to the saints). The negative aspect of the final judgment (19:11–21), in which the beast was condemned, requires as its positive counterpart that judgment be given in favour of the martyrs, who must be vindicated and rewarded. In the contest between the beast and the witnesses of Jesus the beast appeared to triumph and the martyrs to be defeated. When the heavenly perspective finally prevails on earth, so that the truth of things becomes evident, not only must the beast be seen to be defeated, but also the martyrs must be seen to triumph. As the kings of the earth who shared the beast’s usurped rule are deprived of their kingdom, so the martyrs now reign with Christ.

  Thus what is said about the martyrs in 20:4–6 is strictly limited to what contrasts with the fate of the beast. Their evidence, with Christ’s, has condemned him, but the divine court vindicates them. He has been thrown into the lake of fire (19:20), which is the second death (20:14), but they come to life and the second death has no power over them (20:4–6). The kingdom has been taken from him and is given to them. Now that the destroyers of the earth have been destroyed (11:18), the earth is given to Christ’s people to rule with him (20:4; cf. 5:10; Dan. 7:18, 27). Life and rule – the two issues on which the contest between the martyrs and the beast had focussed – are the sole themes of 20:4–6, and they are merely asserted, without elaboration.

  This shows that the theological point of the millennium is solely to demonstrate the triumph of the martyrs: that those whom the beast put to death are those who will truly live – eschatologically, and that those who contested his right to rule and suffered for it are those who will in the end rule as universally as he – and for much longer: a thousand years! Finally, to demonstrate that their triumph in Christ’s kingdom is not one which evil can again reverse, that it is God’s last word for good against evil, the devil is given a last chance to deceive the nations again (20:7–8). But it is no re-run of the rule of the beast. The citadel of the saints proves impregnable (20:9).

  Thus John has taken from the Jewish apocalyptic tradition the notion of a temporary messianic reign on earth before the last judgment and the new creation (cf. 2 Bar. 40:3; 4 Ezra 7:28–9; b.Sanh. 99a), but he has characteristically made something different of it. He has used it to depict an essential aspect of his concept of the victory of the martyrs over the beast. He has given the image of the millennium a very specific function. But once we take the image literally – as predicting an actual period in the future history of the world – it is impossible to limit it to this function. We then have to ask all the questions which interpreters of Revelation ask about the millennium14 but which John does not answer because they are irrelevant to the function he gives it in his symbolic universe. We have to ask: whom do the saints rule? Do they rule from heaven or on earth? How is the eschatological life of resurrection compatible with an unrenewed earth? Who are the nations Satan deceives at the end of the millennium? And so on. The millennium becomes incomprehensible once we take the image literally. But there is no more need to take it literally than to suppose that the sequences of judgments (the seal-openings, the trumpets, the bowls) are literal predictions. John no doubt expected there to be judgments, but his descriptions of them are imaginative schemes designed to depict the meaning of the judgments. John expected the martyrs to be vindicated, but the millennium depicts the meaning, rather than predicting the manner of their vindication.

  * * *

  1 For the messianic war, see E. Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ, revised and ed. G. Vermes, F. Millar, M. Black, vol. 11 (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1979), 517–35; M. Hengel, The Zealots (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1989), 271–319; A. Yarbro Collins, ‘The Political Perspective of the Revelation to John’, JBL 96 (1977), 241–56; R. Bauckham, ‘The Book of Revelation as a Christian Wrar Scroll’, Neot. 22(1988), 17–40, which becomes chapter 8 in Bauckham, The Climax of Prophecy.

  2 Isa. 11:11–12:6; 43:14–21; 51:10 11; 1 Enoch 1:4; 1 QM 1–2; Ap.Abr. 30:2–31:1; cf. Josephus, Ant. 20:97–8; Liv.Proph. 2:11–19; 12:12–13.

  3 Cf. allusions to Isa. 53 with reference to the passion of Christ elsewhere in the New Testament, especially Luke 22:37; Heb. 9:28; 1 Pet. 2:22.

  4 For this interpretation, cf. H. B. Swete, The Apocalypse of St John (London: Macmillan, second edn, 1907), 156; G. B. Caird, The Revelation of St John the Divine (London: A. & C Black, 1966), 156–7.

  5 For the argument of this section in more detail, see Bauckham, ‘The Book of Revelation as a Christian War Scroll’ (n. 1 above).

  6 For the argument of this section and the next section in more detail, see chapter 9 (‘The Conversion of the Nations’) in Bauckham, The Climax of Prophecy.

  7 This point is argued convincingly by F. D. Mazzaferri, The Genre of the Book of Revelation from a Source-Critical Perspective (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1989), 265–79.

  8 This distinguishes Rev. 11 from the widespread apocalyptic tradition about the return of Enoch and Elijah. The forms of this tradition which are closest to Rev. 11 (in expecting the martyrdom of the two prophets) have been influenced by Rev. 11: see R. Bauckham, ‘The Martyrdom of Enoch and Elijah: Jewish or Christian?’, JBL 95 (1976), 447–58.

  9 For the argument of this section in more de
tail, see Bauckham, ‘The Book of Revelation as a Christian War Scroll’ (n. 1 above).

  10 For these three figures, their mythical background and their historical reference in Revelation, see G. R. Beasley-Murray, The Book of Revelation (London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1974), 191–221; A. Yarbro Collins, The Combat Myth in the Book of Revelation (Harvard Dissertations in Religion 9; Missoula, Montana: Scholars Press, 1976), chapter 4; J. M. Court, Myth and History in the Book of Revelation (London: SPCK, 1979), chapter 6; F. R. McCurley, Ancient Myths and Biblical Faith (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983), chapters 2–3; S. R. F. Price, Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge University Press, 1984), 62–4; R. Bauckham, ‘The Figurae of John of Patmos’, in Ann Williams, ed., Prophecy and Millenarianism: Essays in Honour of Marjorie Reeves (London: Longman, 1980), 107–25: revised version (chapter 6: ‘The Lion, the Lamb and the Dragon’) in Bauckham, The Climax of Prophecy.

  11 For the argument of this section and the next section in more detail, see chapter 9 (‘The Conversion of the Nations’) in Bauckham, The Climax of Prophecy.