God's Problem (35 page)

You would think that now, with the destruction of the sun, moon, stars, and earth, we have come to the end of all things. But it is not so: we are only in chapter six! Two more rounds of disasters are yet to hit. With the breaking of the seventh seal, there is a great silence, and then the appearance of seven angels who are each given a trumpet (Rev. 8:1–2). As the angels blow their trumpets, new catastrophes strike: the earth is burned to a crisp, the waters of earth become blood and poisoned, the sun, moon, and stars are darkened, wild beasts are set loose upon the inhabitants of earth, violent wars and plagues strike. Along with other disasters is the appearance of the great beast—the Antichrist—who wreaks yet greater havoc on earth. And then, after the seventh trumpet is blown, seven more angels appear, each carrying an enormous bowl filled with God’s wrath (Rev. 16:1–2). Each angel pours out his bowl upon the earth, leading to yet further catastrophes—until we reach a climax with the destruction of the great city that is the enemy of God, “Babylon the great” (Rev. 18:2).

Finally there is a last battle, in which Christ appears from heaven on a white horse (Rev. 19:11); he wages war with the Antichrist and his armies, leading to their eternal destruction in a lake of fire (Rev. 19:17–21). There follows a thousand-year period of utopia on earth, when the Devil himself is hidden away in the bottomless pit so that he can do no harm (Rev. 20:1–6). After the thousand years the Devil is released for a brief time, and then the end, finally, comes. All the dead are raised and forced to face judgment. Those written “in the book of life” are given an eternal reward; those whose names are in “the other books” are sent off to eternal punishment. Then Death is thrown into the lake of fire, as is the realm of the dead, Hades (Rev. 20:11–15).

And then the eternal kingdom appears. Heaven and earth are remade and a heavenly city, the holy Jerusalem, descends from heaven, a city with gates of pearl and streets of gold (Rev. 21:9–27). There the redeemed live forever, a blessed existence of joy and peace, where there is no more pain, anguish, misery, death, or suffering. There God reigns supreme, through the victorious “Lamb,” who is worshiped forever and ever.

The prophet ends the book by indicating that Christ is “coming soon” to bring all this to pass (Rev. 22:12). He urges Christ to do so: “Amen, Come Lord Jesus!” (Rev. 22:20).

The Audience of the Book

Since Revelation describes the disasters that will happen at the end of time and the glorious, utopian Kingdom of God that will then arrive, and since none of this, obviously, has yet happened, it is no wonder that readers over the centuries have interpreted the book as referring to what is yet to take place. But there are clear indications in the book that the author is not concerned with the distant future, say, the twenty-first century, but that he is symbolically referring to what will happen in his own time.
⁷

As I have indicated, the visions found in ancient apocalypses are typically interpreted by an angelic companion, and this is the case
with the book of Revelation as well. Let me give just two examples. In chapter 17, we are told that one of the angels with the bowls of God’s wrath takes the prophet off into the wilderness to show him a vision of the great enemy of God who will appear at the end of time. This is the famous “Whore of Babylon.” John sees a woman sitting on a scarlet beast, which has seven heads and ten horns (this is to remind the reader of the fourth beast in Daniel, also with ten horns). The woman is bedecked with gold, jewels, and pearls—that is, she is fabulously wealthy. She is said to be one with whom the “kings of earth” have “committed fornication.” She holds in her hand a gold cup filled with her abominations and fornications. And on her forehead is “written a mystery: Babylon the great, the mother of whores and earth’s abominations.” The woman is said to be “drunk with the blood of the holy ones and the blood of the martyrs of Jesus” (Rev. 17:6).

Who or what is this great abomination, this great enemy of God? The first thing to note is that she is said to be a city: Babylon. Anyone familiar with the Hebrew Bible, of course, knows that the city of Babylon was the ultimate enemy of God and his people Israel. But what city could be the enemy of God for this prophet, since the real, historical Babylon was no longer a threat at the end of the first century when the prophet was writing? It must be a city that has “committed fornication” with other kings—that is, a city on earth that has had scandalous and flagrantly sinful relations with other empires. Most significant, we are told that the seven heads of the beast symbolize seven kings who have ruled the city, but also that they represent the “seven mountains on which the woman is seated” (Rev. 17:9). Any astute reader knows by now what the woman represents. What city in the ancient world was built on seven mountains? It was the city of Rome (you’ve probably heard of the “seven hills of Rome”; it was a city built on seven hills). And to clinch this interpretation, the prophet is told that the woman is in fact “the great city that has dominion over the kings of earth” (Rev. 17:18). What city held
sway over the author’s world, in the first century? Rome, or the Roman Empire. This was the great enemy of God, the one who persecuted the Christians (she is drunk with their blood). This was the enemy that would be overthrown by God. This is the enemy that the book of Revelation is written against.

Or take another image. In chapter 13 we read about another beast, one that rises from the sea (recall the fourth beast of Daniel again). And once more, it is said to have ten horns and seven heads. It has terrifying power over the earth. One of its heads (i.e., one of its rulers) is said to have received a “mortal wound” that then healed. All the earth worships the beast, but it speaks “haughty and blasphemous words” (remember the small horn of the beast in Daniel). Moreover, it “makes war against the holy ones and conquers them.” If this sounds a lot like the beast of chapter 17, it is. It too is Rome. But here we are told that the beast has “the number of a person” and that the number—the mark of the beast—is 666.

Who is this Antichrist, whose number is 666? Over the years, of course, people have come up with all kinds of speculation about who it could be. In the 1940s it was sometimes thought to refer to Hitler or Mussolini. When I was in college there were books written to show that it was Henry Kissinger, or the pope. Recently people have written yet other books claiming it was Saddam Hussein or some other notorious figure in our own time.

An intelligent ancient reader would not have had difficulty knowing who was being referred to. Ancient languages like Greek and Hebrew used letters of the alphabet for their numerals (we, on the other hand, use roman letters but arabic numerals). The first letter was “one,” the second was “two,” and so on. The author of Revelation is indicating that if you take the letters of this person’s name, they will add up to 666. On one level, this is highly symbolic. The perfect number, of course, the number of God, is seven. One less than seven is six; this is the number of a “human.” Triple six is someone far from the perfection of God; it is a number that symbolizes what is most distant from God. But who is it?

If the beast of chapter 17 with seven heads and ten horns is Rome, it seems likely that this beast of chapter 13 is as well. This is the great enemy of the saints. Who in Rome was thought of as the great enemy of the Christians? The first emperor to persecute the Christians, of course, was Caesar Nero. As it turns out, there were rumors throughout the Roman East that Nero was going to return from the dead to wreak even more havoc on the world than he had done while alive the first time. That sounds like someone who receives “a mortal wound” but then recovers, as is said of this beast. But what is most striking is the number of the beast itself. When you spell the name Caesar Nero in Hebrew letters and add them up, they total 666.

Suffering in the Book of Revelation

The book of Revelation was not predicting what is going to happen in our own time. Its author was concerned with what was happening in his time. His was a time of persecution and suffering. Christians had been put to death in Rome by the emperor Nero. And the world at large looked like it was in a terrible state. There were earthquakes, famines, and wars. Surely, thought this author, things were about as bad as they were going to get.

But things were going to get worse. This world was filled with evil, and God was going to judge it. The wrath of God was soon to break on this world, and woe to the one who lived to see it happen.

At the end of the terrible times ahead, however, God would finally intervene on behalf of his people. He would destroy all the forces of evil—the evil empires aligned against him and the cosmic forces of the Devil and his minions who supported them. Christ would return from heaven and in a cosmic show of strength annihilate every power opposed to God and every human being, from the emperor on down, who had cooperated with them. God’s people would be vindicated, and a new kingdom would come to earth, a kingdom symbolized by the heavenly Jerusalem, with gates of pearl
and streets lined with gold. All that is hateful and harmful now would be done away with then. There would no longer be any persecution, pain, anguish, misery, sin, suffering, or death. God would rule supreme once and for all. And his people would live a heavenly existence, forever and ever.

The Transformation of Apocalyptic Thinking

What happens to an apocalyptic worldview when the expected apocalypse never comes? In Mark’s Gospel Jesus indicates that some of his disciples “will not taste death” before they see the “Kingdom of God having come in power” (Mark 9:1). Even though he says that no one knows the precise “day or the hour,” he does indicate that the end of all things is sure to come “before this generation passes away” (Mark 13:30). Paul himself seems to have expected to be among those “who are alive, who are left” until the Lord appeared in fiery judgment from heaven. The prophet John, in the book of Revelation, heard Jesus say that he was “coming soon,” and so he prayed, “Yes, come Lord Jesus.” But what happens when he doesn’t come?

The earliest Christians believed they were living “in the last days.” Their Lord had himself been an apocalypticist who warned the people of Israel to repent before it was too late, for “the Kingdom of God is very near” (Mark 1:15). And Jesus had been a follower of John, who indicated that the “ax is already laid at the root of the tree”—in other words, that the apocalyptic judgment was soon to begin. Jesus’ own followers thought that he would be the one to bring that judgment, that he had ascended to heaven but would soon return to judge the earth and bring in the Kingdom of God as the messiah. They expected it all to be imminent.

But the days of waiting turned into weeks, then into months, then into years, and then into decades. And the end never came. What happens to a belief that is radically disconfirmed by the events of history?

What happened in this instance was that the followers of Jesus transformed his message. In some ways the apocalyptic hope can be understood as a kind of divine time line in which all of history is divided into two periods, this wicked age controlled by the forces of evil and the coming age in which evil will be destroyed and God’s people will rule supreme. When the end did not come as expected, some of Jesus’ followers transformed this temporal dualism (this age versus the age to come) into a spatial dualism, between the world below and the world above. Or put differently, they shifted the horizontal dualism of apocalyptic expectation of life in this age versus life in the age to come (horizontal dualism because it all takes place on this plane, here on earth) into a vertical dualism that spoke instead of life in the lower world versus life in the world above (with an up and down). In other words, out of the ashes of failed apocalyptic expectation there arose the Christian doctrine of heaven and hell.

Apocalypticism is nothing so much as an ancient kind of theodicy, an explanation of why there can be so much pain and suffering in this world if a good and powerful God is in charge of it. The apocalyptic answer is that God is indeed completely sovereign, and that he will reassert his sovereignty in the future when he overthrows the forces of evil and vindicates everyone who has sided with him (and therefore suffered) in this age. Why do the wicked prosper now? Because they side with evil. Why do the righteous suffer? Because they side with good. But God will reverse the order of rewards and punishment in the age that is coming. The first will be last and the last first; the exalted will be humbled and the humble exalted.

When that didn’t happen—when the world never was transformed—Christians began to think that judgment was not something that would happen here, on this earthly plane, in some future cataclysmic event. It would happen in the afterlife, after each of us dies. Judgment day is not something that will take place in the by-and-by. It is something that happens all the time. It happens at death. Those who have sided with the Devil will be given their
eternal reward by being sent off to live forever with the Devil, in the flames of hell. Those who have sided with God will be given their eternal reward by being granted eternal life with God, forever enjoying the bliss of heaven. In this transformed view, the Kingdom of God is no longer thought of as a future kingdom here on earth; it is the kingdom that God currently rules, in heaven. It is in the afterlife that God vindicates his name and judges his people, not in some kind of transformation of this world of evil.

There are already traces of this “de-apocalypticized” version of Christianity in the New Testament itself. The last of our Gospels to be written was John, written by someone other than the John who wrote the book of Revelation.
⁸
It is striking that in John’s Gospel Jesus no longer talks about the coming Kingdom of God as a place where God will rule here on earth. What matters for John’s Gospel is not the future of the world. What matters is eternal life in heaven, which comes to those who believe in Jesus. In John, Jesus does not urge the people of Israel to repent because “the Kingdom of God is near.” He urges people to believe in him as the one who has come down from heaven and is returning to heaven to his heavenly Father (note the vertical dualism). Those who believe in him will themselves experience a rebirth, a birth “from above” (the literal meaning of John 3:3). Those who are born from above can expect to return to their heavenly home when they leave this life. That is why Jesus is leaving his disciples, according to John, so that he “can prepare a place” for them, an abode in heaven where they will go at death (John 14:1–3).