Sometimes, leftovers taste better than the original meal; this may be one of those times. I have three items again. The first one really builds on last month’s issue. I argued that the book of Revelation is the gospel. It deals with the same issues as the canonical gospels: deliverance from evil and the coming of the kingdom. I also pointed out that the Lord’s Prayer is what connects the four gospels and Revelation. Only when all five books are held together is the good news complete.
You can also watch this content as a VIDEO PODCAST
1. An Army in Linen
Here, I would like to make one important addition. The final victory of God as described in Revelation will come about with the involvement of his people.
The Lord’s Prayer finds its ultimate answer in Revelation, BUT it is not a prayer for the second coming. It is not a cry for God to finally come and end it all. It is far more concrete and immediate than that. God’s kingdom and will are to find realization and execution within history, in the circumstances of our lives.
In other words, believers play an active part in the coming of the kingdom and the defeat of evil. This is part of the warp and woof of Revelation. The most obvious examples:
In Revelation 12, the dragon fails at every turn: to devour the child once it is born (Rev. 12:4), to maintain a position in heaven (Rev. 12:7-12), in his pursuit of the woman (Rev. 12:13), and in his attempt to sweep her away (Rev. 12:15).
Believers play a part in this battle through their word of testimony and their willingness to die if need be (Rev. 12:11).
In Revelation 13, the beast makes war on the saints and conquers them (Rev. 13:7). Here, the beast appears to have gained the upper hand. It is parallel to Revelation 11:7, where the beast makes war on the two witnesses and conquers and kills them. But notice they are dead for only three and a half days – a remarkably short time and a contrast to the three and a half years of effective ministry. The beast’s apparent victory in chapter 11 is short-lived. This is also true in chapter 13.
Because in Revelation 17:14, we read of this war again: “They [the beast and his ten kings] will make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them, for he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those with him are called and chosen and faithful”.
Called and chosen and faithful? Who would that be? The phrase does not describe angels but humans. The tide has turned. It is now the saints who are overcoming the beast.
In Revelation 19:11ff we read about the rider on the white horse, accompanied by “the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure” (Rev. 19:14). This is not the second coming (when Jesus will come with the clouds, not on a horse) and the armies are not angelic. Instead, it describes something that is true throughout the church age.
Just a few verses earlier we read that the bride has clothed herself “with fine linen, bright and pure”, which is interpreted as “the righteous deeds of the saints” (Rev. 19:8). As ChatGPT pointed out to me: “Heaven’s armies wear linen, not armour – because righteousness, not violence, wins the war.”
Clearly, then, those wearing fine linen here are, once again, the saints.
They make up the armies of heaven. Their righteous deeds are what counts. Thus, his kingdom comes; in their lives, his will is done. Not just at the end. Now.
ChatGPT again: “This isn’t just prophecy; it’s participation. The kingdom isn’t on pause, waiting for an ending – it’s advancing, through the faithful who live it now.”
2. Zechariah: Joining God in the Fight
While reading Zechariah, I found an interesting OT counterpart to this. A very long time ago, in 2014, I actually wrote the very first issue of Create a Learning Site on the second half of this book.
One of its themes is that God will empower his people for the final confrontation, endowing them with unbelievable vigour and vitality. Three passages especially speak of this: Zechariah 9:13-15, 10:5-7, and 12:5-8.
In Zechariah, as in other OT prophets, the eschatological war is entirely described as one of Israel against the nations, with all the messiness and bloodiness that results of fighting with blades and spears: “trampling the foe in the mud of the streets” (Zech. 10:5). The text is intoxicating and repulsive at the same time. Obviously, it does not know the NT intuition that our battle is not against flesh and blood. Understandably: For OT Israel, evil usually showed up in the form of invading armies – of humans.
Taking this into account and reinterpreting Zechariah in the light of the NT, we find a clear confirmation of the conclusion of the previous section.
The final victory over evil, nations or otherwise, comes about with the active participation of God’s people, even though the actual ‘fighting’ will look rather differently.
3. The Image of God in Assyria
On a completely different note: In July, I wrote about the idea of Assyria as the world’s first empire, based on a book by Eckart Frahm, Assyria: The Rise and Fall of the World’s First Empire [paid link].
Here is a fascinating quote from that book, illuminating the concept of the image of God as used in Genesis 1:26:
Unlike the monarchs of other periods of Mesopotamian history, Assyrian kings never claimed that they were actual gods. Their written names are not preceded by the divine determinative [a particle indicating that the following name belonged to the category gods], and there were no temples specifically dedicated to their cult. But because of their power, the kings were very much perceived as godlike. Comparisons with the sun god Shamash, the paragon of justice, were particularly common, and many Assyrian texts use Shamash’s sacred number, twenty, to write the title “king.” In 669 BCE, Adad-shumu-usur, a prominent scholar, wrote to King Esarhaddon, “The king, the lord of the lands, is the very image of Shamash” … In another letter, the same Adad-shumu-usur establishes an interesting tripartite hierarchy that places the king at the intersection between the world of the gods and that of ordinary human beings: “They say thus: ‘Man is the shadow of god.’ But man is nothing but the shadow of man. The king, he indeed is the true likeness of god.” A Mesopotamian myth that distinguishes the creation of the king from that of man seems to point in the same direction. And a royal reinvestiture ritual [that is, a ritual to reestablish or confirm someone in office, often involving special garments], performed in the sixth month of the year, applied to the garments and the throne of the king some of the same sacred procedures that were used when a new divine statue was made, bringing about – in the minds of the participants – a eucharist-like transformation of those objects. (in this case, of the king as image; Frahm 2024: 139f)
In ascribing this image to all humans, not merely the king, Genesis marks a radical and revolutionary departure from the world around it.
For more on the image of God, go here.
Attribution
Images used are taken from pixabay.com and unsplash.com
References
Unless indicated differently, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Frahm, Eckart. 2023. Assyria: The Rise and Fall of the World’s First Empire (Bloomsbury Publishing; paid link)
Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in this text are ‘affiliate links’. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. If you purchase anything through such a link, you help me cover the cost of Create a Learning Site.