We move into some scary parts of Revelation. It's easy for us to feel afraid, or condemned or self-righteous reading this passage. I hope to make it easy for us to feel awe and confidence in God, and in our ability to read the Bible. Remember that Revelation was addressed to 7 churches: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis , Philadelphia and Laodicea . John likened the churches to lampstands. He takes the churches to task for being loveless, imperfect, and self-deluded and encourages them to beware evildoers, stay faithful, hold fast, repent and obey. John writes Revelation to encourage these faltering churches. Even though Christians will be persecuted and oppressed, no one will be able to stop their prophetic witness, nor their call to repentance. Injuries inflicted upon the Christians increase God's anger and plagues on their enemies. (1)
I remember in Old Testament class in seminary hearing what the professor said, and having him explain my question so well, and went to write it down in my annotated Bible, only to discover that the annotations already included what I meant to write. Even Revelation is not so confusing we can't make sense of it. Much of it is there.
For example, the mysterious 1,260 days is really just a reference back to the old testament book of Daniel. He spoke of the persecution of the faithful, saying “they shall be given into his power for a time, two times, and half a time.” ( 7:25 ) The time period isn't indefinite; it is limited; it's only 3.5, half the perfect number 7.
That word for time could also be translated as year. So in Revelation 11, John wrote 'a year plus two years plus a half a year, 'which adds up to 1, 260 days. I printed the equations on the front of the bulletin cover.
Some of you might wonder how the Hebrew year could be just 360 days; every few years they added another month, and would get caught up. (2) The book of Revelation is full of symbolic acts. Our text today begins with a reference to measuring the temple. Measuring is a way of preserving the temple; making a blueprint so it can be restored or rebuilt. Measuring is part of a plan for the future. It takes Ezekiel the prophet two chapters to measure the temple as the angel directed.
Here are a few other bits from the old testament that will help you hear Revelation 11. The prophet Zechariah spoke of the anointed ones, the heirs to the throne of David as two olive trees. (4:4) The law said, “A single witness shall not suffice to convict a person of any crime or wrongdoing in connection with any offense that may be committed. Only on the evidence of two or three witnesses shall a charge be sustained.” (Deuteronomy 18:15). In one of the plagues on Egypt , where the Egyptian pharaoh persecuted the Israelites, the waters of the Nile turned to blood (Exodus 7:20 ). Sackcloth is a sign of mourning for what has been. When a prophet wears sackcloth, it is a sign of mourning for what is to come. Fire is a sign of God. Leaving a body unburied is a sign of humiliation and disgrace. Letting everyone see it is unburied magnifies the disgrace. People thought your soul lingered around your body for three days. After that, resurrection was impossible.
Listen for the word of God as it is found in Revelation 11: 1-18.
1 Then I was given a measuring rod like a staff, and I was told, "Come and measure the temple of God and the altar and those who worship there, 2 but do not measure the court outside the temple; leave that out, for it is given over to the nations, and they will trample over the holy city for forty-two months. 3 And I will grant my two witnesses authority to prophesy for one thousand two hundred sixty days, wearing sackcloth." 4 These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth. 5 And if anyone wants to harm them, fire pours from their mouth and consumes their foes; anyone who wants to harm them must be killed in this manner. 6 They have authority to shut the sky, so that no rain may fall during the days of their prophesying, and they have authority over the waters to turn them into blood, and to strike the earth with every kind of plague, as often as they desire.
7 When they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the bottomless pit will make war on them and conquer them and kill them, 8 and their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city that is prophetically called Sodom and Egypt , where also their Lord was crucified.
9 For three and a half days members of the peoples and tribes and languages and nations will gaze at their dead bodies and refuse to let them be placed in a tomb; 10 and the inhabitants of the earth will gloat over them and celebrate and exchange presents, because these two prophets had been a torment to the inhabitants of the earth. 11 But after the three and a half days, the breath of life from God entered them, and they stood on their feet, and those who saw them were terrified.12 Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, "Come up here!" And they went up to heaven in a cloud while their enemies watched them.
13 At that moment there was a great earthquake, and a tenth of the city fell; seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the rest were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven. 14 The second woe has passed. The third woe is coming very soon. 15 Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, "The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign forever and ever." 16 Then the twenty-four elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God, 17 singing, "We give you thanks, Lord God Almighty, who are and who were, for you have taken your great power and begun to reign. 18 The nations raged, but your wrath has come, and the time for judging the dead, for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints and all who fear your name, both small and great, and for destroying those who destroy the earth."
So where's the hope in that? Did you notice that only a tenth of the city fell? In the midst of terrible destruction, in a world filled with enemies, 90% of the people survived and gave glory to God.
In this chapter, we hear tell that the dead are judged, the servants are rewarding, the destroyers are destroyed. Justice, justice, justice. Except for the part where “the rest” of verse 13 are afraid, and give glory to God. That's what Revelation commands them to do. ‘They' and ‘them' change; sometimes ‘they' hear the witnesses, other times ‘they' don't.
We're pretty accustomed to hearing Revelation as judgment. But it is about justice.
Some people think Revelation is about our time now, and there's a one to one correspondence with the events on earth and the events in the book. I disagree that the message is that all unbelievers will get theirs, and theirs is a violent humiliation. The message is that persecution will be punished; those who are persecuted can take heart. But Christians can find a lot of harmful judgment in Revelation.
We readers of Revelation aren't the only ones to find things that aren't there. For the last 15 years, the World Health Organization was working to eradicate polio in Africa . In 1988, there were 1,000 cases of polio a day. In 2003, it was down to just 758 cases. Nearly half of those came from Nigeria, and outbreaks in other countries were traced back to Nigeria . So in January and February, the organization concentrated on Nigeria.
But “opposition from religious and political leaders in the north of Nigeria forced the suspension of an immunization program being conducted in Nigeria and other countries in Africa where polio is endemic or has been spread in recent months. Nigeria is Africa 's most populous country.
Critics….charged that the polio vaccine makes girls infertile and that the health organization and Western countries are using it to reduce the Muslim population. Nigeria sent the vaccine to South Africa for testing,” and then to India … “The tests found no elements of hormones or infectious agents”, just the Sabin polio virus used in the oral vaccine. Other Islamic countries elsewhere in the world have vaccinated against polio, including Nigeria 's neighbor, Niger .
The Nigerian government also sent a 23-member team, including Islamic scholars, to India and Indonesia to discuss concerns about the vaccine. (3) Eventually, the vaccinations continued.
What we believe matters. A federal worker who had to supervise many employees as well as deal with reporters and politicians, told me “The perception of truth mattered more than truth.”
I've been chewing on that for quite awhile. To me, the truth matters a great deal. But sometimes people can't hear it. Naomi Kulog wrote in her last letter from Uruguay : “I can't tell you how many times kids here have asked me if Bush is going to attack Uruguay someday for their abundance of water.”
I remember meeting a man from Brazil who thought the US had fabricated the moon landing; he didn't think it could really happen. We took him to our town's tiny museum for our one local celebrity, astronaut Tom Stafford. In the museum was Tom's penmanship book from first grade. My Brazilian friend had just learned to read and write a few years earlier, and had a similar penmanship book. That connection made him believe the astronauts were real. So what we believe informs how we can hear the truth, and the truth we hear informs our beliefs.
If we believe that the events in Revelation have a one to one correspondence with events on earth, we might believe it is our religious duty to protect and promote the nation of Israel where the holy temple is located at any cost in order to get our heavenly reward. In chapter 11, we have two people witnessing to God's truth. They are persecuted for their witness and die, but are resurrected. Death has no hold over us. God reigns, and many people will eventually hear that. The churches to whom the book is addressed are far from perfect; they might hear words of condemnation in the plague and fire and earthquake. But I think they heard the encouragement to resist Babylon, that is, Rome, and not conform to the world. No matter how terrible the world becomes, faithfulness is possible and even desirable.
Last week, at the Peacemaking conference, I found out that Rev. Gilbert Shaheen, pastor of the Presbyterian church in Basrah, had to leave Iraq and go to Sweden . He is pastoring a group of Iraqis there. I wonder how he interprets Revelation. I hope he finds meaning, courage, and hope. And when we are faced with trials and suffering, I hope we can find hope too.
(1)Schussler-Fiorenza, Elizabeth . Revelation; Vision of a Just World, p. 78.
(2)Harper's Bible Dictionary says it was 7 out of 19 years they added a second Adar. This works if the months are 29.5 days long, p. 1,072.
(3)Altman, Lawrence K. “Polio case in Ivory Coast came from Nigeria” ATLANTA, New York Times, Tuesday, March 2, 2004 Copyright © 2003 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com .
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