Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation

by Michael J. Gorman

Revelation is not about the antichrist, but about the living Christ. It is not about a rapture out of this world but about faithful discipleship in this world.

Revelation knows that true spiritual existence is warfare, but it defines victory in the cosmic battle as faithfulness. Neither the Lamb nor his followers fight in any other way than faithfulness, even to the point of suffering and death.

Revelation says “yes” as well as “no” to the world. The church that is both in and out of Babylon will not be able to sit still. Perceiving idolatry leads us to evangelize. Perceiving injustice leads us to action. “No one can enter imaginatively into the world narrated by this book and remain complacent about things as they are in an unjust world.”11 Both are needed, and both are rooted in Revelation’s final, hopeful vision.

The faithful church expresses its commitment to the city—to the “inhabitants of the earth”—only in ways that are true to the gospel and to Christians’ identity as followers of the Lamb. This means that the church will above all serve, and that service will be Lamb-like, cruciform. It will neither sacralize nor seek secular power, whether economic, political, or military. It disavows, in other words, Christendom in favor of Christ.

God the creator and Christ the redeemer take evil and injustice seriously, and soon will both judge humanity and renew the cosmos. We hope and long for the wiping away of everyone’s tears and for the healing of the nations. We anticipate the day when those nations will worship God and the Lamb. We bear witness in word and deed to that certain future. But we know that only God can bring that final, future reality to earth, so we constantly pray, “Come, Lord Jesus.”