Revelation 9:1-11 - Control Issues

The first issue to address here is the identity of the star that fell from the sky and opened the Abyss. The ancients often understood celestial beings to be spiritual beings, so this fallen star is probably the “angel of the Abyss” of verse 11. The names given to the angel. both of which mean “Destroyer” give us some insight into exactly what the star/angel is all about. Is it Satan? Perhaps. But as we’ve seen already, God is doing plenty of destroying of his own. So this isn’t necessarily an angel who is rebelling against God. In fact, as we go along I think that’s the whole point. God’s in control even of what appears to be his opposition.

The understanding of Satan that many of us have doesn’t come from the Bible but from the Elizabethan poet John Milton, whose epic poem “Paradise Lost” portrays Satan as a powerful angel who rebelled against God, was thrown out of heaven, and nursed a grudge. This is one of the few passages in the Bible that seems to support Milton’s version. But there’s an important piece missing: nowhere here does it appear as though the angel is doing anything other than what God wanted.

The second issue is the notion of the Abyss. Arguably the greatest theologian of the twentieth century was Karl Barth, whose massive thirty-one volume “Church Dogmatics” has made students’ eyes glaze over if their spirits weren’t caught up in it. I only had the “pleasure” of reading one of the thirty-one volumes. In it, Barth describes “nothingness:” that which had not been created by God but which opposes God. It’s Barth’s way of dealing with the problem of evil, and I’m not sure if I completely buy it. But he makes the very interesting point that the opposition which confronts God is literally nothing. And yet it has power and causes evil. It could be that the Abyss (a deep pit of nothing) is something like Barth’s “nothingness.”

The third issue is this terrifying and tormenting army of locusts that swarms up out of the Abyss and tortures humanity. The Old Testament often used locusts as an image of destruction, and rightly so. The documented stories of how an unbelievably massive swarm of locusts can wipe out all vegetation for miles is enough to make the stoutest heart tremble. But this is no ordinary locust swarm. Instead of going after plants, like normal locusts, they go after people. I’ve never been stung by a scorpion, but from what I’ve been told, I have no desire to do so. These locusts are a weird hybrid creature that flies and swarms like locusts, but inflicts horrible pain like scorpions. Again, if you want to describe something about as nasty as they come, these locusts do it.

The description of these locusts tells a little bit about why God sent them. (And yes, they come from God. We’ll get to that in a moment.) They come like an army. Horses, chariots, and iron breastplates were the Abrams tanks, Predator drones, and ballistic missiles of the time. It’s a devastating army coming to inflict God’s wrath. Their crowns indicate the ultimate doom of those who grasp for glory. The flowing women’s hair represents, at least for the culture that John was part of, the temptation of earthly pleasure. Only “loose” women showed their long flowing hair in public. So the torment that comes upon the people is a consequence or a result of our own sin. Can we really blame anyone but ourselves for some of the nasty stuff that we have to deal with?

The fourth issue is the most important of all. I’ve hinted at it a few times already. God is in control of it all: the destroying fallen angel, the Abyss, the locusts that come out of it, and what the locusts do. Read the passage carefully, and you’ll see it. The angel was “given” the key to open the Abyss. The locusts were “given” the ability to sting like scorpions. Who do you think was doing all this giving? God, of course. But God also set “rules of engagement” upon the locust army. He instructed them only to attack people and nothing else. He did not permit them to kill anyone, but only to torture them. Of course, that may not have been doing anyone any favors. It’s common for people going through extreme torture to wish for death so that their agony would end. No such luck here. Perhaps the most important of all the “rules of engagement” that were given to the locusts was the prohibition to do anything to the people who had the seal of God. Remember that from Chapter 7? God paused in the unfolding of his plan to mark the people who had been saved by Christ’s redeeming work. We hear so much about
“the mark of the Beast” which comes up in Chapter 14. But God’s mark is the one that really matters.

What does the mark mean here? On the one hand, it means that the people who have received grace through the acceptance of Christ’s gift do not have to fear God’s wrath, which comes upon everyone else. But even more, if we understand the locusts to be the personification of the destructive consequences of our sin, we can see that God spares us from the damage that we do to ourselves. There’s really no limit to what God will do for us! He even protects us from ourselves.

It’s an issue of control. Satan and his minions aren’t in control. They only do what God allows them to do. And when we commit ourselves to God, we’re not in control of ourselves. It’s a good thing, because we’d make a royal mess of our lives and everything else around us. Accepting Christ’s lordship doesn’t just mean that we have to obey him and live the way he wants. It means that he takes control of our lives so that we don’t wreck ourselves.

Revelation 8:6-13 – The Plagues of Repentance

I don’t know if this is where the expression “saved by a hair” comes from, but this passage evokes an interesting episode in Ezekiel’s career. According to Chapter 5 of his book, Ezekiel was instructed by the Lord to shave off all his hair and divide it into thirds. He was instructed to burn a third of his hair, strike a third of it with a sword (that would have been an interesting sight!), and scatter a third of it to the wind. This was God’s way of describing the doom of the nation of Judah for rejecting him. They would perish in destruction and in warfare, and those who remained would be scattered and forgotten. It’s a pretty depressing or frightening prediction, but there was a glimmer of hope in the midst of it all. Before burning, slashing, and scattering his hair, Ezekiel was instructed to take a few strands of hair and tuck them safely away in his pocket (well, actually “in the folds of his garment,” since pockets apparently hadn’t been invented yet). Even in the midst of terrible destruction, God would redeem and rescue a righteous remnant who hadn’t abandoned him. Perhaps Jesus had this episode in mind when he assured his followers that God has numbered the hairs on our head (Matthew 10:30). He carefully watches over and protects the faithful, just as Ezekiel tucked away those few strands of his hair.

All of this relates to this passage from Revelation. The angels have received their trumpets to enact God’s will that had been hidden in the scroll that is now opened. And with each of the first four trumpet blasts, destruction comes upon the earth. In order, a third of the land, the sea (or salt water), the rivers and springs (or fresh water), and the sky are destroyed. The first and most obvious connection between Ezekiel and Revelation is the “thirds:” Ezekiel’s hair was divided into thirds to be destroyed, and a third of each element of creation is destroyed as the trumpets sound. But this connection is a bit sketchy, since almost all of Ezekiel’s hair is destroyed, but only a third of creation is destroyed with the sounding of the trumpets. The relationship between these two episodes comes out when we recall the few strands of hair that Ezekiel tucked away for safe keeping. Destruction in both situations was not total, but was limited, and limited quite a bit in the case of this passage. There’s a point to the destruction, beyond God destroying a world that had rebelled against him. The point to it all is repentance: those who turn away from their rebellion or self-indulgence and direct their lives to God. In Ezekiel’s case, the strands of hair in his pocket represented the righteous remnant of Israel: those few who heeded God’s message and abandoned their idolatry, immorality, greed, and pride. In the case of this passage, the destruction of a third of creation was meant to be instructive. As people see it, they are hopefully inspired to leave their sinful ways and accept Christ’s lordship. This is a dramatic example of what we read about in Hebrews 12:4-13: God brings hardship into the lives of his people as a form of discipline, to enable them to “produce a harvest of righteousness and peace.”

Not all of creation is destroyed by the first four trumpets. It happens in order to draw people to God. It’s the same approach that we use with our criminal justice system, and with capital punishment in particular. The theory is that if we see people being sent to jail or executed for committing certain crimes, the rest of us are less likely to commit those crimes ourselves, out of fear of the consequences that we’ll face. When we are confronted with the awesome and destructive power of God, we’re more likely to turn our lives over to him. I personally prefer to draw people to God with an invitation of love and grace: come to God who loves you and will recreate your life into something wonderful. And there is Scriptural support for this kind of an approach. Others, however, prefer what is pejoratively called a “fire and brimstone” approach. Turn your life over to God, or face dire consequences. One of the most powerful sermons in colonial America, preached by Jonathan Edwards and called “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” is an excellent example of this approach. Is one approach better than the other? Not really. Because God has created us all in different ways, an approach that reaches one person will not work on someone else. It’s the same reason why we have such a wide variety of churches. Some people are able to worship God best in a highly liturgical setting, while others worship better in a contemporary setting. Some prefer intimate settings while others are inspired by huge gatherings. Music touches some, while sacraments are meaningful for others. Whatever it takes to bring people to God (1 Corinthians 9:19-23)! This passage is God’s attempt to reach those who respond better to threats and warnings than to invitations and promises.

The order of events heralded by the trumpets represents an undoing of creation: first the land, then the water, then the sky. According to Genesis 1, God first created the sky (on the second day), then gathered the water together, and finally created the land (on the third day). This isn’t a random order of events. The trumpets give us the message that God can un-create what he made.

The calamities caused by at least three of the trumpets also brings to mind the plagues that God sent to Egypt in order to convince them to free the Hebrew slaves. The order is somewhat different, but the plagues of Egypt included a plague of blood, of hail, and of darkness, which we find here in the first, third, and fourth trumpets. Later in Revelation, we’ll encounter echoes of the plagues of frogs, boils, and locusts.

Our passage provides one more allusion to Old Testament events: the strange reference to a star named Wormwood, who poisons the waters. Wormwood is a bitter-tasting plant that is referred to by several prophets (such as Jeremiah and Amos) to represent the bitterness of God’s judgment and the bitterness that comes from perverting God’s justice. Here, it is personified as a star (understood by the ancients to be spiritual beings) who brings God’s punishing bitterness to the fresh waters of the world. It is a reversal of the miracle at the waters of Marah during the Exodus (15:22-25). The thirsty Israelites came upon a spring of water in the desert, only to discover that the water was undrinkable. In response to their complaints, God had Moses throw a piece of wood into the water to make it drinkable. Just as the trumpets signal the undoing of creation, they also signal the reversal of God’s blessings.

There are two points to notice here. First, the destruction is under God’s control. The events that come from the four trumpets are not a rebellion or an attack against God’s good will. They are God’s will! Sometimes, God does bring about calamity. We don’t always understand how tragedy and destruction fit in with his plans, but they do. I have seen times when people have experienced terrible things, and it has brought them closer to God. We can only hope, with God, that these kinds of experiences happen more often.

Second, we would be foolish to assume that the events of these four trumpets will only happen at the end of time. By the time we get to Chapter 16 and the first four of seven bowls, then we will learn about the final and total destruction. Here, however, we gain insight into the destruction and calamity that goes on all around us, and has for centuries. It too can play a part in God’s plan.

After the fourth trumpet, an eagle proclaims woe upon the inhabitants of the earth. It is a declaration of God’s judgment that they have already experienced, and a warning of worse things yet to come.

Earth is not our home, as the old gospel song proclaims. We are only passing through. Living here is full of woe. And that woe isn’t necessarily contrary to God’s will. So often we assume that a world under the control of a good and loving God won’t have any suffering in it. But that’s not the case. There is evil in this world which God attacks, punishes, and destroys. Before destroying it, he provides us the opportunity to move from the “destroy” to the “redeem” column, by accepting his offer to cleanse us of our sin through the saving work of Christ. Then we can become one of those precious strands of hair in the fold of Ezekiel’s robe.

Of course, none of us want to be told that we’re suffering because God is chastising us. But when the destruction of the trumpets comes close to our lives, it’s time for us to recognize God’s wrath and discipline, while there’s still time to make the change.

Revelation 8:1-5 – Reversed Thunder

Revelation provides an ongoing plot. The images may be confusing, but it’s well-organized story that develops clearly. It’s also a story with some surprises.

Let’s review what’s gotten us to this point. John’s experience began with a vision of Jesus Christ, who commanded him to give specific messages to the seven churches he oversaw. Then John was given the privilege of seeing the world’s events from a heavenly perspective. He saw God on his throne, surrounded by the praise of heavenly beings. God held a scroll upon which was written his plan for the world, but only Christ, the Lamb who had been slain, was able to open its seven seals to reveal the contents. Fantastic and terrible things happened as the first six were opened: the four horsemen of the apocalypse revealed the horrors of life on earth, the martyrs demanded that God settle their accounts, and calamity fell upon the earth. Before the seventh seal was broken, John saw how the faithful were cared for by receiving the seal of protection and taking part in the universal praise of God.

So now we’re ready for the seventh and final seal to be broken. It’s the moment we’ve been waiting for ever since Chapter 5, when the Lamb brought joy into heaven by stepping forward as the one qualified to open the scroll, revealing and enacting God’s will for creation. It’s taken more than two chapters to reach this point. As each of the first six seals were opened, fantastic and terrible things took place. It was so bad that before the seventh seal could be opened, God made special provisions for his people. As bad as everything else was, you know that it’s going to be even worse with the seventh seal. You want to close your eyes, plug up your ears, and hide behind something solid to protect yourself.

So when Christ opens the seventh seal, what happens? Nothing! Like a dud firecracker. All this hype and build-up, for nothing. To put it mildly, it’s a surprising development, maybe even a let-down. It’s hard to believe that’s it.

But appearances are deceiving. Just because it looks like nothing is happening doesn’t mean that it’s not. There are plenty of examples where inactivity, latency, or dormancy is significant. For instance:
• Humans go mad without sleep. Even though it seems like we’re just laying there, it apparently serves some important purpose.
• When we planted grass seed at the church’s construction site last October, I was convinced that the seed was bad or that the birds ate it all, because nothing happened. Now it’s growing in fine.
• The most important part of wine making is the time that it sits and ages in those fancy casks.
• Therapy sometimes goes through phases where the client doesn’t seem to be making any progress. But when the breakthrough takes place, it’s only possible because of the “nothing” that led up to it.
And here’s the best example of all. After six days of amazing creation, what did God do? He rested. He spent a day of doing nothing. How crazy is that?

The seventh seal is broken. God’s plan is ready to be revealed and to take place. But first, there’s a half hour of silence. Nothing. The calm before the storm? No. An important part of the plan. At least in our culture, that’s hard for us to understand. For us to accomplish something, we need to be busy, doing things. Rest and inactivity is wasteful, we think. We need to be active in order to be productive. At least, that’s what we tell ourselves. But it’s certainly not what God tells us. He has told us regularly to spend time in rest. To pause, focus our attention upon him, and purposefully do nothing. It’s so important that he made it one of the Ten Commandments. But of all the commandments, it’s one that we seem to take perverse pleasure in breaking. When we complain about being too busy, it’s almost like we’re bragging. One of the greatest curses, or moral failures, is to waste time doing “nothing.” I’ve known more than one person who was forced into inactivity because of health reasons, and not being able to do anything was actually harder on them than their physical ailment. It’s hard for us to be silent and to do nothing. But there’s value to it.

In this case, we learn what the value of the half-hour time-out is. And once again, it’s a reminder of the incredible way that God includes us in his plans. We’re not just spectators; we’re his teammates. I’ll keep you in suspense for just a moment, but it will all make sense before I’m done.

The breaking of seals meant that God’s plans are now able to be accomplished. To herald them, seven angels are given trumpets to sound. The trumpets are both a way to get everyone’s attention for what’s happening (like an alarm or attention signal), and they’re a way to get things in motion (like a bugle blast to get the troops to charge). And it will take all the way until the end of Chapter 11 for all seven trumpets to be blown. The angels are ready to fulfill God’s will. But first….

In verse three, we learn what the silence was all about, and we find out the important role that it played. During that half hour of inactivity, God was listening. He was listening to his people. He was paying attention to our prayers. It’s a marvel to realize that God takes time to listen to us. In the din of a loud world, God shuts everyone up so that he can hear us. In the middle of huge and important events, he makes us the center of attention. Far too many people beg off of praying about an issue in their lives because “God has more important things to worry about.” Not true! Even if we set aside the fact that God has a limitless ability to pay attention to everything, we should never dismiss how important even the most petty parts of our lives are to him. He counts the number of hairs on our head. He knows our every thought before it comes to our mind. His plans for the world are not as important to him as our prayers are.

So before the seven trumpet-angels set to their work, another angel has a more important task. He takes a giant bowl of incense and offers it on the altar to God. Incense is more than just a pretty aroma, sometimes used to cover up other odors. It was used in the Old Testament to symbolize prayer (see Psalm 141, for example). And that’s what we see here. The incense that the angel offers up is associated with the prayers of the saints (that is, everyone made holy by the work of Christ). Our prayers aren’t merely our requests that we make of God. They are an offering, presented to God as part of our devotion to him.

God receives our prayers, like sacrifices on the altar. But he doesn’t just hoard them away in heaven. He acts on them. The angel is given fire from the altar—God’s very power—to mix with the prayers that we, his people, offer up. Our prayers and God’s power. The angel mixes the two together, and hurls it to the earth. It causes thunder, lightning, and earthquakes.

Thunder is usually something that comes down from the sky to the earth. This is reversed thunder: our earthly concerns go up to heaven, where God adds his power to them and then shakes the world with it.

We have two lessons to learn from this. First, silence and inactivity are powerful. God uses them, and so should we. Second, recognize the significance that God attaches to our prayers. They are the grist for his saving work in the world.

Revelation 7:9-17 – Song of the Saved

The second half of Chapter 7 continues to describe the interlude between the sixth and seventh seals being opened on the scroll of God’s plan, which Christ (the Lamb) received in Chapter 5. And it describes, from a different perspective, what’s going on for the people of God in the midst of the calamities that are, and will, strike the earth. In the first half of the chapter, John described them (us) from an earthly perspective: God brought his plans to a halt to “seal” us, so that we’d be protected. Think of a construction crew that has to quit its work because they’ve stumbled upon an important archaeological site. Now, we see these same people, but from a heavenly perspective. To so do, we revisit the scene that we first saw in Chapters 4 and 5.

The first thing to notice about these people is how many of them there are, and how diverse they are. In the first half, John gave them a number (144,000) to indicate that it is a vast assembly of God’s people. Now, he doesn’t even pretend to know how many they are. It’s huge crowd that can’t even be counted. And it comes from every nationality and language group of the world. This crowd is the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham, that his offspring would be as numerous as the stars in the night sky (Genesis 15). By the way, astronomers are still counting the stars today and haven’t come close to knowing how many there are. God also promised Abraham that people from every nation on earth would be blessed through him (Genesis 12). There are plenty of citations in the New Testament to help us understand that being a child of Abraham isn’t about genetics, but about faith (Romans 4, Matthew 3:7-10, Galatians 3:6-9, 26-29). As the children’s song explains, Father Abraham really does have many sons (and daughters). This vast multitude from all ethnic and language groups is possible because of the promise of Mark 13:10 that the gospel will be proclaimed to every nation.

In the past century, the Church has started to look more and more like this throng that John saw in front of God’s throne. For more than a thousand years, Christianity was a predominantly white religion, practiced almost exclusively in Europe. But for a number of reasons, it has exploded across the globe and can now be found in virtually every country (although there are still many ethnic groups that have yet to be reached. At some point in the 1980’s, whites were no longer the majority of Christians. God’s family is the ultimate rainbow coalition. When Malcolm X when on his Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, he was struck by the unity across national and ethnic lines that he found among his fellow pilgrims. It affected the “black power” philosophy that had driven him up to that point. And if he hadn’t been assassinated soon after his pilgrimage (perhaps because some of his followers didn’t like the change they saw in him), his legacy may have been very different. Imagine how different our perspective on people from other ethnic groups and nations would be if we had a similar realization: the citizenship of the kingdom of God includes people from every conceivable background. How dare we presume to limit it to people “like us”!

Verses 13-14 explain exactly who this crowd is. One of the twenty-four elders quizzed John about them, asking him who they were. (Is this the same elder who comforted him in Revelation 5:5?) When John said he didn’t know who they were, the elder told him that they are the people who have been saved: saved from the world, and saved from themselves. First, they are saved from the world because they have come out of the great tribulation that rages across the earth. It’s unfortunate that many interpreters of Revelation read this and similar passages and conclude that there is a single tribulation, or time of distress, which will come at the end times. Doing so blinds us to the tribulation/distress/calamity that is going on all around us, which has and which continues to burden the world. It’s the distress of Adam and Eve’s curse of Genesis 3. It’s the bondage and frustration of creation that Paul describes in Romans 8:18-21. It’s the human condition which the four horsemen of Chapter 6 reveal. These are the people who received the seal to protect them and deliver them out of such great suffering. But second, these are the people who have been saved from themselves. Their robes were washed white in the blood of Christ, the Lamb. This is an allusion to Isaiah 1:18 and Zechariah 3: filthy and dirty clothing represents our sinful and shameful condition before God. But through the grace made possible to us through Christ’s atoning death, we become pure and honored before God. We are released from our sin and our brokenness.

Now that we know who these people are, we can look at what they’re doing. Their white robes and palm branches of verse 9 indicate that worship of God is what they’re all about (the palm branches are a reminder of Palm Sunday, and also of Psalm 118:27). They are able to take their place in the great circle of praise that surrounds God, which we saw in Chapters 4 and 5. Our salvation isn’t about us: it’s about God receiving the worship and praise that he deserves. It’s not a self-focused song, about what God did for them. It’s praise for God, based on an awareness of God that comes from personal experience. They shout with joy to the Lamb who saved them. Whatever we’re facing, whether trouble from the world and people around us, or turmoil, brokenness, and confusion within, we find our salvation in God. and when we do, we life up our praise to him.

The song of the saved sparks renewed praise among the heavenly beings: the angels, elders, and four living creatures. Remember Jesus’ comment about the rejoicing in heaven over the repentance of one lost sinner (Luke 15:3-10)? That’s what John experiences and describes here. The rejoicing focuses upon God, who did the saving. And praise lifts up seven attributes of God. In Revelation 5:12, we heard a similar seven-fold praise of God. This time, it’s very similar but with a couple of differences. First, “riches” has been replaced with “thanks.” Second, the order of attributes has been re-arranged. Perhaps we could gain some interesting insights from a comparison of these two lists, but we can save that for another time.

We can skip over verses 13-14, since we’ve already looked at them when considering who the multitude is. So we can move on to verses 15-17: the poetic description of God’s people by the elder who spoke to John. He describes them as the people who have received God’s blessings. First, they are in God’s presence, to serve him and to receive his protection. Second, they are spared from any of the distress or difficulty that is common to ordinary human life. Third, they will be guided by Christ, as a shepherd guides his flock. In these three short verses, and whole host of Biblical promises come together: Psalm 23, Psalm 91, Isaiah 25, John 10, and so on. And it anticipates the description of the New Jerusalem we find in Revelation 21.

To sum it all up: God gathers people of every description, and saves them from their own sin and from the troubled world we live in. In response to God’s activity in their lives, they lift up their praise to him and acknowledge him as the provider of their salvation: the source of everything good that they experience. Their praise in turn ignites praise by the heavenly beings, renewing and intensifying the worship they had already been giving. Those who have been saved are granted the privilege of serving God (how often do we think of service as a privilege?), they are rescued from the troubles of the world, and God leads them to blessing. It’s a cycle of blessing and praise that feeds on itself: salvation leads to praise, which leads to blessing, and so on. But it all begins with and is focused on God.