Rv 7:9-17

29 April 2007

4th Sunday of Easter

“Don’t be Left Behind”

            “Time flies when you’re having fun.”  How can time fly?  What does that mean?  [Wait for an answer.]  Are you sure?

            “Birds of a feather flock together.”  What’s the point of talking about birds?  What does that mean?  [Again, wait for an answer.]  I don’t know about that.

            What if I were to tell you that 2000 years from now, in a country that doesn’t yet exist, archeologists will make a discovery?  They’ll uncover some document or retrieve a computer file which contains the sayings I just mentioned.  They’ll assume the words were meant for them all along, as though they had nothing to do with us.  These people in the distant future will give them a meaning that never would have occurred to us.

            “Impossible!” you say?  “Ridiculous!”  Maybe.  But that’s pretty much what often gets done with the book of Revelation.  One way this happens is by simply ignoring the message to the people for whom the book was written.  Another, more extreme way this takes place is by assuming that we, and only we, are the intended audience.

            Perhaps you’ll say, “I’m not sure I’m following you.  How does this stuff happen?”  It’s no secret that Revelation contains plenty of colorful imagery; the imagery is in fact apocalyptic.  (I’ll return to that and say something about what that means.)  Because these word pictures are unfamiliar to us—as they’ve been to people in the centuries before us—they’ve been interpreted in all kinds of ways.

            Here’s one example.  At the time of the Protestant Reformation, the images of the beast and the dragon, which appear later in the book, were applied to both Martin Luther and to the Pope.

            Here’s another example, from a book published in 1907, that I find especially interesting.  This one claims that the destruction of the Turkish (that is, the Ottoman) Empire will be a signal for the coming of Christ.  The idea is “that when the Ottoman empire comes to its end, it means the end of all other nations.”[1]  Apparently, in the chaos that ensues after its collapse, the final war will be fought.  (By the way, the Ottoman Empire, after a long decline, collapsed in 1922.)

            In our time, Revelation continues to be misinterpreted by assuming that it provides what’s been called “a roadmap to our future.”[2]  A good bit of that is based on a school of thought, fairly recent in the history of the church, which emerged only in the 1800s.  It’s called dispensationalism.  I’ve addressed this before.

Very briefly, dispensationalism divides history into a number of periods, usually seven, which are called “dispensations.”

It usually goes this way:  the first, known as the dispensation of innocence, goes from creation to the fall of the human race.  The next one runs from the fall to the rainbow covenant with Noah.  Third, we go from Noah to the covenant with Abraham, and then from Abraham to the law of Moses.  The fifth one covers the period from the giving of the law up to the time of Jesus.  We’re currently in the sixth dispensation, the church era.  The seventh will be the literal thousand year reign of Christ.

According to this theology, as one dispensation gives way to the next, there’s a fundamental change in the way God deals with the human race—including multiple plans of salvation.  Contrary to the vast majority of Christian thought, dispensationalism makes sharp distinctions where it need not, such as between the Old and New Testaments.  It rejects the notion of God having one plan for the human race—a plan the Westminster Confession calls “the covenant of grace” (ch. 7).

            Today, the “left behind” phenomenon is the most recent and popular version of this “roadmap to our future” approach to Revelation.  There are a number of problems with this view of the Bible, not the least of which is what I mentioned at the start.  It doesn’t deal with the original audience—in this case, seven churches in Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey.

            Okay, so what about them?  What is it about the message to them that we need to hear?  Let’s first see where we are.

            The first three chapters of Revelation present John’s vision of the glorified Christ, as well as the messages to these churches.  Chapters 4 and 5 contain a vision of the glory of God and the Lamb.  A scroll sealed with seven seals is introduced, one that only the Lamb is worthy to open.  In chapter 6, the first six seals are opened, unleashing all kinds of destruction on the earth.

            With chapter 7, we have two visions that form an interlude before the seventh seal is opened.  In the first vision, an angel commands that the redeemed be marked before the forces of desolation are set loose.  The number given is 144,000.  That’s 12,000 from each of the twelve tribes of Israel.  It’s a symbol of completeness—not one is missing.  Not one of the faithful is forgotten.

            Then we come to today’s reading.  In this vision, the number is too immense to be counted.  It’s a “great multitude…from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (v. 9).  They’re joined by the angels, before God, offering sevenfold praise:  “Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might” (v. 12).  It is sevenfold praise; it is perfect.  It is complete.

            I said earlier that plenty of confusion about Revelation is due to its apocalyptic images.  Those are the crazy scenes with monsters doing battle and cosmic disturbances up in the sky.  You know, it’s like a holy hallucination!

            Very briefly, apocalyptic literature served to encourage those who were being persecuted.  The symbols we see aren’t the point; it’s what they point to.  For Christians at the end of the first century, they serve to remind them that there are other forces at work besides what’s happening around them.  The oppression by the Roman Empire will soon end.  And if nothing else, the faithful know that they will have a good death; that’s something the wicked aren’t able to say.

            This idea of strengthening the saints is highlighted by one of those strange images.  In verses 13 and 14, one of the elders in John’s vision asks him, “‘Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?’  I said to him, ‘Sir, you are the one that knows.’  Then he said to me, ‘These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.’”

            Imagine that for a cleaning solution!  Washing something in blood and having it come out white!

            This odd scenario speaks to the daily life of John and his fellow believers.  He tells us early in the book that he’s been exiled to an island in the Aegean Sea—“because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus,” as he puts it.  John shares with them “the persecution and the kingdom and the patient endurance” (1:9).

            There’s a whole dimension here we rarely acknowledge.  It’s been pointed out, “Within the Roman empire the term ‘salvation’ is political:  it designates the peace, security, and welfare that the empire provides.”  One of the titles of the emperor is Soter, “Savior.”  In John’s vision, “the martyrs recognize that salvation comes from God and from the Lamb.  They are in effect saying that it does not come from the Roman emperor and his empire.”[3]

            To only heighten the subversive, upside-down vision of the faithful, consider the being they call Soter, “Savior.”  They worship a Lamb!  Need I remind you, lambs are not known for their strength?  Pitting a lamb against the mighty Roman emperor is hardly a fair fight!  However, this Lamb is a different story.  This is a Lamb “at the center of the throne” (v. 17).

            When Revelation is written—with John exiled to the island of Patmos—the emperor is Domitian.  This guy is a real piece of work.  As time goes on, he becomes more and more paranoid and morally depraved.  He launches persecutions against both Jews and Christians.  And Domitian goes well beyond the title Soter.  He’s the first Roman emperor to deify himself while living.  He demands to be called “Lord and God.”

            So, considering that background, the reference to “the great ordeal” in verse 14 has provoked speculation throughout the centuries.  What is the great ordeal?  Is John talking about one of Domitian’s fits of rage?  Is it the result of another emperor or some other ruler?

            According to Pablo Richard, this isn’t about any one event.  It “refers to the ongoing oppression of the empire…which is endured by those who are not willing to be integrated into it and to take part in its oppressive and idolatrous structures.”[4]  I believe this idea best fits with the rest of the witness of scripture.

            The great ordeal “is not the distress of a particular moment like persecutions, but rather an everyday and continual [domination].  It is the great distress suffered for following the Lamb wherever he goes, and it is suffered for the sake of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.”[5]  It’s the textbook case of Christ versus empire, Christ versus Caesar.

            The thing is, this isn’t just about Christ versus the Roman Empire.  The Romans aren’t the only ones to make promises like peace, security, and welfare.  Many governments before and since have made those same promises.  But there is something about an “empire” that takes it to a whole different level.

            What is “empire” today?  In what ways does it oppose Christ?  Because Christ is about more than the political side of life, for empire to oppose Christ, it seems it also would need to be about more than the political realm.  It would need to deal with all of life.  So there’s the Christian orientation and the imperial orientation.  Unfortunately, the two often get intertwined.

            What I’m saying is that empire promotes itself as the best the world can offer.  It’s the biggest and the baddest, and it will keep you safe.  Those who put their hope in a Lamb are simply naïve—or even worse.

            That doesn’t mean that the Christians John writes to are hiding from the world.  They’re right there, in the marketplace.  They’re at all levels of society, slaves and Roman citizens alike.  But the faithful watch their hearts.  They guard against letting the values of empire infect their hearts.  There’s only room for one on the throne of their hearts.  It’s either the Lamb or the empire.  Just as they faced consequences for choosing the Lamb over the empire, so do we.

            Revelation, with all its crazy images, is more than anything else, a book of worship.  It’s about what’s going on right now—for them and for us.  To relegate it to the future, with all kinds of hypothetical scenarios, strips it of its power.  Revelation speaks hope.  As I said earlier, it speaks to completeness, to wholeness.  Not one of the faithful is forgotten.

Keeping in mind today’s final verse, we work with God to bring about the reign in which it’s true:  “the Lamb at the center of the throne will be our shepherd, and he will guide us to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from our eyes.”  Now that is an image of the future we can embrace with confidence.

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