Lesson # 4 DIAGNOSING THE CRISES OF EMPIRE

 Key ideas:


1. The frightening images reveal the dangers of an unjust empire and let us know that these evils have not escaped God’s notice.

2. John did not devise the violent language and imagery himself. In both form and content, most of it was adopted and adapted by him from his Bible and his Jewish and Christian tradition.

3. Intent is to produce repentance, to make clear that God is in control, not to predict.




I. Opening Devotion on p. 37, 1st column.



II. This outburst of praise at the Lamb’s coming to open the seals is followed, when the Lamb opens the seals, by an outburst of a very different kind: the 4 riders of the apocalypse, with conquest, war, famine and death! And more frightening stuff follows.



The years preceding John’s writing of Revelation were grim—earthquakes in 60; in 62, defeat by the Parthians on the eastern border, noted for their skills with the bow; the fire in Rome blamed on the Christians in 64; persecution of Christians; the destruction of the Temple in 72; the eruption of Vesuvius in 79; and a major famine in 92. The author, Barbara Rossing, talks about her shocking experience with a vanished glacier; the people hearing Revelation had a lot of shocking experiences.



Do we have such experiences? Have you ever thought, “God, why don’t you do something?” Do you suppose Christians at the end of the 1st century sometimes asked that?”



Read Revelation, Chapter 6



On p. 32, 2nd ¶, Rossing writes, “With the opening of each seal, John of Patmos pulls back a curtain to try to wake people up to the urgency of their situation and show them what is so terribly wrong with the world, with the whole Roman Empire system within which they live.” Our world, as well.



On pp. 84 and 85 are “strategies for getting through the middle chapters of Revelation”, for dealing with the violent images. Read along with the chapters of Revelation we haven’t time to cover.



III. Entering Into the Images

Rossing says, on p. 32, 5th ¶, that “the theological meaning of the seals is not about predicting, it is about seeing. Along with the 7 trumpets and the 7 bowls of woe which follow (and which we don’t have time to discuss), the visions reveal deeper aspects of the same basic evil in the world and urgency of the present moment for God’s people.

It’s like the visions that Ebenezer Scrooge had in A Christmas Carol, as she points out on p. 33. They wake Scrooge up to the peril he faces so he can change, if he so chooses.



These are frightening images, but she suggests we look for the blessing of hope, relying on

Revelation 1:3. As we try to understand this book, we are surely reading and hearing and pondering. The question may be if we’re “keeping what is written in it.”

Perhaps, if we don’t stay in our cocoons of comfort and reach out to those in need as much as we can.



IV. Opening the Seals

Here are the 4 living creatures we remember from Rev. 4, representing the whole world.

Each of them, in turn, says, “Come,” to one of the famous 4 riders. These are deeper than literal images, Rossing says on p. 33, 2nd to last ¶, pointing to different aspects of the Roman imperial system.



Read Zechariah 1: 8-11 and Zechariah 6:1-7. Here’s a clear example of John’s reliance on images from his scriptures. These references would have resonated with those for whom he is writing.

They may well have remembered that God had been with God’s people in the troubled past. They might have been led to look beyond the world’s struggles to remember God’s presence.



V. The First Four Seals:

“Come!” This is an echo of the prayer of the church for the coming of Christ and for God to end persecution and establish the final justice of the kingdom of God.



1st horse: We may think of a bow as being a symbol of hunting, but in those days it was used to great effect in war; the Parthians, Rome’s enemy to the east, were known for their skill in shooting arrows while riding hard. Most scholars think the white horse and archer who receives a crown represent conquest. Certainly, that was a characteristic of the Roman Empire. And we can think of lots of more recent examples. (The Middle East, Germany in WWII, economic control….)



2nd horse: The red horse takes peace from the earth, and people slaughter one another in wars large and small. Has there ever been a time when there wasn’t war? The word “peace” perhaps refers to the kind of fragile stability held by balances of power. Rossing, near the bottom of p. 34, says, “The rider is presented a huge sword…and rides off for a harvest of killing.”



Question 4 is a tough but important one. (John is here showing the results of human sin. No earthquakes, floods, etc. are mentioned here.)



3rd horse: The black horse whose rider holds scales is thought to symbolize economic hardship. What happens to prices during famines? They go sky high, and that’s the point of verse 6. As for the olive oil and wine—some think these were protected because of their value in trade (forget about feeding the people). Or these products may have been important in pagan rituals.



4th horse: Many scholars think of pale green as the color of sickness and death, and this rider is named Death, with Hades following. It sort of puts the cap on the other horsemen of killing in various ways.

Our author, on the other hand, thinks of green as the color of vegetation and the rider as representing ecological disaster. In these days, that makes sense. At any rate, it still caps the other horsemen, in that it represents killing “¼ of the earth itself, with a lethal mix of both natural and human-caused calamities.”

Question 6.

Read the 2nd half of the ¶ before The Fifth Seal, beginning with We can challenge ourselves…

These riders make clear that people are not in control of their own destinies.

Nor are they “raptured” out of the situation. So what are they—and we—to do? Turn to God. Ask God what I can do, in my own situation. Witness to Jesus in the midst of apparent control by Empire.



VI. The Fifth Seal

Once again, a curtain is pulled back on a scene in heaven. In Biblical imagery the life or essence of a person or sacrifice is represented by blood, which runs down to the base of the altar. So the essence or souls of those who have been martyred have been sacrificed on the heavenly altar. God knows what people have endured for their faith. “How long?”, they cry, before their sacrifice is vindicated. (Vindicate is a better translation than avenge.) On the top of p. 36, Rossing writes, “This is the cry of all who suffer injustice in our world,…who long for God to intervene. Read Psalm 13:1.



The white robe signifies the purity of the Resurrection life. (This isn’t meant to be an answer to what happens after death.) The answer to “How long?”—only a little longer--is a repudiation of Rome’s claim of an eternal empire of injustice.

Until the number is complete. What’s complete? Only God knows. Who’s in control? Is the suffering of these martyrs in vain?

Either Question 7 or, from center column on p. 37,

How does Jesus’ own experience of conflict and suffering lead to Christian hope? How can a suffering savior be a source of comfort strength, and encouragement to suffering people?



VII. The Sixth Seal

Now John moves from the clear results of human sin to the cataclysms of nature Read either Isaiah 13: 9-10 or Joel 2:30-31. Again, John references scriptures.

(For homework: Read what Jesus himself says in Mark 13.) We just don’t have time.



The creation stories in Genesis portray God’s establishing order and pushing chaos back. Here, chaos is reintroduced. God’s wrath against injustice and human sin is great and inescapable. Rossing says, in the 1st ¶ after The Sixth Seal, “This scene would have been an especially sobering reminder to Christians who might have been tempted to seek security by assimilating into the dominant culture of their day. Revelation wants us to feel the threat of judgment, and not just jump immediately to hope.” The goal of these visions is not to predict but to warn and to summon to repentance. No matter who you are.

Read Rev. 6: 16b and 17.

William Barclay, in his commentary, says, “The terrible thing about sin is that it makes a person a fugitive from God; and the supreme thing about the work of Jesus Christ is that it puts a person into a relationship with God in which he no longer need seek to hide, knowing that he can cast himself on the love and the mercy of God.”



VIII. Close with prayer on p. 36.