These are the devotionals that are taken from the book For the Love of God by D.A. Carson. It goes along with the church's bible reading plan
December 20 - Revelation 11
Throughout the book of Revelation there are occasional visions of the end or of the throne room of God that anticipate the last two chapters. In other words, the line of development in Revelation is not always linear. The anticipation of victory, glory, and the perspective of the Almighty are sometimes placed in the context of the darkest scenes of judgment: e.g., Revelation 14:1–5, in the context of chapters 12–14.
When the seventh trumpet sounds (Rev. 11:15–19), the veil is rolled back a little to permit a glimpse of just such a scene—not in this case of the new heaven and the new earth, but of the reign of God over these scenes of terrible judgment. I may draw attention to two elements.
First, the notion of the kingdom of God is a dynamic one and changes its precise significance in various contexts. Here loud voices in heaven proclaim: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever” (Rev. 11:15). This suggests that there was a time before which this divine “kingdom” over this lost world had not begun. So what is in view is certainly not the universal kingdom of God’s providential rule. Nor is this the onset of Jesus’ reign, as inaugurated by his resurrection and exaltation. True, at that point all authority became his in heaven and earth (Matt. 28:18). Nevertheless, that reign is so exercised that it is still contested. What the following verses suggest is that God now so takes his great power as to destroy those who have destroyed his people. “The time has come for judging the dead, and for rewarding your servants the prophets and your saints and those who reverence your name, both small and great—and for destroying those who destroy the earth” (Rev. 11:18). What this announces is the imminence of the final exercise of authority that shatters all residual opposition and judges all with perfect justice.
Second, we have already seen that mixed metaphors are characteristic of apocalyptic literature. Here in 11:19, God’s temple in heaven is opened, and within the temple the ark of the covenant is seen, accompanied by an awesome storm. Terrible storms accompanying God’s great acts of self-disclosure spring from what took place at Sinai; something similar is found in the vision of 4:5. The point of temple, ark, and storm in this verse is that God himself is present and reigning. By contrast, in the vision of chapters 21–22, there is no need for a temple in heaven, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple (Rev. 21:22). Only pedants will perceive a contradiction.
December 21 - Revelation 12
The vision of Revelation 12 provides the ultimate cause of the ongoing tribulations of the people of God. That cause is nothing less than the rage of Satan.
The woman in this chapter is not Mary, but a figure representing the people of God. From her springs Jesus, the son “who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter” (Rev. 12:5). Yet she is not simply Israel, for after Jesus ascends to God, the woman is left behind with “the rest of her offspring—those who obey God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus” (Rev. 12:17). The woman, then, represents the collective people of God, whether of the old covenant or of the new.
Satan in this chapter not only fails in his vicious attempt to destroy Jesus (Rev. 12:4–5), but he is defeated by Michael and thrown out of heaven (Rev. 12:7–9). He is hurled to the earth (Rev. 12:9). Raging against this restriction (Rev. 12:13), raging as well “because he knows that his time is short” (Rev. 12:12) before his utter destruction, he is filled with fury against the woman and her offspring. Much of the rest of the chapter describes his attack on the woman and her children—on us Christians!—in symbol-laden language drawn from the Old Testament.
Among his attacks are accusations designed both to destroy our confidence and to engage God’s wrath against people as sinful as we are: Satan is “the accuser of [the] brothers” (Rev. 12:10). But in one crucial verse (Rev. 12:11), John tells us how these believers overcome the devil.
(1) “They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb.” The preposition translated as by in the NIV should be rendered “on the ground of.” When all his accusations are brought before us—so many of them entirely justified, if we gauge things only by the quality of our faithfulness—Satan is silenced when we insist that our acceptance before God is grounded not in ourselves but in the death of Jesus Christ. “Who is he that condemns?” Paul exultantly asks. “Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us” (Rom. 8:34). We neither have nor need another ground for our acquittal.
(2) “They overcame him by … the word of their testimony.” This does not mean that they frequently gave their testimonies. It means, rather, that they constantly bore testimony to Jesus Christ; in short, they constantly proclaimed the Gospel. That is what spells Satan’s defeat. Keep silent, and Satan wins.
(3) “They did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.” You cannot defeat an opponent who is not only willing to die, but for whom death means winning (Phil. 1:21).
December 22 - Revelation 13
It turns out that Satan has two unholy beasts to assist him, one that comes out of the sea (Rev. 13:1–10), and the other out of the earth (Rev. 13:11–18). Together they constitute an unholy triumvirate that in some ways apes the Trinity.
Admittedly, many of the apocalyptic symbols in this chapter have been interpreted in mutually exclusive ways by different schools of thought. It is entirely beyond these brief meditations to defend a particular structure. In my view, however, these beasts represent recurring historical manifestations of evil—in the one case, evil in its guise as outright opposition against the people of God, and in the other, evil in its guise as religious deception. (It is not for nothing that the beast out of the earth is described later in this book as “the false prophet”: e.g., Rev. 19:20.) Satan deploys not only agents who overtly and viciously attack believers, but also agents whose mission it is to seduce and deceive, if it is possible, the very elect.
Observe one of the extraordinary elements in the description of the first beast. He has received a fatal wound, but the wound has been healed. This sounds incongruous: surely if the wound has been healed, it was not fatal, and if it was fatal then obviously it could not be healed. But this symbolism is meant to describe the repeated historical manifestations of this monster. He emerges in a Nero, in the Roman Emperor, in Innocent III, in a Hitler. In every case, the monster is cut down. Many people think that evil in its worst form has finally been destroyed. The thousand-year Reich lasts a decade and a half: surely this was the war to end all wars. Then the genocide starts again—in the Eastern block, in China, in Cambodia, in Rwanda. The beast receives a fatal wound, but always the beast comes back to life.
Note some of the symbols used to describe the false prophet. He looks like a lamb, but he speaks like a dragon (Rev. 13:11): this probably does not mean that he roars like a dragon and scares everyone off, but that he appears innocent, even though his speech is the speech of the dragon—the “great dragon” of Revelation 12:9, none other than Satan himself. This “lamb” turns out to be Satan’s mouthpiece. He performs miraculous signs and thereby deceives the inhabitants of the earth (Rev. 13:14). There is no suggestion that the signs are mere tricks; miraculous power does not necessarily attest divine power. Ultimately he uses the authority he derives from the first beast to constitute an exclusive identity for his own followers, excluding all others with severe economic sanctions (Rev. 13:16–17). Even little historical knowledge can remember manifestations of such deceitful coercion.
December 23 - Revelation 14
In Revelation 13, we discovered that all those under the authority of the unholy triumvirate have a mark on their foreheads. This means that they can participate in the world order of the dragon and his beasts and be spared the wrath of Satan. Here in Revelation 14, we learn that God’s people also have something on their foreheads—the name of the Lamb and of the Father (Rev. 14:1). These people stand on Mount Zion with the Lamb and are spared all the wrath of the Lamb. By contrast, those with the mark of the beast must now face the wrath of the Lamb, drinking “of the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath” (Rev. 14:10–11).
The imagery comes from quite a different vision, from Ezekiel 9, where Ezekiel sees God instructing a man dressed in linen to put a mark on the foreheads of all the people in Jerusalem who grieve over its sin. When the angelic executioners go through the city, bent on destruction and slaughter, they spare all those who have God’s mark on their foreheads. That imagery has now been adapted in two quite different ways in Revelation. Now everyone has a mark on the forehead. Either you have the mark of the beast, and you are spared the wrath of the beast but must face God’s fury; or you have the mark of the Lamb, which means you are spared God’s fury but you must face the sanctions of the beast.
So whose wrath would you rather face? You will face one or the other. Would you rather face the wrath of Satan, or the wrath of God?
The Lord Jesus taught us that the person to fear is the One who can cast both body and soul into hell (Matt. 10:28). Few passages are more terrifying about that prospect than Revelation 14. We are bluntly told that “the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and his image, or for anyone who receives the mark of his name” (Rev. 14:11). Few passages are more explicit about the eternal longevity of this punishment. The final graphic portrait (Rev. 14:19–20) is unimaginably horrific. In the ancient world, large stone vats with holes punched in the bottom were filled with grapes, and servant girls jumped in and tramped down the grapes, squeezing out the juice that ran out through the holes and was gathered for use in winemaking. But now in the wake of the final harvest, one must assume it is people who are thrown into this vat, for what flows out from “the great winepress of God’s wrath” (Rev. 14:19) is blood, flowing outward for 180 miles.
So, whose wrath would you rather face?
December 24 - 2 Chronicles 29
With the exception of only a few verses, most of the material in 2 Chronicles 29–31 has no parallel in 2 Kings. What these chapters provide is a detailed account of how King Hezekiah went about reinstituting temple worship that was in line with the Law of God delivered through Moses, and then called the covenant people together not only from Judah but even some from Israel to celebrate the Passover in a way that had not been done for some time.
Here we may focus on 2 Chronicles 29. Paganism had taken such a hold on the people that temple service had fallen into disuse. The temple had become a repository for junk; even the doors needed fixing. Still only twenty-five years old, King Hezekiah, in the first month of his reign (2 Chron. 29:3), opened the doors and repaired them. He found some priests and Levites and instructed them to consecrate themselves according to the rites established in the Law, and then to set about cleaning, repairing, and reconsecrating the temple. Moreover, Hezekiah recognized that the past failures in this respect had invited the wrath of God (2 Chron. 29:6). He was not so foolish as to think the failures were merely a matter of ritual: he saw the larger picture, but perceived, rightly, that the utter neglect of the ritual demonstrated that the hearts of priests, Levites, people, and king alike were entirely alienated from God. His open intention was to reverse this pattern and inaugurate a covenant with the Lord (2 Chron. 29:10).
The rest of the chapter details what was done. More priests and Levites came on board. The musical instruments secured by David were restored to use. Even small deviations from the Law are recorded, such as the permission to allow the Levites to help with the skinning of the animals for the sacrifices, owing to the fact that at this point too few priests were consecrated (2 Chron. 29:32–34).
“So the service of the temple of the LORD was reestablished. Hezekiah and all the people rejoiced at what God had brought about for his people, because it was done so quickly” (2 Chron. 29:35–36).
So it is when genuine revival comes in considerable proportion. Inevitably, God raises up a leader whose prophetic insistence proves irresistible, first to a few, and then to a great crowd. And in the best instances it is not long before men and women look back and marvel at how fast the face of things was massively transformed. They conclude, rightly, that the only explanation is that God himself has done it—that is, that the transformation is not finally attributable to reforming zeal or organizing skill, but to a God who has changed people’s hearts.
December 25 - Revelation 16
The seven bowls of God’s wrath (Rev. 16), containing the seven last plagues (see also Rev. 15), are poured out on the earth. Doubtless much of the language is symbol-laden; some of it is transparent, some of it more difficult to understand. Here I wish to focus on one clause that is repeated. When the fourth angel poured out his bowl, the people “cursed the name of God, who had control over these plagues, but they refused to repent and glorify him” (Rev. 16:9, italics added). Similarly after the fifth bowl: people “gnawed their tongues in agony and cursed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, but they refused to repent of what they had done” (Rev. 16:11, italics added).
We must reflect on these somber passages.
(1) They occur immediately after the semi-poetical lines of the previous verses: “You are just in these judgments, you who are and who were, the Holy One, because you have so judged; for they have shed the blood of your saints and prophets, and have given them blood to drink as they deserve.… Yes, Lord God Almighty, true and just are your judgments” (Rev. 16:5–7). We have come upon this theme before. If God ignores the persistent attacks on his covenant people, if he pretends that the massive evils that have been perpetrated in the world never happened, he himself is diminished: he is at best amoral, perhaps immoral.
(2) In some ways, the terrible words of Revelation 16:9, 11 explain something of hell itself. Hell is not filled with people who have learned their lesson. It is filled with people who still refuse to repent. Like those who suffer from these plagues, they suffer and curse God because of their suffering, but they refuse to repent of what they have done. That is what hell is like: an ongoing cycle of sin, rebellion, judgment, sin, rebellion, judgment, world without end.
(3) These passages of horrible judgment must be seen in the framework of the entire book of Revelation. Already Revelation 5 has drawn attention to the Lion/Lamb whose triumphant suffering has rescued men and women from every tribe and language and people and nation. Revelation ends with an invitation: the Spirit and the Bride (another word for the church, the people of God) still cry “Come!” (Rev. 22:17). “And let him who hears say, ‘Come!’ Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life” (Rev. 22:17).
It is written: “Let him who does wrong continue to do wrong; let him who is vile continue to be vile; let him who does right continue to do right; and let him who is holy continue to be holy” (Rev. 22:11).
December 26 - Revelation 17
The vision of the prostitute of Revelation 17 is replete with colorful language that has confounded many an interpreter. Yet the main lines are reasonably clear, and even the more disputed points are not completely obscure. Here we may reflect on three matters:
(1) Her basic identification to any reader in the first century would not have been in doubt. Reference to the seven hills on which the woman sits (Rev. 17:9), plus the explicit statement that the woman “is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth” (Rev. 17:18), would identify her with Rome.
(2) Formally, she is identified in slightly obscure terms: “Mystery: Babylon the Great, the Mother of Prostitutes and of the Abominations of the Earth” (Rev. 17:5). Historical Babylon was by this point a ruin of a place, a relatively small and certainly enfeebled center without significant influence. But Babylon had stood in Old Testament times for all that was pagan, powerful, self-promoting, and vile. Babylon was the city that had sent Judah and Jerusalem into exile (however much the people of God had earned the judgment). Now the ancient city’s name is transferred to Rome, the new geopolitical center. The word prostitutes is not in the first instance referring to ordinary human prostitutes, but to spiritual prostitution (once again drawn from the Old Testament). “The mother of all X” is a Semitic way of saying something like “the archetype of all X.” And at the time, Rome was certainly, in this sense, the mother of all spiritual prostitution, the fount of the abominations of the earth. The title was merited not only because of her paganism, political corruption, endless violence and perversion, extraordinary wealth and wretched poverty, but also because this was the center where a human being, the current Caesar, was addressed on minted coins as “Our Lord and God,” and from which emanated the political will that was increasingly directed against the people of God.
(3) The seven heads of this prostitute, we are told, point in two directions. On the one hand, they point to the seven hills of Rome. They also point to seven kings, five of whom have fallen, “one is, the other has not yet come” (Rev. 17:10). It is extremely difficult to align this list with the known Caesars of the first century. Various connections have been drawn; I am uncertain which one is right. But the beast on which the woman is riding, certainly identified with the beast out of the sea from chapter 13, this beast that receives a fatal wound and then is healed, “is an eighth king” (Rev. 17:11). This suggests to many (rightly, I think) a manifestation of evil beyond the Roman Empire.
December 27 - Revelation 18
If Revelation 17 exposes the abominations of “Babylon,” Revelation 18 announces her imminent destruction. Much of the language is drawn from Old Testament passages that predict the destruction of historic Babylon or some other pagan city characterized by corruption, violence, and idolatry.
Read the chapter again, slowly and reflectively. It is worth remembering that although Rome faced several major reverses during the ensuing three hundred years, it was not until the time of Augustine that the city was thoroughly sacked by the barbarians to the north. So much of the description of this chapter came to quite brutal and literal fulfillment. But by that time, Christianity had itself become the state religion, and many Christians therefore found the sacking difficult to accept, let alone explain.
It was Augustine who wrote a book that set the sacking of Rome in a theological context that helped Christians make sense of it all. His volume The City of God traces out two cities, the city of God and the city of man. (See the meditation for January 9.) These categories for him become the controlling typology not only for his rapid scan of biblical history, but for his analysis of good and evil within history. The work is masterful and deserves close reading even today.
Above all, Augustine warns us against associating the church and the Gospel too closely with the cities and kingdoms of this world, cities that are all temporal and temporary and slated for destruction, hopelessly compromised. By contrast, Christians should identify themselves with the new Jerusalem, the city of the great King, the Jerusalem that is above, whose builder and maker is God.
Getting these matters right is never easy or simple. “Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues” (Rev. 18:4). In the context of the book of Revelation, this is a compelling exhortation not to align with any of “Babylon’s” corroding riches and perverted values. One must “come out” and “leave” this doomed city which stands under the judgment of Almighty God. But these words have been used to justify second- and third-degree separation, as if that is what the Apocalypse were teaching. If some enjoy Babylon so much they end up being destroyed with her, others expect to build their own centers entirely removed from Babylon’s corroding influence, without perceiving that until Jesus returns the people of God must constantly be tugged in different directions by the city of God and by the city of God’s rebellious image-bearers. Our ultimate hope is in God himself, who not only introduces the new Jerusalem (Rev. 21–22), but who brings down this “mother of prostitutes” in his own sovereign judgment.
December 28 - Revelation 19
Revelation 19 is divided into two parts. In the first part, John hears the roar of a great crowd in heaven shouting out various lines of unrestrained praise, joined by various others in antiphonal unity. The first stanza of adoration (Rev. 19:1–3) praises God because he has condemned the great prostitute (see the reflections for December 26–27), thus demonstrating the truth and justice of his judgments (Rev. 19:2). This stanza elicits a chorus: “Hallelujah! The smoke from her goes up for ever and ever” (Rev. 19:3), and the elders around the throne join in adoring approbation (Rev. 19:4). A voice from the throne exhorts all God’s servants to join in praise—“you who fear him, both small and great” (Rev. 19:5)—and again John hears a vast multitude in the thunderous acclamation of worship. Now the focus is less on God’s justice in condemning the prostitute, and more on the sheer glory of the reign of “our Lord God Almighty” and on the imminent “wedding of the Lamb” (Rev. 19:6–8).
The second part of the chapter depicts Jesus in highly symbolic categories. Once again it is important to remind ourselves how apocalyptic can mix its metaphors. He who from chapter 5 on is referred to most commonly as the Lamb (a designation that is still very common in chapters 21–22) is now presented as a warrior riding a white horse. This warrior is called “Faithful and True” (Rev. 19:11); his name is “the Word of God” (Rev. 19:13; compare John 1:1, 14), and his title is “King of kings and Lord of lords” (Rev. 19:16). He leads the armies of heaven in the final assault on the two beasts (i.e., on the beast and the false prophet) and on all who bear their mark. His weapon is a sharp sword that comes out of his mouth: he needs only speak to win. It is he who “treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty” (Rev. 19:15), which returns us to the terrifying image of Revelation 14:19–20.
In one sense, Revelation 19 does not advance the plotline of the book of Revelation. It does not try to do so. We have already been told that God destroys the great prostitute, that those who bear the mark of the beast must face the wrath of God, and so forth. What it adds—and this is vital—is the entirely salutary reminder that God is in absolute control, that he is to be praised for his just judgments on all that is evil, and that the agent who destroys all opposition in the end is none other than Jesus Christ. Moreover, all of this is conveyed not only in the spectacular language of apocalyptic, but with the exulting tongue of enthusiastic praise. Implicitly we readers are invited to join in, even if at this stage we do so by faith and not by sight.
December 29 - 2 Chronicles 34
In the meditation for November 9, I briefly reflected on the reforming zeal of Josiah, who led the last attempt at large-scale reformation in Judah (2 Kings 22). About three-quarters of a century had passed since the death of Hezekiah, but much of this was presided over by Manasseh, whose reign of more than half a century was almost entirely devoted to pagan evil. Now we return to the same event, this time recorded in 2 Chronicles 34. Here we may pick up some additional and complementary lessons.
(1) The rediscovery of the book of the Law (probably Deuteronomy) in the rubbish of the temple discloses to Josiah how dangerous is Judah’s position: the wrath of God hangs over her head. Josiah tears his clothes, repents, and orders reform. Moreover, he instructs his attendants to inquire of the prophetess Huldah (2 Chron. 34:22) as to how imminent these dangers are. God’s response is that disaster and judgment on Jerusalem are now inevitable—“all the curses written in the book that has been read in the presence of the king of Judah” (2 Chron. 34:24). The pattern of deliberate and repeated covenantal breach has become so sustained and horrific that judgment must come. However, the Lord adds, “Because your heart was responsive and you humbled yourself before God when you heard what he spoke against this place and its people, and because you humbled yourself before me and tore your robes and wept in my presence, I have heard you” (2 Chron. 34:27)—and Josiah is assured that the impending disaster will not occur during his lifetime.
There are two obvious lessons here. First, we are afforded a glimpse of what God expects from us if we live in a time of cataclysmic declension: not philosophizing, but self-humbling, transparent repentance, tears, contrition. Second, as so often in the Bible, precisely because God is so slow to anger and so forbearing, he is more eager to suspend and delay the judgment that is the necessary correlative of his holiness than we are to beg him for mercy.
(2) The picture of the king himself calling together the elders of Judah and solemnly reading to them the Scripture (2 Chron. 34:29–31) is enormously moving. There is nothing that our generation needs more than to hear the Word of God—and this at a time of biblical illiteracy rising at an astonishing rate. Moreover, it needs to hear Christian leaders personally submitting to Scripture, personally reading and teaching Scripture—not in veiled ways that merely assume some sort of heritage of Christian teaching while actually focusing on just about anything else, but in ways that are reverent, exemplary, comprehensive, insistent, persistent. Nothing, nothing at all, is more urgent.
December 20 - Revelation 11
Throughout the book of Revelation there are occasional visions of the end or of the throne room of God that anticipate the last two chapters. In other words, the line of development in Revelation is not always linear. The anticipation of victory, glory, and the perspective of the Almighty are sometimes placed in the context of the darkest scenes of judgment: e.g., Revelation 14:1–5, in the context of chapters 12–14.
When the seventh trumpet sounds (Rev. 11:15–19), the veil is rolled back a little to permit a glimpse of just such a scene—not in this case of the new heaven and the new earth, but of the reign of God over these scenes of terrible judgment. I may draw attention to two elements.
First, the notion of the kingdom of God is a dynamic one and changes its precise significance in various contexts. Here loud voices in heaven proclaim: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever” (Rev. 11:15). This suggests that there was a time before which this divine “kingdom” over this lost world had not begun. So what is in view is certainly not the universal kingdom of God’s providential rule. Nor is this the onset of Jesus’ reign, as inaugurated by his resurrection and exaltation. True, at that point all authority became his in heaven and earth (Matt. 28:18). Nevertheless, that reign is so exercised that it is still contested. What the following verses suggest is that God now so takes his great power as to destroy those who have destroyed his people. “The time has come for judging the dead, and for rewarding your servants the prophets and your saints and those who reverence your name, both small and great—and for destroying those who destroy the earth” (Rev. 11:18). What this announces is the imminence of the final exercise of authority that shatters all residual opposition and judges all with perfect justice.
Second, we have already seen that mixed metaphors are characteristic of apocalyptic literature. Here in 11:19, God’s temple in heaven is opened, and within the temple the ark of the covenant is seen, accompanied by an awesome storm. Terrible storms accompanying God’s great acts of self-disclosure spring from what took place at Sinai; something similar is found in the vision of 4:5. The point of temple, ark, and storm in this verse is that God himself is present and reigning. By contrast, in the vision of chapters 21–22, there is no need for a temple in heaven, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple (Rev. 21:22). Only pedants will perceive a contradiction.
December 21 - Revelation 12
The vision of Revelation 12 provides the ultimate cause of the ongoing tribulations of the people of God. That cause is nothing less than the rage of Satan.
The woman in this chapter is not Mary, but a figure representing the people of God. From her springs Jesus, the son “who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter” (Rev. 12:5). Yet she is not simply Israel, for after Jesus ascends to God, the woman is left behind with “the rest of her offspring—those who obey God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus” (Rev. 12:17). The woman, then, represents the collective people of God, whether of the old covenant or of the new.
Satan in this chapter not only fails in his vicious attempt to destroy Jesus (Rev. 12:4–5), but he is defeated by Michael and thrown out of heaven (Rev. 12:7–9). He is hurled to the earth (Rev. 12:9). Raging against this restriction (Rev. 12:13), raging as well “because he knows that his time is short” (Rev. 12:12) before his utter destruction, he is filled with fury against the woman and her offspring. Much of the rest of the chapter describes his attack on the woman and her children—on us Christians!—in symbol-laden language drawn from the Old Testament.
Among his attacks are accusations designed both to destroy our confidence and to engage God’s wrath against people as sinful as we are: Satan is “the accuser of [the] brothers” (Rev. 12:10). But in one crucial verse (Rev. 12:11), John tells us how these believers overcome the devil.
(1) “They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb.” The preposition translated as by in the NIV should be rendered “on the ground of.” When all his accusations are brought before us—so many of them entirely justified, if we gauge things only by the quality of our faithfulness—Satan is silenced when we insist that our acceptance before God is grounded not in ourselves but in the death of Jesus Christ. “Who is he that condemns?” Paul exultantly asks. “Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us” (Rom. 8:34). We neither have nor need another ground for our acquittal.
(2) “They overcame him by … the word of their testimony.” This does not mean that they frequently gave their testimonies. It means, rather, that they constantly bore testimony to Jesus Christ; in short, they constantly proclaimed the Gospel. That is what spells Satan’s defeat. Keep silent, and Satan wins.
(3) “They did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.” You cannot defeat an opponent who is not only willing to die, but for whom death means winning (Phil. 1:21).
December 22 - Revelation 13
It turns out that Satan has two unholy beasts to assist him, one that comes out of the sea (Rev. 13:1–10), and the other out of the earth (Rev. 13:11–18). Together they constitute an unholy triumvirate that in some ways apes the Trinity.
Admittedly, many of the apocalyptic symbols in this chapter have been interpreted in mutually exclusive ways by different schools of thought. It is entirely beyond these brief meditations to defend a particular structure. In my view, however, these beasts represent recurring historical manifestations of evil—in the one case, evil in its guise as outright opposition against the people of God, and in the other, evil in its guise as religious deception. (It is not for nothing that the beast out of the earth is described later in this book as “the false prophet”: e.g., Rev. 19:20.) Satan deploys not only agents who overtly and viciously attack believers, but also agents whose mission it is to seduce and deceive, if it is possible, the very elect.
Observe one of the extraordinary elements in the description of the first beast. He has received a fatal wound, but the wound has been healed. This sounds incongruous: surely if the wound has been healed, it was not fatal, and if it was fatal then obviously it could not be healed. But this symbolism is meant to describe the repeated historical manifestations of this monster. He emerges in a Nero, in the Roman Emperor, in Innocent III, in a Hitler. In every case, the monster is cut down. Many people think that evil in its worst form has finally been destroyed. The thousand-year Reich lasts a decade and a half: surely this was the war to end all wars. Then the genocide starts again—in the Eastern block, in China, in Cambodia, in Rwanda. The beast receives a fatal wound, but always the beast comes back to life.
Note some of the symbols used to describe the false prophet. He looks like a lamb, but he speaks like a dragon (Rev. 13:11): this probably does not mean that he roars like a dragon and scares everyone off, but that he appears innocent, even though his speech is the speech of the dragon—the “great dragon” of Revelation 12:9, none other than Satan himself. This “lamb” turns out to be Satan’s mouthpiece. He performs miraculous signs and thereby deceives the inhabitants of the earth (Rev. 13:14). There is no suggestion that the signs are mere tricks; miraculous power does not necessarily attest divine power. Ultimately he uses the authority he derives from the first beast to constitute an exclusive identity for his own followers, excluding all others with severe economic sanctions (Rev. 13:16–17). Even little historical knowledge can remember manifestations of such deceitful coercion.
December 23 - Revelation 14
In Revelation 13, we discovered that all those under the authority of the unholy triumvirate have a mark on their foreheads. This means that they can participate in the world order of the dragon and his beasts and be spared the wrath of Satan. Here in Revelation 14, we learn that God’s people also have something on their foreheads—the name of the Lamb and of the Father (Rev. 14:1). These people stand on Mount Zion with the Lamb and are spared all the wrath of the Lamb. By contrast, those with the mark of the beast must now face the wrath of the Lamb, drinking “of the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath” (Rev. 14:10–11).
The imagery comes from quite a different vision, from Ezekiel 9, where Ezekiel sees God instructing a man dressed in linen to put a mark on the foreheads of all the people in Jerusalem who grieve over its sin. When the angelic executioners go through the city, bent on destruction and slaughter, they spare all those who have God’s mark on their foreheads. That imagery has now been adapted in two quite different ways in Revelation. Now everyone has a mark on the forehead. Either you have the mark of the beast, and you are spared the wrath of the beast but must face God’s fury; or you have the mark of the Lamb, which means you are spared God’s fury but you must face the sanctions of the beast.
So whose wrath would you rather face? You will face one or the other. Would you rather face the wrath of Satan, or the wrath of God?
The Lord Jesus taught us that the person to fear is the One who can cast both body and soul into hell (Matt. 10:28). Few passages are more terrifying about that prospect than Revelation 14. We are bluntly told that “the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and his image, or for anyone who receives the mark of his name” (Rev. 14:11). Few passages are more explicit about the eternal longevity of this punishment. The final graphic portrait (Rev. 14:19–20) is unimaginably horrific. In the ancient world, large stone vats with holes punched in the bottom were filled with grapes, and servant girls jumped in and tramped down the grapes, squeezing out the juice that ran out through the holes and was gathered for use in winemaking. But now in the wake of the final harvest, one must assume it is people who are thrown into this vat, for what flows out from “the great winepress of God’s wrath” (Rev. 14:19) is blood, flowing outward for 180 miles.
So, whose wrath would you rather face?
December 24 - 2 Chronicles 29
With the exception of only a few verses, most of the material in 2 Chronicles 29–31 has no parallel in 2 Kings. What these chapters provide is a detailed account of how King Hezekiah went about reinstituting temple worship that was in line with the Law of God delivered through Moses, and then called the covenant people together not only from Judah but even some from Israel to celebrate the Passover in a way that had not been done for some time.
Here we may focus on 2 Chronicles 29. Paganism had taken such a hold on the people that temple service had fallen into disuse. The temple had become a repository for junk; even the doors needed fixing. Still only twenty-five years old, King Hezekiah, in the first month of his reign (2 Chron. 29:3), opened the doors and repaired them. He found some priests and Levites and instructed them to consecrate themselves according to the rites established in the Law, and then to set about cleaning, repairing, and reconsecrating the temple. Moreover, Hezekiah recognized that the past failures in this respect had invited the wrath of God (2 Chron. 29:6). He was not so foolish as to think the failures were merely a matter of ritual: he saw the larger picture, but perceived, rightly, that the utter neglect of the ritual demonstrated that the hearts of priests, Levites, people, and king alike were entirely alienated from God. His open intention was to reverse this pattern and inaugurate a covenant with the Lord (2 Chron. 29:10).
The rest of the chapter details what was done. More priests and Levites came on board. The musical instruments secured by David were restored to use. Even small deviations from the Law are recorded, such as the permission to allow the Levites to help with the skinning of the animals for the sacrifices, owing to the fact that at this point too few priests were consecrated (2 Chron. 29:32–34).
“So the service of the temple of the LORD was reestablished. Hezekiah and all the people rejoiced at what God had brought about for his people, because it was done so quickly” (2 Chron. 29:35–36).
So it is when genuine revival comes in considerable proportion. Inevitably, God raises up a leader whose prophetic insistence proves irresistible, first to a few, and then to a great crowd. And in the best instances it is not long before men and women look back and marvel at how fast the face of things was massively transformed. They conclude, rightly, that the only explanation is that God himself has done it—that is, that the transformation is not finally attributable to reforming zeal or organizing skill, but to a God who has changed people’s hearts.
December 25 - Revelation 16
The seven bowls of God’s wrath (Rev. 16), containing the seven last plagues (see also Rev. 15), are poured out on the earth. Doubtless much of the language is symbol-laden; some of it is transparent, some of it more difficult to understand. Here I wish to focus on one clause that is repeated. When the fourth angel poured out his bowl, the people “cursed the name of God, who had control over these plagues, but they refused to repent and glorify him” (Rev. 16:9, italics added). Similarly after the fifth bowl: people “gnawed their tongues in agony and cursed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, but they refused to repent of what they had done” (Rev. 16:11, italics added).
We must reflect on these somber passages.
(1) They occur immediately after the semi-poetical lines of the previous verses: “You are just in these judgments, you who are and who were, the Holy One, because you have so judged; for they have shed the blood of your saints and prophets, and have given them blood to drink as they deserve.… Yes, Lord God Almighty, true and just are your judgments” (Rev. 16:5–7). We have come upon this theme before. If God ignores the persistent attacks on his covenant people, if he pretends that the massive evils that have been perpetrated in the world never happened, he himself is diminished: he is at best amoral, perhaps immoral.
(2) In some ways, the terrible words of Revelation 16:9, 11 explain something of hell itself. Hell is not filled with people who have learned their lesson. It is filled with people who still refuse to repent. Like those who suffer from these plagues, they suffer and curse God because of their suffering, but they refuse to repent of what they have done. That is what hell is like: an ongoing cycle of sin, rebellion, judgment, sin, rebellion, judgment, world without end.
(3) These passages of horrible judgment must be seen in the framework of the entire book of Revelation. Already Revelation 5 has drawn attention to the Lion/Lamb whose triumphant suffering has rescued men and women from every tribe and language and people and nation. Revelation ends with an invitation: the Spirit and the Bride (another word for the church, the people of God) still cry “Come!” (Rev. 22:17). “And let him who hears say, ‘Come!’ Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life” (Rev. 22:17).
It is written: “Let him who does wrong continue to do wrong; let him who is vile continue to be vile; let him who does right continue to do right; and let him who is holy continue to be holy” (Rev. 22:11).
December 26 - Revelation 17
The vision of the prostitute of Revelation 17 is replete with colorful language that has confounded many an interpreter. Yet the main lines are reasonably clear, and even the more disputed points are not completely obscure. Here we may reflect on three matters:
(1) Her basic identification to any reader in the first century would not have been in doubt. Reference to the seven hills on which the woman sits (Rev. 17:9), plus the explicit statement that the woman “is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth” (Rev. 17:18), would identify her with Rome.
(2) Formally, she is identified in slightly obscure terms: “Mystery: Babylon the Great, the Mother of Prostitutes and of the Abominations of the Earth” (Rev. 17:5). Historical Babylon was by this point a ruin of a place, a relatively small and certainly enfeebled center without significant influence. But Babylon had stood in Old Testament times for all that was pagan, powerful, self-promoting, and vile. Babylon was the city that had sent Judah and Jerusalem into exile (however much the people of God had earned the judgment). Now the ancient city’s name is transferred to Rome, the new geopolitical center. The word prostitutes is not in the first instance referring to ordinary human prostitutes, but to spiritual prostitution (once again drawn from the Old Testament). “The mother of all X” is a Semitic way of saying something like “the archetype of all X.” And at the time, Rome was certainly, in this sense, the mother of all spiritual prostitution, the fount of the abominations of the earth. The title was merited not only because of her paganism, political corruption, endless violence and perversion, extraordinary wealth and wretched poverty, but also because this was the center where a human being, the current Caesar, was addressed on minted coins as “Our Lord and God,” and from which emanated the political will that was increasingly directed against the people of God.
(3) The seven heads of this prostitute, we are told, point in two directions. On the one hand, they point to the seven hills of Rome. They also point to seven kings, five of whom have fallen, “one is, the other has not yet come” (Rev. 17:10). It is extremely difficult to align this list with the known Caesars of the first century. Various connections have been drawn; I am uncertain which one is right. But the beast on which the woman is riding, certainly identified with the beast out of the sea from chapter 13, this beast that receives a fatal wound and then is healed, “is an eighth king” (Rev. 17:11). This suggests to many (rightly, I think) a manifestation of evil beyond the Roman Empire.
December 27 - Revelation 18
If Revelation 17 exposes the abominations of “Babylon,” Revelation 18 announces her imminent destruction. Much of the language is drawn from Old Testament passages that predict the destruction of historic Babylon or some other pagan city characterized by corruption, violence, and idolatry.
Read the chapter again, slowly and reflectively. It is worth remembering that although Rome faced several major reverses during the ensuing three hundred years, it was not until the time of Augustine that the city was thoroughly sacked by the barbarians to the north. So much of the description of this chapter came to quite brutal and literal fulfillment. But by that time, Christianity had itself become the state religion, and many Christians therefore found the sacking difficult to accept, let alone explain.
It was Augustine who wrote a book that set the sacking of Rome in a theological context that helped Christians make sense of it all. His volume The City of God traces out two cities, the city of God and the city of man. (See the meditation for January 9.) These categories for him become the controlling typology not only for his rapid scan of biblical history, but for his analysis of good and evil within history. The work is masterful and deserves close reading even today.
Above all, Augustine warns us against associating the church and the Gospel too closely with the cities and kingdoms of this world, cities that are all temporal and temporary and slated for destruction, hopelessly compromised. By contrast, Christians should identify themselves with the new Jerusalem, the city of the great King, the Jerusalem that is above, whose builder and maker is God.
Getting these matters right is never easy or simple. “Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues” (Rev. 18:4). In the context of the book of Revelation, this is a compelling exhortation not to align with any of “Babylon’s” corroding riches and perverted values. One must “come out” and “leave” this doomed city which stands under the judgment of Almighty God. But these words have been used to justify second- and third-degree separation, as if that is what the Apocalypse were teaching. If some enjoy Babylon so much they end up being destroyed with her, others expect to build their own centers entirely removed from Babylon’s corroding influence, without perceiving that until Jesus returns the people of God must constantly be tugged in different directions by the city of God and by the city of God’s rebellious image-bearers. Our ultimate hope is in God himself, who not only introduces the new Jerusalem (Rev. 21–22), but who brings down this “mother of prostitutes” in his own sovereign judgment.
December 28 - Revelation 19
Revelation 19 is divided into two parts. In the first part, John hears the roar of a great crowd in heaven shouting out various lines of unrestrained praise, joined by various others in antiphonal unity. The first stanza of adoration (Rev. 19:1–3) praises God because he has condemned the great prostitute (see the reflections for December 26–27), thus demonstrating the truth and justice of his judgments (Rev. 19:2). This stanza elicits a chorus: “Hallelujah! The smoke from her goes up for ever and ever” (Rev. 19:3), and the elders around the throne join in adoring approbation (Rev. 19:4). A voice from the throne exhorts all God’s servants to join in praise—“you who fear him, both small and great” (Rev. 19:5)—and again John hears a vast multitude in the thunderous acclamation of worship. Now the focus is less on God’s justice in condemning the prostitute, and more on the sheer glory of the reign of “our Lord God Almighty” and on the imminent “wedding of the Lamb” (Rev. 19:6–8).
The second part of the chapter depicts Jesus in highly symbolic categories. Once again it is important to remind ourselves how apocalyptic can mix its metaphors. He who from chapter 5 on is referred to most commonly as the Lamb (a designation that is still very common in chapters 21–22) is now presented as a warrior riding a white horse. This warrior is called “Faithful and True” (Rev. 19:11); his name is “the Word of God” (Rev. 19:13; compare John 1:1, 14), and his title is “King of kings and Lord of lords” (Rev. 19:16). He leads the armies of heaven in the final assault on the two beasts (i.e., on the beast and the false prophet) and on all who bear their mark. His weapon is a sharp sword that comes out of his mouth: he needs only speak to win. It is he who “treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty” (Rev. 19:15), which returns us to the terrifying image of Revelation 14:19–20.
In one sense, Revelation 19 does not advance the plotline of the book of Revelation. It does not try to do so. We have already been told that God destroys the great prostitute, that those who bear the mark of the beast must face the wrath of God, and so forth. What it adds—and this is vital—is the entirely salutary reminder that God is in absolute control, that he is to be praised for his just judgments on all that is evil, and that the agent who destroys all opposition in the end is none other than Jesus Christ. Moreover, all of this is conveyed not only in the spectacular language of apocalyptic, but with the exulting tongue of enthusiastic praise. Implicitly we readers are invited to join in, even if at this stage we do so by faith and not by sight.
December 29 - 2 Chronicles 34
In the meditation for November 9, I briefly reflected on the reforming zeal of Josiah, who led the last attempt at large-scale reformation in Judah (2 Kings 22). About three-quarters of a century had passed since the death of Hezekiah, but much of this was presided over by Manasseh, whose reign of more than half a century was almost entirely devoted to pagan evil. Now we return to the same event, this time recorded in 2 Chronicles 34. Here we may pick up some additional and complementary lessons.
(1) The rediscovery of the book of the Law (probably Deuteronomy) in the rubbish of the temple discloses to Josiah how dangerous is Judah’s position: the wrath of God hangs over her head. Josiah tears his clothes, repents, and orders reform. Moreover, he instructs his attendants to inquire of the prophetess Huldah (2 Chron. 34:22) as to how imminent these dangers are. God’s response is that disaster and judgment on Jerusalem are now inevitable—“all the curses written in the book that has been read in the presence of the king of Judah” (2 Chron. 34:24). The pattern of deliberate and repeated covenantal breach has become so sustained and horrific that judgment must come. However, the Lord adds, “Because your heart was responsive and you humbled yourself before God when you heard what he spoke against this place and its people, and because you humbled yourself before me and tore your robes and wept in my presence, I have heard you” (2 Chron. 34:27)—and Josiah is assured that the impending disaster will not occur during his lifetime.
There are two obvious lessons here. First, we are afforded a glimpse of what God expects from us if we live in a time of cataclysmic declension: not philosophizing, but self-humbling, transparent repentance, tears, contrition. Second, as so often in the Bible, precisely because God is so slow to anger and so forbearing, he is more eager to suspend and delay the judgment that is the necessary correlative of his holiness than we are to beg him for mercy.
(2) The picture of the king himself calling together the elders of Judah and solemnly reading to them the Scripture (2 Chron. 34:29–31) is enormously moving. There is nothing that our generation needs more than to hear the Word of God—and this at a time of biblical illiteracy rising at an astonishing rate. Moreover, it needs to hear Christian leaders personally submitting to Scripture, personally reading and teaching Scripture—not in veiled ways that merely assume some sort of heritage of Christian teaching while actually focusing on just about anything else, but in ways that are reverent, exemplary, comprehensive, insistent, persistent. Nothing, nothing at all, is more urgent.