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.
_________________________________________________________________________
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.]
No comments:
Post a Comment