10 June 2023
As you might expect, there's not a lot of Christian Law in John's Revelation, but there's a lot of Covenant. It's the revelation of Jesus Christ, who is our Covenant and our Law. That's the main point of Chapter 1. The symbols all point to Christ.
The Letters to the Seven Churches begin in Chapter 2. We can find some implied law in those letters. For Ephesus, Jesus expects us to test anyone claiming to represent Him, particularly as apostles. The test is something we would have picked up from previous New Testament writings.
For Smyrna, we have a critical point behind the Covenant: Jews are the Synagogue of Satan. That is, as long as they are still Jews; real "Jews" have embraced Jesus their Messiah. For Pergamum, we can understand the prohibition against using stumbling blocks against fellow believers. The other issue is the Nicolaitans, who hold a similar heresy, an extreme version of "free from the law". In Thyatira, it's almost the same thing with some woman Christ calls "Jezebel".
For Sardis, it sounds like a church that has gotten bogged down in operations and has completely lost sight of the purpose of obeying the law of loving each other as Christ does. With Philadelphia we get the message of promise, that those who persevere in faith can escape some forms of testing. Laodecia is well known for being a church that is too well off and just buys their way through everything, while starving the Spirit in their midst.
In Chapter 4 we see a symbolic description of God on His throne. One of the items is the rainbow, the symbol of the Covenant of Noah. That's the law code for the world at large. Who can forget the image of profligate praise and worship here and in the next chapter?
Starting in Chapter 6, the primary issue is quite obvious: God's wrath falls on those outside of His Covenant. The image of the Four Horsemen echoes Zechariah's vision. The world has been turned over to Satan, who drives humanity to self-destruction. The Four Horsemen represent the most common problems with human behavior at large: political ambition, war, economic ruin and death. Those horses always ride together.
A major emphasis in Chapter 7 is the promise that if we die in persecution for our faith, we receive special treatment in Eternity. Most of the chapters following carry on with various visions of how God will judge the world for sin.
In Chapter 11 we are reminded of the Two Witnesses, the two primary leadership figures under the Covenant. In any given context, there should be someone who plays the kingly role of ruler and judge, plus another to serve as a priestly ritual leader. This has always been a key element in any covenant from God. These two roles serving in holiness will be one of the strongest witnesses possible in the world at large.
The imagery in the next chapter tells us about how Satan is feudal master over one-third of the angels, and they are confined to this world. But there is nothing he can do to harm a faithful covenant body. The Lady represents Israel who gave birth to the Son, and she survived by God's care in the wilderness journey, both literal and symbolic. The Lady is the Lord's Bride; it's not a concrete identity, but a representative one. His Kingdom is His Body and His Bride.
In Chapter 13 we have the Roman government represented as a Beast. There have plenty of beasts since then, and more to come, because Satan keeps raising up new ones. The next chapter is the symbolism of Babylon as the worldly market where everything has a price. Economic participation comes at a high price (submission to the Beast).
Some of these themes are replayed in slightly different forms in later chapters, like Babylon, but then we have the Harlot Church riding the Beast. This contrasts with the Bride of Christ farther along in the text. It all ends with the promise of eternal paradise.
We all know the whole point Christ was making through John here is that God is not slack on His promises and the threats of His wrath, but His time scale is radically different from ours. Abraham lived a lot longer than we do these days and he didn't personally see the covenant promises, but his descendants did. We need to embrace that long, multi-generational frame of reference so that we can understand how His Covenant works.
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