Sermon preached at Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church, 14 July 2019
Revelation 11.19-13.18
Have you ever seen the film, Indiana Jones and the Raiders
of the Lost Ark?
It is the first film I remember seeing at the cinema:
when I was
nine years old my Dad took me,
and I can
still recall how tense I found it!
I’ve seen it several times over the years, mostly at
Christmas,
and it
remains a great piece of cinema - Steven Spielberg at his absolute best.
The key aspect to the plot
is that the
characters are trying to locate the lost ark of the covenant
- the stone
box containing the tablets with the ten commandments
that
used to live in the Jewish temple,
but which
was lost or destroyed
when
the Babylonians sacked Jerusalem in 586 BC.
I don’t think it’s a spoiler if a film is nearly forty years
old,
so I think
I’m on safe ground in revealing that they do indeed find the ark,
with
dramatic and deathly consequences, at least for the Nazis,
and at the
end of the film the ark is packaged up,
and
then hidden in a packing crate in a giant government warehouse.
Well, I don’t want to call into question the historicity of
the film’s version of events,
but the
reading we had earlier from the Book of Revelation
offers a
slightly different take on the ark’s location.
Having reached a point of climax
following
the sounding of the seventh trumpet,
John takers his audience further into his vision of heaven
(11.19; cf. 4.1).
and this
time he shows them the heavenly temple,
and there,
in the middle of it, is the lost ark of the covenant.
It’s not in an American warehouse,
it’s in the
God’s heavenly temple.
Having travelled with the people of Israel through their
wilderness journey,
then spending
some centuries in the Holy of Holies
in
Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem.
and finally
being lost under the Babylonian invitation
the
ark had passed into the realm of Jewish mythology.
One strand of Jewish tradition had held
that the
ark would be revealed on earth at the end times,
however in
John’s vision, the ark is revealed in heaven.
Whereas for the Jews the ark was the symbol of their unique
covenant with God,
in John’s
vision it is now seen to be available to all the followers of the Lamb
accompanying them as they make their own exodus journey
through the
wilderness of the world.
The key point that John is making here is to challenge
the direct
equation of the people of Israel with the people of God.
No longer is the fulfilment of God’s covenant with Abraham
restricted
to those who keep the Law of Moses,
written
on tablets of stone and stored in the ark in Jerusalem,
but rather the presence of God is seen by John
to be with
all those who journey from Babylon to the new Jerusalem.
This vision of heaven opened
prepares
the way for the sequence of visions that follow.
And the next two chapters
contain
some of the most vivid and compelling images in the book of Revelation.
John starts off by introducing us to a pregnant woman
dressed in
sunlight, standing on the moon
and crowned
with twelve stars (12.1).
He then brings into view her son,
a child who
rules the nations with a rod of iron,
and
ends up in heaven (12.5).
Next we meet the unholy trinity
of the
dragon (12.3),
the scarlet
beast from the sea (13.1),
and the
beast from the earth (13.11),
not to mention the mark of the beast (13.16–17)
and the
mysterious number 666 (13.18) .
If ever there were chapters guaranteed to cause confusion
and misunderstanding,
these are
good candidates.
But the key to making sense of them
is to try
and discern the motivations behind John’s writing.
Do you remember me saying previously in this series,
that one of
the reasons Revelation can seem so confusing
is
because it has so many different characters,
and that
the way to simplify it is to realise that whilst there are lots of characters, there
are a limited number of actors playing them all.
This, of course, is exactly the way Greek theatre worked,
and when we
were visiting the seven churches of Revelation a couple of weeks ago,
we saw
these theatrical masks from the first century,
that actors
would use to play different characters.
So what’s going on here, in the story of the pregnant woman,
her child,
and the dragon?
Well, firstly, it serves as a reminder of the events so far.
You know when you sit down to watch a TV programme
and it’s
the second part of a series?
It will often begin with a compressed version of the
previous episode.
A kind of,
‘The story so far…’
Well, in Revelation 12, at the half-way point in the book,
John offers
a recapitulation of history
in order to
remind his audience of what has gone before.
And he does this using the three characters
of the
woman, her child, and the wicked dragon,
as he presents what is, in effect, a potted spiritual
history of the world.
So let’s start with the woman.
Many people have seen an image of the virgin Mary in this
woman,
and if you
go into Catholic churches around the world,
you
will often find statues of Mary depicted with a crown of twelve stars,
or
with her standing on the moon with a dragon beneath her feet.
However, it’s far from clear that this is what John has in
mind here.
He’s probably combining a variety of traditions,
from
Jewish, Egyptian, and Greek mythology.
Most significant here, though, is the story of Abraham’s
wife Sarah,
who gives birth
to their son Isaac in old age,
in fulfilment with God’s covenant to Abraham
that all
the nations of the world would be blessed through his descendants.
By this understanding,
the woman
represents the faithful people of God down through all the ages,
with
the twelve tribes of Israel reflected in her crown of twelve stars (12.1);
and she
gives birth to a messianic child
who
it’s proclaimed will be the ruler of the nations (12.5).
In this way, John is painting a picture of the Messiah,
Jesus Christ,
coming into
the world through the nation of Israel,
being
born from within the people of God,
and he is
showing the people of God as good news to all nations,
in
fulfilment of the covenant he made with Abraham.
This is significant theology,
because it
shows Revelation’s hope for universal salvation.
Revelation doesn’t condemn the nations of the earth to
eternal destruction,
rather it
shows how the faithful witness of the people of God,
even
in the face of terrible opposition,
provides
the path for the eventual ingathering of all the nations
to
the loving arms of God.
John then introduces the dragon,
the Devil
thrown out of heaven for bad behaviour
to roam the
earth wreaking havoc (12.7–9, 13).
Would anyone like to tell me the Devil’s other names?
Beelzebub?
Lucifer? Satan?
Let’s start with Satan:
Interestingly, this story of the expulsion of Satan from
heaven
is unique
to the Apocalypse,
although it has its origins in a number of Jewish
traditions.
John probably has in mind as the background to his story
the
mythological account from Genesis
of ‘sons of
God’ coming to the earth to take human wives,
resulting
in the giant-like Nephilim (Gen. 6.1–4),
and this story certainly crops up in other examples of
Jewish apocalyptic literature
as the
story of the Watchers (1 Enoch 6—19).
He probably also has in mind a passage from the book of
Isaiah,
which
refers to an ancient Ugaritic myth
about
the casting down of Venus, the morning star, from the heavens
by
the great god Elyon, who is described as the sun,
in
whose rays the light of the morning star dims.
Isaiah uses this story as a taunt against the Assyrian king,
who he
describes as the Morning Star
whose light
will fade before the brighter sunshine of the true God (Isa. 14.10–15).
The identification of this ‘morning star’ as Lucifer,
the fallen
angel otherwise known as Satan, is not in the Bible at all!
It only occurs much later in the post-canonical Christian
tradition
- I promise
you it’s absolutely not there in the Bible -
and it came about because of a translation error in the
middle ages.
The Latin name for Venus, the ‘morning star’, is Lux-ifer,
or ‘light-bearer’;
and when
this was translated into English,
rather
than using the phrase ‘morning star’, or ‘Venus’,
they just
transliterated the Latin, and invented the word ‘Lucifer’.
Then, in Christian mythology, this idea of the morning star,
or Lucifer,
falling
from the sky as the bright sun rises,
became combined with the story of Satan’s expulsion from
heaven in Revelation,
to give the
name Lucifer to Satan.
Ironically, it is Jesus, not Satan,
who is
described as the ‘bright morning star’ in the book of Revelation
(2.28;
22.16; cf. 2 Peter 1.19),
which is probably a reference to a messianic prophecy from
the book of Numbers
which says
that ‘a star shall come out of Jacob’ (Num. 24.17).
Anyway, all these traditions of angelic beings
descending
from heaven to the earth
provide the background to John’s image
of the
Satanic dragon being cast to the earth.
But the name ‘Satan’ only occurs in three places within the
Old Testament,
all of them
dating from the time of the Babylonian exile or later.
The Hebrew word ‘satan’ simply means ‘adversary’,
and
although the later religious traditions of Satan
as
an evil spiritual opponent
are clearly
derivative of the Jewish material,
the Old Testament references must be allowed to stand in
their own right
without
being overlaid with later developments.
1. A being
described as ‘a satan’
prompts
David to count the people of Israel (1 Chr. 21.1),
but this may be no more than a reference to a human
who gives
David bad advice;
2. in the book
of Job, Satan appears as one of the heavenly beings
who has
been walking about on the earth (Job 1.6–7);
3. and in the
prophecy of Zechariah
‘Satan’
appears as a prosecuting counsel
in the
heavenly courtroom (Zech. 3.1–2).
And that’s it!
It’s this final notion of ‘Satan’ as a designation of ‘one
who opposes’
that lies
behind Jesus’ description of Peter as ‘Satan’,
when he says to him ‘get behind me Satan’
after Peter
tries to encourage him to avoid going to his death (Matt. 16.23).
However, there are other places within the New Testament
where Satan
appears as a personified adversary (cf. Matt. 4.10; Mark 4.15),
and it’s is worth realising that Satan in Scripture
is always
only ever the enemy of humanity,
and not the
enemy of God.
The idea of the Devil or Satan as a kind of ‘bad version of
God’
with Satan
and God locked in endless combat between good and evil
might make good TV, as it certainly did in the recent series
‘Good Omens’,
but I’m
afraid it’s not really biblical!
The notion of Satan as one who is fallen
is referred
to by Jesus who says:
‘I watched
Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning.’ (Luke 10.18)
However, this is different to the war in heaven that we meet
in Revelation,
because it
is a reference to the effects of Jesus’ own ministry,
not to some
ancient time when Satan was cast from heaven.
Fallen angels are also briefly mentioned in the book of
Jude,
but this is
a passage derivative of the Watchers myth that I mentioned earlier,
and doesn’t convey any concept
of evil
angels being expelled from heaven before the fall of Adam.
And it’s is against the background of all these different
images
that John’s
own imagery needs to be read.
So, to return to our story from Revelation:
The dragon, known as the Devil and Satan, but not as
Lucifer,
tries to
lead the world astray (12.9),
to
kill the Messiah-child (12.4)
and to
devour the people of God (12.13).
But God is seen protecting his people,
leading
them into the desert for a wilderness experience
that
parallels that of the people of Israel in Old Testament times (12.6, 14).
God then snatches his son from the jaws of the dragon,
taking him
from death to eternity (12.5)
and leaving the dragon to roam the earth
making war
on the other children of the woman (12.13, 17).
And this is where John locates his own audience within the
story:
they are
those who keep God’s command
and hold
firm to the witness of Jesus
in the face of the onslaught from the dragon (12.17).
The people of God, according to John’s scheme here,
are living
in the wilderness
with the dragon poised to make war
on all
those who owe their allegiance to the Messiah, Jesus Christ.
And this imagery would have made perfect sense to John’s first
audience.
They only had to look around them to see ample evidence
that the
dragon was poised to strike!
The Roman Empire towered over the congregations of the
faithful
like a
mighty beast set on their destruction,
and the people of God in John’s churches
were living
out their lives in the shadow of the imperial dragon.
So having reminded them of their history,
by giving
them another glimpse of the throne room in heaven
where
all his visions began
and showing
them the Messiah-child in his place before God’s throne,
John turns his attention once more
to the
difficult and dangerous situation facing the people of God
as they
live out their lives under the authority of Rome.
And again, John presents them
with an
alternative way of viewing their lived reality;
he confronts them with the heavenly perspective
on their
earthly situation.
In this way he seeks to prepare his readers for their
difficult task
of holding
firm to the truth of the gospel,
and of
overcoming evil
as they endure as faithful witnesses to the end.
And John gives his audience this heavenly perspective
through the
story he tells of the dragon and the two beasts.
The dragon symbolises the underlying source of all
opposition to God,
the beast
from the sea symbolises the military and political power of Rome,
and the
beast from the earth symbolises the propaganda machine
that
promotes the Empire and all it stands for.
However, the beast from the earth also has a face that can
be recognized
as the
focus of the propaganda of Roman imperialism,
namely the Emperor Nero,
both in
terms of the claims he made during his life
to
be a God in human form,
and the
stories that circulated after his death
that
he was going to return from the grave and take up power again.
The Jews used to take names and substitute letters for
numbers,
and then
add these together to arrive at the ‘number’ of a name.
They called this process ‘numerology’,
and
believed that you could tell something important about a person
by the
number of their name.
So when Revelation says that the ‘number’ of the name of the
beast is 666 (13.18),
it seems
likely that the author has an individual in mind.
If you take the Greek for Nero Caesar,
transliterate
it into Hebrew
and turn it
into a number you get, you guessed it, 666.
666 is also the number you get from the Greek word for
‘beast’,
reinforcing
the point that the number of the ‘beast’
is
indeed the ‘name’ of Nero.
Through all this imagery, John is seeking to give his
audience
a new level
of understanding about both their current situation
and the
events that have led up to where they find themselves.
From their perspective they see the Roman Empire
in all its
terrible glory, endlessly promoting itself
as the
bringer of peace through its military strength:
and the temptation they faced was to believe the Roman
propaganda.
However, the way John depicts it,
Rome is
simply the latest and greatest manifestation
of
the ancient force of evil that has been roaming the world
seeking
to destroy the faithful children of God since time began.
Rome, from John’s perspective, is not the bringer of peace
through the Pax Romana,
but is
rather a purveyor of violence.
Only in Christ, John wants to say, can peace be found.
So when Rome claims to be the one who brings peace by
violence,
she is
blaspheming God
and making
herself an idol for her people to worship.
In this way, John places his audience right in the centre
of what he
perceives as a great cosmic battle
between the dragon and the faithful people of God
that has
been raging for millennia.
And as we seek to apply these insights to our own world,
I would
suggest that wherever the forces of evil
are
manifested through idolatrous, powerful and corrupt institutions,
then the
children of God, the army of the Lamb, are called by John to battle.
In this way, John’s vision always challenges the received
view of history,
it always
undermines any presentation of empire
as
a glorious and beneficent institution.
And this is as true of the contemporary empires of
capitalism in our world,
as it was
of the Roman empire of the first century.
In place of this, he shows us that from heaven’s
perspective,
the Empire
is an idolatrous system
that is set
on deceiving the ‘whole earth’ (13.3–4) into worshipping it
through
participation in its propaganda and ideology.
Just as in the first century, the imperial cult of emperor
worship
provided a
direct religious focus for the claims of the Empire
over
the hearts, minds and bodies of its citizens.
So in our world we need to be alert to the temptations to
hero-worship individuals,
or to seek
to combine state and church in mutually beneficial deals of convenience.
The place of the faithful Church is always going to be one
of wilderness journeying,
protected
by God, resistant to empire,
and on our
way from slavery to freedom.
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