Revelation 11:1-14 Explanatory Notes

Continuing the journey. I did a video on this chapter 6 years ago. 
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11:1 And was given to me a measuring rod like a staff, saying, "Rise and measure the temple of God and the altar and those worshiping at it. 2 And the court outside the temple cast outside and do not measure it because it was given to the Gentiles. And they will trample the holy city forty-two months.

1. We now arrive at the most contested passage in the book of Revelation we have seen so far. How should we take this temple? Is it 1) the pre-70 AD temple, 2) a rebuilt end times temple, or 3) a symbolic temple, perhaps representing something like the church? Or perhaps it's some combination of these.

To properly understand this chapter, we need to unlock some secrets from later in the book. In particular, the second vision (11:19-19:10) gives us key insights into what Revelation 11 is about symbolically. It provides us with the context we need to begin to decipher this symbolism. 

From Revelation 17:9-10, we see that the book of Revelation situates its point of view during the reign of Vespasian, who ruled from AD 69-79. [1] At the same time, there are also reasons to believe it reached its current form after the temple and Jerusalem were destroyed in AD 70 -- not least the fact that Babylon is used as a code name for Rome. That cipher makes sense because, just as Babylon destroyed Jerusalem, Rome destroyed Jerusalem.

If John's initial vision came during the Jewish War (AD 66-70), then the starting point of this image might very well be the siege of Jerusalem in AD 69 and early 70. At that time, the Gentiles -- that is the Romans -- were indeed trampling the "court" outside the temple. They would trample it into destruction.

We might also note that the Jewish War lasted about four years, beginning in AD 66 and culminating in the year 70. If the original vision came just before the temple's destruction, a period of about 42 months would not be far off. Could the original image here come from the time just before the temple was destroyed?

2. Yet, as we have also suggested, Revelation does not seem to stop with a purely preterit perspective. It moves beyond AD 70 to give a symbolism that applies to the entire "church age," so to speak. Its beginnings are preterist but it ends primarily idealist, with of course fantastical images of Christ's return and the final judgment (futurist).

So, the beginnings of this image may very well have been the siege of Jerusalem, but if so, it does not end there. The action of measuring the temple makes us think of Ezekiel 45 and the ideal temple that Ezekiel foretold. The actual temple that was rebuilt in 516 BC was nothing like the fantastical image Ezekiel sets out. Some have thus wondered if it might refer to some future temple.

We can state clearly that this idea has no place in the theology of Revelation. The temple theology of Revelation is very much in line with Hebrews. Hebrews indicates that the one sacrifice of Christ has forever accomplished atonement (Heb. 10:14). Further, the veil to the Most Holy Place has been torn asunder (Mark 15:38). The boundary that separated the people of God from the innermost part of the sanctuary is gone. We can now approach the throne of grace boldly (Heb. 4:16).

The final form of Revelation holds this same theology. In the New Jerusalem, there is no need for a temple (21:22). From the standpoint of Hebrews and Revelation, no earthly temple from this point on could be legitimate. Similarly, there are some who suggest that the temple of Ezekiel 45 might be built during the Millennium of Revelation 20. But the sacrifice of Christ has forever established Ezekiel 45 as symbolic.

There is no place for a future temple in the theology of Revelation.

3. If John received his initial vision right before the destruction of Jerusalem, then the temple of 11:1 could be a reference to the literal Jerusalem temple as its "outer courts" were being trampled on by the Romans. 

Yet after the temple was destroyed, the image suggests something even more profound. The body of Christ, the church, is God's temple in the world. "You (plural) are the temple of God," Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3:16. Yet, throughout history, the forces of the world have regularly trampled on God's people. This is true even when those who called themselves Christians -- but really weren't -- were in control.

This is the nature of the "great ordeal" we find ourselves in (7:14) -- and in which John himself especially found himself during the writing of Revelation. The "Gentiles" trample on the physical world of the church. But, at the same time, our spiritual identity in Christ is preserved. It is safe inside the "temple."

4. We will see from chapter 12 that the image of 42 months began with the Messiah, Jesus, being snatched up to heaven (12:5). That means that, at the very least, this period had literally been going for 40 years by the time the vision Revelation came. It thus cannot be a literal time period, and it is certainly not a 7 year Tribulation in the end times.

The period of 42 months is the time of this age, the time of "this ordeal" (7:14). The "Gentiles" have been trampling on the outskirts of the church throughout this period.

3. "And I will give to my two witnesses and they will prophesy one thousand two hundred and sixty days, having been clothed in sackcloth. 4. These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands who have stood before the Lord of the earth.

The identity of these two witnesses is another one of those puzzles in Revelation that has inspired significant conversation over the years. By the time we have finished this passage, we will see them more as symbolic than as two literal individuals who will appear in the end times.

Our first hint is the repeated time of 1,260 days. This is apparently the same 42 months mentioned above in 11:2, the period during which the Gentiles will trample on the outer court of the temple. If there is no temple to be rebuilt in the end times (as we have argued), then this must either refer 1) to the temple that existed in Jesus' day before it was destroyed or 2) be a symbol of something else.

Were there "two witnesses" during the time of the Jewish War? It seems unlikely. Rather everything about these verses suggests that these two individuals are more symbolic. Further, we have already seen that the 42 months/1260 days began with Jesus' ascension. In the end, therefore, these two individuals apparently represent the church's witness during this age, during this time of great ordeal.

The first image of the witnesses is that they are the "two olive trees" and the "two lampstands" who "have stood" before the Lord on the earth. This is an allusion to Joshua and Zerubbabel in Zechariah 4. They were of course two key individuals in the restoration of Israel after the Babylonian captivity. Joshua was the returning priest and Zerubbabel the governor.

If we play the imagery out, if Rome represents Babylon, then the two olive trees/lampstands represent the message of restoration for God's people after Babylon. The witness is one of salvation and, we will later argue, millennium. During this age, when the Babylons of the world are always trampling on the outer court of God's people, the message of salvation and restoration must always be kept in view.

The imagery of the lampstands also reminds us that the seven churches in Revelation 2-3 each had a lampstand (cf. 1:20). In Zechariah 4, there is only one lampstand. But Revelation doubles the lampstand, perhaps a hint that the church was in John's mind. 

The perfect tense for "have stood" is interesting. It suggests that the two witnesses already stand. They are not witnesses who will only arise at the end of this age. The true church is already witnessing to salvation and restoring. It is already reigning with Christ in the millennium.

5. And if someone is wanting to harm them, fire comes out from their mouth and it consumes their enemies. And if someone wants to harm them, thus it is necessary for him to be killed. 6. These have the authority to close the sky so that rain should not fall for the days of their prophecy and they have authority over the waters to turn them into blood and to strike the land with every plague as often as they want.

This imagery clearly alludes to Moses and Elijah, who of course themselves represent the Law and the Prophets respectively -- Scripture, in other words. 

Elijah at one point caused a drought to come over the land of Israel (1 Kings 17:1). Similarly, on more than one occasion he brought fire from heaven (e.g., 2 Kings 1:10-12). The fact that the fire comes out of the mouths of the witnesses rather than falling from heaven is perhaps a hint that we should take the imagery symbolically rather than literally. [2] 

Moses of course turned the water of the Nile into blood as one of the plagues on Egypt (cf. Exod. 7:20-21). The mention of striking the land with "every plague" is also reminiscent of Moses.

So the two witnesses can be seen as Joshua and Zerubbabel and they can be seen as Elijah and Moses. This multilayering of symbolism once again moves us away from seeing the two as literal individuals (e.g., Peter and Paul). Rather, they seem to represent the message of salvation and judgment that comes to the world through the church proclaiming Scripture.

7. And whenever they have completed their testimony, the beast coming up from the Abyss will make war with them. And he will conquer them, and he will kill them.  8. And their corpse [will lie] on the street of the great city -- which is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified.

This is the first time that we encounter the beast in Revelation, but it will not be the last. In Revelation 13 we will meet the "beast from the sea" in more detail, and in Revelation 17 we will learn that he is one of the first five emperors of Rome come back to life (cf. 13:3; 17:11). In particular, we will learn that the Emperor Nero provides us with a type of the beast. More on this to come.

The great city here is clearly Jerusalem -- the place where the Lord was crucified. And while John no doubt grieved the destruction of Jerusalem, he does not identify it positively here. He calls it Sodom (cf. Isaiah 1:9). He even calls it Egypt! Jerusalem is cast in the role of the nation that once oppressed and enslaved it.

What a terrifying image! God uses the godless beast to judge his faithless people! I pictured the movies Jurassic Park and Jurassic World, where terrifying dinosaurs are fighting each other, and the people are just trying to stay out of the way.

The image of martyrdom was fresh in John's mind as he passed on his vision. Indeed, Nero -- the model of this beast as we will see -- put both Peter and Paul to death. We do not know the names of many martyrs during the time of John's vision. We hear of a man named Antipas in Pergamum (Rev. 2:13).

But Revelation is clear that there were and would be martyrs under Babylon -- that is, Rome. And perhaps there were such martyrs during the Jewish War, believers who witnessed in Jerusalem during the war. And there have been martyrs -- witnesses through death -- throughout the church age.

9. And those from the peoples and tribes and languages and nations will see their corpse for three and a half days. And their corpses they will not leave to be put in a tomb. 10. And those dwelling on the earth will rejoice about them and they will celebrate and they will send gifts to one another because these two prophets tormented those dwelling in the land.

Three and a half days is yet another presentation of the 42 months or 1,260 days. It is still, as we will see in Revelation 12, a symbolic way of referring to this age that began when Christ ascended to heaven. The world has been seeing the witness of the church now for 2000 years. They have seen the corpse of the martyrs. The fact that it is singular in verse 9 is a hint that this is a collective witness rather than a reference to two specific individuals.

However, presented as 3.5 days, the vision pictures the time of the world's dominance as brief. God's allowance for the world to persecute the church will not last long in the light of eternity. Of course, John did not know it would last this long and would no doubt have been surprised. Nevertheless, its brevity in the light of eternity is clear.

The world celebrates what they think is the defeat of God's people. They were tired of its witness. Those who are bent on doing wrong don't like to be told about it. The very presence of the righteous is galling to those who feel guilty for their wickedness. Like Herodias, the wife of Herod Antipas, the continued existence of John the Baptist only made her feel guilty. She wanted him gone.

So the world celebrates the disappearance of those who remind it of its true nature.

But we also remember from Revelation 7:9 that there will be people from every nation, tribe, people, and language in the kingdom of God. The witness of the church, it would seem, did indeed lead a multitude in the world to turn to Christ.

11. And after three and a half days, a spirit of life from God entered in them and they stood on their feet and a great fear fell on those who beheld them. 12. And they heard [3] a great voice from the sky saying to them, "Come up here." And they ascended into the sky on the cloud and their enemies beheld them.

The apparent defeat of God's witnesses is not a final defeat. Those who are persecuted now will reign with Christ then. They are already in heaven worshiping in God's presence. They will be part of the resurrection and will reign with Christ on earth as well in the age to come.

If there were an allusion to Peter and Paul's death under Nero hiding in this chapter, Revelation's imagery has a first resurrection of those martyred for Christ. In Revelation 20, those martyred during this age reign with Christ for a millennium. We will take that picture symbolically when we get there, but it is worth noting that the resurrection of the martyred is a consistent theme in Revelation.

The fact that they ascend on a cloud to heaven with their enemies watching could be an allusion to Daniel 7:13. Normally, the Son of Humanity imagery is applied to Christ (e.g., Rev. 1:7), but the image of God's people going on the clouds to God is also reminiscent of what happens in Daniel 7. The Greek word for "coming" can also be translated as "going."

13. And in that hour, there was a great earthquake and a tenth of the city fell and seven thousand names of people were killed in the earthquake. And those remaining became fearful and gave glory to the God of the heaven.

This is perhaps the strongest argument that this part of John's vision dates to the time just before Jerusalem was destroyed. The image pictures Jerusalem still intact enough for the destruction of a sizable portion of the city to take place. Of course, in the period between AD 70 and the final relocation of Jews from Jerusalem after the Bar Kochba revolt of 135, Jews no doubt thought Jerusalem would continue to be inhabited by Jews.

In this image, however, Jerusalem is soundly judged. 7000 people die. Those who remain seem to repent, giving glory finally to the God of heaven. We are reminded of Paul's hope in Romans 11:26 that Israel would eventually turn to its Messiah, Jesus.

14. The second woe has gone away. Behold, the third woe is coming quickly.  

As we saw with the seven seals, the first four trumpets go together, and then the last three also form a group. In the case of the trumpets, the last three trumpets are three woes. With verse 14, the intermission after the sixth trumpet comes to a close, and we are ready for the final trumpet, which is the final woe.

[1] The majority date the book of Revelation to the reign of Domitian in the 90s. The strongest arguments for this dating come from tradition. I have no problem with that dating for the final form of the book. However, Revelation 17:10 situates the "point of view" of the vision during the reign of Vespasian. Most consider this a literary device.

[2] Revelation may also have Jeremiah 5:14 in mind. See Keener, Revelation, 290.

[3] Some manuscripts, "I heard."

Notes Along the Way 3.3 A Summer of Nietzsche

Continued from previous posts
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13. After my dissertation was submitted, I had a little time in the summer to finish out my time as a
residential (or what they used to call a "moral") tutor. Principal Day had hatched a writing project that would draw on several of us in the neighborhood. 

(I don't think I have mentioned that Robert Song had come to Cranmer by then. I believe he had replaced Michael Vasey for theology/ethics. He would go on to marry Margaret Masson, who would eventually become the Principal of St. Chads. Robert would go on to teach for the university faculty of theology.)

The project was to create something like a dictionary with an apologetics flavor. I can't remember all the details (probably never knew them). The book never happened in the end.

I took three entries: Nietzsche, Feuerbach, Foucault. I had never really read much of any of them. I'd talked a fair amount about Foucault with David Mossley (philosophy PhD student) and was quite intrigued with his work. I of course knew the stereotypical version of Nietzsche.

There was no Google. There was no AI. I would spend the better part of the summer reading Nietzsche.

14. Thus Spake Zarathustra. What a horrible novel, I thought. A madman comes to the marketplace. Everyone is celebrating because God is dead. But the madman sees the implications. The death of God means that morality is up for grabs. It is no surprise to me that Nietzsche is sometimes thought to be a prophet of the Holocaust. 

Some of Nietzsche built on those before him. Dostoevsky seems to have presented the morality of a world without God. But he stepped back from the precipice. In Crime and Punishment -- which I would make myself read the year after my PhD -- Raskolnikov can't live with himself after murdering someone for a greater good. He confesses.

(In two years, I would show my philosophy classes at IWU a clip from Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors. In that echo of Dostoevsky, a man commits a murder. Is initially troubled. But he gets over it. Typical Woody Allen. By the way, in those early days of my teaching, I often showed clips like that from movies -- on VHS -- to raise the philosophical issue of the day.)

In this novel, he also presents his idea of the "superman," the person who can create morality out of the ashes of a world without God. It didn't matter too much for him what that morality was as long as it was strong, the morality of a master -- not like Christianity with its weak slave morality.

15. Beyond Good and Evil and On the Genealogy of Morals. In these classic works of ethics, Nietzsche develops his concept of Christianity as a "slave morality." A line from his preface has always stuck with me. Going from memory, it's something like "As a young person, I early realized that if you were going to give God credit for the good in the world, you would also have to give him credit for the evil."

Certainly I think this is a problem for the Calvinist, less so for the Arminian (and even less so for Tom Oord.) In any case, Nietzsche basically treats Christianity as a classic, "You can't hit me because I'm wearing glasses" argument. The weak invent a system where you'll go to hell if you oppress me, even though you have the power to do so. It's a tool that a slave might use to try to manipulate his or her master into treating them well.

But Nietzsche basically says, "No, you should hit him whether he has glasses or not." The superman doesn't worry about the made-up rules of the weak.

I might point out here that MAGA Christianity is basically Nietzschian "Christianity." It is an anti-Christian philosophy. The way of Christ is the way of the cross, which Nietzsche and Trump vehemently reject.

16. At that time, Dostoevsky and Nietzsche resonated with my sense of a world without God. If there is no God, then I had trouble seeing a transcendent basis for morality. There could be social bases. There could be evolutionary bases. But what absolute basis would there be beyond advantage?

For this reason, I have not resonated with the moral argument for the existence of God. I believe morality objectively exists because of God. But it's existence does not seem obvious to me apart from prior belief in God's existence. God's existence is a tremendous boon for morality. 

But, from an evidentiary perspective, I find no obvious, intrinsic morality in the world that points to a transcendent goodness. We have a deep longing for one and perhaps that is the "God-shaped vacuum" talking. 

This of course was the basis for C. S. Lewis and Francis Collins' conversion. We can be thankful that God is good, believed by faith, nonetheless! 

For a long time, I had trouble seeing what the point was for individuals who diverted to some unorthodox conception of God. If God is not God, what's the point? In more recent years, I have at least wondered if there could be non-theistic reasons why people would believe in a spiritual dimension. 

Probably some time during my second year, I noticed that a student had put a discussion question on her door: "If evolution is true, then animals matter just as much as humans. Discuss." I was tempted to write a response: "If atheistic evolution is true, then humans matter just as little as animals."

I haven't mentioned Will yet. Will was a bright atheist who came as a fresher my first year in Durham. I remember asking him that first term what I thought was an innocent question. "So, are you a Christian?" I wasn't trying to proselytize or evangelize. St. John's was an evangelical Anglican college. There was a fair chance he identified as a Christian.

The answer was strong. "No. I'm an atheist--the thinking kind."

I would like to think that we were friends that whole time, although perhaps I have disappointed some of my Durham friends since. 

17. I didn't spend much time on Feuerbach. His argument was basically that God is a projection of all the ideal human traits. Take our best traits: wisdom, knowledge, goodness. Now imagine the perfect version of them. That, he argued, was where the idea of God came from.

I've tried to think of what a naturalist hypothesis of God's origins might be. Were many ancient beliefs in a non-personal spiritual dimension? Animism? A longing to be able to manipulate that which is beyond human control? I do think that the ancient Greeks and that layer of human history often personified various abstract categories like war, wisdom, or love.

Monotheism developed slowly, it would seem, but significant movement seems to have taken place around the sixth century BC. Scholastic conceptions of God in the middle age perhaps come closest to Feuerbach's ideas.

Still, I like to start with creation. If we assume God is the creator of the universe out of nothing, what conception of God results? I would say it comes very close to the classic view, which is also my own.

18. I found Foucault to be very enlightening, although I don't share his ultimate framework. I give credit to David Mossley for cluing me into him, although I imagine I had heard of him before.

What I find helpful is to think of Foucault as an extension of Kuhn. Paradigms are always changing. Power is inevitably associated with the dominant paradigms. This all seems overwhelmingly obvious to me. Where I would differ is his apparent sense that there is no ultimate reality or truth behind these shifting sands. I am a critical realist. 

Foucault wrote a series of historical studies -- on madness, on crime and punishment, on sexuality. I bought them all. I tried to read his three volume history of sexuality -- you'd think they'd be enaging. Not so. The French seem to obfuscate deliberately as a matter of principle.

But I can give you the comic book version. We do not have the same conception of these things as the generations before us. For example, punishment had a primary function of shaming. You behead in public so everyone can see. But in the 20th century, it became a tribute to absolute justice, held in a private ceremony.

Madness in ancient times could be a sign of interaction with the gods. "Whom the gods love, they first make mad." Then there was the concept of the Ship of Fools. The minds of these individuals are seeking their place and need to be free to find it. In the twentieth century, insanity becomes a disease and we hide such individuals away in "cuckoo's nests."

Sexuality as a category of being did not exist until the 1800s. "What orientation are you?" In older times, it was something people did on the side as a deviant activity. They were likely married and had children, but some did this activity "on the down low."

Then it became a sickness. It was put in the DSM.  Now it's an orientation.

I found this deep paradigm framework helpful in analyzing biblical culture. I was always enamored with Mary Douglas' "Dirt is matter out of place." The explanatory power of such understandings unlocked a much more profound sense of the biblical worlds to me. And I really couldn't see much to object to in these frameworks.

19. I believe it was also in my third year that I devised the following soul thought experiment, although I'm sure others have thought the same. I remember coming up with it while walking up the Bailey to Neil's flat.

Let's say that we have no soul. What then would the resurrection be? It is presumbly a re-creation of a body -- using whatever remnants of my previous body as a starting point. Then, that body would be given my memories and personality.

Now consider the possibility that you might make a 3-D scan of my brain. I do not know the particulars of how the brain "stores" memory and personality, but let's say you could re-create the physical and chemical structures of my brain at a certain point in time within some appropriate set of Ken parameters.

Next, let's say we could clone my body and, at an appropriate time, reformat its brain structures to the 3-D scan of my current brain. The resultant Ken would have my body, my memories, my personality. It would think itself Ken in the same way that I think myself Ken.

Yet, we could, in theory, both exist at the same time. Our stories could from that point diverge.

In short, that Ken is not me. It is a copy of me. I came first.

20. If there is no soul, then how would a resurrected Ken be any different? And here is the point. "Existence without continuity is not identity." (You'll recognize this as a similar question to the Ship of Theseus, although my experiment is clearer.)

This is not a proof of the soul, but it does display--I think--why the existence of something like the soul is very important for the notion of afterlife to be coherent.

After I wrote a philosophy textbook on philosophy, I pre-tended this thought experiment on the soul, but it can wait till a post many months from now.