Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
https://soundcloud.com/hapearce/reflection-for-october-18-2022
Revelation 7:9-17
The Great Multitude in White Robes
9 After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. 10 And they cried out in a loud voice:
“Salvation belongs to our God,
who sits on the throne,
and to the Lamb.”
11 All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, 12 saying:
“Amen!
Praise and glory
and wisdom and thanks and honor
and power and strength
be to our God for ever and ever.
Amen!”
13 Then one of the elders asked me, “These in white robes—who are they, and where did they come from?”
14 I answered, “Sir, you know.”
And he said, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. 15 Therefore,
“they are before the throne of God
and serve him day and night in his temple;
and he who sits on the throne
will spread his tent over them.
16 ‘Never again will they hunger;
never again will they thirst.
The sun will not beat down on them,’
nor any scorching heat.
17 For the Lamb at the center of the throne
will be their shepherd;
‘he will lead them to springs of living water.’
‘And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.’”
Our New Testament readings have now moved to the last book of the Bible, usually called “The Revelation,” or “The Revelation of John.” The author of the book identifies himself as ‘John,’ and he’s commonly considered to be the author of the Gospel and the letters of John.
As you’re probably aware, some parts of the church devote a lot more time and attention to the Revelation than we do in the Presbyterian Church. People in those parts of the church study the book for clues about the end times and the second coming of Jesus. They consider the Revelation to be a detailed description of what will happen at the end of time, when Jesus will return and win a great victory over the powers of evil in the world.
But in our denomination and those we’re affiliated with, the prevailing understanding of the Revelation of John is different. And that’s probably because we have a different understanding of the meaning of the word prophesy. The common understanding of that word is that prophesy is the prediction of the future, and particularly of what God will do in the future. But we understand prophesy somewhat more broadly. We understand prophesy to include the interpretation of what is happening in the world right now in light of God’s word and work in history.
Since that’s our understanding of prophesy, it’s important for us to understand what was going on in the world at the time John wrote the Revelation, somewhere around 90-100 AD.
By that time, persecution of the followers of Jesus was getting to be fairly widespread. The church historians say it wasn’t yet the large-scale persecution we see in the movies – where the Romans were rounding up large numbers of Christians and ‘feeding them to the lions.’ It does seem that Emperor Nero tortured and killed some Christians after the great fire of Rome in the 60’s, but that seems to have been mostly an attempt to get people to blame someone other than himself for the fire. So it was really done for political, rather than religious reasons.
The historians say most of the persecution of followers of Jesus was actually local in nature. Jewish Christians were expelled from their local synagogues, where lots of them had apparently continued to participate in both Jewish and Christian worship. Gentile followers of Jesus were often persecuted by their neighbors because they stopped participating in ceremonies honoring pagan gods, and especially because they refused to honor the emperors as gods. So they were perceived as ‘unpatriotic.’
In both Hebrew and gentile communities, Christians were ostracized – they were rejected by their families, and sometimes they lost jobs or homes or businesses. Some were attacked by mobs, and were beaten or stoned or killed by the sword.
That was the church world in which the Revelation of John was published. And its purpose was to give hope and encouragement to followers of Jesus who were facing this kind of persecution. The author told a story meant to assure his readers that Jesus would ultimately defeat the evil forces that were persecuting them, and that those who were currently suffering for their faith would share in his ultimate victory.
New Testament scholars from our part of the church say that the imagery of monsters and cosmic beings was meant to represent forces that were active in the world in John’s day, not terrifying creatures who would appear at the end of time.
For instance, these scholars say that the ‘Beast’ described in the Revelation is actually meant to represent all the powers of this world that crush and oppress people. They say John would have regarded the Roman Empire as a manifestation of the Beast, but also the Babylonian empire from centuries before, and the part of the army of Alexander the great that had overrun Israel and Judea. (They say John might also have seen the holocaust, the Armenian genocide and the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia as examples of the Beast at work. And maybe our genocide of the endemic peoples of North America.)
There are some other connections to the current events of Bible times, too – things that would be easy to miss. In the sixth chapter, as the seven seals are being opened, a voice cries out, “A quart of wheat for a day’s wages and three quarts of barley for a day’s wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!” The historians say that when the Romans took over, they forced thousands of Jewish farmers off their land and planted vineyards and olive groves to supply the Empire with wine and olive oil. The results were food shortages, wildly inflated food prices, and widespread starvation.
Readers of the text at the time would have recognized the connections here that seem mysterious to us. They would have recognized these symbols – like the famous “four horsemen of the apocalypse” as representing things that caused suffering in their own time, not just as prophesies about the future.
What John had in mind was to share a vision of God’s eventual victory, a vision that would give hope to followers of Jesus in the frightening times they were living through.
For us, the point is that whatever threats we might face in this world, our God has promised that his Son will ultimately be victorious over everything that can hurt us. And the Revelation is a reminder that no matter how hard that battle might be, we can trust in Jesus to win that great victory.
Let’s pray. Lord, this world can still be frightening to us. So we thank you for the promise you have made that Jesus will defeat all the forces that can array against us. And we thank you for the vivid portrayal of that victory that your servant John has given us. Amen.
Blessings,
Henry
(The other listed readings for today are Psalms 54 and 146; Micah 3:1-8; and Luke 10:1-16. Our readings come from the NIV Bible, as posted on Biblica.org, the website of the International Bible Society.)
Recent Comments