Revelation 6-9: The Destruction of Jerusalem
Revelation 6: The First Six Seals “The Wrath of the Lamb is coming!”
Revelation 7: Intermission: The Sealed Ones “Who shall survive it?”
Revelation 8-11: The Seventh Seal (Seven Trumpets) “The Lamb’s Wrath Pours Out!”
Revelation 8: The First Four Trumpets The First Years of the Jewish War
Revelation 9: The First Two Woes Jerusalem Besieged!
Revelation 10-11.14: An Intermission
Revelation 10: The Mystery of God
Revelation 11.1-14: The Two Witnesses
Revelation 11.15-19: The Third Woe Jerusalem is Destroyed!
REVELATION 9
What – or who – is the fallen star? The fallen star isn’t a literal star, for it’s given a personal pronounce (he is given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit). Scholars debate the star’s identity: is it an angel? is it a minister of the Jewish religion, such as the High Priest? is it a body of religious leaders spreading unbelief, heresies, and false teachings that wreck peoples’ lives? Whoever this is, he (or they) open the bottomless pit, and locusts come out of the pit.
What are these locusts? These aren’t your ordinary run-of-the-mill locusts, as they harmed people – specifically those who lacked the seal of God on their foreheads, i.e. non-Christians – rather than grass, plants, and trees. They are best identified as demons set loose in besieged Jerusalem as a judgment against those who had rejected Christ. We know that demons dwell in the Abyss, because Jesus sends some there in Luke 8.31. The description of these locusts given in verses in 9.7-11 supports this interpretation:
‘In appearance the locusts were like horses prepared for battle: on their heads were what looked like crowns of gold; their faces were like human faces, their hair like women's hair, and their teeth like lions' teeth; they had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the noise of their wings was like the noise of many chariots with horses rushing into battle. They have tails and stings like scorpions, and their power to hurt people for five months is in their tails. They have as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit. His name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he is called Apollyon.’
‘With their insatiable desire for loot, [the besieged rebels] ransacked the houses of the wealthy, murdered men and violated women for sport; they drank their spoils with blood, and from mere satiety and shamelessness gave themselves up to effeminate practices, plaiting their hair and putting on women’s clothes, drenched themselves with perfumes and painting their eyelids to make themselves attractive. They copied not merely the dress, but also the passions of women, devising in their excess of licentiousness unlawful pleasures in which they wallowed as in a brothel. Thus they entirely polluted the city with their foul practices. Yet though they wore women’s faces, their hands were murderous. They would approach with mincing steps, then suddenly become fighting men, and, whipping out their swords from under their dyed cloaks, they would run through every passerby.’
On the eve of Jerusalem’s fall, sanity and civility in Jewish society had corroded. The behavior of the Jews was reprehensible: violent infighting, murdering one’s own family, and men pretending to be women. The biblical scholar David Chilton notes, ‘The entire generation became increasingly demon-possessed; their progressive national insanity is apparent as one reads through the New Testament, and its horrifying final stages in the pages of Josephus’ The Jewish War: the loss of all ability to reason, the frenzied mobs attacking one another, the deluded multitudes following the most transparently false prophets, the crazed and desperate chase after food, the mass murders, executions and suicides, the fathers slaughtering their own families and the mothers eating their own children. Satan and the host of hell simply swarmed through the land of Israel and consumed the apostates.’ David S. Clark adds, ‘[In] the siege of Jerusalem social and civil safeguards were thrown to the winds; and as if they had gone insane, as if possessed with devils, father was set against son and son against father, brother against brother till the inside of the city was a seething hell, and its deliverance impossible.’
It’s noteworthy that this torment lasts ‘five months’. Between the months of May to September AD 70, a period of five months, the warring factions caused the most mayhem and bloodshed. It was during these five months that they crippled themselves so badly that the Romans were able to make quick work of them once they entered the city. The text in Revelation also states that men would seek death and not find it; this may allude to the fact that during the siege of the city, the warring rebel factions perpetrated such horrendous crimes on one another that many wished for the Romans to break through the walls and put an end to their misery.
Interestingly, Jesus warned this would happen in Matthew 12.43-45. Looking towards the fall of Jerusalem, Jesus warned that an onslaught of demons was what His generation could expect if they didn’t seize the opportunity He was presenting them to embrace His kingdom. Only those who embraced Jesus could walk in deliverance and victory. Matthew 12.43-45 reads:
When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none. Then it says, “I will return to my house from which I came.” And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first. So also will it be with this evil generation.
Jesus had spent three years casting demons out of Israel. Israel was the house that was found empty, swept, and put in order. All the demons that had been cast out – and there had been legions! – went and gathered up a host of more demons, and they poured back into that wicked generation. The demons pent up in the Abyss are beyond frustrated, for their nature is to steal, kill, and destroy, and the Abyss is a place where everything is already destroyed. They cannot wreck because they live in a wrecked place. When they’re released, they’re more than happy to get back to doing what they’re good at: stealing, killing, and destroying. And all this Jesus said would happen with this evil generation – the people who were alive in the days of Jesus’ ministry.
The figurative language likes refers to the Roman armies or their confederates, following upon the demonic ‘locust’ invasions that came upon the apostates of Israel. The mention of the Euphrates may have a literal and/or symbolic meaning. In the literal sense, Rome’s 10th Legion was stationed across the Euphrates and thus had to cross it to join the Roman forces besieging Jerusalem. In a symbolic sense, the Euphrates carried dark undertones for the Israelite people. The river Euphrates was the boundary between Israel and her ancient captors; it was across the Euphrates that first Assyria and then Babylon came to carry the people of Israel and then Judah into captivity. Two great conquerors had crossed the Euphrates to defeat Israel and Judah in the past, and a third (the Romans) was coming now. That this trumpet refers to an army is clear from Revelation 9.16-19:
The number of mounted troops was twice ten thousand times ten thousand; I heard their number. And this is how I saw the horses in my vision and those who rode them: they wore breastplates the color of fire and of sapphire and of sulfur, and the heads of the horses were like lions' heads, and fire and smoke and sulfur came out of their mouths. By these three plagues a third of mankind was killed, by the fire and smoke and sulfur coming out of their mouths. For the power of the horses is in their mouths and in their tails, for their tails are like serpents with heads, and by means of them they wound.
That this destruction had been immaculately prepared ‘for the hour, the day, the month, and the year’ tells us that Jerusalem’s destruction had been long-planned. This wasn’t an off-the-cuff decision of a temperamental deity; in fact, it was promised to the Jewish people if they refused to abide by the covenant God made with them. In Deuteronomy 28, Moses warned Israel that violating their covenant would bring great curses upon them (many of which we see befalling the Jews in Revelation), and the final curse, given in verses 49-68, would be an overwhelming and devastating invasion of foreign armies, who would drive them out of their land and leave them dispersed among all the nations:
‘The Lord will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the land [the Euphrates?], as swift as the eagle flies, a nation whose language you will not understand, a nation of fierce countenance, which does not respect the elderly nor show favor to the young… They shall besiege you at all your gates until your high and fortified walls, in which you trust, come down throughout all your hand… You shall eat the fruit of your own body, the flesh of your sons and daughters whom the Lord your God has given you, in the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy shall distress you… And it shall be, that just as the Lord rejoiced over you to do you good and multiply you, so the Lord will rejoice over you to destroy you and bring you to nothing; and you shall be plucked from off the land which you go to possess. Then the Lord will scatter you among all peoples… and among those nations you shall find no rest.’ (Deut 28.49, 50, 52-53, 63-65)
Despite the bedlam and mayhem of the first six trumpets, the Jewish rebels refused to repent. Revelation 9.20-21 reads, ‘The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk, nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.’ The historian Josephus reports that up to the very end – after the famine, the mass murders, the cannibalism, the crucifixion of their fellow Jews at the rate of 500 a day – the Jews went on heeding the insane ravings of false prophets who assured them of deliverance and victory: ‘Thus were the miserable people beguiled by these charlatans and false messengers of God, while they disregarded and disbelieved the unmistakable portents that foreshadowed the coming desolation; but, as though thunderstruck, blind, senseless, paid no heed to the clear warnings of God.’ Josephus continues, ‘When the city was encircled and they could no longer gather herbs, some persons were driven to such terrible distress that they searched the common sewers and old dunghills of cattle, and ate the dung they found there; and what they once could not even look at they now used for food. When the Romans barely heard this, their compassion was aroused; yet the rebels, who saw it also, did not repent, but allowed the same distress to come upon themselves; for they were blinded by that fate which was already coming upon the city, and upon themselves also.’
REVELATION 10: The Mystery of God
In Revelation 10-11.14 we have an interlude between the sixth and seventh trumpets (or the second and third woes) of the last seal. Remember we also had an interlude between the sixth and seventh seals. These interludes serve a purpose: the first interlude (between the sixth and seventh seals) keyed us into who would survive the wrath of the Lamb – the Jewish Christians of the first century – and then looked forward beyond Jerusalem’s destruction to the ingathering of Christians from all the nations. In this interlude, we learn that Jerusalem’s destruction is key to the ‘mystery of God’ being fulfilled (chapter 10), and we hear a strange story about prophets preaching God’s warnings and judgments to a rebellious people who have no intention of repenting (chapter 11.1-14). We will begin by examining the first intermission (chapter 10):
Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head, and his face was like the sun, and his legs like pillars of fire. He had a little scroll open in his hand. And he set his right foot on the sea, and his left foot on the land, and called out with a loud voice, like a lion roaring. When he called out, the seven thunders sounded. And when the seven thunders had sounded, I was about to write, but I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Seal up what the seven thunders have said, and do not write it down.” [Rev 10.1-4]
When Jesus speaks, John equates it with ‘seven thunders’: this could be an allusion to Psalm 29.3 which describes the voice of Yahweh: ‘The God of glory thunders: Yahweh is upon many waters.’ The seven, as we have seen, hones in on the completeness of his word. We know that this voice isn’t literal thunder, for John prepares to write what the thunders said, but a voice from heaven – Yahweh – stays his hand, ordering him not write down what has been spoken. What was it that John was about to write down? Ultimately we don’t know, for the words were sealed, but theories include:
(A) Things revealed to John that were not going to happen until far, far in the future, far beyond the scope of this book. According to this theory, the bulk of what John saw – and what he inscribes in Revelation – is stuff that would happen ‘shortly,’ i.e. in his own lifetime and in the lifetime of the letter’s recipients. That which is for the far future isn’t written down, much as was the case with the prophet Daniel: centuries before John received his revelation from Jesus, the prophet Daniel received revelations as well. Some of this revelation was far into the future, and God ordered him not to write it down because the fulfillment was a long way out (Daniel 12.4). We see basically the same thing here. However, we some of Revelation – such as chapters 20-22 – remain yet to be fulfilled in our own future.
(B) Another theory is that what John heard Jesus say was too terrifying to write down; God ordered that John spare the letter’s readers the horrid details. Perhaps Jesus was telling him, in graphic detail, what vengeance against Jerusalem would look like. At the end of Revelation 11, when the seventh trumpet sounds and Jerusalem is destroyed, we are spared descriptions of its carnage and madness and massacre.
(C) A third theory is that the message John received was meant for him and no one else. What’s important here isn’t the message John received but the fact that he was ordered to keep it secret. Perhaps God wanted the church to know that there are some things – many things! – that He has no intention of telling us beforehand.
The narrative continues:
And the angel whom I saw standing on the sea and on the land raised his right hand to heaven and swore by him who lives forever and ever, who created heaven and what is in it, the earth and what is in it, and the sea and what is in it, that there would be no more delay, but that in the days of the trumpet call to be sounded by the seventh angel, the mystery of God would be fulfilled, just as he announced to his servants the prophets. [Rev 10.5-7]
Jesus swears an oath that there would be ‘no more delay’. The souls of the martyrs had been told to be patient just a little while longer; now they would have to be patient no longer. The time has come. When the seventh angel sounds his trumpet, everything would be complete, and ‘the mystery of God would be fulfilled.’ What is this mystery? It is a mystery of God, but it’s not mysterious in the sense that we can’t decipher it, for this mystery was announced to the prophets. When the New Testament uses the phrase ‘mystery of God’ elsewhere, it’s referring to the fashioning of a new kind of man – the Christian man – out of the old categories of Jew and Gentile (Romans 16.25, Colossians 2.2, Ephesians 3.3-6). The mystery given to the prophets and now unpacked and made clear through the gospel is that Gentiles are going to be made fellow heirs together with the Jews.
But how does this mystery connect with the destruction of Jerusalem? The answer is simple: as long as the Temple in Jerusalem stood, there would be pressure for Gentile Christians to become Jews in order to be received into the New Covenant. We know that in the days of the early church, the preeminent crisis facing the church was whether or not Gentile Christians needed to become Jewish: ‘Do they need to be circumcised? Do they need to observe Jewish holy days? Do they need to eat a kosher diet?’ These questions embroiled the early church, and many of the letters of the New Testament – Romans, Galatians, Philippians, and Paul’s pastoral letters, just to name a few – are filled with arguments against certain ‘Judaizers’ who taught you needed to basically become Jewish in order to be a Christian. This false teaching was a plague on the early church, and Jerusalem’s destruction would put an end to it. As long as the Temple remained standing, Judaism would remain the central facet of the Christian identity; with its destruction, the ‘mystery of God’ – the fashioning of a new man out of both Jews and Gentiles – could run full steam ahead.
Then the voice that I had heard from heaven spoke to me again, saying, “Go, take the scroll that is open in the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land.” So I went to the angel and told him to give me the little scroll. And he said to me, “Take and eat it; it will make your stomach bitter, but in your mouth it will be sweet as honey.” And I took the little scroll from the hand of the angel and ate it. It was sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it my stomach was made bitter. And I was told, “You must again prophesy about many peoples and nations and languages and kings.” [Revelation 10.8-11]
Yahweh’s voice comes again, ordering John to take the book in Jesus’ hand. John is ordered to eat the book. This is strange on the surface, but it echoes what we find in Ezekiel 3. Ezekiel was a Jewish prophet who prophesied during the Babylonian Exile after Jerusalem’s fall in 586 BC, and God commanded him in a similar vision to eat a book before speaking to the House of Israel. When Ezekiel ate the book, it was sweet as honey, but it settled in his stomach as gut-wrenching bitterness. The exact same thing happens here to John. The combination of sweetness and bitterness is about the nature of God’s judgments: they are both sweet and bitter at the same time. The sweetness lies in the vindication of God’s people and His destruction of their persecutors; the bitterness lies in the fact that God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 33.11), and though God executes judgment, He weeps as He does so. After John eats the book, he is commanded to prophecy about ‘many peoples and nations and languages and kings.’ The prophecy about Jerusalem’s destruction was reaching its finale, but this didn’t mean John was done: there was more God had for him to say.
“What is the prophecy for ‘many peoples and nations and languages and kings’?” Some interpreters believe that Revelation 13-19 describes the fall of Rome, represented by Babylon, and that the book John ate and which he will then preach from is a book separate from the one we in Revelation 5. According to these interpreters, there are actually two books that Jesus opens: one detailing the fall of Jerusalem (chapters 6-11) and one describing the fall of Imperial Rome (chapters 13-19), with an interlude (chapter 12) between them. Others believe that Revelation 13-19 is another description of Jerusalem’s judgment, so that we have two drawn-out prophecies against Jerusalem with an interlude between them. While it may seem odd for John to treat with Jerusalem’s destruction twice, the poetic format of Revelation 6-19 would form a chiasm, in which emphasis is placed on what takes place in the middle (chapter 12). We’ll address these divergent opinions when we get to Revelation 13. Those who believe Revelation 13-19 recaps Jerusalem’s destruction argue that Jerusalem’s fall is relevant to people of all stripes, for its fall opens the gateway to the fulfillment of the ‘mystery of God’ in which all people are invited to reconcile with God regardless of ethnicity.
Revelation 11.1-14: The Two Witnesses. Then I was given a measuring rod like a staff, and I was told, “Rise and measure the temple of God and the altar and those who worship there, but do not measure the court outside the temple; leave that out, for it is given over to the nations, and they will trample the holy city for forty-two months. And I will grant authority to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth.” These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth. And if anyone would harm them, fire pours from their mouth and consumes their foes. If anyone would harm them, this is how he is doomed to be killed. They have the power to shut the sky, that no rain may fall during the days of their prophesying, and they have power over the waters to turn them into blood and to strike the earth with every kind of plague, as often as they desire. And when they have finished their testimony, the beast that rises from the bottomless pit will make war on them and conquer them and kill them, and their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city that symbolically is called Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord was crucified. For three and a half days some from the peoples and tribes and languages and nations will gaze at their dead bodies and refuse to let them be placed in a tomb, and those who dwell on the earth will rejoice over them and make merry and exchange presents, because these two prophets had been a torment to those who dwell on the earth. But after the three and a half days a breath of life from God entered them, and they stood up on their feet, and great fear fell on those who saw them. Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, “Come up here!” And they went up to heaven in a cloud, and their enemies watched them. And at that hour there was a great earthquake, and a tenth of the city fell. Seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the rest were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven. The second woe has passed; behold, the third woe is soon to come. [Rev 11.1-14]
It’s interesting that John is told to measure the Holy of Holies but not the outer courtyard. The Holy of Holies is where God’s glory dwelt; the outer courtyard is where worshippers came to offer their sacrifices, but they weren’t allowed into the Holy of Holies (only Levitical priests were allowed in the Holy of Holies). That John is instructed to measure the Holy of Holies but not the outer courtyard may indicate that in the heavenly Temple there is no outer courtyard, since Christians are able to come boldly before the throne in the name of Christ (Hebrews 4.16). The outer courtyard – signifying the Jerusalem Temple complex on one hand and the Old Covenant manner of worship on the other – would be ‘trampled by the Gentiles,’ just as Jesus predicted in Luke 21.24. This is, of course, a prophecy of Jerusalem’s destruction. That the outer courtyard is to be trampled whereas the Holy of Holies is not is symbolic of how God’s true people – those who belong to Christ and who can boldly come before God’s throne without need of offering sacrifice – will be spared the disasters coming upon Jerusalem, but those who adhere to the Old Covenant ways of doing things will be destroyed.
Jesus – the angel who has one foot on land and one foot on the sea – tells John that the Gentiles will trample the outer courtyard for forty-two months; he then adds that ‘two witnesses’ will prophesy for 1,260 days. These timeframes are the same (1,260 days is forty-two months, and this accounts to three and a half years). These number combinations – all referring to a period of three and a half years – appear several times throughout Revelation. Preterist scholars disagree on what this timeframe refers to: some believe it refers to the length of the First Jewish War, others to Nero’s persecution of the saints, both of which lasted about three and a half years. After Nero had much of Rome burned, people began to suspect that he was behind it; his first impulse was to blame the Jews, but his wife was sympathetic to the Jews, and she convinced him to persecute the new Christians instead. Thus in November of AD 64 the first officially-sanctioned Roman persecution of Christians broke out, and it didn’t end until Nero was forced to kill himself in a coup in AD 68 – forty-two months after the persecution started. Other scholars believe this number is symbolic and drawn from the Book of Daniel, in which Jerusalem was bloodily and brutally oppressed three and a half years by the Greek warlord Antiochus Epiphanes; in a symbolic sense, this number would refer to foreign oppression of the worst kind. In Daniel 7.25, the term forty-two months signifies a limited period of time in which the wicked are triumphant. Another theory is that it echoes 1 Kings 17-18, in which the prophet Elijah prophesied a drought of three and a half years, a manifestation of God’s wrath and judgment being poured out due to Jewish apostasy.
Theory #1: Faithful, Prophetic Christians. One theory is that these are an indeterminate number of divinely-commissioned and faithful Christian witnesses, endowed with miraculous powers (such as we see in the Book of Acts) who bear testimony against the corrupt Jews in the final days of the Jewish nation. These Christians decided to stay behind rather than flee, likely from God’s orders, to preach against the rebels, condemning them and their sin, and making it clear that their fate was sealed. God had decreed that there would be no repentance from the rebels, so these prophets would fill a similar role as that of the prophet Isaiah, who was called to preach against apostate Israel with the promise that they wouldn’t listen to him. Sometimes God raises prophets not to call sinners to repentance but to make it so that they are ashamed and without excuse on the day of their judgment.
Theory #2: Civil Government. Another theory is that the Two Witnesses represent the head of the state and the head of the church (Joshua in Zechariah 4 is the head of the Jewish ‘church’ and Zerubbabel is the head of the Jewish state; Moses for a time was the head of the Hebrew people, and Elijah was seen as the ‘head’ of the pure Jewish religion in the days of Old Testament apostasy). Both the Jewish religious hierarchy and the Jewish government leaders had authority over the hearts and minds and lives of men, and civil and religious authorities may go far in restraining the evil passions and deeds of men. Thus the Two Witnesses may be representative of those few within the Jewish religion and secular government who opposed the course of action being taken against Rome. It goes without saying that those who resisted the schemes and ambitions of the Jewish rebels would’ve been hated and persecuted.
Theory #3: The Prophets in General. A third theory is that the Two Witnesses represent the line of prophets, beginning in the Old Testament and culminating in John the Baptist, who bore witness against Jerusalem throughout the nation’s history. That these prophets belong also to the Old Testament and not just the New is evident by their wearing of sackcloth, a dress characteristic of Old Covenant privation. Those who hold this view point out that Moses and Elijah, viewed as archetypical prophets in Jewish thought, both played a role in preparing the way for Jesus’ coming. Moses predicted that ‘a prophet like me’ would be raised up after himself, and this prophet is identified as Jesus in the Book of Acts (Deut 18.15; Acts 3.22ff and 7:37ff). The prophet Malachi predicted the coming of another Elijah prior to the Messiah’s appearing, which was fulfilled in John the Baptist (Mal 4.5-6; Matt 11.13-14, 17.12-13). Historically, Moses was succeeded by a Joshua (the Hebrew form of the name ‘Jesus’), and Elijah was succeeded by one who (like Christ) had a greater anointing of the Spirit than he did himself (2 Kings 2.9). The prophets of the Old Testament served in both civil and religious spheres, which may explain their identification with the two olive trees and two lampstands. With all these undertones and callbacks from the Old Testament, there’s a strong possibility that the Two Witnesses summarize the witnesses of the Old Covenant and culminate in John the Baptist. Remember, too, that Jesus said that the guilt of the Old Covenant era was cumulative: ‘From the blood of Abel up to the blood of Zacharias, which perished between the altar and the Temple, it shall be required of this generation.’ (Luke 11.51) Jesus said that ‘this generation’ – the rebellious Jews – would pay the price for the slaughter of the innocents as far back as Abel in Genesis, and he said this in the context of Jerusalem’s destruction. In this view, the Two Witnesses weren’t actual flesh-and-blood individuals in Jerusalem but representative of all the prophets who had been hated and murdered by those to whom they were sent; the tale of the Two Witnesses, then, is honing in on the point that what’s about to befall Jerusalem with the seventh trumpet blast is directly related to the Jews’ treatment of God’s prophets, just as Jesus warned.
Theory #4: A Pair of Actual Prophets. A fourth theory holds that these Two Witnesses were real, flesh-and-blood men. These Witnesses are witnesses of Christ, were two in number, were endowed with miraculous powers, were symbolically represented by the two olive trees and the two candlesticks seen in Zechariah, they prophesied in sackcloth (i.e. their message was one of woe), and they died a violent death, were treated with contempt, and then three and a half days later they raised from the dead. It’s been suggested that the identities of these prophets will forever be anonymous to history, at least until we get to heaven, since there are no records of them from primary sources (this isn’t surprising, however, as our primary sources on Jerusalem’s chaos and destruction came from outside the city walls looking in). Others believe that these two Witnesses were none other than the Apostles James (Jesus’ brother) and Peter. James was the most notable leader in the Jerusalem church at the hands of the Sanhedrin in AD 69, and though legend has it that Peter died crucified upside-down in Rome, we have no factual evidence of this. What we do know about Peter is that Jesus told him the manner in which he would die: in John 21.19 he tells Peter, ‘When you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.’ We know that beyond legend of his death in Rome, Peter’s main habitation was Jerusalem, where he was the key pillar of the Jerusalem church. We know that he lived up to the First Jewish War is evident from his epistles. It may very well be possible that Peter remained in Jerusalem, refusing to abandon his station, and was indeed crucified – but by the Jewish rebels rather than the Romans.
Revelation 11.11-12, the murdered prophets rise from the dead and are carried into heaven. Most commentators, even those who believe that the Two Witnesses were actual people, believe this represents vindication of the prophets. The Two Witnesses spoke truth, were murdered, and then mocked and treated with contempt; but at the end of the day, the Two Witnesses are vindicated, much to the horror of those who oppressed them. The story of the Two Witnesses thus becomes the story of the church: though we are often oppressed, and persecuted, and murdered, and mocked and treated with contempt, in time we will be vindicated, and our oppressors will be horror-stricken.
Revelation 11.13 says that after this happened, there was a great earthquake and a tent of the city fell. This may be speaking of Jerusalem’s actual fall in AD 70 – which is taking place in just a few verses – but it’s more likely that this refers to a separate incident years before Jerusalem’s ultimate destruction. We know that Jerusalem’s destruction was final and complete; the city and Temple were completely demolished, not merely a tenth, and any survivors wished for death instead of being enslaved by the Romans. That only a tenth of the city is destroyed here indicates John isn’t writing about Jerusalem’s ultimate destruction; he may be referring to the first siege of Jerusalem under Cestius Gallus, the governor of the Roman province of Syria, in AD 66 at the outbreak of the Jewish War. That a ‘tenth’ of the city is destroyed may echo the ‘tenth’ of tithe, so that the tenth that was destroyed is portrayed as a ‘tithe’ given to God – and a warning of the total destruction that will soon engulf the city. The earthquake may even be a literal event that happened during the final Roman siege of Jerusalem; the historian Josephus writes:
‘During the night a terrific storm arose; the wind blew with tempestuous violence, and the rain fell in torrents; the lightnings flashed without intermission, accompanied by fearful peals of thunder, and the quaking earth resounded with mighty bellowings. The universe, convulsed to its very base, appeared fraught with the destruction of mankind, and it was easy to conjecture that these were portents of no trivial calamity.’
The earthquake caused a panic among the besieged, and the Idumeans, who were in league with the Zealots, who occupied the Temple, succeeded in effecting an entrance into the city, where they began massacring the rival factions. Josephus records that ‘the outer court of the Temple was inundated with blood, and the day dawned upon eight thousand five hundred dead.’ In Revelation 11, the number of dead is given as seven thousand, far below what Josephus records; it’s likely that the number given in Revelation is symbolic rather than literal, echoing the seven thousand whom God spared for Himself in Elijah’s day (1 Kings 19.18); in this case, however, God isn’t sparing seven thousand but judging seven thousand. These, along with part of Jerusalem being destroyed in the earthquake, is a ‘tithe’ given to God with the rest coming shortly.
The nations raged, but your wrath came, and the time for the dead to be judged, and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints, and those who fear your name, both small and great, and for destroying the destroyers of the earth.” Then God's temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple. There were flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail. [Rev 11.15-19]
At the sounding of the trumpet, great voices in heaven shout, ‘The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.’ This is the establishment of the fifth kingdom in the Book of Daniel, the rock that struck Nebuchadnezzar’s great statue on the feet, and which then grew to become a mountain that filled the entire earth. As the prophet Daniel said in Daniel 2.44, ‘[The] God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever.’
The importance of Jerusalem’s destruction is seen in verse 19: now that the shadow Temple on earth was flattened, the Temple in the heavens could be opened to all mankind. Just as the veil hiding the Art of the Covenant was torn in two when Jesus died, so also the veil of the heavenly curtain was torn. The ‘ark of his covenant’ is now in the heavenly Temple, no longer hidden away. The heavenly mercy seat is no longer hidden in darkness for most of the year. The cosmic effect of the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple and the opening of the Heavenly Temple is underscored with symbolic apocalyptic imagery: there’s lightning, and voices, and thundering, and an earthquake, and great hail. These aren’t literal events but signposts to a greater reality: the New Covenant is running full-steam ahead, and the early church can come into its own as Christ’s kingdom rather than as a Jewish offshoot.
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