We’re now on the cusp of Revelation 11, perhaps the most bewildering chapter in the Bible.
We’ve learned about the crucial scroll (introduced in chapter 5) which contains God’s plan for establishing his kingdom over all creation.
There were then two series of seven – the seal openings and the trumpets. These visions unveiled God’s judgments against evil. Importantly, they were partial judgments intended to bring about repentance. But judgments alone failed to bring about the desired result: humans did not stop worshiping idols, nor did they turn away from their violence, sexual immorality, sorcery or stealing. (9:20-21)
In chapter 10, the seven thunders announced further judgments, but these were revoked, because judgments alone had been ineffective. Instead, the contents of the scroll shall be revealed.
John was commanded to take the scroll from the hand of the angel bestriding land and sea. The angel tells John, “Take it and eat it. It will turn your stomach sour, but in your mouth it will be as sweet as honey.” This is another moment in the book of Revelation which many readers find bizarre and incomprehensible. What does it mean?
This scene is patterned after Ezekiel’s prophetic commissioning. Ezekiel envisions a scroll which he is commanded to eat. The scroll represents God’s message which the prophet must deliver to the people of Israel. By “eating” the scroll, the prophet absorbs the divine word so that he might faithfully proclaim it.
As the very words of God, the scroll “tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth.” But not all is well, because Ezekiel was sent to a rebellious nation whose hearts were “obstinate and stubborn.” God’s message to sinful Israel contains “words of lament and mourning and woe.” Moreover, Ezekiel is warned that the House of Israel will not be willing to listen. The sweetness of God’s word is thus tinged with the bitter reality that the message will be rejected.
The scroll which John is commanded to eat is also a mixture of sweet and sour. Sweet because it contains God’s plan to gather the nations into his kingdom. But sour too because it will involve the suffering of his people.
In the last blog, we began to explore the theme of suffering, drawing especially upon the book of Daniel. Daniel was granted a vision of beasts arising from the sea which represent a succession of blasphemous pagan empires. The last beast would wage war upon God’s saints and defeat them. God’s people would be given into his hands “for a time, two times and half a time.”
The revelation given to John via the scroll will build upon Daniel’s vision. The scroll’s contents are finally revealed in chapter 11. This is a crucial junction in the book of Revelation! We’ve been anticipating the scroll’s message since chapter 5. Unfortunately, most readers of chapter 11 are totally befuddled. Let’s try and sort things out.
John is first given a measuring rod and told to measure God’s temple and altar. But “the outer court” is not to be measured; it will be “given to the nations” who will “trample the holy city for 42 months.”
The construction of Israel’s first temple was begun by King Solomon, probably in 967 BC. This magnificent edifice was destroyed in 586 BC, when the Babylonians under King Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem. After the exile, a much more modest second temple was built in 515 BC.
Almost half a millennium later (in 20 BC), Herod the Great, Rome’s designated client-king of Judea, launched an ambitious project to rebuild the temple. The existing sanctuary was torn down and within 18 months replaced by a larger version. The new temple consisted of beautiful white limestone and gold which could be seen from miles away. The construction of massive retaining walls allowed Herod to double the size of the temple mount. Work on the entire temple complex would proceed for decades and would not be completed until 63 AD.
Herod’s temple was the site of a sharp confrontation between Jesus and the Judeans, recorded in the gospel of John: “Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days.’ The Jews replied, ‘It has taken 46 years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?’ But the temple he had spoken of was his body.”
In 66 AD, the Jews staged a large-scale uprising against Rome. After four years of brutal warfare, the Romans breached the walls of Jerusalem in August of 70 AD. Herod’s temple was razed and burned.
John composed the book of Revelation during the latter years of the reign of the Roman Emperor Domitian (81-96 AD). At the time of writing, Herod’s temple had been gone for over two decades.
The loss of the temple was a catastrophe for the Jewish people, for that was the place where the presence of God had dwelt among them. Even to the present day, Jews commemorate Tisha B’Av as the day when the second temple was demolished. (Tisha B’Av refers to the 9th day of the Hebrew month of Av, which in our Gregorian calendar corresponds to late July or early August.) Jews consider this the saddest time of the year, a day dedicated to fasting and mourning. The reading of Torah is limited to the book of Lamentations.
But John and the early Christians held a much different perspective. They had come to believe that the physical temple which stood in Jerusalem was merely a signpost, pointing forward to a much greater truth. The Christians believed that the presence of the living God had come to dwell among them in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
This conviction can be seen clearly in the prologue of John. (The gospel was written by the Apostle John. Many people think that the Apostle wrote the book of Revelation too, but there is good evidence that the author was a different John.) John writes, “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” The Greek word for dwelling is the same language that the Old Testament used to describe how God dwelt among the people of Israel, first in the tabernacle and then in the temple.
Thus, Christians believed that Jesus had replaced the temple. This same understanding can be found throughout the New Testament. To the church in Colosse, the Apostle Paul wrote, “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in [the Son.]” Later in the same epistle, Paul declared, “for in the Messiah, all the fullness of the deity lives in bodily form.”
This nicely explains Jesus’ cryptic statement in John 2. While the Jews were focused on Herod’s temple, Jesus was hinting at a new reality: he was now the place where God’s Spirit dwelt.
Even more startlingly, the first Christians believed that God’s very presence and power had come to dwell, not just in Jesus, but also within his faithful followers. We see this in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians: “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?”
Therefore, when John writes about God’s temple in Revelation 11:1-2, he is referring to the “temple” which consists of all God’s people loyal to Jesus the Messiah. He had no interest in Herod’s temple which had been ruined long before; nor did he have any interest in any future physical temple which might or might not be built in Jerusalem.
Why then is John commanded to “measure” the temple? In prophetic literature, measuring something was a symbolic action which marked out that object either for protection or destruction.
In this case, John measures the temple sanctuary consisting of the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place. These were the most sacred precincts to which only the priests had access. This corresponds with John’s view that Jesus had made his people “a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father.”
John is also commanded not to measure “the outer court of the temple…It is given to the nations, and they will trample the holy city for 42 months.”
John is prophesying that God’s “temple” (his people) would be “given over” to the nations. That is, because of their loyalty to the Messiah, they would suffer persecution and possibly even martyrdom at the hands of those in rebellion against the one true God.
This was a sobering message for the churches to whom John wrote. John wanted them to be prepared because a time of severe tribulation was rapidly approaching, a time when their loyalties would be tested to the limit.
Yet this prophecy also came with an amazing promise. The innermost parts of the temple had been marked out for protection. This meant that God would not abandon his people. Yes, they would face certain persecution and possibly even death. But ultimately, victory and salvation would be theirs.
