apocalypse – Preterist Radio

John-Revelation Project – Part 06 – Bonus

The Days of Noah: The Eschatological Structure of Genesis

In a fascinating paragraph to his classic work, Schöpfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit,¹ Hermann Gunkel observed the fundamental interdependence between the beginning and ending of biblical history, a relationship regarding which he noted implicit reference in 2 Pet 3:6-7 (where eschatological judgment is described after the dimensions of the Noahic catastrophe), and explicit formulation both in Matt 24:37, “But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be;” and Barnabas 6:13, “Behold, I make the end like the beginning.”² Gunkel admitted his inability to discover the nature of the relationship between the biblical beginning and ending, though he postulated major theological significance to this relationship, stating his view that the New Testament speculation regarding predestination was in large part founded upon the comparison of first and last things.³

Claus Westermann marvelled in Anfang und Ende in der Bibel⁴ that Gunkel could leave a question of such significance unresolved, for its answer is fundamental to the very thesis of his book. Westermann noted further that Gunkel’s question has not yet been satisfactorily answered, though he likewise concluded that it remains of utmost theological import.

Gunkel’s failure to investigate further the inter-relationship of the biblical beginning and ending is consistent with a broader neglect of foundational studies in biblical protology, an omission which has hindered the successful construction of an eschatological scheme comprehending the entire scope of Scripture. It seems only reasonable, however, that any accurate formulation of biblical eschatology should be squarely based upon biblical protology, that the ending of history could only be comprehensible within the categories by which the be-ginning of history is described. Furthermore, should Genesis provide us with an overarching structure of historical direction we might reasonably expect to discern the inter-relationship of the biblical beginning and ending, and in so doing derive the theological insight which, though anticipated by Gunkel, nevertheless eluded him.

At first glance perhaps it appears paradoxical to suggest a telic or futurist theology undergirding Genesis, the book of origins and first things. Nevertheless the possibility of deriving an eschatological structure from Genesis follows from the fact that a comprehension of universal time is clearly within the self-consciousness of the book. This awareness of diachronology is suggested by the introductory “in the beginning” (berešit) of Gen 1:1, an expression which sets forth the beginning of history while implying a historical eventuation in an eschatological “ending of days” (‘aharit hayyamim),⁵ and required by the promise of perpetual seasons in Gen 8:22, “While the earth remains” (‘ōd kol-yemê ha’ares), a statement wherein the prophetic oracle foresees an eschatological terminus.⁶Moreover, the possibility of projecting such an eschatological structure beyond Genesis is suggested by the divine teleology presupposed in the creation narrative⁷ and consistently reaffirmed throughout Scripture.⁸ Genesis is, after all, the beginning of the revelation of the One who writes history from the Alpha to the Omega, who is the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End (Rev. 22:13).

While the chronicle of the origin of Israel is unquestionably primary to the design of Genesis, the beginnings of Israel’s national history are nevertheless embedded in a matrix of universal history, a broader context which affords a historiographical perspective to the author’s interpretation of Israel’s destiny.⁹ This introductory chronicle of universal history (Genesis 1-11), however, is constructed about a scheme by which the direction of the whole of history may be deduced and displayed.

The thesis of this paper is that the chronicle of prediluvian history (Genesis 1-7) is composed of five theologically fundamental narratives, each of which finds consecutive, synthetic parallel in the history (and prophecy) of the postdiluvian world. Consequently, by understanding the historical movement initiated in early Genesis, we may discern the relationship between the beginning and ending of biblical history.

The first of these theological narratives is the original creation of the world out of the waters of chaos, a story foundational to theology proper, and paralleled in postdiluvian history in the recreation of the world out of the waters of Noah. The second narrative is the commissioning of Adam, a record fundamental to anthropology, and paralleled in the new commission to Noah. The third narrative is the sin of Adam, a record finding hamartiological parallel in the sin of. Noah. The fourth parallel concerns the relationship between the descendents of Adam, namely, the Cainites of the wicked city of Enoch and the Yahweh worshipers in the family of Seth. This chronicle of redemptive import finds parallel in the postdiluvian juxtaposition of the descendents of Noah, namely, the inhabitants of the wicked city of Babel and the Yahweh worshipers in the family of Abraham. Finally, the fifth parallel narrative concerns the sons of God and the daughters of man whose miscegenation brings universal judgment upon the ancient world. This record has profound eschatological significance as it projects the expectations of apostasy and cosmic catastrophe upon the biblical understanding of postdiluvian history.¹⁰ The task of this study is to demonstrate that the record of postdiluvian history is stylized so as to be an essential reduplicative chronicle of antediluvian history.¹¹ Accordingly, the five narrative models isolated and identified in the thesis statement will be examined in turn and appeal will be made to the consecutive structural and literary correspondence of the postdiluvian to the prediluvian models. The literary correspondences marshalled to defend the thesis are structurally presented for it is to be observed that the five parallel narratives sustain a logical as well as a chronological consecution (i.e., God, man, sin, redemption and judgment).

It should be recognized that the primary goal of this survey is to articulate the thesis directively and not exhaustively. It is freely acknowledged that individual correspondences may be challenged while other parallels may be suggested. Nevertheless it is hoped that the aggregate of the evidence herein presented is sufficient to sustain the broader profile of the thesis.

Genesis 8: The New Creation

The ordering of the present heavens and earth out of the chaotic overthrow of the ancient world recorded in Genesis 8 parallels the original creation account of Genesis 1.¹² In both chapters the theological narrative moves from the display of divine work to the account of divine rest. In Genesis 8:1 God brings about a wind to pass over the waters of the flood which, like the waters of original chaos (Gen 1:2), cover the earth (Gen 7:18-19). The emergence of the dry land and the bringing forth of vegetation (Gen 1:12) find a mirror image in the olive leaf brought to Noah, which is taken as a token of the emergence of dry land (Gen 8:11). Noah’s sabbatical pattern in the sending of the dove¹³ suggests that God alone, who created the first world in six days, can deliver the earth from such a catastrophe. The sabbath rest of God at the conclusion of the original creation (“and He rested,” wayyišbot; Gen 2:2) finds correspondence in the sacrificial rest of God after the new creation is completed (“and the Lord smelled the aroma of rest,” reah hannihoah; Gen 8:21; cf. Exod 20:11 in which the rest of God on the seventh day of creation is described by the verb nuah). The literary correspondence between both accounts is readily evident through the extent and frequency of shared vocabulary: ruah, tehom, yom/laylah,yabeš/yabbašah, leminehu, šabat.¹⁴

Genesis 9: The New Adam

The divine commission and blessing bestowed upon Noah finds precise parallel in the record of Adam.¹⁵ The anthropologically fundamental doctrine of the divine image in man(selem) occurs in the Adam narrative as the basis of man’s identity and in the Noah narrative as the basis of man’s protection, being wholly unique in Genesis to the Adam and Noah stories (Gen 1:27; 5:1, 3; 9:6). Surely it also has anthoropological significance that man in his relationship to other animate life is a point central to both the Adam and Noah records.¹⁶ God brings the nepeš animals to Adam to be named. He brings them once again to Noah to be protected (cf. Gen 2:19; 7:15).¹⁷ Finally, the blessing of fruitfulness given to Adam and again to Noah virtually finds identical expression, signifying the fatherhood of Adam and Noah to the prediluvian and postdiluvian worlds respectively (cf. the isocolic parallels of Gen 9:2 and 1:28a: wayebarek ‘elohim ‘et-noah we’et-banayw wayyo’mer lahem peru urebu umil’u ‘et-ha’ares and wayebarek ‘otam ‘elohim wayyo’mer lahem ‘elohim peru urebu umil’u ‘et-ha’ares).

Genesis 9:20-27: The Fall Renewed

The structural and literary correspondence between the story of Noah’s sin and the record of Adam’s fall is striking.¹⁸ Noah’s transgression¹⁹ begins with a vineyard (Gen 9:20) while Adam’s sin is set in a garden (Gen 3:1). Noah drank of the fruit of the vine while Adam ate of the fruit of the tree (Gen 9:20; 3:2), both being acts of deliberate disobedience resulting in the sinner’s awareness of shameful nakedness (Gen 9:21; 3:7). While Noah’s nakedness was covered by his eldest sons (Gen 9:23), Adam’s nakedness was covered by God (Gen 3:32), and both the sin of Noah and the sin of Adam issued into a fearful curse and enduring division in their respective seed (Gen 9:25; 3:15). In both accounts the narrative moves from the sin of the father to the resulting blessing and cursing of the seed and finally to the genealogical development (Genesis 10 and 5). The authorial intention to relate the story of Noah’s sin to Adam’s fall is literarily evident in the word-play in Gen 9:20 (cf. ‘is ha’adamah with adam in Gen 2:7) and the parallel of Gen 9:24 (“Noah awoke,” i.e., by metonymy, his “eyes were opened,” cf. Gen 3:7a).

Genesis 11-12: Renewed Conflict of the Seed

The cursing and blessing of the Adamic seed in Gen 3:15 divide the ancient world into Cainites and Sethites, according to the thematic development of Genesis 4-5. Cain, condemned to wander in the earth, founds the wicked city of Enoch to the east of Eden (Gen 7:17), an antediluvian cosmopolis finding correspondence in postdiluvian history with the wicked city of Babel, on the east of the mountains of Ararat,²⁰ which Noah’s sons found to avoid wandering in the earth (Gen 11:2, 4). The godly line of Adam is represented in the line of Seth in their collective capacity as “calling upon the name of the Lord” (Gen 4:26). The structural correspondence in postdiluvian Genesis is unavoidably directed toward Abram, who with his family “calls upon the name of the Lord” (cf. the correspondence of Gen 12:8, wayyiqra’ besem YHWH with Genesis 4:26, ‘az huhal liqro’ besem YHWH). By this precise correspondence the conclusion is irresistible that the author would have us discern the identifying continuity of Israel’s patriarch with the godly Sethite comnunity of the ancient world.

This juxtaposition of Israel and the nations as reflective of the renewed conflict of the spiritual seed²¹ in postdiluvian history sets the broader context for understanding the Old Testament distinction between the elect nation and the heathen, later spiritualized as Zion and Babel. The character of the conflict between these seed had been the subject of the Cain and Abel story in Genesis 4, that is, the conflict is to the death (cf. again Gen 3:15), and it was the neglect of this principle in the intermarriage of the Sethites and the Cainites,²² thus bringing the entire race under the curse, that was the occasion of the overthrow of the antediluvian world.²³

The conflict between Zion and Babel becomes a major unifying theme throughout the entire postdiluvian scriptural record. The building of an earthly Babel by the postdiluvian faithless brings to mind the wicked city of Cain.²⁴ By contrast the hope of the heavenly city among the postdiluvian faithful brings to remembrance the heavenly expectation of Abel (cf. Heb 11:4, l3-l6).²⁵

Eschatological Expectation: The New Judgment

The task of this study was to demonstrate that the Genesis record of postdiluvian history is so constructed as to be an essential reduplicative chronicle of antediluvian history. Now this reduplication in Genesis carries through historically only to the fourth narrative (creation, man, sin, and the beginnings of renewed conflict of the seed), the conflict between Babel and Zion constituting the rest of the scriptural drama. But the implication of the pattern of historical presentation in Genesis requires the projection of general apostasy and cosmic judgment into postdiluvian prophecy to satisfy the pattern of parallel narratives.²⁶ Explicit confirmation of these expectations is found in the New Testament in Christ’s speaking specifically about the “days of Noah” reappearing upon the earth,²⁷ and the Apostle Peter writing of the Noahic deluge as an adumbration of the eschatological fiery catastrophe.²⁸ Just as the destruction of the ancient world ushered in the present heavens and earth, so the present world’will pass away before the new heavens and earth.²⁹

Conclusion

Moses writes simple stories in this book of beginnings, but they contain profound teaching. They tell of light and darkness, good and evil, of gardens and graves, life and death. In Genesis we are told of the sons of the serpent and the sons of God, of the children of darkness and the children of light. The unifying feature of all these particular stories is a structural comprehension revealing God’s ordination of the historical process. The historical setting was created by the divine Word. History is created by the divine Prophecy. Consequently, the inevitability of historical direction presupposed by the eschatological structure of Genesis serves as the overarching signature of divine sovereignty in the affairs of men.

Remember the former things long past, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things which have not been done; saying, “My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all my good pleasure.” Isaiah 46:9-10

The History of the World: The Macrocosm

The World That Was
Genesis 1 – Genesis 7 The World That Now Is Genesis 8 – Revelation 22 Creation The New Creation Waters of chaos cover the earth. Gen 1:1-2 Waters of Noah cover the earth. Gen 7:18-19 Spirit hovers upon face of the waters. Gen 1:2 Dove “hovers” upon face of the waters. Gen 8:9 Dry land emerges, vegetation brought forth.Gen 1:12 Olive leaf betokens the emergence of dry land. Gen 8:11 Old world finished, God rests. Gen 2:2 Present world finished; God receives sacrifice of rest. Gen 8:21 Adam Noah, the New Adam Man commissioned in God’s image. Gen 1:26 Man, recommissioned in God’s image. Gen 9:6 Man commanded to fill the earth. Gen 1:28 Man commanded to fill the earth again. Gen 9:7 God brings animals to Adam for naming.Gen 2:19 God brings animals to Noah for delivering.Gen 7:15 Fall The Fall Renewed Adam sins in a garden. Gen 3:2Noah sins in a vineyard. Gen 9:20Adam partakes in fruit of tree of knowledge.Gen 3:6Noah partakes of the fruit of the vine. Gen 9:20Adam shamefully naked. Gen 3:7Noah shamefully naked. Gen 9:21Adam’s nakedness covered by God. Gen 3:21Noah’s nakedness covered by sons. Gen 9:23Adam’s sin brings curse upon seed. Gen 3:15Noah’s sin brings curse upon seed. Gen 9:25 Conflict of Seed

Seed Conflict Renewed

Cain, condemned to wander, founds wicked city of Enoch. Gen 4:17Noah’s sons, to avoid wandering, found the wicked city of Babel. Gen 11:4 Seth, with son Enosh, begins to call upon the name of the Lord. Gen 4:26 Shem’s decedent Abram begins to call upon the name of the Lord. Gen 12:8 Daughters of men taken to wife by sons of God. Gen 6:2 The harlot Babel seduces the sons of Zion throughout the ages. Cf. Dan 1:1; Isa 47:1-15; Rev 17-18 Judgment The New Judgment Days of Noah are upon the earth. Gen 6:13“Days of Noah” are again upon the earth. Mt 24:37-39 God brings cloud upon earth to destroy the wicked with a flood. Gen 7:23 God comes in clouds to destroy the wicked with fire. Mt 24:30; II Pet 3:7 Old heavens and earth pass away before the present heavens and earth. II Pet 3:5-7 Present heavens and earth pass away before the new heavens and earth. II Pet 3:13

¹ H. Gunkel, Schöpfung und Chaos in Urzeit und Endzeit (Goettingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1895), 369.

² Matt. 24:37: hōsper gar hai hemerai tou Nōe, houtōs estai hē parousia tou huiou tou anthrōpou; Bar. 6:13: idou poiō ta eschata hōs ta prōta.

³ Gunkel, Schöpfung, 369.

⁴ C. Westerman, Anfang und Ende in der Bibel (Stuttgart: Calwer, 1969), 30.

⁵ W. Eichrodt, Theologie des Alten Testaments (2 vols.; Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1935), 2:2-3, 53.

⁶ C. Westermann, Schöpfung (Stuttgart: Kreuz-Verlag, 1971), 37.

⁷ Cf. Gen 1:31.

⁸ Cf. the worship formulation of Rev 4:11. The reasoning regarding teleology is often associated with the Genesis cosmology, e.g., Ps 104:31; Isa 43:18; John 1:13.

⁹ Mosaic authorship of Genesis is implied by Christ in John 7:21-22.

¹⁰ Cf. Deut 31:14-32:43; Matt 24:37; 2 Pet 3:6-7.

¹¹ The notion of Semitic parallelism as a literary form is a well-accepted point of Hebrew exegesis. The interrelationship of the creative Word and history in Hebrew theological thought is also generally acknowledged. If the creative Word, then, and history are so inextricably identified in ancient oriental thought, might we not be justified in distinguishing a parallelism of thought in Hebrew poetry? The scope of this question is relevant to the hermeneutic of Old Testament history as well as the understanding of New Testament typology; cf. the charts appended to this essay.

¹² Compare the synthesis of original creation and the Noahic recreation in the theology of the wisdom school in Ps 104:9; 74:12-17; Job 38:4-11; cf. also 2 Pet 3:5-7.

¹³ The origin of the dove as a symbol of the Spirit (cf. Matt 3:16) may be traceable to a synthesis of these creation accounts. Gen 1:2 describes the original earth in darkness and deep (both to be taken as tokens of evil as indicated by their absence in the perfected heavens and earth vision of Rev 21:1, 25.), the Spirit of God hovering upon the face of the waters (cf. The rahaph of the eagle in Deut 32:11). Noah sends forth first the raven (black and unclean) and then the dove (white and clean), the dove finding no rest upon the waters of wickedness, therefore “hoving” upon them.

¹⁴ One exegetical implication of the correspondence between the folood and creation is the deduction of the universal dimension of the flood in the authorial conception, contrary to the local or Mesopotamian theory finding common acceptance.

¹⁵ Cf. U. Cassuto, From Noah to Abraham (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1959), 124-29; Westerman, Schöpfung, 39-43.

¹⁶ Cf. Gen 6:20 with 1:25; Gen 1:26 with 9:2 and also the divine appointment of food for man in Gen 1:29 and 9:3.

¹⁷ The source critical attempt to distinguish the creation of the animals in Genesis 1 (attributed to P) from the seond account of animal creation in Genesis 2 (attributed to J) must explain the tidy synthesis of elements of both accounts in the Noahic record within the one recreative model. Here as elsewhere the identification of form patterns calls into question the validity of the source critical method.

¹⁸ Cf. Cassuto, From Noah to Abraham, 158-70, and Henry M. Morris, The Beginning of the World (Denver: Accent Books, 1977), 125-26.

¹⁹ The confusion in conservative commentaries is unwarranted. Noah did not discover viniculture, drinking in ignorance, being insensible to the properties of wine. Christ assured the disciples that before the flood the antediluvians were “eating and drinking” (Matt 24:38, cf. 11:19), and we may be sure that Noah both knew of wine and that his sin was deliberate.

²⁰ This interpretation assumes that the min of miqqedem has a directional force; cf. BDB, 578. Separating himself from Abraham, Lot also chose the wickedness of the east region(miqqedem) of the land (Gen 13:11).

²¹ The terms “Israel” and the “nations” are often used in Scripture in a spiritual sense apart from ethnic significance (cf. Ps 73:1; Matt 6:32; Rom 9:6-13; etc.). As such they represent the theological distinction between the sons of God and the sons of the serpent, a conception traceable to gen 3:15 (cf. Matt 3:7; 1 John 3:13).

²² The narratives in Genesis are rooted in th prophetic oracles, Gen 3:15 having establish the determinative enmity between these Adamic seed. The intermarriage of the sones of God wit the daughters of man is a further explication of the strategy of the serpent, revealed in the garden, to seduce the man (Adam) through the woman (Eve), a theologically fundamental principle in Genesis 1-7.

²³ This history perhaps explains Abraham’s extreme care and explicit instruction regarding the choice of a bride for his son Isaac (cf. Genesis 24; also Jacob in Genesis 28), and sets he theological background to the understanding of the serousness of intermarriage with non-covenant nations (cf. Samson, Solomon, returned exiles; also an echo in 1 cor 7:9).

²⁴ Cf. the cities of wickedness—Babel, Sodom, Pithom and Rameses, the cities of the Amorites, which like Babel, were “built up to heaven,” and the Jebusite city finally overcome by David. Cf. also the titanic struggle between Jerusalem and Babylon in the latter Old Testament prophets (Jeremiah 51; Isa 21:9; Dan 1:1; Zech 2:7; Mic 4:10; etc.) and in the New Testament (1 Pet 5:13; Rev 14:8; 17:5, 18).

²⁵ Cf. Moses’ anticipation of the heavenly city in Exod 15:17, the city of God in the Zion hymns (Ps 46, 48). Cf. also the Zion of the latter prophets Jeremiah, Isaiah, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Micah, Zepheniah, and Zechariah and the New Testament heavenly Jerusalem (Gal 4:26; Heb 12:22; Rev 21:2).

²⁶ That the eschatological projection is derived from the structure of Genesis may be displayed thusly: the prediluvian models a, b, c, d, and e correspond to postdiluvian Gensis models a’, b’, c’, and d’. The particular identification of e’ is implicit from an inductive study of Gensis as necessitating the elements of apostasy and cosmic judgment, points finding explicit statement outside Genesis in Matt 24:37 and 2 Pet 3:6-7. The New Testament confirms the structure of narrative parallels derived from the Genesis material (cf. also 2 Tim 3:105 and 2 Pet 3:1-7).

²⁷ It is interesting to note that the use of Enoch’s preaching of judgment to his generation is applied typologically to the wicked of this world by Jude (cf. also 1 Enoch 106 [fragment of the Book of Noah]).

²⁸ The “Song of Moses” in Deuteronomy 32 represents Pentateuchal expectations of apostasy and cosmic judgment, containing the lament over the spiritual harlotry of Israel which will bring a fiery overthrow of the earth (cf. especially vv 19-22). Note the eschatological judgment finds God taking his bow of wrath once again, with which he had figuratively destroyed the world of Noah (cf. Gen 9:12-16) and with which figuratively he will finally destroy the present world.

²⁹ It is the expectation of the everlasting eschaton of perfect righteousness (cf. 2 Pet 3:13, Revelation 21) wherein we find the fulfillment of the messianic blessings first aroused in Gen 3:15 (cf. Heb 11:16, that from Abel to Abraham the hope of the godly seed was ever in the heavenlies).

John-Revelation Project – Part 05

The Relationship of the Seven Churches (Rev 2:1-3:22) to
the Vision of the Whore and the Bride (Rev 17:1-22:6)

The chiastic structure we have observed in Revelation predicted the contextual relationship between the letters to the churches (addressed to the first septet of angels) and the vision of the whore Babylon and the bride Jerusalem (introduced through the last septet of angels). We have seen how prominently the vision of the exalted Christ in 19:11-16 figured into the inaugural vision of Jesus (1:12-20) and the letters to the seven churches (2:1-3:22). We will now compare the entire vision of the last seven angels to the letters to the seven churches.

The pattern of inclusions connecting the letters to the seven churches to the vision of the whore and the bride is striking and pervasive. We begin by comparing the seven promises given to “the one who overcomes,” that is, the one who resists temptation and endures suffering (2:7; 11; 17; 26-28; 3:5; 12; 21). As we will see, the promises all anticipate the privileges secured in the New Jerusalem, the bride of the Lamb.

The Bridal Destiny of the Seven Churches

The Lord of the seven churches encourages His faithful ones to purity and patient endurance by describing the hope that they have of participating in the New Jerusalem, the virginal and serene bridal city of the Lamb (21:2).¹ Consider the following chart that compares the promises given to the overcomers with their eschatological fulfillment:

Ephesus

2:7 “I will give to him to eat of the tree of life”

22:2 “in the midst of its (New Jerusalem’s) street – the tree of life”

Smyrna

2:11 “he shall not be hurt bythe second death”

20:6 “on these the second deathhas no power”

Pergamos

2:17 “I will give to him astone, and on the stone a new name written”

21:14,19 “the city has twelve foundations, and on them thenames of the twelve apostles…the foundation was of every preciousstone”

Thyatira

2:26-28 “I will give authorityover the nations, and hewill shepherd them with a rod of iron…I will givethe morning star”

19:15, 22:16 “He…strikes thenations…He Himself will shepherd them with a rod of iron…I am the bright morning star”

Sardis

3:5 “he will be clothed inwhite…his name in theBook of Life”

19:14; 20:12 “the armies in heaven …dressed in fine white linen…and another book was opened, theBook of Life”

Philadelphia

3:8,12 “I have set before you an open door that no one can shut…I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God…and the name…of Mycity of the New Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from God shall be on him”

21:2, 22 ,25”the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God…the Lord God Almighty is its temple, and the Lamb…and its gates shall not beshut”

Laodicea

3:21 “I will give him to sit with Me on My throne, and…on His throne”

22:3 “and the throne of God and the Lamb shall be in it (New Jerusalem)”

It should be noted that all the promises to the seven churches are precisely fulfilled in the New Jerusalem.² Consequently, John has carefully exploited the capacity of a chiastic structure to show promises and their fulfillment.

The effect of the chiastic interconnection is to set before the believers of the churches of Roman Asia the hope that is assured by their destiny as the chosen bride of the Lamb. Indeed, much that describes the seven churches, especially their zeal for purity (3:19), previews the bridal hope expressed at the conclusion of Revelation in the vision of the New Jerusalem.

But the seven letters are also filled with severe admonishment and the threat of terrible sanctions from the Lord.³ Jesus warns the churches about an immoral woman who dwells in their midst, one who leads the church into fornication (2:20). Further, He warns the church about a false prophet who seeks to deceive them (2:14). Moreover, Satan dwells among them (2:9 and 3:9). Each of the warnings stated in the seven letters to the churches has a chiastic correspondence in the vision of the last seven angels. The portrait that emerges when we match the warnings with their chiastic correspondence is generally less flattering than the bridal imagery:

The Seven Churches and the Whore

Ephesus

2:5 “Repent…but if not…I willremove your lampstand”

18:23 “And the light of a lamp shall not shine in you (Babylon)”

Smyrna

2:10-11 “the devil is about to throw some of you in prison… you will have tribulation ten days…be faithful until death, and I will give you acrown…you shall not be hurt by the second death”

20:2-7 “He laid hold of the deviland bound him for a thousand years…those who had beenbeheaded…lived and reigned with Christ…over such the second death has no power…Satan will be released from his prison”

Pergamos

2:13-14 “Antipas, My faithfulmartyr, who was killedamong you…you have there some holding the teaching ofBalaam so that they would…eat food sacrificed to idols”

17:6, 19:20 “the woman (Babylon) was drunk with the blood… of the

martyrs…the false prophet who had performed signs of deceit…to make them worship the beast”

Thyatira

2:20,22-23 “you permit thatwoman Jezebel…to deceive My servants into committingfornication and to eat things sacrificed to idols(abominations)…I am throwing into a bed those who commit adultery with her…I will give to each one according toyour works”

17:4, 18:6,9 “The woman(Babylon)…had a golden cup full ofabominations and the filthiness of her fornication…repay heraccording to her works…thosecommitting fornication with her”

Sardis

3:3 “Repent…(or) you will not know in what hour I will come upon you”

18:10 “Woe to you, the great city (Babylon)…for in one hour has your judgment come”

Philadelphia

3:9 “I will make them come (false Jews of Satan‘s synagogue) and know that I have loved you”

20:9 “They (Satan and those he deceives) went up…and surrounded the beloved city…andfire came down from heaven and God and devoured them”

Laodicea

3:17-18 “you say, ‘I am rich… and have need of nothing‘…you do not know that you are… naked…Buy from Me refined gold…andwhite garments”

17:4,16, 18:7 “the woman (Babylon) was arrayed in scarletand adorned with gold…(yet) these will …make her naked…in her heart she says, ‘I sit as a queen…I will not see sorrow’”

The first pattern that emerges from a comparison of the two charts is that the seven churches anticipate the bride, the New Jerusalem. In fact, two churches, Smyrna and Philadelphia, are not reproved at all. They are simply encouraged to persevere. But each of the other five churches has a feature or features that conform to the portrait of the whore Babylon. In fact, two churches, Thyatira and Laodicea, are in great moral jeopardy, their portrait striking for its similarity to the whore, while Ephesus, Pergamum, and Sardis are generally more composite in their association with both the bride and the whore.

The seven letters convey the message that the whoredoms of Babylon are not, at least primarily, an external threat. Contrary to the settled opinion among modern critical commentary on Revelation, John’s “Babylon” is not to be identified primarily with Rome and imperial persecution. Indeed, the choice between the two cities, which the Apocalypse presents, is fundamentally ethical. The intent is to promote repentance, and only secondarily is endurance in view.

We conclude by observing that the immoral woman and the false prophet are at work within the church, which establishes the need for the churches to repent.⁴ The dramatic portrait of the church as bride and whore is a fundamental conclusion drawn from the chiastic intertextuality between the letters to the seven churches and the vision of the seven last angels. It is this radical juxtaposition, set against the antithetical portraits of the alternative destinies of the bride and the whore, which characterizes Revelation as a hortatory address to the people of God. The jeopardy of partaking in the judgment of the whore rather than the wedding of the bride is the basis for the parenetic exhortation to believers.

¹ The eschatological banquet is clearly in mind. See Rev 3:20 and 19:7-9. See also Jan Fekkes, Isaiah and Prophetic Traditions in the Book of Revelation: Visionary Antecedents and their Developments (Sheffield, JSOT, 1994) 233.

² See Fiorenza, “The Eschatology and Composition of the Apocalypse,” CBQ 30 (1968) 537-69; reprinted in idem, The Book of Revelation: Justice and Judgment, 35-67; Rossing,The Choice Between Two Cities, 158.

³ See Beale, The Book of Revelation, 262. Warnings are not pronounced against Smyrna and Philadelphia, two faithful churches. However, both churches suffer from the “synagogue of Satan” in their midst (2:9 and 3:9) and their deliverance is anticipated in the judgment on Satan announced in Rev 20.

⁴ It is instructive that the description of Jesus addressing Thyatira, the fourth of the seven churches, is the One “whose eyes are like a flame of fire” (2:18). This description anticipates the depiction of Jesus as the fourth angel in the vision of the last seven angels, “His eyes were a flame of fire” (19:12). The intent of the metaphor of the “fiery eyes” is to present Jesus as the divine Judge, the One can see through all deceit and who will visit righteous judgment, even on the community of faith. See Beale, The Book of Revelation, 951. In the context of a call to repentance, the fiery eyes may also suggest the possibility of purgation under the gaze of the holiness of the Son of God.

John-Revelation Project – Part 04

Biblical Typology: A Neglected Key to John’s Revelation?

Introduction

Like an elaborately detailed oriental tapestry, John’s Gospel and Revelation are intricately interwoven to present a composite picture, epic in scope and immortal in theme. Elaborate patterns portray the marvel and mystery of the heavenly Son of God who leaves the riches of His Father’s court in quest of an earthly bride and a heavenly kingdom. The Gospel opens with the Spirit descending out of heaven like a dove upon the Son of Man. Revelation ends with the bride of Christ descending out of heaven, made ready for her Groom, and adorned in all the graces of the Spirit.

Together these books celebrate a love that spans time and eternity. We begin with the love of the Father for His Son before the foundation of the world. We survey all the ages, coming at last to the victorious wedding supper of the Lamb and the love of the bride for her Husband at the beginning of eternity future. The Gospel of the Bridegroom begins in a wilderness, but the bride of Revelation is brought at last to a pleasant garden. The darkness that struggled to overcome the Light has now been banished forever. Eternal dawn shines forth, unobscured, clear, and golden. The stones gathered of old by the banks of the Jordan are seen in this Light, by the banks of the river of crystal, to have been built into a vast city of glittering gems. And the bride is lovely in this Light. She is made ready for her Groom arrayed in the finest linen of heaven, white and pure. But as we admire her beauty, we remember that she can be dressed in white only because her Groom’s robe was dyed in deepest red.²

John the Beloved weaves together his two great books using elaborate parallel, chiastic, and typological patterns.³ The two great works thus interpret and complete one another. Taken together, the Fourth Gospel and Revelation constitute a literary diptych, a picture whose temporal framework spans the beginning of the first creation (John 1:1), all the way to the vision of the new creation at the beginning of eternity future (Rev 21:1). Moreover, the two books of John offer a spatial horizon depicting the creative struggle of Jesus both from the perspective of earth (John) and of heaven (Revelation). Upon this wholly comprehensive canvas, John depicts Jesus’ epic struggle as the typological fulfillment of all of the major figures in the OT.

Jesus as the New Joshua
in the Gospel and in the Revelation

The Fourth Gospel’s Joshua typology largely tracks the account of the conquest of Canaan, beginning with the crossing of the Jordan and depicting two campaigns, one in the south (Judea) and one in the north (Galilee). The climactic battle involves the struggle of Jesus as the True Joshua against the confederated enemies of God, led by Jerusalem. This epic struggle occurs, from one perspective, on earth, depicted in the Gospel of John. Revelation portrays the same struggle from the perspective of heaven.⁴ In fact, Revelation offers a mimetic portrayal of the heavenly significance of Christ’s earthly ministry in conflict with the Old Jerusalem, the history described for us in the Fourth Gospel.

We begin our discussion of the typological patterns connecting the Book of Joshua and the Book of Revelation by recounting the warfare of Joshua as recorded in the OT. We will then consider the restatement of that conflict in the Apocalypse. In order to show the pattern of verbal concordance between the books of Joshua and Revelation, we will use bold type to identify significant words that share the same Greek root in the LXX and in the Greek NT.⁵ Words that are related thematically, but not lexically, will be shown in italic type. The reader should observe the striking pattern of details and the thorough comprehensiveness of these correspondence patterns between the two books.

Joshua’s Battle Against Jericho:

The Story of a Whore Who Becomes a Bride

The name of the great city ”Jericho” brings to mind the greatest single battle recorded in the Old Testament. After crossing the Jordan and entering the land of promise, Joshuaand all Israel camped in Gilgal.⁶ Joshua erected twelve stones taken from the riverbed as a memorial to represent the twelve tribes of Israel who crossed the river in safety. The Jordan crossing reminded the Israelites of their fathers, those who crossed the Red Sea after they were delivered from pharaoh, whereupon they sang the song of Moses(Exod 15:1-19, Josh 4:19-24).

But the great city Jericho was walled up to heaven (Deut 9:1), defying Joshua and the armies of Israel. This impassable city represented the decisive struggle of the people of God against the nations of Canaan. In order to inherit the paradisiacal land flowing with milk and honey, and to receive their inheritance by their tribes (Josh 18:3-10), as promised in the book of seven parts (18:9), Israel would have to destroy Jericho. But what was this inviolable city to Joshua, who could command the sun and the moon to cease in their courses that the day of slaughter might not end (10:12-14), and whose God could rain giant hailstones from heaven upon the armies of the Canaanite kings (10:11)?

This fortress city of Jericho, in the plain of the Jordan, was filled with great wealth. Her treasures included silver and gold, articles of bronze and iron (6:19), linen (2:6), andscarlet (2:18). Jericho evidently sustained a commercial relationship with Shinar. Among her many treasures was the beautiful Babylonian garment⁷ that was to prove so tempting to Achan (7:21). Jericho was an impregnable fortress town, whose fall before Joshuawould cause the kings of Canaan to fear the God of the armies of Israel (9:1-3, 24; 10:1-4).

Joshua initiated the conquest of Jericho by sending two spies to view the land and the city (2:1). But the presence of the spies was reported to the king of Jericho, who sought to kill them (2:2, 14). Attempting to escape the king, the spies turned into the house of Rahab, a whore of Jericho identified by her scarlet cord (2:18), whose house was evidently open to strangers (2:1). Rahab protected the spies, whom she could havedelivered over to death (2:14).

The battle of Jericho began with Joshua‘s unexpected vision of a divine Man. Having sanctified all Israel from uncleanness caused by their neglect of covenant circumcision,Joshua was contemplating holy war against Jericho (5:1-12). As he lifted up his eyes, he saw a divine Man standing with His sword drawn for battle. Joshua fell before the Manand was told to remove his sandals from his feet (5:14-15).

The battle began as Joshua directed the campaign against Jericho. He commanded the people to circle the city once a day for seven days and seven times upon the seventhday (6:3-4).⁸ On the seventh day, Joshua arose early in the morning (6:12). He caused the priests carrying the ark of the covenant to sound seven trumpets of judgment before the city. Then he commanded all the people to shout out against her (6:8,20). Suddenly the walls of the wicked city fell (6:20). All those who remained in Jericho were put to the sword, and the city was burned with fire (6:21,24).

But Rahab the whore was delivered along with all her house. She came out of the city in safety because she had obeyed the word of the two spies (6:25). According to Matthew, Rahab became the bride of Salmon, who was of the royal tribe of Judah. Through this marriage the Gentile whore of Jericho became an ancestress of Jesus the Messiah, the True Joshua (Matt 1:5-16)!

Jesus’ Battle Against Babylon in Revelation:

The Story of the True Joshua, and
a Whore Who Becomes a Bride

The name of the great city ”Babylon” brings to mind the greatest battle depicted in the New Testament. The sins of Great Babylon reached up to heaven (Rev 18:5), an affront to the God of all the earth. This mighty city represented the decisive struggle of the LordJesus against the unrepentant of earth. Babylon must be destroyed for the people of Godto inherit the paradise of God (21:1-5), and receive their distribution by their tribes (21:12), as the fulfillment of the book of seven seals (5:1). But what is this great city to Jesus, the True Joshua, whose own light causes the sun and the moon to cease (21:23), and whose God will rain great hailstones from heaven down upon Babylon (16:19-21)?

Babylon was a city filled with great wealth. Her treasures included gold and silver, bronze, iron, linen, and scarlet (18:12-13). In the city lived a woman arrayed in an alluring Babylonian garment of scarlet and purple (17:4).⁹ The fall of this great city before Jesus would cause the kings of the earth to fear and mourn (18:9-10).¹⁰

Now the Lord sent two witnesses into the wicked city (11:3-12), but the nations sought to kill them (11:7). Nevertheless, they were delivered from death in the sight of their enemies (11:12). Dwelling in the great city was a whore identified by her scarlet (17:3-5), who committed fornication with the kings of the earth (18:3). The whore had the power of death over the saints of God (17:6).

Jesus‘ battle against Babylon began with John the Apostle’s unexpected vision of a divineMan (1:12-19). The True Joshua appeared with a sword proceeding out of His mouth (1:16). He commanded John to write seven letters to His churches, calling them to purity for holy war (2:1-3:22). John fell before the feet of the Man as though dead (1:17).

The battle began and Jesus directed the campaign against Babylon. He opened the book of seven seals (5:1), the seventh seal becoming seven trumpets of judgment (8:1-2). As the seventh trumpet sounded (11:15), the ark of the covenant appeared in heaven (11:19), and there were loud voices in heaven crying out, “The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ!” (11:15). In one hour Great Babylon, the wicked city fell (18:2). All the city was burned with fire (18:8).

But a voice had cried out before Babylon, “Come out of her my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you partake of her plagues.” (18:4).¹¹ And so some of those who had belonged to the whorish city were delivered from death, even those who had obeyed the word of the two witnesses.

And all of those who were delivered from their fornications and adultery became a part of the city of the true Israel of God, the New Jerusalem, the bride of the Royal Lion of Judah,Yeshua, the True Joshua (21:2). And to memorialize their safe passage to the paradise of their inheritance, Jesus gave them a city of twelve precious stones by the river of crystal waters, even to all of those who had been delivered from the beast and had come safely across the sea of glass, all who sang the Song of Moses nd the Lamb (15:1-4).

Conclusion

This glorious message of hope for those so desperately lost is the heart of the teaching of the Son of God. It is the crux of His gospel message. The Lord Jesus has come to this world’s Jerichos to rescue His Rahabs and to deliver His Zacchaeuses, all those harlots and publicans who, like their predecessors who sought the repentance of John the Baptist (Matt 21:31-32), would dare to imagine that the love of a holy God could reach down far enough to deliver them.

The True Joshua requires a new army to fill His pulpits with those who will once again learn to be strong and very courageous (Josh 1:7), an army of poets and songwriters who will sound again the gospel’s silver trumpets before the walls of this world’s Jerichos—trumpets announcing a terrible judgment to the unrepentant, but trumpets sounding a wonderful jubilee to all those who, like Rahab, will forsake their sins.

We need a new army. An army of those with strong imaginations. Imaginations courageous enough in the knowledge of the free grace of God to believe that a whore from Babylon could in truth become the bride of Christ. Imaginations that hear so scandalous a message and can believe it is not blasphemy. Imaginations that can envision the depths of their own sin, and so recognize that this scandalous message is the gospel’s very truth.

We need a new sword for the battle. A sword of the Word, awakened from dogmatic slumbers and fashioned in the fiery foundry of metaphor. Just like Milton, who knew that the power of poetry would prove at last to be more compelling than all the armies of Cromwell, we need a new and more poetic restatement of these ancient truths. We need a new sounding of the old gospel of Paul and the apostles, faithfully transmitted through Augustinian Catholicism and Reformed Calvinism—under no illusions about either the nature of man or the power of God in the gospel.

We must, however, sound a more certain sound upon the trumpets of truth. A more biblical sound. We should present the gospel in its native dress—a bridal dress, in the metaphor of an eastern wedding. Our tale is the story of a heavenly romance. It tells of a love that begins in the heart of Father God, who unconditionally chose a bride in grace, one who would be suitable for His beloved Son. It is a drama about a bride whose unfaithfulness made her totally unfit and utterly unworthy of that Son. It speaks of the steadfast love of the Son, who nonetheless paid a great dowry price for her in confidence that she would return His love. It tells of the Spirit, whose love irresistibly wooed the betrothed back to a pure love for the Son. And it promises the hope of a heavenly and everlasting love, a faith that enables Jesus’ betrothed to persevere unto the glorious day of her redemption, when she will descend from heaven as a bride, having made herself ready for the Prince of Glory. I

¹ This document is excerpted from a syllabus entitled “An Introduction to Biblical Typology,” prepared for a forthcoming course to be offered at Knox Theological Seminary.

² The classical genre of Revelation’s climactic vision, describing the triumph of good over evil in the context of a divine wedding procession (komos), is comedy. Cf. Aristotle,Poetica 1449a; see Daniel Russ, “The Bible as Genesis of Comedy,” in The Terrain of Comedy, ed. Louise Cowan (Dallas: Pegasus, 1984) 59. The quarrel among modern commentators on Revelation regarding the character of apocalyptic genre has generally not led to helpful textual analysis. Cf. F.D. Mazzaferri, The Genre of the Book of Revelation from a Source-Critical Perspective BZNW 54 (New York: de Gruyter, 1989) 60-75, 160-84. The categories of Babylon the damned and Jerusalem the blessed, which largely reflect apocalyptic analysis, neglect the tension represented by Ps 87:1-4, where Babylon, the archetypical evil city, is promised salvific blessing, and Ezek 16 and 23, where the prophet excoriates Jerusalem for her whoredoms. The general absence of the comedic imagination in theological commentary, especially expressed in failing to appreciate the transformative nature of love (see Hos 1:2; cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses) and the purgatorial character of comedy (see Ezek 16:60-63, Dante’s Purgatorio from the Commedia, and “Dante’s Letter to Can Grande,” Essays on Dante, ed. Mark Musa, trans. Nancy Howe Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1964 34-47), has led, as we shall argue, to an underestimation of the full range of literary possibilities represented by the Babylonian whore in Revelation. We would encourage biblical expositors to a consideration of the redemptive potential of the “fallen woman” represented most imaginatively in the western literary tradition by Dante, Cervantes, Hawthorne, and Dostoyevsky. Strikingly, theological commentary largely disregards this redemptive possibility in spite of the fact that the rescue of the immoral woman is also a significant theme in both Johannine and Biblical theology. See the account of the Samaritan woman (John 4:4-42), the woman caught in adultery (John 8:2-11), and the story of Mary Magdalene (John 20:11-18, cf. Luke 8:2). See also Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Casta Meretrix,” Explorations in Theology, vol. II Spouse of the Word, trans. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991) 193-288, Jean Daniélou, “Rahab a Type of the Church,” From Shadows to Reality: Studies in the Typology of the Fathers, trans. Dom Wulstan Hibberd (London: Burns and Oates, 1960) 244-60, J.M. Vogelgesang, “The Interpretation of Ezekiel in the Book of Revelation.” (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1985) 98-112, and Raymond C. Ortland, Jr.,Whoredom: God’s Unfaithful Wife in Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996).

³ We have developed this thesis in W. A. Gage, “St John’s Vision of the Heavenly City” (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Dallas, 2001).

⁴ The Joshua typology between the two books of John is developed primarily within the parallel pattern of correspondence sustained between the books.

⁵ The logical and chronological patterns support the analogical and typological interrelationship between the two Johannine books. The more elaborate the patterns, the more convincing is the typology. Each of these methods of analysis: logical, chronological, analogical, and typological, as the several hypostases of the Logos, contribute to the method of exegesis presented in this paper. We will give considerable attention to the method of typological exegesis in due course.

⁶ Gilgal is the place of Joshua’s renewal of the covenant for Israel. It is the camp where Joshua circumcised the people, fulfilling the requirements of the Abrahamic covenant, and where he reinstituted the observance of Passover, the neglected feast of the Mosaic covenant. Gilgal is derived from the verb gālal, which means “to roll,” for it was here that the Lord “rolled away” the reproach of the people from their neglect of the law of Moses. We note a further symbolic use of “gālal” in the victory ceremony at Makkedah, where Joshua commanded large stones to be rolled against the grave of the Canaanite kings, memorializing their “reproach” (10:18). In the NT the True Joshua rolls away the reproach of the people of God at “Golgotha” (also derived from gālal). Moreover, the True Joshua reinstitues the covenant for the people of God by fulfilling on our behalf all the righteous commandments of the law, by giving us a circumcision not made by hands with a flint knife, and by rolling away the stone that sealed our grave.

⁷ The coat coveted by Achan was from “Shinar,” the Semitic name for the land the Greeks called Mesopotamia (the land between the rivers). The eastern cities of Babel, Erech, and Accad were in Shinar (Gen 10:10). The text suggests that Jericho had a commercial relationship with Babel in the east. The AV thus rendered the word Shinar in this context with “Babylonian.”

⁸ The pattern of telescopic heptads in Joshua, that is, seven trumpets sounding upon the seventh march of the seventh day, sets the pattern in Revelation for the seven bowls poured out upon the sounding of the seventh trumpet, the trumpets being the seventh seal.

⁹ There are clues to the identity of the Babylonian whore woven within the Johannine material according to the parallel and chiastic patterning that tie the two books, the Fourth Gospel and Revelation, together. The Great Whore of Revelation, who drinks her cup of loathsomeness and is arrayed in scarlet (Rev 17:4), is a mockery of a queen (Rev 18:7) now that her great hour of judgment and death has come (Rev 18:10). Parallel to the Great Whore of Revelation is the blessed Lord Jesus of John’s Gospel, who in His suffering for us drank the loathsome cup (John 18:11), was arrayed in scarlet (John 19:2), had Hiskingdom mocked (John 19:3), and suffered death when the great hour of judgmenthadcome (John 17:1). John justly charges the Great Whore with blasphemy (Rev 17:3) and fornication (Rev 17:4-5). Bearing her reproach, the precious Lord Jesus suffered the calumnious charges of blasphemy (John 10:33) and fornication (John 8:41). Clearly, John is telling us that the Lord Jesus took the reproach of the whore of Revelation upon Himself. For anyone who has a reformed doctrine of particular redemption, the identity of the whore should become immediately apparent.

Moreover, the chiastic pattern of correspondence between the Gospel of John and Revelation also provides a clue to the identity of the whore. For Lady Babylon, who thirsts although she sits upon the waters (17:1,4,6), has a relationship with seven kings, of whomfive have fallen, one is, and the other has not yet come (17:10). And when John recognized her, he marveled (17:6). Chiastically, the whore of Babylon corresponds in the Gospel account to the Samaritan woman, who in her thirst came to Jesus, sitting upon the well (John 4:6-7). The Samaritan woman likewise has a relationship with seven men. Jesus says to her, “You havehad five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband” (4:18). And when the disciples and John saw her, they marveled (4:27).

Surely the identity of the Great Whore should cause us to marvel as well. For the OT type of the whore of Babylon is none other than Rahab, the whore of Jericho and a type of the church. If we conclude from this evidence that the whore of Babylon will become the bride of Christ, then there could not be a more graphic emblem of the biblical truth of the reformed soteriology of sola gratia. On the other hand, this vindication of reformed soteriology against Rome is at the price of falsifying the unilateral and most common historical identification of the whore of Revelation within Protestant circles, which, consequently, becomes five full centuries of slander.

¹⁰ St Gregory of Elvira (AD 396) made explicit the typological identification of Joshua’s destruction of Jericho with John’s account of the judgment of Great Babylon in Revelation. The pattern that would suggest the redemption of the whore of Babylon as a new Rahab is clearly present in this fourth century witness from Spain. While the editio princeps was not available to us, a translation of the relevant passage occurs in Daniélou’s From Shadows to Reality. The following quotation is from page 257: “Just as the Church made up of many nations is called a harlot, so, as a type of the Church, we see Rahab welcoming the Saints. The fall of Jericho prefigures those last days when the destruction of this world will be brought about and the seven plagues through the seven trumpets or the seven angelic vials will strike the human race together with Antichrist. Then no one will be saved except those shut up in Rahab’s house, that is, the Church.”

¹¹ The identification of the whore of Babylon as the antitype of Rahab, and thus a type of the church, does not lead to a salvific universalism. Rahab was surely not the only whore in Jericho, and certainly all the wicked, who did not “come out” of the city, perished. The command in Revelation for the people of God to “come out” of Babylon (18:4) is the invitation to participate in Rahab’s repentance. For all of those who remain, their whorish city will be utterly destroyed (18:6-24).

John-Revelation Project – Part 03

The Vision Promised to Nathanael (John1:51)

The Seven Last Angels of the Apocalypse (Rev 17:1- 22:6)

Our Lord’s promise to Nathanael¹ that he should see the great vision described in John 1:51 is part of an elaborate Jacobite typology. Nathanael, the “Israelite” unlike Jacob (i.e. one who is “guileless”), is promised that he shall see a climactic vision² that recalls the Bethel vision granted to Jacob in his dream recorded in Genesis 28:10-22. The vision will be recognized, we are told, when he 1) “sees heaven opened,” 2) and the “angels of God ascending and descending,” 3) upon the Son of Man (John 1:51).

The Climactic Vision of Revelation

This study focuses on the climactic vision of the Apocalypse. The vision opens with a lurid depiction of human depravity in the portrait of the abominable whore, Babylon the Great. It concludes with a beautiful expression of all the hopes of the redeemed in the vision of the virginal bride, the New Jerusalem. The center of the vision consists of a glorious depiction of the exalted Christ, seated on a white horse of victory. With its vivid contrasts of Babylon and Jerusalem, whore and bride, and beast and Lamb, no passage in the Bible portrays more clearly both the desperation and the aspiration of all mankind.

In our attempt to understand the vision of this most allusive and elusive of books, we will appeal to the conventional literary controls of structure and pattern. We begin by observing the structure of the vision itself, a literary architecture defined by references to seven angels carrying seven bowls filled with the seven last plagues. The first and most salient observation is the correspondences between 17:1-3,8 and 21:9-10, the introductions of the first and the last angels in the series of seven angels introduced in 16:1. The following boxes compare the text introducing the first (17:1) and the last (21:9) angels in the vision.³

17:1-3,8 “Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls spoke with me, saying, ‘Come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot…and he led me away in the Spirit into the wilderness…’ The angel speaks of the beast “ascending.”

21:9-10 “Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues spoke with me, saying, ‘Come and I will show you the bride, the Lamb’s wife.’ And he led me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain…” The angel shows the holy city “descending.”

In his excellent study on the Book of Revelation, Richard Bauckham notes the “clearly parallel openings” of the two angels, claiming that they “are so clear that it is astonishing that so many attempts to discern the structure of Revelation have ignored them.”⁴Bauckham further observes that several thematic correspondences between the two angels circumscribe the material between them, bracketing a single section of the book. He notes that the two angels deal respectively with Babylon and Jerusalem, the two cities that John depicts under the figure of two women. Bauckham continues, “In 17:1-19:10 he (John) sees the harlot Babylon and her fall; in 21:9-22:9 he sees the bride of the Lamb, the New Jerusalem, which comes down from heaven. Together these two sections form the climax towards which the whole book has aimed: the destruction of Babylon and her replacement by the New Jerusalem.”⁵

There are, in fact, a number of contrasting parallels between the visions of Lady Babylon and Lady Zion that secure the observation that the visions interpret one another.⁶

The following chart lists several of these contrasts between Babylon and Jerusalem:

17:1 ” I will show you the judgment of the great harlot.”

22:15 “outside are…fornicators.”

17:1 “the great harlot sitting on many waters.”

22:1 “and he showed me a river of the water of life.”

17:3 “And I saw a woman…being filled withnames of blasphemy.”

21:12,14 “And her gates were inscribed with the names of twelve tribes…and the city had twelve foundations, and on them the twelve names of the apostles.”

17:4 “And the woman was clothed in…gold and precious stones and pearls.”

21:11,18,21 “and she had… a radiance like a precious stone…and the city was of gold…and her gates were twelve pearls.”

17:5 “And on her foreheada name was written”

22:4 “And His name shall be on their foreheads”

17:5 “Babylon… mother of…the abominations of the earth.”

21:27 “But there shall by no means enter…an abomination.”

17:8 “And those who dwell on the earth will marvel, those whose names are not written in the Book of Life.”

21:27 “But only those (may enter) who are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.”

Bauckham noted the inclusive correspondences between the first and the last angels of the last vision. But inclusio patterns often alert the reader to chiastic correspondence as well.⁷ Nils Lund has undertaken an elaborate comparison of the angels in a study that arranges them in a chiastic pattern.⁸ According to Lund’s arrangement, the first angel corresponds to the seventh, as Bauckham also observes. But Lund likewise corresponds the second to the sixth, and the third to the fifth angels, with the vision of Christ in heaven taking the central place of the fourth “angel.”⁹

Our own study substantiates this chiastic correspondence through the observation that John arranges the angels according to a spatial pattern that conforms to the chiastic pattern. The first and seventh angels are stationed upon the earth (“in a wilderness”, 17:3 and “upon a mountain”, 21:10). The second and the sixth angels descend to midheaven (“descending from heaven” in 18:1 and 20:1), and the third and fifth occupy a place in heaven (“throwing a millstone into the sea,” 18:21 and “standing in the sun,” 19:17).¹⁰ The central scene of the fourth “angel” is the vision of Christ in heaven (19:11). The spatial location markers accompanying the seven angels suggest an elaborate ecphrasis depicting a stairway reaching from earth to heaven, with the vision of Christ at the top of the stairway, described by the Seer as he beheld “the heaven opened” (19:11).

The base of the stairway was indicated by the first and seventh angels. If we “ascend the stairway” with John, we may compare the second and the sixth angels in the vision, both deployed for battle in midheaven (18:1 and 20:1).

18:1-3 “After these things I saw another angel descending from heaven, having great authority.” Fallen Babylon is made a “dwelling place for demons and a prison for every unclean spirit…because all the nations have drunk the wine of her wrath.”

20:1-3 “And I saw an angel descending from heaven having the key of the abyss and a great chain…the devil…(is)bound…and thrown into the abyss, and locked in…so that he should not deceivethe nations.”¹¹

John describes both the second and the sixth angels as “descending” from heaven. The second has “great authority,” and the sixth has a “great chain” and a “key,” the symbols of authority. Just as we observed with the first and last angels, the second and the sixth angels in the series execute comparable missions of judgment. Each acts by incarcerating evil spirits in order to restrain the deception of the nations (figuratively, their “intoxication”). Further correspondences are set forth in the following chart:

18:4 The people of God,who did not participate inBabylon‘s sin, are called out of the city devoted to double judgment.

20:4 The people of God, who did not receive the mark of the beast, are delivered from the second death.

18:7 Babylon is taunted because she “sits as a queen.”

20:6 The people of God will “reign” with Jesus.

18:8 Babylon will be “devoured with fire.”

20:9 The wicked surround Jerusalem, but are “devoured with fire.”

18:10 The kings of the earth stand afar from Babylon’s “torment.”

20:10 The devil, beast and false prophet are “tormented.”

18:11 The merchants of the earth will “weep andmourn” for Babylon.

21:4 And “He shall wipe away every tear…and there shall be no more mourning” in Jerusalem.

If we “ascend the stairway” with John once again, we move from the second and sixth angels in the midheaven to the third and the fifth angels, who are situated in heaven on either side of the central vision of the exalted Lord Christ (19:11).

18:21 “And one mighty angel took up a stone like agreat millstone and hurled itinto the sea, saying, ‘Thus with violence shall Babylonthe great city be hurled down…’”¹²

19:17-18,20 “And I saw one angel standing in the sun,” who speaks in a “great” voice of judgment upon “mighty” men. “And the beast and the false prophetwere hurled down into the lake of fire”

In the last pairing of angels, the adjective “one” introduces each angel and each is associated with natural imagery, the sea or the sun. Moreover, one angel is described as “mighty,” and the other speaks a taunt against “mighty” men. The metaphoric hurling of the millstone into the sea by the third angel foreshadows the hurling of the beast and the false prophet into the lake of fire under the authority of the fifth angel. Just as we have observed with the first two pair of angels, this third pair of angels shares a further correspondence in their missions of judgment:

18:23 “for by your (Babylon’s) sorcery all the nations were deceived.”

19:20 “the false prophet who worked signs by which he deceived those who received the mark.”

As we pass the third and the fifth angels, we have “ascended” to the highest stage of John’s stairway connecting earth to heaven. The Seer now describes a truly remarkable vision. Consider the central apex of the grand vision spanning Rev 17:1-22:6:

19:11, 13, 16 “Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And he who sat on it was called Faithful andTrue, and in righteousness He judges and makes war…and His name is called The Word of God…and on His thigh He has a name written, ‘King of Kings and Lord of Lords.’”

At the summit of the stairway set on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, John beholds the Lord astride a white horse and dressed in battle array at the head of the heavenly army. The full description of the Lord Jesus is so central to the vision we are considering that we will discuss it in detail.¹³ Before we proceed, however, we should step back from the detail of the text and observe the structure of the vision as a whole. The following diagram displays the pyramidal or “stairway” structure of John’s climactic vision in Revelation 17:1-22:6.

John’s Great Vision of the Seven Last Angels (Rev 17:1-22:6)

19:11, 16 “Now I saw heaven opened; and behold, a white horse, and He who sat upon it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war…and on His thigh He has a name written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords” 18:21 “And one mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying, ‘Thus with violence shall Babylon the great city be hurled down…’ 19:17-18, 20 “And I saw one angel standing in the sun” who speaks in a “great” voice of judgment upon “mighty” men. “And the beast and the false prophet were hurled down into the lake of fire. 18:1-3 “After these things I saw another angel descending from heaven, having great authority” Fallen Babylon is made a “dwelling place for demons and a prison for every unclean spirit…because all the nations have drunk the wine of her wrath.” 20:1-3 “And I saw an angel descending from heaven having the key of the abyss and a great chain…the devil…(is) bound…and thrown into the abyss, and locked in…so that he should not deceive the nations.” 17:1-3, 8 “Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls spoke with me, saying, ‘Come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot…and he led me away in the Spirit into the wilderness…’” The angel speaks of the beast “ascending 21:9-10 “Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues spoke with me, saying, ‘Come and I will show you the bride, the Lamb’s wife.’ And he led me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain…” The angel shows the holy city “descending.”

¹ The promise is actually broader in compass than the one disciple named Nathanael, a fact indicated by the plural pronoun in the phrase “you shall see” (John 1:51). As we shall argue, the vision is actually “seen” by John on Patmos.

² The Greek word for “ladder” in the LXX account of Bethel is “climax.” A “ladder” metaphor is thus a remarkable chiastic response to the promise to Nathanael at the opening of the Gospel for the concluding ecphrastic vision of Revelation.

³ This study will provide an English translation for the Greek NT in all charting. Words that contain the same Greek root will be presented in bold text. Words that are not derived from the same Greek root but that appear to be related thematically will be presented in italic text.

⁴ The Climax of Prophecy: Studies on the Book of Revelation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993) 4.

⁵ Ibid. 4-5

⁶ See G.K. Beale, The Book of Revelation: A Commentary on the Greek TextNIGTC(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999) 1117-21.

⁷ See John Breck, The Shape of Biblical Language: Chiasmus in the Scriptures and Beyond (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1994) 335.

⁸ Lund’s work first suggested the chiastic structure of the angels of this vision to the author. Lund’s otherwise interesting study is seriously marred, however, by his occasional transposition of the text, without any manuscriptural warrant, in order to satisfy his chiastic arrangement. See Lund, Studies in the Book of Revelation, 182. His chiastic arrangement of these seven angels, however, is confirmed by this analysis.

⁹ Ibid. 177-178.

¹⁰ There is a further clue to the position of the fifth angel, who is described as “standing in the sun” (R 19:17). The angel calls out to the fowl in the “midheaven” (R 19:17). Clearly John’s vision has heaven (R 19:11), midheaven (R 19:17) and the earth in view (R 17:3 and 21:10). This tripartite understanding of the cosmos recalls the Genesis creation account. The sun was created in “the expanse of the heaven” (1:14) and the fowl were placed in midheaven, “above the earth in the expanse of the heaven” (1:20).

¹¹ Satan is retained in “prison” (R 20:7), the same word as the “prison” of the unclean of Babylon (R 18:2).

¹² The figure of a millstone being cast into the sea as a metaphor for severe and inescapable judgment is familiar from Matt 18:6 and Luke 17:2.

¹³ We have suggested that this vision of the last septet of angels constitutes an elaborate ecphrasis describing a “stairway” connecting the earth with heaven. This observation is based, first of all, upon the chiastic correspondences between the three pair of angels arrayed around the central vision of Jesus, who takes the place of the central “angel” in the vision. Second, we noted the careful description of the spatial markers in the text which, following the chiastic order, places the angels in corresponding pairs on earth, in midheaven, and in heaven. There is a third point that suggests a “stairway of angels,” which we only note now for reference, realizing that it raises a number of questions that we will address in detail below. John has described a vision wherein he sees the heaven opens, and angels tell of the beast ascending and the city descending, all in a context surrounding the One who is the Word of God, that is, the Son of Man. The vision in Revelation is strikingly similar to the one promised to Nathanael in the Gospel of John (1:51), but otherwise never fulfilled, wherein Jesus said, “you (pl.) shall see the heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” The only reference in the Johannine material to the heavens opening is found at the beginning of the Gospel and at the end of Revelation in these references. Both contexts further reference visions of Jesus within a context of angels ascending and descending. As early as Augustine (Cont. Faust. xii.26), the Nathanael passage in the Fourth Gospel was understood to allude to the stairway or ladder of Jacob’s dream described in Gen 28:12, with the angels of God ascending and descending between heaven and earth. In the Genesis account, Jacob beheld the LORD standing at the top of the ladder (Gen 28:13). In Revelation, John describes the Lord Jesus at the top of the stairway, calling Him the Word of God. Jesus is only given this divine name in one other place, the beginning of John’s Gospel. It is thus a striking Christological frame for Johannine theology. In addition to the ascending and descending angels, we note several other remarkable correspondences with the Gospel account, including the description of Jesus as the Word of God, as set forth below:

John 1:1 “the Word wasGod”

Rev 19:13 “His name was called the Word of God”

John 1:45 “Behold, a trueIsraelite, in whom there is no guile,” that is, unlike Jacob (Gen 27:35 LXX)

Rev 19:11 “Behold, …One called Faithful and True” and on His “thigh” was the banner of His strength, that is, unlike Jacob (Gen 32)

John 1:49 “Rabbi, You are the…King of Israel”

Rev 19:16 “a name was written, King of Kings”

John 1:52 “you (pl.) shallsee the heaven opened”

Rev 19:11 ” I saw the heaven opened”

John-Revelation Project – Part 02

The Gospel of John:
A Neglected Key to Revelation?

Introduction

Elsewhere we have suggested that John’s Gospel and Revelation are linked by an elaborate pattern of consecutive or parallel correspondence.¹ But there is another comprehensive pattern of literary linkage that overlays the two great books of John—a chiastic pattern.

Chiastic Correspondences

A chiasm is a literary pattern that involves an inverted parallelism of words or ideas. In chiastic patterning, the beginning of one book contains clusters of shared vocabulary and themes with the end of the second book; and similarly, the beginning of the second book contains paralleled vocabulary and themes found at the end of the first book. The Gospel of John and Revelation are written throughout in an elaborate chiastic pattern, producing the effect of each book being a mirror image of the other. Together, the consecutive and the chiastic patterns constitute the warp and woof of the Johannine interweaving.

Now John’s use of chiastic patterning is not precisely ordered and mechanical, just as we observed with the consecutive pattern of correspondence. It is rather more artistic than mechanically predictable. Nevertheless, the overall pattern of chiastic correspondence is clearly one of John’s major structural devices.

Moving in reverse directions within John’s Gospel and Revelation, we will work our way forward in the Gospel and backward in Revelation, noting as we go in paralleled charts how the two books are joined together so as to enlighten and interpret each other by the use of this ancient literary pattern. The mirror imaging that occurs between these two books will describe a diagram much like the following.

The Book of Revelation

The Gospel of John

John-Revelation Chiastic Correspondence Charts

The Word and the Old Creation

The Word and the New Creation

1:1 “In the beginning was the Word”

22:13 “I am…the beginning and the end”

1:3 “all things were made by Him”

21:5 “behold, I make all things new”

1:5, 9 “the light shines in darkness…He (Jesus) was the true light which gives light to every man”

22:5 “there shall be no night there; they need no lamp nor light, for the Lord God gives them light” ²

1:14 “the Word became flesh, and tabernacled among us”

21:3 “the tabernacle of God is among mankind and He will tabernacle among them” ³

1:17 “grace and truth came by Jesus Christ”

22:21 “grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you”

1:28, 48 “these things took place…beyond the Jordan… ‘when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.’”

22:1-2 “And he showed me the river of the water of life…and the tree of life”

1:29 “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”

22:3 “there is no more curse; the throne of God and the Lamb is there” ⁴

1:32 “I beheld the Spirit descending out of heaven like a dove, and He remained upon Him (whom John identifies as the Bridegroom, 3: 29)

21:2 “And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband”

1:39, 46 Jesus says, “Come and see!” Philip, who hears, says, “Come and see!”

22:17 “the Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come!’” and “let him who hears say, ‘Come!’” ⁵

1:42 Peter, one of the apostles, is given a new name, “Cephas,” meaning “stone”

21:14, 19 the New Jerusalem has twelve foundation “stones,” inscribed with the names of the apostles. ⁶

1:45, 49 “Behold, a true Israelite in whom there is no guile…You (Jesus) are the King of Israel”

19:11, 16 “Behold,…One (Jesus) called Faithful and True… ‘King of Kings’”

1:51 ”you (pl.) shall see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man”

19:11 ”now I saw heaven opened and…He who…is called Faithful and True” The first “angel” shows “the beast ascending” (17:8). The last “angel” shows “the holy city descending” (21:10).⁷

The Wedding in Cana

The Wedding of the Lamb

2:2 “Jesus and His disciples were invited to the wedding”

19:9 “Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding” ⁸

2:3 Jesus makes wine. “When they ran out of wine, the mother of Jesus said to Him, ‘They have no wine.’”

19:15 Jesus makes wine. “He treads the winepress of the wine of the rage of the wrath of Almighty God.” ⁹

2:4 “My hour has not yet come.” ¹⁰

18:8, 10 “For in one day her plagues will come…in one hour your judgment has come.”

2:4, 7, 10 ” ‘Woman, what do I have to do with you?…Fill the waterpots with water‘…they have become drunk with the worse wine”

17:1-2, 4, 6 ”and the woman (who sat on many waters)…had in her hand a golden cup filled with abominations…they have drunk the wine of her fornication…the woman (was) drunk with the blood of the saints”

3:29 ”he (John the Baptist) rejoices because he hears the voice of the Bridegroom” who is the one who “has the bride.” ¹¹

18:23 “the voice of the bridegroom and the bride is heard no longer,” “let us rejoice…for the wedding of the Lamb has come” ¹²

Divine Wrath Poured Out
in the Earthly Temple

Divine Wrath Poured Out in the Heavenly Temple

2:15 Jesus “poured out” the coins of the moneychangers, and “drove them all out of the temple”

16:1-4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 17 Angels from the heavenly temple “pour out” the bowls of divine wrath. “no one was able to enter the temple” (15:8)

2:16 “make not My Father’s house a house of merchandise.”

18:3, 11,15 “the merchants of the earth…the great men…shall stand afar off for the fear of her (Babylon’s) torment” ¹³

2:17 “zeal for Your house has consumed Me.”

20:9 “fire came down from God…and consumed them”

2:18 “The Jews said, ‘What sign do You show us that You do these things?’”

15:1 Angels from the heavenly temple pour out wrath upon Babylon: “And I saw another great sign in heaven”

2:19, 21 “’Destroy this temple…’ He (Jesus) was speaking of the temple of His body.”

21:22 “And I saw no temple in it…for the Lamb is its temple.”

Out of the Darkness

The City of Light

3:2 “this man (Nicodemus) came to him (from Jerusalem) by night”

21:23-25 “and the city (New Jerusalem) has no need of the sun or the moon…its lamp is the Lamb…for there is no night there.” ¹⁴

3:5 “Can a man enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born? (i.e. second birth)”

20:6 “holy is the one who has a part in the first resurrection; over these the second death has no power.”

3:13, 29 “He who descended out of heaven, even the Son of Man…the Bridegroom”

21:2 “I saw …New Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride” ¹⁵

3:14 “And as Moses lifted up the serpent…”

20:2 “And he laid hold of the dragon, the serpent of old…and threw him into the abyss”

3:17-21 “that the world through Him might be saved…light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil…but he who practices the truth comes to the light”

21:25-27 “the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its (New Jerusalem’s)light…its gates shall not be shut by day, and there shall be no night there…and nothing unclean, and no one who practices… lying…shall ever come into it”

3:24 “for John (the Baptist) had not yet been cast into prison”

20:3-4, 7 “and he cast him into the abyss…and I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of the testimony of Jesus…Satan will be released from his prison”

3:36 “he who does not obey the Son…the wrath of God abides on him”

19:15 “He will rule them with a rod of iron…the wrath of God Almighty.”

The Samaritan Woman

The Whore of Babylon

4:7 The Samaritan woman, who has come “to draw water” says, “I have no husband” (4:17)

17:1 The Babylonian harlot, who sits upon “the waters,” says, “I am not a widow”(18:7) ¹⁶

4:18 Jesus describes the Samaritan woman’s old life in the city: “you have had five husbands, and the one you now haveis not your husband” “(Jesus) remained there two days” (4:40)

17:10 The angel describes the life of the Babylonian harlot in the city: “five (kings) have fallen, and one is, the other has not yet come; when he (the seventh) comes, he shall remain a little while” ¹⁷

4:21 “neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem”

16:20 “and the mountains were not found”

4:27 ”His disciples…marveled that he spoke with a woman”

17:6 John the disciple writes, “And when I saw the woman…I marveled”

The Samaritan Woman

The Bride of Christ ¹⁸

4:29-30 The Samaritan woman calls for the people to ” ‘Come’…(and) they came out of the city”

18:4 A voice from heaven calls: “Come out of her (the city of the harlot), My people”

4:10, 28-29 “I would have given you living water…So the woman left her waterpot, and went into the city, and said to the men, ‘Come…’”

22:17 “And the Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come…’ And let the one who thirsts come…let the one who will take the water of life without cost.”

The Old Jerusalem

The Great Babylon

5:2-4 “now there is in Jerusalem…a pool with five porticoes. In these lay a multitude of those who were sick, blind, lame, and withered…for an angel descended at certain seasons and stirred the waters…”

18:1-2 “I saw another angel descending from heaven…fallen is Babylon the Great. She has become a dwelling place of demons and a prison place of every unclean spirit” “and a strong angel took a stone…and threw it into the sea” (18:21) ¹⁹

5:27 The Father “has given Him (Jesus) authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of Man.”

19:11 “in righteousness He (Jesus) judges and makes war”

5:35 ”He (John the Baptist) was the burning and shining lamp, and you (Jerusalem) were willing for a time to rejoice in his light”

18:23 ”The light of the a lamp shall not shine in you (Babylon) anymore”

5:44 “you (the Jews of the temple) receive glory from one another”

18:7 “she (the harlot) glorified herself”

From Shadows

To Reality

6:3,10 ”And Jesus went up on the mountain, and there he sat with His disciples…in number about five thousand”

14:1 ”I looked, and behold, a Lamb standing on Mount Zion, and with him one hundred and forty-four thousand”

6:19 ”when they had rowed about twenty-five or thirty furlongs, they saw Jesus walking on the sea”

14:20; 15:2 ”one thousand six hundred furlongs…I saw…the ones who overcame the beast standing on the sea”

7:12, 47 Some complain concerning Jesus: “He deceives the multitude.” The Pharisees challenge the officers: “Are you deceived also?”

13:14 The beast “deceives those who dwell on the earth” ²⁰

The Accusers Cast Out of the Earthly Temple

The Accuser Cast Out of the Heavenly Temple

8:3 “And the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman caught in adultery, and stood her in the midst…and said to Him, ‘Moses commanded us to stone such women…’” ²¹

12:4 “And the dragon stood before the woman…so that he might devour…” ²²

8:6-7, 10 “This they said, testing Him, that they might have something of which to accuse Him…Jesus said “Let him be the first to cast a stone who is sinless’…And hearing this, they began to go out…Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, where are your accusers?’”

12:4, 8,10 “so that he (the dragon) might devour her Child…and no place was found for them any longer…and the great dragon …was cast down…the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God night and day, has been cast down”²³

11:48 “if all men believe in Him…they will take away our (the religious leaders of the temple)place”

12:8 “and no place was found for them (those who follow the Dragon) in heaven” ²⁴

The War of Light and Darkness on Earth

The War of Light and Darkness in Heaven

8:32, 34-36 “the truth will set you free…whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. And a slave does not abide in the house forever…if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.”

13:16 “He (the beast) causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their forehead”

8:41 “And they (the religious leaders of the temple) said to Him, ‘We were not born of fornication’”

14:8 “she (the whore of Babylon) has made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication” ²⁵

8:44 “the devil…speaks a lie…for he is a liar”

12:9 “the devil…deceives the whole world.” ²⁶

9:16 “How can a Man (Jesus) who is a sinner do such signs?”

13:13 And he (the beast) performs great signs”

10:19 “There was a division among the Jews…many of them saying, ‘He has ademon…’ Others said, ‘These are not the words of one who has a demon.’”

12:7 “And war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought…”

11:53 “From that day on they (the religious leaders of the temple) plotted to kill him (Lazarus).”

11:7 “When they finish their testimony, the beast…will kill them (the two witnesses).”²⁷

12:28-29 “a voice came from heaven…Therefore the people who stood by and heard it said that it had thundered”

10:3-4 “seven thunders uttered their voices…I heard a voice from heaven”

Communion on Earth

Communion in Heaven

13:26-27 “So when he had dipped the morsel, He took and gave it to Judas…and after the morsel, Satan then entered into him”

10:9-10 “And he said, “Take and eat…’ and it was in my mouth sweet as honey, but when I had eaten it, in my stomach it was bitter.’

14:1-2 “Let not your heart be troubled…in My Father’s house are many dwelling places”

7:15,17 “He shall spread His tabernacle upon them…and God shall wipe every tear from their eyes.”

15:6 “they will gather the dried branches, and cast them into the fire, and they will be burned up.”

8:7 “and a third of the trees were burned up”

The Grace to Persevere

The Reward of Perseverance

16:13 Jesus will send “the Spirit of truth (who) will guide you into all truth”

7:17 ”the Lamb…will guide them to springs of living water”

16:20,28,33 “I tell you that you will weep…but your sorrow will be turned to joy…I am going to the Father…take courage, I have overcome the world.”

5:4,5,7 “And I began to weep greatly…and one of the elders said, ‘Stop weeping…the Lion of Judah has overcome…and He came (to the Father)”

16:21, 33 “when she has given birth, she no longer remembers the tribulation…in the world you will have tribulation”

7:14 “These (the redeemed) are the ones who have come out of great tribulation”

The Prayer of the Savior on Earth

The Prayer of the Saints in Heaven

17:12 “I have kept them…whom You have given Me…and not one of them perished…”

6:11 “they were told they should rest a while, until the number of their fellow servants…should be completed.”

17:17-19 “Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth.”

6:11 “How long, O Lord, holy and true…?”²⁸

The Arrest of God

The Worship of God

18:3,6 “Then the cohort…came with lanterns and torches…when He said, ‘I am,’ they drew back and fell to the ground.

4:5-6, 10 “seven lamps of fire burning before the throne…four living creatures full of eyes in front and behind…the twenty four elders fall before Him” ²⁹

18:25,27 “Peter denied it and said, “I am not.’”

3:8 “You have kept My word, and have not denied My name.”

18:37 “for this cause I (Jesus) have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth”

3:14 “These things says the Amen, the faithful and True Witness.”

Suffering Before Glory

Suffering Before Glory

18:20 “I spoke openly to the world. I always taught in synagogues and in the temple”

3:9 “those of the synagogue of Satan, who say they are Jews and are not”

18:37 “for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth”

3:14 “These things says the Amen, the faithful and true witness”

19:2 “they clothed him in a purple garment”

3:5 The overcomer “shall be clothed in white garments”

19:2, 5 “the soldiers twisted a crown of thorns…Then Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns”

2:10 “Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life”

19:18 “they crucified Him with two other men…and Jesus in the midst.”

2:1 “the One who walks in the midst of the seven lampstands”

19:21-22 “The Jews said to Pilate, ‘Do not write…Pilate answered, “What I have written, I have written.”

3:5 “I (Jesus) will not erase his name from the book of life.”

19:29, 30, 36 ”a vessel full of sour wine was sitting there… when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, ‘It is finished‘…that the Scripture might be fulfilled, ‘Not one of His bones shall be broken”

2:26-27 “And he who overcomes and keeps My works until the end, to him I will give power over the nations… ‘they shall be broken like clay vessels‘ as I also received from My Father”

19:37 ”they will see Him whom they pierced”

1:7 “they who pierced Him will see Him”

Recognizing the Risen Lord

Recognizing the Risen Lord

20:1 “And on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came…”

1:10 “And I (John) was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day…”

20:6-7 “Simon Peter…saw…the face cloth, which had been on His head…”

1:14 “His head and His hair were white like wool”

20:9 “For as yet they did not understand the Scripture that He must rise again from the dead.”

1:18 “I (Jesus) was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore.”

20:14 “she (Mary Magdalene) turned around, and behold, Jesus…”

1:12-13 “I (John) turned to see…and having turned I saw…One like the Son of Man”

20:19 “when the doors were shut…Jesus came and stood in their midst”

3:7-8 “The One having the key of David, who opens and no one can shut…I have given you an open door.”

20: 22 “He (Jesus) breathed on them, and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’”

2:7,11,17,29,3:6,13,22 “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

Jesus Calling Out to His Disciples Across the Waters

Jesus Calling Out to His Disciples Across the Waters

21:2, 4-6 Jesus calls out to “Simon Peter, Thomas… Nathanael…the sons of Zebedee, and two other disciples” (seven disciples) from the shore across the waters. ³⁰

1:9-11 Jesus speaks to “the seven churches, to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamos, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea” from an island across the waters. ³¹

21:4 “But when the morning had come, Jesus stood upon the shore, but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus.”

3:3 To Sardis: “if you do not watch, I will come to you …and you will not know what hour I will come upon you.”

21: 7 “Simon Peter…girded himself, for he was naked.”

3:18 To Laodicea: “clothe yourself, lest the shame of your nakedness be revealed”

21:13 “Jesus…took bread and gave it to them”

2:7 To Ephesus: “To him who overcomes I (Jesus) will give to eat from the tree of life”

21:14 “This is now the third time Jesus showed Himself to His disciples.”

1:4 “Grace…and peace from Him who is and who was and who is to come.”

21:15 Jesus asks Peter, “Do you love Me?”

2:4 To Ephesus: “you have left your first love”

21:17 Peter says, “Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You.”

2:19 To Thyatira: “I (Jesus) know your deeds, and your love…”

21:19 Jesus tells Peter “by what death he would glorify God”

2:10 To Smyrna: “be faithful unto death, and I will give you a crown”

The Word and the Testimony

The Word and the Testimony

20:29 “blessed are they that…believe”

1:3 “blessed is the one who reads”

21:20 “The disciple whom Jesus loved, the one who had leaned upon His breast”

1:12-13 “And I (John) saw…His breast girded with a golden band”

21:20, 23 ”Peter, turning around, saw following them the disciple whom Jesus loved…this disciple should not die…till He come”

1:12,17 ”having turned, I (John) saw…when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as though dead”

21:24 “this is the disciple (John) who testifies concerning these things”

1:1-2 “John, who testifies…of the things he saw”

21:25 “if they were written…the world could not contain the books”

1:11 “what you see write in a book”

John-Revelation: The Story Begins to Unfold

The verbal and thematic patterns expressed in the consecutive and chiastic correspondences point to a divinely intended joining of John’s Gospel and the Revelation. As the two charts are laid over each other, a wonderful story emerges. At the opening of his Gospel, John declares that He who was fully God in the beginning has come to tabernacle with men in His earthly sojourn (John 1:1-14). Then climactically at the end of Revelation, a loud voice in heaven rejoices that the tabernacle of God is with men forever (Rev 21:3). Redemption’s glorious climax of God dwelling with His people becomes the frame of these two books for the telling of the greatest love story ever, a story of a heavenly Groom and an earthly bride.

The story is dramatically recounted in the chiastic pattern joining the two books, and is bolstered by key elements from the consecutive pattern. Each crosspiece of the chiastic structure develops a portion of the inspired story the books tell. The following chart summarizes the story line developed in each crosspiece of the chiasm.

The Book of Revelation

The Gospel of John

The Great Reversal:
The Son is lifted up (John 12:28-31)
Satan is cast down (Revelation 12:9-10)

The first crosspiece combines the opening chapters of the Gospel and the closing chapters of the Revelation to tell the story of the Son of Man as a Heavenly Bridegroom who leaves His Father’s house to dwell among men in search of a bride. He finds her in a wilderness and woos her to Himself, at last taking her to a pleasant garden in the city of God. The Gospel presents the Bridegroom; the Revelation introduces the bride.

This crosspiece is rich with wedding imagery. At the opening of the Gospel, Jesus and His disciples are invited to a wedding in Cana. At the close of Revelation, blessing is pronounced on all who are invited to the wedding of the Lamb. At the opening of the Gospel, John the Baptist rejoices to hear the voice of the Bridegroom (Jesus) who has the bride (the church). At the close of Revelation, Babylon is judged when the voice of the Bridegroom and bride is no longer heard. Jesus makes wine in both settings. First, He serves the good wine of the Gospel at Cana. Then in Revelation, when the harlot and her people are drunk, He serves the wine of the wrath of God (cf. John 2:10). The good wine of the Gospel is served before the wine of fierce wrath in the Revelation.

The second crosspiece joins the opening of Revelation with the close of John. It tells of the heroic Son of God, who comes from heaven as a Warrior King to lay hold of His Kingdom by vanquishing the Dragon. He rides forth upon a white horse to conquer His enemies with the sword of His mouth. Those who follow Him need not fear the warfare, for their King is the Lord of Life. Even if they should lose their lives in martyrdom, they will be raised to new life just like their conquering King, and will dwell forever with Him in the New Jerusalem, where there will be no more pain, sorrow, or tears.

The pivot of both the consecutive and the chiastic structure (John 12; Rev 12), which is the thematic center of the story told by the two books, tells of the great reversal that takes place as the Son is lifted up and Satan is cast down. John 12:28-31 and Revelation 12:9-10 are anchored by word combinations that occur nowhere else in either book. These passages constitute the literary axis of the two Johannine books. (See the consecutive chart.) Both passages concern the announcement of Christ’s kingdom. In John 12, Jesus rides into Jerusalem upon a donkey. The crowds proclaim Him “King of Israel” and the Pharisees worry that “the world has gone after Him” (John 12:13,15,19). The Revelation passage that corresponds to the Triumphal Entry of the Gospel opens with the announcement that “the kingdoms of the world have become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of His Christ; and He shall reign forever and ever” (Rev 11:15; cf. Rev 12:10). In John 12:32, the Son is lifted up. The matching declaration of Revelation 12:9 is that the Dragon is cast down to earth. As noted on the chart, both John and Revelation speak of Satan being cast out of heaven.

Intro Part 1Part 2Part 3 Part 4

¹ See Gage/White, “The Gospel of John: A Neglected Key to Revelation? Study No. 1 on the Gospel of John and the Book of Revelation.”

² It will be seen that the chiastic pattern comprehends several themes initiated in the beginning of the Gospel and concluded at the end of the Revelation. The darkness, which is the emblem of the power of chaos, is at war with the light in the opening of the Gospel (John 1:4-5). Only at the end of Revelation is the war finished, and the darkness at last is overtaken by the light (Rev 22:5).

³ The Gospel begins with the declaration that the Word became flesh and tabernacledamong us (John 1:14), and Revelation concludes with the glorious announcement that in the consummation of all things God pitches His tabernacle forever among men (Rev 21:3).

⁴ The promise of John the Baptist at the river Jordan, that the Lamb of God would take away the sin of the world (John 1:29), is realized in the vision of John of Patmos, who sees the river of paradise flowing from the throne of God and the Lamb, with the curse of sin having been taken away (Rev 22:3).

⁵ It is noteworthy that the Gospel opens with a twofold invitation to “come” to Jesus. Revelation concludes with a similar twofold invitation to “come” to the Water of Life.

⁶ Peter’s promise in the Gospel that he would be a “stone” is serendipitously fulfilled in Revelation as he becomes a “precious stone!”

⁷ The Gospel account of Nathanael, the true Israelite, recalls a fig tree (John 1:48), the tree whose leaves could not hide the knowledge of God in Genesis. Similarly, Revelation foretells a vision of the tree of life, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations who make up the city of God (Rev 22:2). Furthermore, the promise to Nathanael, that he shouldsee the heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man (John 1:51) is never fulfilled in the Gospel. Only in Revelation does John see the heaven opened and angels ascending and descending around a vision of the Lord of Lords (Rev 17:8-21:10).

⁸ The beginning of the Gospel and the ending of the Revelation are filled with wedding imagery. The wedding of Cana in the Gospel sustains many literary connections with the wedding of the Lamb in Revelation. John the Baptist describes Jesus as a Bridegroom in the Gospel’s beginning. But there is no description of the bride in the Gospel. John the Evangelist describes the bride of the Lamb at the end of Revelation. But there is no description of the Bridegroom in Revelation. The two books of John, like a husband and wife, require each other to be complete.

⁹ According to the wedding custom, the bridegroom should set forth first the good wine, and only afterward, when the guests are drunk, is the worse wine served (2:10). When the wedding of Cana (John 2:1) is read in light of the wedding of the Lamb (Rev 19:7), it is clear that Jesus observes the wedding custom respecting the order of wine service. Jesus makes wine for both weddings. As the steward of Cana testified, the first wine Jesus serves in the Gospel is “good” (John 2:10). But afterward in Revelation, when the whore and her followers are “drunk,” (Rev 2, 6), He serves them the wine of the wrath of Almighty God (Rev 19:15).

¹⁰ The prophetic character of the wedding in Cana is suggested by Jesus’ words. The hour of which He speaks (cf. John 12:23) is the hour of His passion and death, when he will provide the wine of His blood for His bride. That hour prepares the way for and anticipates the messianic banquet of Revelation 19:9 (cf. Isa 25:6-8).

¹¹ The proclamation of John the Baptist, of course, is not part of the account of the wedding of Cana. However, it is related to John 2:1-11 both thematically and by a pattern of inclusions. Both passages concern the wedding theme. Both describe Jewish purification custom (2:6 and 3:25). Finally, both employ the same Greek root word to describe the inferior (2:10) wine that follows the better, and the decrease (3:30) of John before the increase of Jesus.

¹² Babylon is the city where the “light of a lamp will not shine in you any longer, andvoice of the bridegroom and the bride is heard no longer” (Rev 18:23). The voice of the bridegroom, read chiastically with the Gospel, is the voice of Jesus (John 3:29). The friend of the Bridegroom is the prophet John the Baptist, who is described as a “bright and shining light” in which Jerusalem rejoiced for a season (John 5:35). Babylon is the city in which is found the blood of the prophets (Rev 18:24), and the city which silenced the voice of the Bridegroom (cf. Rev 11:8, 18:23). The conclusion is unmistakable that the Jerusalem of the second temple, the archetypical city of chaos, which is spiritually Egypt and Sodom (Rev 11:8), is likewise the “Great Babylon” of Revelation. In this light it is instructive that Jerusalem under Pontius Pilate was a “babel” of three languages, Hebrew, Latin, and Greek (John 19:20). Similarly, the Babylon of Revelation is divided into threeparts (Rev 16:19). The theme of Jerusalem under the figure of “Babylon” will be well developed as the argument proceeds.

¹³ The love of merchandise is the connecting link between the second temple and Great Babylon (John 2:16 and Rev 18:3,11,15). The prophet Zechariah anticipated the day when the merchant (BH “Canaanite”) would no longer be in the house of God. The Lord’s accusation regarding “merchandise” in the temple constitutes the charge that the second temple was in truth a “Canaanite” sanctuary, a point that figures prominently in the theology of John’s Gospel.

¹⁴ Nicodemus is characterized in the Gospel as the one coming out of the night of the Old Jerusalem (3:2, 19:39) to Jesus, the Light of the World (8:12). Judas, on the other hand, leaves the Light to return to the darkness of Old Jerusalem (13:30). Revelation gives the sharply contrasting picture. There is no night in the New Jerusalem, the city of light, because the Lamb is its light (21:23-25).

¹⁵ The themes developed in these sections are the chief themes of the creation account in Genesis, continuing the pattern that the evangelist began by opening his Gospel “in the beginning” (1:1, cf. Gen 1:1) and by concluding his Revelation with a “new creation” (21:1). This section speaks of darkness and light (John 3:1, Rev 21:25), a Bridegroom and a bride (John 3:29, Rev 21:9), and a serpent of enmity (John 3:14, Rev 20:20:2).

¹⁶ The boastful claim of the whore of Babylon that she is not a widow and will never see mourning (Rev 18:7) is an allusion drawn from the destruction of the first temple of Jerusalem depicted in Lamentations (1:1). John uses devastating irony to portray the coming destruction of the “Babylonian” second temple using the dramatic colors of the destruction of the first temple of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. At the close of Jeremiah, the prophet foresaw the fall of Babylon for all the rapaciousness of her destruction of Jerusalem (51:49). But John identifies the true Babylon as the Jerusalem of the second temple, the city whose sins, like Babel’s ancient tower of rebellion, were piled up to heaven (Rev 18:5, cf. Gen 11:4). The pattern is complete. In his Lamentations, Jeremiah described the ruins of Jerusalem as desolate as a “widow,” she who had been great “among the nations” (Lam 1:1). The nations had dealt treacherously with her, despising her because they had “seen her nakedness” (Lam 1:8). Jerusalem had “fallen,” and so had lost all the “precious things” of her temple (Lam 1:10).

In Revelation, once the Babylonian character of the second temple is revealed, the judgment of Babylon the Great is seen to be in fact the judgment of second temple Jerusalem. John borrows Jeremiah’s description of the ruin of the first temple to predict the character of the destruction of the second. Revelation’s Babylon denies that she is a “widow or will ever see mourning” (Rev 18:7). That is, the second temple boasts that she will never suffer the fate of the first temple. But John foresees the day of divine wrath when the “nations,” who had been familiar with her, will despise her, having “seen her nakedness” (Rev 17:16, 18:9). Thus Great Babylon will “fall” (Rev 18:2). And they will mourn the loss of all her “precious things” (Rev 18:11-18). Just as the destruction of the first temple was incomparable for sorrow (Lam 1:12), so the ruin of the second temple for sorrow will be incomparable (Rev 18:18). Just as the abominable practices of the religious leaders of the first temple brought about its destruction (Ezek 8), so the abominations of the religious leaders of the second temple will require a like judgment.

¹⁷ The Samaritan woman’s past bears a striking resemblance to the whore of Babylon!

¹⁸ There is masterful artistry at work in the selection of a Samaritan woman to symbolize the New Jerusalem. The heavenly Jerusalem is one city, but it is composed of two peoples, Jew and Gentile. It is built on the foundations of the twelve apostles to the nations, but its gates are named for the twelve sons of Israel (Rev 21:12-14). Its inhabitants include thousands upon thousands “from every tribe of the sons of Israel” and a “great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues” (Rev 7:4, 9). Just like the New Jerusalem, the Samaritan is one woman, but she is part Jew and part Gentile. The Samaritans were Jews who had intermingled with their Gentile neighbors. Thus, the Samaritan woman traced her ancestry back to Jacob, like the Jews, but she was also related by blood to the nations.

¹⁹ In both the Gospel and Revelation an angel descends from heaven and waters of earth are “troubled.” The multitude of the sick gathered at the pool of Bethesda is compared to Babylon as a dwelling place of every unclean spirit! The collection of the infirm near the precincts of the second temple brings to mind the bias of the Law of Moses against the infirm or the unclean having entry into the sanctuary (cf. Deut 23:1, Lev 21:21-23). The instruction of the Mosaic Law required that the second temple be preserved from defilement (Lev 21:23). The nature of the true Temple, however, is such that the Lord Christ heals the infirm and cleanses the defiled. The Gospel account of the healing of the woman with the issue of blood, who was both infirm and unclean, illustrates the better nature of the true Temple of Jesus’ body, which cannot be defiled (Luke 8:43-48). The same point is exemplified in the account of the healing of the paralytic man in John 5:2-9.

²⁰ The religious leaders of the second temple charge Jesus with deceit (John 7:12, 47), while John attributes the true deceit to the beast (Rev 13:14). Deceit is the characteristic of the beast in Revelation, and the charge of the religious leaders against Jesus in the Gospel (7:12, 47). The basis of the beast’s deceit is that he had been “resurrected,” that is, he is “the beast who had the wound of the sword and has come to life” (Rev 13:14). The boast of the beast is in truth the claim of Jesus (“I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore” Rev 1:18). We have seen the significance of the temple theology in John’s writings. The allegation that Jerusalem is spiritual Babylon colors the second temple with Daniel’s bestial imagery. The description of the beast, that he had been dead and was now alive forevermore, is thus a clue to his identification when seen in the light of temple theology. In fact, the temple of Israel had been destroyed and thus the second temple represented a kind of resurrection (implicit is the claim that the temple would endure forevermore, cf. Matt 24:1-3). The destruction of the second temple, by this logic, will be the destruction of the beast. It will be the final exposé of draconic deceit.

²¹ There is an ancient and widely diversified history of the excision of the account of the woman taken in adultery from manuscripts of the Gospel of John. The issue of Jesus’ allegedly negligent attitude toward the requirements of the Mosaic law (John 8:5) as well as His refusal to condemn a notorious adulteress (John 8:11) may account for the challenge this passage presented to the church, reflected in the confusion of the manuscripts. Nonetheless, the pattern of concentric correspondence provides strong attestation for the passage, both respecting its authenticity and the accuracy of its placement within the Gospel context.

²² The scene in the second earthly temple depicts the scribes and Pharisees seeking to destroy the adulterous woman as a way to accuse, and thus destroy, Jesus (8:6). The accusers wait to cast stones at her (8:7), wanting to stone Jesus as well (cf. 10:31). In heaven, the dragon stands before a woman in labor, hoping to devour her Child (Rev 12:4). The conflict leads to war in heaven, and the dragon-accuser is cast out of the heavenly sanctuary (Rev 12:7-12).

²³ In the dramatic account of the Gospel, before Jesus forgives a flagrantly immoral woman (8:11), He first confronts her accusers, whom He shows to be morally incompetent to charge an adulteress. As a result, the accusers leave the temple precincts (8:9). The exit of the scribes and Pharisees from the temple because they could not “cast the first stone” constitutes their implicit acknowledgment of their own “adulteries.” Their exit constitutes a second “temple cleansing” (John 8:9), and corresponds to the accusers who are cast out of the heavenly sanctuary (Rev 12:8-12).

²⁴ The religious leaders, who were so zealous of protecting their place in the second temple (John 11:48), are associated with the followers of the dragon, for whom no placewas found in the heavenly sanctuary (Rev 12:8). The significance of the “place” as a sanctuary is later suggested in the chiastic correspondence of John 14:1 (“I go to prepare a place for you”) and Revelation 12:6 (“And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared for her by God”).

²⁵ The charge of the Jewish leaders that Jesus had been begotten of fornication (John 8:41) suggests the nature of the quarrel between the two temples. Revelation responds to the moral characterization, identifying the temple as the site of the true fornication (Rev 14:8).

²⁶ The Lord charges that the devil had begotten the religious leaders, which accounts for their deceit (John 8:44), a charge bolstered by the deceitful operation of the devil as depicted in the visions of John (Rev 12:9).

²⁷ The plot of the religious leaders to kill Lazarus is paralleled with the beast’s war against the light of God in the killing of the two witnesses. The identification of the two witnesses relates to their claim to give light as lampstands (Rev 11:4). In the Gospel both John the Baptist and Jesus are called lights (John 5:35 and 8:12), and both are called witnesses (John 5:33-36), a word which is the fundamental characterization of the witnesses of Revelation (Rev 11:3). Moreover, the two witnesses of Revelation are associated with the power of Elijah and Moses (Rev 11:6). John is questioned by the Jews as to whether he is Elijah (John 1:21), while Jesus is asked to do the works of Moses (John 6:30-31). But the Jerusalem of the second temple refuses their witness and extinguishes their light.

²⁸ Ironically, it appears that the saints in heaven require the truth of the word of God for their sanctification, even as do those upon earth.

²⁹ The encounter of Jesus with the Roman cohort is noteworthy for the emphasis John places upon Christ’s deity. Jesus identifies Himself to the band of about four hundred soldiers by using the theologically significant “I am” formula (John 18:5-6). This statement constitutes Jesus’ claim of deity, a point made clear by the fact that the entire band of four hundred falls backward and down to the ground in response (John 18:6). The irony of the encounter is clear. The four hundred soldiers are arresting God – the very One before whom, in another venue, the twenty-four elders fall down as a token of worship (Rev 4:10).

³⁰ The Gospel account describes seven discouraged disciples (five are named along with “two others”), including and led by Peter. Filled with doubt and wracked by denial, they abandon their calling to be followers of Jesus and return to their prior calling as fishermen (21:3). In all of this they largely represent the spiritual challenges of the seven churches of Asia, also suffering doubt and denial (2:1-3:22).

³¹ Just as Jesus appears on the shore of the sea of Galilee, calling out across the waters to seven of His disciples and inviting them to return to their first love (John 21:15), even so Jesus appears to His disciple John on Patmos, addressing an appeal to seven of His churches across the waters, and likewise inviting them to return to the love they had at first (Rev 2:4).

John-Revelation Project – Part 01

The Gospel of John:
A Neglected Key to Revelation?

Introduction

The ancient church was virtually unanimous in claiming that John’s Gospel and Revelation came from the same hand—from John, the son of Zebedee. Nonetheless, most modern commentary dismisses the relevance of the Fourth Gospel in interpreting Revelation.

The following chart displays a literary intertextuality that shows these two great books should be viewed as companion volumes. In fact, we will claim that if they are read alongside each other, as the church fathers suggested, they will interpret each other according to the Reformed hermeneutical maxim Scriptura Scripturas interpres. While several other literary patterns appear to interleave the Fourth Gospel and the Apocalypse, the parallel chart presented below offers the most readily recognizable and comprehensiveprima facie evidence of the interrelationship of these two books from the pen of the Apostle John.

Consecutive Correspondences

The pattern of consecutive correspondences consists of significant words, word combinations, and phrases that track between the two companion books, as they are read consecutively and side-by-side. If you imagine John and Revelation as two railroad tracks, the verbal and thematic links within this pattern are like the railroad ties that hold the tracks together as they present the ministry of Jesus from the earthly (John) and heavenly (Revelation) perspectives.

The Book of Revelation

The Gospel of John

In the following chart, the word(s) in bold type are from the same root in the original Greek text. When the verse address is bolded, it indicates that this is the only time that the word combinations in bold are found in both the Gospel and Revelation. The italicized words are terms that are related thematically, but are based on different Greek roots.

John-Revelation Consecutive Correspondence Chart

Gospel of John

Revelation

1:1 John writes concerning “the Word ofGod”

1:2 John witnesses to “the Word of God”

1:5 Jesus is “the Light (that) shines in darkness”

1:16 The face of Jesus “shines like the sun”

1:14 “We beheld His glory as the only begotten of the Father”

1:5-6 “Jesus Christ…the firstborn from the dead…to Him be glory”

1:23 John the Baptist introduces the earthly Jesus: “I am the voice of one crying, ‘In the wilderness’”

1:10 John the Apostle “heard … a loud voice, as of a trumpet,” and sees the heavenly Jesus.¹

1:42 Jesus gives Peter a new name: “Cephas, which is translated, ‘a stone’”

2:17 “To him who overcomes…I (Jesus) will give a white stone, and on the stone² a new name” ³

2:17 Jesus purges the temple: “Zeal for Your house will consume Me”

3:19 Jesus purifies His church: “Be zealous therefore, and repent” ⁴

2:24-25 “Jesus…knew all men…for He Himself knew what was in man”

2:23 “all the churches shall know that I (Jesus) am He who searches the minds and hearts”

3:1,10 “now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus…ateacher in Israel”

2:15 “the teaching of the Nicolaitans” (2:6) ⁵

3:20 “he who does evil hates the light…lest his deeds be reproved”

3:19 “as many as I love I reprove” ⁶

3:29 ”the friend of the bridegroom, whostands and hears him, rejoices greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice”

3:20 ”Behold, I stand at the door…if anyone hears My voice…I will come in to him and dine with him” ⁷

4:23 “the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth”

4:9-10 “Whenever the four living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to Him who sits on the throne…the twenty-four elders fall down…and worship Him”

4:44 “For Jesus Himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country”

4:11; 5:12-13 “You are worthy, O Lord, to receive…honor…Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive…honor…Blessing and honor…to the Lamb forever and ever”⁸

5:18 “He (Jesus)…was breaking theSabbath” (the seventh day)

5:5 “the Lion of the tribe of Judah…has prevailed to open the scroll and to break its seven seals” ⁹

5:22-23 “the Father has committed all judgment to the Son, that all should honor the Son just as they honor the Father”

5:13 “And every creature…I heard saying: ‘Blessing and honor and glory and power be to Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb”

5:35 John the Baptist “was a burning…lamp”

4:5 “seven lamps of fire burning…the seven spirits of God” ¹⁰

6:7-9 ”Two hundred denarii worth of bread…five barley loaves”

6:6 ”A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius” ¹¹

6:15 ”when Jesus perceived that they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king, He withdrew to the mountain by Himself”

6:15 ”the kings…the great men…rich men… commanders…mighty men…hid themselves in the mountains” ¹²

6:18, 27 ”And the sea was stirred…a great wind was blowing…for this one has God the Father sealed”

7: 1-3 ”so that no wind should blow on the earth or on the sea…until we have sealed the servants of God” ¹³

6:35 ”He who comes to Me shall not hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst”

7:16 ”they shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore” ¹⁴

7:38 “rivers of living water will flow from him”

7:17 He “will lead them to springs of the water of life”

8:21-22 “you will seek Me, and where I go you cannot come (i.e., you will not find Me); You will die in your sins…(they) said, ‘Will He kill Himself?’”

9:6 “men will seek death, and will not find it; they will desire to die, and death will flee from them” ¹⁵

9:25, 27 “Though I was blind, now I see…I told you (the Pharisees)…and you did not hear”

9:20 The wicked are like their idols “which can neither see nor hear” ¹⁶

10:27 “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me”

10:4, 8, 9 “I heard a voice from heaven…Then the voice which I heard…spoke…and said, ‘Go…’ So I went…” ¹⁷

11:14-15 “Lazarus is dead, and I rejoice for your sakes that I was not there that you might believe… So when Jesus came, he (Lazarus) had been in the tomb four days”

11:9-10 “(they) will see their dead bodies(the two witnesses) for three and a half days, and not allow their dead bodies to be put into a tomb. And those who dwell on the earth will rejoice over them”

11:43-44 “with a loud voice He cried out, ‘Lazarus, come forth!’ And he who had died came out bound hand and foot”

11:11-12”Now…the breath of God entered them (the witnesses), and they stood on their feet…and they heard a loud voice from heaven saying… ‘Come up here!’” ¹⁸

11:48 “if all men believe in Him…they will take away our (the religious leaders’)place”

12:8 “and no place was found for them (those who follow the Dragon) in heaven” ¹⁹

12:13, 15, 19 ”The next day a great multitude…cried out, ‘Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’ The King of Israel!… ‘Behold, your King is coming’…The Pharisees therefore said… ‘Look, the world has gone after Him!’”

12:10 ”Then I heard a loud voice in heaven, ‘Now…the kingdom of our God, and the authority of His Christ have come.’” “And there were loud voices in heaven, saying, ‘The kingdoms of this world have become those of our Lord and His Christ” (11:15)²⁰

12:25 “He who loves his life will lose it”

12:11 “they did not love their lives to death”

12:28-31 ”then a voice came from heaven…the people who heard…said it thundered. Others said an angel spoke… ‘Now the ruler of this world(Satan) will be cast out.’”

12:9-10 ”and Satan, who deceives the whole world…was cast to the earth, and his angels…and I heard a loud voice in heaven… ‘Now has come salvation.’” “there were…thunderings” (11:19) ²¹

12:32 Jesus says: “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself”

12:5 “She bore a male Child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron. And her Child was caught up to God and His throne” ²²

13:29 Judas, who controlled the purse, should “buy those things that we need” Judas challenges: “Why was this fragrant oil not sold…?” (12:5)

13:17 The beast controls all who “buy and sell” ²³

14:6 ”I am the way, the truth, and the life”

15:3, 7 ”just and true are Your ways…God who lives forever”

14:15 “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments”

14:12 “Here is the perseverance of the saints who keep the commandments”

15:1-6 ”I am the Vine, you are the branches…If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown out as a branch and is dried up, and they gather them and throw them into the fire”

14: 15, 18-19 ”the harvest of the earth wasdried up…and another angel who had authority over fire… called… ‘gather the clusters of the vine of the earth, for her grapes are fully ripe.’ And the angel thrust his sickle into the earth andgathered the vine…and threw it into the winepress” ²⁴

16:8 “He will judge of sin, righteousness, and judgment”

16:7 “true and righteous are Your judgments”

16:33 “I (Jesus) have overcome the world”

17:14 “the Lamb will overcome them”

17:12 Judas is “the son of perdition”

17:8, 11 ”(the beast) will go to perdition”²⁵

17:24 “Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me…from the foundation of the world”

17:8 “And those whose name had not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world”

18:11 “the cup which My Father has given”

18:6 the harlot Babylon has a “cup of abominations” (17:4)

18:38 “Pilate said to Him, ‘What is truth?’”

19:11 “and He…was called ‘Faithful and True’” ²⁶

19:2 ”they clothed Him in a purple robe”

18:16 the harlot Babylon “was clothed in purple” ²⁷

19:5 “Jesus therefore came out wearing the crown of thorns and a purple robe…Behold, the Man!”

19:11 “behold…He who was called Faithful and True…and on His head were many diadems, and His robe was dipped in blood” ²⁸

19:13 Pilate “sat upon the judgment seat” to “judge” (18:31)

20:11-13 “I saw a great white throne, and He who sat upon it…judged every man” ²⁹

19:17-18 ”Golgotha, where they crucified Him (Jesus), one on either side and Jesus in the midst”

22:2 ”in the midst of the street, on either side of the river was the tree of life”

19:19 “Pilate wrote a title…it was written, ‘JESUS OF NAZARETH. THE KING OF THE JEWS.’”

19:16 “On His outer garment…a name was written, ‘KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS’” ³⁰

19:23 “when they crucified Jesus, they took His outer garments”

19:16 “On his outer garment…a name was written, ‘KING OF KINGS’”

19:28, 30, 40, 42 “Jesus, knowing that all things were now finished…said, ‘It is finished!’…and they took the body of Jesus and bound it…and placed it in a tomb.”

20:2, 3, 5 “He laid hold of the dragon…and bound him, and shut him in the abyss…that he should deceive the nations no more until the thousand years were finished…and the rest of the dead did not live again until the thousand years were finished” ³¹

20:15 “Jesus said… ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’”

21:4 “and He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes” ³²

20:17 “Jesus said to her, ‘Do not hold to me yet, for I have not yet ascended to My Father…to My God and your God.’”

21: 2 “Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband…” ³³

20:27 ”Be not unbelieving but believing”

21:8 ”But the fearful and unbelieving”

21:15 “Feed my lambs”

19:9 “the wedding supper of the Lamb” ³⁴

21:24 “this is the disciple who…wrote these things; and we know that his witness is true”

21:5 “And He said to me, ‘Write, for these words are faithful and true” ³⁵

21:25 “And there are many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”

22:18-19 “if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part…from the things which are written in this book.”

IntroPart 1Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

¹ John the Baptist, who is about to be cast into prison (John 3:24), announces the coming of the earthly Jesus. John the Apostle, who is upon the prison isle of Patmos, describes a vision of the heavenly Jesus (Rev 1:9). It is noteworthy that John the Baptist “bears witness” about Jesus in the Gospel, while John the Apostle “bears witness” about Jesus in Revelation (John 1:7 and Rev 1:2). The two books open with the witness of “John” about Jesus.

² There is a homophony in Greek between ‘kephas’ (Cephas) in John 1:42 and ‘psephos’ (stone) in Rev. 2:17.

³ Peter is given a new name, “Cephas,” or stone in John 1:42. The overcoming believer is promised a white “stone” with a new name in Revelation 2:17.

⁴ As noted by the verse address in bold, the only occurrences of the word ‘zeal’ are found in these books that describe the Lord’s determination to cleanse the churches of Revelation just as He had purged the earthly temple in Jerusalem. In His letter to the Laodiceans, Jesus exhorts the believers to imitate His own zeal for purity in the house of God. The zeal of Christ drives Him to cleanse the temple (John 2:17). That same zeal is what will drive God’s people to repent, bringing purity to the church (Rev 3:19). This ‘consuming’ zeal (John 2:17) is thus the remedy to Laodicean lukewarmness (Rev. 3:16). Moreover, the cleansing of the earthly temple by the zeal of Jesus (John 2) is balanced by the cleansing of the seven churches, which constitute the heavenly temple, by the zealous call of Jesus (Rev 2-3). Consequently, both Johannine books begin with a cleansing of the “house of God” as temple or church. There is thus a thematic equipoise to the beginning of both the Gospel and Revelation. This literary equipoise is sustained throughout the parallel reading of John’s two great works, as we shall see.

⁵ The meaning of “Nicodemus” and “Nicolaitan” is virtually identical in Greek (“victory of the people”). If Nicodemus is taken as a representative of the Pharisees, the ground of the Lord’s hatred of the teaching of the Nicolaitans is clearly established (Rev 2:6). Moreover, the juxtaposition of these names (and a Hellenistic name for the teacher of Israel is unusual, to say the least) in light of the history of Nicodemus’ faith would give hope of repentance to the Nicolaitans of Ephesus and Pergamum.

⁶ The reproof of Jesus is the evidence of His love (Rev 3:19). The teaching of this parallel reading constitutes a loving invitation to all those afraid of the light because of their evil deeds to come to Him nonetheless (John 3:20).

⁷ The invitation to dine with Jesus is a reference to communion at the Lord’s Table. The suggestion in this parallel is that the Lord’s Supper is in fact an anticipation of the wedding supper of the Lamb (Rev 19:9). The Laodiceans are being invited into a celebration of love and intimacy by the Bridegroom of heaven at the bridal meal He hosts for them.

⁸ Jesus’ teaching to the Samaritan woman about true worship (John 4:23) is echoed by all of heaven being filled with worship (Rev 4:9-10). Similarly, Jesus’ observation that a prophet has no honor ‘among his own’ is contrasted with all of heaven ascribing Him honor (Rev. 4:11, 5:12-13). The heavenly and earthly scenes are full of ironic contrasts!

⁹ The boldness of Jesus on earth in asserting His right to work healing on the Sabbath provoked the charge that He was making Himself “equal with God” (John 5:18). The corresponding passage in the heavenly throne room depicts Jesus as equal with God, worthy to open the seven-sealed book, and boldly ‘taking’ it from the right hand of the Lord God sitting upon the throne (Rev 5:7). Jesus is thus in the posture of a co-regent, not a supplicant, as He approaches the throne of His Father.

¹⁰ John the Baptist, of course, experienced the fullness (cf. “seven spirits of God”) of the Spirit even before his birth (cf. Luke 1:15).

¹¹ The apocalyptic horseman who brings famine to the earth is sent by Jesus to vindicate the justice of God against man’s rebellion (Rev 6:5). But the context of the parallel correspondence encourages the believer to remember that Jesus was mindful of the hunger of His people in the wilderness and that He is able to supply whatever they need.

¹² Strikingly, Jesus fled the honor of man as much as the wicked will flee the wrath of God!

¹³ The pattern of unique correspondences between John 6 and Revelation 6-7 reveals in both books that the people of God are delivered from the wind and the sea, i.e., from natural or elemental chaos. Their safety and security is the seal of God.

¹⁴ This correspondence sets forth a promise-fulfillment pattern. The promise pronounced upon earth is realized in heaven.

¹⁵ The religious leaders conjecture that Jesus intends to kill Himself (John 8:21-22). Ironically, their conjecture is paralleled with the inability of the wicked in judgment to find death (Rev 9:6). The wicked, who are dead in their sins, will suffer a torment that will not die. Once again, the irony is fully appreciated only by a companion reading of these two books.

¹⁶ The Gospel describes the religious leaders who are blind to the Light of the World and deaf to the Word of God. The revelation of their true character is unveiled in the parallel reading. The religious leaders of the second temple are idol worshippers, and the temple of Jerusalem has become an idol sanctuary. John’s polemic against apostate Judaism expresses a shocking irony.

¹⁷ John’s immediate obedience is intended as an example of Jesus’ teaching about following Him.

¹⁸ The resurrection of Lazarus in the Gospel becomes a powerful picture of the resurrection of the two witnesses in Revelation. The murderous hostility of the Jews against Lazarus (John 12:10-11) corresponds to the bestial opposition to the two witnesses of Revelation (Rev 11:7).

¹⁹ In yet another shocking irony, the religious leaders are compared to the followers of the dragon. The religious leaders feared that they might lose their earthly sanctuary as a consequence of the wrath of Rome. But a far worse wrath awaited them — the wrath of God. And for their rejection of Jesus their place in the heavenly sanctuary was taken away. Their loss of “place” (Rev 12:8) contrasts with believers for whom Jesus is preparing a “place” (John 14:2).

²⁰ The cry of the multitude at the triumphal entry is echoed by the cry of the multitude in heaven. Heaven and earth alike declare the kingdom authority of Jesus. The battle on earth against Jerusalem, described in the Gospel, is being simultaneously waged from heaven against Babylon, as depicted in Revelation. The correspondence between the two wicked cities, Babylon and Jerusalem, and the warfare of heaven against them, is a major thematic parallel between the Gospel and Revelation.

²¹ These verses constitute the literary axis of the Johannine books. The thunderous voices of the heavenly angels are heard on earth as the dragon is cast out of heaven to earth. This correspondence is like an open window between the Gospel and the Revelation through which those on earth are permitted to hear the war in heaven (Rev 12:7).

²² The cross foreshadows the victory of the ascension, when Jesus in His “lifted up” glory will draw all nations to Himself as a community of worshippers.

²³ This parallel correspondence between Judas and the beast is reinforced by the juxtaposition of John 17:12 and Revelation 17:8, 11, set forth below.

²⁴ This pattern of unique vocabulary indicates a thematic interdependence. The judgment in Revelation is upon the wild grapes, the apostate Israel (cf. Isa 5:7), namely, all those who do not “abide” in Jesus.

²⁵ We have already seen the bestial character of Judas in John 12:5 and 13:29 in light of Revelation 13:17. This parallel is significant because of the unique occurrence of the word “perdition.”

²⁶ Pilate’s question in the Gospel is answered in Revelation. The irony of Pilate’s question is astonishing when John the Seer, like Elisha for his servant, opens the heavens so that we might see the Lord of Glory, Faithful and True.

²⁷ In a striking juxtaposition, Jesus in his suffering is paralleled to the harlot Babylon. Both have a loathsome cup to drink, and both wear a purple robe. Moreover, Jesus suffers the indignity of false accusations of blasphemy (John 10:33) and fornication (John 8:41), crimes that John charges against the whore (Rev 17:2-3). Shocking as it may seem, it is clear that John’s portrait of Jesus in the Gospel has the Lord taking upon Himself the reproach of the whore of Babylon, as depicted in Revelation. Jesus’ suffering in the place of the whore suggests a truth no less wonderful for its being obvious: the Gospel is laying the foundation in the sufferings of Christ for the redemption of Revelation’s Babylonian whore!

²⁸ Heaven and earth are full of shocking opposites! Pilate, the Roman judge, brings Jesus forth and invites all Jerusalem to behold the mockery of Christ’s royal claim. There He stands, crowned in thorns and arrayed in royal purple, and Pilate announces, “Behold, the Man!” The contrast in Revelation could not be more arresting. John invites us to “Behold the Faithful and True One!” crowned with kingly diadems and clothed in a robe dipped in blood. Revelation balances the ridicule of earth with the triumphant glory of heaven!

²⁹ Ironically, Pilate is himself being judged by heaven for his unjust judgment upon earth.

³⁰ Both of John’s books climax in the judgment of Jesus. Upon earth He is condemned by Pilate, who writes a title to mock His kingdom. But in heaven the Lord God vindicates the kingship of Jesus, writing Him a glorious name.

³¹ The career of Satan counterfeits the earthly history of Jesus. Satan is bound and placed in the abyss just as Jesus was bound and placed in a tomb. Lest he deceive the nations (Rev 20:3, cf. Matt 27:63), Satan is sealed in the earth (Rev 20:3, cf. Matt 27:66). Afterward, Satan imitates the resurrection in being “released” from the abyss (Rev 20:3).

³² The Gospel concludes with a woman and Jesus in an earthly garden (John 20:15). Jesus tells Mary that He must ascend to His Father (John 20:17). Revelation concludes with the bride descending from the Father to be received by her Groom (Rev 21:9-10), coming to a heavenly garden with the river of crystal and the tree of life (Rev 22:1-2). The Gospel’s picture of the bride, corresponding to the bride of Revelation, is Mary Magdalene. Now the choice of this Mary to represent the bride is remarkable due to her reputation within the Christian community as the one from whom the Lord had cast out seven demons (Luke 8:2). Consequently, one who had known every form of demonic defilement (cf. Luke 11:26) is chosen by John to represent the bride of Jesus. When read thematically in parallel with Revelation, the redemption of Mary Magdalene is juxtaposed to the redemption of the whore of Babylon, who becomes the bride of Christ. Once again, the parallel maintains a perfect thematic equipoise with Revelation.

³³ The marriage imagery in the Gospel is an implicit Adam typology, with the Lord awakening in the garden tomb as a new Adam. His wounded side (John 19:34) having been healed, Jesus beholds Mary Magdalene, who has become the new Eve.

³⁴ The parallel is striking. The pastoral oversight of Peter is made emblematic of the wedding supper of the Lamb.

³⁵ These remarks constitute the seal of John as a faithful witness to all he has written.

John-Revelation Project – Intro

At the beginning of the 21st century virtually the entire American evangelical community has been captured by a dispensational, pretribulational, and premillennial eschatology. Best-selling book series and sensational movies, reinforced by endless radio talk programs, promote these fantastic interpretations of biblical prophecy as events coming to pass in our generation.

Unfortunately, the response of the Reformed church to this, thus far, one-sided discussion has been to caution that fantastic interpretations of biblical prophecy, especially concerning the book of Revelation, should be skeptically received. But it should be frankly admitted that we have not offered what we could credibly claim is a defensible interpretation of the last book in the canon.

This faculty forum is an attempt to rectify this omission-a deficiency that we must recognize represents a sinful omission in our Reformed history. While the Westminster Confession clearly states that the Book of Revelation is to be received according “to the rule of faith and life” (WCF, chap. 1, para. 2), we have not given John’s Revelation an equal dignity with the rest of sacred scripture. This neglect is demonstrated in the paucity of exegetical attention the book has been accorded from Reformed exegetes. We have consequently treated the Apocalypse as though it were almost an apocryphal document. And although we have silently recognized that its meaning was largely veiled to us, we have not cried out as a community to the Holy Spirit of God to illumine its message to our hearts. This omission is again largely due to our history. It is instructive that Martin Luther questioned the canonicity of Revelation, lamenting that a “Revelation” should reveal; and John Calvin, who commented on every other book of the Bible, glaringly omitted commentary on the Apocalypse. The children of the Reformers have fared little better.¹And it is time to ask why?

The answer to this question, we believe, is suggested once we recognize the genre of Revelation as classically understood.² The literary pattern of a trajectory leading from darkness to light, from a damsel’s despair to a hero’s victory celebrated at last by a royal wedding procession (komos), is comedy.³

Now, perhaps, we can understand the failure of the Reformed church to address Revelation in any adequate fashion. It is due to our history. Perhaps we must also confess it is due to our sin. For it was our Puritan forebears who closed down the Elizabethan theater, fearing the nature of the theatre to explore the comedic imagination, which was suspected (especially in Shakespeare!) of undermining good morals.⁴

Consequently, as a community, we Reformed folk have been skeptical of the poetic imagination. We have unknowingly but nonetheless actually shut down one of the most fundamental gestures of the soul in so doing. And we have lost the splendor of the mundus imaginalis, the wonderment and sheer joy of the soul that is our true entrée into the Apocalypse, John’s glorious vision of the beauty of the Son of Man.

The following papers from the Faculty Forum represent the ongoing project of Knox Seminary to articulate an understanding of Revelation through a lectionary reading of the Apocalypse and the Fourth Gospel and by an awareness of the overwhelmingly typological character of Johannine literature. We invite the participation of our students and the Christian community at large as we undertake this exciting study!

Please send all comments to JohnRevelation@knoxseminary.org.

IntroPart 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

¹ There have been several valiant attempts by postmillennialists to exposit Revelation. But postmillennialists have largely approached the book with a literary literalism similar to the hermeneutic of the premillennialists, having failed to appreciate the ironic character of the biblical understanding of victory (cf. Paul’s claim that “we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered. But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us,” Rom 8:36-37). This hermeneutical oversight is caused, as we shall argue, by the loss of a classical understanding of the possibilities of irony, the heart of the comedic imagination.

² Modern commentaries endlessly repeat the notion that Revelation represents an “apocalyptic” genre. This wholly confected (that is, non-classical) genre category based upon intertestamental Jewish writings has recently begun to give way under the realization that it has not offered significant hermeneutical assistance in developing the contours of thought within Revelation itself. See F.D. Mazzaferri, The Genre of the Book of Revelation from a Source-Critical Perspective BZNW 54 (New York: de Gruyter, 1989) 60-75, 160-84.

³ There are four classical genres: epic, lyric, comic, and tragic. Aristotle, Poetica 1449a. See Louise Cowan, “Introduction: The Comic Terrain,” in The Terrain of Comedy (ed. L. Cowan; Dallas: The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, 1984), 16.

⁴ Puritanical censors were fearful of comedic wit and humor. Wit, the comedy of the intellect, was eschewed as frivolity. Humor (from the four humors), the comedy of the body, was rejected as bawdy and obscene. This skepticism of the comedic exploration of corporality was often carried to an excess that seemed informed by a neo-platonism rather than a due regard for biblical decency and order. In this we are reminded of the ancient rabbinical canonical objections to the Song of Songs. Solomon’s allegory was relegated to the antilegomena because even the allegorical anthropomorphism of God espousing to Himself a people, once again reflecting the comedic imagination, was regarded as too bold and too bodily.

The Days of Noah: The Eschatological Structure of Genesis

Genesis 8: The New Creation

Genesis 9: The New Adam

Genesis 9:20-27: The Fall Renewed

Genesis 11-12: Renewed Conflict of the Seed

Eschatological Expectation: The New Judgment

Conclusion

The History of the World: The Macrocosm

The Relationship of the Seven Churches (Rev 2:1-3:22) to the Vision of the Whore and the Bride (Rev 17:1-22:6)

The Bridal Destiny of the Seven Churches

Ephesus

Smyrna

Pergamos

Sardis

Ephesus

Pergamos

Biblical Typology: A Neglected Key to John’s Revelation?

Introduction

Jesus as the New Joshua in the Gospel and in the Revelation

The Story of a Whore Who Becomes a Bride

The Story of the True Joshua, and a Whore Who Becomes a Bride

Conclusion

The Vision Promised to Nathanael (John1:51)

The Seven Last Angels of the Apocalypse (Rev 17:1- 22:6)

The Climactic Vision of Revelation

John’s Great Vision of the Seven Last Angels (Rev 17:1-22:6)

The Gospel of John: A Neglected Key to Revelation?

Introduction

Chiastic Correspondences

John-Revelation Chiastic Correspondence Charts

John-Revelation: The Story Begins to Unfold

The Great Reversal:The Son is lifted up (John 12:28-31)Satan is cast down (Revelation 12:9-10)

The Gospel of John: A Neglected Key to Revelation?

Introduction

Consecutive Correspondences

John-Revelation Consecutive Correspondence Chart

The Relationship of the Seven Churches (Rev 2:1-3:22) to
the Vision of the Whore and the Bride (Rev 17:1-22:6)

Jesus as the New Joshua
in the Gospel and in the Revelation

The Story of the True Joshua, and
a Whore Who Becomes a Bride

The Gospel of John:
A Neglected Key to Revelation?

The Great Reversal:
The Son is lifted up (John 12:28-31)
Satan is cast down (Revelation 12:9-10)

The Gospel of John:
A Neglected Key to Revelation?