GOD'S NEW WORLD, DAY 9 (what is truth?)

“These words are trustworthy and true, for the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent his angel to show his servants what must soon take place.” (Rev. 22.6)

     The book of Revelation was written for Christians who were being persecuted for their faith in Christ.  The book is addressed to “the seven churches of (the Roman province of) Asia” (i.e., modern Western Turkey).  Of course, in the first-century Mediterranean world, the all-encompassing reality with which everyone was “invited” to come to terms with was… the Roman empire.  At various times during the first century, the imperial establishment perceived the church to be a threat, and decided to (try to) eliminate it.  “John”, the author of Revelation, himself in exile “because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus” and shares with the members of the 7 churches “the persecution and the kingdom and the patient endurance” (Rev. 1.9), writes to these Christians to help them understand the true significance of what they are experiencing and to encourage them to stay strong and faithful to Jesus no matter what happens next.

     In his book, John draws back the curtain (Apocalypto = “to unveil”) between earth and heaven and gives his readers a glimpse of what is going on “behind the scenes”, enabling his audience to see reality from God’s perspective and thus help them to understand not only what God is up to, but also where they are situated in the divine plan of salvation.  This concept of “revelation” or “unveiling” or “making visible the invisible” is, unsurprisingly, central to what the book of Revelation is all about.  Revelation offers itself as a true account of reality.  No matter what the official sources of information are saying, no matter what the imperial propagandists are pushing, this, says John, is what is actually going on according to “the One who is seated on the throne” of heaven (cf. Rev. 4.2).

     Indeed, in Revelation, we witness a propaganda war.  What is at stake are the definitions of the following words: truth, justice, power, the value/goal of human life, ultimate reality, to name a few.  The stakes are high, and the answers one gives to the questions posed by this book will determine everything about one’s life and eternal destiny.  Who is God/the gods?  Who is in charge of the world?  Whom must I serve/obey?  What is true/real?  What’s right/wrong?  How should I live my life?  What’s the point of everything?  Using vivid “apocalyptic” language, John seeks to shake his readers out of their imperially-induced drowsiness and to wake them up to what is really going on around them.  John wants to alert his audience to the imperial con-game that seeks to dominate society through false promises and deceptive exploitation.  John is telling his readers that they are being systematically lied to by the civil authorities and that they must continue to resist the imperial propaganda and remain faithful to the truth revealed in Jesus, no matter the cost.

     The cosmos that John depicts in his book is indeed a world at war.  The Creator and the anti-God forces are arrayed against each other, locked in a vicious, winner-take-all struggle to dominate all that exists.  At the head of the forces of darkness is “the Dragon, that old serpent, a.k.a. the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world” (Rev. 12.9; 20.2).  Fascinatingly, this chief of the enemies of God is called “the deceiver, the divider, the accuser, the slanderer” – in a word, the Liar (cf. Gospel of John 8.44).  The Dragon sets out to deceive the world by endowing “the beast from the sea” with “its power and its throne and great authority” so it can dominate humankind; indeed, the Dragon makes this beast the object of the world’s worship (Rev. 13.1-10).  This is a shameless bid to usurp the prerogatives of God and of the Lamb (compare Rev. 13.7-8 with 7.9-10).  A second “beast from the earth” (a.k.a. the false prophet) serves as propagandist for the first beast and deceives the inhabitants of the earth and works wonders in order to convince the world’s population to worship the beast from the sea and to receive its “mark”, which identifies those who bear it as belonging to the beast, as opposed to those who bear the “mark of God” who are the targets of the beast’s violence (Rev. 13.11-18; cf. 14.1; 7.1-3; 9.4).  A Dragon, a beast from the sea and a beast from the land – this triple-threat to the church has been labeled by some commentators as the demonic “trinity”, a blatant attempt on the part of Satan to imitate the true God and thus deceive humanity into false worship, which in turn leads to self-destructive patterns of both individual and societal behaviour, whose end is death (cf. Rev. 19.20; 20.10).

     Against this dark parody of divinity, we have the One seated on the throne of heaven (Rev. 4.2), the Lamb, and the seven-fold spirit of God (5.5-6).  Jesus is called “the faithful and true witness” (Rev. 3.14; cf. 19.11).  John alerts his readers that the words of his prophecy (i.e., the contents of his book) are “trustworthy and true” (Rev. 22.6; cf. 21.5).  Readers of Revelation, now as then, are challenged to discern between the lie of the Dragon and the truth of the Lamb (cf. Rev. 13.18).  As far as John is concerned, the “divine” pretensions of the Roman empire – with emperors “divinizing” each other, demanding the worship (and taxes!) of their subjects and assuming the right to dominate the world through ruthless violence and exploitation, all in the name of “peace and justice” – are nothing short of blasphemy against the Creator and are well-deserving of drastic judgment.  John reminds his readers that though the imperial “machine” seems indestructible and all-powerful, it will be swept off the world stage like so much dust by the “terrible mercy” of God.