Martyrs rule because the Martyr rules: The good news of the Apocalypse

 

The church of Christ has been founded by shedding its own blood, not that of others; by enduring outrage, not by inflicting it. Persecutions have made it grow; martyrdoms have crowned it. Jerome

Elliot Ritzema, 300 Quotations for Preachers from the Early Church, Pastorum Series (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2013).

Jesus is the witness, the faithful and true one (cf. Rev.1:5). μάρτυς-witness again edges toward its later meaning of “someone who dies for his faith.” Jesus has been faithful to death, and proven that the Father raises the faithful dead. He is the model for martyrs like Antipas (“in place of the Father”), who died in a Christlike way, and he is also the model for the two witnesses (Rev.11:3) and the witnesses whose blood the harlot drinks.

 Jesus’s blood, like Abel’s and like that of later martyrs’, witnesses against those who kill the saints, crying out for vindication and justice.

Peter J. Leithart, Revelation, ed. Michael Allen and Scott R. Swain, vol. 1, The International Theological Commentary on the Holy Scripture of the Old and New Testaments (London; Oxford; New York; New Delhi; Sydney: Bloomsbury; Bloomsbury T&T Clark: An Imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2018), 200.

According to Rom. 13:12ff the epoch since the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the time of daylight whose brightness is shunned by the world of demons (σκότος), so that Christians are under obligation not only to keep themselves from the immoral influences of this world but also from all inner possibilities in this direction. For Christians are children of this age of light. That is to say, they share in its brightness, their whole existence being illumined by it (1 Th. 5:5, 8). In 2 Pt. 1:19 

faith, which is propagated by the OT Word, is the brightness of day before which the powers of darkness cannot stand.

 (Gerhard Delling, “Ἡμέρα,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964–), 953.)

‘The image of the Emperor was at that time the object of religious reverence; he was a deity on earth; and the worship paid to him was a real worship. It is a striking thought, that in those times (setting aside effete forms of religion)

 the only two genuine worships in the civilized world were the worship of a Tiberius or a Nero on the one hand, and the worship of Christ on the other.’ 

James Stuart Russell, The Parousia: A Critical Inquiry into the New Testament Doctrine of Our Lord’s Second Coming (London: Daldy, Isbister & Co., 1878), 183.

Kahn argues that Western fear of religious infiltration of politics is not originally a fear of theocracy but a fear that Christianity would expose the impotence of the state. What threatens modern Western states is not simply an idea that the state poses a danger to religion, but equally the opposite idea that religion poses a threat to the state because it reveals the insubstantiality of the concerns of the state and the limits of the state’s power over the individual.

 The state’s power is ultimately the power to threaten life, but Christianity begins with a sacrificial act that undermines that threat by announcing life to be death, and true life to be beyond death.

Because of the martyrs, Roman law was unmasked as brute power and arbitrary will and, what was worse, ineffective power and will. The martyrs operated with an alternative theory of power according to which suffering marturia (witness) in union with the chief martus, Jesus, triumphed over force. They overcame because of their testimony and because they did not love life even to death Rev.12:11

Martyrs rule because the Martyr rules. That is the good news of the Apocalypse.

 The apocalyptic gospel is the news that a new world has come into being ruled by human rulers, not angels or beasts. Martyrs rule from heavenly thrones, but their realm is not confined to heaven. With Jesus, they have authority on earth, and this authority is not ineffably spiritual, but concretely political. Martyrs reshaped the politics of the city of man, and have been haunting political life since the late first century AD. They will do, until after the millennium comes to an end. 

Martyrs became the foundation of the church in the first century, standing firmly in the face of the beast and the harlot. Over the following centuries, 

the Roman world itself came to acknowledge the rule of the True and Faithful Martyr and honored the martyrs who followed him.

 Constantine, that lover of grand gestures, kissed the eye sockets of a blinded martyr at the opening of the Council of Nicaea. Even before Constantine appeared, though, there was already a city within the Roman civitas for whom martyrs were heroes, whose holidays were celebrations of martyr deaths. 

Peter J. Leithart, Revelation, ed. Michael Allen and Scott R. Swain, vol. 2, The International Theological Commentary on the Holy Scripture of the Old and New Testaments (London; Oxford; New York; New Delhi; Sydney: Bloomsbury; Bloomsbury T&T Clark: An Imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2018), 321,325.

When Judah/Jerusalem sleeps with the bestial nations, she gives birth to monsters. They may not seem monstrous. They may seem perfectly tame, cuddly even. Their monstrosity needs to be unmasked to be seen, but Revelation is a book of unveiling. And it trains us to look with suspicion on political religious powers that seduce us to worship. The book of unveiling trains us in a political hermeneutics of suspicion, to tear away the friendly masks of ideology and liberate slaves from the tyranny of beasts. 

Having one’s name written in the book of life (and being sealed on the forehead) stands in contrast to being written on by the name of the beast. We will explore the significance of this below, but the structure suggests that the mark of the beast is liturgical and not—or not merely—economic.

Peter J. Leithart, Revelation, ed. Michael Allen and Scott R. Swain, vol. 2, The International Theological Commentary on the Holy Scripture of the Old and New Testaments (London; Oxford; New York; New Delhi; Sydney: Bloomsbury; Bloomsbury T&T Clark: An Imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2018), 48,49

the Great Church in Constantinople was dedicated to the Holy Wisdom

This large cathedral was dedicated to Christ as the "wisdom of God," a phrase originating from 1 Corinthians 1:24, where the apostle Paul writes, “But to those called by God to salvation, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.”

By his patronage Constantine aligned the former church of the martyrs—persecuted, powerless, and pacifist—with the military might and earthly glory of the state. Christianity would never be the same again.

Soon the wars of the Empire became holy wars; church leaders looked for civil sanctions to back up their ecclesiastical judgments (the Council of Nicaea deposed Arius; Constantine exiled him); rulers began to convene synods of church leaders and to influence or intimidate their proceedings; the church hierarchies learned how to invoke state coercion against heretics and schismatics, and they came to control increasing property and wealth. Persecution soon resumed of Christians by Christians, of pagans by Christians, of Jews and Moslems by Christians.

Yet if blame must be apportioned, much belongs not to Constantine but to those church leaders who not only, it seems, failed to teach him any better,

 but even, like Eusebius above all, constructed an extravagant theology of the Christian emperor that made him almost the earthly embodiment of divine power.

David F. Wright, “Controversial Constantine,” Christian History Magazine-Issue 27: Persecution in the Early Church (Carol Stream, IL: Christianity Today, 1990).

To no man shall I return evil for evil, I shall pursue a man only for good; for with God resides the judgment of all the living, and He shall pay each man his recompense. 

My zeal shall not be tarnished by a spirit of wickedness, neither shall I lust for riches gained through violence. The multitude of evil men I shall not capture until the Day of Vengeance; yet my fury shall not abate from Men of the Pit, and I shall never be appeased until righteousness be established.

  I shall hold no angry grudge against those repenting of sin yet neither shall I love any who rebel against the Way; the smitten I shall not comfort until their walk be perfected. I shall give no refuge in my heart to Belial. (Michael O. Wise, Martin G. Abegg Jr., and Edward M. Cook, The Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation (New York: HarperOne, 2005), 133.)

The dragon represents a false priesthood, a false ladder to heaven, a false way to draw near to God. 

Then another portent appeared in heaven: a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns and seven diadems on his heads. ( Dan 7:7; Rev 13:1; 19:12) His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. Rev. 12:3–4.

 Jordan (1999a) also associates the seven diadems with seven titles given to the dragon in Revelation: Wormwood (Rev.8:10–11), the poisoner of wells; Abaddon and Apollyon (Rev.9:11), “destroyer” of Hebrew and Greek worlds; Dragon (Rev.12:3), devourer of children; Serpent (Rev.12:9, 15), the seducer of the bride (cf. 2 Cor. 11:3); Satan (Rev.12:9), the deceitful accuser of the brothers; Devil (Rev.12:9,10), the deceitful slanderer. 

These names give us a rich typology of Satanic attack and tactics. As dragon, he seeks to incorporate the child into himself and make them members of a bestial communion. As Abaddon and Apollyon, Satan is the commander of a horde of demons that can be released to torment people (Revelation. 9). Most Satanic attacks are not so Stephen King. Most are banal.

 They are mostly verbal, social, involving manipulations of news and public opinion. 

As Wormwood, Satan poisons the temple springs of water, God’s Word and God’s food, so that it becomes deadly instead of life-giving and refreshing. As serpent, Satan attacks the church as the cunning and slick-spoken seducer, presenting himself as lover, tempting the bride to leave her first love and devote herself to new lovers and lovers. As Satan, he accuses like an unscrupulous prosecuting attorney. As Devil, he is a political columnist or a talk show host.

Satan is a personal being. If angels are real creatures, there is no reason to think that fallen angels are unreal. Satan is not a power but a conscious, willing, reasoning being who accuses, slanders, seduces, scours the landscape seeking someone to devour. 

Yet Satanic influences work through the institutions and structures of social life. These institutions and structures are not evil in themselves, but they can become perverse and demonic, controlled by demonic powers.

 Perverse traditions and customs, false ideologies and widespread prejudices, patterns of authority and the influence of symbols and “role models” all come under the heading of “principalities and powers.” As we shall see, Satan is cast from heaven, and can no longer accuse the saints before God (Rev.12:10). That is great good news. But he can create plenty of havoc by his seductions and devouring, by promoting slanders and by urging on accusations through Twitter and Facebook. For that the saints need to be forearmed. 

Peter J. Leithart, Revelation, ed. Michael Allen and Scott R. Swain, vol. 2, The International Theological Commentary on the Holy Scripture of the Old and New Testaments (London; Oxford; New York; New Delhi; Sydney: Bloomsbury; Bloomsbury T&T Clark: An Imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2018), 24–25.

The beast is more successful in opening his mouth against the saints. But he does not remain content with verbal attack, slander and innuendo and libel.

 The cold war of words eventually turns hot (Rev.13:7). Slander dehumanizes the saints, paints them as monsters. Then, of course, some brave knight has to go out to destroy the monsters. The beast is first leonine, roaring with his lion mouth. Then his bear feet trample for forty-two months, pouncing with his leopard agility and flying at the saints on his leopard wings. 

Those with ears hear and resist beast-worship. They worship God and take encouragement from the assurance that God avenges. By their worship and witness, their non-worship and nonparticipation, they carry on the Lamb’s lawsuit against the nations. Their words, lives, and especially deaths provide the decisive proof of the bestiality of the beast, and seals God’s case against both Jew and Gentile.

 Those who send the saints to captivity will go into captivity themselves. Those who slay saints with the sword will be put to the sword. God is a God of eye-for-eye justice, and he will vindicate and avenge his church (Rev.13:10). The just God is a God of comfort for everyone he loves and protects. To his enemies, he is terrifying as a lion and an eagle.

Peter J. Leithart, Revelation, ed. Michael Allen and Scott R. Swain, vol. 2, The International Theological Commentary on the Holy Scripture of the Old and New Testaments (London; Oxford; New York; New Delhi; Sydney: Bloomsbury; Bloomsbury T&T Clark: An Imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2018), 48,49,60,61.

‘Nahum’s message has become the prototype of the destruction of all evil—from that of Nineveh to Nazi Germany to the final end of all evil like that of Babylon in Revelation 18.’ To apply the message in Nahum to inhumane oppressors such as Hitler and Stalin may give more validity to the LORD’S violent judgments, but is it sound hermeneutics to ‘substitute “Assyria” with the oppressor of your choice’? 

It is very easy to demonize the enemy, especially when the enemy has provided the written and pictorial record to do so and particularly when doing so makes the bitter pill of God’s bloody vengeance in Nahum slightly easier to swallow. In attempting to demonstrate that God’s punishment fits the crime, there has, perhaps, been a tendency to rely too heavily on these exaggerated records.

 ‘Shall those whose eyes you have gouged out shed tears at your death? Shall those whose ears and nose you have cut off lament now? Shall the tongues you have chopped off recite your praises?’

Compare this with Nahum 3:19.

There is no healing for your wound;
your injury is fatal.
All who hear of your destruction
will clap their hands for joy.
Where can anyone be found
who has not suffered from your continual cruelty? NLT

Julie Woods, “The West as Nineveh: How Does Nahum’s Message of Judgement Apply to Today?,” Themelios 31, no. 1 (2005): 8-9,16. 

Job and Ecclesiastes wrestle with the same problem: why does God, if he is just, allow the wicked to prosper and inflict disaster on the innocent? 

It is all the same; therefore I say,
he destroys both the blameless and the wicked.
When disaster brings sudden death,
he mocks at the calamity of the innocent.
The earth is given into the hand of the wicked;
he covers the face of its judges—
if it is not he, who then is it? (Jb. 9:22–24; cf. Ec. 3:16–4:3; 9:1–3).

And the psalmists express their longing for vindication in the face of their suffering at the hands of evildoers (e.g. Psa. 43; 79; 94). If they did not maintain faith that somehow, some time God would demonstrate his justice by delivering them from suffering, then suffering would be compounded by utter despair. 

When people look for a God of judgment whilst they suffer at the hands of a Pharaoh, an Antiochus or a Hitler, it is not necessarily because they wish to gloat in vengeance over the fate of the wicked. It is because if God’s just dealings with mankind are not ultimately to be demonstrated, they would think it necessary to give up faith in God’s justice altogether. 

All people will be judged. The New Testament has a way of emphasizing this in its repeated insistence that God (or Christ) will judge ‘the living and the dead’ (Acts 10:42; 2 Tim. 4:1; 1 Pet. 4:5; cf. 2 Cor. 5:10). A few passages speak of a ‘resurrection of the unjust’ as well as of the just (Jn. 5:29; Acts 24:15), as if to make it plain that God will ensure that no-one escapes this judgment, whether they are dead or alive, Christian or not Christian... (Stephen H. Travis, “The Problem of Judgment,” Themelios 11, no. 2 (1986): 52-53.) 

Christians will take an interest in what government is doing. We strike a balance between becoming too comfortable with the ways of the world, as Lot did (Ge 19:1), and becoming isolationists who withdraw from the world (cf. the movement of monasticism).

 We are in the world but not of the world (cf. Jn. 17:14, 16). Jeremiah told the exiles in Babylon to take an interest in the affairs of their land of captivity. He wrote, “Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper” (Jer. 29:7).(Lyle W. Lange, God So Loved the World: A Study of Christian Doctrine (Milwaukee, WI: Northwestern Publishing House, 2005), 652.) 

On the other hand, the warnings of judgment can escalate until they result in a different kind of narrative, where pagan empire reaches its arrogant height and is finally overthrown by the one true God in an act of judgment which will, ipso facto-automatically, bring his own people not only into freedom at last after their exile, but into their own long-promised world sovereignty. 

This results in a very different message from the command to settle down and seek the welfare of Babylon. Instead, in a diverse range of texts, the people are commanded to leave Babylon in a hurry and to avoid contracting uncleanness as they do so (Isa. 48:20; 52:11; cf. Zech. 2:6–13; Rev. 18:4.)  N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, vol. 4, Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013), 1274–1275. 

What agreement does Christ have with Beliar-the devil; Satan? Or what does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? 

For we are the temple of the living God, as God said, “I will live in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 

 Therefore come out from them, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch nothing unclean; then I will welcome you, (Isa 52:11; Rev 18:4) and I will be your father, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.”(Isa 43:6; Hos 1:10) 2 Cor. 6:15–18

Babylon the great/the great city is the highest achievement of humanity, but it must fall as the city of God descends.  for these are days of vengeance, as a fulfillment of all that is written.  Lk 21:22 ; Ex. 9:13–14; Jeremiah 51:6

‘Shinar’. This place name evokes memories of Nimrod, the beginning of whose kingdom was ‘Babel’ (in Hebrew Babel and Babylon are spelled the same: בבל, bbl) ‘in the land of Shinar’, from which he went on to build Nineveh in Assyria (Gen. 10:8–11). Genesis. 11 also presents the attempt to build a tower into heaven ‘in the land of Shinar’ (Gen. 11:2). Shinar thus comes to be associated with rebellion against God: it is the land of the seed of the serpent, where God’s enemies dwell.

The phrasing of Genesis 15:16 and Daniel 8:23 does not match at the lexical level, but at the conceptual level the ideas communicated are synonymous.(The reference to ‘the transgression that makes desolate’ in Dan. 8:13 may be relevant here as well.)

The same can be said about the second such statement Gabriel makes to Daniel in Daniel 9:24, when he says, ‘Seventy weeks are decreed … to finish the transgression’. The idea that transgression has a full measure that will be fulfilled before the end will come seems to have informed the thinking of both Jesus, who told the brood of vipers (i.e. seed of the serpent) to ‘fill up … the measure of your fathers’ (Matt. 23:32), and Paul, who said that the enemies of the gospel ‘always … fill up the measure of their sins’ (1 Thess. 2:16).

James M. Hamilton Jr., With the Clouds of Heaven: The Book of Daniel in Biblical Theology, ed. D. A. Carson, vol. 32, New Studies in Biblical Theology (Downers Grove, IL; England: Apollos; InterVarsity Press, 2015), 48,52.

Come out of her, my people,
so that you do not take part in her sins
and so that you do not share in her plagues, Rev. 18:4. 

“Fallen, fallen Babylon the great” (Rev.18:2) is the leading announcement of the entire passage, and it restates Isa. 21:9, originally an announcement of Cyrus’s conquest of Babylon. Those who remain in the city, who were not slaughtered in the great harvest, are commanded to leave (Rev.18:4), repeating a command of Jeremiah to the exiles. Both Jeremiah and the heavenly voice of Revelation. 18 buttress their exhortation with warnings about the coming of the Lord’s recompense, using the image of a cup of wrath:

Flee from the midst of Babylon,
And each of you save his life
Do not be destroyed in her punishment
For this is Yahweh’s time of vengeance;
He is going to render recompense to her.
Babylon has been a golden cup in the hand of Yahweh
Intoxicating all the earth
The nations have drunk of her wine;
Therefore the nations are going mad. (Jer. 51:6–7; cf. 51:45

Babylon the harlot evokes not only neo-Babylon but the original Babel, left unfinished on the plains of Shinar. She is Sodom, also Egypt, also Tyre the great city of trade (see below). As the “great city,” she is Nineveh, described as “the great city” four times in Jonah, a phrase used virtually nowhere else in the prophets (Jon. 1:2, 3:1, 3; 4:11; cf. Jer. 22:8)

 All this fits neatly with biblical accounts of the fall of Gentile cities, yet I have argued throughout this commentary that the setting of the Apocalypse is pre- AD 70 and that 

the focal point of John’s visions is the end of the old covenant order, most dramatically and visibly evident in the fall of Jerusalem to Roman armies led by Vespasian and Titus.

 In fact, the strongest evidence for this identification of the great city is in chapter Rev. 18, the discovery in Babylon of “the blood of the prophets and saints and of all who have been slain on the land” (Rev.18:24). That is closely parallel to Jesus’s statement about Jerusalem in Matt. 23:34–35:

 “upon you may fall all the righteous blood shed on the 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.”

 Jerusalem is the city that has killed prophets, and will continue to kill them until the cup of martyr blood is filled to overflowing (Matt. 23:32; 1 Thess. 2:16). If Revelation. 18 alludes to Jesus’ prediction, it seems likely that it refers to the same city.

 In how many different cities, after all, can we find the blood of all who have been slain? Jesus’s statement in Matthew. 23 makes it clear that Jerusalem is charged with all the blood of the righteous; Jerusalem, not Rome, is unmasked as the apocalyptic city of man. cf. (Dt. 32:35. Isa. 34:8. 63:4. Jer. 5:29. Hos. 9:7.)

 Christ will forever separate the two “cities” within mankind, glorifying the city of God (Rev. 21), the heavenly Jerusalem, and ruining the city of man, the demonic and worldly Babylon (Rev.18:1–8). The world acts as a spiritual prostitute in its idolatrous, violent, and perverse self-exaltation (Rev.17:1–6).

But the parallels are numerous and compelling. Revelation. 18 speaks of the blood of the prophets, as does Matt. 23:34 (ἰδοὺ ἐγὼ ἀποστέλλω πρὸς ὑμᾶς προφήτας). Revelation speaks of blood being found in a city, and Matthew. 23 is a prophecy about Jerusalem. Both passages speak of the blood of “all” being charged to a particular city.

 That Matthew speaks of blood being “charged” and Revelation of blood being “found” makes sense given the different times: Jesus speaks prophetically about coming events, the accounting of blood to the city that we have already seen in Revelation. 16; Revelation. 18 speaks of the uncovering of the city’s bloodthirstiness after the city has fallen. The blood of the witnesses is part of a legal process, a charge and a discovery that leads to a sentence.

No other city within the biblical frame of reference qualifies. Rome piled up the corpses of Christian martyrs for several centuries, and there have been thousands of thousands of modern martyrs. The temporal frame of Revelation, however, precludes the possibility that it is talking directly about martyrs from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, or even the third.

 Seleucids slaughtered Jews, Jews sometimes slaughtered other Jews, but, according to Jesus, only Jerusalem has shed blood of all prophets and wise men. When Jonah goes to the great city Nineveh, the Ninevites listened and repented. Jeremiah has no such luck, nor did Jesus. “A prophet is accepted except in his own country.” 

Revelation was written, by virtually any account, in the first century, and at that time Jerusalem is the only city that, for an early Christian who knows the Olivet Discourse, remotely fits the description of Rev. 18:23. 

The only alternative is to suggest that Babylon is not a specific city at all, but a generic city of rebellion, perhaps represented in the first century by Rome but not limited to Rome. We have seen that this option raises more problems than it solves.

 If Babylon is the city of man, when did it fall? If the fall of Babylon is still future for us, then what are we to make of John’s insistence that the things he sees “must shortly take place”? ( Rev. 1:1; 22:10,12,20)

 When we take seriously (a) the temporal frame of the book and (b) the prophecy of the city’s destruction, then the only consistent reading is that Babylon is Jerusalem.

Identifying the city as Jerusalem significantly affects the political economy of chapter 18. Commentators make much of the condemnation of consumerist trafficking lamented by the kings and merchants of the land, and by the shippers and sailors of the sea. The text can be deployed in a powerful critique of Mammon worship and the liturgies of consumption that support it.

Commenting on the list of goods in Rev.18:9–19, Mangina (2010: 208–209) writes,

  The list exposes the way in which human beings, made in the image of God, are treated as mere commodities, convertible in principle with other goods. From the merchants’ perspective, human souls or lives (the word psyche means both) are no different in kind from silk, spices, or sheep, since the value of all these things is determined by the price they can command in the great marketplaces of Ephesus, Smyrna, or Rome itself.

There is a Mammonite ontology at work:

 “Nothing ‘is’ what it is (i.e., as created and established by God). It ‘is’ only insofar as it can be traded for other things or exchanged, even more abstractly, for money. Each thing is worth nothing more nor less than what the market will bear.” 

This is objectifying, but Mangina brilliantly observes that this objectification of human lives is rooted in a more fundamental subjectification: “the market is, after all, a marketplace of fantasy and wishes, a field of dreams for those who have the resources to play.”

 He takes note of the phrase “the fruit of the longing of your soul,” and connects it with the Augustinian insight that human beings are “constituted by desire.” For John as for Augustine, not only human beings but human communities are constituted by inordinate desire for things.

If the city is Jerusalem rather than Rome, however, these critiques are less tightly tethered to the text. We might attempt a historical reconstruction demonstrating that Jerusalem is a large-scale trader in the eastern Mediterranean.  Alternatively, we might venture the proposal that Revelation. 18 is fundamentally about a different sort of commerce, the temple commerce Jesus himself condemns (cf. Jn. 2:13–22), which is both liturgical and “economic.” 

 Babylon is Sodom, so the righteous make like Lot and leave (Oecumenius 2011: 77). Commentators commonly take the exhortation “Come out!” metaphorically, as a reference to flight from worldliness or pagan culture that does not involve any spatial or geographic movement (Cyprian in Kovacs and Rowland 2004: 191; Boxall 2006: 257; Reddish 2001: 341).  

 On the interpretation offered in this commentary, the exhortation to leave is quite literal, repeating Jesus’s warning to flee the city when the abomination of desolation comes into view (Matt. 24:15–16). The harlot is the queen of abominations, and her greatest abomination is consumption of holy martyr blood. When she intensifies the slaughter of the saints, the city is doomed and it is time for the faithful to leave.

For Christians in Asia, especially Jewish Christians, it is an exhortation to leave the doomed synagogues to enter a new city, new Jerusalem, the church, which is a new place, even if it is not merely a place.

Peter J. Leithart, Revelation, ed. Michael Allen and Scott R. Swain, vol. 2, The International Theological Commentary on the Holy Scripture of the Old and New Testaments (London; Oxford; New York; New Delhi; Sydney: Bloomsbury; Bloomsbury T&T Clark: An Imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2018), 209-218.

There in heaven’s throne room the one like unto a Son of Man was given “dominion, glory and a kingdom.” Two points are emphasized about Messiah’s kingdom. First, it is universal, consisting of “all the peoples, nations and men of every language.” Second, it is everlasting. The triple emphasis on the eternality of Messiah’s kingdom seems to rule out any notion that the Millennial kingdom is in view. Messiah’s kingdom shall never pass away because no flaw would be found in it. It is permanent because it is perfect.

That Christ entered into heavenly glory and received a kingdom at his ascension is the clear teaching of the New Testament. The manifestation of that kingdom on earth is the church of Christ. This comports well with the dream of Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 2:44 in which the kingdom of heaven would be established “in the days of those kings,” i.e., during the course of history, not at its close. (Smith, J. E. (1992). The Major Prophets (p. 581). Joplin, MO: College Press.)

Readers of Daniel 7 in the twenty-first century must analyze not only ancient text but also modern context. What is the nature of the political and economic systems in which we participate? Do they destroy and devour, seduce, and exploit, or do they enact justice for humankind and for the earth?

Dempsey, C. J., Sweeney, M. A., Franke, C. A., Murphy, K. J., Bailey, W. A., Carvalho, C. L., … Coggins, R. J. (2014). Themes and Perspectives in the Prophets: Truth, Tragedy, Trauma. In G. A. Yee, H. R. Page Jr., & M. J. M. Coomber (Eds.), The Old Testament and Apocrypha (p. 815). Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.

The cloud, as it falls, moves over your head, and then fair weather comes, along with eternal sunshine and glory. Can you not watch with Christ for an hour or two? Hold your ground for a few days? If you give in, you are lost forever; persevere only until the battle is won, and your enemy will never rise again.

 Tell faith to peer through the keyhole of the promise and report what it sees prepared for the one who overcomes; tell it to listen and say whether it can hear the shouts of crowned saints, like those dividing the spoils and receiving the reward for all their service and suffering on earth. And do you stand apart, afraid to wet your feet in those sufferings and temptations, which, like a small puddle, run between you and glory?

William Gurnall and John Campbell, The Christian in Complete Armour (London: Thomas Tegg, 1845), 104.