What Did Revelation Mean to Its First-Century Hearers?
by Norm Young | 20 December 2024 |
The seven churches to which John wrote in Revelation 2 and 3 were in a circle of about 500 km, from Ephesus on the coast, to Laodicea in the south, and then west back to Ephesus. Early Adventists interpreted the seven letters according to the historicist method as the unfolding eras of western Christianity, with the letter to the church in Laodicea climaxing in the Seventh-day Adventist Church itself.
Since these seven letters were written at the end of the first century to churches that existed at that time, there is no reason for placing them in any other period than the first century.
Avoiding assimilation
Paganism was pervasive in the cultural environment of the seven churches. All but Laodicea had imperial priests. Christians refused to worship either the Roman gods or the image of the Emperor, which seems to have been the main causes for their persecution. The temptation then was for Christians to blunt their witness, and to align themselves, as far as possible, with paganism or Judaism (Rev 2:9; 3:9). This tendency is evident in the letters themselves.
The Nicolaitans, who are present in the churches of Ephesus (Rev 2:6) and Pergamum (v. 15), “represented an accommodation with pagan society and [the] imperial cult” (Colin J. Hemer, The Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia in their Local Setting, 67–68).
The symbolic reference to “Balaam” (Num 25:1–2) clarifies that an issue in the Pergamum assembly was a willingness of some to “eat food sacrificed to idols and [to] engage in sexual immorality” (Rev 2:14). The Thyatira assembly is heeding a prophet that John likens to “Jezebel” (1 Kings 18:19 and 2 Kings 9:22), who is beguiling God’s “servants to engage in sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols” (Rev 2:20). This implies that some of them were participating in the services of a pagan temple that was present in most of the cities of Asia Minor.
Babylon, that great city
The seductive harlot that John saw “is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth” (Rev 17:18). The woman is named “Babylon the great,” that ancient city that sacked Jerusalem, the city of God, and she “was drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of the witnesses to Jesus” (v. 6). This “Babylon” receives a constant flow of precious cargo (Rev 18:11–13). The grain ships from Alexandria had to do 6,000 annual port berthings to feed Rome. It is therefore no wonder that all the merchants, shipmasters, and sailors cried when they saw this city destroyed (v. 17).
In this city was found the blood of prophets and of saints (Rev 18:24). Who is the great whore that was guilty of “the blood of his servants” (Rev 19:2)? A hearer in one of the seven churches of Asia Minor would hear Rome: the Rome of Caligula (37–41), of Nero (54–68), of Domitian (81–96), and of Trajan (98–117).
The Christians in the seven churches knew that Rome was the city on the seven mounts (Rev 17:9), the Eternal City, the Capital of the World—but also the city that was responsible for persecuting the Christ and his followers (Rev 12:17). What would those churches of Asia Minor think of when they heard of another beast with a lamb’s horns that made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast? They would probably see that as the network of officials from the Senate with their military backup that enforced its rule on behalf of Caesar.
Caligula thought of himself as a god, and he even ordered that a statue of him be placed in the Jerusalem Temple. Fortunately, Herod Agrippa diverted this dangerous folly. While he was governor of Bithynia (109–111 CE), Pliny the Younger used to bring an image of Emperor Trajan before the accused and invite them to offer wine and frankincense to it as an act of worship. If they did, he released them. If they did not, he executed them. Citizens of Imperial Rome had no doubt who and what was the image of the beast (“the image of the beast could even speak and cause those who would not worship the image of the beast to be killed”) (Rev 13:15).
No emperor visited Asia Minor in the first century, but the Imperial cult made his presence felt and known throughout the region. Coin inscriptions, images, public plaques, public festivals, and holidays were the means of disseminating the presence of the Emperor. The Roman Empire knew no division between cult and state.
Accepting martyrdom
John rejects the idea of assimilation to either Judaism or paganism. Even if resistance resulted in suffering, John called the early Christians to a faithful witness and a willingness to die rather than compromise Christ. The Roman state persecuted them just for being Christians. John’s call is for the believers in Asia Minor to “endure” and to “hold fast” to the faith (Rev 1:9; 2:2,3,13,19,25; 3:10,11; 13:10; 14:12).
John himself is in exile for witnessing to Christ as Lord (Rev 1:9). The church of Smyrna is about to suffer; some will go to prison and even to death (Rev 2:10). Antipas, the faithful witness of Pergamum, has already died for his faith (v. 13). An hour of trial is coming that will test the whole world (Philadelphia, Rev 3:10). John saw the life blood of some Christians as if it were the blood of a sacrifice poured out at the base of the altar of burnt offering (Rev 6: 9–11; Lev 4:7; 5:9).
These Christians had been slain for their witness to Christ. There were more of their brothers and sisters, John says, “who were soon to be killed as they themselves had been killed” (v. 11). The angry dragon goes off to make war on the rest of the woman’s seed (Rev 12:17); the first seed is Christ, the rest of her seed are his siblings, the Christians, who “did not cling to life even in the face of death” (v. 11). The beast makes war on the saints and conquers them (Rev 13:7). If anyone is to be killed with the sword; with the sword he will be killed (v. 10 NIV).
John saw among the resurrected saints “the souls of those who had been beheaded for their testimony to Jesus and for the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its brand on their foreheads or their hands” (Rev 20:4).
The three angels
True to their historicism, early Adventists read the three angels’ messages of Revelation 14:6-12 as referring to their own religious experience and message. This is possible only if one ignores the first hearers and their historical and social setting. Ultimately, Adventists applied the phrase “the hour of his judgment has come” (Rev 14:7) to an examination of the records of the lives of the saints, commencing in 1844 CE in heaven.
The “eternal gospel” is not Paul’s justification by faith; it relates to the call to worship God as creator, and the assurance that the time of his judgment has arrived.
Who would see judgment as glad tidings? “All those who live on the earth—to every nation and tribe and language and people,” who endure an Imperial Rome that promised peace and safety but delivered war and death. “Rejoice over her, you heavens! Rejoice, you people of God! Rejoice, apostles and prophets! For God has judged her with the judgment she imposed on you” (18:20 NIV).
The second message clarifies the first: God’s judgment is upon Imperial Rome. The cry, “Fallen, fallen,” is not referring to some moral decline but the total collapse of a military power as Imperial Rome was. John is using the language of ancient Babylon’s annihilation to depict the future demise of Imperial Rome. (“Fallen, fallen is Babylon, and all the images of her gods lie shattered on the ground.” Isa 21:9, also Jer 51:8.)
John repeats the language of Babylon’s fall in Rev 18:1–4, and the theme of judgment is found in vv. 8,10,17,19,20. Such language, John declares, demonstrates the violent manner in which “the great city [of Rome] will be thrown down” (Rev 18:21).
Adventists usually relate Rev 18:4 (“Come out of her, my people, so that you do not take part in her sins”) with the second message, and take it to mean leaving the apostate Protestant churches—God forgive us—and joining the Adventist community. But how did the first hearers hear John’s call to come out of Babylon? It meant for them not to practice the ways of Imperial Rome, and not to participate in its idolatry, its inequalities, its slavery, its luxurious lifestyle, its unrestrained immorality, its militarism, or its brutality. It is not much different from Paul’s understanding several decades earlier:
Therefore come out from them,
and be separate from them, says the Lord,
and touch nothing unclean;
then I will welcome you,
and I will be your father,
and you shall be my sons and daughters,
says the Lord Almighty (2 Cor 6:17–18, italics added).
The third message is an appeal to the Christians of John’s day to be constant in their worship of the creator God and to flee from the worship of the idolatrous Roman power, whether in the form of images of Caesar or of its gods. Any joining with the pagan worshipers in their temples is risking a share with them in the fury of God’s fiery judgment (John’s language is drawn from Isa 34:9–10).
Until we have read the Apocalypse in its original first-century setting, we cannot hope to understand it in our twenty-first-century setting. This is true for all the New Testament writings, whether gospel, history (such as Acts), or the epistles.
Norm Young is Professor Emeritus of Avondale University in Cooranbong, Australia.
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