REVELATION 12 & 13

We now come to what commentators universally agree is the central and pivotal chapter in the book. The shape of the chapter and of the one that follows is also distinctive. Together, Revelation 12 and 13 form the longest continuous narrative within the whole book.

REVELATION 12

The claims of Jesus are brought sharply into focus as rival claims to those of the Roman Empire. In the literary equivalent of a political cartoon, John’s vision report takes a piece of imperial propaganda and inverts its effect. Rome is no longer the strong hero Apollo who vanquishes the chaos monster as in Roman mythology, but is in fact allied with the chaos monster and so is threatened with defeat. Jesus is not a marginal figure who is the inspiration for an insignificant religious movement, but is the Apollo figure who is the true bringer of victory and peace. The effect of this on John’s audience is to push them to a crisis of decision. Now the crisis deepens: to ally oneself with the empire is to ally oneself with the spiritual adversary t both God and his people.

John’s use of Old Testament traditions, particularly those of Daniel, paints this crisis of decision on a wide historical canvas. Although the particular challenge facing John’s audience is one particular system of empire, his coalescing of the description of the beasts in Daniel 7 portrays their situation as one among the many that humanity faces from one era to the next. Inasmuch as their claims are those that only God can make, all such human empires ultimately derive their power from the enemy of God. Jesus’ victory by his death is not only the denial of the claims of empire, it is also the answer to the aspiration of the people of God down the ages to live in peace and worship God in freedom (Luke 1:69-75).

The narrative also confirms what John has already suggested about the times we live in. The followers of the lamb live in the in-between time which was inaugurated with Jesus’ death, resurrection and ascension, and will be consummated with his return as depicted in Revelation 19-22. This is the age of the third woe when Satan is at large in this world even though he has no authority in the heavenly realm. Therefore God’s people will continue to experience the presence and protection of God (because Jesus’ death has silenced the accuser and the seven Spirits of God are abroad in the world), but they will also experience suffering (tribulation) and opposition, because Satan continues to be at large for a short time until he is finally locked up and then destroyed in the final judgment. This paradoxical pattern of suffering and victory for Jesus’ followers is the same thing that Jesus experienced; the hardships of being are not a mistake, nor a sign of the failure of God, but are part and parcel of what it means to be a faithful witness.

REVELATION 13

Having told the story of the cosmic conflict between God and Satan in Revelation 12, John now turns to tell the story of the local conflict that is being experienced by his readers. He does so by drawing on biblical imagery, particularly from Daniel, to describe the particular experience of those in Asia who have seen an imperial power come from across the sea and work hand in hand with a local power already in the land. But he does this in a distinctive way: on the one hand, the symbolism of empire is quite particular, and the rise and fall of the beasts is framed by the introduction and final judgment of Satan as God’s cosmic enemy. In this sense, John frames his particular historical situation with the framework of the ultimate cosmic realities of salvation and judgment. On the other hand, he combines Daniel’s imagery, so that the empire he faces is not simply the one that is present before him, but is in some sense the archetypal representation of all human imperial power. This is communicated by means of particularly powerful metaphorical imagery which allows subsequent readers not only to understand the challenges that John and his readers faced, but to ask for themselves: where in our world is Satan’s power at work through the beasts in our situation?

For John’s first audience, the allusion to Roman imperial power in the beast from the sea is made clear by the continuity of that character of the dragon. It is also confirmed by the close links between this passage and Daniel 7, where the beasts are symbolic of kingdoms (Dan.7:23: Babylonia, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome), But the symbolic description and the combining of Daniel’s four beasts into one have a further effect for subsequent audiences. Rather than focus on the fourth beasts alone, John draws on the characteristics of all the beast-empires, as if to say, ‘This is the threat of Roman imperial power – but it is actually the threat of any human empire which claims what only God can claim.’

John’s vision report then offers a challenge for both his immediate audience and subsequent audiences. For his immediate hearers and readers, the challenge is to make decisions about their loyalty to the empire or to their faith in the light of John’s claims about the nature of the empire and its source of power and authority. For later hearers and readers, the challenge is to discern where similar patterns of authority are at work and – knowing that we too are living in the forty-two months or 1,260 days or three and a half years, when we too will know suffering and victory, when we too are in a time of testimony and patient endurance – to make hard decisions about our own loyalty and faith.

Humanity carries either the mark of the beast or the mark of the lamb of God. John is offering us the anatomy of human totalitarian rule and its defiance of the sovereignty of God, drawing, as ever on biblical images as his symbolic vocabulary. We can see enough connection with the world of the first century to know now vivid his description would have been to his first audience. But we can also feel the rhetorical power of what he says to find correspondences in subsequent generations, including our own. John is here not just heightening the significance of the decisions of loyalty that those described in the seven messages must face; he is raising the stakes for all subsequent readers who must also examine their loyalties, their compromises and the question of faithfulness.

(Ian Paul, Revelation, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries)