REVELATION 10 & 11

REVELATION 10

Three of the most important theological questions to ask are: ‘What time is it?’, ‘Where are we?’ and ‘Who am I?’ In this interlude, through complex allusions to a wide range of Old Testament texts, this part of John’s vision report addresses these questions.

First, this is the time of the nations or Gentiles, in that it appears as though God’s people (as his temple, his dwelling place on earth) are being trampled just as the Jerusalem temple was trampled by the power of Rome. Yet it is also a time of preservation and protection, since the inner part of the temple – the spiritual heart of God’s people – enjoys his presence and assurance.

Second, this is a transitional time of journeying, since God’s people are traveling from one station to another, having been set free from slavery (enslaved not by Egypt but by sin, Rev. 1:5), but not yet having entered the promised land of dwelling in the full presence of God, which is the constant hope on the horizon in every section of Revelation.

Third, by a clever numerical identification, this journeying of forty-two stages is also a time of tribulation anticipated in the visions of Daniel.

This is a time for God’s people to maintain the true worship of God by refusing to compromise their allegiance and instead fulfill their calling to be a kingdom of priests. It is a time to offer prophetic testimony to God, just as the prophets before them had done, even though they to had suffered oppression. It is a time in which the nations gloat over their failure and even death, and yet a time when they experience God’s resurrection power. Although they are a small, vulnerable group, in their faithfulness they follow the example of their Lord and so experience both crucifixion and resurrection as he did. By delaying identification of the third woe, John is confirming that the first two woes (and the series of plagues in which they are embedded) are not a future scenario of judgment, but a reality that already exists. The third woe stretches from the present into the future, and includes the challenge of faithfulness that confronts God’s people.

By contrast, the great city representing Roman imperial power is not the eternal city as was consistently claimed, but a human institution like all others that went before it – subject to the judgment of God as they had been. The true eternal city is the one that God’s people are already beginning to inhabit, as yet hidden, but which will be revealed in the visions of Revelation 21-22.

REVELATION 11

Chapter 11:15-19 looks forward to the final visions of chapter 21, when the city of God that contains the throne of God and the lamb descends from heaven, signifying both the presence and reign of God on earth. The merging of the identities of God and the lamb in the singular verb ‘he will reign’ (11:15) anticipates the even closer merging in chapters 21 and 22. But it also looks back to the worship scenes of chapters 4 and 5 – it is the twenty-four elders from that scene who in praise look forward to the final scene, from which they themselves will be absent. It reinforces what John has said from the beginning (in 1:9): that John’s readers (then and now) are living in the in-between times, in tension between the kingdom where God’s will is done and which has broken in on this world, and the need for patient endurance as we look forward to the final triumph of that kingdom.

The praise of the elders emphasizes the tensions involved in living in this in-between period, by highlighting a series of contrasts. The first is between the nations of the earth who have resisted God’s rule, and the judgment they will now face as his reign is enacted. The second contrast is between the judgment of humanity as they must give account of themselves to God, and the reward that is given to those who have kept faith despite the pressures to compromise. The third contrast draws the first two together: those who are destructive, and who have brought death and destruction to God’s people and God’s world, will receive back what they have given out. This is the first anticipation of the theme of lex talionis: the principle of God’s justice in treating people as they have treated others, which is developed more fully in chapter 18. But it also connects the theology of God as Judge with the theology of God as creator; at the end he will remake creation and exclude from it those who have wrought its destruction and in doing so failed to recognize him as its source.

(Ian Paul, Revelation, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries)