June 29, 2025
“I,
John, your brother who share with you the persecution and the kingdom and the
endurance in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God
and the testimony of Jesus. I was in the spirit on
the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet 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.”
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The
last book of the Bible, Revelation (no ‘s’ on that), is a favorite for people
who want to convince others that they have a special inside line to God about
what the future holds. It gets mixed
into a sort of stew with chunks from the books of Daniel and I Thessalonians
and is served up with gravy made from the events of the interpreter’s time, and
gets washed down with a glass of gloating at the ill fortune of the enemy of
the day. That does nothing in the long
run to call people to faith in Christ or to strengthen believers.
Nevertheless,
it is a great book, one that the church has taken as inspired by God himself,
although because of its strange imagery and complicated symbolism it took
centuries longer than the other books of the New Testament to gain acceptance. Its greatness lies in its message, that comes
to us through a man about whom we know little and that was first directed to
churches spread out along the southwestern coast of what is now Turkey.
That message, delivered
to them at a time of threat and fear and suffering, is about as audacious as it
could be – dangerously so, which is why much of it was sent to them in a sort
of coded, symbolic way. That message is
still a courageous declaration: the world is going to keep on being the world,
and making the innocent suffer; but keep on doing what is right – no matter
what – and the true Lord of all will sort things out and set them right in the
end.
“‘Do not seal up the words of the prophecy
of this book, for the time is near. Let
the evildoer still do evil, and the filthy still be filthy, and the righteous
still do right, and the holy still be holy.’
‘See, I am coming soon; my reward is with
me, to repay according to everyone’s work.
I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the
end.’” [Revelation 22:10-13]
At
the start of the book, the author, whose name was John, establishes his right
to speak that message on behalf of God.
He tells us who he is and what his Christian experience has been.
“I,
John, your brother who share with you the persecution and the kingdom and the
endurance in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God
and the testimony of Jesus.” [Revelation 1:9]
He speaks as a brother, an equal, to the people he
writes to. Like them, he is going
through a time of persecution that calls for endurance, which he does for the
sake of Jesus and his kingdom.
For John that had meant exile
to the island of Patmos. In the words of
Karen Engle,
“Juvenal, the Roman satirist, active toward the end of
the first century AD, describes several Greek islands that are near to Patmos
as ‘rocks crowded with our noble exiles.’ While Juvenal does not mention Patmos
specifically, this smallish island, no more than 30 miles in circumference,
might well also have served such a function, a place to which to send largely
elite undesirables, removing them from their places of influence where they
might foment trouble or otherwise cause embarrassment for Rome and its leaders.”[1]
If exile was all that John had faced, he had gotten
off lightly. It was around his time that
the Roman emperors were beginning to get rid of Christians more permanently. The problem was that the emperors had decided
that it would be good for an empire that included peoples who worshiped a
variety of gods to have at least one unifying divine figure they could all
worship together. That would bring a
sense of one-ness to everybody from Britain to Syria to Egypt and North Africa.
That one additional god
would be whatever Roman emperor was in charge at that time. Failure to recognize Nero or Caligula or Trajan
or whoever as a god when called upon to do so would be seen as treason. And we all know what happens to traitors. Not every place in the Empire enforced those
laws all the time, but for two centuries they were a constant threat used whenever
local rulers wanted to assert their control or prove their loyalty to
Rome.
One comparison in our own
day would be to North Korea. A group
called Open Doors describes conditions there this way:
“If your Christian faith is discovered in North Korea,
you could be killed on the spot. If you aren't killed, you will be deported to
a labour camp and treated as a political criminal. You will be punished with
years of hard labour that few survive. And it's not only you who will be
punished: North Korean authorities are likely to round up your extended family
and punish them too, even if your family members aren't Christians. …
Recognising any deity beyond the Kim family is
considered a threat to the country's leadership. ‘Anti-reactionary thought
laws’ were enacted in December 2020. These made it even clearer that being a
Christian or owning a Bible is a serious crime and will be severely punished.”[2]
Consider the powerful message of Revelation to North
Korean Christians: Kim Jon-Ung is not a god.
His father was not a god. His
grandfather was not a god. His
successors will not be gods. He holds
power now, through his use of starvation and terror, but he will fall under the
more powerful judgement of the true God, who does not forget Kim’s victims and
their suffering.
Consider
the powerful message of Revelation for all the peoples of the earth, even our
own nation. Love your country but love
God more. Honor the laws of your nation
but honor God’s laws first. There are
good rulers and bad rulers, and they will do good ill to their people. But while rulers come and rulers go, the King
of kings remains, the Alpha and the Omega.
Revelation describes a
vision of the rule of that Lord of lords as an eternal and righteous kingdom ruled
not by the likes of Caesar or Genghis Khan or Pol Pot or even the less lethal but
still proud George III or Queen Victoria.
John
wrote what he heard and saw, and it would be far better.
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth,
for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no
more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of
heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard
a loud voice from the throne saying,
‘See, the home of God is among
mortals.
He will dwell with them;
they will be his peoples,
and God himself will be with them and be their God;
he will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.’”
[1] https://www.logos.com/grow/where-is-the-island-of-patmos-and-whats-it-like/?msockid=3cea78d49e6d6d323f9d6df69fdd6c4d
[2] https://www.opendoorsus.org/en-US/persecution/countries/north-korea/ This report is cited in official report on
religious freedom published by the U.S. State Department in 2022, found at https://www.state.gov/reports/2022-report-on-international-religious-freedom/north-korea/ .
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