Apocalyptic moments with God

Reflections are everywhere - in crystal blue lakes and shining, marble surfaces, in the glass of towering skyscrapers and the concave lenses of ever-present cameras. They capture my thinking and mesmerize me, enticing me to look again because there's more in the picture!

Literature differs from one era to the next.  The myths of really ancient literature, such as the ones told by the Egyptians differ in length and style and a few other ways from the myths told up the timeline by a couple thousand years in Greece.  The tales of the gods of the Norse people differ in style and content from the myths down the timeline a thousand years from the Greeks' tales.  So it goes.  Different eras produce different literature.

One would expect Hebrew literature not to be an exception.  One can see short narratives, for instance, in the earliest tales of the Hebrew people, but by the time of David, the narratives have lengthened and have a different purpose and style than the earlier narratives.  Poems of the Israelites can also be seen as early as the Exodus story (Exodus 15, which many call the Song of Moses), but its form, style, and type are certainly different from the forms exhibited in the book of poetry called Psalms.  A person can see the robust style and technique of a poem like Psalm 119 as very different from the straightforward and focused praise poem of Exodus 15.

So, it really should not surprise anyone at all that the New Testament, too, contains different forms of writing.  Even though it was a much more tightly constrained time period than any of the comparisons in the above paragraphs, its literature still shows variation because of place, time, purpose, and author.  An exercise in accounting for the differences between the synoptic gospels and the Gospel of John illustrates the affect of different circumstances for different audiences in different settings.  And as a person reads the New Testament as a whole, it would not take a genius to notice that the book of Revelation is very different from the other books of the New Testament.  It stands alone.  In fact, it has a greater similarity to a couple of Old Testament books (Daniel and Zechariah) than it does to any of the New Testament books.

But, literature exists in genres.  It would be the rarest of books that stand alone with no connection to other books of its type.  That should be a great indication to any reader that one might want to look for a genre of literature that Revelation fits even if he or she has to look outside the New Testament for comparisons.  At the same time that Revelation was being written, in fact, the books of Second Baruch and Second Esdras were penned.  They contain the same fanciful imagery, visions, and guidance of a human by heavenly beings that Revelation does.  First Enoch one of the first to be written, is somewhat older by a couple or three centuries, but it still contained the features that Revelation adopted of heavenly beings explaining the scheme of things to come to Enoch.  Second Enoch as well might be slightly older than Revelation, but its contents were very similar.  And the Apocalypse of Peter, written around the same time as Revelation, was actually given canonical status by Christan groups in Egypt and Ethiopia, but it never achieved that status by Roman Christians, who had a great deal of influence in canon formation.  Other apocalyptic material existed, but the mention of the above books helps one to see that apocalyptic writing was a genre and a style of writing over about a 400 year period that Revelation fits into.  Understanding the style and genre gives great insight into the interpretation of the New Testament's last book.

Revelation 16 is representative of the help one can receive in interpreting its symbols by knowing the genre of apocalyptic literature.  A series of angels are pouring bowls of wrath onto the Earth.  Immediately one notices that a literal understanding doesn't give insight.  Instead, one knows from other apocalyptic books that angels deliver God's messages to chosen humans.  These angels do things like ride in different directions around the Earth and report to God what they saw (as in Zechariah) or open scrolls and explain its contents (as in Daniel).  They measure things (as in Second Enoch and Ezekiel).  Or they interpret great battles' consequences for all who live on the Earth (as in Second Esdras).

The bowls of Revelation 16, then, are actions of angels with a message for the inhabitants of Earth.  They are symbols belonging to the story of Christians who have cried out for God to avenge their oppression and suffering that has been unfolding in previous chapters.  The seven seals, for instance, show that God has received reports from his angels of his people's suffering, then reveals that he is going to act on their behalf to avenge their suffering.  Seven trumpets follow to publicly announce to his people that God knows who exactly is responsible for the persecution against his son's followers and that their end is new.  After the trumpets, John sees a vision in the sky of an evil force (Satan), who tries to eliminate Christianity as it was being born from Judaism and that Roman leaders (the first beast) and Jewish leaders (the second beast) had been in cahoots with the Romans and on their own oppressing his sacred people, now those who follow the slain lamb.

In auspicious manner (because Revelation 15.1 says these seven angels' actions are God's πληγὰς ἑπτὰ τὰς ἐσχάτας... ἐτελέσθη ὁ θυμὸς τοῦ θεοῦ  ["seven last plagues... that finish his anger"]), seven angels start pouring out bowls of anger onto the Earth.  The first four recall God's dealings with the king of Egypt 1500 years prior to John's time in a Great Deliverance that alleviated his people's pain of suffering. The first four bowls of anger conjured up the accompanying signs of that Great Devliverance in foreshadowing what God was about to do for his people in John's time because the emperors of Rome, their governors, and Jews everywhere around the empire had been persistently persecuting them.

Verse 8

Καὶ ὁ τέταρτος ἐξέχεεν τὴν φιάλην αὐτοῦ ἐπὶ τὸν ἥλιον, καὶ ἐδόθη αὐτῷ καυματίσαι τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ἐν πυρί

(The fourth one poured his bowl out onto the sun causing people to suffer from extreme heat.)

Verse 9

καὶ ἐκαυματίσθησαν οἱ ἄνθρωποι καῦμα μέγα καὶ ἐβλασφήμησαν τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ θεοῦ τοῦ ἔχοντος τὴν ἐξουσίαν ἐπὶ τὰς πληγὰς ταύτας καὶ οὐ μετενόησαν δοῦναι αὐτῷ δόξαν

(When people felt the tremendous heat, they spoke profanities against the name of God, the one having the power over these plagues, and refused to give him due honor.)

Verse 10

Καὶ ὁ πέμπτος ἐξέχεεν τὴν φιάλην αὐτοῦ ἐπὶ τὸν θρόνον τοῦ θηρίου, καὶ ἐγένετο ἡ βασιλεία αὐτοῦ ἐσκοτωμένη, καὶ ἐμασῶντο τὰς γλώσσας αὐτῶν ἐκ τοῦ πόνου

(The fifth poured his bowl onto the beast's throne, and its kingdom became dark.  People bit their tongues to endure their suffering.)

Verse 11

καὶ ἐβλασφήμησαν τὸν θεὸν τοῦ οὐρανοῦ ἐκ τῶν πόνων αὐτῶν καὶ ἐκ τῶν ἑλκῶν αὐτῶν καὶ οὐ μετενόησαν ἐκ τῶν ἔργων αὐτῶν

(They spoke profanities against the God of Heaven since they had to endure suffering and had been covered in festering sores.  But they did not say they wanted to change the behavior that caused their pain.)

There are some very close parallels with Second Esdras at this point.  The first 4 bowls of anger speak to God's anger about the treatment of his people.  That also is a theme using the same kind of symbolic language of leading his people from torment out of Egypt in Second Esdras 15.5-12.  The fourth bowl of anger uses imagery with the sun and extreme heat.  The same kind of imagery of destruction of the abusers of God's people is used in Second Esdras 13.8-11.  The sun isn't mentioned in that context, but fire, flames, and sparks spewing from the Messiah's mouth to burn people and to show humanity that God is in control and through his anger he brings accountability  to a group of people mistreating those who live by his name is the same.  Rejection of God and refusal to change behavior by those who act profanely against him in the bowls poured out by angels 4 and 5 of John's vision parallels Second Esdras 9.7-13.  And although there is the same kind of imagery in Day of the Lord passages in the Old Testament, such as Isaiah 13.6-18, the details of apocalyptic imagery represent the denoument an age and a beginning of a new era, not just a cleansing.

The above parallels with Second Esdras make the point that God's people have called out to him, that he has heard them and will act against the ones subjecting them to mistreatment.  Both books were written about the same time with the same message.  They corroborate the treatment of God's people at the hands of the Romans, and both show that God is acting with superlative means and with supernatural, unmistakable, inimicable justice against this invincible empire.  Both make the comparison to the Egyptian deliverance, which was Judaism's pivotal, seminal event.  Both have overtones that this time God is acting on behalf of his people the Christians, including those Jews who believed and accepted Jesus for who he was, but excluding those Jews who believed Jesus to be a prophet, not the son of God or the messiah.

One of the reasons John's Apocalypse resonates with me is that, at times, I have found myself on the opposite side of Christianity.  I have been in situations when no one knew that I was a Christian, and so I saw others rail against it as an evil in the world.  I have heard people say God doesn't exist and Christianity is a mere superstition.  I have heard and been in the presence of scientists speaking about the impossibility of God's existence, that we as sentient beings have created a god out of necessity for controling the masses of people.

Admittedly, ashamedly, my silence against such terrible profanity against the Maker of Heaven and Earth fits into the category of these Romans and Jews who persecuted Christians for their beliefs in a superstition that God's son rose from the dead and will return for his followers.  Deservedly, I should accept my judgment of festering sores or death from not getting to drink Earth's lifesources of water.  My early years as an adult were characteristic of idealism and relentless pursuit of knowing more about God.  But my middle years were filled with silence as the scientific pursuits of knowledge encroached on my faith rather than supplementing it.

But, with knowledge, there is a tipping point.  It must decide to continue to supplant one's spiritual beliefs or decide to make it subsidiary to faith because knowledge seeks arrogance and self aggrandizement and doesn't coexist with the humble nature of faith well.  It was evident that supplanting my belief would place me in a kingdom that would become dark.  So I thank the God of the Great Deliverance from Egypt and the God of the Great Deliverance from Rome for allowing time for the profanity of silence to change  into a voice for the sake the kingdom of light.  I am grateful to have changed discomfort from the extreme heat of the sun into letting others see that God stands with his people and acts in their lives.  John's apocalypse, his disclosure of the One who stands with his people, even me, brings me to an unclouded moment with "the one who has the power over the plagues," who deserves my due honor!



[Introductory photo of reflection is found at https://i.pinimg.com/736x/8d/82/3a/8d823a0a3cc358656c1e2c48f6eb19a1--stunning-photography-photography-ideas.jpg]
[The first song is There Is A Cloud by Elevation Worship.  The second song is So Will I by Hillsong.]
[The Greek text used for the New Testament references is the Nestle Aland 28th edition]

[Translations from Greek are my own.]

Lord, act again

Reflections are everywhere - in crystal blue lakes and shining, marble surfaces, in the glass of towering skyscrapers and the concave lenses of ever-present cameras. They capture my thinking and mesmerize me, enticing me to look again because there's more in the picture!


John had a case against the Romans, for sure.  They had tried to kill him.  He had survived, so they allowed him to live out his life in banishment on an island, away from his beloved Ephesus with his Christian community.  It was also well known around christendom that Nero had had Paul killed and Agrippa had had Peter executed.  Even closer to the time of John's writing of Revelation, Antipas had been martyred.

Now the most ruthless ruler yet to govern the Roman Empire, Domitian, was in power.  He was the first to actually have the gall to claim full deity and had made his subjects call him "Lord", as if he ruled the whole universe.  The Romans had spiraled out of control.  They brutally killed to hold their power and they relentlessly exterminated those who believed superstitions, like that insidious belief that someone named Christ had been resurrected from the dead and would return for those who followed him one day, which to them was absolutely absurd!

On top of dealing with the Romans, he had had to tell the Jews that their God had warned them about their failure as his people.  He had even taken the time to write about all the acts of Jesus that showed the heart of God.  But he had moved on. Titus had leveled Jerusalem just 15 years before this writing. Masada with its mass suicides had fallen.  Qumran lay in ruins.  The Dead Sea Scrolls had vanished.  Judaism had given birth to followers of Christ. John had just finished writing that the beast, Satan, had tried to devour Christ and his movement at its inception, but had failed.  About all that was left was for God to eradicate that pestilence on the Earth called the Roman Empire.

John had to reassure the Christians he had led for half a century.  God was on the cusp of dealing with these barbaric Romans in a convincing manner.  Like he had done with the Egyptians for his people 1400 years prior to his time, God was about to demonstrate his power against these invincible- thinking, merciless, arrogant, and uncouth Romans to once again deliver his people from oppression.
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John sat, staring into the waves beating against the ragged rocks dividing the sea from this small island of Patmos in deep contemplation, ready to continue writing on his papyrus tablet.  Sixty years ago...

He didn't know why God had looked down in favor on him to choose him to walk alongside his son, his people's long awaited messiah, the one sent to show his father's nature to his people and to offer them life and an extraordinary place.  And because God had shown him this favor, he had felt compelled to remind his own people once more of God's offer - for all those that would accept him and believe who his son was, he would give them the power to become the children of God. He had written those two ideas a decade before in his memoirs of Jesus' actions as he presented his father's heart (John 1.12, John 14.10).

As he felt the spray of the waves hitting the rocks and boulders, John reviewed what he had written thus far in a new message to his beloved Jewish people and to the Christian community he had been a part of.  He had chosen the apocalyptic form as the vehicle for his message in the tradition of the books of Enoch and Esdras.  He had used the apocalyptic beginning of Zechariah to start the visions of his own book.  He had used Zechariah's four horses in a series of seals being broken to show how God was still being reported to about the condition of the world and that God was not complacent toward his children of this generation.  He had infused ideas from other times of great trouble like the time of the exodus of Egypt, some of the struggles referred to in the prophets against the nations around them, and a few of the captivity Psalms to depict that Christians had endured great hardship at the hands of the brutal Romans who ruled John's world.

He briefly contemplated the sixty years that had passed since the Romans had put down a Jewish rebellion by crucifying its "king." But that king had not vanished.  His tomb had actually been empty and he had followers.  The Romans had had to deal with that continuing movement.  It seemed like each decade the Romans had become a little more brutal with Jesus' followers than the last decade.  John remembered fondly over the last week or so all those he had written about on the previous pages of his tablet when he was summarizing the state of the world as the horsemen had reported it.  He had depicted his courageous friends as souls crying out from beneath an altar to God, clamoring for justice.

Revelation 6.10

καὶ ἔκραξαν φωνῇ μεγάλῃ λέγοντες· ἕως πότε, ὁ δεσπότης ὁ ἅγιος καὶ ἀληθινός, οὐ κρίνεις καὶ ἐκδικεῖς τὸ αἷμα ἡμῶν ἐκ τῶν κατοικούντων ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς

(And they called with a loud voice, "How long, sacred Lord, the one we trust, are you going to hold out on judging the ones who govern the Earth and not punish them for our blood?")

John continued his thoughts of the judgment of God against "the ones who govern the Earth," the feared and hated Roman government.  He wanted to reassure the Christian community around him that the Romans could not and would not win in their battle against God's people.  What came to his mind to write (Revelation 16) was imagery of the total devastation of the Romans, a time when God would crush them for their brutalities.

He could not think of imagery any better than that from a very similar situation - the time the Jews had spent under a terrible Pharaoh in Egypt.  God had sent ten plagues to crush the pharaoh and to kill him under the waves of a sea.  So, John placed a vision in his writing of seven angels pouring out bowls of God's anger on the Earth that were filled with 4 of the most impacting of those plagues. 

John continued writing the images in his mind's eye. A loud voice was coming from the temple in his vision.  The voice told seven angels to pour out bowls of anger on the Earth.

Verse 2

Καὶ ἀπῆλθεν ὁ πρῶτος καὶ ἐξέχεεν τὴν φιάλην αὐτοῦ εἰς τὴν γῆν, καὶ ἐγένετο ἕλκος κακὸν καὶ πονηρὸν ἐπὶ τοὺς ἀνθρώπους τοὺς ἔχοντας τὸ χάραγμα τοῦ θηρίου καὶ τοὺς προσκυνοῦντας τῇ εἰκόνι αὐτοῦ

(The first angel came and poured out his bowl on the Earth.  Festering and ugly sores appeared on those having the imprint of the beast and worshiping its image.)

In Pharaoh's Egypt, the magicians that represented the king had duplicated the first two plagues, failed in their attempt to duplicate the third, and were impotent in the fourth and fifth plagues.  But on the sixth plague, they were so covered in boils they couldn't even appear when Moses came calling at the palace.  God let Pharaoh see the condition of utter helplessness with the sixth plague.  John wanted to show this same helpless condition with the Romans.  So, he had started with the sixth plague.


The next two angels poured out God's anger on the seas, rivers, and springs of the Earth.

Verse 3

Καὶ ὁ δεύτερος ἐξέχεεν τὴν φιάλην αὐτοῦ εἰς τὴν θάλασσαν, καὶ ἐγένετο αἷμα ὡς νεκροῦ, καὶ πᾶσα ψυχὴ ζωῆς ἀπέθανεν τὰ ἐν τῇ θαλάσσῃ

(The second poured out his bowl on the sea.  It changed to the blood of someone who had died, because every living creature of the sea had died.)

Verse 4

Καὶ ὁ τρίτος ἐξέχεεν τὴν φιάλην αὐτοῦ εἰς τοὺς ποταμοὺς καὶ τὰς πηγὰς τῶν ὑδάτων, καὶ ἐγένετο αἷμα

(The third poured out his bowl on the rivers and water sources, and they too turned to blood.)

The second two angels poured anger onto the Earth's reservoirs of water.  John went back to the first plague of God against pharaoh.  For seven days, the River Nile and its tributaries ran red.  The Egyptians were desperate for water, digging in the mud on the banks of the river to see if they could uncover any non-bloody water.  God could alter their world in a way that demonstrated he was in complete control, not them.  It was God's way of saying, "I could exterminate all of you if I wanted to."  John saw that God would treat the Romans in the same way. 

But the Romans weren't the only group standing vehemently against Christians.  The Jews had stood firmly against Christians and even collaborated with the Romans in ridding the Earth of their presence.  The prophets had experience the Jews' wrath over a 400 year period of time because they tried to tell them what God had really wanted of them.  Jesus did the same with the same result.  And the followers of Jesus met with shame, ostracism, and death at the hands of the Jews.  John had just finished writing about two beasts who served a dragon who had tried to devour God's son.  But God's patience had been completely spent with these two beasts (Revleation 13.1, 6, 14, 15; Revelation 14.15, 16; Revelation 15.1, 7).  He was sending seven last plagues on the Earth, expressions of anger against two groups of people who had relentlessly tried to rid the Earth of his people the Christians.  Seven bowls of his anger would be poured out on the Earth and through them his anger would complete his judgment (Revelation 15.1) against these two "beasts" who had killed his prophets and his sacred children.


Verse 5

Καὶ ἤκουσα τοῦ ἀγγέλου τῶν ὑδάτων λέγοντος· 
      δίκαιος εἶ, ὁ ὢν καὶ ὁ ἦν, ὁ ὅσιος, 
      ὅτι ταῦτα ἔκρινας

(I heard the angel of the waters speaking.
      You are the one who stands for right, the one who is and was, the one who is sacred,                      because you have judged their actions )

Verse 6

ὅτι αἷμα ἁγίων καὶ προφητῶν ἐξέχεαν 
      καὶ αἷμα αὐτοῖς δέδωκας πιεῖν, 
      ἄξιοί εἰσιν

(because they poured out the blood of the prophets and those who set themselves apart,
     And you have given them blood to drink.
     And they deserve it.)

Verse 7

Καὶ ἤκουσα τοῦ θυσιαστηρίου λέγοντος· 
     ναὶ κύριε ὁ  θεὸς ὁ παντοκράτωρ, 
     ἀληθιναὶ καὶ δίκαιαι αἱ κρίσεις σου

(I heard a voice from the altar speaking.
         "Yes, Lord God Almighty,
          your judgments we can trust to be right.")

My heart has ached for God's relief before.  I understand the utter devastation caused by a force completely out of my control and the resulting helpless feeling in the wake of the onslaught of such a terrible force..  And when God sent his relief, I spoke out like the angel here in complete trust of his handling of the situation, "Your judgments I can trust to be right!"

Help me, Daddy, to cry out in chorus with others when life's treatment is so utterly out of control so that you can replace it with your morality and decency!


[Introductory photo of reflection is found at blog.enterpriseengagement.com]
[The first song is Like Incense by Hillsong.  The second song is Find Me by Jenn Johnson.]
[The Greek text used for the New Testament references is the Nestle Aland 28th edition]

[Translations from Greek are my own.]