Days of Vengeance - The Preterist Archive

19:16-18
of wealth, or wasting disease stalking with ghastly
power over a land, or the upheavings of popular commotion
overturning the foundations of social order, we
recog-nize the wisdom, and might, and righteous
retribution of Prince Messiah, carrying into execution
the divine decree, The nation and kingdom that will not
serve thee shall perish: yea, those nations shall be utterly
wasted” (Isa. 60:12). 22
16 St. John sees Christ’s title “which no one knows
except Himself” (v. 12) written on His robe and on
His thigh, the place where the sword is worn (cf. Ps.
45:3). “The title is the ground, not the result, of the
coming victory; he will conquer the monster and the
kings because he is already King of kings and Lord of
lords.” 23 Riding out on His war-horse, followed by His
army of saints, He conquers the nations with the Word
of God, the Gospel. This is a symbolic declaration of
hope, the assurance that the Word of God will be
victorious throughout the world, so that Christ’s rule
will be established universally. Jesus Christ will be acknowledged
everywhere as King of all kings, Lord over
all lords. From the beginning of Revelation, Christ’s
message to His Church has been a command to overcome,
to conquer (2:7, 11, 17, 26-28; 3:5, 12, 21); now
He assures the suffering Church that, regardless of the
fierce persecution by Israel and Rome, He and His
people will in fact be victorious over all enemies.
All nations are absolutely required to be Christian, in
their official capacity as well as in the personal
character of their individual citizens. Any nation that
does not submit to the all-embracing rule of King Jesus
will perish; all nations shall be Christianized some day.
It is only a matter of time. Jesus Christ is the universal
Sovereign, and He will be recognized as such
throughout the earth, in this world as well as in the
next, in time as well as in eternity. He has promised: “I
will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in
the earth” (Ps. 46:10). The LORD of hosts is with us.
17-18 This is the second of the final seven visions,
each of which begins with the phrase And I saw; thus,
while it is certainly related to the subject of the
previous vision, it is not simply a continuation of it. As
we have seen, the chapter begins with a feast, the
Marriage Supper of the Lamb, the sacred Eucharistic
meal of the Church before her Lord. But another great
feast is proclaimed here. The Sun of Righteousness has
arisen, with healing in His wings (Mal. 4:2); but He
also brings an angel standing in the sun (the ruler of
the Day, Gen. 1:16) who issues an invitation to all the
birds that fly in midheaven, the birds of prey. We have
seen “midheaven” as the place in which the Eagle
warned of woe (8:13), and in which an angel invited
the rulers of the earth to embrace the eternal Gospel
(14:6). Now the angel invites the eagles to the Great
Supper of God, where they may glut themselves on the
flesh of Christ’s enemies: the flesh of kings and the
flesh of commanders and the flesh of mighty men and
the flesh of horses and of those who sit on them and
the flesh of all men, both free men and slaves, and
small and great. We noted at 8:13 that a basic curse of
the covenant is that of being eaten by birds of prey (cf.
Deut. 28:26, 49). Israel is now a sacrificial corpse (Matt.
24:28), and there is no longer anyone who can drive
away the scavengers (cf. Gen. 15:11; Deut. 28:26). 24
St. John’s language is borrowed from God’s invitation
through Ezekiel “to every bird and beast of the field” to
devour the corpses of His enemies, the armies of the
heathen who had made war upon Israel:
Assemble and come, gather from every side to My
sacrifice which I am going to sacrifice for you, as a great
sacrifice on the mountains of Israel, that you may eat flesh
and drink blood. You shall eat the flesh of mighty men, and
drink the blood of the princes of the earth, as though they
were rams, lambs, goats, and bulls, all of them fatlings of
Bashan. So you will eat fat until you are glutted, and drink
blood until you are drunk, from My sacrifice which I have
sacrificed for you. And you will be glutted at My table with
horses and charioteers, with mighty men and all the men of
war, declares the LORD. (Ezek. 39:17-20)
The meaning is clear: Those nations that refuse to
submit to the lordship of Christ, as Psalm 2 commands,
will be utterly destroyed. God requires of all men and
institutions nothing less than complete subservience to
His ordained Christocracy.
Peter J. Leithart observes that the feasting of the scavengers
in Ezekiel 39 has a cleansing effect on the Land.
“The expanded invitation to the birds of prey in verses
17-20 comes immediately after a discussion of cleansing
the land through the burial of the dead (cf. Deut.
21:22f.). Perhaps the birds help to cleanse the land by
feeding on the dead bodies which defile it. Moreover,
the Lord invites the birds to eat a sacrificial meal. Sacrifice
implies cleansing and restoration. Thus, in Ezekiel
39, the image of the birds of prey not only emphasizes
the totality of the judgment, but also points to the
obverse of judgment, cleansing and redemption.” 25
Leithart continues: “Is the idea of cleansing found also
in Revelation 19:17-18? There is no direct mention of
cleansing, nor of sacrifice. Still, for several reasons, the
Revelation passage can be understood as a cleansing.
First, the events of 20:4-6 suggest that by His victory,
the Warrior cleanses the earth of the influence of the
beast and the false prophet, and this, combined with
the fall of Babylon and the binding of the dragon,
inaugurates a period of unprecedented power for the
Church. Second, the totality of the Warrior’s victory is
so great that not even the slain bodies of His opponents
22. William Symington, Messiah the Prince: or The Mediatorial Dominion of Jesus Christ (Philadelphia: The Christian Statesman Publishing Co., [1839] 1884), p. 224.
23. Caird, p. 246.
24. Genesis 15 describes the ratification ceremony of God’s covenant with Abram. After Abram cuts the sacrificial animals apart and arranges the halves opposite
each other, the unclean birds of prey descend to attack the carcasses, and Abram drives them away (v. 11). Gordon Wenham interprets this as a promise that
Israel, through Abramic faith and obedience (cf. Gen. 26:5), will be protected from the attacks of unclean nations; Gordon Wenham, “The Symbolism of the
Animal Rite in Genesis 15: A Response to G. F. Hasel, JSOT 19 (1981) 61-78,” in Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 22 (1981), 134-37.
25. Peter J. Leithart, “Biblical-Theological Paper: Revelation 19:17-18,” Westminster Theological Seminary, 1985, p. 11.
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