What is the “mystery” of Ephesians 3?

What is the “mystery” about which Paul speaks in Ephesians ch. 3? One can quickly think of several answers which, at first blush, seem promising. However, like poor Hosea’s wife, they soon prove faithless.

Background

Paul has written about God’s plan to reconcile all things to Christ, in heaven and on earth (Eph 1:10). To that end, he’s spoken about God’s grace in salvation, the impossible situation from which he rescued us, our responsibility as grateful believers, and about this new Jesus community he has formed in which Jews and Gentiles “are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household” (Eph 2:19). This is all part of God’s plan to remake the Genesis 1-2 paradise, which he achieves in Revelation 21-22. Through his covenants, God has made several sacred promises:

To gather a people to himself physically descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
To place these people into a promised land of their own.
To make his people, Israel, a blessing to all the families of the earth.
To give them a king descended from David who will rule forever and whose kingdom will never end, and
To give them a Messiah as a new and better covenant who will give his people new hearts and new minds by a miracle of his Spirit.

Amidst the chaos of national collapse and apostasy, the prophets explain that this Messiah will nevertheless re-gather a remnant of the Israelite people from the four corners of the earth because of his covenant promises. He will usher in a golden age wherein righteousness, truth, justice, peace, and bliss will prevail. The Messiah will rule from Jerusalem as a signal flag of salvation to the nations, who will stream to Yahweh with joy in those days. In short, the prophets say these covenant promises will come to fruition in the millennium, which functions as a version in miniature, a microcosm, or prototype of the eternal paradise to which the story transitions by Revelation 21-22 (see esp. Jer 33:14-26; Micah 4:1-8; Zech 8; Isa 11-12, Isa 25).[1]

Back in Ephesians 3:1-12, Paul writes about a mystery which God has revealed to him:

… which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it was now revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit: that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel (Ephesians 3:5-6; emphasis added).

So, somehow, this “mystery” news about Gentiles being “fellow heirs” of the Jesus promise is something new—a new thing in the unfolding of God’s great plan. Well, what’s new about what Paul says? What, exactly, is this mystery? Based on what Ephesians 3:5-6 says, several possible answers come to mind. We may dismiss some straightaway, while others are a bit stronger.

Wrong answers about this “mystery”

Nobody ever heard of this before!

With apologies to traditional dispensationalists, we can dismiss this immediately. This perspective sees a great discontinuity between the people of Israel and the church; one has an earthly future with earthly covenant promises, while the latter is a heavenly people.[2] I don’t believe this is the best way to frame the two groups in God’s plan. God tells Abraham that, in him, all the families of the earth will be blessed (Gen 12:3), and the apostle Paul cites this as warrant for the revelation of the church (Gal 3:8). The bible is clear that Gentiles have a future in God’s family.

Wow! The nations are part of God’s plan!

This is closely related to the last perspective, and it is the response of the Jewish Christians at Jerusalem. Consider the apostle Peter’s prejudicial and foolish comments to Cornelius—remarks with no biblical support: “You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a man who is a Jew to associate with a foreigner or to visit him …” (Acts 10:28). Reflect, also, on the indignant reception the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem give Peter when he returns home (Acts 11:1-3, 18). They would have never responded this way if they had listened to Yahweh’s words in Isaiah 56:6-8. This passage says that foreigners may “take hold of My covenant,” and Yahweh promises to bring these believing Gentiles to his holy mountain “and make them glad in My house of prayer” (Isa 56:6-7). “‘For My house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples.’ Lord Yahweh, who gathers the banished of Israel, declares, ‘Yet others I will gather to them, to those already gathered’” (Isa 56:7-8).

The nations have obviously always been part of God’s plan.

Gentiles aren’t at the back of the bus in God’s family—they’re equal!

This is a common view. One advocate writes: “God’s blessing of the Gentiles would involve the obliteration of the old line of demarcation which separated them from Jews, and the incorporation of Gentile believers together with Jewish believers, without any discrimination, in the new, comprehensive community of God’s chosen people.”[3] But, is this truly new news? Has this never been heard before? What about old covenant texts that clearly say this will happen—like Isaiah 56:6-8? What about Isaiah’s prophesy that, during the millennial age, “Yahweh of hosts will prepare a lavish banquet for all peoples on this mountain” (Isa 25:6)? What about his promise through Jeremiah: “the nations will be blessed in Him, And in Him they will boast” (Jer 4:2)?

Some bible teachers respond by leaning into texts that seem to suggest the nations are subservient to the people of Israel during what I believe to be Christ’s millennial reign,[4] and therefore Paul’s “mystery” here is a different thing entirely—it’s been taken to the next level.

But, study shows these passages are often depicting Israel’s triumph over her enemies (e.g., Mic 4:13) or, in the important case of Isaiah 60, it is Zion (not the people of Israel) whom the nations will serve (as metonymy for Yahweh). The Old Covenant scriptures clearly promise that all who are thirsty may come to the waters “without money and without cost,” that Yahweh has given the Messiah “as a witness to the peoples,” and declares this Rescuer will “call a nation you do not know” which “will run to you” (see Isa 55:1-7).

The Messiah will do this!

This one is clearly absurd. Yes, Paul does say in Ephesians 3:5-6 that this “mystery” (whatever it may be) concerns the promise about Christ Jesus. But, the Old Testament very clearly says the Messiah will be the one who saves and rescues Jews and Gentiles (see Isa 42:1, 6-7). It was known. It was expected. This cannot be the mystery.

Israel is replaced by the church!

This is a very common interpretation.[5] I cannot properly rebut that perspective here. I’ll just say that (a) if God gives us the covenant oaths and signs so that we’d have faith in his promises, then (b) this requires God to mean what he says, to speak clearly so we can understand him, so we therefore rely upon his promises.[6]

Mary and Zechariah, to take one example, surely understood Yahweh to mean what he said in his covenant promises through David about a king rescue them from their enemies and usher in righteousness (Lk 1). If God didn’t mean what he said through the prophet Nathan (1 Chr 17:1-15) and didn’t expect his people to understand and rely upon that covenant promise, then Gabriel wouldn’t have had any basis for a conversation with Mary! Instead, he assumes and expects that she knows what he’s talking about.

A better relationship with God by spiritual union!

This, also, does not work. The prophet Joel said that, in the last days (which Peter says have now arrived), God will pour out his spirit upon all mankind (Joel 2:28-29). Ezekiel said that, in the new covenant, God “will give them one heart and give within them a new spirit. And I will take the heart of stone out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh” (Ezek 11:19).

A probable answer

So, if the Old Testament clearly says each of these things, then what precisely is the “mystery”? It seems to me that the mystery is not about what will happen, but about how.[7] Yes, by the end of the whole story in Revelation 21-22, there will be one people of God consisting of two groups (Israel and the church) which have been made one. But, how will God make this promise a reality?

It seems that Jesus makes God’s covenant promises come true in two stages. First, by using the church now, during this present evil age. Second, during his 1,000-year millennium reign, by using the people of Israel (see esp. Jer 33:14-26; Micah 4:1-8; Zech 8; Isa 11-12, Isa 25). The apostle Paul’s analogy of the olive tree seems unanswerable along this line (Rom 11:17-36): God has broken off the “natural branches” (i.e., the people of Israel) from this tree now, and meanwhile grafted in “wild” and unnatural branches (the Gentiles) for a time.

For I do not want you, brothers, to be uninformed of this mystery—so that you will not be wise in your own estimation—that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in; and so all Israel will be saved; just as it is written, “THE DELIVERER WILL COME FROM ZION, HE WILL REMOVE UNGODLINESS FROM JACOB” (Romans 11:25-26).

Regarding how the whole bible story comes together, the apostle Peter tells us the prophets themselves had questions about the “how.”

… the prophets, who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, made careful searches and inquiries, inquiring to know what time or what kind of time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as He was predicting the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow” (1 Pet 1:10-11).

I like to compare this issue to disagreements about eschatology today. Every true Christian believes that, one day, Jesus will return to punish the wicked, reward the righteous, defeat Satan forever, and bring in everlasting righteousness. But, we sometimes disagree about the precise details. The “how” questions about the Messiah’s advent were like that—of course he would arrive, but how would all the details about “the glories to follow” shake out?

Therefore, regarding Paul and the revelation of the “mystery” about Jews and Gentiles as “fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel” (Eph 3:6), the best answer seems to be about the how, and not the what. “Messianic days have dawned, albeit in a way not clearly anticipated in the prophesies. Rather than one grand age of fulfillment under the messianic reign, the prophetic fulfillment has been divided into two ages related to the two comings of Christ.”[8]

[1] Eugene Merrill, “A Theology of the Pentateuch,” in A Biblical Theology of the Old Testament, ed. Roy B. Zuck (Chicago: Moody, 1991), 27.

[2] Lewis S. Chafer is representative of this school (Systematic Theology (reprint; Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1976), 4:74-77). “The distinction between the purpose for Israel and the purpose for the Church is about as important as that which exists between the two Testaments. Every covenant, promise, and provision for Israel is earthly, and they continue as a nation with the earth when it is created new. Every covenant or promise for the Church is for a heavenly reality, and she continues in heavenly citizenship when the heavens are recreated” (Systematic, 4:47).

[3] F.F. Bruce, The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the Ephesians, in NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984), 314.

[4] See Thomas Schreiner, The Letter to the Ephesians (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2026), 152, for a list of passages. Lynn Cohick declares: “ … while the theme of gentile inclusion is found throughout Second Temple literature, Paul’s emphasis on the equal status of gentiles with Jews in the community is not obvious in these works, nor in the Old Testament itself” (The Letter to the Ephesians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2020), 320). This is clearly incorrect.

[5] One representative example is John Stott, The Message of Ephesians (Downer’s Grove: IVP, 1979), 117-18.

[6] See especially Paul Henebury, The Words of the Covenant, vol. 1 (Maitland: Xulon, 2021), 13-52.

[7] I’m especially indebted to Robert Saucy, “The Church as the Mystery of God,” in Dispensationalism, Israel, and the Church, ed. Craig Blaising and Darryl Bock (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992), 137-51.

[8] Saucy, “Mystery of God,” in Dispensationalism, Israel, and the Church, 151.

Does science contradict Christianity?

I made this little video for the church where I pastor. It presents six core truths that good Christians ought to be able to agree on, from the book of Genesis, that will help us think carefully about the three common “flashpoints” that often cause disagreements about Christianity and science.

Some further resources:

Can Science Explain Everything? by John Lennox (https://a.co/d/05wAAF0F).
Faith, Explained: Questions + Answers for Jesus People by M. T. Robbins (https://a.co/d/0cICGrdq).
The Big Question: Why We Can’t Stop Talking About Science, Faith and God by Alister McGrath (https://a.co/d/02MWdafn).

The bible’s big story

In the last article in this series about Israel and the Millennium, we explained why good Christians disagree about the bible’s big story. Today, we sketch what we believe the true big story is.

The bible’s big story is God’s plan to remake the paradise that our first parents ruined in Genesis 3. It’s God’s plan to fix the world, to fix us, and to create a family he can love and which loves Him back. God promises to send His only Son, Jesus—our King—on a special mission. First, Jesus will defeat God’s great and evil adversary and schedule his destruction. Second, Jesus rescues and then transforms a special community to show and tell his Good News to the world and to themselves. Meanwhile we wait to be with him forever in his coming kingdom—when he makes all things new. We must read and interpret the bible in that light.

The simplest way to understand the bible’s big story is like a three-act play:

Paradise made (Genesis 1-2).
Paradise lost (Genesis 3).
Paradise regained (Genesis 4 to Revelation 22).

A better way to explain the bible’s story is to compare God’s covenant promises to individual “episodes” of an Amazon Prime or Netflix “season.” Together, these “episodes” string together to form a traceable and logical story—ending in a new creation paradise, where God’s people can worship him and exercise dominion over his good creation, where Satan and evil have been banished and defeated forever.

Let’s talk about these two ways to understand the bible’s story.

The “three-act play” way

At its simplest level, the bible’s “big story” in unfolds in three movements:

Paradise made. God made everything good and holy, as it was supposed to be. There was no sin, no rebellion, no imperfection. Our first parents and this world were wholesome and untainted. This is why Moses tell us: “And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good” (Gen 1:31).
Paradise lost. Everything falls apart. Satan tricked Eve into eating fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and she (in turn) persuaded her husband to do the same (Gen 3:1-7). “Our first parents, by this sin, fell from their original righteousness and communion with God.” As our representatives, their guilt was imputed and their corrupted nature conveyed to each of us—their descendants—by ordinary generation. And so, “death came upon all: all becoming dead in sin, and wholly defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and body”[1] (see Rom 3, 5).
Paradise regained. God rescues a community of people, places them in a new land, and gives them a king to rule over them and be a blessing to all the families of the earth. Sin is banished. There is a new creation—a new heavens and a new earth, “and He will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away” (Rev 21:4). Some Christians imagine eternity as a vague spiritual existence in heaven, contemplating God. The truth is that paradise is a “new creation” existence where God’s people fulfill the creation mandate that went haywire in Genesis 3. Paradise is an “Eden 2.0” that will not fail, because Satan, the antichrist, and sin itself are gone forever.

The key is to see that the story is about God fixing what has gone wrong. It culminates in a new creation paradise, on a true new earth in a truly new creation, where righteousness dwells forever. That’s the goal. That’s the plot.

The “episodes in a season” way

But that’s the quick version of the bible’s story. We get a deeper sense of the story by following the plot though its various twists and turns. We do this through the different covenants God made with his people. A “covenant” is a formal agreement God makes that has binding obligations. God always seals his covenants with an oath wherein he “solemnly swears” (as it were) to do what he promises to do. Each covenant also has a sign; a symbol that declares something about the covenant it represents. We should think of these covenants as “episodes” in God’s TV series. And, like every good show, it ends by resolving the issues that unfolded throughout the “season.”

Each covenant progressively sketches in what “paradise regained” will look like. Here’s how this deeper version of the bible “big story” shakes out:

Episode 1: The promise in the garden

Though this is not a covenant, it is the big event which follows right on the heels of “paradise lost.” God promises to send a man, descended from Eve, to destroy Satan (Gen 3:15). This descendant will be injured, but he will crush the serpent’s head. In other words, he will smash the snake and destroy the source of all evil. This promise is immediately in jeopardy when our first parent’s only two children are moved off the board—Cain murders Abel and is banished far away to the east (Gen 4). Where, then, are the children through whom this victorious son will come? God has grace and mercy to provide a new son—Seth.

Episode 2: The covenant with Noah and all creation

As generations pass, the growing human population ignores God’s special promise, and a moral darkness descends. God decides to act (Gen 6:5-8) and “reboots” creation with a dreadful flood that destroys all living creatures, except for a precious few. He orders a righteous man named Noah to build a lifeboat of sorts in which to rescue himself, his family, and various creatures (Gen 6:9-22). After this flood subsides, they exit the boat and the “reboot” begins (Gen 7-9). God makes a covenant to withhold another such judgment, so that there will be a people and a world for the Messiah to rescue (Gen 9:1-17; cp. Mt 1:21), according to the promise God made to Eve in the garden.

Episode 3: Covenant with Abraham and family

After the rebellion at Babel, God scatters men and women across the earth. He chooses one obscure man from nowhere to be the source of blessing to the world—the vehicle to make his promise in the darkness come true (Gen 12:1-3). God made three specific promises to Abraham in Genesis 12:1-3 and confirmed them by way of a covenant in Genesis 15; re-iterated in Genesis 17, and 22, and later to Isaac and Jacob.

This covenant is the fountainhead for all of God’s promises to come. It marks out the Jewish people (those descended from the Abraham-Isaac-Jacob line) as God’s special people, who are promised a specific land of Canaan in which to live, so they can be a blessing to all the families of the earth. This is why the Messiah is the son of Abraham” (Mt 1:1 This covenant is the basis for Mary’s hope (Lk 1:55) and for Zechariah’s, too (Lk 1:72-75).

The raw shape of “paradise regained” is coming into focus—a people, in a land, being a blessing to all the families of the earth.

Episode 3.5: Covenant with Israel at Mt. Sinai

The Lord rescues His special people, Abraham’s descendants, from slavery in Egypt and brings them to their new home to wait for the promise. They agree to a covenant that will teach them how to love him and live holy lives until the Messiah comes (Ex 19:1-9; Deut 18:15-19). Unlike the others, this covenant doesn’t move the story forward. Like an airplane orbiting, waiting for permission to land, God’s people were in a holding pattern waiting for Jesus to arrive. So, God tells them how to live holy lives while they’re waiting.

It established rules and boundaries. Breaking the laws, in and of themselves, did not get you kicked out of the family, but disciplined within it. This covenant taught people about themselves—that they were sinful. It taught people about God—that he is holy and righteous and punishes sin. The ceremonial laws (the sacrifices and such) were object lessons to teach us about Christ. The civil laws (statutes about everyday life) were general principles of righteousness applied to their specific kingdom context. The moral laws were a mirror to show us our true nature, a general restraint on sin, and a vehicle for nudging his people towards greater holiness.

Episode 4: Covenant with David

The conquest and occupation of the Promised Land is haphazard. Many forsake God and go their way, and the High Priest and the judges cannot hold us together. God institutes a monarchy, and prophesies about a better King who will bring true holiness and justice to us and his world (2 Sam 7:1-17; 1 Chr 17:1-15). While they waited for God’s covenant promises to be fulfilled, God gave his people a king to rule over them. He established a dynastic line through a boy named David. He said a man from this line would rule over his people and be his royal representative on earth. God said this king would be like a son to him, and he’d be like a father to the king.

Now, our shape of paradise regained is a people, in a particular land, being a blessing to all the families of the earth, ruled over by a king whose reign would never end.

Episode 5: New covenant in Christ

This is the promise of a new shape to our relationship with God, and Jesus is the one who brings this new arrangement to pass. Generations have passed. A civil war has torn God’s people in two, and the dual monarchies of Judah and Israel have betrayed God again and again. Sin abounds. Externalism reigns. Under the looming shadow of an impending exile, God sends word of a new and better hope, built on better promises—a suffering servant who will set everything right (Jer 31:31-40; Ezek 36-37; Isa 52:12-53:13).

This messenger will love God, lead the people in righteousness, and bring a new shape to God’s relationship with his people—one in which all his people have full legal pardon and an interior renovation of their hearts and minds. Our shape of “paradise regained” now looks like a people, in a particular land, being a blessing to all the families of the earth, ruled over by a king whose reign will never end—and all his people are fixed inside and out.

The polaroid analogy

The bible’s story ends in Revelation 21-22 with new people in a new world. Through Christ, God will have “reconcile[d] all things to Himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross” (Col 1:20). The core of this are the people + land + be a blessing promises God made to Abraham, augmented by the covenant with David (an eternal king) and the new covenant about Christ (legal pardon + interior renovation). Jesus is the domino which triggers the chain reaction of these covenant promises that he fulfills by the very end of the story—a people, in a real paradise land, ruled by a king, having been cleansed by an interior renovation and been given full legal pardon for their sins.

This fulfillment fades in starting at Matthew 1:1 and concludes at Revelation 22:21 in four main stages:

Gospels. Jesus arrives and announces that he has come to fulfill all the covenant promises—this is the “good news” (Mk 1:15). The right response is to believe and trust in Jesus in order to be counted righteous by God.
This present evil age. The Jesus family, the church, declares this good news to the world and works to gather a people for him, while promising full legal pardon and interior renovation for all who repent and trust in Jesus.
Christ’s millennial reign. This is like a “spring training” version of eternal paradise, where Jesus will reign for 1,000 years. This will be a nearly paradise-like kingdom with its base in the land of Canaan, with a great nation of Jewish messengers and evangelists, who are a blessing to all the families of the earth as they preach the good news abroad, with Jesus ruling as king of the world. As we mentioned in the previous article, the millennium is a lengthy transition period between this present, evil age and the paradise to come.
Paradise regained. In which the great nation + land + be a blessing covenant promises reach their ultimate fulfillment in the one great people of God, in the land of the new creation, with Jesus the “son of Abraham” as the blessing to the nations.

These four stages are like a Polaroid that slowly develops—the image becomes clearer as time goes on:

Of course, this is not a defense of this premillennial outline; it’s just a brief statement of it. Why do we believe all this—especially the bit about the millennium and God’s promises about Israel’s role in the bible’s “big story”? In the next article, we’ll discuss some basics about how to read the bible the right way, then look at some scripture passages that speak about Israel’s role in God’s plan for paradise regained.

[1] 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, Art(s) 8.2, 8.3.

Why Good Christians Disagree About Israel’s Future

This is the first in a series of articles about Israel and the Millennium. Good Christians disagree about whether the people of Israel have a future in God’s plan because they have very different ways of understanding the bible’s “big story.” Many Christians believe the people of Israel are important to the bible’s story. But not all of them know why, other than to correctly declare “Israel is special” or “they’re God’s chosen people.” These are incomplete answers.

There are at least two reasons why we believe the people of Israel are a key part of the bible’s “big story.”

To be a blessing. Israel is special because God plans to use her as a vehicle to preach the gospel to the world during Jesus’ 1,000-year millennial reign. It is during the millennium that God fulfills his three big covenant promises to Abraham (Gen 12:1-3)—a great nation, in a land of their own, being a blessing to the world by spreading the gospel about King Jesus. These covenant promises are about “a geographical platform, a land of promise, to serve as a base of operations for God’s kingdom program on earth.”[1]
Millennium as a microcosm of paradise. Israel is not an end in and of itself. The millennium is a microcosm or prototype of what the Lord will do in paradise in eternity[2]—sort of the “spring training” version of the new creation paradise to come. This millennium will feature a great nation of believers, in a new and perfect land, with Jesus (“the son of Abraham,” Mt 1:1) as the penultimate Abrahamic blessing to the world.

But other Christians disagree. They believe there will be no millennium, and a very different fulfillment of those three “big promises” to Abraham. They believe Israel no longer has a unique role to play in reconciling the world to King Jesus. So, rather than seeing the great nation + land + be a blessing promises as means God will use to reach the world for the Messiah, they see them as shadows pointing to the greater realities which Christ makes real, both now and in paradise. Although these good Christians arrive at the same place—Jesus will return to punish the wicked, reward the righteous, and usher in eternity—they take a very different route to get there.

Many Christians believe the New Testament sheds new light on God’s covenant promises. They say this so-called “new light” changes what these promises mean in a way the original audience wouldn’t have understood, and in a way that violates the normal sense of the words God used to make those promises. They believe the bible does this by one thing foreshadowing another—which is when one thing points to another thing bigger than itself (this is also called “typology”).

For example, Adam (our first representative), Moses (the great prophet), and David (the king of Israel) each foreshadow Jesus in complementary ways.
The tabernacle is a figure of the real throne room in heaven.
Christ also fulfills larger old covenant events in scripture which the prophets heralded; the old Eden v. the new Eden, fall v. atonement; Exodus from Egypt v. exodus from Satan’s grasp, etc.[3]

This is a real thing in scripture. But is it a real thing when it comes to God’s covenant promises? Many Christians wrongly say it is.

Their argument is the big three covenant promises to Abraham (a great nation + in a land of their own + to be a blessing to the world; Gen 12:2-3) are signposts which point to a larger fulfillment.[4]
So, they say, God does not replace Israel. Instead, Christ fulfills her promises in a larger way.

So, these Christians interpret in a non-literal way old covenant passages that we believe plainly mean more than that. Many do this because they believe the bible’s whole story is all about God’s alleged “covenant of grace” with those chosen for salvation.[5] “In the New Testament all these types reach their fulfilment and therefore cease.”[6]

It’s true that God has a big plan to provide salvation to sinners through faith in Christ.
But it isn’t true that this means the bible’s “big story” is basically about you and your personal salvation. This viewpoint interprets everything through the lens of the gospel (Jesus’ life and death),[7] when the real “big story” is the new creation paradise God has been bringing about since Genesis 3:15. Yes, Jesus essentially defeats Satan on Easter morning, but the war is not over until Revelation 22.
This would be like interpreting the Allied victory in Europe during World War 2 entirely from the standpoint of D-Day on 06 Jun 1944. This would be a flattening of reality. Yes, D-Day was a triumph for the Allied cause that spelled the end for Nazi Germany, but the war in Europe didn’t end for another 10 months!
This popular and helpful (but incomplete) “gospel-centered” lens can lead to a tunnel-vision way of reading the bible that has the New Testament flattening many Old Testament covenant promises to fit the “Jesus and individual salvation” mold.

This is why many good Christians wrongly flatten and distort God’s covenant promises to mean only this:

Great nation = God’s people, whoever they are (1 Pet 1:9-10)
The land of Canaan = Paradise in eternity (Rev 21-22)
Israel will be a blessing = Christ will be a blessing (“son of Abraham,” Mt 1:1)
King over Israel in Canaan = Jesus over his people in paradise (Rev 21-22)

We agree that, by time we get to Revelation 21-22, all this is true—the endgame truly is paradise regained, in a new creation, with one body of believers in Christ consisting of two peoples: Israel and the church (see Rev 21:10-14).

And yet … suppose you describe the plot of the 1997 movie Titanic as being “a love story on a ship.” This is true, but very incomplete—you’ve flattened the story into a pancake. This makes Titanic= an episode of The Love Boat. What if you described Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone as “a wizard kid goes to boarding school”? Or the book of Revelation as “Jesus wins”? These are all true, but really simplistic—so crude they’re wrong even though they’re technically right!

This is why the true disagreement is about the way we think the bible’s “big story” plays out. We believe God made those “big three” promises to Abraham because he determined that Israel will play a key role in reconciling people from all over the world to Jesus, and she will do this during the 1,000-year millennium. During that time, she will be a great nation, in the land of Canaan, being a blessing to the world by spreading the good news about Jesus the King. Here is one example passage from the prophet Micah that speaks of these events:

And it will come about in the last days That the mountain of the house of the LORD Will be established as the chief of the mountains. It will be raised above the hills, And the peoples will stream to it. Many nations will come and say, “Come and let’s go up to the mountain of the LORD And to the house of the God of Jacob, So that He may teach us about His ways, And that we may walk in His paths.” For from Zion will go forth the law, And the word of the LORD from Jerusalem (Micah 4:1-2).

On our interpretation, Jesus’ millennial reign is a lengthy transition period between this present, evil age (Gal 1:4) and paradise to come. That is the disagreement about the big picture.[8] This is why good Christians often talk past one another about the end-times. The other side believes the New Testament, and the apostle Paul in particular,[9] provides new understanding of these old covenant promises, and so their shape of the bible’s “big story” does not include a future mission for the people of Israel, so they see no need for a millennium.

Again, all good Christians have the same finish line: Jesus returns, punishes the wicked, and rewards the righteous. But we have very different ideas about how the big story of the bible gets to the finish line.

In the next article, we’ll discuss how to rightly understand the bible’s “big story.”

[1] Michael Vlach, The Bible Storyline (Cary: Theological Studies Press, 2025), 101.

[2] Eugene Merrill, “A Theology of the Pentateuch,” in A Biblical Theology of the Old Testament, ed. Roy B. Zuck (Chicago: Moody, 1991), 27.

[3] See esp. Graeme Goldsworthy, Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics (Downers Grove: IVP, 2006), 58-66; 245-57. The chart at pp. 253-56 is especially excellent.

[4] “These temporal blessings did not constitute an end in themselves, but served to symbolize and typify spiritual and heavenly things” (Berkhof, Systematic, 296).

[5] Berkhof argues that the second party to the so-called “covenant of grace” are the elect in Christ (Systematic, 272-76).

[6] Berkhof, Systematic, 293.

[7] “[T]he gospel is the hermeneutical norm for all of reality … For the student of the Bible, the gospel becomes the norm by which the whole Old Testament and all the exhortations and other non-gospel aspects of the New Testament are to be understood” (Goldsworthy, Gospel-Centered, 63; emphasis in original).

[8] “The basic issue is the way we understand the historical plan and the goal of that plan through which God will bring eternal glory to himself” (Saucy, Progressive Dispensationalism, 19).

[9] “The best Scriptural exposition of the Abrahamic covenant is contained in Rom. 3 and 4, and Gal. 3” (Berkhof, Systematic, 295-96).

Revelation 6

This is a series of short expositions of Revelation 4-22 from a futurist perspective. Follow along with a timeline here.

In Revelation 6, the apostle John shows us the first six divine seal-judgments in rapid succession. He handles them in barely a few sentences each. While these first six judgments are terrible, the Lord seems to save his powder for the seventh and final act of vengeance—an event which runs from Revelation 8-18. Remember, Revelation 6-18 is not about the antichrist’s persecution—it’s about Jesus pouring out divine wrath upon the antichrist’s kingdom before he returns in Revelation 19.

It’s impossible to know how long these judgments last. But, (a) if we suppose Jesus essentially ends the great tribulation by way of these judgments upon the kingdom of evil, and (b) we take the sinister half the great tribulation to be ≈ 3.5 years (42 months), then (c) it’s likely these judgments occur at the very end of this 3.5-year period (for videos and articles about Daniel 9:24-27, see here). Perhaps they will take a few short months. The horror-stricken, “how could this even be happening?” reactions of unbelievers when Babylon falls, in Revelation 18, suggest a very short period of intense, violent, overwhelming divine judgment ending with the antichrist’s defeat.

Sinister horsemen are the agents of the first four judgments. Each rider is astride a horse of a different color, and so of course bible teachers speculate about what these colors mean. John doesn’t say. But, the rider’s actions seem to naturally correspond to the color of their horses, so little speculation is necessary. It’s certainly not worth an argument. The judgments the riders bring seem to be successive, like a series of disasters striking one after the other in short order.

Are the horses literal? Probably not. Interpreting symbolism is more of a feel than a rote equation to follow. These are ecstatic visions John has while “in the Spirit.” They convey true things under color of powerful and vivid imagery. We should take them as normally and straightforwardly as possible, while making allowance for the drama of the prophetic imagery. We should only resort to symbolism when it seems clear that pushing literalism would be absurd, and when evidence suggests that God is using dramatic license to push a point closely related to the imagery.

I’m not aware of anyone who believes the antichrist will truly have seven heads (Rev 13:1), or that in heaven Jesus literally morphs into a slaughtered lamb, complete with seven eyes and a human hand (Rev 5:6).
We know this is imagery, in the same way we know when we sing “Here I Am To Worship” that the Lord does not literally “step down into darkness,” and does not literally open our eyes to let us see. These are metaphors.
When the antichrist emerges from the sea at the dragon’s call, with seven flailing heads (Rev 13:1), we know this simply means he is frightening, otherworldly, and forbidding, and the same fourth monster from Daniel 7. That’s the point—there are not truly seven heads!
In the same way, there will not literally be four horsemen who sally forth from the heavens. But this imagery gives color and shape to each judgment in a clear, concrete, and memorable way. That is their function.

John sees Jesus, the lamb slain for the sins of his people, crack open the first seal. A seraph (“one of the four living creatures”) then spoke with a voice like the sound of thunder and commanded: “Come!” (Rev 6:1). The first rider (seal/judgment 1) enters the stage. Because this is a vision, and not strict reality, the horseman appears as if out of nowhere. The NASB 2020 translation reads: “I looked, and behold, a white horse …” (Rev 6:2). This is quite correct, but the effect is bland. “Behold” is an interjection, almost an exclamation.[1] The sense is that John looks and suddenly—“Whoa! Oh, my goodness!!”—the horseman clomps onto the stage without warning.

This rider has a white horse, a bow, and a crown, “and he went out conquering and to conquer” (Rev 6:2). This rider gives off clear authority (“crown”) and military victor (“bow … conquer”) vibes. The white color of his horse suggests “purity” and “holiness.” Many good bible teachers believe this is Jesus. But, this is probably wrong.

Jesus is in heaven, cracking open the scroll. Why would he teleport here into his own vision, playing two different parts? While prophecy can stretch reality into some elastic shapes, this may be too much.
Remember that Jesus directs these divine judgments which comprise Revelation 6-18 against the antichrist and his kingdom of darkness. They are not a chronicle of the antichrist’s reign of terror—they are Christ’s judgment against the antichrist. So, this first rider is bad news which Jesus unleashes against the unbelieving world.
The only way this first rider can be Jesus is if he is sallying forth to conquer his foes—sort of a shock and awe first strike against the antichrist. But, Jesus doesn’t return until in Revelation 19, which is directly after all judgments are complete.

So, who is this first rider?

It seems to me that the antichrist’s reign cannot be a happy one, even for his followers. Later in this book, the apostle John tells us that during the great tribulation the antichrist’s creature compels obedience upon threat of death (Rev 13:15-17).
So, it’s logical to believe that untold millions will “go with the flow” due to fear and intimidation and thus pay homage to the antichrist and his empire of evil.
Therefore, I take the rider on the white horse to represent a military dictator (likely the antichrist himself) who commands obedience by threats of torture and murder as his rule (“conquest”) reaches a fever pitch towards the end of the great tribulation.
In that event, by way of this first rider Jesus allows the antichrist to ramp up his vindictive and oppressive reign. Our rider doesn’t possess the crown by right—it’s given to him. The object would be to tell the unbelievers who continue to flock to this supremely evil man: “You don’t want Jesus as your savior? Well, this is the alternative. Is this what you want?”
This scenario makes even more sense if we place the murder of Jesus’ two witnesses in Jerusalem (Rev 11:1-13) as the “all right, that’s it!!” moment which triggers Jesus’ divine wrath.

A seraph summons a second horseman (seal/judgment 2), who gallops off “to take peace from the earth, and that people would kill one another, and a large sword was given to him” (Rev 6:3-4). This rider is atop a red horse. Again, he does not own the sword—it’s given to him by a divine loan. The horse’s significance is clear; red equals war and bloodshed.

Who will make war and who will die? Those who assume Revelation 6-18 is the dark tale of the antichrist’s reign of evil assume this is his doing. But, as we’ve seen, this is divine judgment against the antichrist. If we don’t keep that framework in mind, we misread the situation. So, in this case, we should imagine the antichrist’s fascist dictatorship spiraling deeper into a more hardline stance, turning on its own people—imprisoning, torturing, murdering its citizens.

Christians often see themselves as playing the victims in the antichrist’s schemes. Here, that isn’t necessarily the case—Jesus would hardly bring purposeful destruction against his own people. Instead, we likely have most unbelievers caught in the middle—not interested in Jesus and his gospel, yet facing death and torture if they don’t go “all in” with the antichrist’s program. The kingdom of darkness doesn’t appreciate fence straddlers. So, as Jesus allows the antichrist’s program to ramp into overdrive, there is no place to hide—peace is taken away and people kill one another as the wicked noose tightens.

At this point, the third horseman (seal/judgment 3) enters from stage right. He rides a black horse, holding aloft a pair of scales. A voice booms from the midst of the seraphim, and this can only be God speaking (cp. Rev 4:2-3, 5-6). He says: “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not damage the oil and the wine” (Rev 6:6).

What does this mean?

A “denarius” is the equivalent of a day’s wage,[2] while the “quart of wheat” and (alternatively, and less expensively) the “three quarts of barley” are food measurements that would last a typical family one day. These are not precise measurements, but rough approximations.
The command to not damage the oil and the wine is equivalent to “don’t waste these precious staples of your diet! Guard them carefully!”
Some believe it refers to a disconnect in society; the poor barely survive while the rich lounge about drinking wine with vats of olive oil secure in the basement. But Jesus is not bringing a class judgment upon the kingdom of evil—it’s a worldwide sentence against unbelief in general.
So, it seems best to interpret God’s admonition to the unbelieving world to mean: “be careful with the olive oil and wine you have on hand!”

The idea, then, is that our third horseman heralds a season of economic disaster and subsistence living. Consider the disasters of the “managed economy” of Soviet Russia in the 1930s, and communist China’s so-called “Great Leap Forward” in the late 1950s. Both resulted in famine, a collapsed economy, and the deaths of tens of millions of citizens. These are the consequences of the antichrist’s kingdom—repression and terror and a crashed financial system. Through it all, the Lord implicitly asks the world: “Why don’t you come to me, instead? My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” In contrast, our rider’s black horse signifies despair, bleakness, and the darkness of long cold, hungry nights.

The fourth horseman (seal/judgment 4) now gallops to the fore at the seraph’s command. He rides an “ashen” (NASB 2020), or “pale” (ESV), or “pale green” (NLT), or “sickly pale” (NEB, REB) horse. The color is uncertain; the word means something with a green-ish yellow tinge.[3] Context must decide the color. Because this rider bears the name “Death” and carries the realm of the dead (“Hades”) along with him, it seems best to see the horse being a sickly green—like that of a rotting corpse.

“Authority was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword, and famine, and plague, and by the wild animals of the earth” (Rev 6:8). The focus is less about warfare and more widespread death; a world turned upside down. This will be a remarkably unsettled and unstable time; sort of a breakdown of order and civil norms (such as they are). Famine, plague, wild animals, and warfare (“the sword”)—each will take their pound of flesh. The focus is on the mass death that will result.

The fifth seal (judgment 5) is not really a judgment at all, but a plea from martyred believers for divine vengeance. They have “been killed because of the word of God,” and because they have been witnesses for Jesus and his gospel (Rev 6:9). It’s likely that they died during the great tribulation, which the Lord is now ending with these judgments from on high. “And they cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘How long, O Lord, holy and true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who live on the earth?’” (Rev 6:10).

This plea is why Jesus is unleashing this hellish wrath upon the empire of evil. Crime demands punishment and, by the time Jesus breaks open the first seal, the antichrist’s fascist war against God had reached its zenith: “And if those days had not been cut short, no life would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short” (Mt 24:22).

The martyrs want justice. Vengeance. Divine retribution. Didn’t Jesus teach us to pray, “‘Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Mt 6:10)? Well, where is this kingdom and the righteous justice that comes with it? The first five seal judgments have thrown the world into chaos and surely rocked the antichrist’s kingdom, and now the martyrs are (in effect) pleading: “Finish him!”

John provides the Lord’s answer—the antichrist will be put down … but not quite yet:

And a white robe was given to each of them; and they were told that they were to rest for a little while longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers and sisters who were to be killed even as they had been, was completed also (Rev 6:11).

This suggests that more Christians will die at the antichrist’s hand even as Jesus strikes him with these judgments, and others to come. Like a wounded beast, the antichrist will lash out and strike whoever is convenient at hand—especially Christians, the people who represent to one true God he hates most of all.

Jesus now opens the sixth seal, which foregoes the horses in favor of shocking, terrifying phenomena—earthquake, a blackened sun, a moon turning blood red, stars falling from the heavens in large numbers (Rev 6:12-13). This is a supernatural, “next-level” scale of sudden and violent destruction—one that has no possible natural explanation: “The sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place” (Rev 6:14).

What will unbelievers do when this happens? What will they think? Will they choose Jesus, even in the face of torture and death at the hands of the evil empire? They will not; they would rather die. The rulers, the elites, the military commanders, the wealthy, the strong—every slave and free person will hide in caves and beg for death rather than submit to Jesus and his grace: “and they said to the mountains and the rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the sight of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of Their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?’” (Rev 6:16-17).

Jesus told us that unbelievers, in effect, judge themselves by their reaction to the gospel. “And this is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the Light; for their deeds were evil” (Jn 3:19).

The saddest thing in the world is that, even at the height of antichrist’s evil kingdom, even when he compels obedience upon threat of murder, even after the Lord’s two witnesses have preached so faithfully and passionately for 3.5 years (Rev 11:1-13), even after such a series of crushing hammer blows of divine wrath that surely must strike fear into every person’s breast … people would rather die than turn to Jesus for rescue. They can turn, if they want—much later in this cycle of divine judgment an angel explicitly makes a salvation offer to the unbelieving world (Rev 14:6-7).

They just don’t want it. More, and worse, judgments are coming.

[1] It’s possible this “behold” is simply a literary device John is using after the fact to cue his readers to something important. But I take it to be John relating his own startled surprise at something unexpected—the horseman truly just enters the vision from left field with no warning, upon the seraph’s command.

[2] John D. Barry et al., eds., s.v. “Denarius,” in The Lexham Bible Dictionary (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2016).

[3] BDAG, s.v., χλωρός; GE, s.v.

Revelation 6-18 isn’t about the antichrist’s persecution

This is a series of short expositions of Revelation 4-22 from a futurist perspective. Follow along with a timeline here.

As John watches, Jesus (the lamb who was slain, Rev 5:6-10) cracks open the first seal binding the scroll together (Rev 6:1). There are 19 judgments contained within the seven seals, which expand outward like a telescoping hiking pole (see the outline):

Seals 1-6 stand alone = judgments 1-6.
Seal 7 consists of seven individual judgments, signified by trumpet blasts = judgments 7-12.
The seventh trumpet blasts of seal 7 consist of seven individual judgments, shown as bowls of wrath which angels pour out upon the world = judgments 13-19.

But, before we dive into visions of sinister horsemen, we must first clear something up = Revelation 6-18 is not about the antichrist persecuting the world. It is about Jesus pouring out divine wrath upon the antichrist and his kingdom. If you don’t get this straight, you will never understand the book of Revelation. Many Christians are confused here.

Revelation 6-18 is not about the antichrist’s reign of terror against believers—the “great tribulation.” Many Christians think it is about that. But they’re wrong (on Revelation 13, see the outline).
It is Jesus who opens the seals and unleashes wrath upon the earth; divine wrath against the antichrist’s kingdom. Every judgment that happens—the seals, the trumpets, the bowls—is from Jesus. There is nothing from the antichrist. It is astounding that so many Christians wrongly believe Revelation 6-18 is about the terrors of the great tribulation.
The great tribulation largely occurs off camera in John’s vision. Instead, evidence suggests that the vision of Revelation 4-5 (the run-up to Jesus’ wrath unleashed), and those of Revelation 6-18 depict the very tail-end of the antichrist’s reign of terror, when Jesus makes good on his statement that: “if those days had not been cut short, no life would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short” (Mt 24:22). The divine judgment against the antichrist in Revelation 6-18 is Jesus cutting this awful time short.
Instead, Revelation 6-18 is about the time at the end of this seven-year “great tribulation” when Jesus pours out the seven seals of judgment upon the kingdom of darkness.

Given the futuristic chronology of the book, the scenario that makes best sense of the evidence is that:

Antichrist rises to power and makes a covenant with the people of Israel that lasts for seven years (Dan 9:27); then,
In the midst (or middle) of these seven years he lets the mask slip and launches a series of religious persecutions against believers, including the people of ethnic Israel (Dan 9:27; cp. 2 Thess 2; Rev 11, 13); and finally,
At what is likely the nadir of believer’s fortunes during this great tribulation (perhaps when the two witnesses are slain and then raptured to the heavens—Rev 11), Jesus puts an end to this persecution by venting divine wrath onto antichrist and his Babylon kingdom (Rev 6-18).

We know that Revelation 6-18 is about divine wrath (not antichrist’s terror) because Revelation 4-5 shows us the solemn run-up to this day of the Lord, which culminates with the slain Lamb being the only one worthy to break the seals and open the scroll which heralds the better tomorrow (Rev 5:2).

Because Jesus has overcome for his people, as our vicarious and righteous substitute, he alone may open the scroll and its seven seals (Rev 5:5).
As if to solemnize this awful but necessary time of divine wrath against evil, the angelic creatures sing: “Worthy are You to take the scroll and to break its seals; for You were slaughtered, and You purchased people for God with Your blood from every tribe, language, people, and nation” (Rev 5:9).
Before Jesus can receive power, honor, glory, blessing, “and dominion forever and ever,” he must first destroy his evil counterpart and his wicked kingdom. What follows in Revelation 6-18 are the seven-sealed judgments of wrath against the antichrist and Babylon.

The horsemen, the brimstone, the incineration of one-third of the earth’s vegetation, the waters turning to blood, the mutant, demonic locust-like creatures—all the “bad stuff” we associate with Revelation is divine wrath against antichrist and his followers. The antichrist is doing none of this! Instead, Jesus is doing it to the antichrist and to his people.[1]

This suggests this “time of testing—the one about to come upon the whole world to test those who dwell on the earth” (Rev 3:10) is against unbelievers—against the antichrist and his followers.[2]Jesus is testing whether they will repent and choose Jesus or cling to darkness. Some translations use the word “trial” here, but this not the best because Jesus is not evaluating the faith of unbelievers. He is testing whether unbelievers will truly continue to reject him.

These series of judgment end with the Lord destroying Babylon, and the antichrist’s people wailing because Jesus has smashed their world (Rev 18:9-19).

“Rejoice over her, O heaven, and you saints and apostles and prophets, because God has pronounced judgment for you against her” (Rev 18:20).
When Lord vanquishes the kingdom of evil, John tells us: “I heard something like the voice of a great multitude and like the sound of many waters, and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, saying, ‘Hallelujah! For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns’” (Rev 19:6).
At that point, Jesus returns to establish his kingdom on earth (Rev 19:11-21).

So, the “time of testing” (Rev 6-18) is not the antichrist’s persecution of believers—it is Jesus’ wrath upon the kingdom of darkness. Yet, many Christians continue to believe that Revelation 6-18 depicts the antichrist’s reign of terror. This is false. Instead, it depicts Babylon (and Satan) being pummeled and destroyed by a series of 19 successive hammer blow judgments from on high.

Once we get this straight in our minds, we are ready to consider the six judgments of the first six seals that Jesus looses upon the empire of evil. We turn to this in our next article.

[1] Buist Fanning briefly states that the ones who hide from Jesus’ wrath in Revelation 6:16-17 are believers who die because of the divine judgments, but this makes no sense in context. He does not try to substantiate the claim—he just makes it in one sentence (Revelation, in ZECNT (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2020), 177). The truth is that these people are likely unbelievers who follow the antichrist.

[2] “There the faithful are sealed with a view to their preservation from the assaults of demons, but are not thereby secured against physical death … It will be observed that the demonic trial spoken of, while worldwide, was to affect only ‘those that dwell upon the earth,’ i.e. the non-Christians” (R. H. Charles, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Revelation of St. John, vol. 1, in ICC (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1920), 89).

Revelation 5

This is a series of short expositions of Revelation 4-22 from a futurist perspective. Follow along with a timeline here.

John now looks up from the worship of the elders and the seraphim and fixes his eye upon the figure on the throne, who is the Father himself. In the Father’s right hand, he spies a “scroll written inside and on the back, sealed up with seven seals” (Rev 5:1). This “scroll” may indeed be a rolled-up scroll (compare Lk 4:16-20), or it may be a book like we’re familiar with today. The book or codex format didn’t become widespread until the 3^rd century, so this is probably a traditional scroll. You get the impression that John can tell the writing is on both sides, perhaps like how you can immediately tell that a sheaf of paper is printed double-sided.

This scroll is the trigger for everything that happens in the rest of the book of Revelation. What is this writing? What does it mean? It’s clearly a document of great importance: “And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, ‘Who is worthy to open the scroll and to break its seals?’” (Rev 5:2).

Whatever the scroll reads, only someone worthy can take the momentous step of opening it. Doing so will bring divine judgment upon the kingdom of darkness and those who follow it—this is why the powerful angel cries out his question in a loud voice. It’s a solemn event. The angel knows the answer. He doesn’t have to ask, but he does anyway—not for theater but to formally ask and receive the solemn answer.

And no one in heaven or on the earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it. Then I began to weep greatly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it (Rev 5:3-4).

At this point, does John know what the scroll means? What does it represent? He weeps in frustration. How will Jesus’ kingdom come? How shall his will be done on earth, as it is in heaven, if judgment does not first cleanse his creation? If nobody worthy can be found, is the whole thing over, right here and right now? You get the impression of deliberate drama, a heightened tension—John is interpreting the vision after the fact as he writes it down, armed with reflective insight from the entire revelation of this book.

One of the 24 elders steps forward, perhaps with a hand on John’s shoulder: “Stop weeping; behold, the Lion that is from the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has overcome so as to be able to open the scroll and its seven seals” (Rev 5:5).

The “lion of Judah” statement refers to Jacob’s blessing of his son Judah at Genesis 49:9-10. The connection to our passage is that Jacob prophesied that his son, Judah, was a “lion’s cub” who would be fearsome and mighty. The scepter of royal authority, Jacob declared, would never depart from this “lion’s” hands “until Shiloh comes” (Gen 49:10).[1] Shiloh was the sacred site where the ark was kept during the period of the judges (Josh 18:1), and Jacob seemed to be prophetically identifying the place with God himself—the city of Shiloh personified YHWH’s rule. So, one day, this “lion from Judah” would rule until Shiloh (that is, YHWH) arrives. Evidentially, this “lion from the tribe of Judah” reference was shorthand for this event—and it is he who has conquered all enemies and may open the scroll!
The “root of David” reference is about the great descendant who will come from Jesse, King David’s father. Isaiah refers to “the root of Jesse” (Isa 11:1) which is the same thing (under different color) as “root of David”—it is Jesus, descended from David and, of course, also from Jesse (David’s father). It is this “root of David” who will one day rule the world in righteousness (Isa 11:1-5).
Too many Christians today will not recognize these references, because too many Christians don’t read their Old Testaments.[2]

Together, these two allusions act as flashing neon lights which read: “Messiah! Messiah!” for those with eyes to see and ears to hear. So, the kind elder says, there is no need to cry—because Jesus has won. The word the angel uses, which the NASB translates as “overcome,” means Jesus is victorious, he’s conquered, he’s prevailed against all obstacles.[3] And so, as a result,[4] he is worthy to open the scroll and its seven seals. Astonished, John looks up sharply at the throne once more and sees something new beside the seraphim— “a Lamb standing, as if slaughtered, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth” (Rev 5:6). Jesus is both the lion who conquers and the lamb who allows himself to be taken and slaughtered.[5] The vision is bizarre, but it’s a vision communicating truth in a deliberately startling way. Just as the figure of “Uncle Sam” represents the United States in broad strokes, so too this curious mutant lamb represents the slain, powerful, and all-seeing Jesus—the eternal Son of God. The number “seven” suggests completeness; seven horns imply strength, and seven eyes convey omniscience; an “all-seeing” power.

Jesus is the “lamb” who has been slain to take away the sins of the world (Jn 1:29). “For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified” (Heb 10:14).
In this way, Jesus has vanquished Satan and all his schemes and frees everyone who comes to him for rescue.
And yet, we cannot forget that the lamb was slain and yet stands there alive, beside the throne. The resurrection is strongly implied. Christians have a live savior, not a dead one.

This lamb moves immediately after John notices him, as if he’d been waiting for his cue. He strolls over, still bearing the marks of his own slaughter, and “took the scroll out of the right hand of Him who sat on the throne” (Rev 5:7). It’s as if he says, “I’ll take care of this. I’m the only one who can!”

Again, this is not a flippant thing. This scroll is extraordinarily important. When the lamb grabs hold of it, “the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each one holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints” (Rev 5:8). They bow down in worship, each cradling a bowl containing the prayers of saints or holy ones (i.e., God’s people). In fact, these bowls are the prayers themselves (cp. Ps 141:2), vessels ready to be offered to God upon a figurative altar.[6] John doesn’t tell us what God’s people are asking for in their prayers, but soon enough it will be clear they are begging for justice and relief from prosecution.

The elders and the seraphim cry out in worshipful song—a “new song” (Rev 5:9), because the time has divine judgment has come at last, bringing a paradigm shift with it:

Worthy are You to take the scroll and to break its seals; for You were slaughtered, and You purchased people for God with Your blood from every tribe, language, people, and nation (Revelation 5:9).

In the previous chapter, the elders and the seraphim fall down before the Father on his throne (Rev 4:8-11). Now, they fall down before the lamb.[7]God is triune, which means within the one Being who is God, there eternally exists three divine Persons—Father, Son, and Spirit. Each Person is co-equal and co-eternal, and each divine Person receives worship—the Father in Revelation 4, and the lamb (i.e., the Son) here.

The KJV and NKJV translations render this as if the 24 elders have been purchased by God (“thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us …”), but no modern English version (except the NKJV) agrees with this reading[8]—it is believers whom God has ransom and “bought.”

Why, exactly, is Jesus the only one worthy to break the seals and open this scroll?

Because he was slaughtered. He died. The phrasing is in the passive voice, which means Jesus let himself be slaughtered. He saw it coming and let it happen. He didn’t resist. Jesus told his disciples in his final hours of freedom: “[T]he ruler of the world is coming, and he has nothing in regard to Me, but so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded Me” (Jn 14:30-31). Satan has nothing on Jesus—no accusation to make, no legal charge into which he can sink his claws. Nevertheless, Jesus (in his human nature as our vicarious representative) obeyed his Father’s will and let it happen. This is why he told Judas: “What you are doing, do it quickly” (Jn 13:27).
As a consequence of his death,[9] Jesus bought or purchased people from God from everywhere on earth. This is a ransom motif (cp. Mk 10:45)—his blood (i.e., his vicarious death) is the means of payment[10] which “buys” people from spiritual slavery and legally pardons them in God’s eyes. This is why the apostle Paul told the believers in Corinth: “For you have been bought for a price: therefore glorify God in your body” (1 Cor 6:20).

Because nobody else can accomplish this, nobody else is worthy to unleash divine judgment on a world which rejects such amazing grace. It’s as if, when Jesus cracks open the seals, he is also saying: “I did everything necessary, and yet you still reject YHWH’s authority, and his offer of forgiveness and love!”

The elders and the seraphim continue: “You have made them into a kingdom and priests to our God, and they will reign upon the earth” (Rev 5:10). This is language from the old covenant ceremony at Mt Sinai (Ex 19:1-6), re-purposed and re-packaged for the new (and better) covenant. These people whom Jesus purchased for God (that is, all who “repent and believe in the Gospel,” Mk 1:15) are a kingdom and a collection of priests for him.[11] We are a kingdom and we are priests right now, and so we will one day reign on the earth. Elsewhere, scripture suggests this will happen during Christ’s 1,000-year millennial reign.

John perhaps startled, now sees the angelic chorus join the crowd around the throne: “myriads of myriads, and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, ‘Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power, wealth, wisdom, might, honor, glory, and blessing” (Rev 5:11-12). Jesus has not only died and thus purchased people from spiritual slavery—he is worthy to receive the kingdom and the divine worship he deserves!

As if in response, every living thing on, above, or under the earth (and everything in the sea) raises its voice and sings praise to the lamb as one: “To Him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be the blessing, the honor, the glory, and the dominion forever and ever” (Rev 5:13).

The seraphim declare “Amen” in true independent Baptist fashion, while the elders fall down in worship. The ceremony is over, and the time has come for the lamb to open the seals and bring down judgment upon the kingdom of evil on earth.

[1] Hebrew: עַ֚ד כִּֽי־יָבֹ֣א שִׁילֹה. There is much discussion about what this phrase means. For our purposes, I’ll just say that it seems to refer to a place where the ark was kept during the time of the judges and, for some reason, the Holy Spirit (through Jacob) chose to use this place in Jacob’s blessing of Judah to personify YHWH’s personal presence. We know this is true, because the subject of this clause is Shiloh, which performs the action of the verb “until he comes.” A city cannot “arrive” anywhere, so it’s best to see “Shiloh” as standing for YHWH’s arrival.

[2] On this sad state of affairs, see Brent Strawn, The Old Testament is Dying.

[3] See BDAG, s.v., sense 1; GE, s.v., sense 1: “to conquer, prevail in a battle or in a contest.”

[4] The anarthrous infinitive (ἀνοῖξαι τὸ βιβλίον καὶ τὰς ἑπτὰ σφραγῖδας αὐτοῦ) expresses the result of the previous statement (ἰδοὺ ἐνίκησεν ὁ λέων ὁ ἐκ τῆς φυλῆς Ἰούδα, ἡ ῥίζα Δαυίδ).

[5] Swete, Revelation, 78.

[6] Grammatically, the true antecedent of the relative pronoun is probably the bowls, not the incense. φιάλας χρυσᾶς γεμούσας θυμιαμάτων, αἵ εἰσιν αἱ προσευχαὶ τῶν ἁγίων. The pronoun is a feminine plural, and the bowls are the same. But, the incense is a neuter. True, the relative pronoun is a nominative and so does not match the accusative case of the bowls. But, we can attribute this to (a) the accusative case of the bowls is because is an object of the participle, and (b) the pronoun is nominative because it introduces a relative clause.

[7] Schreiner, Revelation, 251-52.

[8] The KJV translation was completed in 1611 using a comparatively very small group of printed Greek manuscripts, and its translators did not have access to the wealth of data and manuscript evidence we now possess. This is why it (and its child, the NKJV) sometimes has different readings that, while odd, don’t change the meaning of bible doctrine in any meaningful way.

Nevertheless, Walvoord doggedly understands the text this way (Revelation, 118-19); perhaps because he wishes to see the 24 elders as the church because this would support a dispensational, pre-tribulational rapture.

[9] The conjunction in our phrase (ὅτι ἐσφάγης καὶ ἠγόρασας τῷ θεῷ ἐν τῷ αἵματί σου ἐκ πάσης φυλῆς καὶ γλώσσης καὶ λαοῦ καὶ ἔθνους) is likely a conclusion, not a simple additive. It would read something like this: “… because you were slaughtered, and so you purchased [people] for God by your blood from every tribe, and language, and people, and nation.”

[10] The preposition + dative here indicates means (ὅτι ἐσφάγης καὶ ἠγόρασας τῷ θεῷ ἐν τῷ αἵματί σου ἐκ πάσης φυλῆς καὶ γλώσσης καὶ λαοῦ καὶ ἔθνους).

[11] John records the elders and seraphim using the aorist tense-form throughout this song, which basically means John sees Jesus’ achievements as an undefined event happening in the past. The aorist has a perfective aspect, which means it’s often expressing past events as a whole. Anyone who presses the aorist tense-form too much here is missing the boat. The kingdom reference (and the rest of the aorist verbs in this song) is simply a constative aorist: “you made them a kingdom and priests for our God.” In other words, believers are a kingdom and priests right now. It is a present reality, and it has been one since Jesus’ ascension.

When bible teachers become weird

Too many otherwise solid, reliable, and trustworthy bible teachers become really strange when it comes to two things: Genesis 1-11, and prophecy. It doesn’t have to be this way! In this video, I describe this unfortunate problem and suggest a few pointers that will help you interpret Genesis 1-11 and prophecy in a more reliable way.

Revelation 4

This is a series of short expositions of Revelation 4-22 from a futurist perspective. Follow along with a timeline here.

After the revelation of Jesus’ messages to the churches (Rev 1:9 – 3:22), the apostle John sees something else. A door is open in heaven, like an invitation. A voice booms out at him—the voice of Jesus. It was he who ordered John to copy down the messages to the churches (“the first voice which I heard,” cp. Rev 1:10-13), and it’s him again who says: “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after these things” (Rev 4:1). Some bible teachers argue passionately that Revelation’s events here (Rev 4-19) focusses on Israel, because the church is in heaven, because the pre-tribulation rapture must have happened sometime between the end of Revelation 3 and the start of Revelation 4.[1] This is a weak argument from silence (see the article “Does Revelation 3:10 Teach a Pre-Tribulation Rapture?”), and instead we will simply take the text as we find it.

Immediately after receiving this open-door invite, John tells us he was “in the Spirit,” which likely means he felt as if he’d entered a different spiritual plane—this is an ecstatic vision given by the Spirit, not just shown to him but experienced, too. He sees, as if beyond the beckoning door, a strange figure seated on a throne in heaven. In words reminiscent of Ezekiel’s so long ago (Ezek 1:26-28), John tells of a man glittering as a jewel, surrounded by a rainbow that glinted and sparkled in deep emerald hues (Rev 4:3).

24 creatures sit on 24 thrones arrayed round about this mysterious man (Rev 4:4). John calls them “elders,” a word which could mean older men, or religious leaders (i.e., pastors). Here, it seems to refer to angelic creatures of some stripe[2] (we’ll come back to them soon). They’re clad in white robes and wear golden crowns.

As is his way, the apostle John borrows old covenant language to describe the scene. Just as when the people of Israel did when they came to Mt. Sinai (Ex 19:16), John sees “flashes of lightning and sounds and peals of thunder” coming out from the throne (Rev 4:5).

Seven lamps of fire, which are God’s seven Spirits, flicker and burn before the throne (Rev 4:5). These seem to be the heavenly reality which the temple’s golden lampstand foreshadowed (Ex 25:37). Much ink has been spilt on these “seven spirits of God,” which are likely the Holy Spirit. John’s visions include letters to seven churches, seven Spirits before the throne of God above, seven seals on the judgment scroll which Jesus slowly cracks open throughout this book, seven trumpet blast judgments within the seventh seal judgment, and seven bowl judgments nestled within the seventh trumpet judgment. Elsewhere, Daniel tells us of that 70 “sevens” will elapse before the Lord’s program for this present evil age is complete (Dan 9:24-27). In short, “seven” is a number that inevitably calls to mind “fullness” or “completeness.” If the seven lamps are the Holy Spirit, then because we will shortly meet the Lamb who was slain standing between the elders and the throne (in ch. 5), then we have the Trinity in God’s throne room.

Also, in this scene there are images so fantastic that John scarcely knows what to make of them. We get the strong impression that he tries his best to describe the indescribable. Imagine an average American in 1850 trying to describe to his family a vision of a mobile phone with the Amazon app! He wouldn’t have the words or concepts to imagine such a thing—the conceptual distance is far too great. Perhaps the best he could do would be to liken it to a portable telegraph without wires—but even that would be inaccurate. John seems to be doing something like that.

There is a glassy sea, like crystal, surrounding the shimmering, rainbow-emerald throne. Around the throne are four bizarre creatures bursting with eyes all around, sporting faces of (in turn) a lion, a calf, a man, and that of an eagle. They each have six wings (Rev 4:6-8).

These are remarkably similar to what Ezekiel saw when he beheld an image of God’s throne room (Ezek 1:4-21). The figures he described are not identical to John’s, but they are close. They’re so close that surely they saw the same thing.
It’s not worth our time to object that Ezekiel’s creatures had four wings and different faces. Both John and Ezekiel are describing the indescribable in the best language they knew. To return to our 19^th century analogy: it doesn’t matter if one time-traveler from 1835 Kentucky describes a portable telegraph, while another tells of a glowing black brick with a burning silhouette of an apple on the back—they’re clearly seeing the same thing!
Isaiah saw and recorded almost exactly what John did and called these creatures “seraphim” (Isa 6:1-3).

The point is not what the seraphim are—they’re otherworldly creatures, accept it and move on! The point is what they and the 24 elders do and why they do it.

First, the four seraphim: “[A]nd day and night they do not cease to say, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come’ (Rev 4:8). This is precisely what Isaiah heard (and saw) during his own ecstatic temple vision (Isa 6:1-3). The seraphim praise God’s eternity—he always was, always is, and always will be. He has no beginning and no end.
Second, the 24 elders: As the seraphim sing their praise, the elders bow down to the figure on the throne, cast off their golden crowns, and declare: “Worthy are You, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for You created all things, and because of Your will they existed, and were created” (Rev 4:11).

This is very dramatic, and it’s meant to be that way. If this were a movie, there would be haunting music, ratcheting tension, and expectation of some “big moment.” Jesus, the lamb slain to rescue his people and to reclaim a ruined world, is about to unleash judgment upon the kingdom of darkness. This vision of praise and solemn majesty is the backdrop for this unfortunate but necessary event.

YHWH is eternal—this means he has the jurisdiction and authority to move against a terrorist insurgency.
YHWH is the creator of everything—this means he has the power and justification to put down Satan’s rebellion.

Our dramatic scene continues in the next chapter with a ceremony of sorts that ends with Jesus taking the scroll of judgment. It is this document which, when slowly cracked open, unleashes divine fury upon the antichrist and his kingdom of evil (Rev 6-18).

[1] John Walvoord, The Revelation of Jesus Christ (Chicago: Moody Press, 1966), 101-103.

[2] Walvoord suggests they represent the Body of Christ (Revelation, 106-107), but this is largely driven by his assumption that the church has been raptured away to heaven—an argument from silence.

Missing bible pages … found?

A church member recently asked me about a recent article which described of “42 missing pages” of St. Paul’s letters. So, I made a short video explaining why it isn’t a bad thing to find new (old!) copies of manuscripts of biblical letters. I talk about how we can know whether what St. Paul, or Peter, or Matthew wrote is actually what we have in our bibles. This is a very general overview! For more info on these topics (in both video and print formats), see the resources linked in YouTube in the video description.

The Eccentric Fundamentalist

Musings on theology, apologetics, practical Christianity and God's grace in salvation through Jesus Christ

What is the “mystery” of Ephesians 3?

Background

Wrong answers about this “mystery”

A probable answer

Does science contradict Christianity?

The bible’s big story

The “three-act play” way