Revelation 10:1-11 – A Spoonful of Sugar

If you’ve been paying attention, you’ll notice that we’re almost at the end of another series of seven in Revelation. First was the letters to the churches, then the seals being opened on the scroll, and now the trumpets being sounded by the angels. Before the seventh seal was opened, there was an interlude to make sure that God’s people were preserved, as they were given God’s protecting mark and gathered before the throne of heaven. In the same way, we have another pause before the seventh angel sounds off. But this time, it’s God’s witness and not his people who are being preserved in the face of evil.

There’s something about scrolls and mighty angels in Revelation. This is the second time that we see a mighty angel holding a scroll (the third mighty angel shows up in Chapter 18, but that’s another story). The first mighty angel and scroll came in the beginning of Chapter 5, when the angel asked if anyone was able to open the scroll that was sealed up and contained God’s plan for the world. This scroll is a bit different. It’s not God’s designs for the world, but his message to the people. Maybe that’s why it’s a “little scroll:” not the entire overall plan, but a particular part of it.

(By the way, there’s another possibility: it’s the same mighty angel each time, performing a different task. And there’s a chance that the scroll was little only in comparison to the angel.)

The might of the angel is a reflection of God’s might because the angel acts as his representative. Roll that thought around in your brain for a moment: when you act as God’s representative, you reflect him as well. It’s an awesome responsibility, but even more importantly, it’s a reminder that what you do does not depend upon your power but upon the One who is acting through you. Your role is to be the best representative of God as you can. Get yourself out of the way as much as you can, and let as much of God flow through you as you’re able. The angel is a reflection of God; are you?

As God’s agent, the attributes of this angel echo his majesty. The cloud and fire associated with him remind us of how God led the Israelites through the wilderness with a pillar of smoke by day and fire by night. It is a symbol of God’s divine presence. The rainbow over him evokes the divine mercy demonstrated by God’s promise to Noah after the flood never to destroy the world by water again. His feet on the land and on the sea and the fact that he came down from heaven show that the angel’s message is universal: for all people.

At the sound of the angel’s lion-like roar (another demonstration of his power; remember that the lion is the symbol of Judah), the seven-fold thunders speak in reply. I’m not exactly sure what the seven thunders are, but I suspect that it’s the seven-fold Spirit of God that we encountered in Chapter 1. But at this point, we run into an interesting mystery. John is about to record what the thunders say, but God orders him to seal it up: that is, to keep it under lock and key. He’s forbidden to write it down so that others (like us, who are reading John’s record) will know what the thunders have spoken.

Why the mystery? If the whole purpose of Revelation is to reveal, to show us what God’s doing in the world and what the future will hold, why is this message so different? I have a couple of theories. First, even in the midst of God’s revealing of himself to us, there are things that he holds back from us. Job never really got an answer for why he suffered so much. According to Mark’s gospel, the people who encountered Jesus during his earthly ministry never really quite understood him. Moses never made it into the Promised Land. There is always mystery when it comes to God, always something that we don’t know or understand. Perhaps it’s because we would never be able to grasp the whole picture because it’s incomprehensible to our little pee wee human brains. It may be that so much knowledge, a full exposure to God’s glory, would undo us. Or it may be a reminder to us that we worship and serve an undomesticated God. If we fully understood him, we could predict him. And that’s just one step away from controlling or manipulating him. Then we’d be the masters and God would be the servant. And wasn’t that the original sin: eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil? It’s denied us for our own protection. There are times when we run into this situation when it infuriates or confuses us. We see God’s hand at work in the world around us, in the circumstances that our loved ones face, and we don’t understand why God would do such things. One of my favorite fantasies about heaven is that the time will come when God will explain it all to me and I’ll recognize how his plan was at work in ways that I couldn’t comprehend. This passage makes me wonder, however, if I’ll ever get to live out my fantasy. I hate to admit it, but I suspect that even in heaven God will be a mystery to us. We’ll see him face to face and revel in his glory, but there will still be things that are sealed up.

(There is another theory about what the seven thunders spoke which was sealed up. By sealing up their words, God prevented them from taking place. Perhaps the thunders spoke words of judgment that will not happen, maybe because it’s the voice of accusation against those whom Christ has redeemed.)

In my reflections on the sixth trumpet, I wondered how much longer God would inflict agony upon the people of the earth before he would start to bring things to a final end. It appears that now is the time. The mighty angel declares that the delay of God’s plans in order to woe or warn people away from their sin is over. The final plan of God was going to come to pass. It’s an answer to the martyrs’ demands in Chapter 6 for their suffering to be avenged. If you want to spoil the surprise, look ahead and you’ll see that the final consummation of God’s plans on the scroll is for his universal authority and worship. It’s about God, not us.

While it may be about God, we are privileged to play a role in the cosmic drama. It’s an honor and a humbling prospect, both at the same time. John is pulled away from his role of observer and recorder to become an active participant in God’s plans. Up until now, John has been detached from the action, apart from the comfort that an elder gave him in Chapter 5 and a question that an elder (the same elder?) asked him in Chapter 7. A voice from heaven (obviously the voice of God himself) instructs John to go and take the scroll from the hand of the mighty angel, who is beaming with the glory of God and straddling the foundations of creation. We, like John, are not passive observers of what God is doing. We are instructed to play our role in God’s plans. Like Moses and so many of the Old Testament prophets and New Testament apostles, we may feel utterly unworthy for the role God has for us. But it’s a false, even demonic, humility that prevents us from taking on those roles. Remember the mighty angel? His majesty and glory and might were not features of his own attributes, but refections of the majesty and glory of God. We, like the angel, are to allow God to work through us. In the process, we are transformed. There’s no place for us to sit back and let God or someone else take care of things. We all have our tasks to perform.

When John approached the angel and asked him for the scroll (imagine the courage it would take to do that!), the angel gave it to him and told him to eat it. The angel told him that it would be sweet going down, but would give him an upset stomach once he swallowed it. No; this doesn’t mean that the scroll was like too much Halloween candy. The scroll was God’s word to be proclaimed to the world. It’s sweet because it is the word of God, but it is bitter because of the judgment contained in it. Here’s another way to put it: the only way to the sweet victory of the resurrection is through the bitterness of the cross. On one wall in my office I have a picture of Christ seated in the glory of heaven. But on the other wall is a picture of his agony on the cross, surrounded by people from the past, present, and future. You can’t get to glory without agony.

The best way to understand the meaning of John eating the scroll is to look at the story of Ezekiel’s call to become a prophet, which this passage strongly echoes. God gave Ezekiel a scroll, upon which was written his message of “lament and mourning and woe” for the “obstinate and stubborn” people who had rebelled against him. Ezekiel, like John, was told to eat the scroll. Eating the scroll represents “internalizing” God’s message; really taking it to heart and letting it become part of you. but it also means that you must speak the word of God to others. Ezekiel’s scroll was sweet to the taste, like John’s was. But for Ezekiel, the words that he swallowed were difficult ones. Not only would they be harsh for the people he would speak them to, but their reaction would make Ezekiel’s life difficult. He would need God’s blessing to strengthen him so that he could withstand it.

When we are like Ezekiel and John, we receive God’s word and take it into our very selves. It is sweet and wholesome for us, but it’s not easy. It’s a harsh, bitter message that we receive and share. The gospel is literally “good news,” but it won’t always win you friends. Nonetheless, we share Ezekiel and John’s commission to share it with the world.