Days of Vengeance - The Preterist Archive

7:10-14
inheriting the Kingdom (Matt. 21:43). That St. John
intends us to see such a parallel is clear from the fact
that the word translated palm (phoinix) occurs only two
times in the New Testament – here, and in the story of
Palm Sunday in the Gospel of John (12:13).
10 Joining in the heavenly liturgy, the innumerable
multitude shouts: Salvation (i.e., Hosanna! cf. John
12:13) unto our God who sits on the Throne, and to
the Lamb! – ascribing to God and to the Lamb what
Rome claimed for the Caesars. Mark Antony said of
Julius Caesar that his “only work was to save where
anyone needed to be saved”; 18 and now Nero was on
the throne, whom Seneca (speaking as “Apollo”) had
praised as the divine Savior of the world:
He is like me in much, in form and appearance, in his
poetry and singing and playing. And as the red of morning
drives away dark night, as neither haze nor mist endure before
the sun’s rays, as everything becomes bright when my chariot
appears, so it is when Nero ascends the throne. His golden
locks, his fair countenance, shine like the sun as it breaks
through the clouds. Strife, injustice and envy collapse before
him. He restores to the world the golden age. 19
In direct contradiction to the State-worshiping
blasphemies of Rome and Israel, the Church declares
that salvation is the province of God and His Son
alone. In every age, this has been a basic issue. Who is
the Owner and Determiner of reality? Whose word is
law? Is the State the provider of salvation? For us, as for
the early Church, there is no safe middle ground
between faith and apostasy.
11-12 The angels too are seen here in this heavenly
worship service, encircling the congregation around
the Throne and giving a sevenfold blessing to God in
praise – a blessing both preceded and ended with an
oath: Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and
thanksgiving and honor and power and might, be to
our God forever and ever! Amen! As in many other
Biblical descriptions of worship, the position of the
worshipers is noted here: They fell on their faces
before the Throne. Official, public worship in
Scripture never shows the participants sitting at prayer;
public prayer is always performed in the reverential
positions of standing or bowing down. The modern,
nominalistic platonist, thinking himself to be more
spiritually-minded than Biblical characters (even
angels!), would respond that the bodily position is
irrelevant, so long as the proper attitude is filling the
heart. But this overlooks the fact that Scripture
connects the attitude of the heart with the attitude of
the body. In public worship, at the very least, our
churches should follow the Biblical pattern of physical
reverence in prayer.
When rationalistic Protestants abandoned the use of
the kneeling rail in worship, they contributed to the
outbreaks of individualistic pietism that have brought
so much ruin to the Church. Man needs liturgy and
symbolism. God created us that way. When the Church
denies man this aspect of his God-given nature, he will
seek to fulfill it by inadequate or sinful substitutes. A
return to Biblically based liturgy is not a cure-all; but it
will prove to be a corrective to the shallow, frenetic,
and misplaced “spirituality” that has been the legacy of
centuries of liturgical poverty.
13-14 One of the elders now challenges St. John to
tell him the identity of this great multitude from every
nation. St. John confesses his inability, and the elder
explains: These are the ones who come out of the
Great Tribulation. While this text may and should be
used to comfort Christians going through any period of
suffering and persecution, its primary reference is to
“the hour of testing, that hour which is about to come
upon the whole world, to test those who dwell upon the
Land” (3:10), the “Great Tribulation” of which Jesus
warned as He spoke to His disciples on the Mount of
Olives (Matt. 24:21; Mark 13:19) – a tribulation that
He stated would take place during the then-existing
generation (Matt. 24:34; Mark 13:30; Luke 21:32); the
greatest tribulation that ever was, or ever will be (Matt.
24:21; Mark 13:19).
The point, for the first-century Christians reading it,
was that the Tribulation they were about to suffer
would not destroy them. In facing persecution they
were to see themselves, first, as “the Israel of God”
(Gal. 6:16), sealed and protected; and second, as an
innumerable, victorious multitude. As God saw them,
they were not scattered, isolated groups of poor and
persecuted individuals accused as criminals by a
merciless, demonic power-State; they were, rather, a
vast throng of conquerors, who had washed their robes
and made them white in the blood of the Lamb,
standing before God’s Throne and robed in the
righteousness of Jesus Christ. St. John is probably
drawing on the ordination-investiture ritual after the
rigorous examination for the priesthood. First, the
prospective priest was examined as to his geneology. “If
he failed to satisfy the court about his perfect
legitimacy, the candidate was dressed and veiled in
black, and permanently removed. If he passed that
ordeal, inquiry was next made as to any physical
defects, of which Maimonides enumerates a hundred
and forty that permanently, and twenty-two which
temporarily disqualified for the exercise of priestly
office. . . . Those who had stood the twofold test were
dressed in white raiment, and their names permanently
inscribed.” 20 The white robes of these priests thus
correspond to the white robe of their High Priest; and
just as His robe is said to be “dipped in blood,” so theirs
are washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb.
In striking contrast to what some Christian groups in
recent years have been taught, the early Church did
not expect to be miraculously preserved from all
hardship in this life. They knew that they would be
18. Ethelbert Stauffer, Christ and the Caesars (Philadelphia: The Westminster
Press, 1955), p. 52.
19. Ibid., p. 139. Nero eventually repaid Seneca for a lifetime of servile idolatry
by ordering him to commit suicide.
20. Alfred Edersheim, The Temple: Its Ministry and Services as They Were at the
Time of Jesus Christ (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.,
1980), p. 95; cf. Rev. 3:5.
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