“Eschatology”

(Part 15: The Book of Revelation, Review)

III. The Book of Revelation.

D. Covenant Divorce (Rev. 5:1-2).
1. God is putting Israel away for her unfaithfulness.
a. God’s covenant with Israel was often likened to a marriage, a marriage to
which they had been unfaithful: “Thus says the LORD, ‘Where is the
certificate of divorce by which I have sent your mother away? Or to whom of
My creditors did I sell you? Behold, you were sold for your iniquities, and for
your transgressions your mother was sent away” (Isa. 50:1; cf. Eze. 16:32; Jer.
3:1).
b. The book of Revelation deals with God’s final divorce from ethnic Israel.
(i) For their rejection of Him, by rejecting His Messiah: “Therefore I say to
you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a
people, producing the fruit of it” (Matt. 21:43).
(ii) The book/scroll with the seven seals represents that divorce
document/judgment (Deu. 24:1-4).

2. The Lord must deal righteously with Israel before He takes to Himself His new
bride, the church.
a. Israel is the harlot of Revelation – she is also called Babylon – and is
responsible for the death of the saints and witnesses of Christ: “Then one of
the seven angels . . . spoke . . . saying, ‘Come here, I will show you the
judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters . . . The woman was
clothed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and
pearls, having in her hand a gold cup full of abominations and of the unclean
things of her immorality, and on her forehead a name was written, a mystery,
‘BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE
ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.’ And I saw the woman drunk with the
blood of the saints, and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus” (Rev. 17:1-6).
We know this because of how she’s described.
(i) Both Israel and Babylon are characterized as centers of demonic activity.
(a) “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has become a dwelling place
of demons and a prison of every unclean spirit, and a prison of every
unclean and hateful bird” (Rev. 18:2).
(b) Jesus freed Israel from demonic activity during His ministry (Luke
10:17-18). But after they rejected Him, Satan again took hold of her,
bringing her into an even worse condition: “Now when the unclean
spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest,
and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which
I came’; and when it comes, it finds it unoccupied, swept, and put in
order. Then it goes and takes along with it seven other spirits more
wicked than itself, and they go in and live there; and the last state of that
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man becomes worse than the first. That is the way it will also be with
this evil generation” (Matt. 12:43-45).

(ii) The Lord calls His people to withdraw from Babylon when the time of her
judgment comes.
(a) “Come out of her, my people, so that you will not participate in her sins
and receive of her plagues; for her sins have piled up as high as heaven,
and God has remembered her iniquities” (Rev. 18:4-5).
(b) This is what Jesus called His disciples to do when they saw the
destruction of Jerusalem drawing near, “Therefore when you see the
abomination of desolation which was spoken of through Daniel the
prophet, standing in the holy place . . . then those who are in Judea must
flee to the mountains; whoever is on the housetop must not go down to
get the things out that are in his house. Whoever is in the field must not
turn back to get his cloak. But woe to those who are pregnant and to
those who are nursing babies in those days! But pray that your flight
will not be in the winter, or on a Sabbath. For then there will be a great
tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world
until now, nor ever will” (Matt. 24:15-21).

(iii) Babylon is called “the great city”; but so is the city where Jesus was
crucified (Jerusalem).
(a) “Then a strong angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it
into the sea, saying, ‘So will Babylon, the great city, be thrown down
with violence, and will not be found any longer’” (v. 21).
(b) “And their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city which
mystically is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was
crucified” (Rev. 11:8).

(iv) Babylon is charged with the death of all the righteous, as Jesus charged
Jerusalem.
(a) “Rejoice over her, O heaven, and you saints and apostles and prophets,
because God has pronounced judgment for you against her. . . . And in
her was found the blood of prophets and of saints and of all who have
been slain on the earth” (18:20, 24; cf. 19:1-2).
(b) “Therefore, behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and
scribes; some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you
will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city, so that
upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from
the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of
Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Truly
I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation” (Matt.
23:34-36).
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b. Revelation is a prophetic warning to the church of the coming judgment of

God against ethnic Israel for her infidelity to God’s covenant, as He prepares
to take to Himself a new bride:
(i) “Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you
and given to a people, producing the fruit of it” (Matt. 21:43).
(ii) The church is His new bride: “And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem,
coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for
her husband” (Rev. 21:2; cf. v. 27; 22:14-15).

E. The Seven Seal Judgments.

1. Christ is presented as the Judge who will prosecute this lawsuit against the Jewish
people (Rev. 5:1-5).
a. All judgment has been entrusted to Him: “For not even the Father judges
anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son, so that all will honor the Son
even as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor
the Father who sent Him” (John 5:22-23; cf. Rev. 12:4-5; Psalm 2:8-12).
b. Jesus told the Council that they would see and recognize both His authority
and judgment: “Jesus said to him, ‘You have said it yourself; nevertheless I
tell you, hereafter you (pl.) will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of
Power (authority), and coming on the clouds of heaven (judgment)’” (Matt.
26:64).

2. Judgment begins when Christ opens the seven seals (Rev. 6):
a. The first seal: the white horse – the Roman Army comes to Jerusalem (6:1-2).
(i) The white horse is God’s avenger.
(ii) He often uses the unjust to bring judgment: “The LORD will bring a
nation against you from afar, from the end of the earth, as the eagle swoops
down, a nation whose language you shall not understand, a nation of fierce
countenance who will have no respect for the old, nor show favor to the
young” (Deu. 28:49-50; cf. Isa. 10:5-6; 45:1).

b. The second seal: the red horse – Jewish Civil War, “To him who sat on it, it
was granted to take peace from the earth, and that men would slay one another;
and a great sword was given to him” (6:3-4).
c. The third seal: the black horse – famine, “He who sat on it had a pair of scales
in his hand. And I heard something like a voice in the center of the four living
creatures saying, ‘A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley
for a denarius; and do not damage the oil and the wine’” (6:5-6; cf. Josephus,
Wars, 5:10:3; cf. 2-5).
d. The fourth seal: the pale horse – the death of one-fourth of Israel, “He who sat
on it had the name Death; and Hades was following with him. Authority was
given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and
with pestilence and by the wild beasts of the earth” (6:7-8; cf. Deu. 28:15-26).
e. The fifth seal: the martyrs in heaven promised vindication, “When the Lamb
broke the fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the souls of those who had been
slain because of the word of God, and because of the testimony which they had
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maintained; and they cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘How long, O Lord,
holy and true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those
who dwell on the earth?’ And there was given to each of them a white robe;
and they were told that they should rest for a little while longer, until the
number of their fellow servants and their brethren who were to be killed even
as they had been, would be completed also” (6:9-11).
f. The sixth seal: Cosmic upheaval – the collapse of Israel, “I looked when He
broke the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake; and the sun became
black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood; and
the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when
shaken by a great wind. The sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled
up, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. Then the
kings of the earth and the great men and the commanders and the rich and the
strong and every slave and free man hid themselves in the caves and among the
rocks of the mountains; and they said to the mountains and to the rocks, ‘Fall
on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from
the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is
able to stand?” (Rev. 6:12-17).
(i) The cosmic imagery has to do with the collapse of government: “The
oracle concerning Babylon which Isaiah the son of Amoz saw. . . . Behold,
the day of the LORD is coming, cruel, with fury and burning anger, to make
the land a desolation; and He will exterminate its sinners from it. For the
stars of heaven and their constellations will not flash forth their light; the
sun will be dark when it rises and the moon will not shed its light . . . .
Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, and the earth will be shaken
from its place at the fury of the LORD of hosts in the day of His burning
anger. . . . And Babylon, the beauty of kingdoms, the glory of the
Chaldeans’ pride, Will be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah”
(Isa. 13:1, 9-10, 13, 1 ; cf. Ezek. 32:2, 7-8, 16; cf. Isa. 34:3-5; Jer. 4:14, 23-
24). This is what Jesus describes in connection with the fall of Jerusalem
(Matt. 24:29).
(ii) Josephus tells us that when the end of the siege came and Jerusalem fell,
the Jews tried to hide in caves under Jerusalem (Wars, 6:7:3; cf. 7:2:1).
Jesus predicted this in connection with the fall of Jerusalem, “And
following Him was a large crowd of the people, and of women who were
mourning and lamenting Him. But Jesus turning to them said, ‘Daughters
of Jerusalem, stop weeping for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your
children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are
the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never
nursed.’ Then they will begin TO SAY TO THE MOUNTAINS, ‘FALL
ON US,’ AND TO THE HILLS, ‘COVER US’” (Luke 23:27-30).

F. Interlude: The preservation of the saints - The prophecy backs up to show how
the Lord gave the saints time to flee Jerusalem before judgment (Rev. 7:1-8).
1. The four angels and the four winds (v. 1).
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a. The four angels are instruments of God’s judgment (the same four angels
representing the four legions of soldiers kept at the Euphrates River; 9:12-21).
b. The four winds represent the devastation they will bring (Wind represents
calamity: Dan. 7:2-3; Matt. 7:24-26; often at the hand of a foreign army: “I
will bring upon Elam the four winds from the four ends of heaven, and will
scatter them to all these winds” Jer. 49:36-37).
c. The Lord is holding back His judgment to allow time for the Jewish Christians
to flee from the city as General Vespasian is distracted with the fall of Nero
and the Roman Civil Wars before he reaches Jerusalem (Josephus 4.9.2;
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 3:5).

2. The 144,000 are sealed (7:2-4).

a. The sealing represents protection (vv. 2-3): “The LORD said to him, ‘Go
through the midst of the city, even through the midst of Jerusalem, and put a
mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the
abominations which are being committed in its midst.’ But to the others He
said in my hearing, ‘Go through the city after him and strike; do not let your
eye have pity and do not spare. Utterly slay old men, young men, maidens,
little children, and women, but do not touch any man on whom is the mark;
and you shall start from My sanctuary.’ So they started with the elders who
were before the temple” (Ez. 9:4-6).
b. 144,000 is a symbolic number – 12x12x1000 – representing the Jewish
converts to Christianity (7:4-8).
(i) They are the first fruits of the Jews converted to Christianity: “These have
been purchased from among men as first fruits to God and to the Lamb”
(Rev. 14:4).
(ii) They represent the first harvest among the Jews, beginning with those
gathered at Pentecost – the Feast of the First-Fruits (Acts 2).
(iii) They are distinguished from the Gentiles converts from every nation,
“After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one
could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues,
standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and
palm branches were in their hands; and they cry out with a loud voice,
saying, ‘Salvation to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb’”
(7:9-10).
(iv) These Gentiles were converted by the witness of the 144,000 and were
martyred during the War/Tribulation.

c. This agrees with the several warnings Jesus gave His disciples that they be
ready to flee and His promise of God’s protection if they would (Matt. 24:15-
18; Luke 21:16-22).
d. This also fits well with what actually happened in history when the Christians
fled from Jerusalem just prior to the siege (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History,
3:5).
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G. The Trumpet Judgments (the seventh seal).

1. The trumpets review and intensify the seals: the destruction is increased from
one-fourth (6:8) to one-third (8:7-12).
a. The first four plagues are reminiscent of those the Lord inflicted on Egypt at
the time of the Exodus: hail and fire, blood, poisoned water, and darkness.
(i) Since Jerusalem has become like Egypt – “And their dead bodies will lie in
the street of the great city which mystically is called Sodom and Egypt,
where also their Lord was crucified” (11:8) – she receives the same
judgment (8:7-12).
(ii) They also appear to describe the volcanic activity that was prevalent
during that time frame.

b. With the fifth trumpet, there is an outbreak of demonic torment (9:1-12).

(i) One falls from heaven with a key who releases a vast army from the
bottomless pit.
(ii) This describes the intense demonic activity that was then present;
something of which Jesus warned Israel during His ministry (Matt. 12:43-
45).
(iii) They are released to torment Israel – those not of the 144,000 (Rev. 7:3-
4), who don’t have the mark on their foreheads (9:4).
(iv) The time frame of this plague of demonic activity is 5 months, the same
time frame of the final siege of Jerusalem under Titus, during which the
Jews were driven mad with despair (vv. 5-6).
(v) The description John gives of these demons is very much like that of the
Roman soldiers (vv. 7-10), whose siege of Jerusalem (which lasted five
months) drove the Jews mad (Jos. 5.1.1, 5).

c. The sixth trumpet: Roman reinforcements (9:12-21).

(i) The interlude reminded us that there were four angels holding back the four
winds or the judgment of God, until the 144,000 could be sealed (Rev. 7).
The four angels represent the Roman armies kept at the Euphrates River
who are now loosed to finish the war.
(ii) This is Christ’s judgment against Jerusalem (Matt. 26:64). The four angels
are His messengers of destruction against the Jews. They destroy a third of
men.