Finding Fixed Points in Revelation

Revelation is a confusing book for many readers, apparently endlessly, perhaps even drearily repetitive. The pyrotechnics and special effects might fascinate for a bit, but after a while it all blurs and blends and leaves us wandering in the bewilderness (David Sterritt’s wonderful term). Can we find fixed points, coordinates that help us navigate the text?

Yes. This is an apocalypse, an unveiling of Jesus, and Jesus provides the fixed moments. The opening chapters (1-3) are fairly easy to grasp: Jesus appears to John and dictates letters to the angels of seven churches of Asia. With chapter 4, things get more difficult, but John has not left us without guidance. John enters the heavenly liturgy, and discovers that heaven is in a bit of a crisis: There is no one to open the book. To his relief, a Lion-Lamb appears, worthy to open the book. No Lamb in heaven; then a Lamb in heaven: This must be the ascension of Jesus. Here is a fixed point: Whatever happens after the Lamb appears must happen after the ascension of Jesus. That is the frame for the seven seals that the lamb opens.

The seventh seal is opened at the beginning of chapter 8, and an angel appears, standing on an altar. He is “another angel,” and that phrase takes us back to the opening verses of the book, where John says He received the revelation of Jesus through “His angel.” That is the Holy Spirit, and it is the Spirit who is doing the work at the altar, scooping up coals and tossing them to the earth. That is Pentecost, and the trumpets that follow flow out from the fall of the Spirit’s fire.

It overlaps with the seals, but moves the narrative ahead. We can see this in the progression of the martyrs. Initially, martyrs are seen under the altar (6:9-11). Then 144,000 additional martyrs are sealed (ch. 7). Those are both in the seal section. In the trumpet section, we see witnesses who actually die for their testimony (ch. 11). The seals move from ascension to the sealing of martyrs; the trumpets move from Pentecost to the deaths of the two witnesses.

Chapter 12 begins with another fixed point, again a point fixed by an appearance of Jesus. A woman gives birth to a child who is snatched to heaven to reign. It’s another vision of the ascension of Jesus, and means that we are starting the cycle again, but again moving ahead. The angel’s work at the altar is a preparation for the trumpets; chapters 12-15 can be seen as a lengthy preparation for the bowls. To have bowls of blood, you need blood; to have blood, you need martyrs; chapters 12-15 show how there came to be enough blood to pour out on the city.

This isn’t simply repetitive, any more than the trumpets simply repeat the seals. Again, we can see the progress if we watch what happens to martyrs. The seals show us martyrs sealed; the trumpets show us two witnesses who die; the bowls show that the blood of the martyrs tears down the old world and makes way for a new.

So, in general: Jesus and the Spirit mark the fixed points in the story, and the central section of Revelation shows the progress of the martyrs from the trough of the altar toward the thrones of heaven.