My first advice is to read this in context with the whole of Revelation (there were no chapters or verses originally), a a whole book, things mentioned in the opening will be picked up and be weaved through the whole book. And with this also comes a caution then of taking one line or piece within Revelation as a definitive statement of but rather part of an ongoing unveiling.
The big theme in Revelation is that St John the Divine is picking up and employing here a well known way for writing in the Jewish world at the time, and was a method of writing that was designed to correspond and make understandable the visions seen by holy, prayerful people who are wrestling with the question of divine purpose on events, feeling in the dark at times in light of current events. Here the seer was wrestling in prayer with these issues, and the curtain would be pulled up, and they would be invited into a scene, and gain understanding, a vital part of this is the ancient Jewish concept that God’s sphere of being and operation (heaven) and our sphere that we see (earth) are not separated by a great gulf, but exist within and alongside each other, and meet, merge and meld into one another in all kinds of ways. For ancient 2nd Temple Jews this happened supremely in the Temple in Jerusalem (which isn’t unimportant to what happens in Revelation). Most people are blind to this truth to creation, only seeing the earthly side of the story, though there are moments in all people can hear that sound beyond and within what they are doing of more, at moment of joy and pleasure, of grief, in a moment of beauty or meaning, moments of love both joyful and painful, all give us the sense of something more, but we can’t see more. Ancient Jews struggled to see both sides of the story, sometimes disastrously so (such as the great rebellions of AD 69-70 and AD 132-135 which destroyed Jerusalem and Judea).
The earliest Christians also believed that Jesus of Nazareth was in person, the place where heaven and earth sides of reality supremely meet and joined, and looking to Him, and contemplating His death and Resurrection, they could see right into God’s reality and perspective on events. They were able in Him to understand the things about God’s purpose, reality and nobody else could and have ever imagined before, that the very understanding was now disclosed that had been hidden before.
From this however came new questions, what was God doing now, what were His plans for the little communities dotted around the Mediterranean world, and where was it going? In Paul’s epistles we see some of these questions and struggles, Acts itself is written in part under these questions and has it’s answer running through it and so on, and we see see it with St Ignatius writing to the Church just after the NT period. But in some respects Revelation is an focused on this question, and is an answer tour de force, why was God allowing followers of Jesus to suffer persecution, tortured, cast out of house and family, often into further poverty and excluded from previous kin-groups (a death sentence effectively all of it’s own in such societies of the ancient world), and executed. And what should their reaction be towards the fastest growing religion of the time, one which demanded the acceptance of all other religions, that of the worship of Caesar, should they resist these things?
Of the groups of Christians in ancient Anatolia (present Turkey) where John seems to have been based at this time, most would have been poor and meeting in each others houses, on in a house of a patron which set itself aside for this purpose. By contrast, people were building grand and expensive temples for Caesar and the imperial family in various cities, eager to show Rome how loyal they were, so what did the Lord Jesus say to these things, did it mean that Christians after all were wasting their time, following a crucified Jew rather than the one who was rather obviously to everyone the ‘Kyrios’ or Lord of the world. This is the question Revelation is answering, and it is a strong no with more to say besides. At it’s centre is Jesus the Messiah, the cornerstone, illuminating the Gospel and the Scripture of Israel, discovered that the curtain that is usually keeps us from see God and the full truth of reality clearly was drawn back and he was face to face with the Risen Lord Himself.
With that introduction to it we learn five important things about what sort of book Revelation is, and how it should be approached (and of course it is something that should also be approached with a prayerful and meditative attitude and thought, so that for us to God might make the curtain transparent and we can glimpse more than me might have imagined through it.
First the book is a four stage revelation, about something God had revealed to Jesus, and that He was revealing to His servants, through an angel, and though the lines get blurred this basic framework runs through it. Secondly the book is in the form of an extended letter, not just in the letters to the seven churches, but also of the book as a whole, is a letter both telling them what he John had seen, and expanding on things referenced in the letters. Thirdly, the book is a prophecy, and as both prophets of ancient Israel he draws on earlier Biblical traditions, understanding those revelation and purposes in Christ, and giving fresh impetus to them. Fourthly the book is a witness, both in an assembly in which the truth is being born witness by Jesus and His followers, and the witness carries both is a key for the ultimate decision and verdict and testifies to it, and also in the sense of it’s main meaning from the Greek word martyr, and that those who carry this testimony way well be called to suffer, and perhaps even die from what they have said. And finally fifthly and most important, everything that is to come flows from the central figure, Jesus Himself and God the Father. God is the Almighty, the beginning and the end, other lords and rulers may claim similar titles, but there only one God to whom they belong and drive the existence and authority (from which all humans get their authority). And the Lord Jesus is the one, through His death and Resurrection, has accomplished God’s purpose, His love for the world and His people and His purpose for them, not just to rescue them but of the important purpose they have, and to remind them that Jesus is there in this work and will return to complete it, to fulfil His reign on earth as on heaven destroying death and healing and putting things to rights.
These messages to the seven churches and through then to the many other Christian groups in the area, and from there through the Church onwards is to hear what the Risen Lord is seeing and glimpse the heavenly reality so often hidden behind the veil from us. They are filled with both encouragement, concerns and then urging them to endure, and to the path of Life, and we should not think that any of the promises are just for the one church or another, but rather are all interrelated (afterall both each of the seven churches will receive this letter) and many others did besides (and now some places such as Ephesus, once such an important centre to Christianity (indeed a place of an Ecumenical Council, the third) and now is a ruin where there are no churches and no Christians (unless they are there to visit the site). All the promises, concerns and urgings are for all the churches and for all Christians, and all the promises and images here will be woven through the book, elaborated on in the apocalyptic imagery and language to come.
Now to the passage at hand, this is a warning and a promise that carries with it echoes of Jesus warning to Israel in the parables of the sheep and goats (or of the wise and unwise virgins, and the wedding guests) who think they are living the life of Christ and growing in true life, but in they have missed understood reality and are blind to their current state. They are not falling opening to the destructive path of the ways of the Gentiles and the kings of the world (exemplified by Ceasar and the imperial militaristic cult most of all), but in reality, just as James and John didn’t understand when they asked to be at Jesus’ right and left, as to just how the life of the Kingdom and the new creation is to be lived, and such as those who before the Lord in the parable did either did engage and grow in the immortal Life of God available in the Resurrection and death’s defeat in meeting Him in the needy, the hungry, in the prisoner, the stranger and so on (it also echoes part the Sermon of the Mount, and thus is centred at the heart of the Gospel and of what being blessed comes from). In that parable they realise that despite their outward and what the people in the church was a life they were choosing to orientate and engage in or were in reality despite the right sayings and even for standing and declaring Jesus as Lord of this world denied this reality and were still choosing and embracing the power of death and the drift to decay and non-being and by their life and action choose not to live in growing towards life now free and found in Christ, and engage and participate in the Life of God there for them by the Spirit, and so despite outward appears they were as one still dead, and would if keep going on this course see at that great unveiling of reality see themselves as they should be in Him, and in the other and see how far they are from their true self and true life and humanity (and so not their true selves and names, which likes to the promise to be given a new name, such as Peter for example was given, we find who we really are in the Messiah, our true humanity). The ones that Jesus refers to here, are those who both have unlike those have truly turned and respond to HIs love, and Life and walked with Him, in the new life of the new creation, in synergy with the grace of God, that is the Holy Spirit in action, and lived not as the Gentiles do, but in self-giving love and self-sacrificial service to all around them, and engaged and participated in the Life Christ gives and makes available in the people around them. The were are are living the life of the age to come, and it’s ways of love, faith and hope, and were already growing into the names that are in the heavenly Jerusalem and the Book of Life, which is those who are alive and being renewed in their humanity rather than walking in paths of destruction and hate, and not engaging in the very Life Christ makes available in the people around them (and bring that life into their lives). Those who overcome, are living in the way, truly human way and are living in the victory of Christ over death and all the anti-creational and anti-human forces, in the manner of His victory and Life, that of kenotic self-giving love and sacrificial service to others (he would great must be the servant of the other, and he who would be greatest of all must be the slave of all, for the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and give His Life a ransom for many’ ), the life as put in the Sermon of the Mount, the Beatitudes, of loving all, of returning blessing for cursing, praying for and blessing your enemies, bringing light and love into the dark places in the world, society and the hurts of people’s hearts, bodies and lives and confronting with this radical new way of life all the ways of death and the fear of it that dominate and twist so many aspects of human life and existence (drive for money, position, power, influence, escape to pleasure, sex and so on, all are the power of death and it’s fear in humanity in action), of affirming by that love the truth of the immortal life of Christ and the defeat of death in all it’s aspect in all things,. Those who are living in this life already are living and witnessing (and are witnesses or martyrs to this reality and life) the victory in Christ and overcoming death and it’s slaves the accusing anti-creational forces, they are living in the Resurrection where death was defeated by death.
And He is urging those who proclaim His name by not yet living the life of the Kingdom, who have not responded to His love, most of all in those around them, to realise the reality of their situation now and come out of death, out of Egypt, they have been freed Pharaoh and don’t need to live as slaves any longer, when they do they will embrace and grow into their true selves, their true persons and full humanity, and engage His victory, and HIs Life and overcome death, and have their new name, their true self in that love, and find themselves walking in the City here even as it will come in full. And this thought is followed on through the book to the end when the same imagery (washing robes, white clothes, a new name to enter the heavenly Jerusalem when it comes down and unites to earth (the moment when there will be no veil at all, and all will be filled openly to the heart of all things, and all of us in our deepest selves will know and engage the Lord Jesus in the completion of the resurrection when we are all raised, and the universe transfigured and completed, and know Him, His love and therefore ourselves in Him and all humanity around us as we really are) when some who have so turned from their humanity and embraced the way of death see and know themselves in Him, in His full Truth and Reality, and before that Reality and Light there will be no more darkness to hide in or any self-deception, healed and understanding Him and engaging Him in their deepest being they understand themselves in His Love and Truth and in that reflected humanity around them, in all those they are connected to, and see the persons they should be and see in HIs light the effects of death upon them (this is what what I believe is the second death, reality the symbolic imagery of the lake of fire is showing - and is counterpart to the reality of grace and judgement indicated in John). This is an ontological reality of this in our lives, of how death and the drift towards non-being outside the communion in God and with each other causes us and all things to fall apart and dissolve more, emotionally, morally, spiritually and physically, and is only arrested, healed and overcome by grace, and responding to it and living to it’s love. As St Issac the Syrian says this is not a moment, anymore than now that someone is deprived of God’s love:
‘As for me I say that those who are tormented in hell are tormented by the invasion of love. What is there more bitter and violent than the pains of love? Those who feel they have sinned against love bear in themselves a damnation much heavier than the most dreaded punishments. The suffering with which sinning against love afflicts the heart is more keenly felt than any other torment. It is absurd to assume that the sinners in hell are deprived of God’s love. Love is offered impartially. But by its very power it acts in two ways. It torments sinners, as happens here on earth when we are tormented by the presence of a friend to whom we have been unfaithful. And it gives joy to those who have been faithful.’
This is a heart of the call, but even for those who have turned from much of humanity and will yet be confronted with this in the moment of healing, when all are drawn out through and beyond death in the completion of the resurrection of the dead, we are immediately told that just like now the gates of heavenly Jerusalem are not closed, but always open and that the leaves for the healing of the nations (those still hurt and damaged from death) are there, and the call still goes out to those understand God’s love to respond to it, and to come out their hurt and of the remains of death and leave the remains of their false selves and hurts and come to their right mind, to turn their lives and selves to Christ and to to love and life, and grow and be healed and overcome at last, with and in all around them, and join in the love and delight of God in Christ, and so we are reminded there at the end that they are called to wash their robes, and find their true names in the Book of Life, the Spirit and Bride will still say come, and we are promised in the end there nor more sea (chaos and disorder), for all creation and all in it the all things shall pass away, there shall be no more death, nor more mourning, and He will wipe the tears from our eyes, as Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians, death itself in all it’s manifestations, all it’s decay and marring shall be itself destroyed. All are symbols of that repentance, that change of mind and the re-orientation of our lives to the love of Christ and live in the overcoming defeat of the death the self-giving love of God in Christ, to be in our lives in truth the way of the true Lord and true King rather than the ways of the ‘Gentiles’, the ways of death.
This is something that goes on now, hence the urging in the passage, that the very damaging nature of our hate, our dehumanization of others in our minds and our actions, to treat others as nothing is the ultimate heresy, it is to deny Christ and refuse HIs Life with our lives, and so keep ourselves from participating in His grace and overcoming death and the fear of death both and affirming the victory of the Messiah, the Kingdom of God and it’s immoral Life in every act of love for the other, for those hurting and in need, and loving them and both bringing and participating in the Life of Christ with them, bringing love and light to the dark and hurting places. So He is telling us this reality is already now as the book will make clear it will also be later, and is urging those in the letter and beyond down to our generation (and beyond, should His appearing be far off still) to understand this and make the choice to live and not stay in the ways of death, to live what they proclaim (here we can for example see a type of Christian down through the centuries who has often delighted in declaring the few that are ‘in’ as they see it, and rejoicing over the belief that everyone else will be tortured in hellfire forever, and being controlling and hateful, such denies Christ in action no matter their words ). He is reminding them that this is reality now, and that one day the veil will be gone, and there no darkness, blindness and it’s self-deception to hide in anymore, when through the resurrection truth and love is fully ablaze within them and healing them no such self-deceptions will be possible any longer (not even trying to rejoice in being hateful or destructive, that to is just a form of self-justifying deception and hiding in the darkness, a way of trying to declare evil good and good evil, it to cannot be held when their deepest beings are alive and freed in the light of His Love and Truth). And much like in many other things, while I believe that in many respects that time will be much kinder (there won’t be violence, abuse or dehumanization, they won’t hate or misunderstand each other, and they know His and all our love, they will be fully resurrected with us) like is often the case now, we often prefer at first lies and avoiding truth rather than facing it, even if the avoidance is more harmful and abusive (on a simple level it is amazing how much people will put up with pain and a debilitating condition for instance, or a bad tooth ache rather than going to the doctor or dentist, their fear the truth more than the pain and the confusion, the more difficult areas of abuse, an abused spouse and their abuser both prefer to to hide in deception for a long time rather than facing the truth, even if that truth brought healing and freedom and an end to hurt and pain). That is why He waits and warns, because He understands, the blinding light of His Love won’t be harmful in one way, but once there no veil anymore, all will have no choice anymore but to see and understand the Truth and engage it, to be be freed rather than choose to stay under the effect and dominion of death (of wishing to return to Egypt rather than leaving it), their freedom will mean they will have to deal with that reality then. The Lord is a loving Physician however, and is rather they beginning engaging it now and overcoming it now, for them and those around them, rather than dealing with their healing later.
