The Book of Revelation and the Global Conflict In the Middle East
By William E. Hull, Research Professor
Samford University, Birmingham, AL

Note: This three-part sermon series was preached at the Mountain Brook Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama in April/May/June, 2003. Dr. Hull notes that “he was driven by the thrust of the book’s message to wrestle with major ethical issues: national hubris in the first sermon, systemic evil in the second sermon, and religious pacifism in the third sermon.”

Sermon One: The Lord God Omnipotent Reigns!

     Let’s face it: we are afraid of the Book of Revelation. It is at once the least read yet most misunderstood book in the New Testament. When we pass from the Gospels and Epistles to its pages, we are confronted with a bizarre scenario that seems to unfold in an alien land. Weird and esoteric symbolism abounds on every page. While some choose to ignore this last book of the Bible, others make it the key to their understanding of the whole of Scripture. Revelation has been the happy hunting ground for many a religious crackpot, from the Millerites who were convinced that the world would end in 1844 to the Branch Davidians whose leader, David Koresh, believed that he had been chosen to open the seven seals of the Apocalypse and launch God’s judgment on the world. It is a book of unspeakable violence in the name of God which chills the blood of those who want religion to offer a haven of safety and peace.

     Lest we despair, the cryptic language that so easily confuses offers a clue to the unique genius of the book. Here we have nothing less than an attempt to peer into another world, to make visible the invisible and to utter the unutterable. It forces us out of our routine ways of thinking and asks us to discover reality through the imagination rather than the intellect. Make no mistake: the Revelation of John intends to startle us, even to shock us, for it is subversive literature with a dangerous message for an evil day when those who challenged the powers that be in the name of Christ were courting persecution and even death. The book is high drama designed to awaken buried emotions, to enlarge the boundaries of experience, to jar its readers out of complacency with God’s wake-up call. It dares to view all of life in the ultimate dimension!

     One of our primary sources of confusion is the time perspective which its message intends. Was Revelation written only for its day, or to describe the subsequent sweep of human history, or to predict the ultimate end of the world? The answer is found in a formula used three times (1:4; 1:8; 4:8, reinforced by 11:17 and 16:5), where God is seen as “the One who is and who was and who is to come,” the one “in whom the ultimate past and the ultimate future are comprehended in an eternal present." (1) Unlike the religious sensationalists of our day, John wrote to be relevant and intensely practical for his desperate readers who were trying to survive in an alien culture, for whom our endless speculations about the latest skirmish in the Middle East would be of little or no help. And yet John probed the depths of life so profoundly that his core convictions are just as valid in our day as in his own. It is precisely because John was so effective in guiding the embattled church of the first century as it lived on the edge of extinction that his book is worthy of our closest attention in the twenty-first century.

As is the case in most drama, the central reality of Revelation is conflict. The three great themes that dominate the book from beginning to end concern (a) the divine protagonist, God; (b) the evil antagonist, Satan; and (c) the resolution of the cosmic struggle between the two, Victory. Here two worlds are pictured as locked in a titanic battle for the loyalty of the human heart, the outcome of which will determine the character of both time and eternity. Amazing as it may be, we mortal earthlings are the prize for which the ultimate powers of the universe now contend! Revelation is profoundly theocentric, thus we look first at what it has to say about God.

God the Father

John lived in a day when the Roman Empire, then at the height of its power, was determined to control the course of history. Its imperial designs knew no limits. The ages of time would be determined by the rule of its Caesars (Luke 3:1). Rome had already crushed every other earthly power within the wider Mediterranean world, thus none dared challenge its supremacy. Intoxicated with its own self-importance, the empire moved steadily to make itself the unifying power around which political, economic, cultural, and religious life would cohere.

Over against this absolutizing of Roman authority, John dared to make the most subversive claim imaginable, namely, that history was guided, not by the Caesars, but by the sovereign Lord of heaven. Three interlocking claims made clear that God alone controlled the unfolding of the ages from creation to consummation, for he is “the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (22:13). The meaning of time would be determined by his eternal purposes, not by the latest ruler in Rome. Throughout the book there is an emphasis on wholeness, completeness, and ultimacy as seen, for example, in the frequent use of the number seven which, in Jewish numerology, stood for the fullness of reality, as in the seven days of the week. In Revelation we have seven letters, seven seals, seven trumpets, seven thunders, seven bowls, seven attributes of the Lamb, seven beatitudes, seven acts in the drama which unfolds, and God guides it all.

In exalting the awesome majesty and mystery of God, John goes out of his way to underscore his utter transcendence by describing him seven times as “almighty” or “omnipotent” (1:8; 4:8; 11:17; 15:3; 16:7; 19:6; 21:22). This is seen not only in his vivid descriptions of God’s glory but particularly in John’s sevenfold designation of God as “the One who sits on the throne” (4:9; 5:1; 5:7; 5:13; 6:16; 7:15; 21:5). Caesar’s throne stood for his right to rule, but John saw a greater throne than Caesar’s, not in Rome but in heaven (4:2). Everything about the description of God on his throne (4:3-6) was calculated to trump the ostentation that Rome heaped upon its Caesar in a futile effort to make him seem superhuman. In passages such as this, John is crying at the top of his voice that appearance is not reality, that the dazzling temples to Caesar being built all over Asia Minor were nothing compared to the heavenly court, and that while Caesar may rule momentarily on earth, God reigns eternally in heaven.

And yet John makes an equally important point by what he does not say about this cosmic Potentate. To be sure, God is supreme, but his sovereignty is not coercive. Despots like Nero could rigidly control events by the exercise of arbitrary and capricious power, intimidating and terrorizing whole populations with the threat of violence. But almighty God chooses to rule in a context of human freedom. In his universe, one can decide to be either friend or foe. The greatness of God is seen precisely in the fact that he is not a “control freak” like the Caesars, but accomplishes his purposes in the face of radical contingency. Revelation is animated by a breathtaking vision of the God who lets us be, who fashions his future out of our choices whether they be good or bad, a God who desires only our love, even though love is the most voluntary relationship in human experience.

God the Son

But if God does not bully his subjects with coercive power, how does he hope to win their fickle hearts? The answer to that central question is that God responded to the unpredictabilities of human freedom by sending his Son to earth to save us from self-destructive decisions. Perhaps the most incredible symbol in the entire book is that of Christ as a sacrificial Lamb. John knew that the messianic hope looked for a “Lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David” who would come to conquer the enemies of the people of God (5:5). But as soon as we move to his next paragraph, we are shocked to discover that this Lion has become a Lamb with his throat cut (5:12)! Now we begin to realize that God has given us so much freedom that we can make him bleed, that evil “can be conquered only by being allowed to conquer and so to burn itself out." (2)

How quickly we come to the heart of the plot in this drama of redemption: here is the daring claim, not only that God is going to triumph over the most hideous evil imaginable, but that his only weapon will be a vulnerable Lamb. This is John’s key image of Christ in the Apocalypse, being used as a title for Jesus twenty-nine times. But more: it is not just that this Lamb was willing to be a helpless victim. Rather, it was precisely as victim that he became victor over every malignant force in the universe, worthy “to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing,” a seven-fold tribute no less (5:12)! Jesus is “worthy,” not despite the fact that he had to suffer, but precisely because he had to suffer. His defeat is his victory, his shame is his glory, his humiliation is his vindication, his cross is his crown.

What an incredible claim: that Rome is going to be vanquished, not by swords and spears, but by a splintery cross! Any doubt that the crucified Christ will reign triumphant is dispelled at the outset of the book when the risen Lord is described in glorious terms reminiscent of God himself (1:12-16). Even Caesar in all of his finery never looked like that! Make no mistake: Jesus Christ, the faithful witness and first born of the dead, is “the ruler of kings on earth” (1:5). To be sure, the enemies of God “will make war on the Lamb, but the Lamb will conquer them, for he is Lord of lords and King of kings” (17:14). What a seditious thing for John to say!

God the Holy Spirit

All over Asia Minor the oppressive power of Rome was acutely felt even though the throne of the Caesar was far away in the so-called Eternal City. Just so, John and his readers could take heart that the Lord and his Lamb were already sovereign in heaven even though their throne often seemed so far away. A more immediate help for these beleaguered Christians was offered by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, another constant refrain in the Book of Revelation. Indeed, John was given a vision of heaven because he was “in the Spirit” (1:10). This momentous disclosure happened on the isolated island of Patmos, a remote military outpost some eighty-eight miles off the coast of Asia Minor. Only ten miles long and six miles wide, this rocky outcropping in the Aegean Sea was a perfect place to isolate troublemakers who needed to come to their senses. But God’s Spirit was also present on Patmos, not only to inspire the writing of John’s book, but also to serve as God’s living agent of persuasion for all who would read it (22:17).

But more than that, John could write confidently that the Holy Spirit would not only interpret his divine revelation but also strengthen the Christians to whom he was writing. Each of the letters to the seven churches ends with the refrain, “Let the one with ears hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (2:7, 11, 17, 29; 3:6, 13, 22). Since each of these seven letters begins by announcing that the words which follow are from the exalted Christ, this means that the Holy Spirit mediates the realities of heaven to those struggling here on earth. It is as if each church, regardless of its condition, has the Holy Spirit of God intimately present to function somewhat like its guardian angel (1:4, 20; 3:1; 4:5; 5:6).

Revelation constantly emphasizes that worship is the setting in which God the Father and God the Son are most intimately present with us as God the Holy Spirit. On the one hand, there are scenes of heavenly worship interspersed throughout the book with at least fifteen hymns or hymn-like fragments: (1) the thrice-holy cry (4:8); (2) three songs acclaiming God or the Lamb as “worthy” (4:11; 5:9-10; 5:12); (3) three doxologies (5:13; 7:12; 16:5-7); (4) seven “victory” songs (7:10; 11:15; 11:17-18; 12:10-12; 15:3-4; 19:1-2; 19:6-8); and (5) an exhortation to praise God (19:5). (3) These hymns help to carry the story line of the book in poetic fashion. In a profound sense, the Revelation sings its message through stanza after stanza to a grand climax.

But, on the other hand, it is precisely in earthly worship that Christians both anticipate and participate in the worship of the heavenly court. The reference to “the Lord’s day” (1:10) implies that the book began in worship and the “Amen” cry (22:20) implies that it ended in worship. To us, worship is often little more than a weekly habit, but to John’s readers it was a daring act of political protest. For one thing, its heavenly descriptions of worship were a parody of imperial court ceremonies, a way of saying that none of Rome’s impressive pageantry was worthy to be compared with the liturgy of heaven. To gather for worship on earth, and to have that heavenly worship mediated by the living Holy Spirit, was a concrete declaration that this people would bow to no other God, that only the Lord of Heaven deserves our ultimate allegiance, that any compromise with the worship of the Lamb is nothing less than treason. The inference is inescapable: if God and the Lamb are truly worthy of worship, then there can be no doubt that the Caesars are unworthy of the worship which they were demanding.

In our modern democratic culture with its emphasis on autonomous individualism, some have reacted negatively to the insistence of Revelation that the triune God is omnipotent. Far from sanctioning “authoritarian structures of power and domination in human society,” however, “this is the exact opposite of the way the image of divine sovereignty functions in Revelation. There, so far from legitimizing human autocracy, divine rule radically de-legitimizes it. Absolute power, by definition, belongs only to God, and it is precisely the recognition of God’s absolute power that relativizes all human power." (4)

Our nation and its people need this message of an omnipotent God as never before in its history, for like Rome in its day, we possess unrivaled military, political, economic, and cultural power. One response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 is to conceive our strategic role as that of an imperialist empire exercising global hegemony in unipolar fashion. (5) Indeed, some feel that we are already well down that Roman road with a complicit Christianity leading the way. Listen to the stinging indictment of Wendell Berry which has so many resonances with the Book of Revelation:

Despite its protests to the contrary, modern Christianity has become willy-nilly the religion of the state and the economic status quo. . . . It has, for the most part, stood silently by while a predatory economy has ravaged the world, destroyed its natural beauty and health, divided and plundered its human communities and households. It has flown the flag and chanted the slogans of empire. It has assumed with the economists that ‘economic forces’ automatically work for good and has assumed with the industrialists and militarists that technology determines history. . . . It has admired Caesar and comforted him in his depredations and faults. But in its de facto alliance with Caesar, Christianity connives directly in the murder of Creation. For in these days, Caesar is no longer a mere destroyer of armies, cities, and nations. He is a contradicter of the fundamental miracle of life. (6)

In its radically theocentric vision of ultimate reality, Revelation offers us an astringent reminder that we allow God to have earthly competitors only at our peril, even if those rivals be democracy and capitalism. Our nation was founded as an experiment in limited government unlike the absolute monarchies of Europe. It was to be carefully circumscribed by checks and balances, one of which was the separation of church and state so that government and religion could not control or even unduly influence each other. Our market economy was designed to protect the yeoman farmer and village shopkeeper from destructive competition by industrial and commercial behemoths. There are many ways to restrain the totalitarian impulse, including a free press in the community, a free pulpit in the church, and a free podium in the classroom. But the best way to curb the unbridled appetite for power is to affirm with Handel that the Lord God alone is omnipotent and that “he shall reign forever and ever!”

Updated Sunday, November 30, 2003