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March 19 - April 30, 2024
Remember, these images are not about predicting the future, but about shaping our perceptions of the present.
Because speculation drives interest (and sales!) such interpreters silence the magnificent images of Jesus and how those images should form our teaching and discipleship.
John gives us a multifaceted depiction of Jesus in the book of Revelation, and he is the one whom disciples are to follow by resisting Babylon.
John may have avoided precision so we could see all three of these and perhaps even more!
Again, we have found that too many readings of Revelation know the Lion is the Lamb, but then they ignore the significance of the Lamb in the book of Revelation.
The Lion is a Lamb who wins (as we are about to see) not with a sword in a bloody battle but with a nonviolent weapon, namely the Word of God.
And that’s how artists operate. They evoke, they don’t define. If they want to tell us something particular, they do. But if they want us to use our minds and imaginations, they paint something for us and then ask us, “What do you see?”
one of the heads “seemed to have a fatal wound.” But the NIV translation fails to lead readers to the connection John is making here. You could also translate this by saying “one of its heads” appeared to be “slain to death,” as it is the same word used to describe the Lamb in Revelation 5. The wild thing is the biggest copycat of all, aiming to appear as Lamb-like as possible, even faking the very act of Jesus: dying for others and coming back to life.
John yearns for the seven churches to become more aware of the fraudulence of idolatry.
If you really think about the description of blood up to the horses’ nostrils, it does not make sense as anything but a metaphor.
In Revelation the Lamb wins the war. The splendorous woman of Revelation 12 gives birth to the Son, who will “rule all the nations with an iron scepter” (12:5), an expression that echoes what John told us at the start, that king Jesus would be “the ruler of the kings of the earth”
the “deaths” at the hand of the Lamb are by the Word, the Logos, and not by a sword in the king’s fist. And here’s why. The way of the Lamb is not the way of Babylon and its dragon. The latter is the way of power and might, violence and bloodshed, murder and arrogance, and the exploitation of human bodies.
Militarism is not the way of the Lamb. Instead, the Lamb wins by losing, and his losing liberates others.
the Lord wins the battle with the Wor...
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God is not willing that any should perish. How do we reconcile that with a literal battle where Jesus slaughters millions?
When we read such interpreters, we should wonder if their heart has been cauterized.
the Lamb will win. And the Bible tells us the Lamb wins with the Word.
Winners with the Word deconstruct winners with the sword, and they will win at the parousia of Jesus, or his second coming or return
The Word is the weapon of the divine white horse Rider.
The longing for the new heavens and the new earth is the longing for the presence of God with us, for the Son—who morphs and morphs in this book—to come back to earth and undo injustice, defeat evil, and establish the new Jerusalem.
For Jesus and the apostles, the kingdom of God was both now and not yet.
One act of God after another attempts to persuade Babylon to surrender to the Lamb, but Babylon will have none of it, so the judgments increase until the whole shebang is tossed to the powers of Hades, the god of death. The dragon and evil are finished, and the new Jerusalem descends in its glory to the earth.
And this is what those who speculate about the future get completely wrong—the vertical axis moves through time.
The Horizontal Axis: The progress of history from creation to new Jerusalem. Babylon is present until the dragon is tossed into the fiery lake, and God’s Lamb is at war with the dragon and Babylon throughout history.
The vertical axis is the ever-present battle of God and the dragon, of the presence of Babylon and the yearning for new Jerusalem.
Just as we get to the point where we want to put our hands over our eyes, John lifts us into the presence of God, a place of worship and revelation.
that Jesus defeated death in the resurrection. That story announces that the Lamb and justice win, and the dragon and death lose.
“Often it is difficult for persons who have not been hopeless to understand how precious hope (and judgment, that is, justice) can be for those without hope.”
The oppressed want to hear from God, and they want to experience his justice. They want to see judgment on evil, they want oppression to end, and they want injustices to be undone. They want to hear that their oppressors are scheduled for a date with the divine. They want to know that racism will end in equality, that starvation will end in a banquet, that exclusion from the city will end in open gates for all.
They know evil when they see it, and they long for the light found in the Lamb’s eyes.
All these and others remind the oppressed people of God that it may not look good today, but tomorrow brings new Jerusalem.
It is the Lamb who alone is worthy to open the seals and who therefore unleashes the seal judgments
they stir the imagination of the oppressed in their hope for justice and of the sinful as a warning that God will eventually pay back all injustice.
Morally, the core issue is justice, and God is the One and Only who always does what is right.
Isaiah used Amos (Isa 1:12–17; 5:8–23) and Hosea (Isa 1:2–3, 21–26; 9:18). Jeremiah had read Micah (Jer 26:17–19). Daniel drew from Jeremiah (Dan 9:2).
They are acts of God with the purpose of transforming people.
Let’s consider a fourth indicator that these are disciplines and not retributive punishments.
“Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.” We would first
But notice then that John says people from the whole world are now part of this covenant relationship with God.
John’s core chapters (6–19) tell us, and this concludes our observations, that the three times seven judgments are disciplines designed by God to woo people from the way of the Dragon to the way of the Lamb.
For the oppressed people of our world, the words “Babylon is fallen!” declare the end of the dragon’s corruption (18:1–19:10).
They are an announcement of the gospel itself. Not as an encouragement to delight in vengeance but as relief that the ache for justice is ended.
Could the kings be spiritual beings (fallen angels, demons, etc.) rather than human kings?
the Rider on the white horse alone slays his enemies. None of the allegiant witnesses draw so much as a knife or a fist.
The point is clear: the battle is the Lord’s, as is the victory that is won.
so the people of God can live in safety and peace and justice and so they can forever bask in the light of the Lamb. And his point is that these two belong together: eliminating evil and establishing justice.
Revelation 21 announces that God has returned to the house. But not quite. Instead of dwelling in a house, God becomes the house. The new Jerusalem vision of John is something new, going beyond any vision in Israel’s history.
He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!
This is what new Jerusalem means to John, the churches, and to us today: God’s presence with God’s people in unending intimacy and splendor. God provides water and food and a city and shelter and safety, and all the jewels and materialism of Babylon are turned toward God, flooding the new Jerusalem with gifts stacked on gifts like a cosmic Christmas tree. He gives his people a perfectly constructed city where a temple is no longer needed. The temple was a place to “house” God, but God and the Lamb flood this place and are present everywhere (21:22).
The inclusion of the nations in God’s redemption opens those gates. And this is even more radical: the “kings of the earth” (21:24) bringing their splendor and riches indicates the conversion of pagan, persecuting kings.
