Two Burdensome Beasts

I would not have chosen Revelation as my summer study. 

My attitude has always been that we don’t really know who wrote it or why and, certainly, it was not written for twenty-first century readers. So why bother?

The last time I remember reading Revelation was in 1969. I was in college taking a course in the poetry of William Butler Yeats. A cursory understanding of Revelation was necessary to understand Yeats’ pessimistic poem, “The Second Coming.”

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   
The darkness drops again; but now I know   
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Maybe you had to dwell in the psychedelic sixties and attend a conservative Christian college to feel the full impact of those images. Experts argue about what Yeats, an Irish Protestant, is saying. He seems to be asking what comes next now that two millennia of simple faith are being torn apart by science, the theory of evolution, democracy, and the breakdown of class systems. Obviously, Yeats was not optimistic.

Whenever I re-read this poem the image of the rough bast slouching toward Bethlehem haunts my unconscious mind.

But was John – whoever he was – any more optimistic? His beasts do not slouch. They explode off the page with perfect posture.

So who are the beasts of John?

Beats me.

I said as much when I posted on Facebook last week that I was preaching on Revelation 13 Sunday and prayed I would understand it before I stepped before the mic.

Immediately my Facebook friends leaped to my aid with a flurry of posts.

Alan, a learned scholar, warned me about the second beast with its famous mark, six hundred sixty-six.

“You can’t understand Revelation without assistance from two or three good commentaries,” he warned. “It isn’t self-explanatory.”

“On the other hand,” Alan re-posted, “(the beast) is obviously Donald Trump.”

But what does 666 mean?

My friend Doug, a Hebrew scholar, said, “My own interpretation is (the) numerical substitution in the Hebrew alphabet: W = 6, S = 60; QW = 600.”

That seems logical. But why?

My friend Vince also came to my rescue. Vince is a personal hero of mine because we started out in the same class at Eastern University but he dropped out. Nearly 50 years later he went back to Eastern to finish his baccalaureate degree: a daunting task for anyone of a certain age, namely, my age.

Vince quoted from Michael J. Gorman’s Reading Revelation Responsibly:

The most prominent theory is that (666) is the numerical value of "Nero Caesar." The Greek "Neron Kaisar," transliterated into Hebrew is "NRWNQSR." The numerical value of the Hebrew letters adds up to 666. In some manuscripts, the number is 616, relying on a transliteration of "Nero Kaiser" to "NRWQSR."

The Beast is the evil emperor Nero? That works. The infamous persecutor of Christians is certainly anti-Christian if not anti-Christ. Be that as it may, the term antichrist never appears in Revelation. It appears in first and second John. But this John – not necessarily the writer of Revelation – warns of many antichrists, which certainly muddies the theological waters. 

So perhaps the best advice I received was from my friend and former ecumenical colleague Kurt, a Lutheran layman and political activist in Iowa:

“If and when you get Revelation figured out … well, let’s just say you might be the first,” Kurt wrote.

He added his own explanation of John’s visions: “My personal theory: an early discovery of the use of LSD.”

The one clear reality of Revelation 13 is that it is, as Lutheran Seminary New Testament Professor Craig R. Koester points out, one of the most read, most discussed, and most debated parts of the book. There are thousands of theories about what it means, some logical, some insightful, some wacko. So it all comes down to this: it isn’t self explanatory, and maybe it is all a wild LSD trip on Mount Patmos.

As an amateur cartoonist I have spent some time trying to draw the strange creatures of Revelation: the lamb of God, the four horsemen, the two beasts of Revelation 13. That is why I like Professor Koester’s explanation so much:

The most helpful way to think about the word pictures in this passage is by comparing them to the word pictures used in political cartoons. In American media you find an elephant and donkey representing political parties, a bull and a bear representing the stock market trends.

Some of you may remember Herbert Block, the Washington Post cartoonist who drew under the name of Herblock.

Herblock had two notable characters: a benign Uncle Sam who represented good-will and peaceful aims in the world, and a snarling, unshaven, uni-browed atomic bomb representing danger and evil. For years readers said the uni-browed bomb scared the dickens out of them. The cartoons reminded readers to strive for peace over war, good over evil.

If we are able to untangle the knotted quagmire of theories, misinterpretations, psychedelic fantasies, and outright idiocies that obscure the meaning of Revelation we come down to this:

Two burdensome beasts who dare us to figure out who they are.

The beast from the sea representing the invincible powers of tyranny and in justice. 

And the lamb who sacrifices itself to demonstrate its power to destroy evil and free us from its icy grip.

The beast who vanquishes by tyrannical invincibility is conquered by gentle self-sacrifice and the power of the Creator God.

 Then I saw between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. (Revelation 5:6)

Just as Herblock used cartoons to challenge readers to choose good over evil, John is using cartoon-like images to remind his readers who they are: people who cower beneath the forces of destruction or embrace the liberating power of the lamb.

“Now is the judgment of this world,” Jesus said. “Now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” (John 12:31-32)

Amen.

The Four Horsemen Ride Still

 

Long before Hi-Def television brought live athletic events into our living rooms, our grandparents relied on newspapers. 

Only a few sports writers were able to give readers a sense of the true intensity of a game, but one of the best was Grantland Rice. In 1924 he wrote what many believe is the best lead in football history.

Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as Famine, Pestilence, Destruction and Death. These are only aliases. Their real names are Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army football team was swept over the precipice at the Polo Grounds yesterday afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered down on the bewildering panorama spread on the green plain below.

Yesterday (they) struck again as Notre Dame beat the Army, 13 to 7, with a set of backfield stars that ripped and crashed through a strong Army defense with more speed and power than the warring cadets could meet.

The scriptural Four Horsemen are not unknown in the twenty-first century. When the four Cartwrights fiercely galloped their horses into the television camera, millions thought of the Apocalypse. More recently, if you read this week’s New York Daily News, you saw cartoonist Bill Bramhall addition of a fifth horseman adjacent to war, famine, pestilence, and death: MISINFORMATION.

In 2018, Veronica Tate wrote in the Salt Lake City Daily Herald about the four horsemen of American politics. She noted that Republicans and Democrats are locked in a loveless marriage, bound by the four horsemen of Criticism, Contempt, Defensiveness, and Stonewalling.

Mark Rosenberg, President of Florida International University, took a more positive approach by citing four women in FIU’s medical college – an epidemiologist, a nurse-paramedic, an emergency management specialist, and a clinical health services manager – as the Four Women AGAINST the Apocalypse.

The original Four would have been a horrifying image for first century readers, thundering off the parchment on the I-Max screens of their imaginations.

It’s not just the horror of four lusty horses charging off the page, it’s the notion of what they represent:

The White Horse, in lieu of a clarifying footnote we wish John had provided, has sent modern interpreters in several directions. The horseman is thought to represent Christ or, perhaps, the Anti-Christ. Or, perhaps it represents the Roman Empire in its good days. Or – most famously, perhaps, pestilence. 

Some prognosticators speculate the white horse represents war, but most believe that honor goes to the red horse. Its rider is shown with an upraised sword that could be interpreted as attack or a declaration of war. It has also been interpreted as a prediction that the Roman Empire, once so unified and prosperous, is about to divide and begin a long collapse.

The Black Horseman, brandishing scales for weighing, has long been seen as a harbinger of famine.

And the White Horse is death.

None of these images would have surprised John’s readers because they were constantly focused on Christ and the Gospel and their lives within the Roman Empire. They had experienced pestilence, war, famine, and death. They did not have to over-think what John was covertly communicating. The Four Horsemen were not omens of things to come. They were emblems of things they were experiencing every day of their lives.

So it is with us. The horsemen are not so much warning of us horrors to come as reminding us of things that are: war, pandemic, poverty, and death. Instead of horses, the bearers of these omens are the seated braying pundits on Fox News and CNN.

These threats are as real now as they were in the first century and throughout all time. 

Anyone, then or now, who reads about the Four Horsemen and turns away in despair will miss the point John is trying to make. 

Wait. There’s more in the next chapter.

There will come a time, John submits, when those who go through this “great ordeal”

will gather in peace before God.

They will hunger no more, and thirst no more;

    the sun will not strike them,

    nor any scorching heat;

for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd,

    and he will guide them to springs of the water of life,

and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. (Revelation 7:16-17)

This no pie-in-the-sky promise. War, pandemic, poverty and death will not go away. All of us will struggle with health and check book challenges all our lives. We will despair over new virus variants and argue among ourselves about the best way to deal with them. We will face wars, some of us very directly when loved ones are called into harm’s way, others of us as we sit in growing gloom in front of our television sets. 

We will face, in ways that John could not have imagined, the intensifying effects of climate change, including hurricanes like Henri, disappearing shorelines, unbearably hot summers, raging wild fires, rain when it should be snowing in Greenland, and desperately cold winters. 

One observer has suggested that there is a fifth horseman in our day, and that is us, because we are the cause of this latest plague. 

Be that as it may, John is urging his readers – then and now – not to despair. He envisions a glorious future:

After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice, saying,

“Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!” (Revelation 7:9-10)

This is a beautiful poem, of course. It’s a metaphor. The future may not take the form of an international gathering of white-robed people. There may be no actual throne, no lamb in the ovine sense, no palm branches, no syncopated shouting.

But the metaphor does summarize the truth that God sent Jesus to be present with us and share these dangers.

Our redemption by the blood of Christ does not make these menaces go away. But this salvation – by the blood of the metaphorical lamb – gives us the spiritual strength to face these menaces in our earthly lives.

God’s plan, as John is unveiling it in Revelation, is that through the death and resurrection of God’s Son, no one who believes will die.

Those who believe will have the strength to stand amid the pests and perils of earthly life. 

Because, as John assures his readers, “Salvation belongs to our God.”

It's a MET-a-phor. Reading Revelation.

 

“Then I saw … a lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.” – Revelation 5:6b

Try to put an image of this lamb into your head.

It’s scary. This lamb has all the marks of a catastrophic ovine birth defect, a monstrosity that repels our gaze.

With the thought of drawing this creature for a church bulletin illustration, I searched the Internet to see how it had been portrayed in classical art. Also no pretty sights because seven eyes cannot be divided evenly on either side of a lambie’s nose and seven horns look like hideous stalagmites.

Other artists, with a nod to sacrificial symbolism, paint the little lamb laying on its side with it four feet tied painfully together and blood drizzling from its throat. Also not a tasteful image for church bulletins.

As we try to imagine what this lamb looks like, it’s helpful to keep in mind that the author of Revelation – whoever he was – was writing with poetic license.

In this sense, John is a little bit like Elder Cunningham, the spasmodic and woefully uninformed missionary in the musical The Book of Mormon. 

Sent as part of a Mormon mission detail to Uganda, Elder Cunningham is hindered by the fact that he is categorically unfamiliar with scripture or the actual Book of Mormon. When preaching to Ugandan villagers he makes it up as he goes along, substituting actual bible terms with Star-Wars references Mordor and Bobba Fett and claiming Salt Lake City is a myth.

When a naïve young woman realizes these are lies, her faith in God is shattered. But a wise woman in the village reassures her: “It’s a MET-a-phor.”

And that redeems Elder Cunningham’s whacky twaddle because, whatever he’s talking about, he’s glorifying God and talking about good things to come.

When reading Revelation, it’s good to keep that wise woman’s words in mind: It’s a MET-a-phor. And whatever John is talking about, he’s glorifying God and talking about good things to come.

Some of John’s metaphors are easy enough to figure out. The number seven is often used the scripture passages to suggest power or perfection, presumably based on the report that God created the world in seven (metaphorical) days.

The use of a lamb as a symbol of God’s redemptive power probably harkens back to the story of the first Passover in the 12th chapter of Exodus. God tells the Jews to slaughter an unblemished lamb and smear its blood on their doorposts.

For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both human beings and animals; on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the LORD. The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. (Exodus 12:12-13)

The metaphor of a lamb as a sign of God’s salvation would have been familiar to John’s readers. The lamb’s seven eyes and seven horns would have been less likely to appall them because they would have recognized these features as insignia of great power – God’s power.

The super power of seven is a recurring theme throughout this passage. The scroll, itself a recognized repository of important and authoritative information, is sealed with seven seals. That number of seals enhances the significance of whatever information the scroll contains.

Alas, the seals stick like gorilla glue. 

“And I began to weep bitterly [John writes] because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it.”

Members of the seven churches John is writing to may have been up to their ankles in spilled bitter tears. Some are threatened by dangerous adversaries, or torn apart internally by theological debate. Some are diluting their faith to make it more acceptable to judgmental and threatening neighbors. Some no longer find Christianity interesting and go through the motions of worship without real commitment. 

John is writing late in the first century of the common era. It is possible that the thrilling newness of the Gospel message is losing its luster. Many Christians are subject to severe persecution by religious and government authorities. They hold on because they have been promised that Jesus will soon come again to vanquish their enemies and reward them with everlasting life.

But no. Jesus has not come again. Christians are struggling to hold on to their faith in unsafe times and some are beginning to wonder if it is worth it.

They are desperate to hear new promises that all will be well, but God’s word is locked away from them by figurative seals that cannot be broken.

Thus enters the sacrificial lamb of God, evoking the super power to cast the seals aside one by one, the power divinely acquired.

John waxes poetic:

Worthy is the lamb that 

Was slaughtered

To receive power and

Wealth and wisdom

And might

And honor and glory and

Blessing. (Revelation 5:13)

John’s revelation is that fretful Christians can be reassured: the message sealed so absolutely seven times over is the same gospel declared by the Baptizer when the story began.

Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’  I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel. John 1:29

The Revelation of John, so often thought of as a gloomy series of predictions of future wars and calamities precursing the end of the world, is actually a reassurance to fretful Christians:

No matter how hermetically sealed from view the message seems in times of stress, the game plan has not changed.

God so loved the world that God gave God’s only son, so that everyone who believes in Jesus will not die but live eternally.

And that message you can seal in your heart.