“Sometimes I think there are only two kinds of Christians in America: those who’ve never read Revelation and those who read almost nothing else.” – Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove
Regular readers of this site know that I like to read Bible commentaries for fun, especially the more scholarly ones. I’m a Bible nerd. And one eye-opening thing I’ve learned by reading, not just one but multiple commentaries, is that the interpretation of the book of Revelation that most American Evangelicals are familiar with, the interpretation popularized by The Late Great Planet Earth and the Left Behind series, and explained in innumerable books, films, podcasts and web sites, is rejected by the majority of New Testament scholars. The reason for this is simple; that interpretation of Revelation (if you care, it’s called Premillennial Dispensationalism), would not have been understood by the members of the seven churches in Asia Minor that Revelation is addressed to.
Pre-Understanding the Bible
I’ve written before about our pre-understanding of the Bible. That is, the knowledge, beliefs and attitudes you have before you read a passage of Scripture, and that color the way you understand it. Nobody comes to the Bible as a blank slate. If we did, it would be impossible to understand it at all. All you’d see would be meaningless squiggles of ink (or of pixels if you’re looking at a screen). To interpret those squiggles as letters, and then combine those letters into words and sentences, and finally derive some sort of meaning from it all, you have to, at a minimum, know how to read the language that it’s written in. That’s a huge pre-understanding right there, because human languages categorize our experiences in certain ways that affect the way we think about them. What’s more, my understanding of any particular language (that I know) will not be identical to your understanding of it. Admittedly, it’s probably pretty close; it would have to be for us to communicate. But there are differences, often at the level of nuance, in the way any two different people understand the words they use.
Think back over some of the conversations you’ve had recently. Notice how often one or another of the participants had to clarify something they said because it wasn’t perfectly understood. Writing is different from casual conversation, of course; when we read a book we can’t ask an author to clarify what they meant. That’s why good authors make an effort to be as clear as they possibly can, and good readers make a similar effort to try and understand exactly what the author means. Miscommunications still occur, however, so whenever I read God’s word I need to have the humility to acknowledge that I don’t have a perfect understanding of the text.
But it doesn’t end with language. When I sit down to read anything in the Bible, I already have certain ideas about the way the world works, and about the people, places, and things it contains. I’ve had family, and friends, and teachers, and students, and coworkers who have all influenced the ways I think about life. In addition to all that, I have my own experience. I’ve also read the Bible before, and that has become part of my current pre-understanding, just as the things I read today will be part of my pre-understanding tomorrow. As long as I’m alive, my pre-understanding of everything I read will be slowly (and sometimes not so slowly) changing.
Writers know this, of course, although they might not know that this phenomenon is called “pre-understanding.” They count on it, in fact. If someone writes an article which discusses a meeting President Trump had with Secretary Rubio, the author will probably not include very much information about who those people are, what their jobs entail, or how they obtained the positions they hold. Rather, the writer will most likely assume that the readers they are aiming at already know those things.
The same is true of the authors God inspired to write the Scriptures; there are things they didn’t say because they assumed their audience would already know. And even though we recognize that these authors were inspired by the Spirit of God, that does not change the fact that they wrote in their own words, and that they were addressing a particular person or group of people, who would have approached the text with a particular pre-understanding. This has to be the case because God chose to communicate using human language, and because there was a particular person or group of people whom God wanted to receive his message. If the Holy Spirit had meant the message just for us in the 21st century, he would not have given it to believers in the 1st century. This is why many Bible scholars like to say that, although the Bible was written for us, it was not written to us. It’s not what the writer knows that matters in this regard, but what the writer thinks his readers know. You and I, living thousands of years later, in a different culture, on a different continent, don’t necessarily know everything that the original intended readers of a particular passage of Scripture knew. And so, again, we need to read the Scriptures with humility.
Seeing and Hearing
All of this applies to every book in the Bible, but some of the most glaring examples of not asking questions about pre-understanding can be seen in some of the interpretations people have come up with for the book of Revelation. Contrary to what many people seem to think, the pre-understanding that the Apostle John, the author of Revelation, assumed his readers would have is not 21st century geopolitics; it’s the Old Testament. Revelation refers to passages in the Old Testament more than any other New Testament book, but most of the references are not direct quotes. This means that readers who are not thoroughly familiar with the Old Testament, as many Christians in America today are not, can easily misunderstand.
Consider this passage:
Then I saw in the right hand of him who sat on the throne a scroll with writing on both sides and sealed with seven seals. And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice, “Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?” But no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside it. I wept and wept because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or look inside. Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.” (Revelation 5:1-5).
There are a lot of interesting things going on in this passage. The scroll with writing on both sides is unusual, but there is a very important Old Testament parallel in the scroll Ezekiel was given to eat (Ezekiel 2:9-3:3). And the number seven, the number of the seals, is used throughout the Bible as a symbol of completion. But what I want to specifically look at here is the introduction of the “Lion of the tribe of Judah.”
When the patriarch Jacob was dying he called his sons in, blessed them, and prophesied over them. Judah was compared to a lion, and Jacob also said:
The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he to whom it belongs shall come and the obedience of the nations shall be his (Genesis 49:10).
By the time Revelation was written in the 1st century, this prophecy had long been understood as a reference to the coming Messiah. The phrase “Root of David” comes from Isaiah 11:1-5, and similarly was understood as the Messiah. This part is pretty easy to understand. Jesus is worthy to open the scroll because he has “triumphed.” This is the same word (Greek nikaō) Jesus uses in his promises to the seven churches in Revelation 2-3. He is the Messiah, the Christ, the conquering Son of God who comes in glory. He alone has triumphed, and he alone is worthy to open the scroll and bring to completion God’s plan for the world. So far, so good. But then we read this:
Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing at the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. The Lamb had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth (Revelation 5:6).
The “Lamb of God” is, of course, an image of Christ that is used elsewhere in the New Testament, by John himself (John 1:29, 36), and by Paul (1 Corinthians 5:7) and by Peter (1 Peter 1:19). Interestingly, it’s not the regular sin offering or the goat sacrificed on the Day of Atonement that is used here as the image of Christ, but specifically the Passover sacrifice, which was eaten by the people, and whose blood, smeared on the door frame, shielded the people from the Angel of Death (Exodus 12:1-30). John is saying that Christ is our true Passover, and salvation is the true Exodus. References to Exodus, in fact, appear throughout Revelation.
But there is something unexpected going on here. Did you catch it? John heard that “the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David” was the one who had triumphed and was worthy to open the scroll, but when he looked, what he saw was not a lion, but a sacrificed lamb. He heard one thing, but saw another. What he heard was the expectation; what the people reading the Old Testament prophecies had expected to happen. What he saw was the fulfillment. The mystery revealed here is that the two images are the same; the conquering Messiah going to war on behalf of Israel is the suffering servant whose death atoned for the sins of the world.
An Army 144,000 Strong
With this in mind, let’s jump forward to another strange passage:
After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth to prevent any wind from blowing on the land or on the sea or on any tree. Then I saw another angel coming up from the east, having the seal of the living God. He called out in a loud voice to the four angels who had been given power to harm the land and the sea: “Do not harm the land or the sea or the trees until we put a seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.” Then I heard the number of those who were sealed: 144,000 from all the tribes of Israel (Revelation 7:1-4).
At the beginning of this scene, even the wind is still over the whole earth. Clearly, something momentous is about to happen. And while the earth is waiting, God is marking his people with his seal of ownership. There are several other places in the New Testament that also talk about God putting his seal on his people, most notably 2 Corinthians 1:21-22, and Ephesians 1:13-14 and 4:30. The seal in all of these passages is the Holy Spirit, which is probably the case here in Revelation as well. All of God’s servants receive the seal.
From the tribe of Judah 12,000 were sealed, from the tribe of Reuben 12,000, from the tribe of Gad 12,000, from the tribe of Asher 12,000, from the tribe of Naphtali 12,000, from the tribe of Manasseh 12,000, from the tribe of Simeon 12,000, from the tribe of Levi 12,000, from the tribe of Issachar 12,000, from the tribe of Zebulun 12,000, from the tribe of Joseph 12,000, from the tribe of Benjamin 12,000 (Revelation 7:5-8).
The tribes of Israel are listed many times in the Old Testament. There are fourteen tribal names that are used; Jacob’s twelve natural sons, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, Benjamin, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher (Genesis 35:23-26), and his two adopted sons Ephraim and Manasseh, who were the sons of Joseph (Genesis 48:5-6); these last two tribes are sometimes called half tribes because together they make up the tribe of Joseph. But the number twelve had symbolic importance, so every single list of the tribes in the Old Testament includes only twelve of those fourteen names, often (although by no means always) counting Ephraim and Manasseh in place of Joseph (logically enough), and leaving out Levi, because the Levites did not have a tribal territory, but were instead given cities scattered among the territories of the other tribes.
An important thing to be aware of is that the list of names was always manipulated to get to the required number of twelve. Modern readers sometimes stumble over this because, to us, a number only means one thing. It represents a mathematical value, and that’s all. In the ancient Near East, however, numbers also had symbolic meanings. Seven, for example, represented completion. Any particular example of a number could have a mathematical meaning, a symbolic meaning, or both. This is not only true in the Bible, but in ancient near eastern literature generally. The actual meaning of a number has to be determined from the context. In the case of this passage, we should at least suspect a symbolic meaning because 144,000 is the number of tribes (12) times the number of apostles (also 12) times 1,000 (representing a multitude). Is this suspicion valid? Let’s look closer.
If we pay attention to which twelve of the fourteen tribal names John chose, we see that Dan and Ephraim are left out, while both Manasseh and Joseph are included. But Manasseh is part of the tribe of Joseph. John is giving us a detail that, taken literally, makes no sense; the 12,000 from Manasseh are also in Joseph, so they are counted twice. The total is actually 132,000, not 144,000. John is telling us pretty clearly, then, that this numbering is symbolic.
But symbolic of what? Going again to the Old Testament, this numbering of the tribes seems to parallel the census in Numbers 1 and again in Numbers 26, when Israel was preparing to go to war. What John is hearing in this passage is God’s people, Israel, assembled as an army, preparing to march to war, reinforcing the earlier picture of salvation as the true Exodus. That’s what John hears. But what does he see?
After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice:
“Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.”
(Revelation 7:9-10).
Immediately after John hears the census of the armies of Israel, his gaze shifts back to the throne room, and he sees an uncountable multitude. Just as he heard about a lion but saw a lamb, now he hears the number 144,000 and sees a vast crowd, too large to count. Instead of armor, they are dressed in white robes, just as Jesus had earlier promised would be the reward of those who were victorious (Revelation 3:5).
The palm branches call to mind the triumphant entry (Matthew 21:1-11, Mark 11:1-11, Luke 19:28-44), but there’s more. In the 1st century, palm branches were used as symbols of Jewish victory. Palm motifs were common on Jewish coins, and as decoration in synagogues. So while the census of the 144,000 depicts an army ready to fight, both the robes and the palms indicate a victory already won. They’re not going to a battle, they’ve come out of one. And the crowd’s cry, “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb,” celebrates the fact that it was the Lamb and not the army who actually won the victory. As with the throne room scene, what John heard was the expectation, and what he saw was the fulfillment. The 144,000 and the uncountable multitude are the same.
These are the ones who have overcome the enemy. The white robes are not for everyone who claims to be a believer, or who has prayed a prayer, but to “the one who is victorious” (Revelation 3:5). And their number is not small; indeed, there are too many of them to count. They stand before God’s throne, shouting praise to him.
This is a picture of God’s people, saved by the blood of Christ. John shows us that they were marked with God’s seal before the four winds are unleashed to harm the earth. That’s important. God does not rescue his people as an afterthought; they are already rescued, already marked as his, before he unleashes his wrath. We don’t see them being taken from the earth, but we do see them marked as belonging to Christ. The message here, both for John’s generation and for every other generation until Christ returns is, don’t give up. Keep on standing firm, because you’ve already won.
The Message for Us
Much of the New Testament, and especially of this book, presents us with a paradox; we must stand firm, hold on to the truth of the gospel and fight the good fight (2 Timothy 4:7) because we have already won. This is the message the Holy Spirit gave to the seven churches in Asia in the 1st century, and through them to the rest of the church, all the way down to our time. You and I are already part of this vast crowd of victorious saints, provided that we stand firm and don’t give in to the pressures of this world.
We should not get the idea that what John heard was wrong and what he saw was right. They are both right, just from different points of view. The Lion of Judah is the Lamb who was slain. The army of Israel is the victorious multitude. They are the same, but seen in different ways. The battle is being fought, and the victory has already been won. But the victory of this multitude is, in reality, Christ’s victory. They are victorious because “they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Revelation 7:14). They are God’s holy people, worshiping him in purity and in truth.
God, who stands outside of time, sees me as already being what I will someday become. My life in Christ is a process of becoming the person I already am. And God shows us who we are in Christ so that we will have the courage to persevere and become those people.
Although Revelation was addressed to seven 1st century churches in Asia Minor, this message is for every believer. Including me. I am part of this multitude. When I picture this scene, I should try to see it from the point of view of a member of the crowd, not as a detached observer. That’s the vision John offers to the believers in the seven churches. And it’s the vision the Holy Spirit offers to us today. We are the servants of God. We are the ones who have been sealed. We are the victorious ones, and we can, if we choose to do so, stand firm against temptation and against oppression, because we know that the battle has already been won.