Category Archives: Eschatology

Revelation Notes (chapter 20)

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Ted Grimsrud

[See notes on Revelation 19]

Revelation 20 comes in the middle of the final set of visions that complete the book of Revelation. The first part of chapter 19 shows the great celebration of the Lamb’s marriage following the fall of Babylon the Great in chapter 18. Then comes the battle that’s not really a battle where the rider on the white horse (Jesus, crucified and resurrected) captures two of his main enemies, the Beast and the False Prophet, and dispatches them (without an actual battle) to the lake of fire.

The book concludes in chapters 21 and 22 with a vision of the New Jerusalem, the city of genuine peace and healing that has been in the background from the beginning of Revelation. Tears are wiped away never to return, and ceaseless celebration and praise of the Lamb and the One on the throne ensues.

In between, in chapter 20, come a series of difficult to understand visions that complete the judgment and destruction of the powers of evil (here the Dragon, the power behind Babylon, the Beast, and the False Prophet) and that portray the judgment of all of humanity and the final destruction of Death and Hades.

I will suggest that these visions (along with the rest of Revelation, actually) should not be read strictly in terms of chronology. One of the interpretive approaches that especially makes the visions in chapter 20 confusing is to assume that this chapter presents events that will happen in the future after everything else that we have seen—rather than seeing this chapter as a kind of recapitulation of some of the main themes from earlier in the book. That is, Revelation 20 is also best understood as a picture of present reality. And it presents a theology of judgment that is actually quite different that what is usually assumed to be characteristic of Revelation.

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Revelation Notes (Chapter 8)

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Ted Grimsrud—June 8, 2013

[See notes on Revelation 7]

Revelation 5–7 has established several crucial things about the agenda of the book and its theological center. The One on the throne is confessed as Master of the universe, but the kind of power that best expresses this mastery is the power of persevering love. The Lamb is worshiped due to how the Lamb resists empire nonviolently even to the point of death. The Lamb’s resistance frees the multitude from the Powers and offers this worship, worship that finds its ultimate expression in these people following the Lamb wherever he goes.

In between the vision of the Lamb in chapter five and the vision of the multitude in chapter seven, two clearly parallel visions, we have the first of three sets of seven-fold plagues described. These plagues, we have seen, are not direct acts by God to punish rebellious creation. Rather, they are a creative way to assert that though the world we live in is full of wars and rumors of war, God’s will for healing remains active, and (according to the book of Revelation as a whole) this healing will come.

So, now we turn to another set of plagues, and their level of destruction expands from one-quarter to one-third destruction. Still—reinforced by the visions of healing in chapter seven—I believe we still must read the plague visions in light of the core affirmations Revelation has already made about God’s intentions, God’s power, the promise of God’s victory, and—importantly—the means by which the victory is achieved. What we don’t have here, contrary to many interpreters, is a picture of God Godself unleashing terrible destruction in order to push people to repentance. The plagues in chapter eight, though, cannot be understood apart what from what follows in chapters nine and ten. Hence, I will offer here only comments describing the plagues waiting for the following chapters to reflect more on their meaning.
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Revelation Notes (Chapter 7)

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   Ted Grimsrud—May 18, 2013

[See notes on Revelation 6]

As a rule, the book of Revelation is read as a book emphasizing God’s judgment on the rebellious world. The visions that begin in chapter six (centering on the three sets of seven plagues in chapters 6, 8-9, and 15-16) are typically seen as visions of destruction coming down from heaven in order to punish wrongdoers and clear the ground for the New Jerusalem. I propose a different way of reading the book as a whole, including a different way to read these plague visions.

As part of this different way of reading, I suggest that chapter 7 be seen not as a kind of “digression” or “tangent” from the main story line. Rather, chapter 7 is better read as helping us see the main point that the book as a whole is making—Jesus is Lord and as Lord calls people from throughout the earth to embrace and witness to his ways of mercy and compassion. As people walking Jesus’ path, followers of the Lamb become agents of healing the rebellious world, ultimately even the kings of the earth (even as the nonhuman powers of oppression and domination are destroyed).

Our step in reading chapter 7 as central to the plot of the book as a whole is to recognize that it follows shortly after the crucial vision of chapter 5 that establishes the Lamb and his path of compassionate witness as the path the one on the throne embraces as the the meaning of history. That is, in a genuine sense, the plagues that are visited on the earth beginning in chapter 6 are the “digression” or “tangent” in relation to the core message of God’s healing love. Thus, the plagues actually serve that healing love—not the healing love as a side point to the plagues. Continue reading →

The War That’s Not a War

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[This is the fifteenth in a series of sermons in interpreting America in the 21st century in light of the Book of Revelation. The series will continue, monthly for about two years.]

Ted Grimsrud

Shalom Mennonite Congregation—May 12, 2013—Revelation 19:1-21

One of the great things for me in looking closely at the book of Revelation again is that I keep noticing new things. I have talked quite a bit, and will some more today, about how I see “blood” everywhere in Revelation. Now, this is not unusual, a lot of people see red when they look at Revelation. However, I have noticed that the “blood” in Revelation is always the blood of Jesus or his followers; never do we hear of the blood of Jesus’s enemies being shed. This one-sided use of blood can’t be an accident.

I believe when we “follow the blood” in Revelation we see that one of the main messages of the book is a call to self-giving love. Jesus gave his life over to love, so should we. Revelation presents Jesus’ way of nonviolent resistance to the domination system as the model for his people—and as the method that overcomes that death-dealing system. Jesus’ “blood,” and that of his followers, stand for lives of compassion in resistance to domination.

The Powers keep coming back

Today I want to talk about something else I have noticed. Over and over again we are told that the beast, the dragon, the city Babylon, these powers that symbolize the domination system—over and over we are told that they are defeated, that they go down, that “it is all over.” Yet the powers keep coming back, they keep showing up.

Some of you may remember the old folk song, “The Cat Came Back.” It has also been turned into a children’s book—I remember reading it over and over to our son Johan when he was little. Mr. Johnson wants to get rid of this pesky old cat—“he gave it to a little man who was going far away, but the cat came back the very next day.” And it goes on, a little boy takes the cat on a boat trip. The boat capsizes; lives were lost. But still the cat came back. Even after the hydrogen bomb falls, the cat comes back. “They thought he was gone, but the cat came back, he just wouldn’t stay away.”

This is kind of like the dragon and his minions in Revelation. They go down in chapters 11 and 12, “it is over.” They go down in chapter 17. And then again in chapter 18. And at the beginning of chapter 19, the great harlot has been judged and smoke goes up from her forever and ever. And yet, in the second half of the chapter the powers of evil are back, gathered for the great battle of Armageddon. Continue reading →

Confessions of a Birthright Imperialist

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[This is the fourteenth in a series of sermons in interpreting America in the 21st century in light of the Book of Revelation. The series will continue, monthly for about two years.]

Ted Grimsrud

Shalom Mennonite—March 17, 2013—Revelation 18:1-24

When I started this series of sermons on Revelation, back in the mists of time, I talked about it as sermons on 21st century America according to the book of Revelation. As the series has unfolded, I’ve had a lot more to say about Revelation than the 21st century. But today I want to focus a little more on our present world.

I think Revelation, chapter 18, might speak more obviously to the 21st century than anything else we have considered thus far. This chapter focuses on a critique of the great city, called here Babylon—probably with Rome in mind, but also most other imperial capital cities ever since. John challenges his first readers with how they think about the empire they are part of. As such, I think Revelation, chapter 18 works as a good challenge for us today to think about how we feel about our empire.

Reading Revelation 18 as Americans

So, let’s start with an exercise. As I read Revelation, chapter 18, let the imagery stimulate you to reflect on how you feel about being part of our nation. What here maybe rings a bell or triggers a thought? What parallels between ancient Rome and present-day America are suggested by this vision? Continue reading →

Revelation Notes (chapter 18)

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Ted Grimsrud

[See notes on Revelation 17]

Revelation 18 continues the envisioning of God’s work of transformation, from Babylon to New Jerusalem.  In Revelation 17, we read of Babylon’s comeuppance. At the end of chapter 16, the seventh of the full out plagues had been visited upon the city Babylon. The greatest earthquake the world has ever known splits Babylon into three parts. A loud voice, presumably God’s, had cried out: “It is done!” (16:17). Yet, the visions John reports are far from over.

Chapter 17 focuses on what happens to Babylon—a rather gruesome picture. However, we should not think of this picture as a prediction of what will happen in the future—rather the vision is simply part of Revelation’s broader message about our purpose (or “end”). When read in context, then, chapter 17’s vision actually is part of the bigger movement the book portrays of movement toward the New Jerusalem. In a paradoxical sense, the “destruction” of Babylon might actually be its transformation—or, at least, the transformation of the human city from Babylon to New Jerusalem.

Babylon falls, crushed by the self-destructiveness of its ways. But in the destruction lies the seeds of the city’s hope. Babylon is “drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of the witnesses of Jesus” (17:6)—”blood” that links the witnesses with Jesus. That is, the “blood” of self-giving love that leads to Babylon’s downfall, the destruction of the three great Powers of evil (dragon, beast, and false prophet), and the re-creation of Jerusalem as a city of healing. The healing, as we will see, is not only for the faithful witnesses but also for the kings of the earth and the nations.

First, though, the destruction of Babylon requires more attention. So John gives us another vision in chapter 18, also of the destruction of Babylon but from a slightly different angle.

Revelation 18:1-3

The vision features a different angel than the angel of chapter 17 who was one of the seven angels who had poured out the plague bowls in chapter 16. It begins with an assertion that indeed “Babylon the great” has met its doom. Instead of being a place of beauty and power, a true city of the gods, Babylon is actually pretty disgusting, a home for demons, foul spirits, foul birds, and foul and hateful beasts. Continue reading →

Seeking the Peace of the City

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[This is the thirteenth in a series of sermons in interpreting America in the 21st century in light of the Book of Revelation. The series will continue, monthly for about two years.]

Ted Grimsrud

Shalom Mennonite Congregation—February 17, 2013—Revelation 17:1-18

Welcome back to the wild and crazy world of the book of Revelation. My job today is further to persuade you that it’s our friend. Revelation is our friend as we desire wholeness in our world, as we seek peace with humanity and with the rest of creation, as we are troubled by power politics and injustice. Right? Well, listen up….

Linking Revelation with today’s world

My first sermon in this series was “The 21st century according to Revelation.” I suggested then, and today, that in its idiosyncratic way, Revelation can give us perspective on the world we live in—not due to its predictions about the end times but due to its insights into its own times. Those insights tell us about deep structures of human life and the message of the Lamb that spoke then and continues to speak now.

An image that comes to mind is of a chair my mother found at a second hand store when I was a kid. The chair was covered with ugly green paint. She stripped the paint and uncovered the beauty that remained with the original hard wood. Then she put on a finish that enhanced the chair’s original beauty—and she had a treasure. Many interpretations of Revelation hide the original beauty of the book. I think we can strip those interpretations away and find its actual message as a great treasure. Continue reading →

Transforming Babylon

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[This is the twelfth in a series of sermons in interpreting America in the 21st century in light of the Book of Revelation. The series will continue, monthly for about two years.]

Ted Grimsrud

Shalom Mennonite Congregation—January 20, 2013—Revelation 15:1–16:21

We seem to get mixed messages about love. Jesus was asked to identify the greatest commandment—it’s the call to love, he said. Probably if we were asked what was the most important emphasis for Martin Luther King, we’d say it was love. He called one of his most famous books, Strength to Love.

And yet it also seems that love is kind of looked down upon. It certainly doesn’t seem to come up much when we talk about social policy and social problems, gun violence, economic inequality, terrorism, climate change. When we talk about social issues we tend to use “realistic” language—power, coercion, justifiable violence, finding a seat at the table, self-interest, just desserts.

Marginalizing love

Love may seem sentimental, naïve, emotional, soft. Nice for life on a personal level (perhaps), but not very central to negotiating social life, not very central to the work of social justice and social order.

I’ve read a couple of books that bear this out. Michael Burleigh in his book on World War II, Moral Combat, and Jean Bethke Elshtein in her book on the American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Just War Against Terror, both write about values and moral standards—but neither devote any space to talk about love. In the “real world,” love is irrelevant it would seem. But is it? Have the violent strategies with which the “realists” deal with conflict and wrongdoing actually worked to enhance human life?

I think this is a challenging question—given all the terrible things that go on in our world. I wonder if the book of Revelation gives us any insights about love and social life? What would you guess I think? Let me read a portion of Revelation—a passage that may not seem to say much about love—chapters 15 and 16, and then you can see what I will pull out of the hat. Continue reading →

Revelation Notes (chapter 15)

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Ted Grimsrud

[See notes on Revelation 14]

After chapter 14’s visions of judgment that actually focus on Jesus’ self-giving love, we turn in chapter 15 to the final series of plagues. Though there is a sense of progression moving from the seal plagues in chapter 6 through the trumpet plagues and now to the bowl plagues, these three series are best seen as three angles on the same picture. They do not actually portray three separate events but rather portray a deeper sense of urgency in relation to the one “event”—which is not one specific historical but a symbolic way of referring to the “three and a half years,” that is, the time between Jesus’ life and the final end.

Revelation 15:1-4—The great song of saving justice

As the book does numerous times amidst the recounting of various plague and trauma visions, here also we get a powerful vision of celebration. One of our big questions in interpreting Revelation is how we understand the relationship between the plagues and the celebrations. I would suggest, given the self-identification of the book as a “revelation of Jesus Christ,” given the centrality to the entire book of the vision in chapter five of the Lamb receiving the scroll, and given the ending vision of the New Jerusalem that portrays an amazingly inclusive sense of healing, we should see the celebrations as the fundamental reality.

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How to Read Revelation

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[This is the eleventh in a series of sermons in interpreting America in the 21st century in light of the Book of Revelation. The series will continue, monthly for about two years.]

Ted Grimsrud

Shalom Mennonite Congregation—November 25, 2012—Revelation 14:1-20

Last weekend, Kathleen and I had the privilege of once again attending the massive annual convention of over 10,000 religion scholars in Chicago, the joint meetings of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature. As always, we had a great time and had our thinking quite stimulated.

Several sessions raised a big question for me—in our quest for peace on earth, for the healing of our brokenness—is the Bible our friend or is it mainly a problem? We heard presentations that pointed in each of these directions. A session on the book of Revelation, though, was pretty clear. The presenters, what I would call “cultured despisers of Revelation,” presented the book in its worst possible light. As you can imagine, I wasn’t pleased.

A “jiu jitsu” approach to the Bible

This is what I think, though. In our all-too-violent world, and in our-all-too-violent Christian religion, we can’t afford to squander this amazing resource for peace—the Bible in general and the book of Revelation in particular. We who seek to be peacemakers, instead of a superficial dismissal of unsettling texts, should wrestle with them, wrestle until (like Jacob of old) we get blessings from them. And there are blessings to be had. We should take what I call a “jiu jitsu” approach to biblical interpretation. Jiu jitsu is a form of martial arts. “Jiu” means “gentle, flexible, or yielding.” “Jitsu” means “technique.” So, “jiu jitsu” is a gentle technique of self-defense that uses the opponent’s force against itself rather than confronting it with one’s own force.

So, I suggest we let the difficult, seemingly “pro-violence,” texts of the Bible swing away at us, but step inside the punches and use those very texts as part of our peacemaking repertoire. Today, I want to give an example of how to read Revelation in this way by taking on one of the more troubling passages in the book, chapter 14. Continue reading →