Rome Archives - Christ Church

Grace & Peace: Revelation 96

Douglas Wilson on May 2, 2018

“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16:11).

And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared. And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet. For they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty. Behold, I come as a thief. Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame. And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon (Rev. 16:12-16).

We come now to the great battle of Armageddon, the symbolic name for the ultimate defeat of the enemies of God. Many commentators have pointed out that this word served the same way that the battle of *Waterloo* serves us. It refers indirectly to a location, but in general application it means catastrophic defeat.

So the sixth angel pours out his bowl of wrath on the river Euphrates, which was the eastern boundary of the Roman Empire. On the other side of that river was the Parthian Empire. Josephus tells us that the general Titus brought additional reinforcements to the siege of Jerusalem from the region of the Euphrates.

In this vision the waters of the Euphrates were dried up, which provides us with an important scriptural trope. When Daniel interpreted the famous handwriting on the wall for Belshazzar, it was the night before he was killed. Cyrus conquered Babylon that night through the device of diverting the Euphrates, drying it up, and marching into Babylon on the river bed (536 B.C). In addition, when waters are dried up in Scripture, this indicates a great deliverance for God’s people. We saw this in the Red Sea deliverance (Ex. 14:21-22), and in the initial stages of the attack on Jericho (Josh. 3:9-17; 4:22-24). So here the waters of the Euphrates are dried up, opening the way for the kings of the sunrise to destroy Jerusalem, which has become the new Babylon.

These armies are gathered through the working of an unholy trinity of three demon-like frogs. This brings to mind the plague of frogs that afflicted Egypt (Ex. 8:1-15)and remember that Jerusalem has also become the new Egypt (Rev. 11:8). The fact that the frogs come out of the mouths of the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet indicates that the enemies of God who are going to be destroyed are going to be destroyed by the instrumentality of other enemies of God. In other words, the unbelieving Jews were going to be judged through the pagan Roman armies.

The word Armageddon means Mountain of Meggido, and the location referred to is probably Mount Carmel, where Elijah defeated the priests of Baal. This is the nearest mountain to the plain of Meggido. That battlefield was used more than once. Deborah and Barak achieved their great victory there (Judg. 5:19). The godly king Josiah met his Waterloo there, so to speak (2 Chron. 35:20-25). And so the grim reality represented by this convulsive battle is most likely to be understood as the demolition of Jerusalem.

The Lord here announces that He comes as a thief, which need not refer to His Second Coming. The same phrase was used earlier in Revelation to encourage the saints in Sardis to walk circumspectly (Rev. 3:3). The sixth bowl has been poured out. Very little time is left.

Grace & Peace: Revelation 95

Douglas Wilson on April 25, 2018

“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16:11).

“And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seat of the beast; and the kingdom was full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues for pain, and blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and repented not of their deeds” (Rev. 16:10-11).

The way we are interpreting all these portents, the bulk of them are falling on Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the city devoted to utter destruction. But that does not mean that Rome was left unscathed. The center of attention is always Jerusalem, but the pagan nations are not out of view. Earlier in Revelation we read this: “Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth [land]” (Rev. 3:10). Jerusalem is ground zero, but the rest of the Roman world was not unaffected.

So when the fifth angel pours out his bowl of wrath, he pours it out on the throne of the beast. We have seen earlier that this beast is to be identified with Rome, and not with Jerusalem. When this bowl is poured out, the kingdom was filled with darkness. This echoes the judgment that centuries before had fallen upon Egypt, when the darkness was palpable (Ex. 10:21-22). We see that these bowls are cumulative in their effect because the people here are still affected by the sores delivered by the first bowl of wrath.

In what way was Rome affected during this time? Jerusalem fell in 70 A.D. but Rome was drastically affected during the same period as well. In fact, there is little doubt that the troubles in Rome provided the defenders of Jerusalem with some of their vain hope. In 69 A.D. Nero was forced to commit suicide, and the scramble that followed is called the “year of the four emperors.” Galba, Otho, and Vitellius each successively ruled for a handful of months, and then they were succeeded by Vespasian—who was the general besieging Jerusalem. He returned to Rome, leaving his son Titus to capture the city. These transitions were tumultuous, and in 69 A.D. the great Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill was burned to the ground—the same fate that would come to Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem a very short time later.

And what brings repentance is the grace of God. Affliction by itself will never accomplish it. If pain could bring repentance, then Hell would be filled with penitent. There is a true mystery to lawlessness. These men, afflicted by their sores, covered in darkness, refused to repent. They gnawed their tongues in pain, and yet used those same tongues to blaspheme God.

Grace & Peace: Revelation 84

Douglas Wilson on January 31, 2018

“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16:11).

“And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father’s name written in their foreheads. And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder: and I heard the voice of harpers haring with their harps: And they sung as it were a new song before the the throne, and before the four beasts, and the elders: and no man could learn that song but the hundred and forty and four thousand, which were redeemed from the earth. These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth. These were redeemed from among men, being the first fruits unto God and to the Lamb. And in their mouth was found no guile: for they are without fault before the throne of God” (Rev. 14:1-5).

As we come to the fourteenth chapter of Revelation, we do so having been introduced to an evil travesty of the Trinity: the great dragon, Satan, the sea beast, which was Rome, and the land beast, which represented the priestly leadership in Jerusalem. As this chapter opens, the contrast couldn’t be sharper than it is. Those enslaved to the beast in the previous chapter had the mark of the beast on their right hand, or on their forehead. Here the 144,000 have the name of the Father on *their* foreheads. Everyone has the name of someone on their forehead.

The scene here appears to be in the heavens, and not on earth. We saw in chapter 7 that the 144,000 likely represented the total number of the elect, which means they were not assembled on the *earthly* Mt. Zion in Jerusalem. Rather, the scene is the heavenly Jerusalem, the New Jerusalem that descends from Heaven at the conclusion of Revelation. In Hebrews 12:22, it teaches us that in worship, the saints of God assemble in a heavenly Jerusalem, and it mentions Mt. Zion expressly. The harpers here are described as being before the throne, and the 144,000 are said to have been redeemed from the earth. All this places the scene in Heaven.

So we have here a wonderful image of the perseverance and preservation of the saints. In chapter 7, the 144,000 were still on earth, and they were all sealed to protect them there. Here in Heaven their number is undiminished, not one was lost. The reason is plain. These were the only ones who could learn the new song that the harpers were playing. These men were virgins, undefiled with woman. This is talking about spiritual fornication, or idolatry. It is not talking about lawful marital relations, which are not defiling at all (Heb. 13:4). These are called virgins because together they all constitute the Virgin who descends out of Heaven like an undefiled bride at the end of this book (Rev. 19:7). They are called virgins because they have nothing to do with the great harlot, who is to be introduced shortly. In 2 Cor. 11:2, Paul uses virginity as a symbol of spiritual integrity. Moreover, these are those who follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth. They are described as being without fault before the throne of God.

A close examination of this passage and the description of heavenly worship in Hebrews 12:18-23 is likely to be rewarding. Both scenes take place on Mt. Zion. In Revelation the worshipers are the firstfruits and in Hebrews they are described as being the church of the first born. And the 144,000 represent the entire number of the elect, as do the worshipers in Hebrews, whose names are written in heaven.

Grace & Peace: Revelation 83

Douglas Wilson on January 24, 2018

“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16:11).

“And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six” (Rev. 13:16–18).

In order to understand this (often misconstrued) section of Revelation, we must (literally) return to our ABCs. In English, we use Roman letters and Arabic numerals. When we want to spell a number out, we write three. When we want to use a symbol for it, we write 3. We are so used to this system that we hardly ever even reflect on it. It is a very good system, if I may say so.

But Hebrew, Greek and Latin did not work this way. They did not use Arabic symbols for their numbers, but rather used the letters of their own alphabets for both phonetic sounds and for numbers. Thus, in Greek, the first letter alpha (corresponding to our letter a) made its particular vowel sound, but it also represented the numerical value of 1. I trust you are all still with me. This system was common in the ancient world, and is called gematria.

If English had an analogous system, it would be easy to compute the numerical value of our names. For example, my name is Douglas. All we would have to do is add the value of the numbers up: D (4), O (60), U (300), G (7), L (30), A (1), and S (100). The number of my name would therefore be 502. And while this strikes us as odd and contrived (because we don’t do it), it was very common in the ancient world. Greg Bahnsen once pointed out that graffiti at Pompeii has been found that said, “I love her whose number is 542.” There are not enough digits there for it to be her phone number. And the Roman historian Seutonius pointed out (about Nero) that some doggerel poetry was circulating in Rome that pointed out the numerical value of “Nero,” and “murdered his mother” were the same. This was pertinent because Nero had murdered his mother. And because we are talking about a particular intellectual skill set, someone once figured out that if you rearrange the letters of Presbyterians you can spell out Britney Spears. There are always people like this, and so we can be grateful that gematria died out before Facebook was invented.

Now mark this. John knew the name of the person he was thinking of, and he also believed that any reasonably clever member of the churches in Asia would be able to figure it out also. Let the one “with understanding” calculate the identity of the beast. It would be odd in the extreme if young Demetrius of Ephesus stayed up late the night after Revelation was read to their church, and in the morning asked his father who Henry Kissinger might be.

The system John was inviting them to use would have been obvious to them all. But it couldn’t have been too obvious, or else the officials censoring the mail leaving Patmos would have found out that John was writing seditious letters to his churches. The land beast that represented Rome is destroyed in this book. And so John was inviting the readers to transliterate the Greek name Nero Caesar into Hebrew, which the censors would not pick up on. In Hebrew, it would have been Nrwn Qsr. Once the vowel markings were added, as commentator Larry Ball points out, it would have been pronounced as Neron Kaiser.

So what is the numerical value of Nrwn Qsr? As it happens, it is 50 + 200 + 6 + 50+ 100 + 60 + 200 = 666. Nero was the head of the beast who was ruling at the time this revelation was given, and it seems to me that his identity as the sixth head of the seven-headed beast is secure.

It is worth mentioning that in the original, there is nothing like 666 or six six six. The value is found in the sum, in the total. The number given is six hundred and sixty six.

One additional comment should be made about the mark of the beast. The persecution included shutting believers off from the means of sustaining life, using economic chokepoints. You were not allowed to buy or sell unless you were willing to take the mark, or the name, or the number of the name onto your right hand or forehead. This is a diabolical parody of God’s requirement for faithful Jews, who were to bind the law of God on their hand and on their forehead.

Grace & Peace: Revelation 98

“And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seat of the beast; and the kingdom was full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues for pain, and blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and repented not of their deeds” (Rev. 16:10-11).