The Lamb vs. Nike Revelation 14:6-12 June 9, 2013 Travis Collins Ancient Rome was the oppressive, ruthless occupier of what we now call the Holy Land. A long string of Roman emperors hated, persecuted and massacred Christians. And they had little use for the rowdy, ragtag nation of people called Jews. The feeling between the Romans and the Jews was mutual. So in the year A.D. 66 the Jews rose up against Rome. But their uprising was violently squelched. Jerusalem was burned, and the Jewish Temple destroyed, in A.D. 70. The Romans were inspired, they said, by the Roman goddess of Victory, called Victoria in Latin, and, in Greek, Nike. Rome rubbed Jewish noses in their defeat. The Roman government minted coins to celebrate Rome s crushing of the Jewish revolt. The coins depicted the Roman goddess Victoria, or Nike, holding a trophy over a Jew who was bowing prostrate before the goddess. And there was constructed in Rome the Arch of Titus celebrating Rome s victories over the Jews with the goddess Victoria, or Nike, crowning the head of Emperor Titus, who had led the defeat of the Jews. The image of the flying Nike appears multiple times on the arch and on smaller versions of the arch that were erected in cities all across the Mediterranean. So maybe, just maybe, those three angels depicted in the section of the book we read this morning were a dig at Nike. Maybe the message was, You ve got your made-up, mythological flying Nike, but we ve got real, live flying angels and what they say is, Jesus wins. What is certain is that the clear and constant message of this book of Revelation is that, though Babylon and Nike and all the evil forces they represent will win some skirmishes along the way, in the end, God wins, and you d better be on His side. There are two important things about what I just said. 1) I said Maybe the image of the angels and their declarations of victory in Revelation 14 were intended to counter, to play off of, and to defy Rome and her goddess of victory, Nike. We cannot be sure of such symbols, though we have hints. The message they communicated is certainly true; but the most we can say about the symbolism here, like all the dramatic symbols in the book of Revelation, is maybe, probably, not certainly. 2) The clear message of Revelation, and all the cryptic, future-oriented literature in the Bible is this: In the end, God wins, so you d better be sure you re on His side. Let s look at those two truths: 1) When we are interpreting the symbols in Revelation the best thing we can say is Maybe. We can t be sure of the symbols, numbers, and dramatic images in Revelation. 1
I did a little experiment on Facebook this week. I prophesied. On Tuesday morning I wrote, I prophesy that the King will be Spurred in six. I got a comment from a friend of ours, a retired missionary from Nigeria, who said, Interesting. I ve never known you to prophesy before. Sorry, don t know what this is all about. Lots of folks knew exactly what I meant by the cryptic language, simply because those who follow basketball know the King (LeBron James) and the San Antonio Spurs. But what if someone were to find that prophesy, say, twenty years from now in a bottle that had washed up onto the shore in, let s say, Egypt? It would be very hard to figure out what I was talking about without understanding the culture and context. The same thing is true of the book of Revelation. It s hard to figure out what they were talking about from half the world and 2,000 years away. Besides the distance, there is the special language. Most of the writings in the Bible about the return of Jesus are apocalyptic writings a form of literature which uses uncommon imagery to communicate dramatic truths. Apocalyptic writings were about the spiritual battle between God and Evil, and were meant in particular to encourage persecuted people. The immediate audience would have understood the symbolism. For us, it s extremely difficult. So be wary of those who say they ve got everything figured out, for details surrounding the end times cannot be understand fully or predicted accurately. 2) In the end, God wins. God wins. That is what the Bible says, in a nutshell, in every instance in which it speaks in that highly symbolic language about the end. God inspired the writers to assure us that in the end He wins. What importance did that have for those first century Christians? Somewhere in the late first century A.D. a man was forced to do menial labor and was paid a mere pittance, since, because he was a Christian, he could not get a good job. His children ate bread and soup with only a faint taste of beans. And as he said grace over that pitiful meal the father prayed, God, we gladly take our place with you on the winning side. Somewhere in the late first century Roman soldiers dragged a Christian husband from his home as his screaming children looked on. His wife gathered their children and prayed for him through her tears, then she said, Look at me children. Never forget, no matter what happens: we are on the winning side. Somewhere in the late first century a Christian woman stood on the edge of the flames into which she soon would be thrown. And she was heard to cry, To you, O Lord of history, I commit my spirit! And she died a tortuous death, but she died knowing she was on the winning side. Those hard-to-decipher images like beasts and horsemen and a scroll with seven seals were the only assurance that the early Christians had that they were not fools for suffering as they did for their faith. In those images the early Christians found hope. 2
So, what s coming, in general terms? What are the big events of which we can be sure when we think of the end times? The Second Coming When the Bible speaks of the conclusion of history as we know it, it speaks of a return to earth by Jesus. The return of Jesus is a central theme of the Bible. One student of the New Testament has reported that the Second Coming is mentioned 318 times in the New Testament alone. And most of the time when the Bible mentions the second coming of Jesus it is in the context of our getting ready. When God inspired people to refer to the return of the Son, the Lord Jesus, God said, Get ready. Time may be short. One day the world will be surprised by my Son s coming. In Matthew 24, to encourage us to be prepared for his return, Jesus told the parable of a homeowner who left his house in charge of another and then returned home before expected. His point? Always be ready for the return of Jesus. Which reminds me of a story I told a decade ago, and I d like to tell it again. Greene and Carolyn Hollowell were so gracious that they allowed me to live in their home when I first came to Richmond in June of 2002. We had not yet moved into our house, and I was awaiting the arrival of my family. Greene and Carolyn were gone for a month-long vacation. I didn t trash the house, for I respect the Hollowells and their lovely home too much for that. But I wasn t as neat as I should have been. After all, I knew they were coming back on Saturday, June 15. So on Friday, June 14, when I left their house I was thinking, I've got to clean up the house before Greene and Carolyn come home. I had left a shirt here and there. There were a few dishes in the sink to be washed, and I had not emptied the dishwasher. My room looked like, well, like I was living out of a suitcase. I specifically remember that the ironing board was still out. And I certainly hadn t made up the bed, for making up beds never has made sense to me. I drove into the driveway on Friday evening, June 14, with the clean-up plan in mind... and lights were on in the house. I figured that either some thief was burglarizing the house or the owners of the house had returned. Frankly, I was hoping for the thief. The owners of the house had returned. And I was unprepared. If the Bible says anything, it says that we are to live prepared to meet Jesus, were he to come today. Judgment 1 Corinthians 4:5 reads, (When) the Lord comes, He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men's hearts. One day God will make things right. When Jesus returns all the world will be judged. Even you and I will give an accounting of our lives. We are saved by grace, not works. Yet we still are accountable for our choices. 3
There is a wideness to God s mercy and an amazing-ness to His grace. But there also is a fierceness to His justice. I don t know exactly how He will administer His justice, but nothing more certain than this day of reckoning appears in the pages of holy Scripture. Forever in one place or the other Hell When Jesus spoke of Hell he almost always used the word, Gehenna. Gehenna in the days of Jesus was a hideous and nauseating valley outside the walls of the city of Jerusalem which was the garbage dump. Trash, human waste, carcasses of animals, even the bodies of executed criminals unclaimed by friends or family made up the horror known as Gehenna. A fire was kept burning in an effort to minimize that awful pile of refuse. Maggots and wild scavengers always were present and busy there. It was used in earlier days as a site for sacrificing children to pagan gods. For Jesus, Gehenna was a symbol of the horror, waste and God-less-ness of Hell. And that is the image that Jesus used to speak of a real, literal, awful place of eternal separation from God. Heaven Heaven is the home of our Creator and Father and the promised home of all whose trust and hope are in Jesus. The book of Revelation, in Chapter 21, Verse 4, says there will be no more tears or death or pain and gives us hope and comfort. But the Book of Revelation also says, only three verses earlier, there will be no more sea. Revelation 21:1, Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. No more sea was a welcome description from the mouth of Jesus. The sea was not a place for cruises and deep sea fishing trips on chartered boats and something to dip your toes in when sun bathing gets too hot. The sea was a mysterious, foreboding expanse that swallowed up sailors and housed great monsters. The power and the depth of the sea were feared, not admired. The sea symbolized all the evil and frightening possibilities that await us just around the unknown corner. The sea represented what is bad about life the uncontrollable dangers those bad things that we can t do anything about. So when John wrote, There will be no more sea, it meant to his readers that there would come a day when there wouldn t be anything to be afraid of anymore. Is your sea Death? For some of us it is. When you get to heaven, you are going to ask, Why was I so afraid? One day doubts will no longer haunt us; fear will no longer trouble us. There will be no more sea. One day there will be no more sea for you. No more reason to be afraid. No more looming illness. No more economic fears. No more sea! No more sea, if your faith is in Jesus and not your own goodness, whatever sea is for you. 4
But that s not all. Heaven is the fulfillment of all our unfulfilled longings on earth. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, God has set eternity in the human heart. There is a chamber of our hearts where the message echoes, This is not all there is; there is more than the eye can see. And you were made for that unseen world beyond this one. There s a reason why, in the words of the Rolling Stones, we can t get no satisfaction. There is a reason we sometimes feel incomplete here. There s a reason we have a strange sense that maybe just a little bit is missing here. That reason is: We were made for heaven, so our ultimate hope and life at its best are in the next life. There are desires within us that no experience in this world can satisfy. So, if you are a follower of Jesus with unmet hopes and longings, you will have to be patient. For you were made for another world, and you re not home yet. Say that after me: I was made for another world and I m not home yet. A blind lady named Fanny Crosby wrote, There are depths of love that I may not know, till I cross the narrow sea. There are heights of joy that I may not reach till I rest in peace with Thee. And one day we will. In that is our hope. Not a crutch. But real hope. Deep hope. Hope during a long night and on a dark day. Hope when the Office of Homeland Security raises the terror alert to High. Hope when our world is increasingly hostile to what we believe. Hope when a follower of Jesus whom you love goes home. Hope when the doctor says to you or to me, There is nothing more I can do and the family gathers to say their goodbyes. When the Spirit of God speaks in Scripture of the end He speaks of mystery. But He also speaks of hope. 5