Revelation 10
Uneasiness fills the life of a prophet. What seems sweet at first taste, churns the stomach when fully digested.
Chapter 10 is short. An angel with feet on land and sea carries a “little scroll,” and John is commanded to eat it. He’s told that it’ll be sweet in the mouth but bitter in the stomach. Still, he takes it. And eats it. For what else is a prophet to do when a voice from heaven — Jesus? — tells him to eat?
The angel with their left foot on land and right on sea swears an oath, a thunderous message from God.
"There would be no more time, but that God’s mystery would be completed in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, who was going to blow his trumpet.” Rev 10: 6-7
The voice tells John to take and eat the little scroll this giant angel is carrying. John is to prophesy “about many peoples, nations, languages and kingdoms.” In other words, what comes next is not just about a few but about everyone across the planet and time.
Note: I’m following N.T. Wright’s Revelation: 22 Studies for Individuals and Groups and his newest book 20th Anniversary Edition with Study Guide, Revelation for Everyone. See my post Prepare for Revelation for suggested materials.
A brief side reminder: N.T. Wright notes that each of the seven is a different perspective of the same event. Seven represents completeness. We’ve had seven seals; we’re waiting for the last of the seven trumpets.
Being a Prophet
But this passage is about prophesying. Through it, we glimpse what it must be like to prophesy, to be given this sacred gift only to discover it comes with a bitter aftertaste. After all, the Bible is rife with peoples not exactly liking the prophets. They’re hounded, beheaded, reviled. John himself is exiled into a lonely existence. Only him and God. Although I’m sure people would think that living with God as your only companion, with Jesus arriving with visions to share a message to the world, wouldn’t be lonely.
They’d be wrong.
We’re social creatures who require touch and proximity of other humans. We’re infinitely adaptable and can adjust to harsh, isolating conditions; but it doesn’t mean we don’t become lonely, that we don’t feel the vast emptiness of aloneness.
Wright:
“‘Eating the scroll’ is a vivid metaphopr for the way in which the prophet, then or indeed today, can only speak God’s word insofar as it has become part of the prophet’s own life. It may be nourishing; it may be bitter; it may be both…What will follow [this chapter] will be God’s word, spoken through [John], bringing about the terrible judgement and the glorious, victorious mercy in which ‘God’s mystery would be completed’.” Page 69.
I’m reminded of the time God instructed the prophet Hosea to marry an adulteress as a highly visible symbol to the nation of the people’s adultery towards God. Hosea had to personally live a life of abandonment, betrayal, shame, and unconditional forgiveness in searching for his adulterous wife and taking her back.
Prophets live God’s pain that springs from God’s relationship with humanity.
Humans Cause God Pain
I don’t know what it’d be like to have my characters come to life and then hurl insults at me, mock me, deny me, revile me. It’d be disorienting for sure. But aside from that, I’d feel deeply betrayed. Although characters spring from my mind, they arrive from an unknown space and time and show me themselves. They’re part of me yet not part. The more novels I write, the more I see how we’re like my characters: created yet independent, an intrinsic part of God yet separate, formed because God envisioned us and wanted to live with us, never letting us go and hoping that we wouldn’t want to let go, either.
Like how I plan my books and foresee the ending, so God plans and sees their Creation’s completion. God gave a few the gift of prophesy to let us in on some of God’s plans and what completion would look like. For Christians and Zoroastrians, it’s salvation for all and the Resurrection.
But to get there, it’s like Star Trek: we need to traverse and survive WWIII.