Revelation: The Final Chapters
Satan's last stand, the Book of Life opened, a new Heaven and a new Earth. Who will live there? I envision these for novel three of The Q'Zam'Ta Trilogy.
My mind kicked into gear. I followed and remembered Revelation’s final scenes better than I had the first ones. How?
During my walks over Christmas and New Year’s 2024-2025, I reviewed mentally the big picture of what I’d read so far, using Lindamood-Bell’s visualizing and verbalizing method. I wrote about my personal experience with this method that restored my reading comprehension after brain injury.
Walking gave me space to recall my visuals of the last chapters. Perspectives formed.
I’d wanted to finish Revelation in the last December days, first January days. I fell behind in my planned reading schedule. So, being me, I read two or three chapters at a time per day instead of my usual morning fiction reading. Pushing oneself like that is good to shove brain into healing gear, but it sucks energy up like a high-powered vacuum. Yet being on track felt good. I think, too, being able to read an entire chapter of N.T. Wright’s Revelation for Everyone, instead of one section at a time, lead to better memory and comprehension.
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.
Revelation’s Last Days’ Sequence
What barged into my mind was a question about the final sequence. Did things really happen the way and when most assume?
Here’s a good animation of the second half of Revelation. My main quibble with it is its assumption that the harvest mentioned in chapter 14 is grain and the grapes are the evildoers. That isn’t how Wright, I, and many others interpret it. Revelation 14: 16 doesn’t specify what’s harvested, only that the earth was.
It could be like in Genesis when the first iteration says male and female, God created them. And the second tells the story of Adam and Eve.
When Does God Wipe Away Tears?
Although we know, as best as most interpret it, that the seven seals, seven trumpets, and seven bowls are different perspectives on the same event — not a sequence of events — I think the last events after the angels pour the seven bowls out, may be seen as a sequence. It seems like that’s how Wright and others interpret them. As I read and reread and recalled my mental imagery as I walked and pondered, I noticed something.
Prior to this reading of Revelation, I’d understood from how others talked about it that God wipes away every tear after death when we go to heaven. But on close reading, that’s not when God wipes away the tears and heals the wounds.
“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth….‘Look! God has come to dwell with humans!’…God himself will be with them and will be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death, or mourning or weeping or pain any more, since the fist things have passed away.” Rev 21: 1-4
Plainly, we won’t be free of psychic pain or physical wounds or grieving loss and death until after all evil is wiped out, death gone forever, and the new earth and heaven appear. That is, after heaven. Even after death, we will not be freed from weeping, mourning, and pain.
This realization confirms my characters’ experiences in the second novel — The Soul’s Reckoning — of The Q’Zam’Ta Trilogy. Perhaps being closer in form to God and Jesus and angels will provide my characters the ability to repair relationships, an ability that’s too difficult when they exist — we exist — solely within our emotions. Just as brains support brains here on earth, perhaps Jesus’s emotions and love support human-spirit emotions and relationships in a way that allows deeper repair.
I wrote in Brain Injury, Trauma, and Grief: How to Heal When You Are Alone, apologies alongside forgiveness lead to reconciliation. But God wiping away tears, and mourning passing away, sound like an outright cure, not just a healing in the way we’re familiar with. After all, when we heal psychic wounds, they’re not erased from our memories. Their taint lingers on in the way we approach life. Perhaps we’re more guarded, trust less, closed more. But when these things pass away, then their longstanding effects will, too, I presume.
When Is the Book of Life Opened?
The next thing I noticed was when the books were opened and people judged. Yeah, I’m hopscotching around the chapters here, for this happens before the new heaven and earth appear. But this is the order in which I began to realize something about this sequence.
The dragon — Satan — has been unchained and let out of the Abyss to do his worst. The thousand years are up. It’s Satan’s final rally.
“When the thousand years are complete, the satan will be released from his prison. Out he will come to deceive the nations at the four corners of the earth…They came up over the full width of the earth, and closed in on the place where God’s holy people are encamped, and the beloved city. Then fire came done from heaven and burnt them up. And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire…
“Then I saw a large white throne, and the one who was sitting on it…Then I saw the dead, great and small, standing in front of the throne. Books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged on the basis of what was written in the books, in accordance with what they had done.” Rev 20: 7-12
First they release Satan, then Satan calls out to come hither, and those who had heeded the monster and the beast, who, one assumes, tried to continue to live that way during those thousand years of multiple generations, heard and went running in obedience to Satan’s command to battle God’s holy people. Not only nations but individuals, too. Not a single one escaped Satan’s call and heaven’s fire. God created conditions to see where those who make life miserable had endured through many generations without the dragon, monster, and beast. To see whose sin kept them going and resisting God.
Thus when the dead came back to life and were judged, they did not include a single one of those who’d responded to Satan’s call. Interesting, eh?
The fire and brimstone pulpits rail that we will be judged. But, here, the judging happens after the last of the evildoers are burnt up and thrown into the lake of fire. Sure, John writes in verse 15, “And if anyone was not found written in the book of life, they were thrown into the lake of fire.” It’s an “if” not a “when.” Big difference. It’s like a just in case clause. God being supreme, all-knowing, with a perfect plan, would not likely miss a few stragglers. You could say that some were left who had seen through God’s plan, resisted Satan’s call, and avoided the burn. But when God knows all hearts and minds, how likely is that? Plus those who escaped, repented, and can resist temptation today generally keep growing. Even with setbacks, their path remains on the recovery trajectory.
I think, then, this judging isn’t about who’s tossed into the lake of fire and who isn’t, but more about something to do with their future in the new heaven and the new earth. This opens up all sorts of possibilities for novel three — which will focus on what life is like in these end times from an individual perspective within a global reality. (I won’t just be calling on Revelation to figure out how to describe it. I’ll be using what I know from other fields like Philosophy of Mind, theoretical physics, and so on. But Revelation is the foundation.)
The Gates
Perhaps we get a clue about this judging business in the description of the New Jerusalem.
The foundation stones represent the 12 apostles. The gates, the children of the 12 tribes of Israel. I’m not sure what the 12 fruits of the Tree of Life symbolize, but I have an interesting idea.
Jesus said that he is the rock. It makes sense then that the 12 foundation stones represent the apostles who began his church here on earth. Haven’t we built the church on their work? The foundations are precious stones. Perhaps a little bit of time spent studying the symbolism, then and now, of each stone would mine richer understanding. But for now, I feel like these stones are saying to us that the foundation is precious, created from great forces, hewn out of the earth, and polished by humans and God alike.
The gates are described as pearls. You know how pearls come to be? A small stone or piece of material enters an oyster’s shell, irritating the animal. The oyster creates a barrier between this wounding irritant and itself. This barrier becomes a pearl. Humans harvest the pearls and clean them up to create jewellery. Each of these tribes went through suffering to become beautiful and wanted. Everyone who enters these pearl gates has suffered — like those who hid under God’s altar asking when, oh, when will God vindicate them. And just like a pearl, they are now cleaned and beautiful. Their suffering the reason for their arrival but now gone.
It’s not heaven that gives us hope. It’s the Resurrection, the fulfillment of God’s plan. Heaven is just the second stage in the journey — our journey of walking hand in hand with God — towards living as we were always meant to live.