Days of Vengeance - The Preterist Archive

10:5-7
5-7 St. John now shows us Christ’s purpose in revealing
Himself in this way: The Angel lifted up His right
hand to heaven (the proper stance for a witness in a
court of law: Gen. 14:22; Ex. 6:8; Deut. 32:40;
Ezek. 20:5-6; Dan. 12:7) and swore an oath. Some
commentators have taken this fact as their basis for
holding that this Angel is not Christ, apparently
regarding swearing as somehow below His dignity or
out of character. One wonders, in response, about the
soundness of these commentators’ views regarding the
doctrines of the Trinity and Christ’s deity. For,
assuredly, the Lord God swears oaths throughout Holy
Scripture (cf. Gen. 22:16; Isa. 45 :23; Jer. 49:13; Amos
6:8), and in fact our salvation is based on God’s
faithfulness to His covenant oath, the ground of the
Christian’s assurance and hope (Heb. 6:13-20).
We must observe carefully that Christ is presented here
in the position of a witness, as St. John has informed us
on two occasions already (1:5; 3:14). This is the point
at which the various details of the vision converge. We
have noted some of the significance of His legs
appearing like pillars of fire (v. 1), and this must be
further developed. For, in the first place, pillars are used
in Biblical symbolism and ritual as witnesses (cf. Gen.
31:45, 52; Deut. 27:1-8; Josh. 8:30-35; 22:26-28, 34;
24:26-27). Similarly, the two stone tablets containing
the Ten Commandments served as witnesses (Deut.
31:26), legal documents of testimony to the covenant
stipulations. Thus the law is called the Testimony (Ex.
16:34; 25:16, 21-22; 32:15; 34:29; Lev. 16:13; 24:3;
Num. 1:50, 53; 4:5; Josh. 4:16; 2 Kings 11:12). 10 When
God stood in the dual pillar of cloud/fire before Israel at
the “tent of testimony” (Num. 9:15; 10:11), He was
identifying Himself as the Witness to the Covenant (cf.
1 Sam. 12:5; Jer. 29:23; 42:5; Mic. 1:2; Mal. 2:14).
The Angel-Witness swears that there shall be delay 11
no longer, but in the days of the seventh angel, when
he is about to sound, then the Mystery of God is
accomplished. The word Mystery does not mean
something “mysterious” in our modern sense, but rather
“something formerly concealed and now unveiled.” 12 It
is revelation: knowledge that God formerly withheld,
but has now “revealed to His holy apostles and prophets
in the Spirit” (Eph. 3:5), a mystery “that has been
hidden from the past ages and generations, but has now
been manifested to His saints” (Col. 1:26). This
“Mystery” is a major aspect of the letters to the
Ephesians and Colossians: the union of believing Jews and
Gentiles in one Church, without distinction; “that the
Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the
body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Jesus
Christ through the Gospel” (Eph. 3:6). Gentiles, who
had been strangers and aliens from the commonwealth
of Israel and from the covenantal promises, are now,
through the work of Christ, full sons of Abraham, heirs
of the Covenant, on an equal and indistinguishable
standing with believing Jews (Eph. 2:11-22; Gal. 3).
They form one “new man,” one Church, one Body of
Christ, in the one New Covenant. And this one
covenantal Kingdom, the fulfillment of the Old
Testament promises, will have universal dominion:
All nations will now flow to the Mountain of the Lord,
as the kingdoms of the world become the one
Kingdom of Christ (11:15). The Mystery of God, the
universalization of the Kingdom of God, is to be
accomplished – as He preached the Gospel 13 to His
servants the prophets. The Mystery is simply the
revelation of the message of the Gospel.
This is why the Angel stands as witness on the Sea and
on the Land (cf. v. 2), a fact that is repeated for
emphasis in verse 5. The Angel takes the oath with His
pillar-legs planted on Israel and the nations,
proclaiming the New Covenant which will unite the
two into one new nation in Christ. Moreover, He
swears in the name of the Creator: by Him who lives
forever and ever, who created heaven and the things
in it, and the earth and the things in it, and the sea
and the things in it (cf. Ex. 20:11; Ps. 146:6; Neh. 9:6).
The Angel swears in this manner because He is
standing as divine Witness to the New Creation. The
details of the passage remind us of two other “New
Creation” events: the covenant with Noah (the
rainbow) and the covenant at Sinai (the pillar of fire).
Both of these recalled how “the Spirit at the beginning
overarched creation as a divine witness to the
Covenant of Creation, as a sign that creation existed
under the aegis of his covenant lordship. Here is the
background for the later use of the rainbow as a sign of
God’s covenant with the earth.” 14 “At the ratification
of the old covenant at Sinai, this cloud-pillar form of
theophany represented God standing as witness to his
covenant with Israel. Once again at the ratification of
the new covenant at Pentecost, it was God the Spirit,
appearing in phenomena that are to be seen as a New
Testament version of the Glory-fire, who provided the
confirmatory divine testimony.” 15
Thus, we have seen several Biblical ideas joining
together at this point to form a consistent pattern:
covenant, oath, creation, testimony, and witness. The
Spirit, appearing as the original cloudy pillar of fire, was
present at the original creation, and then at the later
re-creation events in the history of redemption: the
Flood, the Exodus, the erection of the Tabernacle and
the Temple, and the Day of Pentecost. The coming of
10. Meredith G. Kline, The Structure of Biblical Authority (Grand Rapids: William
B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1975), pp. 113-30. The law required two
witnesses (Deut. 17:6; 19:15), and, as we have noted in the Introduction, the
two tablets were duplicate copies of the covenant.
11. “The sense here is not an abolition of time and its replacement by
timelessness, but ‘no more time’ from the words of the angel until the
completion of the divine purpose.” James Barr, Biblical Words for Time
(Naperville, IL: Alec R. Allenson Inc., rev. ed. 1969), p. 80.
12. F. F. Bruce, Commentary on the Epistle to the Colossians (Grand Rapids:
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1957), p. 218.
13. “Preached the Gospel,” rather than “declared” or “preached,” is the literal
translation of the Greek text.
14. Kline, Images of the Spirit, pp. 19f.
15. Meredith G. Kline, Kingdom Prologue, Volume I (privately published syllabus,
1981), p. 28. Kline also points out (pp. 5f.) that the words oath and covenant
are often used interchangeably (cf. Deut. 29:12; Ezek. 16:8).
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