Days of Vengeance - The Preterist Archive

10:8-10
the Spirit at Pentecost was prophetically described by
Joel in terms of the Glory-Cloud: “I will display
wonders in heaven and on earth: blood, fire, and pillars
of smoke” (Joel 2:30); and the Apostle Peter, quoting
Joel’s statement, declared that the Pentecost event was
the fulfillment of the ancient prophecy (Acts 2:16-
21). 16
The various creation-events thus interpret and are
reinterpreted by each other. That the covenants were
made in terms of the creation shows them to be
provisional re-creations which point to the final New
Creation in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17; Eph. 4:24). And that
the creation accounts use covenantal language and
settings (witness-pillar, oath, and testimony) shows it
to have been a covenant (i.e., if covenants are recreations,
then the creation was covenantal. 17
Another motif common to creation and covenant is
the sabbatical form in which both are structured. 18 The
entire book of Revelation is, as we have previously
noted, structured in sevens, revealing its nature as a
record of a covenant-making process; and here we see
“the Mystery of God” declared to be completed with
the sounding of the Seventh Trumpet. The Sabbath “is
a day of divine action featuring divine judgment with
the penetration of the darkness by the light of the
theophanic glory, it is a day of creating heaven and
earth and consummating a temple of God made in the
likeness of the Glory, it is a day of the revelation of the
sovereign glory of the covenant Lord. Taken together,
the seven days are the fulness of time of creation, the
sevenfold fulness of the day of the Lord. In redemptive
re-creation, the day of the Lord, wherein the old passes
away and all is created anew, is again a fulness of time,
in which, as Paul declares, all the mystery of God comes
finally into eschatological realization” (see Gal. 4:4;
Eph. 1:9-10; cf. Matt. 13:11-17; Mk. 1:15; Col. 1:15-20;
Rev. 10:7). 19 Revelation 10 thus serves to introduce us
to the first great climax of the prophecy: the
announcement of the destruction of Jerusalem. And
through its use of multi-layered Biblical imagery it
declares the fall of Jerusalem to be an inescapable
aspect of the great and final Covenant-making event.
The sounding of the seventh angel will be the
irrefutable sign that the promised New Creation, the
New Covenant, is an accomplished fact. The great
Mystery of God – the completion and filling of His new
and final Temple – will have been revealed to the world
(11:15-19).
The Bittersweet Book (10:8-11)
8 And the Voice which I had heard from heaven, I heard
again speaking with me, saying: Go, take the book that is
open in the hand of the Angel who stands on the Sea and
on the Land.
9 And I went to the Angel, telling Him to give me the
little book. And He said to me: Take it, and eat it; and it
will make your stomach bitter, but in your mouth it will
be sweet as honey.
10 And I took the little book out of the Angel’s hand and
ate it, and it was in my mouth sweet as honey; and when
I had eaten it, my stomach was made bitter.
11 And they said to me: You must prophesy again
concerning many peoples and nations and tongues and
peoples.
8-10 The instructions to take and eat the book held by
the Angel are based on a similar incident in the life of
Ezekiel, who was commanded to eat a scroll
symbolizing the prophetic denunciation of the
“rebellious house” of Israel (2:8-10; 3:1-3).
This reference enables us to identify the book given to
St. John as his commission, based on the New
Covenant, to prophesy “lamentations, mourning and
woe” against apostate Israel. The book is thus,
essentially, the Book of Revelation itself. As with
Ezekiel, the Covenant Lawsuit tasted to St. John as
sweet as honey (cf. Ezek. 3:3), but his stomach was
made bitter (cf. Ezek. 3:14). This should not be difficult
to understand. St. John was called to prophesy about
the victory of the Church and of the kingdom of God.
A necessary corollary to the triumph of the righteous is
the destruction of the wicked. The pattern holds
throughout Scripture in the history of salvation: The
same judgments that deliver us also destroy God’s
enemies. “Salvation and judgment are two aspects of
the same event .” 20 Old Israel had turned from the true
God to worship idols and demons; she had become a
harlot and a persecutor of the saints, and had to be
destroyed. And while St. John could rejoice in the
victory of the Church over her enemies, it would still
be a wrenching experience to see the once-holy city
levelled to rubble, the Temple torn down and burned to
ashes, and hundreds of thousands of his relatives and
countrymen starved and tortured, murdered, or sold
into slavery. All the prophets experienced this same
emotional wrenching – which did not usually involve a
rebellion against their calling (Jonah is a notable
exception), but rather a deeply rooted recognition of
the two-edged nature of prophecy, of the fact that the
same “Day of the Lord” would bring both immeasurable
blessing and unspeakable woe (cf. Amos 5:18-20). It
should be noted further, however, that a vast chasm
separates the prophets from many of their interpreters
in our own day. For while modern theologians will
affect a weepy attitude over the sufferings of “humanity”
in general, or in the abstract, the prophets suffered
from no such humanitarian impulses. 21 The prophets
grieved over the disobedient children of the Covenant.
The bitterness St. John will experience is not over the
fate of the Roman Empire. He grieves for Israel,
considered as the Covenant people. They are about to
16. No other construction may legitimately be placed upon the apostle’s words.
The coming of the Spirit was the fulfillment of Joel 2:28-32. “The Last Days”
had arrived. See Chilton, Paradise Restored, pp. 115-22.
17. See Kline, Kingdom Prologue, Vol. I, pp. 33f.
18. Ibid., p. 33.
19. Kline, Images of the Spirit, pp. l14f.
20. See R. J. Rushdoony, Salvation and Godly Rule, pp. 19ff., 140f.
21. For an incisive analysis of humanitarianism, see Herbert Schlossberg, Idols for
Destruction: Christian Faith and Its Confrontation with American Society
(Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1983), pp. 39-87.
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