The Theology of the Book of Revelation Read online

1 See J. D. G. Dunn, Christology in the Making (London: SCM Press, 1980), chapters VI-VII; J. F. Balchin, ‘Paul, Wisdom and Christ’, in H. Rowdon, ed., Christ the Lord: Studies in Christology presented to Donald Guthrie (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1982), 204–19.

  2 The argument of this and the next three paragraphs is presented in greater detail in R. Bauckham, ‘The Worship of Jesus in Apocalyptic Christianity’, NTS 27 (1980–1), 322–41; revised version: chapter 4 (‘The Worship of Jesus’), in Bauckham, The Climax of Prophecy.

  3 Ap.Zeph. 6:11–15; Asc.Isa. 7:21–2; 8:5; Ap.Paul (Coptic ending); cf. Tob. 12:16–22; Jos. As. 15:12; Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew 3:3; Lad Jac. 3:3–5; 3 Enoch 16:2–5.

  4 R. Bauckham, ‘Jesus, Worship of, in D. N. Freedman, ed., The Anchor Bible Dictionary (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1992) vol. 3, 812–19; L. W. Hurtado, One God, One Lord (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988).

  CHAPTER 4

  The victory of the Lamb and his followers

  STATISTICS

  We saw in our chapter 2 that the sevenfold occurrence of divine designations in Revelation is John’s way of highlighting their significance. It will be worth looking at the statistics of some christological designations, to prepare us for our study of the work of Christ in Revelation.

  That the identification of Christ with God does not imply the unimportance of his humanity is indicated by the use of his particular human name Jesus. This occurs fourteen times in Revelation, seven of these in the phrases ‘the witness of Jesus’ (1:2, 9; 12:17; 19:10 (twice); 20:4) and ‘the witnesses of Jesus’ (17:6). As we shall see, what matters most about the humanity of Jesus in Revelation is the witness which he bore and which his followers continue.

  The word ‘Christ’ (Messiah) occurs seven times (including occurrences of ‘Jesus Christ’). As we shall see, Jesus’ fulfilment of the Jewish hope of the Davidic Messiah is prominent in Revelation.

  The word ‘Lamb’, referring to Christ, occurs 28 (7 × 4) times. Seven of these are in phrases coupling God and the Lamb together (5:13; 6:16; 7:10; 14:4; 21:22; 22:1, 3). Four is, after seven, the symbolic number most commonly and consistently used in Revelation. As seven is the number of completeness, four is the number of the world (with its four corners (7:1 ; 20:8) or four divisions (5:13; 14:7). The first four judgments in each of the series of seven affect the world (6:8; 8:7–12; 16:2–9). The 7 × 4 occurences of ‘Lamb’ therefore indicate the worldwide scope of his complete victory. This corresponds to the fact that the phrase by which John designates all the nations of the world is fourfold (‘peoples and tribes and languages and nations’: the phrase varies each time it occurs, but is always fourfold) and occurs seven times (5:9; 7:9; 10:11; 11:9; 13:7; 14:6; 17:15). Its first occurrence establishes its connexion with the Lamb’s victory (5:9).

  THE MAJOR SYMBOLIC THEMES

  The role of Christ in Revelation is to establish God’s kingdom on earth: in the words of 11:15, to turn ‘the kingdom of the world’ (currently ruled by evil) into ‘the kingdom of our Lord and his Messiah’. This is a work of both salvation and judgment. As we shall see, salvation and judgment are inevitably the two sides of a single coin. It is also a process which begins with his earthly life and death and ends with his parousia. The victory he has already achieved in his death and resurrection is decisive, but needs to be continued by his Christian followers in the present and completed at his parousia in the future. It will be important for us to distinguish these three stages, but also to understand the interconnexions between them. In order to find our way through the rather complex imagery in which John expresses his understanding of Christ’s work, it will be helpful initially to recognize the three major symbolic themes – or complexes of symbols – which are all used of all three stages of the work of Christ. Each of the three enables us to see the essential unity of Christ’s work, from cross to parousia. The combination of the three conveys most, if not all, of Revelation’s distinctive theological interpretation of Christ’s work.

  The first is the theme of the messianic war. This takes up the Jewish hope for a Messiah who is to be a descendant of David, anointed by God as king and military leader of his people. He is to fight a war against the Gentile oppressors, liberating Israel and establishing the rule of God, which is also the rule of God’s Messiah and God’s people Israel, over the nations of the world.1 Essential to this notion, it should be noted, is that the Messiah does not wage war alone: he leads the army of Israel against the enemies of Israel. Many Old Testament prophecies were commonly interpreted by first-century Jews as referring to this expected Messiah of David. The identification of Jesus with the Davidic Messiah was, of course, very common in early Christianity. It is very important in Revelation, partly because for John, as a Jewish Christian prophet, it is one of the ways in which he can gather up the hopes of the Old Testament prophetic tradition into his own eschatological vision centred on Jesus. But it is important also because it portrays a figure who is to establish God’s kingdom on earth by defeating the pagan powers who contest God’s rule. As we shall see, John carefully reinterprets the tradition. His Messiah Jesus does not win his victory by military conquest, and those who share his victory and his rule are not national Israel, but the international people of God. But still it is a victory over evil, won not only in the spiritual but also in the political sphere against worldly powers in order to establish God’s kingdom on earth. Insofar as the hope for the Davidic Messiah was for such a victory of God over evil Revelation portrays Christ’s work in continuity with that traditional Jewish hope.

  The prominence of Davidic messianism in Revelation can be gauged from the fact that, as well as the two self-declarations by Christ that we have already considered (1:17–18; 22:13), there is a third: ‘I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star’ (22:16). The first of these two titles comes from Isaiah 11:10 (‘the root of Jesse’) and is used of the Davidic Messiah (‘descendant’ interprets the meaning of ‘root’, rightly giving it the same sense as the ‘branch’ or ‘shoot’ of Isa. 11:1, which was more commonly used as a messianic designation). The second title refers to the star of Numbers 24:17, which (in the context of 24:17–19) was commonly understood to be a symbol of the Messiah of David who would conquer the enemies of Israel. ‘The root of David’ is found also in Revelation 5:1, alongside another title evoking the image of the royal Messiah who will defeat the nations by military violence: ‘the Lion of Judah’ (cf. Gen. 49:9; 4 Ezra 12:31–2). Further allusions to the Messiah of Isaiah 11, a favourite passage for Davidic messianism, are the sword that comes from Christ’s mouth (1:16; 2:12, 16; 19:21) with which he strikes down the nations (19:15; cf. Isa. 11:4; 49:2) and the statement that he judges with righteousness (19:11; cf. Isa. 11:4).

  One of John’s key Old Testament texts, allusions to which run throughout Revelation, is Psalm 2, which depicts ‘the nations’ and ‘the kings of the earth’ conspiring to rebel against ‘the LORD and his Messiah’ (verses 1–2). The Messiah is God’s Son (verse 7), whom he sets as king on mount Zion (verse 6), there to resist and overcome the rebellious nations. God promises to give this royal Messiah the nations for his inheritance (verse 8) and that he will violently subdue them with a rod of iron (verse 9). Allusions to this account of the Messiah’s victory over the nations are found in Revelation 2:18, 26–8; 11:15, 18; 12:5, 10; 14:1; 16:14, 16; 19:15. To what is explicit in the psalm it is notable that John adds the Messiah’s army (with him on Mount Zion in 14:1) who will share his victory (2:26–7). Probably also from the psalm is John’s use of the phrase ‘the kings of the earth’ as his standard term for the political powers opposed to God which Christ will subdue (1:5; 6:15; 17:2, 18; 18:3, 9; 19:19; 21:24; cf. 16:14).

  Also derived from this militant messianism is Revelation’s key concept of conquering. It is applied both to the Messiah himself (3:21; 5:5; 17:14) and to his people, who share his victory (2:7, 11, 17, 28; 3:5, 12, 21; 12:11; 15:2; 21:7). Once again we note the importance in Revelation of the Messiah’s a
rmy. That the image of conquering is a militaristic one should be unmistakable, although interpreters of Revelation do not always do justice to this. It is closely connected with language of battle (11:7; 12:7–8, 17; 13:7; 16:14; 17:14; 19:11, 19) and it is notable that not only do Christ’s followers defeat the beast (15:2), but also the beast defeats them (11:7; 13:7), so that this is evidently a war in which Christ’s enemies have their victories, though the final victory is his. We should note also that the language of conquering is used of all the three stages of Christ’s work: he conquered in his death and resurrection (3:21; 5:5), his followers conquer in the time before the end (12:11; 15:2), and he will conquer at the parousia (17:14). Thus it is clear that the image of the messianic war describes the whole process of the establishment of God’s kingdom as Revelation depicts it. Revelation’s use of this image incorporates the fundamental shift of temporal perspective from Jewish to Jewish Christian eschatology. The messianic war is not purely future. The decisive victory has in fact already been won by Christ. His followers are called to continue the battle in the present. The final victory still lies in the future.

  The second of the three major symbolic themes is that of the eschatological exodus. Since the exodus was the key salvation event of the history of Israel, in which God liberated his people from oppression in Egypt, destroyed their oppressors, made them his own people and led them to theocratic independence in a land of their own, it was naturally the model for prophetic and apocalyptic hopes of another great salvation event in the future. In some Jewish apocalyptic the eschatological intervention of God in which he will finally judge the evil powers and bring definitive salvation to his people was conceived as an eschatological exodus, surpassing the first exodus as eschatology surpasses history.2 Traces of an interpretation of the saving work of Jesus Christ as bringing about the eschatological exodus can be found in many parts of the New Testament, but it is Revelation that develops the idea most fully.

  The central image in this complex is that of Jesus himself as the Passover Lamb (first introduced at 5:6, 9–10). That Revelation’s image of the Lamb refers to the lamb sacrificed at the Passover is clear especially from 5:9–10. There it is said that by his blood the Lamb has ‘ransomed’ a people and made them ‘a kingdom and priests serving our God’. The latter phrase echoes the well-known words of the Sinai covenant (Exod. 19:5–6), by which God made the people he had brought out of Egypt his own people. God’s liberation of his people from Egypt was often referred to as his ransoming them from slavery to be his own people (e.g. Deut. 7:8; 13:5), and the same image could be used of the new exodus of the future (Isa. 35:10; 51:11). When Revelation treats the blood of the Lamb as the price of redemption, this really goes beyond the role which the blood of the Passover Lamb played in the exodus (cf. Exod. 12:12, 23). Moreover, the Passover lamb played no role in Jewish expectation of a new exodus. But it is likely that in Revelation 5:6, 9 John alludes not only to the Passover lamb, but also to Isaiah 53:7, where the Suffering Servant is portrayed as a sacrificial lamb.3 He may well have connected this verse with the new exodus language of Deutero-Isaiah and seen the Suffering Servant of Isaiah 53 as the Passover lamb of the new exodus. In any case, it is the central role which the death of Jesus played in the Christian understanding of redemption which accounts for the centrality of the Lamb to Revelation’s use of the new exodus motif.

  In 15:2–4 the Christian martyrs, victorious in heaven, are seen as the people of the new exodus, standing beside a heavenly Red Sea, through which they have passed, and singing a version of the song of praise to God which Moses and the people of Israel sang after their deliverance from Pharaoh at the Red Sea (Exod. 15). Moreover, the plagues which are God’s judgment on their enemies in this context (15:1, 5–16:21) are modelled on the plagues of Egypt at the time of the exodus. We have already noticed, in chapter 2 above, that the final judgment of this series is linked to a reminiscence of the Sinai theophany (16:18). Other allusions to the exodus narratives are in 11:6, where the activity of the two witnesses is in part modelled on Moses and the plagues of Egypt, and 11:8, where one of the prophetic names of the great city where the witnesses are martyred is Egypt. Already in 2:14, the false teachers in the church at Pergamum, who are persuading Christians to compromise with paganism, are compared with Balaam, the false prophet who was responsible for the seduction of the Israelites into idolatry, as a result of which they failed to reach the goal of the exodus: entry into the promised land.

  As with the messianic war, John’s use of the new exodus imagery shows that for him the decisive eschatological event has already occurred: the new Passover Lamb has been slaughtered and he has ransomed a people for God. The goal of the new exodus is still to be attained, when Christ’s people will reign with him as priests on earth (20:4–6; 22:3–5), attaining their theocratic independence in the promised land. But Revelation’s new exodus does not consistently follow the sequence of the Old Testament narrative. The imagery is used flexibly – in literal terms, inconsistently – to characterize all three stages of the work of Christ as Revelation portrays it.

  The third theme which is used to characterize Christ’s work is that of witness. Jesus himself is ‘the faithful and true witness’ (3:14; cf. 1:5). The title refers primarily to the witness which Jesus bore to God during his life on earth and to his faithfulness in maintaining his witness even at the cost of his life. The word ‘witness’ (martys) does not yet, in Revelation, carry the technical Christian meaning of ‘martyr’ (one who bears witness by dying for the faith). It does not refer to death itself as witness, but to verbal witness to the truth of God (cf. the association of witness with ‘the word of God’: 1:2, 9; 6:9; 20:4; cf. also 12:11) along with living obedience to the commands of God (cf. the association of witness with keeping the commandments: 12:17). But it is strongly implied that faithful witness will incur opposition and lead to death (2:13; 11:7; 12:17). That Jesus’ witness led to his death is suggested by the sequence of titles in 1:5.

  Jesus’ work of witness is continued by his followers, who are not only called his witnesses (17:6; cf. 2:13) but are also said to hold ‘the witness of Jesus’ (12:17; 19:10), which is the same as their own witness (6:9; 12:11). ‘The witness of Jesus’ means not ‘witness to Jesus’, but the witness Jesus himself bore and which his faithful followers continue to bear. It is primarily Jesus’ and his followers’ witness to the true God and his righteousness, which exposes the falsehood of idolatry and the evil of those who worship the beast. The theme of witness is connected with Revelation’s dominant concern with truth and falsehood. The world is a kind of court-room in which the issue of who is the true God is being decided. In this judicial contest Jesus and his followers bear witness to the truth. At the conclusion of the contest, their witness is seen to be true and becomes evidence on which judgment is passed against those who have refused to accept its truth: the beast and his worshippers. So, in the third stage of Christ’s work, his parousia, the witness becomes the judge. He who was faithful and true as witness (3:14) is now called faithful and true in his activity of judgment (19:11).

  If the title, ‘the faithful witness’ (1:5) for Christ is based on Psalm 89:37, there is a connexion with Davidic messianism, but John has certainly developed the theme of witness as a theme in its own right, as a judicial image alongside the military image of the messianic war which he also uses. His use of it may have been inspired by the prophecies of Deutero-Isaiah. These portray a judicial contest in which the claim of Yahweh to be the only true God, the Creator and the Lord of history, is vindicated against the gods of the nations. In this context the people of Israel are ‘my witnesses’ (Isa. 43:10, 12; 44:8), called to bear witness to all the nations that Yahweh alone is the true God and Saviour. The themes are close to those of Revelation, where, as we shall see, the emphasis is on the role of the church in bearing witness to all the nations (and against the idolatrous claims of the beast) that God is the only true God.

  THE DEATH OF CHRIST

 
Fundamental to Revelation’s whole understanding of the way in which Christ establishes God’s kingdom on earth is the conviction that in his death and resurrection Christ has already won his decisive victory over evil. This conviction is portrayed in chapter 5, which is the continuation of the foundational vision of God’s rule in heaven in chapter 4. After the revelation of God’s sovereignty in heaven, which we studied in our chapter 2, the question of how his sovereignty is to become effective on earth is raised. John sees in the right hand of the One seated on the throne a sealed scroll (5:1). This contains the secret purpose of God for establishing his kingdom. Its contents are, in fact, what is to be revealed to John as the content of his prophecy for the churches. But it is established that only one person is qualified to open the scroll and divulge its contents. We shall have to identify the content of the scroll later. Here we are concerned with what it is that qualifies Jesus Christ to be the only one who can open it.

  The key to John’s vision of the slaughtered Lamb (5:6) is to recognize the contrast between what he hears (5:5) and what he sees (5:6). He hears that ‘the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, had conquered’. The two messianic titles evoke a strongly militaristic and nationalistic image of the Messiah of David as conqueror of the nations, destroying the enemies of God’s people (cf., e.g., 1QSb 5:20–9). But this image is reinterpreted by what John sees: the Lamb whose sacrificial death (5:6) has redeemed people from all nations (5:9–10). By juxtaposing the two contrasting images, John has forged a new symbol of conquest by sacrificial death. The messianic hopes evoked in 5:5 are not repudiated: Jesus really is the expected Messiah of David (22:16). But insofar as the latter was associated with military violence and narrow nationalism, it is reinterpreted by the image of the Lamb. The Messiah has certainly won a victory, but he has done so by sacrifice and for the benefit of people from all nations (5:9). Thus the means by which the Davidic Messiah has won his victory is explained by the image of the Lamb, while the significance of the image of the Lamb is now seen to lie in the fact that his sacrificial death was a victory over evil.