Revelation 20:11-15 – The Death of Death and The Book of Life

The battle is done, the war is over, now the victorious king judges those who fought against him, the rebels who were loyal to the dragon, beast, and false prophet, and all they stand for in opposition to God. The scene is a royal heavenly courtroom of ultimate power and purity:

¹¹ Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. The earth and the heavens fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. 

We’re introduced it all by yet another of John’s, “then I saw,” here a mega white throne, which as we’ve seen is where God dwells in rule over the entire universe. The white is symbolic of purity throughout Revelation, and both images are an echo and fulfillment of Daniel 7 where the Ancient of Days takes his seat in white, and the court was seated and the books opened. We are pointed back to three passages in Revelation that speak to the awesome presence of God in which a fallen created reality cannot endure his judgment and presence. In 6:12-17, the sixth seal is opened and there is a great earthquake and,

¹⁴ The heavens receded like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.

In 11:11-13, two prophets in the second woe come back from the dead, a “severe earthquake” hits, and a tenth of the city collapses. Then we read of the judgment of the dead to come in verse 18, the details of which we read here in chapter 20, along with rewards for “the prophets,” all those who are faithful in proclaiming God’s word. And finally, in 16:17-21, the final of the seven bowls of God’s wrath is poured out, and the greatest earthquake ever strikes and, “Every island fled away and the mountains could not be found.” Earthquakes don’t do that, but God’s holy presence can when he pours out his wrath on sin. The powerful point is that all that is tainted and ruined by sin, the current fallen heavens and earth will finally, completely disappear. That can only happen when God’s justice is fully satisfied, which is the context of the entire, terrifying scene to come:

¹² And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. ¹³ The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each one was judged according to what they had done. 

How is it that the dead can be standing? The word generally means lifeless, a corpse, but somehow these people are standing. This takes us back to Genesis 2 and God telling Adam that when he ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, of which he was commanded not to eat, he would “surely die.” When Adam and Eve did eat, they did not die right away physically, but spiritual death, alienation from their Creator, happened immediately (they hid from God now until he sought them out and clothed them). From that point all human beings were born condemned to physical death, and those not chosen by God to spiritual death, but all are afflicted with the disease of death that Christ came to destroy. So here, the dead are all people who have experienced that horrible reality, but they stand before the throne because physical death is not annihilation of the soul, of our true being. On the other side of physical death there will be judgment. But we see here, in a direct reference to Daniel 7:10, that there are two books. In Daniel it is plural, but we’re now told how many, two, and only two, speaking again to the binary, either/or nature of reality. In Luke 11 in the middle of a discussion about the devil, Jesus says:

Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.

In addition, from what Paul says in 2 Timothy 4:1, God and Christ Jesus will “judge the living and the dead.” The living go into the book of life, the dead do not, but it seems both are in some sense judged. We tend to almost always view the word judge negatively, as in, how dare you judge me! Or, I’m not judging you, but the word doesn’t have to imply always coming down with a negative judgment. We can make positive judgments as well. One definition of the English word says, to form an opinion about through careful weighing of evidence and testing of premises. The Greek means either positive (a verdict in favor of) or negative (which rejects or condemns). The key here for Christians isn’t to fear God’s judgment, but to rejoice that our names are written in the book of life! In fact, we read in 13:8 that our names were written in this book, which is “the book of life of the Lamb who was slain,” from before the foundation of the world. Paul tells us in Ephesian 1:

³ Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. ⁴ For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love ⁵ he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— ⁶ to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. 

Not only was this done for us even before we were created, it was a legal proclamation (sonship), and he did it solely because he wanted to! Paul also says, “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Whatever this judgment is for us, it is a source of comfort and joy because it will be “in Christ.” For those who rejected him, they must stand before God based in their own works, and verse 13 tells us it will be all those who have ever lived, and died. John wants us to know the finality of this judgment:

¹⁴ Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. ¹⁵ And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life he was thrown into the lake of fire.

At the end of the fallen epoch, death itself, and the place where all the dead dwell, Hades, is utterly destroyed. Paul in the preeminent chapter on resurrection in the New Testament (I Cor. 15) tells us, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” The wonderous Isaiah 25 tells us that “death will be swallowed up forever.” The second death means all vestiges of not-life, not God, are gone from the universe; everything is transformed via the glorious resurrection of a new creation. Verse 15, though, is not something I like to contemplate. It seems to imply that these too are utterly destroyed, and in the history of the church some have believed that hell is not eternal punishment, but Jesus strongly seems to say there is. If you’ve read much here, you’ll know when I get to the end of my capacity to understand, I embrace all over again Moses’ words in Deut. 32:3,4. Christians can rejoice that we don’t have to figure any of that out, but that our names will be found written in the book of life.

Revelation 20:7-10 – The Final Battle Again, Same Result: The Devil Loses

We’ve seen that the thousand years of Christ’s reign during that period with those who stayed faithful unto death is like all the numbers in Revelation, symbolic of a long period of time. I see it as the time from Christ’s resurrection to his second coming, and now whatever that period of time turns out to be, it has come to an end:

⁷ When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison ⁸ and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth—Gog and Magog—and to gather them for battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore.

We notice John’s emphasis on God’s sovereign rule over Satan, that it is only he who can release him and allow him to do his deceptive work on earth. When we look at this fallen world in all of its misery, and experience the gravitational pull of sin in our own lives, we must understand none of it is outside of the purview of God’s sovereign control and rule over all things. When we moved to Florida in June of 2017, one of the first church services we went to, the bulletin had the verses of I Chronicles 29:10-13 in it. I remember thinking, I need to memorize those verses. Little did I realize what comfort they would bring to me when about a month later I lost my job of 14 years, and at 57 what was a bummer. What continually impressed itself upon me were David’s words that God is “the ruler of all things,” and that “wealth and honor” come from him. I realized the struggle of my existence was to trust him, and somehow, some way, he enabled me to do that. I’ve come to call that “the trust challenge,” or what is known as life! The challenge of trusting God extends to his justice, and that the entire mess of existence is completely under his control, no matter what it looks like to us. Revelation teaches that in grand eschatological scope.

In these verses, we get a recapitulation of the last battle of chapter 19; we are reading of the same events in both chapters. Both in their imagery connect them to Ezekiel 38 and 39, as we saw in chapter 19, but here the armies are specifically called God and Magog as in Ezekiel. The sand on the seashore represents both huge, uncountable numbers of those coming to the battle, and a connection to 13:1 where the dragon “stood on the shore of the sea.” As in 19 the battle is with all people, and here we learn they come from all over the earth (four corners). The battle is with all those whom God has allowed to be deceived by the devil’s wiles and deceptions. We’ll remember that Jesus says his sheep “hear his voice,” they listen to him and not the lies of the devil specifically because they belong to him, they are his people. That is why these people of every kind from every corner of the earth are lured into battle against God by the beast; they do not belong to God, they are not his people, and they cannot hear his voice. They do not, however, make war against God himself, as if that were possible, but against his representatives on earth, his people:

⁹ They marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints, the city he loves. But fire came down from heaven and devoured them. 

Since these armies come from all over the earth, they have a long march to get to the camp of God’s holy people, his set-apart ones. It may appear that this camp where the saints reside is protected by God with immediate defeat of this enemies, but we learn earlier (11:2) that the Gentiles “trample on the holy city for 42 months.” The great battle isn’t one and done, but when it is over it is decisive, thus fire comes from God’s presence, from heaven, and obliterates them. In case their is any doubt who wins this last battle, they literally get eaten up, but figuratively they are ferociously consumed all the way down, i.e., with a rapacious, voracious appetite – leaving only ruination, without hope of recovery (or even remains). This is a specific fulfillment of God’s promise to Israel in Ezekiel 38:22:

I will execute judgment on him with plague and bloodshed; I will pour down torrents of rain, hailstones and burning sulfur on him and on his troops and on the many nations with him.

The camp is also a metaphor for where God’s people dwell, not a reference to literal Jerusalem at the end of time. We are always metaphorically surrounded by God’s enemies who seek to destroy us; that is the world system represented by cultures and governments throughout the centuries. As Paul says in Ephesians 6, our struggle, and all the battles we endure in it, are spiritual, and against spiritual forces of evil that are not earthly, but in another world. In due course God will utterly, completely destroy all vestiges of these forces of evil in the world, creating out of it a completely new world free of sin and death. Oh, what a day that will be! No more death. No more tears. No more struggle. God’s shalom will fill the earth as the waters cover the sea. All the disordered things in us and in this fallen world, will be reordered, and this new, redeemed and cleansed creation will be become complete and whole, the way it was meant to be. And this will not be a fix for a limited time, as now the gospel and the kingdom of God and its light break into our fallen world from time to time, but it will be a forever fix:

¹⁰ And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.

We saw back in 14:10 &11 that all who worshiped the beast and received his mark “will be tormented in fire and sulfur,” and “their torment will rise for ever and ever.” Also in 19:20, that the beast and the false prophet “were thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulfur.” Finally, the Big Kahuna, the one who deceived them all joins them, and their destruction is final. That is the implication of for ever and ever. While the devil is a real spiritual being, the beast and the false prophet represent the institutional forces of the fallen world that war against all things God and his people. The source and deceptive power that came into God’s creation at man’s fall will be utterly, totally obliterated and good, true, beautiful, and holy will replace it. The process of making that happen continues in the next verses.

Revelation 20:1-6 – The Millennium: Is it Literal or Not?

These six verses are some of the most contested in all of Scripture, and how we interpret them will depend on which grid we bring to the text. There are three broad eschatological camps, premillennial, amillennial, and postmillennial, which comes from the Latin, millennium for a thousand years. We’ll see why in a moment. After more than three decades as a Christian I decided I would be an amillennial when I learned about it from a series of talks (in 2014) Kim Riddlebarger gave called Amillennial 101. It was amazing to me at the time because I had always considered myself a “panmillennialist,” figuring I couldn’t form any convictions on the subject, but I know it will all “pan out in the end.” This was a cop out in a way, but it really doesn’t matter what we think about “end times.” What does matter is what we’ve learned from John throughout Revelation, that God is faithful and just, and we can trust him to right all wrongs in the end. That encourages us to remain faithful to and trust him, and not take our eschatological hope into our own hands, as too many have done in the history of the church. So let’s see what makes these verses so “controversial”:

And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key to the Abyss and holding in his hand a great chain. ² He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. ³ He threw him into the Abyss, and locked and sealed it over him, to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore until the thousand years were ended. After that, he must be set free for a short time.

As we’ve seen, coming “out of heaven” means from the presence and with the authority of God. The first question we must ask is, is this great chain an actual chain. Of course not because as throughout Revelation John communicates his vision in metaphor. Only a small portion of the book is to be taken literally, so a great chain signifies the power to restrain the evil that comes from the great enemy of God, Satan. The Abyss means unfathomable depth, and in the Jewish conception the home of the dead and evil spirits. God controls who enters and who stays there. This description of Satan brings us back to 12:9 where he is also called a great dragon and ancient serpent, and he was hurled down from heaven to the earth to lead “the whole world astray.” Earlier, in chapter 9, we saw that he had power himself over the Abyss to unleash hellish powers on the earth.

One of the things we learn from these references to the devil and his powers is that Revelation is not intended as a chronological account of historical events. Rather, it is different snapshots of God’s judgment against sin and evil, and the being that bears the responsibility all of it. There is a great spiritual cosmic war, the reality of which we can only vaguely comprehend. What we see play out in the world, the suffering, pain, sorrow, death, along with goodness, beauty, truth, and joy is a reflection of a metaphysical reality that can be the only explanation for why it all exists. And as we learn throughout Scripture, it isn’t two equal forces between good and evil, darkness and light, as Augustine thought when he was a Manichean; Revelation makes that abundantly clear. We also learn these cannot possibly be chronological accounts because Satan was given the power to deceive the nations, who accepted the mark and worshiped the beast, who then gathered together for a great battle against God and his people. We saw variations on this theme which culminated in their utter destruction in chapter 19. So, I am convinced these thousand years are not a literal number of years, and this chapter is recapitulation of what came before with some additional information as we’ll see. John continues:

⁴ I saw thrones on which were seated those who had been given authority to judge. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony about Jesus and because of the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years.

Those who embrace the pre-millennial position believe Christ will return before these literal thousand years to reign on earth, and it is that period of time to which this refers. They also believe that these who came to life and reign with Christ are part of a first, literal, physical resurrection of the saints from the dead. There are several problems with this. One is that in Jewish eschatology there is only one resurrection of the dead, and Christianity affirmed that. If you read Paul’s account of resurrection in I Corinthians 15, there is only one resurrection of the dead. It is also problematic if resurrected, sinless people will be living in a fallen world where sin and non-sin somehow interact.

It’s really bizarre and speculative if you think about it, but this is how they interpret the next two verses:

 ⁵ (The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.) This is the first resurrection. ⁶ Blessed and holy are those who share in the first resurrection. The second death has no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with him for a thousand years.

In the context of resurrection, Paul says that, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” The day of judgment throughout Scripture is exactly that, a day, when the living and the dead will be judged. To say there will now be two of these days in a book that is highly symbolic and metaphorical is not at all persuasive. There are references here to Daniel 7 and Revelation 4. We’ve seen that Daniel is a backdrop for much of Revelation, and that chapter is specifically about the ultimate, forever victory of God and his saints. John uses a phrase he could have taken verbatim from that chapter. In verse 22 it says, “judgment was given for the saints,” and in verse 4 here the Greek says, “judgment was given to them.” The vision is coming out of heaven, but if the premillennialists are right then this judging is done on earth, whereas thrones in Revelation are only in heaven.

I could go on, but there will be debate about these verses until Jesus comes back, so in a way, being a “pan-millennialist” isn’t a bad copout. I do like the interpretation in one of the books I’m reading by Dennis Johnson which is driven by the heavenly location of this vision (Rev. 4). He says that paradoxically, the first resurrection is the physical death of the saints who now rule (judge) with Christ in heaven during the time (thousand years) between his resurrection and second coming. This is plausible to me because in John 11:25, 26, Jesus say, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he die.” All the English translations I looked at interpreted verse 4 as “they came to life,” but the Greek just says, “they lived,” (zaó-ζάω) and the verb tense is indicative; it is. I guess because John calls it a resurrection, the implication is that they came to life. There is paradox all throughout Revelation; we are safe yet in danger, victorious yet defeated, power is weakness, but weakness is power, we gain victory by losing, etc. Getting all this “right” isn’t the point; trusting God is.

Revelation 19:17-21 – The Final Battle, Over Before it Even Begins!

We are witnessing in this and the next chapter the culmination of everything that came before, not only in Revelation, but in all of Jewish apocalyptic literature when all things will be made right by the power of Almighty God. John transitions from revealing that Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords with another, “And I saw,” this time he sees the end of a mighty battle he doesn’t even describe:

¹⁷ And I saw an angel standing in the sun, who cried in a loud voice to all the birds flying in midair, “Come, gather together for the great supper of God, ¹⁸ so that you may eat the flesh of kings, generals, and the mighty, of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all people, free and slave, great and small.”

I can’t help reading verse 17 and instantly thinking of an old song by one of my favorite bands, Genesis, and one of the great songs of all time from 1972 called Supper’s Ready. Anyone familiar with old Genesis (before Peter Gabriel left) will know the song instantly (here is a live version of the 26 minute song if you want your mind blown, or to be confused:). In the final stanza of the song Gabriel sings:

There’s an angel standing in the sun, and he’s crying with a loud voice,
“This is the supper of the mighty one”,
Lord of Lords,
King of Kings,
Has returned to lead his children home,
To take them to the new Jerusalem.

To which we will come soon! The angel John speaks of is not literally standing in the sun, which would be very hot. The sun, previously referenced in bringing judgment on earth, is now a means of the angel’s great illumination (similar to the angel in 18:1 who “was illuminated by his splendor”), so that and the loud voice means all the earth will hear his call to these birds and about the nasty business to come. This is where we as modern, enlightened people, wonder about all this gruesome judgment business. It so happens the other day as I was driving I saw some vultures feasting on carrion on the side of the road. As I briefly beheld them picking at the dead animal’s flesh I was disgusted, and had to quickly turn away. Now I read this and wonder, does justice have to be so grisly?

Keep in mind, Revelation is full of metaphor, and this doesn’t necessarily refer to real birds feasting on real human flesh, but it does represent something real: the disgusting, horrendous reality of life lived in rebellion to the living God, i.e., death. We are told that is sin’s wages, and God told Adam he would surely die if he ate of the tree he was commanded not to eat. And war is ubiquitous in human history, reflecting the greed and hubris of man, so it is appropriate God uses that means to execute judgment. These verses, and those to come, also show us the eschatological fulfillment of Ezekiel 38 and 39, where we first read of the great victory of God over Gog and Magog, the archetypal pagan powers. War in all its ugliness was long used by God’s enemies against his people, so it will be used against them by God. That it is referred to as “a great supper” is a contrast to the wedding supper of the Lamb to come, and each “supper” is universal in scope, with peoples from all nations on one side or the other; nobody is sitting this one out.

We see this great army of the nations coming for the rider on the white horse “whose rider is called Faithful and True,” i.e., against Jesus, his people, and all he stands for:

¹⁹ Then I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies gathered together to wage war against the rider on the horse and his army. 

Which emphasizes the ultimately metaphorical nature of the battle and it’s aftermath, that it is the rider’s words, that which comes out of his mouth, “a sharp sword which to strike down the nations” (v. 15) which will bring victory over world’s system that stand against God. Because of this, the battle is brief, and not even described by John:

²⁰ But the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who had performed the signs on its behalf. With these signs he had deluded those who had received the mark of the beast and worshiped its image. The two of them were thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulfur. ²¹ The rest were killed with the sword coming out of the mouth of the rider on the horse, and all the birds gorged themselves on their flesh.

Here were all the armies and nations of the world gathered to make war against God and his people, and in a moment it is over! We talked about the delusions of the world, represented by Rome, Babylon the Great, and how the promises of wealth and safety and meaning apart from God suck people into the delusions so they actually worship the beast and it’s image. That’s all it is, a representation of something that is a lie, that isn’t even real, like all idols. We win in the end not because of “the will to power” and force, which is pretty much all the world and its systems ultimately have, but by the sword, which is the Truth, which is the Word of God, which is Jesus!

Understanding this makes these metaphorical images so much more powerful than thinking they might somehow be “literal.” War and its death and destruction are most certainly God’s judgment on man, but that which sets itself up against God is much more pernicious and deceptive than mere power and force; it is lies from the pit of hell, literally, lies that stem from Satan’s first big lie to Eve calling God a liar. It is Truth which is the means for God’s ultimate victory. That they are thrown alive into the underworld is an indication of the ultimate nature of the victory because such an end was considered the most painful of tortures in Greco-Roman literature, and burning sulfur brings to mind the great judgment of God against Sodom and Gomorrah. To John’s readers, stuck in a Roman world that hated everything about them and their faith, and to us, who face the same world systems who set themselves up against us and God, their end is certain, sure, and forever.

Revelation 19:10-16 – King of Kings and Lord of Lords

I ended my last both with little room to continue my thoughts on verses 9 and 10, so decided to move 10 to the next post, and I’ll include 9 for context:

⁹ Then the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!” And he added, “These are the true words of God.”

¹⁰ And I fell at his feet to worship him. But he said to me, “Don’t do that! I am a fellow servant with you and with your brothers and sisters who hold to the testimony of Jesus. Worship God! For it is the Spirit of prophecy who bears testimony to Jesus.”

The Greek doesn’t say angel, just he, so we’re not sure who John is referring to. It likely refers back to chapter 17 and the angel who explained to John what everything meant. We’re not sure why John felt compelled at just this moment to worship the angel, so we can only speculate. It could be the true words he brings from God, but we’re not even sure exactly which words those are. Do they reference the declaration of the invitation to the wedding, or all the words of explanation about what it all means that came before? Whatever they reference, John was stunned into worshiping a creature God had created, and the angel rebukes him.

What I love about this is how consistent it was with every word in the Bible from Genesis 1 to now. If all of this were mere human invention, you bet we would worship angels! They are amazing spiritual beings completely different from us; whenever angels show up in the history of redemption people freak out. Why wouldn’t we worship them? The angel tells us: they are just as much servants of God as we are. And that final sentence is key to understanding what he’s saying. The Spirit of prophecy is the Holy Spirit of God, and saying it is prophecy means it must be revealed. We could never figure any of it on our own, nor could the angels. God alone is the Almighty Definer of all of reality! He’ll tell us what it all means. It is speculation and conjecture, not accepting that we don’t know what we don’t know, that gets sinful human beings into trouble. I’ll agree with the angel on this, Don’t do that!

John’s vision now changes again. The victory has been declared and celebrated with all heaven and earth shouting Hallelujah! four times. Now we see the final victory secured for eternity by the only one who can make that happen:

¹¹ I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and wages war. ¹² His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. ¹³ He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. 

White horses in the ancient world were ridden by rulers to reflect their authority and power, but this rider is no ordinary ruler. The Greek word for faith, pistos-πιστός, is the central concept of what makes Christianity so distinct from all other religions. While is does mean belief, I believe its essence is trust. Here it is directly connected to the one who is True, the very Word of God. Our God is a God who speaks, who declares, and it is. Witness Genesis 1, and he creates all of material reality with his speech, “God said, let there be . . .” and it was! We are saved because we trust him, not because of who we are or what we do; he saves us, we do not save ourselves. We can take that to the eternal bank! And because we live in a fundamentally moral universe where there is good and evil, right and wrong, there must be justice, both in this world, and in the next, temporal as well as eternal. The entire message of Revelation is that his readers in their historical context, and we in ours, can trust him to execute ultimate justice. How we all long for it, but often we don’t have the stomach for it. I’ve commented on this before, and will do so again as we witness the rider execute justice by waging war.

We read the same description of his “eyes like blazing fire” in 1:14; he sees in a way no one else can see. While the beast has ten crowns on his head, indicating his power is great but limited, Jesus has many crowns indicated, so his power and rule are unlimited. In the ancient world knowing someone’s name was an implement of power. When Jacob wrestles with someone, we think God, in Genesis 32, and asks his name, the answer is, “Why do you ask my name?” And back in 2:17, Jesus gives a name to the one who overcomes only he and the recipient know. Here, no one can gain leverage over this mighty warrior by knowing his name.

The reference to a robe dipped in blood is a reference to how clothes in the ancient world were dyed. Here, the robe will be dyed with blood, an indication of the horrific justice to be meted out to God’s enemies. The dipping looks back to Isaiah 63, where God himself came against his enemies, “mighty to save,” and blood spattered his garments and stained all his clothing. We’ll see the sickening reality of this in some detail in the coming verses, but justice will be done because this rider is the very Word of God! Of course, the reference is to John 1, and “ In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” who then “became flesh and made his dwelling among” them. The logos, the divine organizing principle of all reality is a person! That would have been inconceivable to Greek and Jew alike. Not only did he make all things, but he will make all things right.

¹⁵ Coming out of his mouth is a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. “He will rule them with an iron scepter.” He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty. ¹⁶ On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written:

KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS

In chapter 1 (repeated in 2), John referred to a sharp double-edged sword coming out of Jesus’ mouth, and here we see the power of that word in judgment. His mere word is enough to destroy the nations of the world. The quote comes from the Messianic Psalm 2, which shows the power of God to judge and the futility of the nations. The reference to the winepress again goes back to Isaiah 63, and God alone being the one who can execute ultimate justice. Forward to Revelation 19 and we see that is fulfilled by God in Christ alone. He is over all authorities and has all power, the ultimate King and Lord, which is why we can trust him in all things, now and forever.

Revelation 19:6-10 – “Hallelujah! The Wedding of the Lamb has Come

As we saw, the victory over the beast and the prostitute has been won, ultimate justice done, and now it’s time for God’s praises to ring throughout the heavens and hearth. There are four Hallelujahs! in the chapter, and we’ve seen two. Now the third:

⁶ Then I heard what sounded like a great multitude, like the roar of rushing waters and like loud peals of thunder, shouting:

“Hallelujah!
    For our Lord God Almighty reigns.

As we have seen throughout the book, John tries to describe sounds that are indescribable by comparing them to the most awesome things in human experience, here like rushing waters and thunder. Those of us who have been to large concerts and sporting events know what noise a “great multitude” can make. This sound, though, is for one who is ultimately worthy to receive praise, unlike athletes and musicians. Secular people are uncomfortable with the worship of God, think it’s kind of strange. The more cynical among them think God is narcissistic, but human beings are worshiping creatures. It is in our nature to worship and exalt things we find worthy of praise and admiration. Like the aforementioned events, what are those who pile into great stadiums to cheer on their favorite teams or artists but worshipers. The only issue is not if we worship, but what and who. If it is not God first and above all, it is idolatry. As I’ve heard Tim Keller say, idolatry is turning good things into ultimate things. Once God is worshiped above all, we can freely admire and praise all other things worthy of that and in a healthy way.

Notice why they and we shout Hallelujah! to our God; he reigns! As we have seen (chapter 17) and will see again in this chapter, he is King of kings and Lord of lords. He rules over all things, and has ultimate authority over all power in heaven and on earth. When we worry or doubt or fear or experience anxiety, we do not believe this. We just don’t. We say we do, but we lie to ourselves. Either we trust him because he reigns and have perfect peace, or we do not. There is no in between. Yes, it is difficult to achieve such peace in a fallen world in a fallen body living among fallen people, but the more we know him and fall in love with him the easier it is to trust him, and as Paul implored us to do, give thanks in all circumstances. If we’re not giving thanks, trusting him is impossible; if we trust him, we will give thanks. In that he is glorified and we will experience his hand in our lives for our good. We learn further why we should proclaim Hallelujah!:

⁷ Let us rejoice and be glad
    and give him glory!
For the wedding of the Lamb has come,
    and his bride has made herself ready.
⁸ Fine linen, bright and clean,
    was given her to wear.”

(Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of the saints.)

Who doesn’t like going to a wedding, but imagine a wedding that’s been planned since the creation of the world! It’s interesting, and instructive, that God uses the metaphor of marriage to teach us about his relationship to his people, and his people to him. So, it doesn’t surprise us that faithfulness and adultery are common themes in the Old Testament story of Israel. We learn through that long sordid story that his people being faithful to God could only be accomplished by God himself. He laid down his life for his bride, as the husband is to do for his wife, and the wife is to submit to the husband as God’s people submit to Christ. This also tells us about the centrality of the family to life in this fallen world, as it is the basis for civilization. It is no wonder the devil through Karl Marx made it his number one goal to destroy the family, along with religion.

We see that the bride is prepared for her wedding, as brides normally are; there will be no cold feet at this wedding. We know how most brides prepare for most weddings, but how does this eternal, spiritual bride prepare herself? She is given “Fine linen, bright and clean” to wear. In order to be ready she must be given the clothing she will wear at her wedding; it is not something she can make herself. Yet, it is something that represents what she does, not only who she is. In philosophical terms, she acts consistently with her being, her ontology, and effectively cannot act otherwise. She is, after all, the eternal, spotless bride of the Lamb! That is why, in theological terms, the indicative (what is based on what God has done for us in Christ) comes before the imperative (what we are exhorted to do as saved servants of the Lamb). Too often we get this backward and think the latter leads to the former; it does not! Justification comes before sanctification. This is the exquisite beauty of Christianity, and its radical revolutionary transformational nature; it is not as is every other religion, moralism. The morals, the doing, the holiness, flows out of God’s love, as Paul says, “that has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.” And as John himself says, “We love because he first loved us.” I could go on, and on, and on, but you get the point. These words in Isaiah 61 say it perfectly:

¹⁰ I delight greatly in the Lord;
    my soul rejoices in my God.
For he has clothed me with garments of salvation
    and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness,
as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest,
    and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

Read the entire wonderful chapter and it is clear how it is these righteous acts come to pass. John continues:

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

There is too much to say about these verses and the post is getting long already. I’ll start with them in the next post as well, but I will briefly continue the theme of the last paragraph. The invitation doesn’t imply it can be rejected. The invitation brings to mind a parable of Jesus that was likely well-know to John’s readers, the parable of the wedding banquet in Matthew 22. The theme there is the ones initially invited, the Jews, didn’t come, so they got other people to come. The point isn’t how they got there, but that one wasn’t dressed appropriately and was thus cast out. He thought he could wear his own righteousness, and that attire was not acceptable to the king. We are invited to this marriage supper because of the robes of righteousness given to us.

Revelation 19:1-5 – Babylon is Fallen, Hallelujah!

The enemies of the Lamb and his people have been finally defeated, and now it is time to praise Almighty God. After what John has seen of this, he hears “what seemed to be the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, “crying out” God’s praises. John has used similes several times to try to describe sounds that are indescribable, and here (and again in v.6) it is a great, uncountable crowd of people. This great (mega) voice is so described by John because the entire universe can’t help but hear the praises of God’s redeemed and vindicated people. There are two multitudes in Revelation, one belongs to the Lamb, and the other to the beast, the world system opposed to the Lamb and his people. It is those who belong to God and the Lamb, those he purchased with his blood who sing his praises in the end:

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

³ Once more they cried out,

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

The word Hallelujah is a transliteration of the Old Testament for “praise the Lord,” literally, praise Yahweh. It is only used four times in the New Testament, all in this chapter. I think John want’s to get a point across. Reading that first sentence, consider how contrary it is to our fallen human nature. We are born enemies of our Creator, at enmity with him. To get a sense of what that means for the “natural” bent of our existence, take a look at the synonyms for the word enmity. That is who we are the moment we are conceived. Once Eve took the Satanic bait that God could not be trusted, it all went to hell, literally. In the very next chapter after what we call the fall in Genesis 3, Cain is jealous of his brother Able and is so angry with God that he kills his brother. It takes a supernatural work of God in our souls (stone to flesh, and then working that stone out of us for a lifetime, i.e. sanctification) to get us to really, truly believe that God’s “judgments are true and just.” Even in the petty annoyances of life I want to blame God! I’ve said many time as we’ve made our way through Revelation and see God’s justice meted out to his and his people’s enemies, that we must meditate upon Moses’ words he gave us just prior to his death (Deut. 32):

³ I will proclaim the name of the Lord.
    Oh, praise the greatness of our God!
⁴ He is the Rock, his works are perfect,
    and all his ways are just.
A faithful God who does no wrong,
    upright and just is he.

Trusting God’s providence, goodness and love for us is just as important in how we interpret the petty annoyances and World Wars, and everything in between: His works are perfect! All his ways are just!

Again, I will take us back to the historical context in which John is writing. Those living in the first century didn’t have the luxury of looking back on 2,000 years of Christian history. They had no idea Rome would ever fall, that it was even possible for Rome to fall. After all, by the time John wrote Revelation Rome had come to be called, “the eternal city.” It had lasted for some 900 years by that time, so it would likely last another 900 or more. The Christian’s suffering would never stop. But Revelation was written to give Christians hope that, oh yes it will! Ultimate Justice will be done, and they will not have to try to take it into their own hands and get needlessly slaughtered; it is the Lord’s to avenge.

The point of the second “Hallelujah! is not that God’s people will gaze on God’s enemies suffering for eternity, but that their enemies and all they stand for will be wiped out forever. One of the books I’m reading has a great phrase for it, “prophetic hyperbole.” He explains the implications of the smoke going up “for ever and ever”:

Ultimately God promises a complete removal of the “first heaven and earth” (20:11; 21:1), and with them God’s curse against human sin, with all its adverse effects (21:4; 22:3). Babylon, the man-centered substructure of civilization, grounded in brute force and intoxicated by idolatrous adoration of pleasure and possessions, belongs to this old cosmic order for which “no place is found” when the new heavens and earth appear.

“Hallelujah! indeed! Next, the praises which encompass all of the earth now take over the heavens:

⁴ The twenty-four elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God, who was seated on the throne. And they cried:

“Amen, Hallelujah!”

⁵ Then a voice came from the throne, saying:

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

The elders and creatures are mentioned here for the seventh and last time by John, but they are described each time differently (5:6, 8, 11, 14; 7:11; 14:3, and here). It’s amazing how many times John uses words or phrases a perfectly biblical seven times in Revelation. It’s almost like he planned it that way! They add their voices to the earthly multitudes in praise and worship of Almighty God. The Greek for worship is indicative what how we should approach our holy Savior God: properly, to kiss the ground when prostrating before a superior, and God is the most superior of all!

As if what God has done for his people in Christ isn’t enough, and the defeat of all their enemies, and ultimate justice done, directly from the presence of God comes a command to “Praise our God.” It’s more of an exhortation, and encouragement to do what God’s people are already inclined to do. That the voice telling us to do this comes “from the throne” indicates it is coming from God’s presence, but it can’t be God himself saying it because we are being told to praise “our God.” I could be wrong, but the only person who could go into the Holy of Holies once a year was the High Priest, but only once he had been ceremonially cleansed and his sins atoned for. So, maybe this voice is our High Priest, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Our God is his God!

Then there are we, his servants who do the praising, and can’t help it! The word servant was not a positive one in the ancient world, but Jesus and his followers would turn it into one. The word doulos-δοῦλος means someone who belongs to another; a bond-slave, without any ownership rights of their own. That is us! Being the servants of our God is why we can be and must be the servants of others, and why Christianity transformed the ancient world into the modern world, with ripples of blessing going out to all corners of the earth. Christianity did something to the ancient world that could have never happened otherwise: it leveled social distinction. It made human ontological status, i.e. our being, egalitarian, so all people were of equal value, great and small, king or laborer. This was radical and revolutionary, and yet another reason Christianity could not have been merely a human invention. Nobody in the ancient world would have ever even thought such a thing, let alone made it central to the teaching of a new religion and propagated it as a positive good. Hallelujah! indeed!