A Theology of the Book of Revelation Session #6

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A Theology of the Book of Revelation Session #6 – Christology in the Book of Revelation (Continued) Review What is God portrayed as doing in the book of Revelation? He is establishing His kingdom on earth. He is establishing His Kingdom through the Triumph of Christ, who fulfills the OT expectations of a Messianic War (led by a Davidic King) to liberate His people from bondage (an Eschatological Exodus) by being the Faithful and True Witness unto Death. In our last session, we saw that “fundamental to Revelation’s whole understanding of the way in which Christ establishes God’s kingdom on earth is the conviction that in his death and resurrection Christ has already won his decisive victory over evil.” (73) John’s vision of the Davidic, Jewish King, the Lion of Tribe of Judah, is shown to be subversive to the expectations of His audience. Though John “hears a lion,” when he turns, he “sees a lamb,” which signals that God’s means of triumph are not through military, empire-rivaling power, but rather, through humble sacrifice. We then saw Lamb who conquers gatherings an Army of Martyrs for the continued expansion of His kingdom. Again, we find Jewish expectations subverted when John “hears of 144,000 from the 12 tribes of Israel,” but then turns and “sees” an innumerable multitude of people from every kindred, tongue, tribe, and nation. It will not be through Israel that God brings about His kingdom on earth, but through the church of Jesus Christ, which is made up of both Jews and Gentiles. The book of Revelation, then, so far, is challenging the expectations that are rooted in the Old Covenant. In the past, God would use a lion-like leader with an army of Israelites to put down his enemies. Now, in the present, God is using a lamb-like leader who lays down his life for his enemies with an army of martyrs from every tribe on earth. Those who follow Christ constitute the church Having seen that the kingdom of God comes through the sacrifice of Christ and his church, we turn our attention to the “Unsealed Scroll” in Revelation 5:1-9… The Unsealed Scroll Richard Bauckham notes that “The scroll is to reveal the way in which, according to the hitherto secret purpose of God, the Lamb’s victory is to become effective in establishing God’s rule over the world. Only the Lamb can open the scroll and reveal its contents, because it is his victory which makes possible the implementation of the purpose of God in the scroll.” At this point, it is important to note that seals that seal the scroll and the contents of the scroll are two distinct things. The contents of the scroll are found in Revelation 11 after a mighty angel delivers the scroll to John (See 1:1 – From God to Christ to an Angel to John). To be sure, Revelation 11 is one of the most difficult passages to understand in the book of Revelation. There have been at least five major interpretations of just the first two verses of the passage.1 With that said, let us proceed with interpretive caution. 1 G. K. Beale helpful summarizes the five “broad interpretations of these two verses, and variants of each: 1.



The dispensational futurist understanding of Revelation, along with some modified futurist views, projects these verses into the time of tribulation immediately preceding Christ’s final parousia. Some commentators interpret the whole chapter in a more thoroughgoing literal manner than others.239 Typically, the temple and the altar are taken as referring to a literal restored temple in the literal “holy city” of Jerusalem. “Those worshiping in it” are a remnant of believing ethnic Jews. The measuring of temple, altar, and worshipers indicates that they will be physically protected by God, though there are differing interpretations of this. For example, on analogy with

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Given that Revelation 11 reveals the contents of the scroll, the significance of the scroll will depend on how one understand the temple and the identity of the two witnesses in Revelation 11. Personally, I understand the temple in verses 1-2 to refer symbolically to the church of Jesus Christ. My understanding of the reference in this way is rooted in the fact that John and the rest of the New Testament often speaks of the temple in a symbolic manner. Craig Keener makes this observation, writing, “In early Christian literature, however, the temple regularly symbolizes Christians, both Jewish and Gentile (1 Cor. 3:16; 2 Cor. 6:16; Eph. 2:18–22; 1 Peter 2:5). This is also what the temple symbolizes elsewhere in Revelation (Rev. 3:12; 13:6); not surprisingly, this is the more common scholarly interpretation of this temple today.” Others, however, understand the temple literally, believing that a temple will be rebuilt either during the tribulation or during Christ’s millennial reign. If you believe that a literal temple will be rebuilt at some point in the future, you need to be sure that you deal honestly with the book of Hebrews, especially Hebrews 10, which clearly relegates all physical temples to a place of irrelevance in light of Christ’s final sacrifice. However you understand the temple, though, there is still significance for the Unsealed Scroll for our life today, and that significance is rooted in the role of the two witnesses. The Two Witnesses On this point, I again take the most commonly held view among biblical scholars that the Two Witnesses symbolically refer to the church of Jesus Christ. Again, I find Craig Keener’s extended comments to be especially helpful: the use of “rod” in 2:27; 12:5; and 19:15, Seiss proposes that the idea is chastisement of Jewish believers for the purpose of sanctification. But those other uses of “rod” refer to judgment of unbelievers and are citations of Ps. 2:9, whereas 11:1 alludes to Ezekiel 40ff. (see below). Accordingly, the “outer court” is usually identified with Gentiles who will persecute the remnant and overrun a literal Jerusalem during a literal forty-two month period. 2.

The preterist understanding of Revelation takes a similar literal approach, also viewing the temple, altar, and outer court as an actual cultic complex in Jerusalem, but not of the future. What is portrayed is events occurring before and during the literal destruction of the temple and of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.

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Some modified futurist perspectives relegate the narrative to the future, like view 1 above, but understand the descriptions figuratively. The images of the sanctuary, the altar, and the worshipers refer to those within ethnic Israel whose salvation is secured at the end of history by the “measuring.” The outer court and the holy city represent Jewish unbelievers, whose salvation will not be secured. Both groups will undergo persecution and suffering for about forty-two months.

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Another position is similar but does not relegate the scene to the future. It identifies the outer court with the professing but apostate church, which will be deceived and will align itself with unbelieving persecutors of the true, spiritual Israel. This view has broad contextual merit, since John has already acknowledged that some in the churches may not prove to be genuine worshipers of God (e.g., 2:6, 14–16, 20–23; 3:1–3, 16). Furthermore, NT uses of “cast outside” (ἐκβάλλω with ἔξω) can have the negative sense of exclusion from the true community of faith (Matt. 5:13; Luke 13:28; 14:35; John 6:37; 12:31; 15:6).

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A final view also understands the text figuratively but interprets the outer court as the physical expression of the true, spiritual Israel which is susceptible to harm. This view is linguistically allowable because “cast outside” can also refer to what happens to God’s true people as they are rejected and persecuted by the unbelieving world (Matt. 21:39; Mark 12:8; Luke 4:29; 20:15; John 9:34–35; Acts 7:58; cf. 1 Macc. 7:16–17; Jos. War 4.316–17; Heb. 13:11–12). The significance of the measuring means that their salvation is secured, despite physical harm that they suffer. This is a further development of the “sealing” in 7:2–8 and is consistent with 1 En. 61:1–5, where the angelic “measuring” of the righteous elect ensures that their faith will be strengthened and not destroyed, despite the destruction of their bodies. In the OT “measuring” is used as a metaphor for a decree of protection (e.g., 2 Sam. 8:2; Isa. 28:16–17; Jer. 31:38–40; Ezek. 29:6 LXX; Zech. 1:16) or of judgment (e.g., 2 Sam. 8:2; 2 Kgs. 21:13; Lam. 2:8; Amos 7:7–9). Interestingly, Mic. 2:5 refers to Israelites who will not be protected from God’s coming judgment by saying that “you will have no one casting a measuring line for you by lot in the assembly of the Lord.”





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The most common view is that the two witnesses represent the prophetic witness of the church. Various factors support this interpretation. (1) They are “lampstands” (11:4), which Revelation elsewhere explicitly identifies as churches (1:20). (2) Joshua and Zerubbabel were the high priest and king seeking the restoration of their holy city; what could better symbolize the saints as a kingdom and priests (1:6; 5:10) seeking their new Jerusalem? (3) Like John in this context, they prophesy (10:11; 11:3, 6), fulfilling the standard Christian mission of testifying for Christ (cf. 19:10). (4) If the time period is symbolic for the entire Christian era, which may well be the case (see comment on 12:5–6), the witnesses would need to be symbolic for something of equally long duration (or to conceal their supernatural longevity with something more effective than merely Grecian formula). (5) The cumulative adaptation of diverse Old Testament prophetic motifs, such as fire coming from the witnesses’ mouths rather than from heaven, suggests a broader symbolic interpretation. The case for the two witnesses being the church is debatable, but it seems the best of available options. Those who object to the witnesses being the church do so especially on grounds that the literal details, such as lying in the street for three days, do not fit the church. Such objections are not unreasonable, but they presuppose that details in Revelation’s narratives must be read literally, a premise that contradicts much of what we find in the rest of the book. Likewise, some insist that a serious reading of Scripture requires us to take the figure of two witnesses as two literal individuals; but in Revelation, unlike many genres in Scripture, it is difficult to apply that interpretive method with consistency: few would insist, for example, that the women in chapters 12 or 17 must represent literal individuals. If the witnesses represent the church, one can view the 1,260 days in one of two ways. (1) One can see here the church’s successful end-time witness (as opposed to its witness in most of church history). (2) One can instead take 1,260 as a symbolic number (fitting the symbolism in much of the book), in which case Revelation reinterprets this Jewish symbol as it does many others (see comments on 12:5–6). In this case Revelation is borrowing Daniel’s figure not to tell us the length of time but to inform us of the kind of time, that the era of the church is characterized by great suffering, as in Daniel’s tribulation. John uses 1,260 days for the church’s time and the equivalent figure of 42 months to describe the beast’s time. The 1,260 days represent 42 months or three and a

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half 360-day years; this is likely intended as a symbolic number (see comments on 12:5–6). Revelation prefers this to a sum of 364 days for a year (1 Enoch 74:12– 13), or Daniel’s 1,290 (Dan. 12:11) and 1,335 days (12:12), probably for reasons obvious to ancient geometers, who found great significance in numerical patterns. If indeed Revelation presents the two witnesses as the church, the biblical allusions provide a pattern for the church’s prophetic mission: “for those whose witness is a greater thing even than Moses’ or Elijah’s and against whom the beast musters greater forces.…” Now, if you prefer to take the “two witnesses as future literal witnesses,” you can still “view them as paradigmatic for the church, because we are also witnesses (19:10) in a time of hardship (1:9).” The point is that even if you do not agree with my understanding of the Two Witnesses, you can still see how the vision of Revelation 11 should impact the church to be faithful as witnesses, even when it looks like they are losing and the world is turning against them.



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