Days of Vengeance - The Preterist Archive

10:2-4
beyond reasonable doubt that this rainbow-haloed,
Cloud-clothed Angel coming down out of heaven is (or
represents) the Lord Jesus Christ.
2-3 The Angel, holding a little book, 3 then placed His
right foot on the Sea and His left on the Land. H. B.
Swete comments: “The Angel’s posture denotes both
his colossal size and his mission to the world: ‘sea and
land’ is an O.T. formula for the totality of terrestrial
things (Ex. 20:4,11; Ps. 69:34).” 4 We might modify this
point with the observation that in the Bible, and
especially in the Book of Revelation, “Sea and Land”
seems to represent the Gentile nations contrasted with
the Land of Israel (2 Sam. 22:4-5; Ps. 65:7-8; Isa. 5:30;
17:12-13; 57:20; Jer. 6:23; Lk. 21:25; Rev. 13:1, 11).
Thus, this picture does contain a cosmic, worldwide
import; but its meaning, as we shall see further on, is
tied up with the fact that Christ is standing on Israel
and the nations (cf. v. 5-7).
And He cried out with a loud Voice, as when a Lion 5
roars; by now, of course, we are familiar with the great
Voice coming from the Cloud; as Kline says, the Voice
“is characteristically loud, arrestingly loud. It is likened
to the crescendo of ocean and storm, the rumbling roar
of earthquake. It is the noise of war, the trumpeting of
signal horns and the din of battle. It is the thunder of
the storm-chariot of the warrior-Lord, coming in
judgments that convulse creation and confound the
kings of the nations.” 6 In worshipful response to His
Voice, the seven peals of thunder uttered their voices.
This sevenfold thunder is itself identified with the
Voice in Psalm 29, where some of its phenomenal
effects are noted: It shatters cedars in pieces, rocks
whole nations with earthquakes, shoots forth mighty
bolts of lightning, cracks open the very bowels of the
earth, causes animals to calve, and topples the trees,
stripping entire forests bare. This adds a dimension to
our understanding of the nature of the Voice that issues
from the Cloud: It consists of the heavenly antiphony
in which the angelic chorus answers the declarations of
the Sovereign Lord.
4 Of course, everyone wants to know: What did the
seven thunders say? An astounding amount of scholarly
ink has been wasted on the solution of this problem.
But, in this life at least, we can never know the answer.
St. John was about to write down what the thunders
had spoken, when he heard a Voice from heaven
saying: Seal up the things that the seven thunders
have spoken, and do not write them. The message was
intended for St. John’s ears only. It was not intended for
the Church at large. But what is important here is that
God wanted St. John to record the fact that he was not
supposed to reveal whatever the seven thunders said.
God wanted the Church to know that there are some
things (many things, actually) that God has no intention
of telling us beforehand.
This serves well as a rebuke to the tendency of most
sermons and commentaries on this book – that of a
curious searching into those things that God has not
seen fit to reveal. “The secret things belong to the LORD
our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to
our sons forever, that we may observe all the words of
this law” (Deut. 29:29). In other words, “Man has been
given the law, which he must obey. He has been told
what the consequences of obedience and disobedience
are. More than that, man does not need to know.” 7 R.
J. Rushdoony writes: “Man is more often prompted by
curiosity than by obedience. . . . For every question a
pastor receives about the details of God’s law, he
normally receives several which express little more
than a curiosity about God, the life to come, and other
things which are aspects of ‘the secret things which
belong to God.’. . . As against curiosity and a probing
about ‘secret things,’ we are plainly commanded to
obey God’s law and to recognize that the law gives us a
knowledge of the future which is legitimate.” 8
In the final chapter of the book St. John is commanded:
“Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book,
for the time is near” (22:10); the message of the Book
of Revelation as a whole is contemporary in nature,
referring to events about to take place. In contrast,
however, the message of the Seven Thunders points us
to the far distant future: Daniel was told to “conceal
these words and seal up the book until the time of the
end” (Dan. 12:4), for the reason that the time of its
fulfillment was not at hand. Similarly, when St. John
is instructed to seal up the words spoken by the
Thunders, it is another indication that the purpose of
Revelation is not “futuristic”; the prophecy refers to the
time of the establishment of the New Covenant, and
points beyond itself to a “time of the end” that was still
very distant to St. John and his readers. We are thus
taught two things: First, the Book of Revelation is a
contemporary prophecy, concerned almost entirely
with the redemptive-eschatological events of the first
century; second, the events of the first century were not
exhaustive of eschatology. Contrary to the theories of
those interpreters who would style themselves as
“consistent preterists,” the Fall of Jerusalem did not
constitute the Second Coming of Christ, the end of the
world, and the final resurrection. There is more to
come. 9
3. The meaning of the little scroll will be discussed below, in connection with
v. 8-11.
4. Henry Barclay Swete, Commentary on Revelation (Grand Rapids: Kregel
Publications, 3rd cd., [1911] 1977), p. 127.
5. Here is yet another identification of the Angel with Christ: He is the Lion
who “has overcome so as to open the Book” (Rev. 5:5).
6. Kline, p. 101.
7. Rousas John Rushdoony, Salvation and Godly Rule (Vallecito, CA: Ross
House Books, 1983), p. 388.
8. Ibid.
9. See, e.g., Max R. King, The Spirit of Prophecy (n.p., 1971). While King’s work
has a great deal of value for the discerning student, its ultimate thesis – that
there is no future Coming of Christ or Final Judgment – is heretical. Historic,
orthodox Christianity everywhere, with one voice, has always taught that
Christ “shall come again, with glory, to judge both the living and the dead”
(Nicene Creed). This is a non-negotiable article of the Christian faith. Cf.
David Chilton, Paradise Restored: A Biblical Theology of Dominion (Ft. Worth,
TX: Dominion Press, 1985), pp. 138-48.
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