Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of the End Times from Revelation 13:11–14:5
Verse 17 introduces us to “the mark,” which is the name of the Beast or the number of his name. This is clearly an appeal to what is called gematria, and it arises from the fact that in the ancient world there was no separate symbolism for letters and numbers. In other words, the letter A or the Greek equivalent of A could also be the equivalent of the number one. B was the equivalent of the number two. Gamma, their third letter (like our G, but we would say C), was the equivalent of the number three, and so forth.
Then when you got up to nine, you started going up on a ten-basis. You would go one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 20, 30, 40.… When you would get up to 90 then it goes 100, 200, 300. Then when you run out of letters in the alphabet.… The Greek alphabet runs alpha, beta, gamma, delta, and so on. To make them into numbers you put a little tick here in each case.
Then when you get to the end of the alphabet and you have to go on a rerun, then you put a little tick on the other side. You can build up some very big numbers because you’re going up exponentially. That means that every name has a numerical value. All you have to do is add up the numbers of the individual letters, and this, in fact, generated a variety of graffiti in the ancient world.
There is one very famous graffito that has come down to us, “I love her whose number is 545.” The trouble is there’s no one-to-one relationship between name and number. There could be a lot of girls’ names that add up to 545, very different names, so that you cannot work back on a one-to-one basis from the number back to the name.
This isn’t used all that much in Scripture, but you do find it here and there. Almost certainly you have an instance of gematria in Matthew 1. Do you remember how the genealogy is laid out? The 14 generations from Abraham to David, 14 generations from David to the exile, and 14 from the exile to Christ? When you compare the lists, of course, you find out that some names have been left out from the Old Testament. In other words, it’s a schematized genealogy.
You could do that, of course, in the way people spoke of fathers and sons in those days. If my grandfather is my ultimate father, or my great-grandfather is my ultimate father, you might leave out the two intervening names and still say, “he sired me.” So you can leave out names, all right, and since the sources were readily available (there were biblical sources for the first two-thirds of the list) then you could see what names are being left out. That means that if you schematized it into 14, 14, and 14, the 14 is significant.
The reason why it’s significant, of course.… There were two ways of spelling David in Hebrew. Part of the problem, of course, that you have to remember is that until the arrival of the printing press spelling was far more arbitrary than it is today, so people even spelled their names differently. George Whitefield spelled Whitefield three different ways. There were two ways of spelling David in Hebrew, but the most common one, in the Dead Sea Scrolls, for example, is four and six and four. David.
Four plus six plus four equals 14, so it’s no accident, you see, that you’re moving from Abraham to David, and from David to the end of the Davidic line, and then to Jesus who is the new David, David’s greater son. The gematria is all part of a device to draw your attention to the fact that this really is the Davidic king. The gematria can have a sort of pedagogical device if you know how the game works.
We are not to think that the number of the Beast here is the computer barcodes on commercial strips and this sort of thing, and there have been whole books and essays written to try to prove that and damn the computer with it, I should say. No, you have a common experience in totalitarian regimes of people who try to control you absolutely, but that’s not the point here. The point here is the stamp does reflect who this person is.
The identification of the False Prophet may be difficult. Who is 666? Let me list some of the suggestions that have been made: If you take the initials of the Roman emperors from Julius Caesar to Vespasian they add up to 666, provided you leave out Otho and Vitellius … that’s the problem. The full name of Domitian adds up to 666, but only if it’s the abbreviated Greek form of the full Latin title of Domitian, which isn’t always told to you in the books, but that’s the way it works.
I have a long essay at home that proves that 666 is Henry Kissinger. See, part of the problem is you can take the last name, and then if it doesn’t work add the last name plus the initial of the first name. If that doesn’t work, the last name plus the first two initials or the last name plus the abbreviated form of the first one or a variant spelling. If it doesn’t work in Latin then you use Greek, and if it doesn’t work in Greek, use Syriac. If it doesn’t work in Syriac.… Give me twenty minutes, and I bet you I can prove it’s Hillary Clinton.
That’s the problem with trying to find out who it is at this stage. There have been other attempts. The triangular number of 36 is 666. Is there any mathematician here? What’s a triangular number? What that means is if you add one plus two plus three plus four plus … plus 36, it equals 666. The reason it’s called a triangular number is because if you put it in ascending dots on each side, like a triangle (an equilateral triangle), you have 666 dots. That’s why it’s called the triangular number of 36.
Now 36 is the triangular number of eight, and eight is the number of the Antichrist in chapter 17. Are you convinced? No? Well, let me try something else. Some have said it’s Nero Caesar. That’s the most common solution in the commentaries, but to get it you need a Hebrew transliteration of the Greek form of the Latin name (and the Hebrew, in fact, has a defective spelling), to pull it off.
Some take it as more of a symbol than a cryptogram. That is, it’s 666 and not 777. That is to say, sevens are the number of perfection or completeness or something, you see. Three sevens, that would be really wonderful, and aren’t we talking here about a Trinity versus an aping of a Trinity? So the most you’ve got here is someone who tries hard to be God but can’t ever be God. He’s only 666. He’s not 777.
“Failure, upon failure, upon failure,” as Hendrickson says. Well, maybe. The short answer is I don’t know, and the truth of the matter is that when you examine church history from the second century on, when you get these various solutions in wild abundance (I have a whole file just on this question at home that I’ve built up over the years), there is no consensus at all. None. I still think that Nero Caesar is the best guess, so that he becomes a paradigm of all later ones, but I’m not entirely comfortable with it. I see the problems with it, but maybe that’s also important.
I suspect that the first readers were very clear in their minds as to who was meant. I suspect so, but as that historical personage passed off the scene, and as we’re not even absolutely certain when the thing was written so it’s pretty hard to line up within a particular historical personage, the principle still becomes important that we’ve been trying to elucidate throughout the exposition of the chapter.
Namely, the first beast existed, received a fatal wound, and comes back again, and even after the Roman period, you still have an eighth beast. The second beast is always supporting the first beast, which we see recurs again and again and again in history, too, so that at the end of the day, even if you could identify the individual, it would still be a typological identification. It would be a Nero Caesar, for example, who stands as a sort of example of the whole head of the line, until you finally get to the False Prophet.
So I’m not sure, myself, that identification of the Beast is going to help us a great deal. The point is he’s an historic personage who becomes the head of the whole deception line, the false prophet line, all the way down to the very end. The appropriate response, then, before this is surely, at the end of the day, a question of maintaining integrity, holding fast to the Word of God, and not being deceived. There’s a lovely hymn that is sung in Britain, it’s just completely unknown over here, by an Anglican suffragan bishop, Timothy Dudley-Smith:
Lord, for the years your love has kept and guided,
Urged and inspired us, cheered us on our way,
Sought us and saved us, pardoned and provided,
Lord of the years, we bring our thanks today.
Lord, for that Word, the word of life which fires us,
Speaks to our hearts and sets our soul ablaze,
Teaches and trains, rebukes us and inspires us,
Lord of the Word, receive your people’s praise.
Is there a question about this chapter before we turn to the next? Sir?
Male: Are you saying, then, that we’re not going to have to take a mark on our hands or on our foreheads?
Don Carson: Let me put it this way. Is the mark imposed on the people of God in chapter 7 and chapter 14 a real mark?
Male: Yes, it’s real.
Don: Is it a literal one that is actually on your forehead?
Male: No.
Don: No. Why should you think this one is?
Male: But what if, as is often promoted, the economic system comes down to a point where it’s just more feasible to run your hand with a barcode over the cash register. Should we allow that to happen?
Don: What I would say is it won’t make any difference. At the end of the day.… I mean, I’m enough of a libertarian.… I’m not too keen on too much government control, full stop, anyway, because I believe, with Jefferson and a whole lot of the other Fathers, you never give too much power to anybody. They’ll corrode it.
But in any case, you’re not going to either stop it or sanction it by barcodes, and in any case, there are going to be all kinds of people in parts of the world where they don’t have laser readers and the like who are still going to be under the mark of the Beast, because everybody’s under this mark, or the other mark, barcode or no barcode. Do you see?
What I would want to argue is that it is conceivable, in a particular culture, at a particular time, that they could use barcodes as a particular way of controlling you under a totalitarian regime. Yes. Would that be the fulfillment of this passage? It would be one of the fulfillments of this passage, but the first fulfillment takes place in the first century, and the ultimate fulfillment is bound up with the fact that you either belong to the Beast or you belong to the Lamb.
Male: In verse 10, regarding the perseverance of the saints through faith, does this mean that the saints should not protect themselves in any way against the evil doings that are going on during that time, that they should just martyr themselves?
Don: Well, you can’t martyr yourself. You can be taken and arrested, but somebody else is doing it to you. Whether evil should be opposed.… You see, the question can be put in such a general way that you have to be very careful how you answer that. There are all kinds of evil in a society that Christians should be actively opposing.
When I was a seminary student, the seminary that I went to in Toronto was in a crummy, run-down part of town that has largely been rebuilt, and the seminary has moved outside, in any case. I was teaching part time, and I often worked until two in the morning and then walked back to my dump. More than once I came across some pretty horrific things.
A fellow was attacking a girl, another time a drunk with a drunken bottle had a couple cowered in a corner, and so on. In those days.… Don’t worry, this is Canada. They don’t have guns up there. They’re like Britain in that regard. They’re very stringent on guns, so if you come across a punk he’s got a knife or a bottle or something. It’s very rare that they have guns, and as a result, if you know anything about self-defense, and the guy’s half-drunk anyway, you can take it away from him, so I did.
I was opposing evil, wasn’t I? Well, I just stopped a rape. I stopped this couple from getting their faces slashed out. It wasn’t very heroic. The guy was so drunk I could have pushed him over. I was opposing evil, wasn’t I? Should I have just lain down and said, “Go ahead, slash me. Slash me.” There comes a time when you have to realize that this is part of the opposition of evil, it seems to me, as a responsible citizen of society.
It’s not that he was attacking me as a Christian. He wasn’t attacking me for my faith. He was just being a punk. You face, then, something of the responsibilities of a God who pursues justice and loves mercy. It is wrong to let evildoers go off. It is wrong to corrode justice. It is wrong to accept bribes. It is wrong not to fight for justice. It is wrong not to do that.
On the other hand, it’s also wrong to use evil to fight for justice. You never say, “Let us do evil, that good may come.” Supposing, instead, the wrong that is coming is directed at us because we’re Christians? Then you face a more difficult decision. If it’s laying down a pattern of jurisprudence, it may be the part of sagacity and wisdom to fight it. Thus, on certain occasions Paul will simply take the punishment. On other occasions he says, “Hey, I’m a Roman citizen. Can you really get away with this?”
I don’t think it’s because he’s afraid of more punishment. That’s not the Paul you read about in the Scripture. It’s because Luke/Acts is very interested in reporting how Paul and others are interested in setting legal precedents, because they know that that’s what is going to save Christians in time to come. They’re interested in legal precedent, so there may be cases where it is strategically wise to do certain things with the right spirit and the right attitude.
On the other hand, when it comes right down to it, if the state turns malevolent and it’s against Christian conscience, then you pay the price, whatever that price. Now as to where you draw the line in terms of concrete cases, I don’t know a formula. You start dealing with hard case after hard case, and you gradually start working things out. In a country like this where the squeaking wheel gets the grease because of the threat of litigation, so often what has happened is you get strong, strong threats of litigation and one side just collapses.
In that kind of framework it sometimes is very important to stand up. If you see stuff that is going on at school that is simply unfair, for example, phone the Rutherford Institute and find out just what your legal rights are. They’ve done exhaustive research on this area, and they almost never lose. As to what you can do in the schools, yeah, it’s worth finding out.
With this kind of framework, for example, when principals have arbitrarily banned all mention of God on the basis of the separation of church and state clause from the classroom or something like that, or banned any school group led by students after school from having a Bible study and so on, you can get that one reversed in 15 minutes.
You phone the Rutherford Institute, the Rutherford Institute phones the principal and says, “There are these 14 cases in law in which we’ve won every case. It’s a question of freedom of speech for your students. If you don’t turn that one around today, we are filing a lawsuit.” The principal will turn it around. You ought to do it, because you’ll lose otherwise and it’s a question of setting jurisprudence priorities in the land.
On the other hand, now I’m going way beyond what the text immediately addresses here, but it still is a question of sagacity. One of the things that troubles me about American society.… By North American I include Canada in this, and Western European Christian society to some extent, but it’s stronger here. It’s stronger here because of America’s particular heritage.
There is a great deal of anger on the American right at the moment. Let me just say a little bit about it, because it is troubling. It’s hard to know what to do. If you want to make a lot of money with a Christian book in this country, write a book that says what’s wrong with America listing all the bad things that you possibly can on the left. Demonize the left. It’ll sell like hotcakes on the right.
Do you want to raise money for Focus on the Family or a whole lot of other institutions that are really good institutions in many ways? If they really want to raise a lot of money in a hurry, let them tell you the worst horror stories of the month. The money flows in. The reason it does is because there is so much in this society that feels, with a certain amount of justification, that “All those nasties on the left are taking away our heritage. They’re perverting our schools. They’re overthrowing principles of jurisprudence. They’re making the city unsafe.”
There is anger. There is anger seething through the whole land. Contrast that with the first Christians taking the gospel in the Roman Empire. They were nobodies. They didn’t have anybody taking away their heritage. They were out to take over the heritage. They looked around and saw an extremely pluralistic empire, and they said with Caleb, in effect, “Give us this mountain.”
They kept witnessing, kept getting martyred, and so on, and it was a revolution, finally, a spiritual revolution. We can’t do that today, at least we find it very difficult, because we’re so busy being angry all the time that at the end of the day not only do we lose our credibility with people on the left, they start demonizing us back, but we have no energy or compassion left to evangelize.
When you’re busy hating everybody and denouncing everybody and seeking political solutions to everything it’s very difficult to evangelize, isn’t it? It’s very hard to be compassionate, to look on the crowds as though they’re sheep without a shepherd, very hard to look on them like that when they’re taking away my heritage. Do you see?
Yet, at the same time, because it is a democracy, there are things we ought to be doing to draw the line here and there, even if you understand the laws don’t finally engender justice. They might preserve it for awhile, but finally they’re all broken and you have to change the laws. There are things we ought to be doing. There are faithful things we ought to be doing. There are cases where I will appeal to the Rutherford Institute.
Yeah. There are places where I would, but at the end of the day if you can’t do it with compassion, and gently, and leave the doors open for evangelism, boy, you destroy everything. I think one of the Devil’s tactics with respect to the church on the right today is to make them so hate everybody else that at the end of the day they can’t be believed anywhere, not even in the proclamation of the gospel.
That doesn’t really answer your question. Your question engenders huge, huge topics, doesn’t it? It involves the whole question of church and state relationships, and whether the church finally takes over the state or whether it is always a persecuted minority, and the tension between the already and the not yet. It involves all kinds of things like that that are just too much a large-scale set of synthetic structures to deal with accurately here, but the kind of line, practically, I would take is the kind of one I’ve suggested.
All right, now we come to chapter 14, and it, too, is really divided into three parts, although the second two parts are much of a piece. The first part is, again, full of symbolism.
1. The Lamb and the 144,000.
“Then I looked, and there before me was the Lamb, standing on Mount Zion, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads, and I heard a sound from heaven like the roar of rushing waters, like a loud peal of thunder. The sound I heard was like that of harpists playing their harps, and they sang a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and the elders.
No one could learn the song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth. These are those who did not defile themselves with women, for they kept themselves pure. They follow the Lamb wherever he goes. They were purchased from among men and offered as firstfruits to God and the Lamb. No lie was found in their mouths; they are blameless.”
From the horrific vision of chapters 12 and 13, you turn now to a dramatic new theme and the change is marked. In the NIV, “Then I looked …” Or some versions, “Then I saw and beheld …” The particular expression that is used in Greek is always the beginning of a dramatic new scene. (Chapter 4, verse 1; chapter 6, verse 2; chapter 6, verse 5; chapter 6, verse 8; chapter 7, verse 9; and chapter 14, verse 14.) For those of you who are following in Greek, kai eidon kai idou.
What he sees, then, is the Lamb, not the lamb of chapter 13:11 but the Lamb of chapter 5. In other words, not the False Prophet who is going about like a lamb, what he sees clearly is the Lamb who is one with God, and where he is.… He’s on Mount Zion and accompanied by the 144,000. So …
First, we need to establish who these people are. Who are they, the 144,000? Now note, their name is sealed, and here you have a strong contrast with 13:16–17. Unless you have a very doctrinaire scheme of eschatology, it seems to me the obvious way of reading this is that all the believers are sealed by the Lamb as the kind of flip side to the way all the unbelievers are sealed by the Beast. Isn’t that what it sounds like to you? Who, then, are the 144,000? There are basically two views.
Some think that they are a subset of all Christians. Which subset is disputed. Some argue for the martyred Jews during the great tribulation or some other specially sanctified group of believers. The reason for this view is often tied to certain interpretations of verses 4 and 5. Does verse 4 mean that they are sexually celibate? I don’t think so. I’ll argue against that view in a few minutes.
Does verse 5, “they are firstfruits,” meant that they are the firstfruits of a bigger crop? I think that’s a mistaken interpretation as well. What I’m saying is sometimes those who argue that the 144,000 are a smaller group argue, in fact, from what I judge to be misinterpretations of verses 4 and 5, besides large-scale structures of eschatology that are imposed on the text. At the end of the day it doesn’t say anything about them coming out of great tribulation or the like here.
Others, myself included, think that these 144,000 are the redeemed, all of them. The meaning of verses 4 and 5 I shall come to in a few minutes, but the symbolism of the number surely is 12 times 12. People of God in the Old Testament and people of God in the New Testament, 12 times 12 (12 tribes, 12 apostles) times 10, the completeness to the third power. In a book where numbers are regularly symbolic, that surely seems pretty clear.
Moreover, verse 3 seems to make a tie to chapter 5, verse 9. In chapter 5, verse 9, if you recall, the Lamb redeems people from every tongue and tribe and people and nation, and they sing the new song. Here, they sing a new song before the throne, before the living creatures and the elders, and no one could learn the song except the 144,000. This sounds very much like the song of redemption, does it not, which surely all the redeemed can sing?
Moreover, the 144,000 may be a way of colorfully saying “the full complement of the redeemed.” Not one is lost. I would argue, on this and other grounds that will become clearer, that they are, in fact, the redeemed, and they thus stand as the mark against the people in chapter 13. You see what’s going on again. There we’re told that everybody gets the mark of the Beast except those who belong to the Lamb’s Book of Life.
Then you come to the very next chapter, and you find the people who stand on Mount Zion, and they have the mark of the Lamb and everybody else, as we’ll find in verses 6 and following, gets shattered and judged and attacked by the Lamb. What you really have are two whole humanities: the humanity under the power of the Beast and the humanity under the power of Christ.
Secondly, where are they? Who are they is clear. Where are they? Well, we’re told in verse 1 they’re on Mount Zion, a fitting place for the Lamb, no doubt, for Zion is often associated with divine deliverance. Joel 2:32: “And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be deliverance, as the Lord has said,” a passage that is picked up in Acts 2 with respect to the proclamation of the gospel.
Thus in Luke—Acts, Jesus has to go up to Jerusalem, for it’s in Jerusalem that he must be killed. It’s in Jerusalem, you see, that he is finally disclosed in his death and burial and resurrection and exaltation and so on. Against Ladd and others, I do not think this is Mount Zion on earth in the last day. I think this is what Hebrews would call “the heavenly Jerusalem.” Hebrews, chapter 12, verse 22: “… the heavenly Zion.” “Jerusalem that is above …” to use Paul’s language in Galatians 4:26.
The entire scene is of praise in heaven, as is the worship in chapter 5 with respect to the new song. In other words, I don’t think you’re talking about millennial splendor in Jerusalem yet. Whatever the millennium means … we’ll come to that in due course.… I don’t think that it’s in view here. I think that they’re in heaven.
Thirdly, what do they sing? Verses 2–3: “I heard a sound from heaven like the roar of rushing waters and like a loud peal of thunder,” a mighty cataract, like the Niagaraic land I mentioned the first day. “Thunder,” often connected with the display of God and his awesomeness. “An ensemble of harpists,” remembering that harps are instruments of joy. “And they sang a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and the elders.”
In the context of chapter 4 and chapter 5, which is the inaugural vision that sets off this whole sequence of things, the new song is the song of redemption. All of the redeemed can sing it, and only the redeemed can sing it. “No one could learn the song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth.” Do you see? Redeemed, purchased from the earth does not, I think, here mean snatched away, but bought, redeemed from the earth and its evil and its tyranny.
Fourthly, what they’re like. We’ve seen who they are, where they are, what they sing, now what they’re like. There are four things said of them.
A. “They are those who have not defiled themselves with women, for they have kept themselves pure.”
The Greek says literally, “They are virgins.” What does this mean? Some have argued that this means that they’re celibate, pure and simple. One would almost have to say if you’re pushing it to that level of literalness, they would have to be male celibates, too, which doesn’t say much for female Christians.
And remember that Jesus does say in Matthew 19:12 that there might be some people, men and women, who make themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of God. That is to say, there is a place for celibacy in life. One should not so idealize marriage that there’s no place for singleness. Paul, likewise, in 1 Corinthians 7, shows that you may be single and have a particularly fruitful form of ministry.
You don’t have to.… I was in church planting for several years and planted two or three churches, and then I became senior pastor of a church on the West Coast, and I was single during all of that time. I didn’t have to check in with anybody. I could visit late at night. I didn’t have to, sort of, juggle my schedule to visit teachers, go to my son’s basketball games and flute and violin competitions, make puzzles, fix motorcars, and make sure I had coffee and dinners out with my wife.
I didn’t have a wife. I didn’t have to worry about any of that kind of stuff. I could put in 90-hour weeks and regularly did. Oh, there are advantages to being single, a lot of them. There are also advantages to being married, a lot of them, and one should not try, on the basis of biblical theology, to idealize one and demonize the other either way.
Moreover, it’s possible to be single, not because you’ve been called by God to it but because Mr. Right or Ms. Right has not come along. It’s possible, in fact, to be single and spend so much of your time burning up with lust and bitterness that you’re no more fruitful than anybody else and a good deal less fruitful than you might be if you were married. That’s also possible.
There’s no necessary connection between singleness and fruitfulness. A whole lot depends on what you do with it, and I have to tell you, even though I had very fruitful years of ministry during that time, my Mondays, which was my day off, I found for a while very hard to take, very lonely. It took me awhile to sort of structure my time so that I handled things and found friends outside the church and so on.
As early as the second century, celibacy came to be praised in some quarters of the church. In the third century, Origen is said to have castrated himself. That still doesn’t take away lust; it just makes the execution of it a little difficult. It is important not to make single people second-class citizens.
It is important to say that the choice of being single can, in some cases, benefit the kingdom, but there is not a shred of suggestion in the New Testament that it is an intrinsically holier state. In fact, in 1 Corinthians 7, marriage is called a charisma, a charismatic gift. So also is singleness. That means the whole lot of us in here are charismatics, and that is one instance where you cannot have both charismatic gifts at the same time.
In other words, singleness is a gracious gift from God, and so is marriage a gracious gift from God. It’s a charisma. That’s the word that is used, and marriage, for its part, is not intrinsically dirty. Far from it. Hebrews 13 says, “The marriage bed is undefiled.” Constantly there is some kind of typology in Scripture between Yahweh and Israel or between Christ and the church that is typified in marriage.
There is a sense in which every marriage ought to be a reflection of the relationship between Christ and the church, every single one. If you don’t see your marriage in those terms, you have a sub-Christian view of marriage. I don’t think that’s the most obvious interpretation at all, especially in a book that is full of symbolism. You have to at least ask what is being symbolized.
Others say that this is not absolute celibacy, but chastity. That is, people here who are redeemed are maritally faithful. They display marital fidelity. Well, that’s certainly a cherished ideal in the Bible. On the other hand, it’s not quite what the text says. It says they’re virgins. It doesn’t say they’re maritally faithful.
In any case, even if that were what the text says, it is far from clear that chastity should be elevated to the distinguishing mark of Christians in heaven, because there are some Christians who clearly weren’t, starting with David, if I may use “Christian” of a pre-Christian man, and not a few since that time, too.
Shall we exclude Gordon MacDonald? It’s just not what the text says. It’s far more likely that you’re dealing, as does the Old Testament, with heavily symbolic language, and when you see what the language is doing you also see that this text is not a putdown on women, as if women are intrinsically more unclean than men.
No, no. In the Old Testament Israel is often spoken of as a virgin daughter of Zion (2 Kings 19:21, Lamentations 2:13), and as the virgin of Israel (Jeremiah 18:13, Amos 5:2), so that when she sins, she sins against her lord, Yahweh, and thus is said to play the harlot. Read Jeremiah 3 or Amos 5:2. “Fallen, fallen is virgin Israel, never to rise again.”
Or the whole prophecy of Hosea. Isn’t the whole prophecy of Hosea full of that kind of language? God’s grace is displayed in going after the harlot and wanting her back anyway. The same language is then brought over to the New Testament. Think, for example, of Paul in 2 Corinthians 11:2. “I promised you …” He says to the whole church. “… to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him.”
Now the connection between sexual profligacy and paganism was clearer in the first century than it is today because so much sexual profligacy was bound up with fertility cults, where you went in and did sleep with the pagan priests and priestesses, so that the connection between sexual perversion and spiritual perversion would be a little clearer in the public mind.
In any case, by the time you get to chapter 21, verse 9, which we’ll look at on the last day, the climax of the whole thing is the marriage supper of the Lamb. That is, the church, the virgin church, enters into a consummated union of intimacy and bliss with the Lord Christ. That’s where we’re moving.
The alternative, then, is the kind of sexual sin imagery that we looked at briefly in chapter 17, where you have the whore, the harlot, Babylon, sitting on the beast. We’ll look at that in due course. What you have here, I think, is the particularly disgusting imagery of spiritual adultery. These are the people, then, who haven’t slept around spiritually, as it were. They have been faithful. That’s the point. Then …
B. They follow the Lamb wherever he goes.
This does not mean they follow him around heaven. You know, “Me and my shadow, my 3-year-old following me around.” What it means is the same kind of thing as in Mark, chapter 8, verse 34. “If anyone would come after me he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” They have really followed the Lamb. They have patterned themselves after him. He’s been their Savior and their Lord. If the first figure speaks of fidelity, the second figure speaks of discipleship. Which brings us to the third figure:
C. Those who were purchased and offered as firstfruits to God and to the Lamb.
This now speaks of redemption. “Offered as firstfruits to God and to the Lamb.” Now the critical word here is firstfruits, in Greek aparche. Firstfruits in English sounds like the first bit of the harvest, with the rest still to come, and if firstfruits in that sense is what is meant here, the 144,000 can’t be the totality of the redeemed, because then there would be still more to come.
The word aparche can mean firstfruits in that sense, but already in the LXX or Septuagint, that is the Greek Old Testament, the translation of the Hebrew Bible that was made between about 250 and 150 BC, it is more commonly used to mean an offering or a gift to God. That’s all. The notion of firstfruits in it simply isn’t there.
In other words, I don’t think the point here is that these are the firstfruits from amongst believers but those who are offered up to God and to the Lamb. That’s the point. In other words, they are set free from other entanglements. They’re offered up to God. That is language that you also find in Romans 12:1–2, isn’t it? “I beseech you therefore, brothers, that you offer yourselves up as living sacrifices,” and so on and so on and so on. Finally …
D. They are those who speak the truth.
Verse 5: “No lie was found in their mouths. They are blameless.” Contrast chapter 20, verse 15b, where all liars are going to the lake of fire, and so on, and chapter 22, verse 15b, where you have this terrible description. “Outside are the dogs, those who practice magic arts, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.”
But I suspect that it’s not just a question of truth-telling. I suspect it’s going after the deeper paganism that Paul speaks of in Romans 1:25, which exchanges the truth about God for a lie. Contrast the fulfillment of Zephaniah 3:13. “The remnant of Israel will do no wrong. They will speak no lies.” In other words, they’re blameless. They love the truth, they speak the truth, they know him who is the truth, and above all they have not bought into the big lie that there’s some God other than God.
Now before we take a quick go at the next section, someone has told me that there are some of you who are at least a little concerned that I have kept saying things like “John picks up language from the Old Testament or uses symbols from the Old Testament or draws his language from the Old Testament.” Things like this.
What, then, does this have to do with inspiration? What is coming from God, and what is just coming from sort of a pastiche from the Old Testament? Are there some of you who are worried about my language in that respect? Let me say something about it, first of all. There are parts of the Bible that are clearly given, on the very face of it, by dictation.
Parts of Jeremiah are like that. God gives his words to Jeremiah and Jeremiah’s secretary writes them down. When somebody burns up the scroll then God gives the words again, Jeremiah gives them to his secretary, and his secretary writes them down again. That’s dictation, and thus there are parts of the Bible that are given like that, but no orthodox view of Scripture argues that all of the Bible is given by dictation.
It argues that all of the Bible is so given by God that what is finally written down is nothing less than the very words of God, but that the means by which you get there may be highly varied. In any case, they do often reflect the passions and commitments and fears and loves and so on of the individuals.
Think of Paul’s letter to the Philippians, for example, where he says in chapter 3, “Watch out for those dogs, those mutilators of the flesh …” Things like that. Then a little farther on, “… forgetting those things which are behind, I press on for the prize of the upward calling of God in Christ Jesus …” and so on.
Would you really picture Paul coming in, then, at the end of a long day of evangelism. He’s about to go to sleep, and then a voice from heaven says, “Sorry Paul, you’ve got to do a few more verses tonight.” “Well all right, Lord.” So he takes his quill pen and he’s waiting there, and then God says, “Forgetting those things …”
“Forgetting those things …”
“… which are behind …”
“… which are behind …”
“… I press on …”
“… I press on …”
“… toward the mark …”
“… toward the mark …”
“… for the prize …”
“… for the prize …”
“… of the upward call.”
“… of the upward call.”
You can just tell by reading the book that it has the passion of Paul. This is Paul and what he thinks. He is not merely a Dictaphone. The orthodox view of Scripture has always had a far more sophisticated understanding of inspiration.
It is argued that God has so used his apostles and prophets, and so on, that what is finally written down is simultaneously nothing other than the Word of God but also the peculiar words of the writers involved. Sometimes they’re bearing witness, and when they bear witness they bear witness in their words, so that John does not sound like Paul.
He doesn’t sound like him in English, let alone in Greek. Different syntax. Different vocabulary. When Matthew uses the verb to call, for example, to call means something like invitation. “Many are called, but few are chosen.” When Paul uses the verb to call, it means God’s effectual call. In Paul’s use of to call, if you’re called you’re saved. There’s a big difference between the two writers. Now the point of all of this is you cannot find in the Bible a kind of “Holy Spirit” language.
If all of the biblical writers were merely Dictaphones, merely transcribers of dictation, you would expect a commonality of vocabulary, of syntax, of style, wouldn’t you, from one end of the Bible to the other? But sophisticated doctrines of Scripture that are orthodox have always argued that there are many different modes of God giving the Word. Some of them involved dictation, as we’ve seen in Jeremiah. Some of them involved visions. Some of them involved witnesses.
Luke openly says that he does some research, doesn’t he, in Luke, chapter 1? “Many have undertaken to give a faithful account of the things that have happened among us, but I …” Then he talks about how he has examined the records again, and so on and so on and so on. You check where he’s been in Luke/Acts, and he’s been everywhere that Paul has been that’s of any import, and he’s talked to everybody.
Why is it that Luke mentions the virgin birth in such detail from the mother’s side? I suspect because, as a doctor, he had a wee in with Mary. I can’t prove it, but that’s what I suspect. You have a situation, in other words, where he’s done a lot of careful research, and the Lord has used that as part of the whole business of generating what we call Scripture.
What the doctrine of Scripture insists is that the final result is nothing less than and nothing other than the Word of God, even while so many parts of it accurately reflect the fears and the loves and the hopes and the beliefs and the observations and the peculiar language and so on of individual human beings.
Now if you emphasize only the human side and you lose the divine side you lose all the authority. If you emphasize only the divine side then you can’t see very often what the texts are actually saying in terms of human witness or the like. Now in this case, when I say that John uses Old Testament bits and pieces or the language is drawn from there, it’s plain as a pikestaff, so often, that the language is drawn from there.
This series of beasts that you’ve seen, for example, in chapter 13. That’s the only place in the whole Bible where those beasts crop up. Of course that’s where it comes from. You can also see it, plain as a pikestaff, that the beasts don’t function here exactly the way they functioned there. Then you’ve got to ask questions about the nature of literary genre, how symbols work in the Bible, how they’re brought over, and what they’re doing in this area. In fact, sometimes we use biblical language in a diversity of ways, do we not?
Sometimes we quote the Bible not to say what I’m saying is now fulfilling the Bible exactly, but because we’re using biblical language. Thus when I was a boy, I was brought up on the King James Version. I was from that generation. When one of us children was talking too much and didn’t know when to stop, my father would smile and say, “He wists not what to say, so he said.”
Now that, of course, is a direct quotation from Peter on the Mount of Transfiguration. “He wists not what to say.” He didn’t know what to say, so he said, “Let us build three tabernacles: one for you, one for you, and one for you.” Well, my father was not saying that we were being a sort-of reincarnation of Peter or that we were experiencing a new transfiguration.
He was saying something like, using biblical language, like Peter we were talking too much and we didn’t know what we were saying. He was using biblical language to do it. Or when nobody in the church would volunteer for anything, my father would quietly mutter, “They all, with one accord, began to make excuses.” So all of these one-liners come out of me in the King James Version because that was the milieu in which I was brought up.
Now it’s in that framework that I say again and again and again, because it is important to see these inner-canonical links, these links from one part of the Bible to the other, these links that prove that John was thinking about the Old Testament, using Old Testament language and bringing forward Old Testament symbolism …
It’s important to see all of that, but not for a moment am I denying that God was so super-intending the process that what came out at the very end is nothing less than the authoritative Word of God. Does that help? Now if you’re still troubled come and see me, because I don’t want people to go away with an uncertain attitude toward Scripture. That’s just far too important. If you’re troubled, come and see me. All right?
Now we didn’t get through the rest of chapter 14, but we will. It is too important to leave. It is the most horrific passage on hell in the whole Bible, and in this day and age of rising annihilationism, it’s important to work through this passage. Okay?
