First Presbyterian Church
What's a Presbyterian to do with Revelation? Part 1
Sermon for July 6, 2003
by Pastor Susan Barnes

Our Bible reading today is Revelation 1:1-19, found on page 245. Most of us find the book of Revelation baffling. We have no idea how to interpret it, and so we are easy marks for every whacko scheme someone popularizes. In this series on Revelation, I hope to give you some tools for interpreting this apocalyptic book, so you can find meaning in it yourselves.

Revelation is filled with quotes from and allusions to the Old Testament. To give you an idea of how much of Revelation is taken from the old testament, I will read some old testament quotes after Bill reads a few verses from Revelation. Listen for the word of God.

1:1 The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place; he signified it by sending his angel to his servant John, but there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and he has disclosed to King Nebuchadnezzar what will happen at the end of days.

Daniel 2:28a.
The king said to Daniel, "Truly, your God is God of gods and Lord of kings and a revealer of mysteries, for you have been able to reveal this mystery!"

Daniel 2:47.
2 who testified to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw. 3 Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of the prophecy, and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it; for the time is near. 4 John to the seven churches that are in Asia : Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, 5 and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.

The psalmist speaks of David: I will make him the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth.

Psalm 89:27.
It shall be established forever like the moon, an enduring witness in the skies."

Psalm 89:37.
To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, 6 and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.

Exodus 19:6.
to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. 7 Look! He is coming with the clouds; every eye will see him, even those who pierced him; and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail. So it is to be. Amen.

When they look on the one whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn. Zech 12:10b.

8 "I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.

Solo: Laudamus Te

9 I, John, your brother who share with you in Jesus the persecution and the kingdom and the patient endurance, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. 10 I was in the spirit on the Lord's day

And when he spoke to me, a spirit entered into me and set me on my feet; and I heard him speaking to me. Ezekiel 2:2.

The spirit lifted me up and bore me away; I went in bitterness in the heat of my spirit, the hand of the LORD being strong upon me. Ezekiel 3:14.

and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet As the blast of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses would speak and God would answer him in thunder. When the LORD descended upon Mount Sinai , to the top of the mountain, the LORD summoned Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up. Exodus 19:19-20.

11 saying, "Write in a book what you see and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus , to Smyrna , to Pergamum , to Thyatira, to Sardis , to Philadelphia , and to Laodicea ." 12 Then I turned to see whose voice it was that spoke to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands,

[The prophet Zecharaiah said] "I see a lampstand all of gold, with a bowl on the top of it; there are seven lamps on it, with seven lips on each of the lamps that are on the top of it. [The angel who talked with me said] "This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel: Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, says the LORD of hosts. "These seven are the eyes of the LORD, which range through the whole earth." Zechariah 4:2b, 6b, 10b.

13 and in the midst of the lampstands I saw one like the Son of Man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash across his chest. 14 His head and his hair were white as white wool, white as snow; his eyes were like a flame of fire,

As I watched, thrones were set in place, and an Ancient One took his throne, his clothing was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool; his throne was fiery flames, and its wheels were burning fire. Daniel 7:9.

15 his feet were like burnished bronze, refined as in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of many waters.

I looked up and saw a man clothed in linen, with a belt of gold from Uphaz around his waist. His body was like beryl, his face like lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze, and the sound of his words like the roar of a multitude. Daniel 10:5,6.

16 In his right hand he held seven stars, and from his mouth came a sharp, two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining with full force.

but with righteousness … he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. He made my mouth like a sharp sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me; he made me a polished arrow, in his quiver he hid me away. Isaiah 11:4b and 49:2.

17 When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he placed his right hand on me, saying, "Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last,

Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel, and his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts: I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god. Isaiah 44:6.

18 and the living one. I was dead, and see, I am alive forever and ever; and I have the keys of Death and of Hades. 19 Now write what you have seen, what is, and what is to take place after this. 20 As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand, and the seven golden lampstands:

You shall make a lampstand of pure gold. The base and the shaft of the lampstand shall be made of hammered work; its cups, its calyxes, and its petals shall be of one piece with it; On the lampstand itself there shall be four cups shaped like almond blossoms, each with its calyxes and petals. Their calyxes and their branches shall be of one piece with it, the whole of it one hammered piece of pure gold. You shall make the seven lamps for it; and the lamps shall be set up so as to give light on the space in front of it. Exodus 25: 1, 34-37.

the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.

This ends our reading of God's word.

We get our word apocalypse from the Greek word for Revelation, pronounced apokalupsis. Webster's defines apocalypse as a revelation, especially when the forces of good triumph over the forces of evil. That's what the Greek word apokalupsis means: something that is revealed. (1)

So if Revelation is supposed to be revealing, why is it so difficult for us to understand the book? For the same reason that much of the Bible is hard for us to understand: we aren't first century agrarian Jewish Palestinian peasants, nor are we urban Roman gentiles. But it's also tough because apocalyptic writing is full of allusions, metaphors, and symbols. If you don't know the references, the meaning is hard to decipher.

I taught a Bible study on Revelation with a pastor from New Zealand . In trying to explain the way symbols work, I read the class this story called “ Independence .”

“One day an eaglet flew from her mother's nest because her life was in jeopardy. The eaglet made a new nest. The mother eagle wanted to maintain total control over the eaglet, and tried to convince her to return. The eaglet wouldn't. The eaglet grew stronger and stronger, and its mother worried her offspring might no longer require the protection and oversight she had so willingly provided. She wanted to remain in control. The eaglet had to fight and struggle with her to prove it was capable for caring for itself.

It hatched 13 eggs and was busy helping its hatchlings learn to eat and fly. Grandmother eagle was impressed with her strong grandchildren, so she wanted to control them, too. The grandchildren were raised to respect their grandmother. However, as she became more and more possessive, the thirteen eaglets tried to convince her that their first loyalty was to their mother, even if that made their grandmother angry.

They found strength in unity on the fourth day of the seventh month, and withstood all their grandmother's efforts to dominate them. She couldn't persuade any of them to leave their mother and return to her nest. She finally admitted defeat.” (2) The eaglet was free. She ended up with fifty children, and each year, they all celebrated their independence on the fourth day of the seventh month.

As I read this story to the class, I could see them nodding their heads and their faces brightening. But the New Zealand pastor was baffled. He had no idea what the author was driving at. He had been in the US for just a few months in the fall, he didn't know the US had thirteen original colonies, nor that our independence day was July 4. We had to explain it to him. All of us saw with our own eyes how interpreting symbols depends on our backgrounds.

I find the book of revelation to be a collage of pieces of ideas, images and words pulled from the old testament. Some of the pieces are used whole, like when John lets us know he speaks for God by alluding to the Spirit in Daniel or the trumpets with Moses; Other times, the pieces are reorganized to make a different picture: the golden temple lamp in Exodus becomes a church in Revelation. And John expands the original pieces: where OT references speak of the tribes of Israel , Revelation speaks of the tribes of the earth.

Revelation was written to explain how it could be true that God is sovereign, and Christ will return even though evil flourishes and oppresses believers. To help us remember, John uses vivid pictures and dramatic action.

In the books I'm studying for this series, one of the things I've learned is that under Roman rule, Jews were a permitted religion; they were exempt from worshiping the emperor Domitian at Roman temples of Zeus and other gods. But gentile Christians were not a permitted religion, and weren't exempt from roman temple attendance. There's some evidence indicating that in the late first century, when Revelation was written, Christians tried to escape persecution by identifying with a synagogue so they wouldn't have to worship the emperor.

Domitian wasn't an especially bad emperor, he conducted business as usual. The empires work was to get as much money and power as possible, burdening the peasants with forced labor, high taxes, and capital punishment for most offenses. A good citizen showed his patriotism and his religious devotion by worshiping in the local pagan temple. Citizens who didn't do that were called atheists. The problem came not from emperor Domitian forcing Christians to worship him, but from local princes trying to consolidate their power by pressuring Christians to conform to the emperor's cult.

Before I began this study, I had thought Revelation was written during great persecutions, but apparently there weren't any more than usual. Revelation isn't written just to console persecuted Christians, but to point out a crisis many Christians didn't perceive. By collaborating with the empire, either by worshiping at a Roman temple or disguising themselves as Jews, early Christians were not being true to Christ. Faces with the vast resources of the Roman empire , how could a small band of Jesus followers survive? John tells them how in his revelation.

And he uses a customary form to tell them: an apocalyptic story. Stories do more for our emotions than straight facts.

I read the facts about wars; I know that war is hell and full of betrayals, half-truths and injustice. But hearing war stories engage my feelings.

I ran across this little bit of information: “During World War II, Soviet general Vlasov with his entire army, deserted to the German side and fought with the Nazis against the Allies. After Germany surrendered, the general and his army requested asylum, knowing they faced certain death if they were delivered up to Stalin. But the allies refused, and the general and his troops were sent to their deaths.” I was shocked to think that America would participate in such horror, and read further.

It turns out that “between five hundred thousand and a million Soviet POWs either volunteered to fight alongside Nazi troops against their former comrades or were coerced into doing so. Another six million Soviets, many of them POWs, were forced into German slave-labor battalions that manufactured war materiel.

Vlasov was a decorated Soviet general who'd played a key role in the defense of Moscow and of Kiev . He and his army were captured in 1942 after being encircled by the Nazis. Vlasov blamed the excesses of Stalin's police state for the inefficiency of the Russian army, and soon came to fault the regime for all the disasters that had befallen the Soviet Union . When his German captors suggested that he urge Soviet troops--POWs and otherwise--to oppose Stalin, he agreed, persuading himself that the Nazis could offer him his best hope of deposing Stalin. The charismatic general wanted the Germans to create a Russian provisional government and a Russian army of liberation that he would lead in the struggle to free the motherland.

Hitler and other senior Nazi leaders regarded the Russians (along with all other Slavs) as subhuman, and furiously opposed the creation of a freestanding and possibly treacherous Russian army. Instead, most Russian units were salted in among regular German forces and commanded by German officers.

After D day thousands of Russian troops, posted with German forces all over the western front, were captured by U.S. and British armies. Though Stalin refused to admit to the existence of Soviet turncoats, at the Yalta conference in February 1945 he demanded that all captured Soviet nationals be repatriated whether they were willing or not. Recognizing that they needed Stalin's cooperation to obtain the release of their own POWs held in camps near the eastern front, the other Allied leaders secretly agreed

Following the Nazi collapse in May 1945, Vlasov and his men … surrendered to western Allied forces in hopes of escaping Stalin's wrath. But in obedience to the Yalta agreement, U.S. and British commanders turned most of their captives over to Soviet troops, in some cases using deceit or beatings when the Russians resisted. Some of the prisoners committed suicide, others were shot shortly after being taken into Soviet custody, and still others (including Vlasov) were executed after perfunctory trials. The remainder vanished into Soviet forced-labor camps, forgotten by the rest of the world until Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn told their story more than 20 years later in The Gulag Archipelago .

One historian said, “Some say Vlasov and the other Russians who collaborated with the Nazis aren't worth crying over--they were traitors, after all. But I'd say they deserve a little sympathy. They could fight for either Hitler or Stalin, and life offers few choices more dismal than that.” (3)

I could have left this last story out of my sermon, and just said that people are at the mercy of emperors, and that empires betray and oppress their citizens. But I bet you'll remember the story much better. Revelation is also a story to remember.

It provides us with choices that are not dismal but enlightening: follow our Lord Jesus Christ and trust that God is sovereign over all the earth.

(1) Webster's Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language, New York : Gramercy Boos, 1996,p. 98.

(2) Adapted from Dr. Walther's Revelation Leader's Guide, Kerygma series, p. 21.

(3) Adapted from Adams , Cecil, The Straight Dope, June 27, 2003 .