Left Behind? Just Don't Call Me Late for Dinner-Another Book pt 2

This is the second part in a series that begins with The Conqueror.  I am pasting here the introduction from Part 1 that serves as the introduction to the whole series.

"We are wrong about everything else but we are right about the Gospel."  It's a pretty good one liner and I have kind of been using it as the unofficial motto of our church.  "We are wrong about everything else but we are right about the Gospel."  What I mean to imply by that is that the Gospel is the only thing that matters.  The Gospel, quite literally, justifies all of our other mistakes, errors, and failures.  So, I don't know how far our little look into Revelation will get but the key that I intend to use is something like this.  "I am wrong about eschatology.  I am wrong about numerology.  I am wrong about symbolism.  But I intend to be right about what the Revelation says about Christ."  Where it is necessary to try and interpret John's visions to tell my story, I don't intend to seek a coherent system of symbolism, I don't intend to offer any opinion on the chronology of the "End Times", not even in the most general of ways.  Instead, I will shamelessly use all of the imagery and mysticism to try and illustrate the Christ of Revelation.  If that is how John intended it to be used then it might work out pretty well.  If it isn't, "Oh well."

Sometime during my childhood the geniuses behind the American christian experience came up with the idea of the Judgment House.  A haunted house where God is the monster seems like a great way to get people to trust God.  The message is quite literally turn or burn, with the last scene being a courtroom where God throws away anybody that doesn't make the cut.  God can either be your best friend or your worst enemy, they say.  But who wants to be friends with a guy who throws people away?  And how can you ever trust someone who might waste you if you don't measure up?  Maybe the reason this brand of Christianity targets kids so much is that they are still naive enough to think that they might measure up if the bar is low enough.  The rest of us have realised by now that no matter how easy the test we will ultimately fail.

Of course, the Judgment Houses and their sequel Tribulation Trail are jam packed with apocalyptic imagery.  Scenes of God smashing the sinners are how we all see the Apocalypse.  I have been terrified by the Book of Revelation for as long as I can remember.  There's nothing special about that though is there?  We are all terrified by this bizarre story, that hangs over Christianity as an ominous spectre of the future.  It claims to be a Revelation of Jesus Christ, but why is this Jesus so different from the Jesus of the Gospels?  I am going to try and shine a little different light on the Apocalypse.  I believe that judgment is a form of grace, and I am going to try and survey Revelation for the purpose of showing it as such.

Revelation is structured something like this, it begins with an introduction and some letters to churches, which have some judgmental aspects but I am going to try and head straight to the whole end of the world sequence which is so upsetting.  We talked about the throne room of Heaven and the opening of the scroll last time and that is kinda where the story kicks off.  From an overview, the story has six seals being opened, which are upsetting but comparatively nondescript.  Then there is a story about God's people being given a protective mark and a group too large to be numbered coming to heaven and worshipping around the throne.  Then the last seal is opened.  Then there is a sequence of Six Trumpets being blown which each unleash a rather plainer and rather judgier set of events than the seals did.  This is where it starts to get nasty with things falling out of the sky to smack the earth and monsters coming out of holes and whatnot.  Then we have a series of stories about John and the Mighty Angel with the Little Book, The Two Witnesses killed in the Bad City, followed by the Seventh Trumpet and the Saints in Heaven.  Then we see The Woman giving Birth to a Child who ascends to the Throne of God, the War in Heaven, and then the Beasts who Deceive the world are introduced, followed by the Reaping of the World's Harvest.  Then we get back to the Judgment sequence with Seven Bowl Judgments, which are the nastiest yet and several seem to be specifically designed to goad the Beast and His followers into a fight with the Lamb.  Then follows the final story about the Fall of Babylon, Christ the Conqueror, Christ the Warrior, and Christ the Judge, Christ with the Keys of Death and Hell, reprised and expanded from the Seals on the Scroll, and then The End.


So we have a series of very strange almost unintelligible stories about the Kingdom and Grace and Judgment, told in rather vague terms so as to give them a universal application.  They are told with almost no names instead everyone has titles The Child, The Woman, The Dragon, The Unjust Steward, The Lamb, The King's Son, The Saints, The Witnesses, The Older Brother.  You probably noticed that I mixed in several characters from the Parables of Jesus and that is how these stories strike me.  The Apocalypse is almost like the Parables of Jesus Part II.  It is in that light that I want to look at these stories.



I want to begin by proposing a framework to understand the structure of Revelation especially the way it seems to tread the same ground several times.  From Luke 14:

Now when one of those who sat at the table with Him heard these things, he said to Him, “Blessed is he who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God!”
Then He said to him, “A certain man gave a great supper and invited many, and sent his servant at supper time to say to those who were invited, ‘Come, for all things are now ready.’ But they all with one accord began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a piece of ground, and I must go and see it. I ask you to have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to test them. I ask you to have me excused.’ Still another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’ So that servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house, being angry, said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in here the poor and the maimed and the lame and the blind.’ And the servant said, ‘Master, it is done as you commanded, and still there is room.’ Then the master said to the servant, ‘Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. For I say to you that none of those men who were invited shall taste my supper.’ ”

There are three sequences of Judgments in Revelation.  The Seals, The Trumpets, and The Bowls.  I think that we can understand them by comparison with the three calls issued to the Great Banquet in Luke 14.  The Seals are the invitation to know God to those who are expected to be more or less worthy, to the Church people, the Christians and the Jews.  So, once Christ opened the Scroll, whenever in history or the future we think that might be, the knowledge of God became available to anyone who cared to read the scroll.  The Scroll presented Christ as the Conqueror, the Warrior, the Judge, and the One with Power over Death and Hell.  But as the fifth seal tells us towards the end of Revelation 6,

When He opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice, saying, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, until You judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” Then a white robe was given to each of them; and it was said to them that they should rest a little while longer, until both the number of their fellow servants and their brethren, who would be killed as they were, was completed.

the number of people who came to His party, who traded in their lives for His death was insufficient for the party He had planned.  The group who was first invited to Christ's party, the religious, the Jews, us, our own works, our own plans to build His kingdom and our kingdom keep us out of the place He has gone to prepare for us.  And the Sixth Seal gives us the reason,

I looked when He opened the sixth seal, and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became like blood. And the stars of heaven fell to the earth, as a fig tree drops its late figs when it is shaken by a mighty wind. Then the sky receded as a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island was moved out of its place. And the kings of the earth, the great men, the rich men, the commanders, the mighty men, every slave and every free man, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains, and said to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of His wrath has come, and who is able to stand?”

When He invited us to Resurrection we only saw the Death that is the door through which we must pass to that Resurrection.  When He invited us to enjoy Him, we only saw that we must lose ourselves.  He offers us Heaven and we are too busy grieving the loss of Earth to appreciate the offer.  And don't imagine that you and I aren't in that number for as it says, the kings, the great, the rich, the mighty, every slave and every free, it is hard to find an exception to that set.  This is the Judgment.  That we prefer our life which is death to the death of Christ which is life,our darkness to His light.   There is a sort of understated irony which is very characteristic of the preaching of Jesus of Nazareth, which I find in the phrase "wrath of the Lamb"  Although sheep are much more common in the Old World than they are in the American South, the word used here is a little lamb and would have felt much the same to the first readers of this story as it does to us.  There is a clear portrayal of passive helplessness, and of course Jewish readers would have felt the sacrificial tones of the word lamb quite as much as we do.  What animal could be less inclined to show wrath than a little lamb?  Of course as John has already pointed out in chapter 5 this lamb is dead, dead to wrath and alive to grace.  I don't know much about Greek but it seems to me that there is another bit of irony in the word translated throughout Revelation as "wrath". When I was studying all of this I became curious about this wrath and and looked it up.  It describes feelings so strong that they can't be contained and an alternate translation is passion.  Hide us from the Passion of Christ.  When this was written the end of Christ's life hadn't yet come to be called His Passion but I think that that illustrates the problem we have with the Apocalypse rather nicely.  His way of Salvation is a way that features a guilty verdict, suffering, Death, and Hell, it has all of the external characteristics of wrath, it is only when you get inside that you can perceive it as passion.  Which I think is why at the Seventh Seal there is silence in Heaven.  Christ has stooped down to open the knowledge of God to us and we have made excuses not to take Him up on the offer.  He set the Scroll that is the Express Image of God right before us and we were too attached to our own notions of who God is to take a look.  It is the silence of shock and awe.  Not shock and awe though at our stubborn stupidity but at the lengths which Christ is about to go to to get guests at His party.

So that servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house, being angry, said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in here the poor and the maimed and the lame and the blind.’

The story proceeds to the blowing of Seven Trumpets.  God is turning up the volume.  Christ is done being refused by the religious set.   He is now broadcasting the message of Grace full volume.  But how does He do that? From Revelation 8:

The first angel sounded: And hail and fire followed, mingled with blood, and they were thrown to the earth. And a third of the trees were burned up, and all green grass was burned up.
Then the second angel sounded: And something like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea, and a third of the sea became blood. And a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.
Then the third angel sounded: And a great star fell from heaven, burning like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died from the water, because it was made bitter.
Then the fourth angel sounded: And a third of the sun was struck, a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of them were darkened. A third of the day did not shine, and likewise the night.
And I looked, and I heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, “Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth, because of the remaining blasts of the trumpet of the three angels who are about to sound!”

This sounds like wrath.  It sounds like judgment.  But wrath and judgment are not ends unto themselves with God.  This is the story of God taking away the things that we depend on, the things that we think we need.  Because as He said of Jerusalem, "You did not know the things which make your peace."  He burns the grass and the trees, He poisons the water both salt and fresh, He blots out the light of sun and moon.  But it is only so that we will see that the Lamb is our Shepherd, only so that He can cause us to lie down in green grass, beside the rivers of living water which issue from His throne, He blots out the sun so that we will perceive the Light of the World.  His judgment is to take away the things which we imagine support us and make us happy that we may perceive that He provides for us just as much without means of water and trees and the sun.  Mercy doesn't merely triumph over judgment, mercy is the ground; the foundation on which judgment is built.

From Revelation 16:Then I heard a loud voice from the temple saying to the seven angels, “Go and pour out the bowls of the wrath of God on the earth.”
So the first went and poured out his bowl upon the earth, and a foul and loathsome sore came upon the men who had the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image.
Then the second angel poured out his bowl on the sea, and it became blood as of a dead man; and every living creature in the sea died.
Then the third angel poured out his bowl on the rivers and springs of water, and they became blood. And I heard the angel of the waters saying:
“You are righteous, O Lord,
The One who is and who was and who is to be,
Because You have judged these things.
For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets,
And You have given them blood to drink.
For it is their just due.”
And I heard another from the altar saying, “Even so, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are Your judgments.”
Then the fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and power was given to him to scorch men with fire. And men were scorched with great heat, and they blasphemed the name of God who has power over these plagues; and they did not repent and give Him glory.
Then the fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and his kingdom became full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues because of the pain. They blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and did not repent of their deeds.
Then the sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up, so that the way of the kings from the east might be prepared. And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs coming out of the mouth of the dragon, out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. For they are spirits of demons, performing signs, which go out to the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty.
“Behold, I am coming as a thief. Blessed is he who watches, and keeps his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his shame.”
And they gathered them together to the place called in Hebrew, Armageddon.
Then the seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and a loud voice came out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, “It is done!” And there were noises and thunderings and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such a mighty and great earthquake as had not occurred since men were on the earth. Now the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. And great Babylon was remembered before God, to give her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of His wrath. Then every island fled away, and the mountains were not found. And great hail from heaven fell upon men, each hailstone about the weight of a talent. Men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail, since that plague was exceedingly great.

Then the master said to the servant, ‘Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled. For I say to you that none of those men who were invited shall taste my supper.’

And so, when we don't bother to look at God as He has revealed Himself in the Living Book which is Christ the Lamb, when we don't listen when His Gospel is shouted across the earth with the voice of the Archangel, He takes our choice out of the equation, He pours out the bowls in which chapter 15 says the wrath of God is finished, on the condemned, the Beast and those who bear his mark, on the last, the least, the certainly lost.  And when the wrath is finished, when there is no more condemnation in the bowls, there is still grace.  Christ is righteous when He judges and makes war, righteous with the righteousness which makes us righteous.  Death and Hell are His undershepherds to lead us to life and resurrection.

Revelation is a book of Unexpected Good News, the good news that God's Mercy Seat is no longer locked up in the Holy of Holies but is going out over the whole earth with the thunder of the White Horse's hooves.  The Gospel which was once whispered in Palestine is proclaimed over the earth with the trumpeting voice of the Archangel.  The cup of the wrath of God has not ceased to be the cup of the wrath of God, but when our Saviour drank from that cup, it became the Cup of the New Covenant, the Communion of the Saints, the holiest of Holy Grails, justification by grace alone through faith alone, which David describes saying, "Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute his sins.", poured out on the last, the least, the lost, those dead in sin and rebellion, toiling away in Babylon at the throne of the Beast.  Our distrust and our guilty consciences make us see only wrath when God makes war and righteous judgment, because we only make war and condemn out of hatred and fear, but He has subjected Creation to futility, bloody, destructive, miserable futility in hope, hope of the joy that is set before Him and us, joy that is not beyond the cross but within the cross.  He has confined us under sin and condemned us as the necessary first step in showing mercy. He kills and damns that He might raise and justify. From Revelation 19 and 22:

Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war. His eyes were like a flame of fire, and on His head were many crowns. He had a name written that no one knew except Himself. He was clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. And the armies in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, followed Him on white horses. Now out of His mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it He should strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And He has on His robe and on His thigh a name written:
KING OF KINGS AND
LORD OF LORDS.

And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the middle of its street, and on either side of the river, was the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. And there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and His servants shall serve Him. They shall see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads. There shall be no night there: They need no lamp nor light of the sun, for the Lord God gives them light. And they shall reign forever and ever.