Rapture: The End-Times Error That Leaves the Bible Behind (37 page)

But even with all this, there is still a group “who were not killed by these plagues [and] did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons” (9:20). This is the remnant,
loipos
, that will appear later in the book. St. John mentions them here in anticipation. In Daniel’s previous vision, they were called the “wicked.” Josephus calls them the “scum.” Historically, we know them as the “outlaw Zealots.” We will eventually learn what happens to these men who refused to “repent of their murders or their sorceries or their immorality or their thefts” (9:21). It is not a pretty picture.

Like the climactic sixth seal, the sixth trumpet has many details. A powerful angel now unleashes seven thunders, but St. John is not permitted to write these details for us. How ironic: Jesus’ nickname for John and his brother was
boanerges
, or “sons of thunder” (Mark 3:17), yet John is forbidden to tell more about these seven thunders.

At this point, an angel announces that when the seventh trumpet is sounded, “the mystery of God, as He announced to His servants the prophets, should be fulfilled” (10:7). We have not arrived at the seventh trumpet; this is another example of anticipation. We will wait until we arrive at the seventh trumpet to discuss this “mystery of God.” It is the message of the scroll, the mystery of Christ’s Kingdom, that will be revealed for the entire world to see when the seals are all opened.

St. John is instructed to eat a second scroll, a little scroll, from the hand of a powerful angel, and he says, “It was sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach was made bitter” (10:10). This is a clear reference to the scroll of Ezekiel that contained “words of lamentation and mourning and woe” (Ezek. 2:8–3:14). At first blush, the deliverance of the Church from the Great Tribulation was a sweet prospect. But the result of that deliverance was the destruction of St. John’s kinsmen and hometown.

We now encounter the second specific time reference in The Apocalypse. This one will be repeated. We read that Jerusalem, “the holy city,” will be trampled for forty-two months (11:2). This is the biblical period of judgment, as is evidenced as far back as the prophet Elijah, who withheld rain from Israel for three and a half years.

These forty-two months are still within the sixth trumpet. The trampling is made possible because the protective river Euphrates has dried up. The trampling will be accomplished by the locust army of “two hundred million” cavalry.

This specific period is identical to the “one thousand two hundred and sixty days” during which the “two witnesses” of prophesy (11:3). We see this period when the woman flees from Satan (12:6, 14). It appears again when the beast is given “authority” over Israel for “forty-two months” (13:5). Remember Daniel? This same three and a half years appeared in Visions III:A and III:E.

While most of the numbers in apocalyptic literature are round, significant numbers, such as
three, seven
, or
ten
(or multiples of these numbers), the four references to this period are not, so they possess the aura of actual historical time (GR2). And when we examine history, we find a precise fulfillment of these forty-two months in the three-and-a-half-year Jewish-Roman War.

The repetition of the time reference in four visionary contexts gives further evidence to the position that the visions of Daniel are not to be viewed chronologically. They look at the same events and periods from different perspectives (GR8).

It is no wonder this sixth trumpet was considered the “second woe” by the Jewish leadership. “The nations … will trample over the holy city for forty-two months” (11:2). The picture of Jerusalem being overrun by pagan Gentiles is lifted from the teaching of Jesus in the Olivet Discourse. Jesus prophesied that “Jerusalem will be trodden down by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled” (Luke 21:24).

This picture can be found in the Old Testament as well. Jesus was expanding on Daniel’s visions. Daniel had seen a gentile nation trample the holy places of the Jews. He witnessed the Babylonians as they conquered Jerusalem and carried off all the holy vessels within the Temple. This defeat was a fulfillment of Isaiah 63:18.

But that was not the last time the Temple would be desecrated. During the time of the Maccabean Wars, Antiochus Epiphanes defiled the Temple by entering its walls and even sacrificing a pig on its altar. This was foretold by Daniel (8:13–14; 11:31). That overrunning of the Temple’s holy places lasted for 1,150 days (2,300 evenings and mornings). It ended with the victories of Judas Maccabee, and that victory is still celebrated today as the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.

During the time of Jesus, Jewish commentators claimed that Antiochus would be the last to desecrate the Temple as foretold by Daniel, but Jesus specifically taught otherwise. In the Olivet Discourse, Jesus referred to “the desolating sacrilege spoken of by the prophet Daniel” as a future event (Matt. 24:15). Although the Antiochan insult would last 1,150 days, and was in the past by the time Jesus spoke in the Olivet Discourse, the sacrilege that Jesus foretold best fits the details of Daniel 9:27 and 12:11. As we saw in Daniel, this period of judgment spans three and a half years.

So we have come full circle in the entire scope of our examination of the Old and New Testaments. The three and a half years that appear in Daniel, and are described in the Olivet Discourse, are now mentioned in the sixth trumpet. By using this time reference four times in Chapters 11 and 12 of The Apocalypse, St. John effectively emphasizes that these events all occur within the three and a half years that Daniel and Jesus predicted.

Jesus had prophesied that this judgment would occur within the lifetime of His hearers: “This generation will not pass away till all these things take place” (Matt. 24:34). By referencing the Luke passage, we can determine that these forty-two months are “the times of the Gentiles” (Luke 21:24). St. John writes that, during these forty-two months, the Gentiles “will trample over the holy city” (11:2).

According to Josephus, the daily sacrifice dedicated to Nero in the Temple in Jerusalem was halted in July of 66 A.D. (
WJ
, II, 17:2). This Jewish provocation led to the declaration of war by Rome in February of 67 A.D. (
WJ
, III, 1:2). The war ended precisely forty-two months later when the Temple was burned by Titus’s troops in August of 70 A.D. Daniel predicted these things more than six centuries earlier, Jesus predicted them four decades earlier, and St. John expands on their prophecies. The Jewish-Roman War might have already started by the time St. John wrote, but was not anywhere near a resolution.

Make no mistake. The “times of the Gentiles” cannot be a present or a future time. Indeed, there can no longer be a “times of the Gentiles” because the categories of Jew and Gentile are no longer relevant in the Kingdom of Christ. “For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all” (Rom. 10:12). The distinction is meaningless because there is now a new Lord, who is ruler of His eternal Kingdom here and now. That Kingdom supersedes any national or ethnic identity. “Every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues” is invited to eat at the Table of the Lord (7:9).

There are more important events during this sixth trumpet. During the trampling by the Gentiles, there will be two witnesses who prophesy for God. They are described as the “two olive trees and the two lampstands which stand before the Lord of the earth” (11:4). This description should tell us that they may not be just normal human beings.

The identity of the two witnesses in 11:3–14 has been much debated: the Law and the Prophets, Moses and Elijah, Peter and Paul, the Prophets and the Apostles, and Zerubbabel and Joshua have all been proposed.

The symbolism is definitely taken from Zechariah 4, where Joshua the priest and Zerubbabel the ruler are described in similar fashion. But the Old Testament events are meant to foreshadow the New Testament (GR3). These witnesses might also represent the ministries of Sts. Peter and Paul. They were both killed by the beast, when they were martyred in Rome during the Great Tribulation. Anyone who has done his homework in Daniel would expect the beast to be nothing other than Rome. But Peter and Paul were martyred before these 1,260 days began.

The best interpretation of the witnesses seems to be as symbols for the Law and the Prophets. If we remember the vision of the battle strategy of the beast in Daniel 7 (III:A), this will not surprise us. Daniel informed us that the little horn, Nero, would make war on
the times and the law
for three and a half years. This was the first time we encountered the forty-two months. The times and law that Daniel mentions are the parallel of the two witnesses.

As we have seen with the beast, and will see again, St. John also had the personification of the Law and the Prophets in mind. Moses and Elijah serve as the personification of all that the Law and the Prophets represented. St. John uses this literary technique enough that we can be sure of this (GR4).

Moses and Elijah were the two most important men in each of their respective roles. Moses gave Israel the Law, and Elijah was the epitome of God’s prophet. Elijah prophesied during a similar three-and-a-half-year period of judgment in the Old Testament. The powers attributed to these two witnesses in The Apocalypse recall the high points of the careers of Moses and Elijah. “They have power to shut the sky, that no rain may fall during the days of their prophesying, and they have power over the waters to turn them into blood, and to smite the land with every plague,” and even the power to breathe life back into the dead (11:6).

It was Moses and Elijah who came to bear witness to Christ in the Transfiguration (Matt. 17:1–13; Mark 9:2–13; Luke 9:28–36). We see the symbolic importance of Elijah as Jesus uses him as a type for John the Baptizer. This was an allegorical fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy concerning Elijah’s return.

At this point in his vision, St. John does something noteworthy. While his book is apocalyptic literature, and much of that literature is vividly symbolic, St. John specifically points out the allegorical nature of his language in this vision (11:8). Nowhere else in The Apocalypse does he remind us that he is writing allegorically. So in this vision especially we must not expect too literal a fulfillment. In fact, we will find that this section of The Apocalypse has the least “literal” fulfillment.

So how were the events surrounding these two witnesses fulfilled? As long as the Temple stood, the Mosaic system gave voice to the Law and the Prophets. They witnessed against the paganism of both the Romans and the unfaithful Jews. This witness annoyed many Romans.

The Law and the Prophets were killed by the beast when biblical Judaism was destroyed forever by the Roman army in 70 A.D. The world would have thought that, at the burning of the Temple, they could forget about this Law that prohibited the worship of the Roman emperor. When the Temple was destroyed, the world would have thought that the prophets who condemned their selfish lifestyles and immoral practices had been silenced forever. After all, the earthly center of Judaism was destroyed. Surely Judaism, and even this small sect within Judaism (the common view of Christianity at the time) would dissipate when Jerusalem was eliminated. Pagan Rome was so overjoyed that people made “merry and exchange[d] presents” (11:10). But the world was wrong to think that God’s Truth could be silenced by war.

The Law and the Prophets came back to life. Even now they continue to proclaim their message of moral uprightness and godly worship within the heavenly city of the New Jerusalem, which is the Church. God’s New Covenant was beyond the reach of armies. They “went up to Heaven in a cloud” (11:12). The heavenly city of God is a theme that St. John develops in some detail later. Heaven is the location of the New Jerusalem at this point in The Apocalypse. The use of a cloud speaks of their more glorious associations in the New Covenant. We participate in that glory in the Mass.

From this point forward, the message of the Law and the Prophets is beyond the power of earthly kingdoms to silence. That is the significance of their being protected in Heaven. They continue to bear witness against the evil of emperor worship and immoral lifestyles from their home in the New Jerusalem, the Church. This is the significance of St. John Chrysostom’s comment: “The Romans conquered countless thousands of Jews, but could not overcome twelve unarmed, unprotected men” (
HOM
, LXXXVI).

The early Church assiduously used the Jewish Law and Prophets of the Old Testament (the Scriptures) to point people to Christ (Acts 1:16, 8:35, 17:2, 17:11, 18:28; Rom. 1:2–3; 1 Cor. 15:3–4). The situation became so distressful to the Jewish rabbis that they revised the list of the canon a few decades after the fall of Jerusalem, and some very Messianic books of the Old Testament were demoted to deuterocanonical status. The irony of the situation is that this revision by the Jewish scholars in about 90 A.D. gave the Protestants an excuse to delete some of the books of the Bible that they found distressing almost fifteen centuries later.

Yet the Church continued to use the Law and the Prophets as an apologetical tool. It was very effective, for the simple reason that Christ really was to be found in the Old Testament (GR1). Through the efforts of the early Church, the Law and the Prophets really did rise again to bear witness to God’s undefeated Truth.

The theme of the two witnesses will later be counterbalanced with the two evil beasts in Chapter 13 of The Apocalypse. This theme will then be complemented by the two women: a good woman in Chapter 12 and an evil one in Chapter 17. We will see the same dual symbolism that St. John used with the two witnesses. The characters symbolize an entity or group of people, but also point to a particular individual as representative (GR4).