Unveiling the Heart of Apocalyptic Preaching

Don Carson: And Where is Jesus? By this question, I mean two things. First.… In what sense do standard interpretations of the book of Revelation truly focus on Jesus? In other words, where is he in this book? Let me address that one (in fact, I want to spend most of my time on that one), and then I’ll come to the second question. I suspect that it’s worth taking just a moment to review with you the standard interpretations of the book of Revelation that are found in most of our commentaries.

1. An essentially futurist view

This interprets most things after Revelation 4:1 as to take place sometime still in the future to us. That’s not just dispensationalism. Abraham Kuyper had his own brand of futurist interpretation, of course.

2. The philosophy of history approach

This argues that the book does not refer to specific periods of time at all, whether in the past, present, or future, but presents patterns of what takes places in history, again and again and again, with evil multiplying and then being beaten back by the conquering Lamb.

3. An essentially preterist view

This places most things in the book of Revelation as taking place up to and including AD 70.

4. The history of the church approach

This is not held by many people today, but there are still some around. In the nineteenth century in the US, it was one of the dominant views. It’s perhaps most accessible in Barnes’s Notes. It’s still worth reading for your amusement and edification. In Barnes’s approach to the book of Revelation, the book of Revelation is alleged to lay out the whole history of the Christian church.

It is, then, no surprise that it comes down just about to Barnes’s own time as you come to the end. So you know who that nasty woman sitting on the seven hills is going to be. That fits right into traditional Reformation views of the Roman Catholic Church, and so forth.

1. The historical background approach

This approach has many, many variations: some now liberationists, some now political, and so forth. The book is analyzed for its background to see how it can speak in some way to contemporary settings today or the like.

2. New rhetorical approaches

These really don’t care for extratextual referentiality (that is, what the text is referring to or not referring to). Rather, they simply want to examine the rhetorical power of the argument, and so forth.

You can find commentaries on all of these perspectives very easily. The question I would want to ask of all of them, however, is.… Where does Jesus function in your scheme? For example, the commentaries I have read that take a preterist stance spend pages and pages and pages on trying to prove that the seven-hilled city is really Jerusalem and not Rome, after all, that the language of destruction really fits best into AD 70, and so forth.

It has some stuff on Jesus, by the by, but it’s not where the authors are excited. It’s not where they spend pages and pages and pages trying to unpack things. Now I think they’re wrong. I think they’re wrong historically. On the other hand, that doesn’t trouble me nearly as much as the loss of center.

Likewise, when I read older-fashioned dispensational commentaries and come to Revelation 4 and 5, the great vision to which I referred this morning, a lot of time is spent on the opening two or three verses to demonstrate that this is actually a reference to the secret rapture of the church because everything after the end of chapter 3 refers to something future. Now eventually there will be talk about what is going on in chapter 4 and 5, what Jesus does, and so on.

However, it’s largely shaped and constrained by the fact that, under this view, the church has been raptured out of the way and witnesses some things in heaven or the like. Nothing takes place in that chapter on earth or with huge significance, in fact, right there. It’s all to do with the removal of the church. Now again, I think that view is wrong, but I’m not going to lose a lot of sleep over it. If Jesus and his cross work get enough focus in those two chapters, I still think it is wrong, but the offense is not nearly as great as to somehow relegate Jesus to background noise.

I sometimes tell my students that if I have learned anything in 35-odd years of teaching, I have learned that my students don’t learn most of what I teach them. What they tend to learn is what I’m excited about. What they tend to learn is what I keep repeating. What they tend to learn is what I place at the organizational center; that is, so that everything gets related back to it.

So if you approach a book like Revelation thinking that all Christians are more or less on the same page about Jesus and his death, so that’s not the real problem, the real problem is, “When does the rapture take place?” or the like, if that for you is a really big shtick, or really demonstrating that preterism wins, then that is probably what you’ll be excited about going through the book, and that is what your people will pick up as of fundamental importance.

The questions do have some interpretative importance. I don’t want to deny them. Nor am I saying there is no place for thinking these things through pretty carefully. But in terms of the burden of what is preached amongst the people of God, you simply cannot afford to lose the place of Jesus. Where is Jesus?

What I would like to do, therefore, in the next little while, is go right through the book of Revelation with you. I won’t stop at every passage that refers to Jesus or Christ or Lamb or related terms, but I’m going to stop briefly at quite a few. Here and there, I’ll fly by and just dip down. In other places, we’ll stop and actually look at the text a little more closely.

The book begins: “The revelation from Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who testifies to everything he saw: that is, the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ.” So Jesus is not only the primary agent of revelation, but he is also the substance of revelation: “… the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ.”

Then, halfway through verse 4. “Grace and peace to you from him who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.”

So he’s Jesus Christ. He’s “the firstborn from the dead …” You have reference to his death and resurrection. “… and the ruler of the kings of the earth.” That is, he’s the mediatorial King in line with what Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15. That is, all of God’s authority is mediated through him. All that is before you get out of verse 4!

“To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood …” This is right at the beginning of the book, placarded across the opening paragraph. “… and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father: to him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen.” That is to say, you’re looking back on the cross, and all of the benefits that have come to us have been secured by the shedding of his blood.

Moreover, he has made us to be a kingdom and priests (or a kingdom of priests; it can be read both ways). This is clearly a reference back to Exodus 19, picked up also in 1 Peter. “… a kingdom and priests to serve our God …” That is, the continuity of the people of God as the very domain of God’s saving rule and intercessors and intermediaries before the larger world, all secured on the basis of Christ’s blood.

Then, after looking back, John looks forward. “Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye shall see him, even those who pierced him.” So even in this looking forward, there is a quotation from the Old Testament that brings us to Jesus. “All the peoples of the earth will mourn because of him. So shall it be! Amen.”

At the risk of becoming a peddler of books myself, one of the things that will help you in this biblical, theological reading is the fat volume that Greg Beale and I edited. It came out last year and is called Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old. Do not make the mistake of thinking that it is to be used primarily in the New Testament. Obviously, it is to be used in the New Testament; it’s a commentary on the New Testament use of the Old. But Tim Keller tells me that he never preaches from anywhere in the Bible now without consulting that book.

This is because if you use the biblical indices (and there are lots of them) when you’re preaching from some Old Testament passage, if it’s picked up anywhere in the New Testament, even allusively, it will be there. Thus, you’re learning to make the connections that the Canon itself makes. When you work through this passage in Revelation 1, you already have Exodus 19, Daniel 7, and Zechariah 12. That’s all before you get through the first eight verses!

Then John begins. “I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering and kingdom and patient endurance that are ours in Jesus …” That opens up huge swaths of biblical theology. It even reminds us, for example, of Philippians 3 where Paul wants to know the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering. That’s what is in Christ Jesus. The reason it’s in Christ Jesus is because that is the very nature of the gospel itself. It is the dawning of the kingdom, which dawns and comes in the full flush of suffering, best manifested in the cross itself.

Then in the glorious vision of verses 12 to 16: “I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me.” The voice, after all, was Jesus’ voice. I haven’t even mentioned the reference to the Lord’s Day, which has been shown to be Sunday. There is possibly a reference to the day of the Lord from the Old Testament, but it’s the Lord’s Day because it’s the day of the Lord’s resurrection. That was already picked up toward the end of the first century.

“And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands. Among the lampstands was someone ‘like a son of man,’ dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet …” Everybody knows this is picking up Daniel 7. The interesting thing is that the description of Jesus, by and large, is taken from the description of the Ancient of Days in the Daniel 7 reference. So this becomes another way of enriching our doctrine of the Trinity and already anticipating where Revelation 5 is going when the Lamb himself comes from the center of the throne. So again, this is hugely christological.

Then all of the descriptions of Christ in Revelation 1:12–16 are the baseline, the reservoir, from which the descriptions of Christ are drawn in Revelation 2 and 3, in the letters to the seven churches. John writes, “Then this is the one who speaks,” and then there’s a descriptive phrase in there that is drawn from these lines.

“These are the words of him who is the First and the Last.” “These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand.” “These are the words of him who has the sharp, double-edged sword.” Well, the sharp, double-edged sword, for example, is actually mentioned in chapter 1, verse 16. In each case, the descriptions of Jesus in his glorified splendor in verses 12–16, become the reservoir of Jesus’ self-introductory ways of disclosure in chapters 2 and 3. I would love to pick up a lot of other references in chapters 2 and 3, but I’ll let them pass.

I have already dealt with chapters 4 and 5. Chapter 4 is the setting to the drama in chapter 5. When the Lamb is introduced (5:6), he looks “as if he has been slain, standing in the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. The Lamb had seven horns and seven eyes.” Now we’ve already run through some of that material quickly.

Then the new song is sung: “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased for God members from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests …” There’s that expression again, which takes us back to chapter 1 and to the old covenant people of God.

“… to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth. Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!” There are seven elements: a perfection of praise to him who has been slain. Then again and again, from there right through the end of the book, you find this sort of expression that you find in verse 13.

For example, “To him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb” or “This was the voice of him who sits on the throne and of the Lamb” or “All praises given to him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.” Again, there is this close concatenation of God Almighty and the Lamb, right through the rest of the book.

Then structurally, of course, with the breaking of the seals, consequent upon Christ prevailing in death and resurrection, all of God’s purposes come to pass. That unravels the rest of the book. So the seals are broken one by one. Chapter 6, verse 1: “I watched as the Lamb opened the first of the seven seals.”

However you understand the difficult verses the follow, what you must see is that he is qualified to open those seals precisely because of his death and resurrection. You cannot now interpret anything in the rest of this book apart from this crucial turning point that constitutes chapters 4 and 5. It’s virtually the controlling vision for the rest of the book. I’ll draw your attention to that in two or three other places.

Chapter 7, verse 10: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.” What belongs to our God? Salvation! Because this is what’s being unpacked by the splitting of the seals and the bringing together of all of God’s purposes in salvation and blessing. With it, as we’ll see, there is also judgment, consequent upon Christ’s death and resurrection on our behalf.

Or again, chapter 7, verse 14: “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” Now a lot of commentaries spend a huge amount of time in chapter 7 trying to decide if the 144,000 of verses 1–8 are a subset of the “great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people, and language” in verses 9 and following or an alternative way of referring to the same people.

If you take either view, there are problems and challenges and so forth. I understand that. Even the list of names in the tribal list is rather interesting. John does some surprising things with the tribal lists in the book of Revelation. I’ve read scores of pages of learned disquisition, by Richard Bauckham and others, on the significance of all of those names. Somewhere along the line, some serious scholars have had to tackle that question.

But you have to see, nevertheless, that however you put those together … in my view, the 144,000 are the great multitude … the only reason they are among the redeemed is because Christ has shed his blood. That’s the only reason. They wear white robes because they have made them white in the blood of the Lamb. That’s where your focus needs to be.

Then in chapters 8, 9, and following, judgment is unpacked. Horrible judgment. Heavily apocalyptically symbolized judgment. It reminds us of many passages in the Old Testament. But when you remember, at the end of the day, that all of God’s purposes for judgment and blessing spring from the slitting of the seals, then all of these things are unfolding in history not only because God is sovereign but because Christ is qualified to be the mediatorial King bringing all these things to pass.

Just as when he says, “All authority is given to me in heaven and on earth” in Matthew, or when Paul says of him that all of God’s authority is mediated through him, the book of Revelation describes him as the one who brings to pass all of God’s purposes according to the scroll in the Sovereign’s right hand. They’re all very different images getting across the same reality.

As in the book of Matthew, Jesus’ authority is predicated on his death and resurrection. That’s where the whole passion narrative leads, as in Paul’s writings in 1 Corinthians 15 (which is embedded in the death and resurrection), where Paul says, “These are the matters of first importance: Christ died for our sins and rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.” That’s why he reigns. So also here. He reigns precisely because he has prevailed in suffering to bring about all of God’s purposes and slit the scroll.

Until we get down to chapter 11, verse 15. “The seventh angel sounded his trumpet …” The trumpets flow right out of the seals, of course. “… and there were loud voices in heaven, which said: ‘The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah, and he will reign for ever and ever.’ ” There’s this kingly theme, again, that is consequent upon the prevailing victory through death and resurrection of Jesus in chapter 5.

Or again, in the following verses: “We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, the One who is and who was, because you have taken your great power and have begun to reign.” The Lord God Almighty has taken his power and begun to reign (although he always reigns in some sense, salvifically) precisely through Jesus in the whole context. Then the symbolism for the temple here is astonishingly important and intertwined with a great number of themes that tie back to Revelation 4 and 5, again, but I’ll let that pass.

Then, chapter 12. The woman in this section is not Mary, although many have thought it was. The woman here clearly has to be a symbol for the whole people of God, whether the old covenant people or the new covenant people. Messiah comes from the people of God. She who was recognized to be the daughter of Zion, which is another way of referring to the people of God.

The reason why it must be understood that way is because the same woman, then, is described at the end of the chapter as having children, who are clearly Christians, under persecution and attack from the Devil, who goes off “to make war against the rest of her offspring: those who obey God’s commandments and hold fast their testimony of Jesus.” That’s a reference to what we might almost call mother church. That is, the locus of the people of God, whether seen as the daughter of Zion in the Old Testament or the church, the bride of Christ, in the New Testament.

So she is in travail and gives birth to a son (12:5), “… a male child, who will rule all nations with an iron scepter.” This is picking up Psalm 2:9, a passage frequently quoted in the New Testament with respect to Jesus’ Davidic rule. “Her child was snatched up to God and to his throne.” That’s it. You’ve gone all the way from his birth to his ascension in half a verse. Where’s the cross?

Indeed, in large measure, most of this chapter is about the people of God. That is to say, the Devil is outraged against the woman and against the Son. The picture is grotesque. She has her feet in the stirrups, pushing, as it were, to give birth to the Messiah. There is the Devil himself, a great dragon, standing between her legs, ready to devour the baby as soon as it comes out.

It’s meant to be grotesque. Historically, it’s easy to fill that in, too, isn’t it? The slaughter of the innocents? The attempts to kill Jesus, again and again? The temptation of Jesus: “All this I will give you, if you will bow down and worship me”? Finally, the move to the cross. Did you see the film The Passion of the Christ? Do you remember the opening scene where Jesus is praying in Gethsemane?

As he’s praying, a serpent begins to wind its way over and around him. He quietly stands up and stamps his heel down on the serpent’s head. This, of course, is coming out of Genesis 3. It picks up language that is used of Christians stamping down on the serpent’s head in Romans 16. I wonder how many people who saw the film picked up any of those biblical allusions?

Then nothing more is said about Jesus, at least right away. There’s a war in heaven. We’ll come back to the significance of the war in due course. By the end of the chapter, the Dragon has been limited. He’s been hurled to earth. He’s been cast out of heaven. He’s been beaten. So he tries to vent all of his rage against the woman and her children.

What you have pictured here is the reason why the church of the living God faces suffering in this age. The reason is not that Satan is an undefeated foe or that Satan is still vying for the control of heaven. Rather, he has been defeated in principle and, now, having been cast out of heaven, he is limited, as it were, in his sphere and, as the text says in verse 12, “he knows that his time is short.”

He is like a Hitler after the Russians have been pushing in from the East, the Americans have cleaned out North Africa and started going up the boot of Italy, and the Western Allies come in on the shores of France. Hitler does not say, “Oops, sorry,” and sue for peace. He’s filled with fury because he knows his time is short, and the bloodiest fighting and mayhem takes place after that!

So there is, here, a depiction of what takes place in the church. I don’t want to lose ecclesiastical themes and conflict themes and human suffering themes; they’re all there. But why Jesus is snatched up so quickly in verse 5? Why isn’t there any depiction of his ministry, his passion, or his resurrection? Why does it just move immediately from his birth and the promise of his coming reign (“he will rule them with a rod of iron”) and his ascension (“snatched up to heaven”)?

The reason is that when you get to this chapter, you’ve already preached chapters 4 and 5 and all the implications. That’s not just making some arbitrary statement. The reason I know that is not only because it makes sense literarily … the book as a whole presupposes that before you preach chapter 12 you preach chapters 4 and 5 and show the implications; it’s the way numbering works.… I also know this because, especially in verses 10 through 12, there is an unambiguous reference back to chapters 4 and 5.

In other words, when Satan is defeated, we’re told, “Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: ‘Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Messiah. For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down.’ ” He’s defeated in principle.

Skip verse 11 for a moment. “Therefore rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short.” That’s the setup for all of the persecution, the struggles back and forth, and how God intervenes to save his people in the following verses. This is just full of exodus symbolism, incidentally.

Then there’s that crucial verse 11. This accuser of the brothers, this one who tries to crush us with guilt and bears charges before God that we must be damned for God to be just.… How do the people of God win? “They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb.” That’s back to chapter 5.

In fact, the Greek is stronger: “They triumphed over him on the ground of the blood of the Lamb.” It’s not even the blood of the Lamb as the agent or instrument or means; it is the very basis of our triumph. We don’t say that we can withstand the accusations of the Evil One because we’re not really all that bad or because we plead the blood of the Lamb as a kind of magic little talisman or slogan.

I had a friend, when I was in seminary, who would occasionally pray appealing to the blood of Jesus almost as if it were a talisman. At one point, I was driving back after a summer of ministry in Winnipeg. I was driving an old ‘59 Chevy in which the packets of rust sort of held hands to hold the car together. I had paid $140 for it; it was a lot of money!

I was bringing this other seminary friend back to Toronto with me. The trip was about 1,400 miles or so. In the mountains above Lake Superior, the transmission started popping out of third, so I had to stop somewhere at a scrapyard to buy another transmission (I didn’t have enough money to buy a new one). I bought the transmission and stuck it in. Every once in a while, we’d stop somewhere along the road and have something to eat, and then we’d pray. We were seminary students; we were supposed to pray! So we prayed.

He would pray things like, “Jesus, spread your precious blood over this car.” Well, I knew the car needed help, but I thought to myself, in my condemning ways, that I hoped this dear brother has a theological grid so that, by this, he meant, “By all the kindness that you bestow on us because Christ shed his blood, therefore, please have mercy on us even in the itsy-bitsy matters of life that come down to this wretched transmission” or something like that!

I was afraid, however (I didn’t have the courage to ask him flat out), that it was a bit of magic, as in, “I plead the blood of Jesus; therefore, you have to do it.” That misses the point! That’s teaching the cross as if it’s a bit of magic. It’s like a kind of evangelical crucifix! No, no, no, no. “They overcame him on the ground of the blood of the Lamb …” I have no other argument. I need no other plea. When the accuser of the brothers and sisters sticks his charge before God, damning us, we overcome him on the ground of the blood of the Lamb.

How else? “… and by the word of their testimony.” That doesn’t mean they give their testimony a lot. It means they bear testimony to Jesus. So you’re back to the gospel again. How do you overcome in a world of rising Islam? How do you overcome in a world of rising secularism? How do you overcome where there’s greed?

How do you overcome in a world of porn? How do you overcome in a world of endless consumerism? How do you overcome in a world that is relationally digital but is not relationally rich and human? How do you overcome? How do you win when the outside forces seem to be crumbling?

You bear witness to Jesus. What else can you say? You preach the gospel. You still have to do the same thing. You appeal to the death of Christ. You bear witness to Jesus, the gospel, and all the richness that is bound up with that in terms of knowing God, building relationships between brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus, living in the light of eternity, finding our self-identity in him, and so on. This is all secured by the cross. We bear testimony to him; that’s what we do!

Also, we “do not love our lives so much as to shrink from death.” Where do you think you learn that? We’re to take our cross and follow him. Thus, likewise, in this chapter that is worried about how the church is going to combat the enemy, the message of hope and assurance and confidence (which the focus of the whole chapter) is, at the end of the day, not the church. It’s Jesus and his cross work.

Thus Christians themselves, picking up a line from this verse, can be described in verse 17 as “those who keep God’s commandments and hold fast their testimony about Jesus.” That does not mean Christians who try harder and are especially obedient. Their testimony about Jesus, in the context of the book thus far, is really about Jesus and the gospel.

I would love to tease out chapter 13 and the two beasts there, but I press on. Chapter 14 is really divided into two unequal parts. First, there is the Lamb and the 144,000. Then, in the second part, there are the heralds and the harvest. Both are stunning, powerfully Christocentric, and tied up, again, with the gospel. I don’t have time to go through this in detail, but let me just say this about the 144,000. These opening verses say who they are, where they are, what they sing, and what they’re like.

You have to ask who the 144,000 are. I submit to you that they are the people of God from the old covenant and the new, from the 12 tribes and those reared under the 12 apostles: 12 times 12 is 144, times 10 times 10 times 10. This is a way of symbolizing the completeness of all of God’s people. It’s symbolism that is picked up again and again and again in the book.

Where are they? They’re with the Lamb, standing on Mount Zion. If you come from a certain school, this has to be geographical Jerusalem all over again. If you come from another school, then you see this Mount Zion as akin to the Mount Zion, for example, in Hebrews 12. We can argue about that one way or the other, but just make sure Jesus is there!

It’s “the Lamb, standing on Mount Zion, and with him the 144,000 who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads.” That is language that is picked up from chapter 13, where either you are stamped by Satan’s stamp or you are stamped by the Lamb’s stamp. The book keeps picking up the same themes, again and again. Well, I would love to unpack the rest of that, but I won’t.

Then, there are the heralds and the harvest. What you have here is unambiguous judgment. I think the closing verses of chapter 14 are the most horrific in all of Scripture. It is positively frightening. But don’t make a couple of mistakes that are regularly made. You see, one of the heralds, one of these angels that cries in verses 7 and 8, says, “Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come. Worship him who made the heavens, the earth, the sea and the springs of water.” That is issued to every nation, tribe, language, and people.

Then a second angel followed and said other things. Now then, does verse 7 provide us with the content of the reference to gospel in verse 6 or the motive? In other words, before you read verse 7 you have to read verse 6. “Then I saw another angel flying in midair, and he had the eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth: to every nation, tribe, language and people. And he said in a loud voice, ‘Fear God and give him glory …’ ”

Most commentaries today say that verse 7 gives us, then, the content of what John means by the eternal gospel. So in other words, there is a kind of goodness in God, an eternal gospel of benevolence that can actually invite people to come from every tongue and tribe and people and nation, without reference to Jesus or the cross? That’s by reading verse 7 as the content of the reference to the eternal gospel in verse 6. That’s a huge mistake.

After all, the entire book up to this point is headed in a different direction. Few books have been so Christocentric, so crucicentric, as this one. You must understand verse 7 not as giving us the content of the gospel. That’s already been established by the rest of the book! In fact, the word gospel has, by any date reckoning of this book, well and truly been established now in Christian circles. The content is there. It is bound up with Christ and with his death, his resurrection, his ascension, and his session on the right hand of the Majesty on high!

Verse 7, then, does not give us the content of the eternal gospel. It gives us the motive for responding. This God is the God of judgment. Fear God. Give him glory. The day of judgment is coming. That trails off into all the rest of the chapter, including to this final, spectacularly violent description of judgment at the end.

In this description, people are thrown into the great winepress of God’s wrath and are trampled underfoot like grapes in a winepress. People are trampled underfoot until their blood trickles out the bottom and then rises to the height of a horse’s bridle for a distance of almost 200 miles. That has been guaranteed by the death and resurrection of Christ.

Don’t you see that? The scroll is the book of all of God’s purposes, in judgment and blessing. This is all being brought to pass by what God has done in Christ Jesus, in judgment and blessing. So if one does not close with Christ, so as to receive his forgiveness and acknowledge his lordship, what is there left but to be trampled underfoot and destroyed by God’s own decree?

Then you can press on through chapters 15, 16, and until chapter 17, verse 6: “I saw that the woman …” (The woman with a name of mystery on her forehead: Babylon the great.) In my judgment, this is a reference to Rome and great “Romes” that come later, too.

“I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of the God’s people, the blood of those who bore testimony to Jesus …” This is not those who just gave their testimony, but who preached Jesus and preached the gospel. So one group is saved by the blood of Jesus; the other group is drinking Christians’ blood. But again, the reference is back to the cross.

There is the threat of judgment in verse 18 and the song of triumph in 19: “Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, for true and just are his judgments. He has condemned the great prostitute who corrupted the earth by her adulteries. He has avenged on her the blood of his servants.” Then, out of this, in verses 6 and 7: “Hallelujah! For our Lord God Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and be glad and give him glory! For the wedding of the Lamb has come.” You’re back to this eschatological fulfillment again.

Now I would love to go on to chapters 20 and 21. I know that Colin Smith is going to be speaking on 21 and 22 tomorrow. One of the courses I regularly teach at the seminary these days, which I’ve been doing for the last few years since we’ve revised the MDiv curriculum a bit, is an introductory course in biblical theology.

Every incoming MDiv student is now required to take an introductory course in biblical theology from either Graham Cole or me. What we do is introduce biblical theology as a discipline, how it differs from systematic, something of its history, and so on. Then we spend all the rest of the semester just taking theme after theme after theme and running right through the whole Bible. That’s all we do.

Sometimes what we do (Graham does this bit a little more often than I, but we’ve both done this sort of thing) is that the first essay we require is that students study Revelation 21 and 22 and find every single Old Testament theme in those chapters that is coming to fruition in Revelation 21 and 22. They all complain about the same thing: “You didn’t give us enough space.” Because theme after theme after theme come to fruition there.

“I saw no temple in that city, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.” Now you’re supposed to stop and think through the first sacrifices and the tabernacle: what it was for and what it was constructed as. You’re supposed to think of Passover, Yom Kippur, and the priestly structures.

Then you’re supposed to think of how it was taken over by the temple and, in both cases, the shekinah glory manifesting himself over the ark of the covenant on the Day of Atonement, as the blood of bull and goat was offered up, to pay both for the sins of the priest and his family and for the sins of the people, until finally, the temple is removed.

The shekinah glory abandons the temple and the city, gets a ride on Ezekiel’s mobile throne chariot, crosses the Kidron Valley, and parks on the Mount of Olives, attending the destruction of the city by Nebuchadnezzar, a judicial pronouncement of profound significance. Then the temple is rebuilt. It never amounts to all that much. There’s no description of the return of the glory.

Then one day on the streets of Jerusalem, a voice is heard saying, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will build it again.” You have another strand pointing forward. “I saw no temple in that city, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple.” There is strand after strand running through the whole Bible, and all of them are deeply, deeply christological.

So that’s my first question.… Where is Jesus in the book of Revelation? But let me take two more minutes to ask and answer the second question.… Where is Jesus in a locative sense? Where is he located? I don’t presuppose that you can give coordinates on a space graph. Even if the location is spiritual or metaphorical, where is Jesus in this book?

He’s not in the dusty streets of Galilee. Where is he? He is one with God and with all the attributes of God in chapter 1. He comes from the throne, but is the lion-lamb in chapter 5 who mediates to us all of everything God has for us. Although it doesn’t use the language, he is the mediating Priest; he is the mediatorial King.

He is the Conquering One. He is the one who is putting all of his enemies under his feet until the last day. He is the One who secures his people. He is the One to whom testimony is borne because of his gospel. He is the One who comes along in triumph in chapter 19. He is the One who sits with his Father on the throne. He is the One to whom all worship is due.

Here is a picture of Christology that many of our people don’t know much about. We tend to focus on the historical Jesus and then, perhaps, the Jesus of the resurrection and then the Jesus, somehow, in the church of Paul and so on. But we often do not see this grand vista of a massive movement of God to the final culmination that issues in the new heaven and the new earth.

This book gives us a telos, a final end in both senses, the purpose and the end. It surrounds the throne of the triune God, as God discloses himself supremely and triumphantly in Jesus. That’s where Jesus is. Let us pray.

Father, we do not want to become sloganeering about our pursuit of Jesus, the cross, and the gospel. Help us simply to see what is there in your most Holy Word and to be faithful to it. In Jesus’ name, amen.