The John-Revelation Project

A Faculty Forum of Knox Theological Seminary

At the beginning of the 21st century virtually the entire American evangelical community has been captured by a dispensational, pretribulational, and premillennial eschatology. Best-selling book series and sensational movies, reinforced by endless radio talk programs, promote these fantastic interpretations of biblical prophecy as events coming to pass in our generation.

Unfortunately, the response of the Reformed church to this, thus far, one-sided discussion has been to caution that fantastic interpretations of biblical prophecy, especially concerning the book of Revelation, should be skeptically received. But it should be frankly admitted that we have not offered what we could credibly claim is a defensible interpretation of the last book in the canon.

This faculty forum is an attempt to rectify this omission-a deficiency that we must recognize represents a sinful omission in our Reformed history. While the Westminster Confession clearly states that the Book of Revelation is to be received according “to the rule of faith and life” (WCF, chap. 1, para. 2), we have not given John’s Revelation an equal dignity with the rest of sacred scripture. This neglect is demonstrated in the paucity of exegetical attention the book has been accorded from Reformed exegetes. We have consequently treated the Apocalypse as though it were almost an apocryphal document. And although we have silently recognized that its meaning was largely veiled to us, we have not cried out as a community to the Holy Spirit of God to illumine its message to our hearts. This omission is again largely due to our history. It is instructive that Martin Luther questioned the canonicity of Revelation, lamenting that a “Revelation” should reveal; and John Calvin, who commented on every other book of the Bible, glaringly omitted commentary on the Apocalypse. The children of the Reformers have fared little better.¹ And it is time to ask why?

The answer to this question, we believe, is suggested once we recognize the genre of Revelation as classically understood.² The literary pattern of a trajectory leading from darkness to light, from a damsel’s despair to a hero’s victory celebrated at last by a royal wedding procession (komos), is comedy.³

Now, perhaps, we can understand the failure of the Reformed church to address Revelation in any adequate fashion. It is due to our history. Perhaps we must also confess it is due to our sin. For it was our Puritan forebears who closed down the Elizabethan theater, fearing the nature of the theatre to explore the comedic imagination, which was suspected (especially in Shakespeare!) of undermining good morals.⁴

Consequently, as a community, we Reformed folk have been skeptical of the poetic imagination. We have unknowingly but nonetheless actually shut down one of the most fundamental gestures of the soul in so doing. And we have lost the splendor of the mundus imaginalis, the wonderment and sheer joy of the soul that is our true entrée into the Apocalypse, John’s glorious vision of the beauty of the Son of Man.

The following papers from the Faculty Forum represent the ongoing project of Knox Seminary to articulate an understanding of Revelation through a lectionary reading of the Apocalypse and the Fourth Gospel and by an awareness of the overwhelmingly typological character of Johannine literature. We invite the participation of our students and the Christian community at large as we undertake this exciting study!

Please send all comments to JohnRevelation@knoxseminary.org.

© 2002 Warren Austin Gage, J. Randy Beck, Steven P. Carpenter

¹ There have been several valiant attempts by postmillennialists to exposit Revelation. But postmillennialists have largely approached the book with a literary literalism similar to the hermeneutic of the premillennialists, having failed to appreciate the ironic character of the biblical understanding of victory (cf. Paul’s claim that “we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered. But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us,” Rom 8:36-37). This hermeneutical oversight is caused, as we shall argue, by the loss of a classical understanding of the possibilities of irony, the heart of the comedic imagination.

² Modern commentaries endlessly repeat the notion that Revelation represents an “apocalyptic” genre. This wholly confected (that is, non-classical) genre category based upon intertestamental Jewish writings has recently begun to give way under the realization that it has not offered significant hermeneutical assistance in developing the contours of thought within Revelation itself. See F.D. Mazzaferri, The Genre of the Book of Revelation from a Source-Critical Perspective BZNW 54 (New York: de Gruyter, 1989) 60-75, 160-84.

³ There are four classical genres: epic, lyric, comic, and tragic. Aristotle, Poetica 1449a. See Louise Cowan, “Introduction: The Comic Terrain,” in The Terrain of Comedy (ed. L. Cowan; Dallas: The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, 1984), 16.

⁴ Puritanical censors were fearful of comedic wit and humor. Wit, the comedy of the intellect, was eschewed as frivolity. Humor (from the four humors), the comedy of the body, was rejected as bawdy and obscene. This skepticism of the comedic exploration of corporality was often carried to an excess that seemed informed by a neo-platonism rather than a due regard for biblical decency and order. In this we are reminded of the ancient rabbinical canonical objections to the Song of Songs. Solomon’s allegory was relegated to the antilegomena because even the allegorical anthropomorphism of God espousing to Himself a people, once again reflecting the comedic imagination, was regarded as too bold and too bodily.

 Study Paper No. 1 on the Gospel of John and the Book of Revelation

Biblical Typology:
A Neglected Key to John’s Revelation?¹

Introduction

Like an elaborately detailed oriental tapestry, John’s Gospel and Revelation are intricately interwoven to present a composite picture, epic in scope and immortal in theme.  Elaborate patterns portray the marvel and mystery of the heavenly Son of God who leaves the riches of His Father’s court in quest of an earthly bride and a heavenly kingdom.  The Gospel opens with the Spirit descending out of heaven like a dove upon the Son of Man.  Revelation ends with the bride of Christ descending out of heaven, made ready for her Groom, and adorned in all the graces of the Spirit.

Together these books celebrate a love that spans time and eternity.  We begin with the love of the Father for His Son before the foundation of the world.  We survey all the ages, coming at last to the victorious wedding supper of the Lamb and the love of the bride for her Husband at the beginning of eternity future.  The Gospel of the Bridegroom begins in a wilderness, but the bride of Revelation is brought at last to a pleasant garden.  The darkness that struggled to overcome the Light has now been banished forever.  Eternal dawn shines forth, unobscured, clear, and golden.  The stones gathered of old by the banks of the Jordan are seen in this Light, by the banks of the river of crystal, to have been built into a vast city of glittering gems.  And the bride is lovely in this Light.  She is made ready for her Groom arrayed in the finest linen of heaven, white and pure.  But as we admire her beauty, we remember that she can be dressed in white only because her Groom’s robe was dyed in deepest red.²

John the Beloved weaves together his two great books using elaborate parallel, chiastic, and typological patterns.³ The two great works thus interpret and complete one another.  Taken together, the Fourth Gospel and Revelation constitute a literary diptych, a picture whose temporal framework spans the beginning of the first creation (John 1:1), all the way to the vision of the new creation at the beginning of eternity future (Rev 21:1).  Moreover, the two books of John offer a spatial horizon depicting the creative struggle of Jesus both from the perspective of earth (John) and of heaven (Revelation).  Upon this wholly comprehensive canvas, John depicts Jesus’ epic struggle as the typological fulfillment of all of the major figures in the OT.

Jesus as the New Joshua
in the Gospel and in the Revelation

The Fourth Gospel’s Joshua typology largely tracks the account of the conquest of Canaan, beginning with the crossing of the Jordan and depicting two campaigns, one in the south (Judea) and one in the north (Galilee).  The climactic battle involves the struggle of Jesus as the True Joshua against the confederated enemies of God, led by Jerusalem.  This epic struggle occurs, from one perspective, on earth, depicted in the Gospel of John.  Revelation portrays the same struggle from the perspective of heaven.⁴ In fact, Revelation offers a mimetic portrayal of the heavenly significance of Christ’s earthly ministry in conflict with the Old Jerusalem, the history described for us in the Fourth Gospel. 

We begin our discussion of the typological patterns connecting the Book of Joshua and the Book of Revelation by recounting the warfare of Joshua as recorded in the OT.  We will then consider the restatement of that conflict in the Apocalypse.  In order to show the pattern of verbal concordance between the books of Joshua and Revelation, we will use bold type to identify significant words that share the same Greek root in the LXX and in the Greek NT.⁵ Words that are related thematically, but not lexically, will be shown in italic type.  The reader should observe the striking pattern of details and the thorough comprehensiveness of these correspondence patterns between the two books.

Joshua’s Battle Against Jericho:

The Story of a Whore Who Becomes a Bride

The name of the great city “Jericho” brings to mind the greatest single battle recorded in the Old Testament.  After crossing the Jordan and entering the land of promise, Joshua and all Israel camped in Gilgal.⁶  Joshua erected twelve stones taken from the riverbed as a memorial to represent the twelve tribes of Israel who crossed the river in safety.  The Jordan crossing reminded the Israelites of their fathers, those who crossed the Red Sea after they were delivered from pharaoh, whereupon they sang the song of Moses (Exod 15:1-19, Josh 4:19-24).

But the great city Jericho was walled up to heaven (Deut 9:1), defying Joshua and the armies of Israel.  This impassable city represented the decisive struggle of the people of God against the nations of Canaan.  In order to inherit the paradisiacal land flowing with milk and honey, and to receive their inheritance by their tribes (Josh 18:3-10), as promised in the book of seven parts (18:9), Israel would have to destroy Jericho.  But what was this inviolable city to Joshua, who could command the sun and the moon to cease in their courses that the day of slaughter might not end (10:12-14), and whose God could rain giant hailstones from heaven upon the armies of the Canaanite kings (10:11)? 

This fortress city of Jericho, in the plain of the Jordan, was filled with great wealth.  Her treasures included silver and gold, articles of bronze and iron (6:19), linen (2:6), and scarlet (2:18).  Jericho evidently sustained a commercial relationship with Shinar.  Among her many treasures was the beautiful Babylonian garment⁷ that was to prove so tempting to Achan (7:21).  Jericho was an impregnable fortress town, whose fall before Joshua would cause the kings of Canaan to fear the God of the armies of Israel (9:1-3, 24; 10:1-4).

Joshua initiated the conquest of Jericho by sending two spies to view the land and the city (2:1).  But the presence of the spies was reported to the king of Jericho, who sought to kill them (2:2, 14).  Attempting to escape the king, the spies turned into the house of Rahab, a whore of Jericho identified by her scarlet cord (2:18), whose house was evidently open to strangers (2:1).  Rahab protected the spies, whom she could have delivered over to death (2:14).

The battle of Jericho began with Joshua‘s unexpected vision of a divine Man.  Having sanctified all Israel from uncleanness caused by their neglect of covenant circumcision, Joshua was contemplating holy war against Jericho (5:1-12).  As he lifted up his eyes, he saw a divine Man standing with His sword drawn for battle.  Joshua fell before the Man and was told to remove his sandals from his feet (5:14-15).

The battle began as Joshua directed the campaign against Jericho.  He commanded the people to circle the city once a day for seven days and seven times upon the seventh day (6:3-4).⁸ On the seventh day, Joshua arose early in the morning (6:12).  He caused the priests carrying the ark of the covenant to sound seven trumpets of judgment before the city.  Then he commanded all the people to shout out against her (6:8,20).  Suddenly the walls of the wicked city fell (6:20).  All those who remained in Jericho were put to the sword, and the city was burned with fire (6:21,24).

But Rahab the whore was delivered along with all her house.  She came out of the city in safety because she had obeyed the word of the two spies (6:25).  According to Matthew, Rahab became the bride of Salmon, who was of the royal tribe of Judah.  Through this marriage the Gentile whore of Jericho became an ancestress of Jesus the Messiah, the True Joshua (Matt 1:5-16)!

Jesus’ Battle Against Babylon in Revelation:

The Story of the True Joshua, and
a Whore Who Becomes a Bride

The name of the great city “Babylon” brings to mind the greatest battle depicted in the New Testament.  The sins of Great Babylon reached up to heaven (Rev 18:5), an affront to the God of all the earth.  This mighty city represented the decisive struggle of the Lord Jesus against the unrepentant of earth.  Babylon must be destroyed for the people of God to inherit the paradise of God (21:1-5), and receive their distribution by their tribes (21:12), as the fulfillment of the book of seven seals (5:1).  But what is this great city to Jesus, the True Joshua, whose own light causes the sun and the moon to cease (21:23), and whose God will rain great hailstones from heaven down upon Babylon (16:19-21)?

Babylon was a city filled with great wealth.  Her treasures included gold and silver, bronze, iron, linen, and scarlet (18:12-13).  In the city lived a woman arrayed in an alluring Babylonian garment of scarlet and purple (17:4).⁹ The fall of this great city before Jesus would cause the kings of the earth to fear and mourn (18:9-10).¹⁰

Now the Lord sent two witnesses into the wicked city (11:3-12), but the nations sought to kill them (11:7).  Nevertheless, they were delivered from death in the sight of their enemies (11:12).  Dwelling in the great city was a whore identified by her scarlet (17:3-5), who committed fornication with the kings of the earth (18:3).  The whore had the power of death over the saints of God (17:6).

Jesus‘ battle against Babylon began with John the Apostle’s unexpected vision of a divine Man (1:12-19).  The True Joshua appeared with a sword proceeding out of His mouth (1:16).  He commanded John to write seven letters to His churches, calling them to purity for holy war (2:1-3:22).  John fell before the feet of the Man as though dead (1:17).

The battle began and Jesus directed the campaign against Babylon.  He opened the book of seven seals (5:1), the seventh seal becoming seven trumpets of judgment (8:1-2). As the seventh trumpet sounded (11:15), the ark of the covenant appeared in heaven (11:19), and there were loud voices in heaven crying out, “The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ!” (11:15).  In one hour Great Babylon, the wicked city fell (18:2).  All the city was burned with fire (18:8).

But a voice had cried out before Babylon, “Come out of her my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you partake of her plagues.” (18:4).¹¹ And so some of those who had belonged to the whorish city were delivered from death, even those who had obeyed the word of the two witnesses.

And all of those who were delivered from their fornications and adultery became a part of the city of the true Israel of God, the New Jerusalem, the bride of the Royal Lion of Judah, Yeshua, the True Joshua (21:2).  And to memorialize their safe passage to the paradise of their inheritance, Jesus gave them a city of twelve precious stones by the river of crystal waters, even to all of those who had been delivered from the beast and had come safely across the sea of glass, all who sang the Song of Moses nd the Lamb (15:1-4).

Conclusion

This glorious message of hope for those so desperately lost is the heart of the teaching of the Son of God.  It is the crux of His gospel message.  The Lord Jesus has come to this world’s Jerichos to rescue His Rahabs and to deliver His Zacchaeuses, all those harlots and publicans who, like their predecessors who sought the repentance of John the Baptist (Matt 21:31-32), would dare to imagine that the love of a holy God could reach down far enough to deliver them. 

The True Joshua requires a new army to fill His pulpits with those who will once again learn to be strong and very courageous (Josh 1:7), an army of poets and songwriters who will sound again the gospel’s silver trumpets before the walls of this world’s Jerichos—trumpets announcing a terrible judgment to the unrepentant, but trumpets sounding a wonderful jubilee to all those who, like Rahab, will forsake their sins. 

We need a new army.  An army of those with strong imaginations. Imaginations courageous enough in the knowledge of the free grace of God to believe that a whore from Babylon could in truth become the bride of Christ.  Imaginations that hear so scandalous a message and can believe it is not blasphemy.  Imaginations that can envision the depths of their own sin, and so recognize that this scandalous message is the gospel’s very truth.

We need a new sword for the battle.  A sword of the Word, awakened from dogmatic slumbers and fashioned in the fiery foundry of metaphor.  Just like Milton, who knew that the power of poetry would prove at last to be more compelling than all the armies of Cromwell, we need a new and more poetic restatement of these ancient truths.  We need a new sounding of the old gospel of Paul and the apostles, faithfully transmitted through Augustinian Catholicism and Reformed Calvinism—under no illusions about either the nature of man or the power of God in the gospel.

We must, however, sound a more certain sound upon the trumpets of truth.  A more biblical sound.  We should present the gospel in its native dress—a bridal dress, in the metaphor of an eastern wedding.  Our tale is the story of a heavenly romance.  It tells of a love that begins in the heart of Father God, who unconditionally chose a bride in grace, one who would be suitable for His beloved Son.  It is a drama about a bride whose unfaithfulness made her totally unfit and utterly unworthy of that Son.  It speaks of the steadfast love of the Son, who nonetheless paid a great dowry price for her in confidence that she would return His love.  It tells of the Spirit, whose love irresistibly wooed the betrothed back to a pure love for the Son.  And it promises the hope of a heavenly and everlasting love, a faith that enables Jesus’ betrothed to persevere unto the glorious day of her redemption, when she will descend from heaven as a bride, having made herself ready for the Prince of Glory.  

© 2002 Warren Austin Gage, J. Randy Beck, Steven P. Carpenter

¹ This document is excerpted from a syllabus entitled “An Introduction to Biblical Typology,” prepared for a forthcoming course to be offered at Knox Theological Seminary.

² The classical genre of Revelation’s climactic vision, describing the triumph of good over evil in the context of a divine wedding procession (komos), is comedy.  Cf. Aristotle, Poetica 1449a; see Daniel Russ, “The Bible as Genesis of Comedy,” in The Terrain of Comedy, ed. Louise Cowan (Dallas: Pegasus, 1984) 59.  The quarrel among modern commentators on Revelation regarding the character of apocalyptic genre has generally not led to helpful textual analysis.  Cf. F.D. Mazzaferri, The Genre of the Book of Revelation from a Source-Critical Perspective BZNW 54 (New York: de Gruyter, 1989) 60-75, 160-84.  The categories of Babylon the damned and Jerusalem the blessed, which largely reflect apocalyptic analysis, neglect the tension represented by Ps 87:1-4, where Babylon, the archetypical evil city, is promised salvific blessing, and Ezek 16 and 23, where the prophet excoriates Jerusalem for her whoredoms. The general absence of the comedic imagination in theological commentary, especially expressed in failing to appreciate the transformative nature of love (see Hos 1:2; cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses) and the purgatorial character of comedy (see Ezek 16:60-63, Dante’s Purgatorio from the Commedia, and “Dante’s Letter to Can Grande,” Essays on Dante, ed. Mark Musa, trans. Nancy Howe Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1964 34-47), has led, as we shall argue, to an underestimation of the full range of literary possibilities represented by the Babylonian whore in Revelation.  We would encourage biblical expositors to a consideration of the redemptive potential of the “fallen woman” represented most imaginatively in the western literary tradition by Dante, Cervantes, Hawthorne, and Dostoyevsky.  Strikingly, theological commentary largely disregards this redemptive possibility in spite of the fact that the rescue of the immoral woman is also a significant theme in both Johannine and Biblical theology. See the account of the Samaritan woman (John 4:4-42), the woman caught in adultery (John 8:2-11), and the story of Mary Magdalene (John 20:11-18, cf. Luke 8:2).  See also Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Casta Meretrix,” Explorations in Theology, vol. II Spouse of the Word, trans. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991) 193-288, Jean Daniélou, “Rahab a Type of the Church,” From Shadows to Reality: Studies in the Typology of the Fathers, trans. Dom Wulstan Hibberd (London: Burns and Oates, 1960) 244-60, J.M. Vogelgesang,  “The Interpretation of Ezekiel in the Book of Revelation.” (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1985) 98-112, and Raymond C. Ortland, Jr., Whoredom: God’s Unfaithful Wife in Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996).

³ We have developed this thesis in W. A. Gage, “St John’s Vision of the Heavenly City” (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Dallas, 2001).

⁴ The Joshua typology between the two books of John is developed primarily within the parallel pattern of correspondence sustained between the books.

⁵ The logical and chronological patterns support the analogical and typological interrelationship between the two Johannine books.  The more elaborate the patterns, the more convincing is the typology.  Each of these methods of analysis: logical, chronological, analogical, and typological, as the several hypostases of the Logos, contribute to the method of exegesis presented in this paper.  We will give considerable attention to the method of typological exegesis in due course.  

⁶ Gilgal is the place of Joshua’s renewal of the covenant for Israel.  It is the camp where Joshua circumcised the people, fulfilling the requirements of the Abrahamic covenant, and where he reinstituted the observance of Passover, the neglected feast of the Mosaic covenant. Gilgal is derived from the verb gālal, which means “to roll,” for it was here that the Lord “rolled away” the reproach of the people from their neglect of the law of Moses.  We note a further symbolic use of “gālal” in the victory ceremony at Makkedah, where Joshua commanded large stones to be rolled against the grave of the Canaanite kings, memorializing their “reproach” (10:18).  In the NT the True Joshua rolls away the reproach of the people of God at “Golgotha” (also derived from gālal).  Moreover, the True Joshua reinstitues the covenant for the people of God by fulfilling on our behalf all the righteous commandments of the law, by giving us a circumcision not made by hands with a flint knife, and by rolling away the stone that sealed our grave. 

⁷ The coat coveted by Achan was from “Shinar,” the Semitic name for the land the Greeks called Mesopotamia (the land between the rivers). The eastern cities of Babel, Erech, and Accad were in Shinar (Gen 10:10).  The text suggests that Jericho had a commercial relationship with Babel in the east.  The AV thus rendered the word Shinar in this context with “Babylonian.”

⁸ The pattern of telescopic heptads in Joshua, that is, seven trumpets sounding upon the seventh march of the seventh day, sets the pattern in Revelation for the seven bowls poured out upon the sounding of the seventh trumpet, the trumpets being the seventh seal. 

⁹ There are clues to the identity of the Babylonian whore woven within the Johannine material according to the parallel and chiastic patterning that tie the two books, the Fourth Gospel and Revelation, together.  The Great Whore of Revelation, who drinks her cup of loathsomeness and is arrayed in scarlet (Rev 17:4), is a mockery of a queen (Rev 18:7) now that her great hour of judgment and death has come (Rev 18:10).  Parallel to the Great Whore of Revelation is the blessed Lord Jesus of John’s Gospel, who in His suffering for us drank the loathsome cup (John 18:11), was arrayed in scarlet (John 19:2), had His kingdom mocked (John 19:3), and suffered death when the great hour of judgment hadcome (John 17:1). John justly charges the Great Whore with blasphemy (Rev 17:3) and fornication (Rev 17:4-5).  Bearing her reproach, the precious Lord Jesus suffered the calumnious charges of blasphemy (John 10:33) and fornication (John 8:41).  Clearly, John is telling us that the Lord Jesus took the reproach of the whore of Revelation upon Himself.  For anyone who has a reformed doctrine of particular redemption, the identity of the whore should become immediately apparent.

Moreover, the chiastic pattern of correspondence between the Gospel of John and Revelation also provides a clue to the identity of the whore.  For Lady Babylon, who thirsts although she sits upon the waters (17:1,4,6), has a relationship with seven kings, of whom five have fallen, one is, and the other has not yet come (17:10).  And when John recognized her, he marveled (17:6).  Chiastically, the whore of Babylon corresponds in the Gospel account to the Samaritan woman, who in her thirst came to Jesus, sitting upon the well (John 4:6-7).  The Samaritan woman likewise has a relationship with seven men.  Jesus says to her, “You havehad five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband” (4:18).  And when the disciples and John saw her, they marveled (4:27).

Surely the identity of the Great Whore should cause us to marvel as well.  For the OT type of the whore of Babylon is none other than Rahab, the whore of Jericho and a type of the church.  If we conclude from this evidence that the whore of Babylon will become the bride of Christ, then there could not be a more graphic emblem of the biblical truth of the reformed soteriology of sola gratia. On the other hand, this vindication of reformed soteriology against Rome is at the price of falsifying the unilateral and most common historical identification of the whore of Revelation within Protestant circles, which, consequently, becomes five full centuries of slander.

¹⁰ St Gregory of Elvira (AD 396) made explicit the typological identification of Joshua’s destruction of Jericho with John’s account of the judgment of Great Babylon in Revelation.  The pattern that would suggest the redemption of the whore of Babylon as a new Rahab is clearly present in this fourth century witness from Spain.  While the editio princeps was not available to us, a translation of the relevant passage occurs in Daniélou’s From Shadows to Reality. The following quotation is from page 257: “Just as the Church made up of many nations is called a harlot, so, as a type of the Church, we see Rahab welcoming the Saints. The fall of Jericho prefigures those last days when the destruction of this world will be brought about and the seven plagues through the seven trumpets or the seven angelic vials will strike the human race together with Antichrist.  Then no one will be saved except those shut up in Rahab’s house, that is, the Church.”

¹¹ The identification of the whore of Babylon as the antitype of Rahab, and thus a type of the church, does not lead to a salvific universalism.  Rahab was surely not the only whore in Jericho, and certainly all the wicked, who did not “come out” of the city, perished.  The command in Revelation for the people of God to “come out” of Babylon (18:4) is the invitation to participate in Rahab’s repentance.  For all of those who remain, their whorish city will be utterly destroyed (18:6-24).

Study Paper No. 2 on the Gospel of John and the Book of Revelation

On the Incompleteness of the Gospel of John:
A Clue to John’s Revelation?

Surely it must seem impertinent to suggest that the Fourth Gospel, the beautiful account of the Savior by the beloved Apostle John, is somehow deficient by itself. After all, commentary after commentary has been written on the Gospel of John. What major interpreter can be cited who laments some lack in the narrative of the Gospel? Sermon after sermon has been dedicated to expositing the Book of John. Almost all of these studies appear to be quite comfortably developed within the four corners of the text. Faithful expositions have been well received by the church and most evidently blessed by the Spirit of God. Moreover, the Fourth Gospel appears to follow the familiar format of the other three Gospels in recounting the ministry, death, and resurrection of the Savior. What is it about John’s Gospel that could possibly be construed to suggest a defect in its completeness?

It has, however, been widely recognized that John’s Gospel is strangely unique. There is something that prevents us from calling it “synoptic;” something that distinguishes it fundamentally from the accounts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. What is the reason for this Johannine divergence from the companion Gospels? For example, commentators have long puzzled over the fact that John appears to describe the temple cleansing so early in Jesus’ ministry (John 2:13-22), while the other evangelists place the event at the end of His ministry (Matt 21:12-13, Mark 11:15-18, Luke 19:45-46). A quarrel has consequently ensued as to whether John requires us to understand a second temple cleansing, one at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. So the question is posed, what is governing the arrangement of John’s episodes in his account? Must we read the Gospel chronologically, or is there some literary pattern that perhaps we have overlooked that reconciles John’s Gospel with its synoptic companions?¹ What is the relation of John’s Gospel to the synoptic Gospels?

While the issue of the temple cleansing has gotten considerable critical attention, other issues have been largely overlooked or left unaddressed.² Looking at only the two opening chapters of the Gospel, we find several questions left open altogether. For example, Jesus promises Nathanael that he will see a remarkable vision that recalls the dream of Jacob in Genesis 32. The promised vision, with the open heavens, reveals a stairway upon which the angels of God are ascending and descending, the Son of Man surmounting, or perhaps constituting, this great bridge between heaven and earth. What is the significance of this promise to Nathanael? The question is posed more urgently in the Greek text, for the vision is clearly not something privately promised to Nathanael. The “you will see” spoken to Nathanael uses the plural form of the verb (John 1:51). The text appears to be prompting us to ask who are the ones who will see the vision, and when and what do they see? There is no evident answer to these questions in the Fourth Gospel, for the vision is not mentioned again. The commentaries often recognize the problem. But they pass over the question without an adequate answer, finding none within the Gospel itself.³

Thematic issues that appear to suggest the incompleteness of the Fourth Gospel are likewise often left unattended. One of the most evident themes of the Gospel of John is the presentation of an Adamic typology of Jesus. John opens his Gospel as a New Genesis, with an account of creation “in the beginning,” stylized after Moses’ account of the first Adam. God the Word creates the world, John writes. Light shines into darkness. Then the Word is made man (John 1:14): a new Adam. The implication of John’s typology is that once the Word becomes authentic man, it is not good that He should be alone (cf. Gen 2:18). There must be a “bride” for Christ. The evangelist makes this explicit when he introduces John the Baptist as a “friend of the Bridegroom” (John 3:29).

So Jesus must have a bride. The evangelist identifies Jesus as the Bridegroom, but where in his Gospel does he describe the bride of the One the Baptist called the “Lamb of God”? Where does he tell us of the wedding of the Son of Man? Christian, and especially Pauline, theology makes the identity of the bride of the Lord quite clear, but reading John’s Gospel within the four corners of the text does not. Is the Fourth Gospel gesturing toward something else? something external, perhaps, to itself? ⁴

The only wedding described in the Fourth Gospel is not the wedding of the Lamb; rather, it is the wedding at Cana to which Jesus is only an invited guest. In the context of the shortage of wine at the wedding of a friend, Jesus’ mother appears to ask Him to supply the wine. But the wine service is the responsibility of the bridegroom, according to the wedding steward (John 2:10). It is not His hour, Jesus says (John 2:2-4). Nonetheless Jesus supplies the wine for His friend, and the steward complains to the bridegroom that he has violated the protocol of serving the better wine first and the worse wine afterwards, after the guests have drunk (John 2:9-10). Why does John report the consternation of the wedding steward? Is the point of the evangelist simply that Jesus made the better wine? Is the significance of the steward’s comment exhausted in the suggestion that the wine of Jesus’ table will be sweet? Or is the account of the wedding at Cana gesturing toward some other wedding. Is there an anticipation of a wedding where Jesus will be the Bridegroom? But when is this wedding? And when the hour of His wedding does come, will Jesus respect the customary protocol, serving the better wine first and afterward the worse wine, after His guests have drunk? ⁵

In short, John’s Gospel opens with a reflection upon “the beginning” of all creation. But where is the ending that makes the Gospel whole? The ending of the Gospel attempts to answer a rumor that went out in the early Christian community about the time and circumstance of John’s death (John 21:18-25). Is this false report the conclusion John intended for his evangelistic enterprise, an ending deemed worthy to be juxtaposed to the “in the beginning” of John 1:1?⁶

On the Interrelationship Between John’s Gospel and the Revelation

Aristotle taught us to look for literary completeness in a plot, characterized by a beginning, a middle, and an end (Poetics 50b).⁷ The question we are raising is whether the ending of the Fourth Gospel, with the refutation of a rumor circulating in some early Christian communities, is an adequate literary ending to the majestic prologue that opens John’s Gospel (John 1:1-18). Alternatively, should we inquire whether there might be another ending, one that corresponds to the grand beginning of the Fourth Gospel and which better rounds out the Johannine Evangel?

The thesis of these papers is that John’s Gospel and his Revelation are one enterprise by the same author. Together they constitute a literary diptych. Consequently, both the Fourth Gospel and the Apocalypse have been composed by one author in a conscious interdependence upon one another. While the notion of common authorship has not been taken seriously in modern critical interpretation of these “Johannine” books,⁸ it is nonetheless consistent with the (virtually) unanimous testimony of the church fathers for the first three centuries of the Christian era.⁹ In spite of the overwhelming testimony of the early church, those rare modern commentators who are brave enough to defend Johannine authorship of these two great works rarely, if ever, treat these books as capable of offering interpretive assistance to one another. It is as though a “Chinese wall” has been erected between these two Johannine books in conservative as well as critical commentary. This in spite of the fact that no one trained in literary interpretation would make so fundamental an error as to neglect the “canon” of the same author, once a commonality of authorship was acknowledged.

Now the thesis that the two great works traditionally attributed to the fisherman son of Zebedee are interdependent has significant interpretive implication. Such a claim would mean that neither the Gospel nor Revelation was intended as a stand-alone document. If these books were conceived and composed as a diptych, then John will help us to interpret Revelation and Revelation will be crucial to completing our understanding of John’s Gospel as well.

We have proposed a hypothesis that the books of John and Revelation are composed as a conceptual unity. If that be the case, such a theory implies that the ending of John’s Gospel is not John 21. Rather, the ending of the entire Johannine enterprise, corresponding to the beginning of the Gospel, would be the conclusion of the Apocalypse, the climax of Revelation.

Let’s examine the beginning of the Gospel of John, looking for significant words and themes that are introduced and that find their appropriate conclusion at the end of Revelation. The number and extent of these correspondences is significant, as we will see. According to our customary convention, words presented in bold type are derived from the same Greek root in the original texts of John and Revelation. Italicized terms appear to be related thematically, but they do not share the same Greek root.

The first verbal and thematic juxtapositions that we observe between the beginning of the Gospel and the end of the Apocalypse are the names and titles of Jesus. The evangelist introduces Jesus as the Word of God in John 1:1, a unique title that he only elsewhere uses to describe the Christ in the vision he relates in Revelation 19:13, where Christ is called the Word of God. The evangelist introduces the One through whom all things came into being in John 1:3. In Revelation 21:5, however, Christ claims, “Behold, I make all things new.” So the opening of the Fourth Gospel is a reflection upon the original creation while the ending of the Revelation is an anticipation of the new creation. The One who was in the beginning with God is now the One who is both the beginning and the end (John 1:1 and Rev 22:13). Moreover, John tells us that the divine Word tabernacled among us in the beginning of the Gospel (John 1:14). He reports at the end of Revelation that God will tabernacle among men forever (Revelation 21:3). And he tells us that Jesus commanded the Jews to destroy the temple, but that they did not understand that He was the Temple (John 2:19,21). But in the eschaton John tells us that he saw no temple, for the Lamb is the Temple (Rev 21:22).

John likewise introduces several themes in the opening of the Gospel that are only adequately resolved at the conclusion of Revelation. He tells us of a quarrel between light and darkness (John 1:5,9). Only at the end of the Apocalypse, however, does John assure us that the light triumphs over the darkness (Rev 22:5). Similarly, the evangelist reports that the prophet John identified Christ as the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world (John 1:29). At the climax of the Apocalypse, John reports that there will be no more curse, for the throne of God and the Lamb is there (Rev 22:3).

It is noteworthy that the evangelist records that Jesus said “Come and see!” and that Philip, who heard Him, likewise says “Come and see!” (John 1:39, 46). The double invitation at the beginning of the Gospel is matched by a double invitation at the end of Revelation. The seer reports that the Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” and “let him who hears say, ‘Come!’” (Rev 22:17). Likewise, the Gospel opens with John the Baptist seeing the Spirit descending out of heaven upon Jesus, whom he would call the Bridegroom (John 1:32, 3:29). Revelation ends with the holy city descending out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride for the Son of Man (Rev 21:2). In other words, the Gospel opens with a Bridegroom who has come to earth from His Father in heaven (John 1:14, 3:29), and Revelation ends with a bride who has come to earth from the Father in heaven (Rev 21:2). Thus the Gospel introduces the bridegroom. Revelation presents the bride. Like a husband and wife, these two books must not be set asunder and read separately. The two great works of John are thus made “one flesh and bone” with each other.

Moreover, the Gospel account of the wedding at Cana is clearly written with Revelation’s marriage supper of the Lamb in view. The extent of overlapping vocabulary and the conjunction of theme is unmistakable. Both accounts speak of those called to the wedding (John 2:2, Rev 19:9). Both accounts speak of the coming of an hour of judgment (John 2:4, Rev 18:8, 10). In the Gospel Jesus has the waterpots for purification filled with water that becomes wine (John 2:4). In Revelation, the great whore, the imposture bride, has a cup filled with abomination (Rev 17:1-2,4,6). Jesus makes wine for both weddings (John 2:3, Rev 19:15). After the whore and her paramours are drunk, the Lord serves the wine of the wrath of God (Rev 19:15, cf. Rev 17:1-2). Having served the better wine of grace in the Gospel, Jesus serves the worse wine of wrath in Revelation, after the unrepentant are drunk. Thus Jesus has respected the wedding custom announced in John 2:10.

Similarly, the account of Jesus’ cleansing of the temple, reported in the Gospel, reflects the warfare of heaven against the temple in Revelation 16-22. Jesus pours out the coins of the moneychangers in the temple in Jerusalem (John 2:15), emblematically anticipating the angels of heaven who pour out the vials of judgment upon the earthly temple (Revelation16:1-17). Jesus laments that His Father’s house has been made a house of merchandise as He overturns the tables of the astonished merchants (John 2:16). At the judgment of Great Babylon, the merchants of the earth stand in dismay as the torment of her city begins (Rev 18:3,11,15). Consequently, it should be clear that the evangelist has arranged his Gospel thematically to reflect the opening conflict between the heavenly Temple and its earthly imposture in Jerusalem’s second temple (John 2:21) so as to juxtapose it to the final conflict of the heavenly and earthly temples that constitutes the dénouement of his Apocalypse. There is no need to posit a second temple cleansing, based upon literary grounds. The beginning of the Gospel of John is written in a ring structure to correspond to the end of Revelation. We conclude, therefore, that the Gospel’s temple cleansing episode is presented chiastically rather than chronologically.

Implications Drawn From These Studies

We believe that these studies demonstrate a profound and deep connection between the two great works of the Apostle John, the Fourth Gospel and Revelation. Moreover, we believe that the connections are so evident that the inability of modern conservative exposition to recognize them is symptomatic of a serious deficiency in theological education.

While it should not be unexpected that critical scholarship would fail to search for the beauty and unity of the Bible, since such critics are presuppositionally adverse to the doctrine of inspiration, it is dismaying that conservatives often fail in this enterprise as well. This failure, we suspect, is often due to the fact that many of our brightest young scholars are tutored at leading universities by critical mentors. The methods they learn are thus almost entirely analytical, as would be appropriate to an anthology of random religious writings expressing a particular tradition. But that method, which is normative in much current biblical exegesis, practically denies the possibility of the synthetic message that is vital to the Living Word of a Living Savior. It neglects the “metanarrative” of the Holy Scripture, and myopically misses the grandeur of the history of our redemption narrated in the Scriptures as a canon.

Men and women trained in biblical exposition have learned to parse the text, but have not been taught to see the Person of whom the text speaks. We are training pastors who are literate but not literary. Modern theological method is thus analytic to excess, disregarding almost entirely the synthetic possibilities of the Bible read as a metanarrative. We need a radical reformation in theological education today. It is time that we recapture the Grand Story of the Bible, and train up a generation of pastors who are conversant with the imagery and beauty of the Holy Scriptures as a whole. In that light, we dedicate these studies to those who have “the eyes to see,” to those who would join with us, not simply in confessing the inspiration of Holy Scripture, but who would join us in exploring the splendid unities of the Bible as they display the heart and portray the beauty of the Savior of the World.

¹ See our Study No. 4, p. 6, in this series.

² One of the most striking “oversights” in the Gospel of John is the failure of the evangelist to establish clearly the Davidic lineage of Jesus. There is, of course, no nativity account or genealogy, such as we see in Matthew and Luke. The issue of the right and title of Jesus to the throne of David is clearly raised in the Gospel, however. John reports that the Jews discussed the lineage issue, citing the fact that the Christ must come from Bethlehem, the city of David (John 7:40-43). Moreover, the evangelist reports the objection posed by the Pharisees that no prophet had arisen from Galilee (John 7:52), all the while John reminds us repeatedly that Jesus was from Nazareth in Galilee (John 1:45-46, 18:5,7, 19:19). But nowhere does the evangelist reconcile the Nazareth origin of Jesus with the claim that the Christ must come from Bethlehem, the city of David. Why does John’s Gospel apparently leave unattended an issue that is absolutely preclusive to the Lord’s claim to be the Christ? The evangelist is certainly aware of the cruciality of the issue. Is he depending upon the familiarity of his reader with the birth narratives of Matthew or Luke? Or might he be gesturing toward his own assertion of the Judahite and Davidic lineage of Jesus, which he makes most clear in Revelation 5:5?

³ See our Study No. 5, in this series.

⁴ See our Study No. 4, p. 18, in this series.

⁵ See our Study No. 4, p. 5, in this series.

⁶ See Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction (London: Oxford University Press, 1966).

⁷ See our Study No. 4, pp. 17-19, in this series.

⁸ A notable modern exception is Austin Farrar, whose poetic sensibility intuited a deep and profound connection between the two great works of John. See A Rebirth of Images: The Making of St. John’s Apocalypse (London: A & C Black Ltd., 1949).

⁹ The only serious orthodox objection to Johannine authorship of Revelation among the Fathers was Dionysius of Alexandria, whose third century rejection was dogmatically driven by his anti-chiliast bias (see Eusebius’ Hist. Eccl. vii 25).

Study Paper No. 3 on the Gospel of John and the Book of Revelation

The Gospel of John:
A Neglected Key to Revelation?

Introduction

The ancient church was virtually unanimous in claiming that John’s Gospel and Revelation came from the same hand—from John, the son of Zebedee.  Nonetheless, most modern commentary dismisses the relevance of the Fourth Gospel in interpreting Revelation.

The following chart displays a literary intertextuality that shows these two great books should be viewed as companion volumes.  In fact, we will claim that if they are read alongside each other, as the church fathers suggested, they will interpret each other according to the Reformed hermeneutical maxim Scriptura Scripturas interpres.  While several other literary patterns appear to interleave the Fourth Gospel and the Apocalypse, the parallel chart presented below offers the most readily recognizable and comprehensive prima facie evidence of the interrelationship of these two books from the pen of the Apostle John. 

Consecutive Correspondences

The pattern of consecutive correspondences consists of significant words, word combinations, and phrases that track between the two companion books, as they are read consecutively and side-by-side.  If you imagine John and Revelation as two railroad tracks, the verbal and thematic links within this pattern are like the railroad ties that hold the tracks together as they present the ministry of Jesus from the earthly (John) and heavenly (Revelation) perspectives.

In the following chart, the word(s) in bold type are from the same root in the original Greek text.  When the verse address is bolded, it indicates that this is the only time that the word combinations in bold are found in both the Gospel and Revelation.  The italicized words are terms that are related thematically, but are based on different Greek roots.

John-Revelation Consecutive Correspondence Chart

© 2002 Warren Austin Gage, J. Randy Beck, Steven P. Carpenter

¹ John the Baptist, who is about to be cast into prison (John 3:24), announces the coming of the earthly Jesus.  John the Apostle, who is upon the prison isle of Patmos, describes a vision of the heavenly Jesus (Rev 1:9).  It is noteworthy that John the Baptist “bears witness” about Jesus in the Gospel, while John the Apostle “bears witness” about Jesus in Revelation (John 1:7 and Rev 1:2).  The two books open with the witness of “John” about Jesus.

² There is a homophony in Greek between ‘kephas’ (Cephas) in John 1:42 and ‘psephos’ (stone) in Rev. 2:17.

³ Peter is given a new name, “Cephas,” or stone in John 1:42.  The overcoming believer is promised a white “stone” with a new name in Revelation 2:17. 

⁴ As noted by the verse address in bold, the only occurrences of the word ‘zeal’ are found in these books that describe the Lord’s determination to cleanse the churches of Revelation just as He had purged the earthly temple in Jerusalem.  In His letter to the Laodiceans, Jesus exhorts the believers to imitate His own zeal for purity in the house of God.  The zeal of Christ drives Him to cleanse the temple (John 2:17).  That same zeal is what will drive God’s people to repent, bringing purity to the church (Rev 3:19).  This ‘consuming’ zeal (John 2:17) is thus the remedy to Laodicean lukewarmness (Rev. 3:16).  Moreover, the cleansing of the earthly temple by the zeal of Jesus (John 2) is balanced by the cleansing of the seven churches, which constitute the heavenly temple, by the zealous call of Jesus (Rev 2-3).  Consequently, both Johannine books begin with a cleansing of the “house of God” as temple or church. There is thus a thematic equipoise to the beginning of both the Gospel and Revelation.  This literary equipoise is sustained throughout the parallel reading of John’s two great works, as we shall see.

⁵ The meaning of “Nicodemus” and “Nicolaitan” is virtually identical in Greek (“victory of the people”).  If Nicodemus is taken as a representative of the Pharisees, the ground of the Lord’s hatred of the teaching of the Nicolaitans is clearly established (Rev 2:6).  Moreover, the juxtaposition of these names (and a Hellenistic name for the teacher of Israel is unusual, to say the least) in light of the history of Nicodemus’ faith would give hope of repentance to the Nicolaitans of Ephesus and Pergamum.

⁶ The reproof of Jesus is the evidence of His love (Rev 3:19).  The teaching of this parallel reading constitutes a loving invitation to all those afraid of the light because of their evil deeds to come to Him nonetheless (John 3:20).

⁷ The invitation to dine with Jesus is a reference to communion at the Lord’s Table.  The suggestion in this parallel is that the Lord’s Supper is in fact an anticipation of the wedding supper of the Lamb (Rev 19:9).  The Laodiceans are being invited into a celebration of love and intimacy by the Bridegroom of heaven at the bridal meal He hosts for them.

⁸ Jesus’ teaching to the Samaritan woman about true worship (John 4:23) is echoed by all of heaven being filled with worship (Rev 4:9-10).  Similarly, Jesus’ observation that a prophet has no honor ‘among his own’ is contrasted with all of heaven ascribing Him honor (Rev. 4:11, 5:12-13).  The heavenly and earthly scenes are full of ironic contrasts!

⁹ The boldness of Jesus on earth in asserting His right to work healing on the Sabbath provoked the charge that He was making Himself “equal with God” (John 5:18).  The corresponding passage in the heavenly throne room depicts Jesus as equal with God, worthy to open the seven-sealed book, and boldly ‘taking’ it from the right hand of the Lord God sitting upon the throne (Rev 5:7).  Jesus is thus in the posture of a co-regent, not a supplicant, as He approaches the throne of His Father.

¹⁰ John the Baptist, of course, experienced the fullness (cf. “seven spirits of God”) of the Spirit even before his birth (cf. Luke 1:15).

¹¹ The apocalyptic horseman who brings famine to the earth is sent by Jesus to vindicate the justice of God against man’s rebellion (Rev 6:5).  But the context of the parallel correspondence encourages the believer to remember that Jesus was mindful of the hunger of His people in the wilderness and that He is able to supply whatever they need.

¹² Strikingly, Jesus fled the honor of man as much as the wicked will flee the wrath of God!

¹³ The pattern of unique correspondences between John 6 and Revelation 6-7 reveals in both books that the people of God are delivered from the wind and the sea, i.e., from natural or elemental chaos.  Their safety and security is the seal of God.

¹⁴ This correspondence sets forth a promise-fulfillment pattern. The promise pronounced upon earth is realized in heaven.

¹⁵ The religious leaders conjecture that Jesus intends to kill Himself (John 8:21-22).  Ironically, their conjecture is paralleled with the inability of the wicked in judgment to find death (Rev 9:6).  The wicked, who are dead in their sins, will suffer a torment that will not die.  Once again, the irony is fully appreciated only by a companion reading of these two books.

¹⁶ The Gospel describes the religious leaders who are blind to the Light of the World and deaf to the Word of God.  The revelation of their true character is unveiled in the parallel reading.  The religious leaders of the second temple are idol worshippers, and the temple of Jerusalem has become an idol sanctuary.  John’s polemic against apostate Judaism expresses a shocking irony.

¹⁷ John’s immediate obedience is intended as an example of Jesus’ teaching about following Him.

¹⁸ The resurrection of Lazarus in the Gospel becomes a powerful picture of the resurrection of the two witnesses in Revelation. The murderous hostility of the Jews against Lazarus (John 12:10-11) corresponds to the bestial opposition to the two witnesses of Revelation (Rev 11:7).

¹⁹ In yet another shocking irony, the religious leaders are compared to the followers of the dragon.  The religious leaders feared that they might lose their earthly sanctuary as a consequence of the wrath of Rome.  But a far worse wrath awaited them — the wrath of God.  And for their rejection of Jesus their place in the heavenly sanctuary was taken away.  Their loss of “place” (Rev 12:8) contrasts with believers for whom Jesus is preparing a “place”  (John 14:2).

²⁰ The cry of the multitude at the triumphal entry is echoed by the cry of the multitude in heaven.  Heaven and earth alike declare the kingdom authority of Jesus.  The battle on earth against Jerusalem, described in the Gospel, is being simultaneously waged from heaven against Babylon, as depicted in Revelation.  The correspondence between the two wicked cities, Babylon and Jerusalem, and the warfare of heaven against them, is a major thematic parallel between the Gospel and Revelation.

²¹ These verses constitute the literary axis of the Johannine books.  The thunderous voices of the heavenly angels are heard on earth as the dragon is cast out of heaven to earth.  This correspondence is like an open window between the Gospel and the Revelation through which those on earth are permitted to hear the war in heaven (Rev 12:7).

²² The cross foreshadows the victory of the ascension, when Jesus in His “lifted up” glory will draw all nations to Himself as a community of worshippers. 

²³ This parallel correspondence between Judas and the beast is reinforced by the juxtaposition of John 17:12 and Revelation 17:8, 11, set forth below.

²⁴ This pattern of unique vocabulary indicates a thematic interdependence.  The judgment in Revelation is upon the wild grapes, the apostate Israel (cf. Isa 5:7), namely, all those who do not “abide” in Jesus.    

²⁵ We have already seen the bestial character of Judas in John 12:5 and 13:29 in light of Revelation 13:17.  This parallel is significant because of the unique occurrence of the word “perdition.”

²⁶ Pilate’s question in the Gospel is answered in Revelation.  The irony of Pilate’s question is astonishing when John the Seer, like Elisha for his servant, opens the heavens so that we might see the Lord of Glory, Faithful and True.

²⁷ In a striking juxtaposition, Jesus in his suffering is paralleled to the harlot Babylon.  Both have a loathsome cup to drink, and both wear a purple robe.  Moreover, Jesus suffers the indignity of false accusations of blasphemy (John 10:33) and fornication (John 8:41), crimes that John charges against the whore (Rev 17:2-3).  Shocking as it may seem, it is clear that John’s portrait of Jesus in the Gospel has the Lord taking upon Himself the reproach of the whore of Babylon, as depicted in Revelation.  Jesus’ suffering in the place of the whore suggests a truth no less wonderful for its being obvious: the Gospel is laying the foundation in the sufferings of Christ for the redemption of Revelation’s Babylonian whore!

²⁸ Heaven and earth are full of shocking opposites!  Pilate, the Roman judge, brings Jesus forth and invites all Jerusalem to behold the mockery of Christ’s royal claim.  There He stands, crowned in thorns and arrayed in royal purple, and Pilate announces, “Behold, the Man!”  The contrast in Revelation could not be more arresting.  John invites us to “Behold the Faithful and True One!” crowned with kingly diadems and clothed in a robe dipped in blood.  Revelation balances the ridicule of earth with the triumphant glory of heaven!

²⁹ Ironically, Pilate is himself being judged by heaven for his unjust judgment upon earth.

³⁰ Both of John’s books climax in the judgment of Jesus.  Upon earth He is condemned by Pilate, who writes a title to mock His kingdom.  But in heaven the Lord God vindicates the kingship of Jesus, writing Him a glorious name.

³¹ The career of Satan counterfeits the earthly history of Jesus.  Satan is bound and placed in the abyss just as Jesus was bound and placed in a tomb.  Lest he deceive the nations (Rev 20:3, cf. Matt 27:63), Satan is sealed in the earth (Rev 20:3, cf. Matt 27:66).  Afterward, Satan imitates the resurrection in being “released” from the abyss (Rev 20:3).

³² The Gospel concludes with a woman and Jesus in an earthly garden (John 20:15).  Jesus tells Mary that He must ascend to His Father (John 20:17).  Revelation concludes with the bride descending from the Father to be received by her Groom (Rev 21:9-10), coming to a heavenly garden with the river of crystal and the tree of life (Rev 22:1-2).  The Gospel’s picture of the bride, corresponding to the bride of Revelation, is Mary Magdalene.  Now the choice of this Mary to represent the bride is remarkable due to her reputation within the Christian community as the one from whom the Lord had cast out seven demons (Luke 8:2).  Consequently, one who had known every form of demonic defilement (cf. Luke 11:26) is chosen by John to represent the bride of Jesus.  When read thematically in parallel with Revelation, the redemption of Mary Magdalene is juxtaposed to the redemption of the whore of Babylon, who becomes the bride of Christ.  Once again, the parallel maintains a perfect thematic equipoise with Revelation.

³³ The marriage imagery in the Gospel is an implicit Adam typology, with the Lord awakening in the garden tomb as a new Adam.  His wounded side (John 19:34) having been healed, Jesus beholds Mary Magdalene, who has become the new Eve.

³⁴ The parallel is striking.  The pastoral oversight of Peter is made emblematic of the wedding supper of the Lamb.

³⁵ These remarks constitute the seal of John as a faithful witness to all he has written.

Study Paper No. 4 on the Gospel of John and the Book of Revelation

The Gospel of John:
A Neglected Key to Revelation?

Introduction

Elsewhere we have suggested that John’s Gospel and Revelation are linked by an elaborate pattern of consecutive or parallel correspondence.¹  But there is another comprehensive pattern of literary linkage that overlays the two great books of John—a chiastic pattern. 

Chiastic Correspondences

A chiasm is a literary pattern that involves an inverted parallelism of words or ideas.  In chiastic patterning, the beginning of one book contains clusters of shared vocabulary and themes with the end of the second book; and similarly, the beginning of the second book contains paralleled vocabulary and themes found at the end of the first book.  The Gospel of John and Revelation are written throughout in an elaborate chiastic pattern, producing the effect of each book being a mirror image of the other. Together, the consecutive and the chiastic patterns constitute the warp and woof of the Johannine interweaving.

Now John’s use of chiastic patterning is not precisely ordered and mechanical, just as we observed with the consecutive pattern of correspondence.  It is rather more artistic than mechanically predictable.  Nevertheless, the overall pattern of chiastic correspondence is clearly one of John’s major structural devices.

Moving in reverse directions within John’s Gospel and Revelation, we will work our way forward in the Gospel and backward in Revelation, noting as we go in paralleled charts how the two books are joined together so as to enlighten and interpret each other by the use of this ancient literary pattern.  The mirror imaging that occurs between these two books will describe a diagram much like the following.

John-Revelation Chiastic Correspondence Charts

John-Revelation:  The Story Begins to Unfold

The verbal and thematic patterns expressed in the consecutive and chiastic correspondences point to a divinely intended joining of John’s Gospel and the Revelation.  As the two charts are laid over each other, a wonderful story emerges.  At the opening of his Gospel, John declares that He who was fully God in the beginning has come to tabernacle with men in His earthly sojourn (John 1:1-14).  Then climactically at the end of Revelation, a loud voice in heaven rejoices that the tabernacle of God is with men forever (Rev 21:3).  Redemption’s glorious climax of God dwelling with His people becomes the frame of these two books for the telling of the greatest love story ever, a story of a heavenly Groom and an earthly bride.   

The story is dramatically recounted in the chiastic pattern joining the two books, and is bolstered by key elements from the consecutive pattern.  Each crosspiece of the chiastic structure develops a portion of the inspired story the books tell.  The following chart summarizes the story line developed in each crosspiece of the chiasm.

The Great Reversal:
The Son is lifted up (John 12:28-31)
Satan is cast down (Revelation 12:9-10)

The first crosspiece combines the opening chapters of the Gospel and the closing chapters of the Revelation to tell the story of the Son of Man as a Heavenly Bridegroom who leaves His Father’s house to dwell among men in search of a bride. He finds her in a wilderness and woos her to Himself, at last taking her to a pleasant garden in the city of God.  The Gospel presents the Bridegroom; the Revelation introduces the bride. 

This crosspiece is rich with wedding imagery.  At the opening of the Gospel, Jesus and His disciples are invited to a wedding in Cana.  At the close of Revelation, blessing is pronounced on all who are invited to the wedding of the Lamb. At the opening of the Gospel, John the Baptist rejoices to hear the voice of the Bridegroom (Jesus) who has the bride (the church).  At the close of Revelation, Babylon is judged when the voice of the Bridegroom and bride is no longer heard.  Jesus makes wine in both settings.  First, He serves the good wine of the Gospel at Cana.  Then in Revelation, when the harlot and her people are drunk, He serves the wine of the wrath of God (cf. John 2:10).  The good wine of the Gospel is served before the wine of fierce wrath in the Revelation.

The second crosspiece joins the opening of Revelation with the close of John.  It tells of the heroic Son of God, who comes from heaven as a Warrior King to lay hold of His Kingdom by vanquishing the Dragon.  He rides forth upon a white horse to conquer His enemies with the sword of His mouth.  Those who follow Him need not fear the warfare, for their King is the Lord of Life.  Even if they should lose their lives in martyrdom, they will be raised to new life just like their conquering King, and will dwell forever with Him in the New Jerusalem, where there will be no more pain, sorrow, or tears. 

The pivot of both the consecutive and the chiastic structure (John 12; Rev 12), which is the thematic center of the story told by the two books, tells of the great reversal that takes place as the Son is lifted up and Satan is cast down.  John 12:28-31 and Revelation 12:9-10 are anchored by word combinations that occur nowhere else in either book.  These passages constitute the literary axis of the two Johannine books.  (See the consecutive chart.)  Both passages concern the announcement of Christ’s kingdom.  In John 12, Jesus rides into Jerusalem upon a donkey.  The crowds proclaim Him “King of Israel” and the Pharisees worry that “the world has gone after Him” (John 12:13,15,19).  The Revelation passage that corresponds to the Triumphal Entry of the Gospel opens with the announcement that “the kingdoms of the world have become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of His Christ; and He shall reign forever and ever” (Rev 11:15; cf. Rev 12:10).  In John 12:32, the Son is lifted up.  The matching declaration of Revelation 12:9 is that the Dragon is cast down to earth.  As noted on the chart, both John and Revelation speak of Satan being cast out of heaven.

©2002 Warren Austin Gage, J. Randy Beck, Steven P. Carpenter

¹ See Gage/White, “The Gospel of John:  A Neglected Key to Revelation? Study No. 1 on the Gospel of John and the Book of Revelation.”

² It will be seen that the chiastic pattern comprehends several themes initiated in the beginning of the Gospel and concluded at the end of the Revelation.  The darkness, which is the emblem of the power of chaos, is at war with the light in the opening of the Gospel (John 1:4-5).  Only at the end of Revelation is the war finished, and the darkness at last is overtaken by the light (Rev 22:5).

³ The Gospel begins with the declaration that the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us (John 1:14), and Revelation concludes with the glorious announcement that in the consummation of all things God pitches His tabernacle forever among men (Rev 21:3).

⁴ The promise of John the Baptist at the river Jordan, that the Lamb of God would take away the sin of the world (John 1:29), is realized in the vision of John of Patmos, who sees the river of paradise flowing from the throne of God and the Lamb, with the curse of sin having been taken away (Rev 22:3).

⁵ It is noteworthy that the Gospel opens with a twofold invitation to “come” to Jesus.  Revelation concludes with a similar twofold invitation to “come” to the Water of Life.

⁶ Peter’s promise in the Gospel that he would be a “stone” is serendipitously fulfilled in Revelation as he becomes a “precious stone!”

⁷ The Gospel account of Nathanael, the true Israelite, recalls a fig tree (John 1:48), the tree whose leaves could not hide the knowledge of God in Genesis.  Similarly, Revelation foretells a vision of the tree of life, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations who make up the city of God (Rev 22:2). Furthermore, the promise to Nathanael, that he should see the heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man (John 1:51) is never fulfilled in the Gospel.  Only in Revelation does John see the heaven opened and angels ascending and descending around a vision of the Lord of Lords (Rev 17:8-21:10).

⁸ The beginning of the Gospel and the ending of the Revelation are filled with wedding imagery.  The wedding of Cana in the Gospel sustains many literary connections with the wedding of the Lamb in Revelation.  John the Baptist describes Jesus as a Bridegroom in the Gospel’s beginning.  But there is no description of the bride in the Gospel.  John the Evangelist describes the bride of the Lamb at the end of Revelation.  But there is no description of the Bridegroom in Revelation.  The two books of John, like a husband and wife, require each other to be complete.

⁹ According to the wedding custom, the bridegroom should set forth first the good wine, and only afterward, when the guests are drunk, is the worse wine served (2:10).  When the wedding of Cana (John 2:1) is read in light of the wedding of the Lamb (Rev 19:7), it is clear that Jesus observes the wedding custom respecting the order of wine service.  Jesus makes wine for both weddings.   As the steward of Cana testified, the first wine Jesus serves in the Gospel is “good” (John 2:10).  But afterward in Revelation, when the whore and her followers are “drunk,” (Rev 2, 6), He serves them the wine of the wrath of Almighty God (Rev 19:15).

¹⁰ The prophetic character of the wedding in Cana is suggested by Jesus’ words.  The hour of which He speaks (cf. John 12:23) is the hour of His passion and death, when he will provide the wine of His blood for His bride.  That hour prepares the way for and anticipates the messianic banquet of Revelation 19:9 (cf. Isa 25:6-8).

¹¹ The proclamation of John the Baptist, of course, is not part of the account of the wedding of Cana.  However, it is related to John 2:1-11 both thematically and by a pattern of inclusions.  Both passages concern the wedding theme.  Both describe Jewish purification custom (2:6 and 3:25).  Finally, both employ the same Greek root word to describe the inferior (2:10) wine that follows the better, and the decrease (3:30) of John before the increase of Jesus.

¹² Babylon is the city where the “light of a lamp will not shine in you any longer, and voice of the bridegroom and the bride is heard no longer” (Rev 18:23).  The voice of the bridegroom, read chiastically with the Gospel, is the voice of Jesus (John 3:29).  The friend of the Bridegroom is the prophet John the Baptist, who is described as a “bright and shining light” in which Jerusalem rejoiced for a season (John 5:35).   Babylon is the city in which is found the blood of the prophets (Rev 18:24), and the city which silenced the voice of the Bridegroom (cf. Rev 11:8, 18:23).  The conclusion is unmistakable that the Jerusalem of the second temple, the archetypical city of chaos, which is spiritually Egypt and Sodom (Rev 11:8), is likewise the “Great Babylon” of Revelation.  In this light it is instructive that Jerusalem under Pontius Pilate was a “babel” of three languages, Hebrew, Latin, and Greek (John 19:20).  Similarly, the Babylon of Revelation is divided into three parts (Rev 16:19).  The theme of Jerusalem under the figure of “Babylon” will be well developed as the argument proceeds.

¹³ The love of merchandise is the connecting link between the second temple and Great Babylon (John 2:16 and Rev 18:3,11,15).  The prophet Zechariah anticipated the day when the merchant (BH “Canaanite”) would no longer be in the house of God.  The Lord’s accusation regarding “merchandise” in the temple constitutes the charge that the second temple was in truth a “Canaanite” sanctuary, a point that figures prominently in the theology of John’s Gospel.

¹⁴ Nicodemus is characterized in the Gospel as the one coming out of the night of the Old Jerusalem (3:2, 19:39) to Jesus, the Light of the World (8:12).  Judas, on the other hand, leaves the Light to return to the darkness of Old Jerusalem (13:30).  Revelation gives the sharply contrasting picture.  There is no night in the New Jerusalem, the city of light, because the Lamb is its light (21:23-25).

¹⁵ The themes developed in these sections are the chief themes of the creation account in Genesis, continuing the pattern that the evangelist began by opening his Gospel “in the beginning” (1:1, cf. Gen 1:1) and by concluding his Revelation with a “new creation” (21:1). This section speaks of darkness and light (John 3:1, Rev 21:25), a Bridegroom and a bride (John 3:29, Rev 21:9), and a serpent of enmity (John 3:14, Rev 20:20:2).

¹⁶ The boastful claim of the whore of Babylon that she is not a widow and will never see mourning (Rev 18:7) is an allusion drawn from the destruction of the first temple of Jerusalem depicted in Lamentations (1:1).  John uses devastating irony to portray the coming destruction of the “Babylonian” second temple using the dramatic colors of the destruction of the first temple of Jerusalem by the Babylonians.  At the close of Jeremiah, the prophet foresaw the fall of Babylon for all the rapaciousness of her destruction of Jerusalem (51:49).  But John identifies the true Babylon as the Jerusalem of the second temple, the city whose sins, like Babel’s ancient tower of rebellion, were piled up to heaven (Rev 18:5, cf. Gen 11:4).  The pattern is complete.  In his Lamentations, Jeremiah described the ruins of Jerusalem as desolate as a “widow,” she who had been great “among the nations” (Lam 1:1).  The nations had dealt treacherously with her, despising her because they had “seen her nakedness” (Lam 1:8).  Jerusalem had “fallen,” and so had lost all the “precious things” of her temple (Lam 1:10). 

In Revelation, once the Babylonian character of the second temple is revealed, the judgment of Babylon the Great is seen to be in fact the judgment of second temple Jerusalem.  John borrows Jeremiah’s description of the ruin of the first temple to predict the character of the destruction of the second.  Revelation’s Babylon denies that she is a “widow or will ever see mourning” (Rev 18:7).  That is, the second temple boasts that she will never suffer the fate of the first temple.  But John foresees the day of divine wrath when the “nations,” who had been familiar with her, will despise her, having “seen her nakedness” (Rev 17:16, 18:9).  Thus Great Babylon will “fall” (Rev 18:2).  And they will mourn the loss of all her “precious things“  (Rev 18:11-18).  Just as the destruction of the first temple was incomparable for sorrow (Lam 1:12), so the ruin of the second temple for sorrow will be incomparable (Rev 18:18). Just as the abominable practices of the religious leaders of the first temple brought about its destruction (Ezek 8), so the abominations of the religious leaders of the second temple will require a like judgment.

¹⁷ The Samaritan woman’s past bears a striking resemblance to the whore of Babylon!

¹⁸ There is masterful artistry at work in the selection of a Samaritan woman to symbolize the New Jerusalem.  The heavenly Jerusalem is one city, but it is composed of two peoples, Jew and Gentile.  It is built on the foundations of the twelve apostles to the nations, but its gates are named for the twelve sons of Israel (Rev 21:12-14).  Its inhabitants include thousands upon thousands “from every tribe of the sons of Israel” and a “great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues” (Rev 7:4, 9).  Just like the New Jerusalem, the Samaritan is one woman, but she is part Jew and part Gentile.  The Samaritans were Jews who had intermingled with their Gentile neighbors.  Thus, the Samaritan woman traced her ancestry back to Jacob, like the Jews, but she was also related by blood to the nations.

¹⁹ In both the Gospel and Revelation an angel descends from heaven and waters of earth are “troubled.”  The multitude of the sick gathered at the pool of Bethesda is compared to Babylon as a dwelling place of every unclean spirit!  The collection of the infirm near the precincts of the second temple brings to mind the bias of the Law of Moses against the infirm or the unclean having entry into the sanctuary (cf. Deut 23:1, Lev 21:21-23).  The instruction of the Mosaic Law required that the second temple be preserved from defilement (Lev 21:23).  The nature of the true Temple, however, is such that the Lord Christ heals the infirm and cleanses the defiled.  The Gospel account of the healing of the woman with the issue of blood, who was both infirm and unclean, illustrates the better nature of the true Temple of Jesus’ body, which cannot be defiled (Luke 8:43-48).  The same point is exemplified in the account of the healing of the paralytic man in John 5:2-9.

²⁰ The religious leaders of the second temple charge Jesus with deceit (John 7:12, 47), while John attributes the true deceit to the beast (Rev 13:14).  Deceit is the characteristic of the beast in Revelation, and the charge of the religious leaders against Jesus in the Gospel (7:12, 47).  The basis of the beast’s deceit is that he had been “resurrected,” that is, he is “the beast who had the wound of the sword and has come to life” (Rev 13:14).  The boast of the beast is in truth the claim of Jesus (“I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore” Rev 1:18).  We have seen the significance of the temple theology in John’s writings.  The allegation that Jerusalem is spiritual Babylon colors the second temple with Daniel’s bestial imagery.  The description of the beast, that he had been dead and was now alive forevermore, is thus a clue to his identification when seen in the light of temple theology.  In fact, the temple of Israel had been destroyed and thus the second temple represented a kind of resurrection (implicit is the claim that the temple would endure forevermore, cf. Matt 24:1-3).  The destruction of the second temple, by this logic, will be the destruction of the beast. It will be the final exposé of draconic deceit.

²¹ There is an ancient and widely diversified history of the excision of the account of the woman taken in adultery from manuscripts of the Gospel of John. The issue of Jesus’ allegedly negligent attitude toward the requirements of the Mosaic law (John 8:5) as well as His refusal to condemn a notorious adulteress (John 8:11) may account for the challenge this passage presented to the church, reflected in the confusion of the manuscripts.  Nonetheless, the pattern of concentric correspondence provides strong attestation for the passage, both respecting its authenticity and the accuracy of its placement within the Gospel context.

²² The scene in the second earthly temple depicts the scribes and Pharisees seeking to destroy the adulterous woman as a way to accuse, and thus destroy, Jesus (8:6).  The accusers wait to cast stones at her (8:7), wanting to stone Jesus as well (cf. 10:31).  In heaven, the dragon stands before a woman in labor, hoping to devour her Child (Rev 12:4).  The conflict leads to war in heaven, and the dragon-accuser is cast out of the heavenly sanctuary (Rev 12:7-12).

²³ In the dramatic account of the Gospel, before Jesus forgives a flagrantly immoral woman (8:11), He first confronts her accusers, whom He shows to be morally incompetent to charge an adulteress.  As a result, the accusers leave the temple precincts (8:9).  The exit of the scribes and Pharisees from the temple because they could not “cast the first stone” constitutes their implicit acknowledgment of their own “adulteries.”  Their exit constitutes a second “temple cleansing” (John 8:9), and corresponds to the accusers who are cast out of the heavenly sanctuary (Rev 12:8-12).

²⁴ The religious leaders, who were so zealous of protecting their place in the second temple (John 11:48), are associated with the followers of the dragon, for whom no place was found in the heavenly sanctuary (Rev 12:8).  The significance of the “place” as a sanctuary is later suggested in the chiastic correspondence of John 14:1 (“I go to prepare a place for you”) and Revelation 12:6 (“And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared for her by God”).

²⁵ The charge of the Jewish leaders that Jesus had been begotten of fornication (John 8:41) suggests the nature of the quarrel between the two temples.  Revelation responds to the moral characterization, identifying the temple as the site of the true fornication (Rev 14:8).

²⁶ The Lord charges that the devil had begotten the religious leaders, which accounts for their deceit (John 8:44), a charge bolstered by the deceitful operation of the devil as depicted in the visions of John (Rev 12:9).

²⁷ The plot of the religious leaders to kill Lazarus is paralleled with the beast’s war against the light of God in the killing of the two witnesses.  The identification of the two witnesses relates to their claim to give light as lampstands (Rev 11:4). In the Gospel both John the Baptist and Jesus are called lights (John 5:35 and 8:12), and both are called witnesses (John 5:33-36), a word which is the fundamental characterization of the witnesses of Revelation (Rev 11:3).  Moreover, the two witnesses of Revelation are associated with the power of Elijah and Moses (Rev 11:6). John is questioned by the Jews as to whether he is Elijah (John 1:21), while Jesus is asked to do the works of Moses (John 6:30-31).  But the Jerusalem of the second temple refuses their witness and extinguishes their light.

²⁸ Ironically, it appears that the saints in heaven require the truth of the word of God for their sanctification, even as do those upon earth.

²⁹ The encounter of Jesus with the Roman cohort is noteworthy for the emphasis John places upon Christ’s deity.  Jesus identifies Himself to the band of about four hundred soldiers by using the theologically significant “I am” formula (John 18:5-6).  This statement constitutes Jesus’ claim of deity, a point made clear by the fact that the entire band of four hundred falls backward and down to the ground in response (John 18:6).  The irony of the encounter is clear.  The four hundred soldiers are arresting God – the very One before whom, in another venue, the twenty-four elders fall down as a token of worship (Rev 4:10).

³⁰ The Gospel account describes seven discouraged disciples (five are named along with “two others”), including and led by Peter.  Filled with doubt and wracked by denial, they abandon their calling to be followers of Jesus and return to their prior calling as fishermen (21:3).  In all of this they largely represent the spiritual challenges of the seven churches of Asia, also suffering doubt and denial (2:1-3:22).

³¹ Just as Jesus appears on the shore of the sea of Galilee, calling out across the waters to seven of His disciples and inviting them to return to their first love (John 21:15), even so Jesus appears to His disciple John on Patmos, addressing an appeal to seven of His churches across the waters, and likewise inviting them to return to the love they had at first (Rev 2:4).

Study Paper No. 5 on the Gospel of John and the Book of Revelation

The Vision Promised to Nathanael (John 1:51):
The Seven Last Angels of the Apocalypse (Rev 17:1- 22:6)

Our Lord’s promise to Nathanael¹ that he should see the great vision described in John 1:51 is part of an elaborate Jacobite typology. Nathanael, the “Israelite” unlike Jacob (i.e. one who is “guileless”), is promised that he shall see a climactic vision² that recalls the Bethel vision granted to Jacob in his dream recorded in Genesis 28:10-22. The vision will be recognized, we are told, when he 1) “sees heaven opened,” 2) and the “angels of God ascending and descending,” 3) upon the Son of Man (John 1:51).

The Climactic Vision of Revelation

This study focuses on the climactic vision of the Apocalypse. The vision opens with a lurid depiction of human depravity in the portrait of the abominable whore, Babylon the Great. It concludes with a beautiful expression of all the hopes of the redeemed in the vision of the virginal bride, the New Jerusalem. The center of the vision consists of a glorious depiction of the exalted Christ, seated on a white horse of victory. With its vivid contrasts of Babylon and Jerusalem, whore and bride, and beast and Lamb, no passage in the Bible portrays more clearly both the desperation and the aspiration of all mankind.

In our attempt to understand the vision of this most allusive and elusive of books, we will appeal to the conventional literary controls of structure and pattern. We begin by observing the structure of the vision itself, a literary architecture defined by references to seven angels carrying seven bowls filled with the seven last plagues. The first and most salient observation is the correspondences between 17:1-3,8 and 21:9-10, the introductions of the first and the last angels in the series of seven angels introduced in 16:1. The following boxes compare the text introducing the first (17:1) and the last (21:9) angels in the vision.³

In his excellent study on the Book of Revelation, Richard Bauckham notes the “clearly parallel openings” of the two angels, claiming that they “are so clear that it is astonishing that so many attempts to discern the structure of Revelation have ignored them.”⁴ Bauckham further observes that several thematic correspondences between the two angels circumscribe the material between them, bracketing a single section of the book. He notes that the two angels deal respectively with Babylon and Jerusalem, the two cities that John depicts under the figure of two women. Bauckham continues, “In 17:1-19:10 he (John) sees the harlot Babylon and her fall; in 21:9-22:9 he sees the bride of the Lamb, the New Jerusalem, which comes down from heaven. Together these two sections form the climax towards which the whole book has aimed: the destruction of Babylon and her replacement by the New Jerusalem.”⁵

There are, in fact, a number of contrasting parallels between the visions of Lady Babylon and Lady Zion that secure the observation that the visions interpret one another.⁶

The following chart lists several of these contrasts between Babylon and Jerusalem:

Bauckham noted the inclusive correspondences between the first and the last angels of the last vision. But inclusio patterns often alert the reader to chiastic correspondence as well.⁷ Nils Lund has undertaken an elaborate comparison of the angels in a study that arranges them in a chiastic pattern.⁸ According to Lund’s arrangement, the first angel corresponds to the seventh, as Bauckham also observes. But Lund likewise corresponds the second to the sixth, and the third to the fifth angels, with the vision of Christ in heaven taking the central place of the fourth “angel.”⁹

Our own study substantiates this chiastic correspondence through the observation that John arranges the angels according to a spatial pattern that conforms to the chiastic pattern. The first and seventh angels are stationed upon the earth (“in a wilderness”, 17:3 and “upon a mountain”, 21:10). The second and the sixth angels descend to midheaven (“descending from heaven” in 18:1 and 20:1), and the third and fifth occupy a place in heaven (“throwing a millstone into the sea,” 18:21 and “standing in the sun,” 19:17).¹⁰ The central scene of the fourth “angel” is the vision of Christ in heaven (19:11). The spatial location markers accompanying the seven angels suggest an elaborate ecphrasis depicting a stairway reaching from earth to heaven, with the vision of Christ at the top of the stairway, described by the Seer as he beheld “the heaven opened” (19:11).

The base of the stairway was indicated by the first and seventh angels. If we “ascend the stairway” with John, we may compare the second and the sixth angels in the vision, both deployed for battle in midheaven (18:1 and 20:1).

John describes both the second and the sixth angels as “descending” from heaven. The second has “great authority,” and the sixth has a “great chain” and a “key,” the symbols of authority. Just as we observed with the first and last angels, the second and the sixth angels in the series execute comparable missions of judgment. Each acts by incarcerating evil spirits in order to restrain the deception of the nations (figuratively, their “intoxication”). Further correspondences are set forth in the following chart:

If we “ascend the stairway” with John once again, we move from the second and sixth angels in the midheaven to the third and the fifth angels, who are situated in heaven on either side of the central vision of the exalted Lord Christ (19:11).

In the last pairing of angels, the adjective “one” introduces each angel and each is associated with natural imagery, the sea or the sun. Moreover, one angel is described as “mighty,” and the other speaks a taunt against “mighty” men. The metaphoric hurling of the millstone into the sea by the third angel foreshadows the hurling of the beast and the false prophet into the lake of fire under the authority of the fifth angel. Just as we have observed with the first two pair of angels, this third pair of angels shares a further correspondence in their missions of judgment:

As we pass the third and the fifth angels, we have “ascended” to the highest stage of John’s stairway connecting earth to heaven. The Seer now describes a truly remarkable vision. Consider the central apex of the grand vision spanning Rev 17:1-22:6:

At the summit of the stairway set on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, John beholds the Lord astride a white horse and dressed in battle array at the head of the heavenly army. The full description of the Lord Jesus is so central to the vision we are considering that we will discuss it in detail.¹³ Before we proceed, however, we should step back from the detail of the text and observe the structure of the vision as a whole. The following diagram displays the pyramidal or “stairway” structure of John’s climactic vision in Revelation 17:1-22:6.

John’s Great Vision of the Seven Last Angels (Rev 17:1-22:6)

©2002 Warren Austin Gage, J. Randy Beck, Steven P. Carpenter

¹ The promise is actually broader in compass than the one disciple named Nathanael, a fact indicated by the plural pronoun in the phrase “you shall see” (John 1:51). As we shall argue, the vision is actually “seen” by John on Patmos.

² The Greek word for “ladder” in the LXX account of Bethel is “climax.” A “ladder” metaphor is thus a remarkable chiastic response to the promise to Nathanael at the opening of the Gospel for the concluding ecphrastic vision of Revelation.

³ This study will provide an English translation for the Greek NT in all charting. Words that contain the same Greek root will be presented in bold text. Words that are not derived from the same Greek root but that appear to be related thematically will be presented in italic text.

⁴ The Climax of Prophecy: Studies on the Book of Revelation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993) 4.

⁵ Ibid. 4-5

⁶ See G.K. Beale, The Book of Revelation: A Commentary on the Greek Text NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999) 1117-21.

⁷ See John Breck, The Shape of Biblical Language: Chiasmus in the Scriptures and Beyond (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1994) 335.

⁸ Lund’s work first suggested the chiastic structure of the angels of this vision to the author. Lund’s otherwise interesting study is seriously marred, however, by his occasional transposition of the text, without any manuscriptural warrant, in order to satisfy his chiastic arrangement. See Lund, Studies in the Book of Revelation, 182. His chiastic arrangement of these seven angels, however, is confirmed by this analysis.

⁹ Ibid. 177-178.

¹⁰ There is a further clue to the position of the fifth angel, who is described as “standing in the sun” (R 19:17). The angel calls out to the fowl in the “midheaven” (R 19:17). Clearly John’s vision has heaven (R 19:11), midheaven (R 19:17) and the earth in view (R 17:3 and 21:10). This tripartite understanding of the cosmos recalls the Genesis creation account. The sun was created in “the expanse of the heaven” (1:14) and the fowl were placed in midheaven, “above the earth in the expanse of the heaven” (1:20).

¹¹ Satan is retained in “prison” (R 20:7), the same word as the “prison” of the unclean of Babylon (R 18:2).

¹² The figure of a millstone being cast into the sea as a metaphor for severe and inescapable judgment is familiar from Matt 18:6 and Luke 17:2.

¹³ We have suggested that this vision of the last septet of angels constitutes an elaborate ecphrasis describing a “stairway” connecting the earth with heaven. This observation is based, first of all, upon the chiastic correspondences between the three pair of angels arrayed around the central vision of Jesus, who takes the place of the central “angel” in the vision. Second, we noted the careful description of the spatial markers in the text which, following the chiastic order, places the angels in corresponding pairs on earth, in midheaven, and in heaven. There is a third point that suggests a “stairway of angels,” which we only note now for reference, realizing that it raises a number of questions that we will address in detail below. John has described a vision wherein he sees the heaven opens, and angels tell of the beast ascending and the city descending, all in a context surrounding the One who is the Word of God, that is, the Son of Man. The vision in Revelation is strikingly similar to the one promised to Nathanael in the Gospel of John (1:51), but otherwise never fulfilled, wherein Jesus said, “you (pl.) shall see the heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” The only reference in the Johannine material to the heavens opening is found at the beginning of the Gospel and at the end of Revelation in these references. Both contexts further reference visions of Jesus within a context of angels ascending and descending. As early as Augustine (Cont. Faust. xii.26), the Nathanael passage in the Fourth Gospel was understood to allude to the stairway or ladder of Jacob’s dream described in Gen 28:12, with the angels of God ascending and descending between heaven and earth. In the Genesis account, Jacob beheld the LORD standing at the top of the ladder (Gen 28:13). In Revelation, John describes the Lord Jesus at the top of the stairway, calling Him the Word of God. Jesus is only given this divine name in one other place, the beginning of John’s Gospel. It is thus a striking Christological frame for Johannine theology. In addition to the ascending and descending angels, we note several other remarkable correspondences with the Gospel account, including the description of Jesus as the Word of God, as set forth below:

Study Paper No. 6 on the Gospel of John and the Book of Revelation

The Relationship of the Seven Churches (Rev 2:1-3:22) to
the Vision of the Whore and the Bride (Rev 17:1-22:6)

The chiastic structure we have observed in Revelation predicted the contextual relationship between the letters to the churches (addressed to the first septet of angels) and the vision of the whore Babylon and the bride Jerusalem (introduced through the last septet of angels). We have seen how prominently the vision of the exalted Christ in 19:11-16 figured into the inaugural vision of Jesus (1:12-20) and the letters to the seven churches (2:1-3:22). We will now compare the entire vision of the last seven angels to the letters to the seven churches.

The pattern of inclusions connecting the letters to the seven churches to the vision of the whore and the bride is striking and pervasive. We begin by comparing the seven promises given to “the one who overcomes,” that is, the one who resists temptation and endures suffering (2:7; 11; 17; 26-28; 3:5; 12; 21). As we will see, the promises all anticipate the privileges secured in the New Jerusalem, the bride of the Lamb.

The Bridal Destiny of the Seven Churches

The Lord of the seven churches encourages His faithful ones to purity and patient endurance by describing the hope that they have of participating in the New Jerusalem, the virginal and serene bridal city of the Lamb (21:2).¹ Consider the following chart that compares the promises given to the overcomers with their eschatological fulfillment:

It should be noted that all the promises to the seven churches are precisely fulfilled in the New Jerusalem.² Consequently, John has carefully exploited the capacity of a chiastic structure to show promises and their fulfillment.

The effect of the chiastic interconnection is to set before the believers of the churches of Roman Asia the hope that is assured by their destiny as the chosen bride of the Lamb. Indeed, much that describes the seven churches, especially their zeal for purity (3:19), previews the bridal hope expressed at the conclusion of Revelation in the vision of the New Jerusalem.

But the seven letters are also filled with severe admonishment and the threat of terrible sanctions from the Lord.³ Jesus warns the churches about an immoral woman who dwells in their midst, one who leads the church into fornication (2:20). Further, He warns the church about a false prophet who seeks to deceive them (2:14). Moreover, Satan dwells among them (2:9 and 3:9). Each of the warnings stated in the seven letters to the churches has a chiastic correspondence in the vision of the last seven angels. The portrait that emerges when we match the warnings with their chiastic correspondence is generally less flattering than the bridal imagery: