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March 2 - August 26, 2023
Those who saw the power and glory and reach of Babylon (=Rome) were stunned—everyone except the dissidents, the oppressed, the slaves, those captured, and the poor. In other words, most everyone!
Rome accumulated all it had through military might and power. Rome tellingly rejected the use of “king” (rex) for its premier leader, instead preferring the title “emperor,” a translation of imperator, referring to military commanders.
It didn’t take much imagination for John’s readers in the seven churches to know this truth: Rome was the center of the world, had the blessing of the gods, and the glory of the people—and it had all these things because of its ruthless power and relentless strategy.
Rome, aka Babylon, aggregated, accumulated, exploited, taxed, and traded—and this was a daily experience throughout the empire. Mosaics in Pompeii show that on the houses you could read on the floor “Hello Profit!” or “Profit is Happiness!”
The previous six signs of Babylon could all be rolled up into this one. Rome turned its arrogance into a virtue. “In her heart,” John knows by discernment, “she boasts, ‘I sit enthroned as queen. I am not a widow; I will never mourn’” (Rev 18:7).
Augustus exposes for all to see the way of the dragon—self-adulation, human accomplishment, and false humility. His rule and way of life exist through power, through violence, through murder, and through the exploitation of others for the sake of indulgence and opulence.
Dissident disciples are the first to realize they are in a battle—not with flesh and blood, but with the principalities and powers that snake their way into the seven churches.
Remember, these images are not about predicting the future, but about shaping our perceptions of the present.
Too much interpretation of Revelation speculates about the antichrist or such newsy items as the rebirth of the nation of Israel. Because speculation drives interest (and sales!) such interpreters silence the magnificent images of Jesus and how those images should form our teaching and discipleship. Instead of forming a Lamb-shaped discipleship that discerns how to live amid a timeless Babylon, this speculation generates specialized knowledge about the future and encourages people to spend time looking for a cloud-rider in the skies.
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?” Note that there is a difference between evocation and instruction, and John utilizes the former.
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.
One of the most unfortunate developments among readers and interpreters of Revelation is an approach that treats the seven churches of chapters two and three as a prediction of the history of church.
This approach to Revelation distorts the meaning of what John wrote in a number of ways, not least these two. First, these are wildly inaccurate descriptions of the periods themselves. And second, John thinks of these churches as coexisting and contemporary. There is not a shred or scrap of evidence that John sees them as future churches.
The biggest problem with this interpretation also damns the entire approach: it fails to comprehend the historic global church. The red-hot power of God at work in churches in Africa and Asia and South America and Central America is disgracefully unacknowledged by this periodizing scheme of reading the seven churches.
The book of Revelation is about the story of everything, and this is why we say Revelation is cosmic. Its scope is, well, everything. Life—past, present, future—is not a product of random chaos, nor is it the result of fate or blind luck. No, in the story of everything, the world is God’s world, time is in God’s hands, history has a beginning, and God guides history toward its divine intention: the new Jerusalem or the kingdom of God.
The interludes lift their listeners in the seven churches away from the horrors of the dragon, the wild things, and Babylon into the heavenly throne room where they can experience God as the real story behind what is happening: As church, a community for those marginalized in our society; as compassion for those suffering from sicknesses and diseases; as music bringing hope to the downtrodden; as the gospel, good news for those systemically abused and oppressed.
few readers ponder what the three times seven judgments—seals, trumpets, shallow bowls—are intended to accomplish in the larger storyline. If you haven’t noticed, John loves numbers. Many readers and interpreters of Revelation have noted that John never gives us a number that is free from symbolic value.
Seven is the number of perfection, implying something done according to the divine design, the number of completion. Three implies the greatest or ultimate expression of something. So seven times three indicates triple perfection! These judgments describe the complete, perfect erasure of evil.
The best explanation we have ever seen for how biblical prophecy works requires understanding two things: resistance and affirmation. What must be resisted is thinking that the prophets are announcing in precise detail what will happen in time and space in the immediate future. What must be affirmed is that rhetorically the prophets ramp up imminency to press upon their readers the urgency of responding to their message. Notice how not all that was predicted in both Isaiah 40–55 and Ezekiel 40–48, two texts especially important for Revelation, was fulfilled in their “fulfillments”—that is,
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Those prophets inspired their audiences to act by utilizing language that turned the next event into the end of history. But that end of history didn’t occur and—this is so important—no one was squawking about the prophets being wrong.
There is something profoundly wrong and unchristian about readings of Revelation that take delight in the so-called great tribulation’s severities and judgments. John’s narrative is not intended to titillate moderns into the joy of knowing they will escape these scenes, nor are they shaped to lead us into vindication or revenge as we see our nation’s enemies crushed. These scenes are not the stuff of world wars or nuclear holocausts. They are images of God’s justice being established by erasing the evils of injustice.
These kinds of calculations are colossally unimaginative blunders that do not understand how apocalyptic literature and the imagery of this book work. These graphic accounts of horrors will not happen literally on planet earth. One
of this to say: we are to see these—yes, triply—complete judgments as the deepest desire of the oppressed for justice. The specific judgments in the seals, trumpets, and shallow bowls are common tropes recognizable by those who have studied the Old Testament. Think of them as graphic images similar to those we see in John Milton’s Paradise Lost or J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings or even science fiction. Think of them then not so much as literal events that God will cast forth onto the world but as rhetorical displays of warning for the dragon and comfort for the oppressed.
Slater expresses this well, saying, “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.” Privileged people tend to abuse Revelation with their misreadings, while the abused of this world find hope for the coming day.
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.
A mistake is sometimes made by those who press these judgments into literal earthly realities in which God supposedly makes havoc of his own creation. Rather, these are all—each and in totality—graphic images of judgment on the dragon, the wild things, and Babylon. These judgments have a clear purpose as well: the elimination of evil in the world so the people of God can dwell in peace in the new Jerusalem.
Nothing thrills the heart of the oppressed and unjust sufferers more than hearing that God will make everything right—that he will bring justice. To put it practically, this means: • Racism condemned and made right is justice. • Economic exploitation made right is justice. • Trafficking bodies of humans made right is justice.
Careful reading of Scripture teaches us that it takes time to read the Bible in its historical context.
We believe more careful, nuanced thinking is needed to ascertain what is happening with the divine three times seven judgments in Revelation. These “judgments,” are perhaps better described as divine disciplines which establish justice, not vindictive judgments of retribution.
The difference matters. These acts of God on the stage of history are not retributions or the venting of a divine spleen. They are acts of God with the purpose of transforming people.
As Ian Paul has observed in his insightful commentary, many want to read the seven visions in sequence, one followed by another, but this approach creates more problems than it solves, not least of which is more than one return of Jesus to earth (hint, there aren’t multiple “second” comings). It is better to see these seven visions as various angles or perspectives on the return of Christ.
The fiery lake extinguishes the wild things and the false prophet.
At the time John writes about the Rider on the white horse —an image filled with pregnant images from the Old Testament—stories were commonly told about the triumphs of military commanders.
Richard Bauckham, a major advocate of this approach, concludes: “The theological point of the millennium is solely to demonstrate the triumph of the martyrs.”
We are frequently asked what our “view” of Revelation is, and the question is often framed in terms of the millennium: Are you premillennial, or amillennial, or postmillennial? We answer back: Why is the so-called (literal, physical) millennium the interpretive framework for reading the book of Revelation? The millennium, regardless of your view, is a sideshow in this book (at best). Three verses are the grand sum of verses about the millennium in Revelation.
A better question is, “Ignoring the millennium entirely, what is your view of the book of Revelation?” Our answer: It is an apocalyptic-prophetic book revealing the evils of the empire and summoning readers to a discerning, dissident discipleship as we live into the new Jerusalem.
The fiery lake is the place where all evil—the dragon, the wild things, the false prophet, and their armies—is eradicated. These are eliminated so the new Jerusalem can come. How we talk about hell, if it is informed by this text, requires understanding the divinely revealed intent of the fiery lake. This is not a place of vindictive punishment but the place where evil is erased so the new Jerusalem can be established and God’s people can enjoy life without harassment, violence, injustice, and evil.
We have come full circle, back to where we began: the way of the Lamb is a form of resistance to the way of Babylon. Those committed to the Lord of lords do not wage war as the Romans do. They do not conquer as the Romans do. And they do not worship as the Romans do. They worship the One on the throne and the Lamb, and anyone worshiping God and the Lamb is being transformed into an agent of the Lamb’s peace and justice, which is the way of life in new Jerusalem.
Justice will be the way of the Lamb for all. Peace will be the way of the Lamb for all. Love will be the way of the Lamb for all. Forever and ever. Ever abounding and flourishing and increasing in glory and love.
Reading Revelation means knowing for whom it was written. We answer that by saying it was written for dissidents. We must also understand how it can best impact and transform us. As we have seen, it is through our imagination.
So how does one live in Babylon? First, the dissident disciples of the seven churches had to learn to see how Babylon was impacting and influencing them. Like a fish in water, the way of Babylon is nearly invisible for the one swimming in it.
How do you live in a world of constant internal betrayals, driven by economic exploitation of anyone and everyone, structured into a mysterious hierarchical system of power and honor, and driven by arrogance and ambition? How does one “escape” Babylon while living in it?
This entire book—don’t forget this please—is for each of those seven churches. Every vision, every interlude, every song is for each of them.
All of this leads us to one central question for our own lives today: How much of our faith is tied to our own nation and its power? Forms of Christian nationalism have been infecting the church since the fourth century. It has long been a matter of Rome plus the church, a church ruled by the state, by the nation, or by the military. In such an idolatrous mixture, the symbols of empire morph into symbols of nationalism and religion, and religious nationalism wants to incorporate Christ into its powers. Idolatries will use religion to sanction the nation.
John wrote up the entire Apocalypse for those seven churches. This means the book of Revelation is not a timeless vision using the seven churches as a mask for some future world but is instead a timely revelation about Jesus for those churches (and for churches of all times).
Our point is one of comparison, that the songs of Revelation were to the empire what the spirituals were to American systemic slavery. They are not the same, but they are similar. And calling them “spirituals” may help us today reorient how we read them and hear them.
In Revelation worship is a whole body, whole voice, whole mind, and whole life lived in gratitude to God for redemption, a whole life surrendered to the Lamb. Reducing worship to Sunday at 11 a.m. violates the heart of worship. Worship is Sunday through Saturday, 24-7.
Martin Luther King Jr., closing down one of his sermons in the early days in Montgomery, speaks of what it means to be a witness: Honesty impels me to admit that transformed nonconformity, which is always costly and never altogether comfortable, may mean walking through the valley of the shadow of suffering, losing a job, or having a six-year-old daughter ask, “Daddy, why do you have to go to jail so much?”
Being a witness has two sides: it is public affirmation in word and life of the lordship of Jesus, and it is public resistance in word and life to the way of the dragon embodied in Babylon. Eugene Peterson observes that for the first three hundred years of the church, the most important image for a Christian was a martyr. To our shame today, the most popular and resonant images among Christians in the United States are athletes, millionaires, and movie stars. Oy!
They will wage war against the Lamb, but the Lamb will triumph over them because he is Lord of lords and King of kings—and with him will be his called, chosen and allegiant followers. (17:14)
