Revelation 20 - In Depth Bible Commentaries

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(...continued)
Newport well states that "Works are unmistakable evidence of the loyalty of the heart.
They express either belief or unbelief, faithfulness or unfaithfulness. The judgment will reveal
through the records whether the loyalties were with God and the Lamb or with God's enemies.
John's theology of faith and its inseparable relation to works is the same as Jesus' and Paul's
(John 5:29; Romans 2:6ff.). This judgment is not a 'balancing of the books,' a weighing of
good works and bad works. Those who have their names in the Lamb's book of life will also
have records of righteous deeds. The opposite will be true as well. The imagery reflects the
delicate balance between grace and obedience." (Pp. 303-04)
Hough comments, "All sorts of things have been destroyed. But men cannot escape
their own past...Human life is not a series of unrelated events. It does not consist of separate
fragments having no connection with each other. It is all of a piece. The present is woven
from the past and the future is woven from the past and the present. Men's deeds are adhesive.
They cannot be torn away from the men who perform them. To use the figure of the
author, they are recorded in indestructible books. When earth and sky have faded away, the
books remain...
“This principle of the moral continuity of life is embedded in the very depths of the
Revelation of the man of Patmos...For at last revelation makes clear not only what God is. It
also makes clear what man is. And the final revelation of what a man is becomes itself a
conclusive act of judgment." (Pp. 607-08)
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Beasley-Murray notes that to die at sea without burial was a terrible fate in the mind
of the ancients--since that meant the dead person would not be able to "be united with his
people...Those who died at sea, therefore, were regarded as in a terrible situation, having
been forever denied the privilege of burial and separated from their kin in the world of the
dead. So John makes explicit mention of them. They are not overlooked by God...but they
will join all the rest of the departed in the resurrection to judgment." (P. 302)
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The phrase íåêñïò ôïò í áô, nekrous tous en aute, “dead ones, the ones in
it,” is changed to read í áô íåêñïò, “in it, dead ones,” by Uncial Manuscript 051, Minuscule
1854 and the “Majority Text” (A). The variant reading does not change the meaning of
Revelation, but is simply a slightly abbreviated way of saying the same thing.
Beasley-Murray points out that the very existence of the sea at this point in John's
vision is problematical, if we understand the fleeing away of the earth and the heavens
previously mentioned in a literal manner. But, he comments,
"His subject at this point was not geophysical and astronomical changes in the universe,
but the majesty of God in the judgment. An instructive parallel is afforded by 6:12-17,
where the terrors of the closing messianic judgments are enhanced by the description of
cosmic signs--the sun turns black as sackcloth, the stars fall to earth, the sky vanishes like a
scroll that is rolled up, mountains and islands are hurled from their places, and the wicked call
on the mountains to hide them from the face of Him Who sits on the throne and from the
Lamb, 'for the great day of their wrath has come.' Commentators frequently interpret that
(continued...)
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