Revelation: Chapters 15 to 17
Calamity upon calamity. Are we in the midst of these? Are they the future? Or the past?
Teachers of Revelation remind us that the context of its time matters. Rome was the city on seven hills. Hills equals seven heads. The Roman Empire stretched over the known world, conquering multiple nations, languages, and ethnicities. Rome required their inhabitants not to offend their gods; all must give sacrifices, such as incense, to Rome’s gods, in addition to their own, except for the Jewish people. Rome recognized that the ancient people of Judaism had a demanding God, who wouldn’t allow such things, and let them off the hook.
Early Christians, considered a subset of Judaism, were initially also included in that exception.
Later on, they weren’t.
I learnt that up until 250AD, only local persecutions of Christians happened in response to accusations against specific persons (and assuming the local Roman Governor gave a crap). After that date, all Christians were at risk.
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.
Nero had died by the time Revelation was written, but many believed he hadn’t died and would return. Filmmakers play out that fear over and over again in horror movies.
Evil doesn’t remain dead.
I’m aware that every generation sees their age as the one in which evil rises to a crescendo before its weight crushes it and God completes their plan. The 20th century certainly saw horrors like no other peoples before.
Yet the Romans cannot be rivalled in their violence and torture.
Imagine the 401 lined with crosses on which dead men hang facing the highway and dead women facing their crucifixes. That’s what walking or riding along the Appian Way was like. Imagine every household having a slave or being at risk of having children taken away as slaves to pay off debts. Imagine women…well, how much has changed for most women? Women have rights today they haven’t in most times and in most cultures (with exceptions); yet billions remain chattel — treated as property over which men have the right to violate and control. Think “domestic” violence as a local version of national oppression under the rubric of religion.
I think chapters 15 to 17 speak to the recurring evil of each generation. I found one description puzzling until I thought about how they viewed Nero back then and thought about the repurposing of Nazi programs under progressive euphemisms in Canada today.
The Dragon
The fiery red seven-headed dragon has gone off in search of the woman’s children, frustrated that God has hidden her in the desert. The dragon stands on the shore and raises a monster in the sea. The monster raises a beast on the land. The beast commands the locals to worship images of the monster and marks them with the monster’s sign. But the real power, the real authority is the dragon. The dragon remains hidden, and people assume the monster — Rome and Nero at the time — and the beast — local elites, such as priests, merchants, politicians — are acting on their own accord.
In chapter 17, one of the seven angels who’d poured out bowls of God’s wrath, takes John to the desert and shows him a scarlet monster with a bejewelled and enrobed woman on it. The monster has seven heads and ten horns, like the monster in the sea. It’s scarlet, like the fiery red dragon.
To John, the angel says, “The monster you saw was, and is not, and is due to come up from the Abyss and go to destruction….when they see the monster that was and is not and is to come.”
Contrast this with Rev 1:8:
“I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, Who Is and Who Was and Who Is To Come, the Almighty.”
What does ‘was and is not and is to come’ mean?
The scarlet monster probably referred to Nero, the one who’d died but who people said was coming again. He was, is not, and is to come.
In contrast, God always existed, exists now, and always will exist.
But Jesus, in a sense, also was, is not, and is to come. Is not because he died. And he’s described as coming again. So why is the monster described this way?
I think the vision refers both to what was said about Nero and to the cyclical nature of evil.
Evil Recycles Itself for the Current Generation
In the last 100 years, the Allies defeated Hitler and the Nazis, and they ended Japan’s cruel reign across Asia. “Never again!” people cried as both victorious and war-mongering nations rebuilt their peoples, their spirits, their economies, and their cities. Although the agreed to pursue Nazi war criminals and the Marshall Plan was enacted to help devastated Europe and UK rebuild, Canada did nothing about the war criminals within our borders. Then a few decades later, after a media brouhaha, Canada tried in court a few aging Nazis. When the brouhaha died, the Feds let it drop, not letting Canadians know they were letting Nazi war criminals continue to live in peace.
Meanwhile, Nazism included euthanasia as part of their call to purify the population, and so it became anathema…until a few decades had passed.
Europe once again, using different language, dressing euthanasia up as compassion, began instituting it. The unconscious bias against disability, the fear of dying, drives people to rationalize the indefensible.
The Supreme Court of Canada, reading into Canada’s Charter of Rights language that didn’t exist in it at all, and contrary to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Disabled Persons, to which Canada is a signatory, ruled that Canadians being a superior (race) would only use euthanasia for compassionate reasons, for the terminally ill. What arrogance! What hubris! In Star Trek: Voyager’s episode Prime Factors, Captain Janeway calls out logic’s flaw — the very flaw the SCOC relied on to come to its ruling. And it not only allowed the killing of innocents under the rubric of compassion, but also required Canada and the provinces to provide it post haste, unlike health care that actually gives people dignity and value. Funny how the Court didn’t balance the requirement for post haste killing with post haste healing or palliative care.
The Dragon Adores Euphemisms
I still think saying we have a right to death is hilarious. We are a mortal species. No one is disallowed that “right.” And no matter how much we expand euthanasia — one day, I’m sure to include persons with a head cold that they can’t live with anymore — there are too many random events like car crashes, storms, earthquakes, accidents, sudden diseases, and the like that will obviate the whole idea of a right to a “dignified” death. Although how someone — especially a member of the healing arts aka medicine -- murdering you, like they do death row prisoners in the US, is dignified is beyond me. I guess the nice environment and compassionate noises make it so.
There are many other aspects of Nazism and colonial violence that have reawakened today. A short, spirit-sapping perusal of the news will reveal them.
Was, Is Not, Is Again
The scarlet monster was during Nazism, was not during the few decades after, and is again here.
The seven seals, trumpets, and bowls of God’s wrath detail the cycling destruction.
Countries continue to conquer, whether geographically (Russia) or economically (China). The Convict in Chief and his acolytes raise manifest destiny again, enjoying the attention that talk of conquering brings.
War razes more and more countries, smashing their productive peace to smithereens.
Economic disparity at bay for decades after WWII, while people still recognized from WWI and II that this disparity brings unrest and violence, raised its head again. Greed grasped minds; wealth “managers” spread lies as truth about trickle down economics, me-first, bling, and only the lazy are poor.
Death from famines, illnesses remains.
These four evils rise again and again. They were, were not for a time, and come again. They seduce people who admire the leaders (the land beast) who follow the power (the sea monster) who is enslaved to the dragon.
But what’s the consequences?
Chapters 15 to 17 outline them.
Consequences of Following the Monster and the Beast
Hail, fire, blood over the earth. Sores erupt on the people seduced and marked by the monster. These sores remind me of how the Accuser, Satan, demanded God take away the hedge of protection around Job so that Job would suffer in his health. As related in the Book of Job, Job sat in ashes, covered in boils, blamed for his illness while declaring his innocence. Boils and sores are a symbol of how Satan, the dragon, infects us all. How many illnesses could we today cure if not for closed minds, tight-fisted economics, and judgement?
Oceans are our planet’s lifeblood. A mountain will fall into the sea, a symbol of pollution and the planet roaring its unhappiness. Its water will be turned into blood, death blood. Aren’t we doing that spectacularly well today, in a way previous generations could do only locally, not planet wide? What is it, 70% of the oceans’ fish are overfished. Coral is dying. Plastic pollutes. And the vast waters between continents are warming up, which is dangerous to its inhabitants.
A burning star falls. Meteors and satellites fall. Governments are allowing the Earth to be surrounded by so many satellites, they’re polluting the night sky and hindering astronomy. Rivers and springs will be poisoned and turned into blood. Again, like the oceans, they will no longer sustain life. Acid rain continues in some parts of the world, even though Conservative governments in Canada and the USA had enough foresight, for a brief moment, to end it over the Great Lakes.
A third of the day and a third of the night lose their light. Then it gets worse. The sun burns up the people. Climate change is heating up the planet. More and more people are dying from heat. Air conditioning, once considered only a luxury is now considered a necessity to protect people’s health and very lives.
Yet in spite of all these calamities, none repent. They curse God’s name instead. They hide and rage. So says Revelation. Looking around, it seems it’s right.
A few cry out for better; some churches are increasing in number. Canada’s Arctic church — where climate change is most apparent — is seeing an increase.
Although my character Charlotte Elisabeth had me include euthanasia in The Soul’s Awakening, I’m not sure how I’ll be including these calamities in The Soul’s Reckoning and in novel 3 of The Q’Zam’Ta Trilogy. It has to be how we as individuals in Canada experience it. So often, in the past, people talked of the USA as The Great Satan. But Canada is not some pure, innocent country. It has the blood of so many on its hands, and it’s enacting more and more legislation to roll back protections and increase the dead and living dead. The church at Ephesus, said Jesus to John, knows how to test and discern who is a fraud, a skill most churches and people lacked. Frauds are hard to pick out when they arrive with smiles and the language of compassion. Canada hides itself better than most other countries. No country, no government has escaped the scarlet monster.