The fall of Jerusalem, although forgotten by most of the Western world, was a very dramatic event in the history of the world. Its impact was felt far beyond Israel and the Roman Empire, and far beyond the time period of its occurrence.
Nero ruled for 14 years from the year 54 AD to the year 68 AD. This was a time of rising to instability in the empire, not only in connection with the ruler of Rome, but also in connection with the entire Roman world. Because of course, as leaders go, civilizations tend to go and the more unstable the leader, the more unstable you’re going to find the culture. And that certainly was the case. And so these years during Nero and even going clear back to Caligula, there is a kind of rising, tumultuous instability that’s characterizing at least some parts of the Roman world. This really culminates with the most dramatic expression of this instability at the time, which was called the Jewish Wars. The term “the Jewish Wars” was given by Josephus, who is the most important historian of the history of the, of the Jewish people from outside the New Testament during that time.
Josephus writes extensively on this period of time that goes from about 66 to 70 AD. And so we’re going to call it by that name, the Jewish Wars. There had been, this kind of rising to instability. Rome was not falling apart, but some people feared that that might be what was happening. There were many voices commenting on the state of Rome during those years who wondered if they were actually going to survive. And in some ways it was because of this really conspicuous deterioration of the quality of the leadership that was in the royal capacity in Rome. Israel herself was also deeply divided. Israel was feeling pressure from outside, but also at the same time she was locked in the throes of an internal conflict between those who were more liberal, who really wanted to remain in the good graces of Rome and the zealots who wanted to throw off Rome.
And you were finding by the time we reached this era that there was really nobody in the middle anymore. It was a deeply polarized community of the Jewish people, most of whom probably tilted in a more moderate direction. But there was a very vocal, powerful and indeed violent, minority, but a pretty good size minority, that was militating more for violent overthrow. So there was instability outside and also in the Jewish world, instability inside, which is working together to create this kind of culture. This was all exacerbated somewhat by a series of rather corrupt Roman procuraters, that is a Roman governors, who had been the political representatives of Rome there in the Jewish world.
One procurator was Festus. He was a pretty good guy. He was the one that Paul appeared before, just before he was shipped off to Rome. But his immediate predecessor was Felix, who was notoriously corrupt. And there had been a string of others before Felix, who had also more or less put the Jewish people into a rather hostile disposition toward Rome because of their corrupt practices. aAter Festus, the next guy that came along a couple of years later was a fella named Gessius Florus. He ruled as procurator from 64 to 66 AD. He really pushed Israel to the boiling point. He’d stolen money from the temple treasury. We learned that from Tacitus. Interestingly, the Roman historian, not the Jewish historian. He plundered the temple. That was bad enough. He also, on one occasion in the year 66, he just gratuitously killed about 3,600 peaceful Jewish people.
They weren’t rabble rousers. They weren’t troublemakers, but just to sort of keep the nation and a state of instability. Almost like he was trying to incite some sort of violent, a revolt. He did this and it was considered to be something like a reign of terror during those years and other actions that he took really were inspiring and giving additional traction to this group that were commonly called the zealots. The zealots were the very ultra conservative. They were really committed to a traditional Jewish religion, but they were also committed to violent revolution against the Roman presence. And the more people like Gessius Florus were out there doing the things they were doing. The more that characters like the zealots in general, were getting additional credibility and support among the Jewish people.
In the fall of 66, the revolt of the Jewish people broke out. It’s a fairly complicated set of events that I’m not going to trouble you with. It’s a fairly readily available if you want to look it up. But it essentially what took took place was a few incidents in Cesarea spread to Jerusalem. And finally the Jewish people had enough and they actually broke out in open revolt rather unexpectedly and drove out the Roman presence from Jerusalem in a rather dramatic kind of display, a force, even Herod Agrippa II and his wife Bernice were forced to flee to Rome. Agrippa II was the last, the seventh of the Herrods. He and Bernice has wife had to flee to Rome and that’s where they lived out the rest of their days.
The governor in Syria, the Roman Governor marshalled an army at the direction of Rome to go down and put down this rebellion. His name was Cestius Gallus. He marched into Judea with an army of over 30,000 men and came down and put Jerusalem under siege. Gallus was successful in conquering Beit She’arim in the Lower Galilee. Then with his army shrunk by detachments sent to occupy Galilee and the Judean coast, Gallus directd his forces to Jerusalem. And so in a rather swift response to this revolt and the fact that Jerusalem had now been arrested from Roman control by the Jewish kind of militant forces there, Jerusalem was put under siege. However, interestingly, and for really reasons that have never been very clear, he left after six days.
Nobody knows why it remains something of a historical mystery. But he had the city locked up tight and it looked like he was just going to just starve them out. Then six days later he just up and goes home and his Roman forces go with him. The zealot forces in Jerusalem took that as divine intervention. They believed that God was going to step in and fight on their behalf and that they were going to be able to establish Jewish independence and throw off the Roman rule. And so the zealot forces, as they saw the Romans departing, saw this as their big chance. And they gathered military forces from out of Jerusalem, chased them down. At the battle of Beth Heron, the Jewish zealot force defeated the Romans and left several thousand bodies out there in the desert and came home.
As that happened, the moderates in Jerusalem were fully discredited. The interpretation that was attached to all of this, is God is going to fight our battles for us. This is the time where God has ordained that the Jewish people can realize their full independence from Rome. That was the way it was interpreted in Jerusalem except for one minority group. The Christians looked at this and took a very different view of it. The Christian people who were living in Jerusalem at that time remembered, Jesus had said back in the Olivet Discourse, when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies flee to the hills.
That’s actually a rather curious statement. When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, how exactly are you supposed to flee to the hills? After all, Jerusalem is surrounded by armies it makes it difficult to escape. And then for inexplicable reasons, the Romans left and the Christians in Jerusalem said, “pack your bags. We’re out of here.” And they quickly, taking seriously Jesus’ command, put together the modest belongings they could and got out of town. Many went north towards Syria, toward Antioch, many went out into the desert. Most of them went south into the Judean wilderness. Some went to Egypt. But all of them got away from Jerusalem, believing that Jesus had been accurate in his predictions.
This was not the mark of God coming to the salvation of Israel. This was the mark of the coming judgment on Israel for her repudiation of Messiah. Jesus himself had said, don’t weep for me, weep for yourselves, when he was being led out to be crucified, because the days are coming when embankments will be piled up against the walls of Jerusalem. Jesus had predicted it repeatedly, and these Christian people recognized that and took it that way.
Nero who is in the last year of his reign realizes that he has a huge problem with a major revolt of a major region of the Roman world and the Jewish area. There was already instability in Rome and he wants to deal with these people ferociously. Nero summoned the most competent military character in the Roman world at the time.
A man by the name of Vespasian and Nero instructs Vespasian put down the revolt in Judah. Vespasian put together an army of some 60,000 troops. These are not hired guns. This is a crack, highly disciplined a military force and it’s 60,000. That is a huge rather overwhelming force Vespasian brings to the region of Israel at that time. He started up in the region of Galilee and just systematically worked his way down through heading towards Jerusalem, each little town, each little burg, each little village is crushed. It is a bloodbath. The descriptions that we have from Josephus are absolutely horrific. He talks about the Sea of Galilee. You could see conspicuously as you looked out over at bloated bodies, and blood was in the streets of these villages and flowing down the Jordan river.
Very, very comparable to the descriptions we hear of such things in the book of Revelation. And so this description that we have from Josephus indicates that this was not by any means a gentle move on the part of Vespasian. He was working his way relentlessly down towards Jerusalem, thousands of Jewish people who were able to ahead of Vespasian’s attack fled for Jerusalem. So as the Christians were leaving, the Jewish people were heading to Jerusalem because they believed that once there, they would be safe. Jerusalem was well provisioned to sustain, to survive for several years under a siege condition. And that was the best option they seem to have. And so thousands of them fled to Jerusalem, meaning Jerusalem became bloated and overpopulated. Virtually everybody in the Jewish world was fleeing there to find safe harbor in that city.
When they arrived, they found Jerusalem itself was locked in civil war. There were the moderates in Jerusalem who were saying, “Let’s make peace with Rome. Let’s put up the white flag.” But the prevailing power was vested more in these militant forces who wanted to continue to campaign. And so Jerusalem was locked in civil war and it was also a bloated and overpopulated. Virtually every Jewish person who could escape there was there at that time. Vespasian was working his way toward Rome through this time, from the year 67 to 68 but in the year 68 kind of halfway through, his campaign is interrupted by what’s called “the year of four emperors.” This was largely related to the meltdown that was taking place, connected with Nero. Nero was forced to commit suicide.
Vespasian, one of the major leaders in the Roman world, realized that this was a time when strong leadership was necessary and he wasn’t so sure the Jewish revolt was as important as securing things in Rome. But as it turns out, there were a series of rulers who tried to take over Rome. Each one assumed the position of ruler and then was cut short by the next one. And so it came to be called the year of four emperors. The first of these was a guy named Galba, he had been a well known, highly respected military character. He was basically retired at this time. He was probably in his late sixties, seventies, pretty old for those standards in those days.
But with the death of Nero, he realize somebody needed to step up and there was a fair amount of support in the military for him to do so. So he went to Rome immediately and asserted himself as the successor to Nero and was attempting to bring some degree of stability there in Rome. However, there was another character named Ortho who was formerly closely associated to nero. In fact, there’s strong support that they had been homosexual lovers. Ortho has also had a wife that was taken by Nero and became one of the wives of Nero along the way. Ortho was banished but also at the same time it always entertained the idea that he was really the one who should be the successor.
When Galba became emporer instead, Ortho got mad and gathered a force and attacked and Galba was assassinated. Ortho was on the throne for about four months from January 15th to April 16th. A more credible successor was a man by the name of Vitellius. He was a Roman military general in the Germanic regions. His military strongly supported that he should go in and challenge Ortho, which he did. There were a series of skirmishes. Ortho then committed suicide.
And as a result of that Vitellius became the next emporer and he rulled from April down to about December. All this time, Vespasian, who has been involved in the Jewish wars is gradually, carefully, methodically assembling what was going to be an overwhelming force, believing that this was a time when Rome needed strong leadership with a strong military support. He arrived in Rome in December, challenging Vitellius and successfully defeating him. And so Vespasian who has been responsible for the Jewish campaign is now the emperor. Vespasian rules for the next 10 years. It’s called “the year of four emperors.” What it should say to you is that Rome was convulsing.
And it’s interesting that Rome is convulsing just as Jerusalem is convulsing, and this is the culmination of several years of a growing kind of crisis politically in the Roman world. Tacitus himself frankly, acknowledges that at the time he did not think Rome would survive. He thought this was the meltdown. He thought Rome was going to fragment and that the great Roman world that had been there for a thousand years was at this point simply going to fall apart. He had despaired as he was observing what was going on. Jesus said in the all of it discourse, you’ll hear of wars and rumors of wars and believe me, that’s exactly what was going on in the culture. There were wars, there were rumors of wars. It was a tumultuous and a time of upheaval and it really culminated both in Jerusalem and in Rome with the kind of evidence that we see right here.
Vespasian is the Roman emperor that actually brings a certain degree of stability back to Rome. However, of course the problem in Judah still remained. He left care for dealing with the remaining revolt in Jerusalem, with his son whose name was Titus. Titus is the son of Vespasian and Titus will eventually himself be a Roman emperor about 10 years later. So Vespasian leaves his son Titus there to mop up as it were, the remainder of the problems in Jerusalem. The problem is that Vespasian took the best of his military forces with him back to Rome. And it’s so it left Titus with a job, but not the same kind of quality military that his father had enjoyed.
Titus was required to go out and hire a whole bunch of mercenaries. Mercenaries are not the most wonderful military force. They are less dependable, they’re less disciplined, they’re in it for the money. They’re not as reliable and everybody knows that, if he’s ever studied mercenary warfare. And so Titus hires a bunch of mercenaries to carry out the rest of the campaign against the Jewish revolt. With this army, he lays siege to Jerusalem in April of 70 AD.
Jerusalem is now for the second time under a complete siege. Of course, the city is heavily overpopulated. All of these people have come from the entire Jewish world in that region and they’re now holed up in Jerusalem. But even at that, they probably could have survived a siege for some years. Jerusalem was heavily provisioned to withstand siege warfare. And so there was at least some hope that they could hang on for a while and just see how this thing shook out. However, as it turns out, Jerusalem fell to Titus only five months later. The Book of Revelation makes prominent mention of a five month period of time, presumably referring to this five months siege. The reason the siege didn’t last longer is because the zealot forces in Jerusalem wanted to provoke violent response. They didn’t want to sit in Jerusalem and simply wait for whatever it was going to happen. So to force the issue, they burned all the food.
What could have been, you know, reasonably comfortable circumstances for a protracted period of time became a crisis. Overnight.
People went for a week, two weeks, three weeks, a month, no food. And of course, what happens, when you have a concentrated population of people in famine conditions, this kind of artificial famine that’s created by siege, is things become unspeakably, ghastly and ugly. And that is exactly what happened in Jerusalem, almost beyond description with cannibalism, well documented cases of parents eating their children, the kind of things. It got so ugly that it almost defies description. Josephus gives us extensive recitation of it, and he was there. He was an eye witness to the whole thing. He was a Jewish historian, but he happened to be on the Roman side. He was right there and he saw all the things that happen. Josephus gives us a remarkable description of the catastrophe that came to Jerusalem.
Jerusalem finally fell to the seige, the walls being breached in August. And of course the Romans broke in and they found this horrific situation inside the walls of people just in a starvation condition and the most ghastly kinds of circumstances. And of course the mercenaries that were there with Titus saw this as a huge opportunity for plunder. Roman disciplined soldiers would have been a little bit more guarded at this point, waiting for commands, but these mercenaries just went crazy. And so they were going through looting, burning, stealing, raping, pillaging and everything you can imagine. And it actually got to the temple and the temple itself was set on fire and was fully destroyed. And as Jesus graphically says, in the Oliveti Discourse, not one stone was left upon another, it will all be laid waste. Jesus also said, “look, your house is left to you desolate.”
And this was when it happened. And so in a just remarkable, breathtaking fulfillment of what Jesus himself had predicted, these things took place. Titus was very upset that the temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed. He had wanted to preserve it. He believed that it was one of the most magnificent structures of the ancient world, which indeed it was, at least by every report it was, this was Herod’s Temple. Great expense had been expended to build this structure. He was very upset that it was destroyed, but there was not much he could do about it once the damage was done. He likely wanted to turn it into a great temple to the Roman gods, a pagan temple. I’m speculating this was his plan. And I think God in his providence was not going to permit such a thing to happen. And so the temple was destroyed.
It was the end of the temple. The temple, of course, has never been rebuilt. That was the paradigm changing moment in history when in fact, that Old Covenant era and the Temple centric worship was brought to its definitive conclusion.
According to Tacitus, Titus did not view this as a great victory. And very interestingly, and intriguingly, Titus himself felt that the catastrophe that befelled Jerusalem was so horrific that it must have represented the very judgment of the Jewish God against those people. That’s the way he viewed it. It was so much more horrific than even anything he could have anticipated or planned that he himself took that view of it. And that’s the Roman historian Tacitus tells us.
There are lots of different views of the meaning of the Book of Revelation. But one that has always been with us, and I would say at least in the early years of the Church’s history, may have been a dominant view, was that the Book of Revelation is not reporting events that are going to take place way out in the future. But as Revelation repeatedly says in its own terms, “things that are about to happen.” It was probably written in about the year 65 AD and certainly written under the persecution that was launched by Nero. It seems to be describing events that would be connected to this tumultuous moment in which you have both Jerusalem and also Rome sort of convulsed. And so if you read it in that light, at least it’s an interesting hypothesis and that’s the way I’m going to suggest it to you.
Revelation is in four major parts. The first part is the introduction to Messiah. The Book of Revelation begins by saying the Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant, John, and so on. It’s the Revelation of Christ. That’s the first thing we know about this book. It’s the apocalypse, the unveiling of Christ and chapter one gives it to us. That’s the first part of the, of the book.
The next part is of course, the letters to the seven churches. John was responsible for seven churches in Asia Minor. These are the churches that John was responsible for: Ephesus, Smyrna, pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia Laodicea. John writes letters to each one of them and highlights in each one of them the peculiar strengths and weaknesses of each.
The third part is of course, the substantial message. We’ll leave that for a moment.
The fourth part of the Book of Revelation is the benediction conclusion, which we find at the end in chapter 22.
Back to the third part, what’s the message? If you’ve read Revelation recently, you know that Revelation is basically in three broad movements. Each of them organized around a seven. There are many sevens in the book of revelation, but the three most prominent and conspicuous ones are seven seals, seven trumpets, seven chalices or seven bowls or vials. You’ll read at the seven seals, seven trumpets, and seven bowls the backbone of the organization, of the message of the Book of Revelation.
The seven seals. What are they? There’s a scroll. You’re familiar with this. It’s written on both sides but sealed with seven seals. If we lived in the Roman world and the first century, it wouldn’t take us a nanosecond to know that what’s being described there is a last will and testament. That’s the way wealthy royalty bequeath their property. They would have a document written on both sides so it could not be later amended and it would be sealed with seven witnesses and only in the presence of those witnesses after the death of the testater could that document be unraveled.
The New Testament is called a New Testament for a reason. It’s a document that was generated and authorized based on the death of the testater, namely Christ himself. The entire New Testament makes it clear that Christ is the one who is creating this new covenant or New Testament based on his death and his resurrection. How does the new covenant era get started? It gets started as the seals are broken and it unleashes the events that surrounded this last generation, that generation. So that’s the inauguration of the covenant. The trumpets are instruments of announcement, trumpets sound in order to make announcements to people. And so they are in a sense of the announcement, both of the dreadful judgments that are coming, but also the redemption that is coming in this new covenant era. And then the bowls actually represent the execution of these. So we have the covenant itself.
We have it announced in the trumpets and we have an executed in the bowls or chalices. So that’s kind of the basic imagery of the book. The seven seals of course, give us exactly what was happening in the Roman world at that time. The white horse is Messiah, as we find in chapter 19, he’s going out as a king, conquering and to conquer. He’s on a white horse. He must reign until he has put every enemy under his feet. You see, he is the conquering Lord of history, riding out into the pages of history. And that’s the first one. The other three are descriptive of the tumultuous times; the Red Horse wars and rumors of wars, the black horse, the famine, especially in Jerusalem, the Pale horse, the pestilence and plague that comes in the face of famine.
The last three of the seals on the other hand are the redemptive side. So we have the judgment side in a sense, in the first four followed by the redemptive side. The fifth seal is the cry of the martyrs for vindication. Already there have been many, many Christian martyrs who’s blood is crying out from under the altar for vindication. “How long o Lord, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?” And they were told just to wait a little longer until the full number of their brothers and sisters who were to be killed with them was completed and they were given white robes and told to just anticipate. Now this is the moment when their lives and their death is going to be vindicated in history.
You have the sixth seal, which is the collapse of political authority. It’s described apocalyptically. As the sun turned dark, the moon turned to sack cloth. The stars in the sky fell to the earth. That is typical Old Testament prophetic language to describe the collapse of the political order essentially into anarchy. The same kind of descriptive language is used by Isaiah to describe the fall of Babylon, for example. It’s the sort of thing you find. It’s not describing actual celestial events. It’s describing apocalyptically and symbolically a time of great collapse here of the ordering powers in history. That’s exactly what happens with the collapse of Jerusalem and with the upheaval in Rome. You’ll see it’s exactly the way it would have seen by those living at the time.
Chapter Seven is an interlude. Chapter Seven is the protection of God’s people. It’s very interesting. In Chapter Seven, you’ve got two groups of people. The first 144,000 who are from all the tribes of Israel are sealed. A seal means they’re protected. They go into a time of great tribulation. Out the other end of the tribulation is the innumerable crowd that no one can number of every nation, tribe, language and people. You have a kind of a Jewish population going in and an explosion to a gentile population coming out of a time of great tribulation.
All of that is laid out as saying that this moment in history is the moment when God’s people are going to take on an entirely different look. It’s you might say demographically when it’s no longer going to be largely Jewish. It’s now going to catapulted to all the nations, peoples, languages of the world.
Then finally the seventh seal is actually itself, the trumpets, which are brought next. These announced the new covenants. Again, we have a four and then three kind of arrangement.
The first four talk about catastrophe on land, on sea and in the air. The catastrophe on land and sea as largely described in terms of fire, in terms of blood, in terms of the sea running rich with blood. The air is filled with smoke. If you’d been standing there seeing Vespasian come, you would’ve said that’s what’s being described. That’s exactly what’s going on. They’re coming from the north and indeed the text says these forces will come across the Euphrates from the north heading for Jerusalem. You have a rather stunning kind of description of what actually took place there. Then you have what are called the three woes. The first woe is said to be locusts. This is destruction, diabolic and archaic destruction from within. These creatures are said to come out of the abyss and a you have to know a little bit of the local lore to appreciate this.
I’m just going to give you the real short version that this is descriptive of a complete breakdown of any kind of ordered life together inside the city as if it had been invaded. It said to last for precisely five months, which happens to be the length of time the siege was carried on in Jerusalem and I think it basically represents the complete collapse of any sort of social order within the city. Feeling very diabolical as if these creatures were coming right out of hell itself at the same time. The second woe, in chapter nine of Revelation are horses, fire-breathing horses that are coming from the north across the Euphrates. These are the Roman forces, of course, coming now and coming from the north to attack. So you’ve got destruction from inside destruction, from outside, and then another interlude. And this interlude is not the protection of God’s people.
It’s the witness of God’s people. The texts that I recited to you a moment ago is in this context, John is told to eat a scroll. The Christian witness is not something we speak into something we are. You are what you eat. You eat the scroll, it becomes you. Your DNA is filled with the word of God. We aren’t simply people delivering a message. We are a message. You see, and John is now called to go and preach that message. And then we here in chapter 11 of the two witnesses, the two witnesses in Jerusalem, which are of course the law and the prophets, Moses and Elijah. This was the witness against God’s people. This was the great warning to them that if they were unfaithful to their covenant responsibilities, sooner or later, God would judge them. In Deuteronomy 28 and Leviticus 26 it’s spelled out in graphic terms and so this is it.
These are the witnesses. They are killed in the streets and their bodies are left in the street, everybody’s rejoicing. Look, we escaped it. We’re going to win, God’s judgement will not come. But no, God raises them to life. This is in fact the moment when that witness against them is going to be fully realized, and by the way, it’s in chapter 11 that we are told expressly that Jerusalem is the city under discussion here, the city where their Lord was crucified. John says, and he says, it is figuratively called Sodom and Egypt, but it is in fact the place of Christ’s crucifixion. It can be no other place than Jerusalem.
Then the third is regime change. This is the wonderful texts that we sing every year in the Messiah. The Kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ. This is the moment when King Jesus having ascended to the throne, having declared to his followers, “all authority is given unto me,” is now in a sense making good on the promises he himself made.
It’s called in Revelation, the wrath of the lamb. Yyou don’t think of lambs as being very wrathful do you, but that’s precisely the term that’s used. The lamb that had been slaughtered in Jerusalem now comes back for those who repudiated him in wrath. It’s regime change that’s taking place.
Finally, the third seven, the seven bowls or chalices. There are three little stories that run up to this. Chapters 12 and 13 give us, first of all, in chapter 12 the woman and the Dragon, the woman has said to give birth to a son who will rule the nations with a rod of iron. He has caught up to heaven, but he is attacked just as he is born by a dragon that has seven heads and 10 horns. It’s a red dragon. My own opinion is that’s descriptive apocalyptically of Herod.
The whole family was hostile to the birth of Christ starting with the first of the seven Herods, the seven heads of this red dragon. The red, the color red was in fact, the family color of the Herods, just by way of interesting side point. They attack God’s people. They attack all the way through trying of course to get this victory, but God’s people are protected. They’re carried into a safe place. All of that is in chapter 12. In chapter 13 we get the two beasts. There’s a beast from the sea and the beast from the land. The beast from the sea stands for gentile power. The Sea always stands for gentile authority. In the Old Testament and through the new, the land stands for Jewish authority. The land of Israel we think of the land is as God’s people to see as the gentile world.
Two beasts, you might say corrupt politics married to corrupt religion. The two of them support each other. In chapter 13, we are told definitively who the beast of the sea is because the number of his name is six six six. You know, people in the early church didn’t have to spend five minutes figuring that out because in the ancient world letters had numeric value and all they had to do was do a little bit of mathematics and figure out that the one name that had the number six six six was the name Nero. And so it was virtually universally understood in the early years of the church, Nero is the six six six. We don’t remember that so well because we aren’t familiar with the ancient language or the number of value of the letters.
Chapter 13 chapter 14 are the two harvests, the harvest of the Grapes of Wrath in Chapter 14. Steinbeck got his wonderful title from that. There’s also the harvest of Gods of redemption. So that’s the picture there. This is all describing what God is doing in a sense in the background leading up now to what we have at this point, the final judgments, the seven chalices poured out in chapters 15 and 16.
This leads us then to the latter part of Revelation, which I’m calling a tale of two cities. Beginning of Chapter 17 going through 22 you have two cities described. The first of these is said to be a harlot city. It’s said to be Babylon. It’s said to be the great city. By the way, the great city implies that there’s only one, not multiple.
And we’ve already been told in Revelation the great city is the city where also their Lord was crucified. So the great city has got to be Jerusalem and Jerusalem is called a harlot city because it was once the wife, the spouse of Yahweh. You can’t be a harlot and adulterous in a sense, unless you have once been in the status of a legitimate and faithful spouse. That’s why it cannot be Rome as some people would say. Rome was never a faithful spouse of Yahweh in the first place. How could it become an adulterous? Jerusalem was. And so Jerusalem is the one that turns away. And this is the old Jerusalem described in graphic terms in chapter 17 and chapter 18. The merchants of the earth throw dust on their heads. Woe to us. What will we do? Because Jerusalem had been a center of worldwide commerce and of immense wealth and now the city was destroyed and fortunes were lost.
And people who had been involved in international trade with Jerusalem were destroyed and devastated and wiped out by this great city. It happened in history just the way it’s described there in chapter 18. On the other hand, the other city that’s described at this time is the New Jerusalem. A New Jerusalem implies an old Jerusalem, doesn’t it? This New Jerusalem is said to be the wife of the lamb. This is the one who is the faithful wife. She’s described as this wonderful creation coming down from heaven. It is the pure temple. It’s a cubic structure because the inner sanctuary of the temple was a cube in shape and so it’s symbolically standing for the people of God.
There’s no need for a temple there because we are the temple. We are the dwelling place of God in his presence on this earth.
This is my understanding of the Book of Revelation. I am open to correction. I’m not saying I have this perfect, but when we look at when Jesus said the things would happen, “the time is at hand,” and we look at history, we see it being fulfilled. I realize I have left a lot of unanswered questions and I welcome your questions.
The Historical Setting of The Book of Revelation
The view of the Book of Revelation in the Bible held by most Christians is that it is mysterious and hard to understand. Yet, the simple fact that it was a revelation means it must be easy to understand. If we can not understand it, then it is not a revelation, it is a mystery.
If we are going to understand the book of Revelation, we must know when it was written. The historical context is important when understanding any book of the Bible. To understand what the writer is saying, we must interpret it as the original audience would understand it.
What was going on in the world at the time? I take the view that revelation was written about the year 65 AD, not my private view. There’s a whole body of scholars who take this view. There’s only two views, one that it was written in 65 AD, one that it was written in 95 AD. If it was written in 95 AD, that would put Revelation under a rather severe, but brief persecution, by a Roman Caesar named Domitian. This view comes from the writings of Irenaeus, the second century church father. He makes a somewhat ambiguous statement in his writings “Against Heresies” in which he implies Revelation was written in 95 AD. That has become a view held by many. It based largely on Irenaeus testimony. Based entirely on a vague writing, outside the Bible, this has become the popular view.
There are a very robust and significant number of scholars who take the view Revelation was written in 65 AD. This view is based both on internal and external testimony. So we have two views: one based on minimal external evidence and one based on internal and external evidence. Personally, I put a great deal of value on internal evidence, letting the Bible interpret the Bible.
Author and scholar Kenneth Gentry wrote his doctrinal thesis on the evidence for the early date. This research is available in his
What are the primary concerns in Revelation? It’s a book celebrating
Revelation 18:4 “Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.” That’s an Exodus motif. The whole book is filled with that sort of Exodus idea. God’s people escaping from a place where God’s wrath is going to fall, but because they follow his instruction, they escape that wrath. It’s a book of transition from an Old Jerusalem to a New Jerusalem. You know the end of the book celebrates the New Jerusalem which implies that there must be an Old Jerusalem. The Old Jerusalem is called “the harlots city.” Why? Because that Old Jerusalem had committed treason against her covenant husband, it had crucified his own son. It had murdered the prophets. Jesus says, “it’s impossible for a profit to die except in Jerusalem,” Luke 13:33. Jerusalem was the city that had turned its back. “We have no king, but Caesar,” was the cry of the crowd when they stood there at the trial of Jesus of Nazareth, and this is a book that celebrates the transition from the old to the new. It celebrates a transition from the old creation to the new creation. “Behold, I make all things new“ is the announcement of the voice from the throne in Revelation 21:5. That theme runs through the book again and again, a time of new creation.
The back story of this book is the mounting campaign against the city of Jerusalem that culminated in 70 AD and when the city was wiped out by the Romans under Titus, the son of Vespasian, who eventually became a Caesar himself. We don’t quite appreciate the cataclysmic proportions of that, but what if you were to wake up tomorrow morning and read the paper and here that the city of Hong Kong or the city of London or the city of New York or some other great city that belongs to the world had just been wiped out overnight? Can you imagine the shock wave that would go around? That’s precisely the proportions of what happened when Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. This was a major center of the world. Huge wealth was in that city. It was a central venue for commerce, for trade, for travel, for tourism, all of these things. Jerusalem was a major city, an important center of commerce and it was wiped out overnight.
At the same time, there was a comparable cataclysm that was happening in Rome. It made many people think it was the end of the world. Tacitus, the Roman historian, thought so. He tells us, he thought the whole thing was collapsing right here, right now. This was unbelievable. We have forgotten because we don’t know that much about history, but at the time this was one of the most cataclysmic events we can imagine. That’s the backstory of what’s happening in this book. The destruction of Jerusalem radically reshaped the Jewish religion. It had always been a religion tied to a temple. Now it had to redefine itself as a religion without a central sanctuary. The Old Testament presupposes a temple that is now gone, and so the Jewish religion looks very different from this point on, but by the same token, the Christian religion did as well because it had also been tied to the temple.
Read the New Testament, and you see again and again illusions to the temple and Christian people resorting to the temple. Now all of the sudden the temple is gone and that made the Christian movement also untethered, freed from a geographic venue for worship. The New Testament tells us there is now a living temple. Christ is its cornerstone. We are, as Peter says, “living stones” constituting comprising this temple. Instead of making a pilgrimage now to the temple, the temple is making a pilgrimage to the world. Go into the world, Temple, and preach the Gospel. Make disciples of the nations so that the whole world becomes the temple. “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them,” Matthew 18:20. You don’t need to go somewhere to find me. I’m with you. Wherever you go. It’s the temple with wheels on it, and this new paradigm you’ll see for God’s people was really only possible once the old temple was removed.
So what happened?
“And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth. And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space. And the beast that was, and is not,” Revelation 17:9-11.
The Angel says, the seven heads are seven mountains or hills. The city of seven hills is Rome. That was a common nickname for that city in the first century. It continues to be a common nickname for it to this day. Well, if the city is Rome than the kings by ordinary estimates would be the five Caesar’s that had ruled up until this moment.
Who’s the first Ceasar? Julius Caesar. Some people don’t want to include him because he was never quite a king, but in the first
We read of him in the New Testament. It was Augustus Caesar sent out a decree that all the world should be taxed. He’s the one that’s ruling at the time that Jesus is born. He defeated Mark Antony and Cleopatra’s forces at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC. He reigned from 31 BC to 14 AD. He’s probably the greatest, most talented of the Caesars. He’s the one that created what’s commonly called the Pax Romana. He says, famously, “he found Rome stone and he left it marble.”
The face of Rome in Israel at the time was Herod. Herod the great, but Herod and the six descendants of Herod. It is a beast with seven heads and 10 horns. Rome was constituted by 10 provinces cobbled together and a great empire, but in Israel it was a seven headed monster known as Herod, and so this Herod who was a friend of Augustus Caesar, plays a role in the Book of Revelation, especially chapter 12.
“Five have fallen.” Third of those Tiberius Caesar. Tiberius Caesar was the nephew and adopted son of Augustus. Augustus never had a son of his own. Tiberius reigned from 14 to 37. He wasn’t as showy as Augustus. He was a more pensive man. Some regarded him as kind of dark and brooding, but he was more or less a quieter sort of fellow. It’s in his 15th year, Luke tells us that John the Baptist came on the scene and began preaching a message of repentance to the people of God that’s recorded in Luke chapter three. Jesus’ ministry began about that time and went until the year 30, so it’s under Tiberius that Jesus is active in Israel. The resurrection, the passion, the ascension, all of this takes place in the spring of 30 AD, the first nine chapters of acts take place under Tiberius, including the conversion of the Apostle Paul, interestingly, and not very well known, Tiberius apparently believed that Jesus was deity.
I’m not saying he was a Christian believer or any such thing, but he had enough evidence at his disposal to have made an interesting proposition to the senate. This is recorded for us by Tertullian. Tertullian, an early church scholar and apologist, wrote a defense of the Christian faith called the Apologeticus, the apology. He writes these words describing Tiberius, “unless the gods gives satisfaction to men, there will be no deification for them. The God will have to probe a propitiate. The man Tibor serious. Accordingly, in whose days the Christian name made its entry into the world, having himself received intelligence from Palestine of events which had clearly shown the truth of Christ divinity brought the matter before the Senate with his own decision in favor of Christ the Senate because it had not given the approval itself, rejected the proposal, Caesar held to his opinion threatening wrath against all of the accusers of the Christians. Consult your histories.”
This is Tertullian, writing to the politicians of his day to go back and look at the archives and convinced themselves that Tiberias himself with some kind of believer. A commentator on this name, Cleveland Cox, noted “great stress is to be placed on the fact that Tertullian was a Roman lawyer, familiar with should it be with the Roman archives and influenced by them in his own acceptance of divine truth. It is not supposedly that such a man would have hazarded his bold appeal to the records and remonstrating with the Senate and in the faces of the emperor and his colleagues had he not known that his evidence was irrefragable.” In other words, this man is commenting that Tertullian would not, as a Roman lawyer, be so stupid as to appeal to an archive that didn’t exist, so we have this interesting little picture of Tiberias as at least a sort of distant or quasi believer in Christ.
The fourth of the Caesars, five have fallen, the fourth of them is Gaius Caesar or otherwise known as Caligula. Gaius took the throne in 37 AD. He was quite competent for the first six months. He was a protege of Tiberius, and then he got some kind of fever that was called brain fever. He came out of it a mentally unstable. For the next three years, his behavior was bizarre and destructive. And finally, his own body guards took his life in the year 41. He reigned for three and a half years, bringing us to the fifth of the five Caesar’s that has fallen.
That is a Claudius. The conversion of Cornelius in the New Testament took place under Caligula. Claudius the fifth of these reigned from 41 to 54 AD. He is most famous for conquering Britain where Roman had a Roman presence for about 300 years. During his reign, Paul engaged in his first and second missionary journeys. And the council of Jerusalem took place in 50 AD and recorded in Acts chapter 15.
He was poisoned, however, because he began to distance himself from his stepson, Nero, who had become his stepson by virtue of his marriage to Agrippina his fourth wife. And so the lovely and charming Agrippina poisoned him.
Five have fallen. One is. So presumably we are now at a time during the reign of Nero when this particular document is written, Nero’s the sixth of these. He reigned from 54 to 68. His early career was benign because he was only a teenager and all he wanted to do was go out and vandalize Rome. He was more or less dominated by three characters who were very sensible managers of the state.
Seneca, the stoic philosopher, Burris, the head of the Praetorians and Agrippina, his mother. Nero began to repudiate sane council. He had all three of these counselors executed, including his mother. The Apostle Paul. who had spent two years in jail in Caesarea was transported to Rome and was held there for a couple of years, from 61 to 63 AD.
Nero had still not turned started his persecution of Christians. However, in 64, there’s a great fire in Rome. The fire destroyed a third of the city. About two days later, Nero trotted out blueprints that had already been prepared as to how to rebuild that part of the city and he was going to rename it Neropolis, or Nero’s city.
The Roman people suspected Nero had caused the fire in order to execute this grand plan. Nero realized he was in huge trouble and in the moment of distress, he blamed the Christians. He said the Christians started that fire. And thus in the summer of 64, this huge persecution is launched against Christian people. It is an imperial assault that begins and continues for about the next seven years. It starts in 64 AD.
Paul was not in Rome at this time. Quite possibly, he was in Spain. Paul was eventually arrested along with Peter. They were executed in Rome in about 66 or 67 AD. John was exiled to the isle of Patmos about the same time. Christians in Rome tended to be killed, while Christian leaders, especially throughout the empire, tended to be imprisoned or exiled, and that’s what happened to John.
The Jewish Wars broke out about that time, and what began as a campaign against Christians morphed into a campaign against Jewish people, especially in Jerusalem. Nero didn’t distinctions at that point between Christian people and Jewish people, and so it kind of transformed itself. Nero himself was executed by the Roman military in 68 AD.
Josephus tells us about the Jewish wars. There had been rising tension in Israel for some 20 years. Israel was becoming increasingly divided between liberals who wanted to find common cause with the Romans represented by the Sadducees class and conservatives represented more by the Pharisees. Even more division was caused by the zealots who were beginning to appeal for a radical revolution against Rome. The abuses of Rome were only exacerbating the situation.
Much of the abuses were from corrupt procurators or governors in Jerusalem. Pontius Pilot was one of these procurator. Others came later who were even more corrupt. The last of those curators was a man by the name of Gessius Florus. He ruled from 64 to 66 AD. He pushed Israel to the boiling point. He stole money from the Temple Treasury. He gratuitously killed about 3,600 peaceful citizens in a five month reign of terror. Most of this information comes to us from Roman historians, especially Tacitus.
These actions inspired a revolutionary response from the zealots. The revolt broke out in 66 AD. It forced Herod Agrippa II, the man before whom Paul appeared, to flee to Rome. This brought Cestius Gallus He was the governor of Syria. Cestius Gallus came down and laid siege to Jerusalem in 66 AD trying to put down the revolt. For reasons that remain completely mysterious to this day. He left after six days. He had bottled up Jerusalem and he withdrew.
The zealots capitalized on that as a show of weakness and chased out after him and actually defeated him in a surprise attack at the battle of Beth Horon. This discredited the moderates in Jerusalem and the radicals took control of Jerusalem.
At that same time, Christians remembered what Jesus said. We get this information from Eusebius, the church historian. Eusebius says that Christian people remembered Jesus’ words, “And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. Then let them which are in Judaea flee to the mountains; and let them which are in the midst of it depart out; and let not them that are in the countries enter thereinto,” Luke 21:20-21
These Christians looked out, they saw Jerusalem surrounded by armies and they said, “how do we flee to the hills? There’s armies out there.” Then for no apparent reason, the armies left and the Christians, every last one of them left town. They went to the southern Judean wilderness and they holed up there. The Christian people escaped the horrific savagery that was unleashed on Jerusalem over the next several years.
Nero appointed Vespasian to quell the uprising. Vespasian arrived in 67 AD with 60,000 elite troops. Vespasian did not attack Jerusalem directly at this point. Instead he attacked rebel stronholds throughout Galilee and finally overran Jodapatha, resulting in the death of most of its citizens. It was a bloodbath. Scorched earth. The Sea of Galilee was floating with bloated bodies. It was a horrific slaughter, so that many thousands of Jewish people fled to Jerusalem for safety and the city was swelled with an overpopulation.
Jerusalem itself then became the involved in civil war between the people who wanted to peace with Rome and those who wanted to carry on the assault.
The campaign against Jerusalem was cut short by what’s called The Year of the Four Emperors. Remember, “five had fallen, one is, the other is not yet come, but when he does come, he will remain for only a little while,” Revelation 17:10. After Nero was executed in 68, his successor was a man by the name of Galba. He reigned for less than two months. He was was assassinated. He was replaced by Ortho. Ortho ruled for three months. He was assassinated, replaced by Vitellius. He ruled for about eight months. He was assassinated. He was replaced by Vespasian.
The world was watching at this. Can you imagine if we had rapid-fire assassinations in the United States? What kind of turmoil it would create, and that’s exactly what was happening in Rome. People thought this is it. This is the end of the Roman Empire, possiblty the end of the world. There was general despair across the entire world, the known world at that point. Jerusalem, on the one hand and Rome the other, were both on a meltdown situation.
The fall of Jerusalem took place in 70 AD. Vespasian went to Rome to take control. He left Titus, his son to handle the mop up operation there in Jerusalem. Jerusalem was put under siege in April. It fell in starvation conditions only five months later. The reason they ran out of food so quickly is that the zealots burned up all the food they could have survived several years. Instead, they couldn’t make it several months. There washorrific, unspeakable cannibalism. One mother even cooked and ate her child.
The worst possible imaginable famine conditions were the experience of those who were in Jerusalem until finally the city fell in. In late August, the city was destroyed. The temple was burned. Over one million Jews were killed and many, many more sold into slavery.
I think there’s pretty good evidence that that is the historical background to the Book of Revelation.
How Your Eschatology Affects Your Worldview?
Our view of eschatology, the study of end times, impacts how we respong to the world. It affects how we live. Unbiblical beliefs will cause us to act in unbiblical ways. Unfortunately, there are a multitude of conflicting views about the end times.
Everything that we do. Your view of the future is going to determine how you will live in the present and if there is a shift in an eschatological position, it’s going to affect every other doctrine that you have. And because a lot of people have grown up with a particular eschatological position, mostly dispensational, pre millennialism and that’s all that they’ve known, it has had a huge effect on our society.
It has removed much of the impact Christianity should have had on American culture. They’ve never heard anything. Anything else would be suspicious to them. To look at any other views regarding eschatology is truly frightening to them. Frightening because they think it invalidates the word of God because of the way it’s been taught, even though the position that they’ve been taught has only been around since the 19th century. On the other hand, they see the implications of the worldview and the implication of that worldview is if they are wrong, that this isn’t the final generation.
Because it affects how we live our lives.
If we aren’t living on the edge of history, it changes everything about the way they see the world. And they are actually frightened by it. They remind me of men who have been incarcerated for many years.
Doing prison minsitry over the years, I have spoke with many inmates. I particularly remember one conversation with a man that had been locked up for twenty years and was about to be released. He was frightened. Afraid he would end up back in prison.
For 20 years, he had been told where to sleep, what job to have, when to get up, when to go to bed, what he could eat. His entire life was controlled for him. All his needs, food, clothing and shelter, were provided for him. Now, he would have to make his own decisions and provide for his own needs. It was frightening to him.
Now, how does this relate to people who are locked into this eschatological position that says we’re living on the cusp of some grand eschatological event? Their hope is that they’re going to be raptured out of this world, that they’re not going to have to live in the world. They’re not going to have to go into the world and make changes to the world. They’re not going to have to make decisions about how to educate their children. They’re not going to have to worry about politics. They don’t have to worry about the arts and journalism and medicine and technology and all that. God is going to take them out of this world. See, technology to them is, is fearful. It’s microchips implanted in you.
Politics is bad because the antichrist is going to co-op the world. All of the things that can be a blessing to us in this world, people are afraid of. If they change their end times view, they’re going to have to be responsible because now they’re going to be stuck in this world. Not only are they going to have to be stuck in this world, but their children will be stuck in this world and their grandchildren are going to be stuck in this world. So it lays a huge responsibility of them.
When you get your eschatology right, you have to make changes. You have live your life. You work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Begin to apply the Bible to every area of life yourself and self, government, family, government, church, government, civil government, business.
Start a business, the become an expert in a particular field. Use your income and knowledge to influence society. Get your children to understand these principles as well. We lost this world, one decision at a time. We take this world back, one decision at a time. We must take the proclamation of the Gospel and the living out of the Gospel in this world and apply God’s word to every facet of life. If Christians would do that, not have the fear factor, but actually believe that we can re-enter the world and begin to transform that world, we will see that transformation take place in our day, and if not in our day, certainly in the day of our children and grandchildren.
When we stop waiting for God to rescue us from this world, and start working for the advancement of the kingdom, we than have true hope. The Kingdom of Heaven is not some future hope. Jesus took his place at the right hand of God when he ascended to heaven.
Peter said of Jesus in 1 Peter 3:22 “Who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him.” Christ is ruling now.
The question is, are we willing to rule with him? Are we willing to work with Jesus Christ to fulfill what the Bible says? Numbers 14:21 says “But truly, as I live, and as all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord.” Are we part of that?
Scripture teaches the success of the great commission in this age of the church.
Isaiah 2:2 “It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills; and nall the nations shall flow to it.“
This makes it very clear that the Gospel is going to impact the world. Not after a rapture and tribulation of seven years, but in “the latter days.” Before the return of the Lord. The church, the believers, are to take the Gospel of the Kingdom, the Gospel of Jesus Christ out to all the world. We are not to accept failure, anticipating that the whole world will become wicked under some antichrist figure. We are to “fill the world with Christ’s doctrine.”
Acts 5:28 “Did not we strictly command you that you should not teach in this name? and, behold, you have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine.”
Jesus taught that the Gospel would fill the world. He did not teach the Gospel would fail and a few would be saved by a rapture. He taught that the Kingdom of God would grow from a few, (the 120 in the upper room), to conquer the world. Not that all would be saved, but that the influence of the Gospel would flood the world.
Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field, which indeed is the least of all the seeds; but when it is grown it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches.”
Another parable He spoke to them: “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened.” Matthew 13:31-33
How does this affect your Christian life?
- Personal. Your view of the end times will affect your worldview and how you view your role as a disciple of Jesus Christ. If you view the world as under the control of the devil and only get worse, then you will do little to change it. Indeed many Christians are looking forward to the coming of an antichrist figure to plunge the world into darkness, in the hope they will be taken out of the world and spared the grief. If you look at the Gospel filling the world, of nations being transformed and drawn unto Christ, then you will be motivated to be active in that change.
Even in tribulation and persecution, you will see the sovreign hand of God. You will trust his rule is bringing his purpose to fruitition.
We read in the 1800’s, the Millerites, believing in an imminent rapture sold all they owned, only to be left broke and still in this world.
Even today, many Christians fail to plan for the future, believing in the rapture that they are sure will happen at any moment. In fact, believing 1988 to be the year Christ would return resulted in many Christians spending foolishly and and hurting themselves financially.
The Bible teaches a victorious church. When you see this, then your view of how to live life changes dramatically. The faith that what we do can and will make a difference in the world motivates us to witness, disciple and build. Rather than looking at the current culture as wicked and without hope, we see it as wicked and we bring hope.
We can influence men. We can be the leaven that leavens the world, filling it with the doctrine of Christ. - Family. If, like most dispensationalist and premillenialists, you belive this is the last generation, then there is no future that a family should plan for. Many Christians have abstained from having children because of this view. But if you see the church victorious, then raising up children to be active in God’s Kingdom is part of your Christian walk. To have children and grandchildren be part of God’s glorious kingdom is exciting. The family is a big part of God’s kingdom.
We will raise our children to be productive and to develop skills to change the world. We will build in them the desire to influence the world for Christ. Rather than having them despair that their life will have no impact, that all the do will result in naught, because they will be taken out of the world, we build in them the hope that they can have a true and lasting impact on their world. This hope will cause them to excel and prosper, even in the worst of troubles. - Church. How we see the end times will influence how we see evangelism. Although many dispensationalists are active in preaching the gospel, we see a lack of discipleship in the churches. When the church sees itself as integral to God’s plan to fill the world with his word and his rule, then discipleship becomes very important. Mature, trained Christians are needed to minister to the growing body of believers. Missionaries and evangelists are needed to take the word of God to the outermost reaches of the world. Christians have a purpose in influencing their communities. The good works and moral values are part of the light we bring to the world.
Rather than the narrow view of the salvation of individuals, which is of great importance, the church also needs to have a vision of impacting their communities and society. We are no just light to our neighbor, we are the light of the world. Christianity is meant to shine through all society.
If the Christians are going to be taken our of the world and the world left to the designs of Satan, then there is no need to build hospitals and clinics. There is no need for programs to help the sinner overcome sin. In years past, churches built grand buildings, designed to last for hundreds of years, now they build cheap aluminum buildings that will not stand. I am not necessarily in favor of ornate buildings, but we should aproach what we do for the Lord with the faith that God’s work will continue into the following generations.
“The Christian hope of triumph in history causes the Christian, whether in his personal life, or in the sphere of family, church, or state, to be ‘forward looking and forward moving, and therefore revolutionizing and transforming the present.'” Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1965), 15-16.
Was The Godhead A New Idea? Divine Plurality In The Old Testament
Is trinitarianism something limited to the New Testament or is it in the Old Testament? Did Jesus introduce something new, or was he building on what was already known and believed by Jews? Does it seem odd that the disciples would accept that Jesus said he and the Father were one? When Paul wrote about Jesus, “For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily,” (Colossians 2:9), why was this not seen as heretical? Did the Jews already have an understanding of the Godhead and the triune God?
Now you may be wondering why is this important. I contend it is very important in terms of apologetics, in terms of our theology, our doctrine, the continuity between the testaments, and especially in evangelizing Jewish people. If you try to witness to a Jew, one of the things that they stumble over the easiest is how can you worship Jesus and be a monotheist? How can I accept the idea that Jesus is God and God is God and not be a heretic?
Among the Jewish people, the Shema is part of the daily morning and evening prayer services. It is the cornerstone of their faith and their most important prayer. “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord: And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might,” (Deuteronomy 6:4-5).
But believe it or not, there was the belief in Judaism in what they call them, two powers in heaven. This was not one good and evil, but both were good guys. This was Jewish theology up until the end of the second century. Believing in the two powers did not conflict with the Shema, just as believing in the Trinity does not conflict with our belief that there is one God.
That was normative Judaism until after the Christian era. We have got to get over this divine plurality hurdle before we get to what you could really show a Jewish friend in terms of, “Hey, your old testament is not really different than the New Testament. You just got to look at it a little bit from different angles and you’re going to come out at same place.”
The other is an apologetic discussion. You may have run into certain groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormons who deny the deity of Christ. The idea of God being the Father and Jesus is confusing to them. Jehovah’s Witnesses are famous for denying that Jesus was a deity. He’s a creative being according to the doctrine of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. The Mormons sort of see lots of gods in their bible and they believe Jesus and Lucifer are brothers. So they have many god figures and they’re all sort of equal and interchangeable.
Then there are the non-believing academics who are fond of saying things like the New Testament authors just sort of made this up about a trinity or God had you won’t find this in the Old Testament.
There’s also biblical continuity and interpretive clarity. The two testaments are very consistent with each other. Even something as fundamentally Christian as a Godhead, you will see in the Old Testament. You just have to know what you’re looking at and what to look for.
One of the most important things in understanding the Bible is contextualized theology and by that, I mean interpreting the scripture in context. Of course, all Bible teachers say you must take verses in context, but not many do. You need to think like an ancient Israelite to understand the Bible as they would understand it and as the writer intended it to be understood. Biblical theology is framed by the world and the people who created it. These people are not from the Middle Ages. They’re not from the Reformation era. They’re not modern. Scripture must be understood from the historical, cultural and linguistic context it was written.
We’re going to look at how Jews interpreted the two powers idea that they see in the Old Testament. Many Jews see a belief in Jesus as God as a problem. We need to be able to fit the idea of Jesus as God and then God is still there into monotheism. Somehow that needs to be monotheistic. If you’re talking to a Jewish friend, (or Jehovah’s Witness), you have got to be able to do that.
One of the first things we need to look at is the word “elohim.” The God of Israel is naturally elohim. But, the gods of the nations are called elohim.
In fact in 1 Kings 11:33, you get three of them and one of them is a goddess, although oddly, biblical Hebrew does not have a word for goddess.
1 Kings 11:33 reads, “Because that they have forsaken me, and have worshipped Ashtoreth the goddess (elohim) of the Zidonians, Chemosh the god (elohim) of the Moabites, and Milcom the god (elohim) of the children of Ammon, and have not walked in my ways, to do that which is right in mine eyes, and to keep my statutes and my judgments, as did David his father.”
In Deuteronomy 32:17 devils are called elohim. “They sacrificed unto devils, not to God; to gods (elohim) whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not,” Deuteronomy 32:17.
In first Samuel 28, the spirit of Samuel is called an elohim.
Moses was referred to as an elohim in Exodus 4:16 and 7:1. Moses was not a god, but he was God’s representative and in this role, he was considered to be standing in the role of an elohim. Exodus 7:1 ”And the Lord said unto Moses, See, I have made thee a god (elohim) to Pharaoh: and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet.”
Is there more than one elohim that is real and exists? Yes, in the Bible, we have plural elohim. They’re right there. I see them, but I’m a monotheist.
There’s some tension here because we’re used to thinking of the term monotheist in a certain way, and the way we think of it does not conform to the Bible. That’s the problem. That’s the tension we feel. So on the one hand, the use of the Hebrew term isn’t really clear. All you gotta do is look up elohim in a concordance. You’re going to find those verses. In the English, it is sometimes a bit obscured. But elohim is used to refer to the one true creator God, the gods and goddesses of the heathens, deceased humans, devils (demons) and other spiritual beings.
Now these figures, these entities are not equal in attributes. We’ve got obviously an angel is not at the level of the god of Israel. None of these are at the level of the god of Israel. So it can’t be about attributes. When we think about the word God, we tend to assign attributes to the word. We think of the one most high creator, his omnipotence and omniscience. God with a capital “G” does refer to the most high. When we see “god” with a little “g” we start getting nervous. Our monotheism wants to say there are no other gods, just Yahweh. Yet the Bible discusses others gods and treats them as real beings.
We are just not used to thinking in these terms. Elohim is a term used to denote what I call a place of residence. That is, if I called something an elohim, it means that thing lives in the spiritual world. Different elohim have different attributes or characteristics.
For more on the word “Elohim,” see: https://dennisregling.blogspot.com/2018/08/who-are-elohim-in-bible-by-dennis.html
A summary to this point, here’s what I want you to get. Where we’ve gotten so far, the biblical use of the word Elohim shows us that it’s not tied to a specific set of attributes. That explains why more than one thing gets described with the term in the Bible. English translations at times obscure this important point. Since elohim is not about attributes, the biblical writers were not denying monotheism by using that word to describe other figures they believed were real, that were also elohim.
Divine plurality language should not be a threat. If you are going to lead a Jew to Christ, this is a big deal. If you start leading them by the hand and getting them over this sort of threat of plural language for God, they can then go with you to the next step.
We can accept a plurality of elohim, but we also establish that Yahweh is inherently superior. He is in command. He by definition is superior to anything else in the spiritual world and of course our world, too. He is the creator of all other elohim.
Once we establish divine plurality, we need to address the “son-ship” language that you will see associated with certain elohim in the spiritual world. The word son gets rightly applied to divine beings because God created all those other divine beings, not only humans, without threatening monotheism.
Since divine plurality, it doesn’t interfere with monotheism, let’s talk about this “divine son” idea. To a Jew, who is the son of God? There are two candidates in the Old Testament. Who gets called “my son?” In Hosea 11, Israel is called God’s son. “When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.”
The other passage is when Moses and Aaron go before Pharaoh and they request to be permitted to leave Egypt. Exodus 4:22 refers to Israel as God’s son, “And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith the LORD, Israel is my son, even my firstborn.” Again, it’s a corporate reference. In 2 Samuel 7:14, speaking of Solomon, God says, “I will be his father, and he shall be my son. If he commit iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men, and with the stripes of the children of men.” So both corporate Israel and a king were called sons of God.
But Jesus is saying he’s the son of God. He’s not Israel and he’s not the king. That seems to contradict this whole divine plurality thing that Jesus could be divine. But, it doesn’t because we have passages like Psalm 82 were the same language is applied to spiritual beings.
Psalm 82:1-8 “God (Elohim) standeth in the congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the gods (elohim).
2 How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked? Selah.
3 Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy.
4 Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked.
5 They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course.
6 I have said, Ye are gods, and all of you are children of the most High.
7 But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.
8 Arise, O God, judge the earth: for thou shalt inherit all nations.”
So God is standing in the council of the gods. Our first reaction as Christians is, “this must be the Trinity.” Trust me in Psalm 82, you do not want the trinity. If you read the rest of the Psalm, what happens to the elohim? God judges them for being corrupt and evil. You don’t want the trinity in Psalm 82. It’s just really bad theology to do that.
So here we have in Psalm 82:1 the word Elohim two times. First it is singular and the second time it is plural. One of the things you’ll hear is that this council must just be people and then they will quote Jesus in John Chapter 10, not realizing that doing so undermines his deity in the passage.
Look at Psalm 89: 6-7, “For who in the heaven can be compared unto the Lord? who among the sons of the mighty can be likened unto the Lord? God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints, and to be had in reverence of all them that are about him.”
Here we have the heavenly beings. The “sons of the mighty” in Psalm 89 are in heaven. There are in the “assembly” of the saint, the divine council of God. These are the same beings as in Psalm 82.
Jesus quotes Psalm 82:6 in John 10. In Psalm 82, God says to the elohim of his counsel, “I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High. But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.” And again, you don’t want the trinity here. Just not a good idea.
This is a declaration that because of their corrupt administration of the authority God gave them in ruling the nations, and part of their failure was having men allowing humans to worship them instead of the true God,” God is going to strip them of their immortality. In essence, God is saying, “I’m bigger than you are. I made you, not the other way around. I gave you life and I can take it.”
Psalm 82 is talking about Deuteronomy 32:8-9, “When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. For the Lord’s portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance.”
This will upset my KJV-Only friends, but there is a small problem with the translation of this verse. Most English translations will have “sons of Israel” in verse 8. The English Standard Version (ESV) has “When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God.”
Now, let’s look at the verse. When the most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided humankind, all mankind. When did that happen? When did the nation is divided? At the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11:1-9. When God did that, he set up boundaries for the people’s according to the “number of the sons of Israel,” in most English translations. In the ESV, we have according to the “number of the sons of God.” The ESV is one of the few translations that we’ll have this rendering. However, that is the reading in the Dead Sea Scrolls, and also the reading of the Septuagint. So the oldest manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible, we have read “sons of God” in this passage. But the age of the manuscripts is not why I believe the correct reading is “sons of God.”
The story is here is that God, if you remember back to the Tower of Babel episode, looks down on what is happening in Babel. Humanity is not dispersing as he had commanded them to do. So He goes down and he confused their languages and split everybody up, and then they disperse. In the chapter prior to that, Genesis 10, you have the table of nations. It gives a list of the nations that are associated with Genesis 11.
What happens here is God says, “you don’t want to listen to me, and we thought that the flood would sort of take care of this, but you don’t want to listen to me. I’m not going to be your God any more. I’m going to split you up. I’m going to put you under the authority of lesser divine beings. These are the sons of God who work for me. I’m going to create a people of my own from scratch.” That people was Israel. Israel does not exist at the time of the Tower of Babel because God hasn’t called Abraham yet, and Israel is not listed in the table of nations for that reason.
This is why it says he divides the people’s up according to the number of the sons of God, but the Lord’s portion is his people. Jacob, also known as Israel, is his allotted heritage. This is the story of the rest of the Old Testament in a nutshell. This is the beginning of antagonism between Israel and everybody else in between God and other deities, other pantheons. This is the Old Testament explanation for why the other nations have their own pantheons. Why they’re messed up because God punished them by abandoning them, disinheriting them.
Now we know from the very next chapter when God calls Abraham, God does not completely forget the other nations. When he calls Abraham, he says through you, “all nations of the earth will be blessed,” (Genesis 22:18). God hasn’t forgotten them, but they are under punishment.
Coming back to the Shema, is all of this a violation of the Shema? The idea God has sons that are elohim, (small “g” gods)? We want the Jewish person to look at their own Bible, their own old testament and realize it is okay to recognize divine plurality, because elohim just talks about where our being it lives and where he’s from has nothing to do with attributes. And some of those elohim are sons. There is son-ship language in the Old Testament. It’s not a violation of the Shema.
In view of divine plurality, the Israelites believed in a whole spiritual world, populated with other elohim. They understood God had punished the nations and some of those elohim had become corrupt and they were demanding and receiving worship from other people’s instead of the true God. They saw where God said, “I’m going to bring you out of Egypt, but you stay away from the other gods. You stay out of their territory. You don’t intermarry with them. You stay away from them,” because he knows the threat is real.
This is the story of the Old Testament. This is why in the Old Testament you get this sense of certain areas were owned or under the domain of different deities. This comes through in the biblical story.
This is what the Shema means. The Shema is not a denial of other elohim or that God has sons in the spiritual world. There’s a context for it. It’s just not one we’re used to.
You might be thinking, what about statements like “there’s none beside me, unlike me.” They’re not denials of the existence of other elohim, their statements of Yahweh’s incomparability.
I’ll just point out some of these denials are in Deuteronomy 32:39, “See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand.” there in Deuteronomy 4:35,39 say, “Unto thee it was shewed, that thou mightest know that the Lord he is God; there is none else beside him. Know therefore this day, and consider it in thine heart, that the Lord he is God in heaven above, and upon the earth beneath: there is none else.”
Well, what’s going on there? Deuteronomy 32 said the devils are gods and they must be real, because we can’t deny the demons are real. But what about these verses?
If you think of them as statements of incompatibility, there actually is no problem. In Zephaniah 2:15, Nineveh claims, “This is the rejoicing city that dwelt carelessly, that said in her heart, I am, and there is none beside me: how is she become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in! every one that passeth by her shall hiss, and wag his hand.” In Isaiah 47:8, Babylon says, ” Therefore hear now this, thou that art given to pleasures, that dwellest carelessly, that sayest in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me.”
Now, are Nineveh and Babylon claiming they are the ONLY cities in the world? No. They are saying they are unique and stand above the others. That is exactly what God is saying when he says there is none like him. Again, we establish the Shema is not a contradiction to divine plurality and is not inconsistent with monotheism.
Understanding this helps us understand how Christianity grew out of Judaism. I haven’t touched on the two powers in heaven yet. That is an upcoming article. But establishing the existence of more than one elohim, the divine plurality, is the first step to getting to the belief that Jesus was God, yet the father was still God. I will be exploring this more in future articles.
Looking To Get More Out Of God’s Word?
If you are like me, you’ve heard thousands of sermons over the years, yet you feel like you have only scratched the surface of the Bible’s message. It seems after all these years, all I am hearing is the same dozen messages preached over and over again in a handful of different ways.
Rather than digging into the text and teaching us what God was conveying to the original audience when the Books of the Bible were written, it seems that preachers are just focused on applications for us today.
I love the Gospel. I love reading the Bible. However, I also like to dig deeper. There are some verses and passages, that in our 21st century mindset, don’t seem very clear. We’ve heard explanations that don’t seem to satisfy.
Sadly, pastors and evangelists spend more time telling us what they believe the Bible means and almost no time, if any, teaching us how to study the Bible ourselves. Even most recently, I have discovered things in the Bible that I should have learned years ago.
For 40 years I have studied the Bible. I use a wide variety of tools and resources to try to understand the Bible the way it was meant to be understood. I have spent years trying to get into the mind of the original audiences that the Bible books were written to. I’ve looked at the languages the Bible was written in. I’ve sat under some of the best Bible teachers and read some outstanding scholarly works.
I have met many people that have sat in a church pew for 40 years and know almost nothing about what the Bible says, or can actually defend what they believe using scripture. They know a few proof texts, but have no real knowledge. Sadly, I have met many pastors that have preached for 20 years and have little understanding of the Word beyond parroting the party line. The church needs teachers. They need to move past the milk and onto the meat. The church needs more than homilies, they need content.
I hear pastors say that folks aren’t interested in deeper study, but I believe rather, that they are not given the chance or equipped to dig into the Bible on their own. There are so many amazing things in God’s word. Things that make one want to dig even deeper. But they need to be taught. Taught how to study God’s word. Taught where to find relevant information outside the Bible, using commentaries, history books, inter-linear study helps and other tools.
When Christians come together, they ought to be talking about what they are studying, what they have found and how it is impacting their faith and Christian walk.
I have discovered there is so much more to the Bible than the average Sunday morning sermon, or Bible study lesson gives us. Now, I want to share my studies with you.
I will be continually adding more articles and studies, so be sure to sign up for our newsletter. Make sure you don’t miss any. Additionally, if you have questions or subjects you would like me to address, please share them with me.
What Does 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 Mean?
“For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”
1 Thessalonians 4:16-17
This verse is given as “proof” of a pre-tribulation rapture. Of course it says nothing about a tribulation, but it seems to be the only verse that even vaguely supports the eschatology of those who believe this.
The sensational idea we will be “caught up into the clouds” to be rescued from a great tribulation does not explain why the “dead in Christ” need to be rescued.
So what is this verse talking about? If we are not being snatched away to heaven, what is happening?
Apantesis, the Greek word translated “meet” in 1 Thessalonians 4, is, according to the Souter Lexicon, “almost technical for the arrival of a newly arrived official.” The idea is to meet to honor and escort.
In ancient times, when a king visited, the people would go out to meet him and escort him back to town. Those welcoming the official would change direction after the meeting and then escort him back to the town from which they had come, not back to his place of origin (see Moulton, Greek Testament Grammar, Vol.1, p.14).
Apantesis is used four times in the Bible. In Matthew 25:1,6, Acts 28:15 and in 1 Thessalonians 4.
“Then shall the kingdom of heaven be likened unto ten virgins, which took their lamps, and went forth to meet the bridegroom.” Matthew 25:1
“And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.” Matthew 25:6
“And from thence, when the brethren heard of us, they came to meet us as far as Appii forum, and The three taverns: whom when Paul saw, he thanked God, and took courage.” Acts 28:15
Notice in Matthew, it is revealed that the virgins had been waiting for the bridegroom to appear. When He did, they met him and escorted him to the banquet hall.
They did not go back with him to the place from which he came.
“And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut.” Matthew 25:10
The bridegroom did not change directions, reverse course after the waiting virgins met him. Rather, he kept on coming in the original direction from which he started. The ones who changed direction were the virgins.
In Acts, the brethren came out and escorted Paul back to Rome. After they met him they did not return to Caesarea with Paul (which was his place of beginning for this trip). Paul did not change directions after the waiting brothers met him; rather, he maintained his course to Rome. The ones who changed direction were those who met him.
The Lord’s coming is not our going. It is His coming! We will not be caught up to escape anything,. We will be meeting him in the air to honor him in his coming and escort him back to earth.
No matter one’s eschatology, nothing can be proved from this verse other than that this is the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
“Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;” Titus 2:13
It is the time of His glory and honor. “When he shall come to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe (because our testimony among you was believed) in that day.” 2 Thessalonians 2:10
We are caught up to honor him and escort him to earth.
(PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COMMENT, BUT KEEP IT NICE. THANK YOU.)