When the Scroll Appears Up Yonder...
...It bears checking out
I have no illusions about how obtuse my posts may seem to readers. To follow the bouncing ball which is my series of posts on the book of Revelation can try any reader’s patience; and there is a reason for this.
I acknowledge that it is quite possible for me to 1) miss the forest for the trees (being fixated on detail after detail in a book overflowing with details); or to 2) miss the trees for the forest (flying 33,000 feet above the text to show the bigger picture). Doubtless I have done both; and if you, the reader, are still with me, I salute you!
I bring this up because I’m about to lead this expedition back into the undergrowth found on the floor of the forest. But let me explain this in a metaphor-free statement: We remain stuck in Chapter 10. Why? Even after the two previous posts on this chapter, there’s no charging forward until we attend to another detail which appears in John’s vision, and demands attention. What would that be? A little scroll.
This little scroll actually appears in the first two verses of this chapter:
I saw another mighty angel…he had a little scroll open in his hand. And he set his right foot on the sea, and his left foot on the earth. And he called out with a loud voice, like a lion roaring.
When an immense being stands before your eyes, standing astride the land and the sea like a Colossus; and when this being erupts with a voice like a roaring lion, it’s bound to happen - we lose sight of the little scroll. Our attention is drawn elsewhere - the dramatic sounds of thunder (v.4), and the angelic announcement that there’s no more playin’ when the seventh trumpet is sounded.
But the chapter does not end on that note (Pun possibly intended). Instead, our attention is brought back to the scroll. John is instructed to take the scroll from the hand of the mighty angel.
So I went up to the angel and told him to give me the little scroll. He said to me, “Take and eat it. It will make your stomach bitter, but in your mouth it will be sweet as honey.”
And I was told, “You must again prophesy about peoples, nations, languages, and kings.
What are we to make of this?
We’ve seen a scroll previously in Revelation - the scroll whose seals the Lamb opens, taken from the hand of the one on the throne. That scroll represented the unfolding purpose and plans of God, who in his sovereign control brings forth and directs every event in human history. And that history has as its destination the fulfillment of God’s eternal rule over a new heavens and earth, the securing of a people for his own possession, and the final judgment upon unrighteousness and evil.
In the course of John’s vision, those seven seals are depicted as having been opened, with the exception only of the seventh trumpet. The tone of Chapter 10 is one of anticipation that the seventh trumpet shall sound, and all God’s purposes will be accomplished. But it is here that John is summoned to take a scroll from the hand of one whose “face is like the sun.”
What John is doing parallels what happens in Chapter 5. But unlike Chapter 5, the scroll John takes is not sealed, but open. What John receives does not require his action to discover and write. Instead he is told to eat it.
Bible readers will recognize that that action has parallels in the books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Both those prophets experienced an engagement with God which entailed “eating” what they were to prophesy. And again, like John, there was both sweetness and bitterness which the prophets experienced.
It’s not difficult to determine what these two “tastes” stands for. The sweetness is the inherent goodness in God’s revealed truth, even if that truth is a message of judgment. This is what we read in subsequent chapters.
We give thanks to you, O Lord God Almighty…for you have taken your great power and begun to reign. (11:17)
Just are you, O Holy One…for you brought forth judgment. (15:5)
And I heard the altar say, “Yes, Lord God Almighty, true and just are your judgments.
But with the message of judgment comes the recognition of the dire condition of those who have been deceived by the Beast, and hardened against the truth of God.
If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he will also drink the wine of God’s wrath… (14:9-10)
There is a final parallel between John and the Old Testament prophets. Just as an Ezekiel proceeded to prophesy what he had “eaten”, so it is with John:
You must again prophesy about peoples, nations, languages, and kings. (10:11)
This phrase in Revelation describes the destiny of the human race, whose destiny is determined by their solidarity with either the Beast or the Lamb. This additional prophesy, however, does not represent a delay in God’s judgment; rather it is an expansion or “blow-up” of the enactment of judgment described in 10:6 and 11:15-18.
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In David Lean’s monumental film Lawrence of Arabia, the story reveals the initial and overwhelming success of English military officer T.E. Lawrence, who united warring Arab tribes against the Ottoman Empire. The apparent height of Lawrence’s powers occurs when he backtracks through the desert to rescue his man servant Gassim, who had fallen off his camel and stranded in the heat. Lawrence brings back Gassim to the camp and announces to the tribal chiefs, “Nothing is written” - meaning that the belief in defined events was misplaced.
But trouble erupts in the tribal camps. It is revealed that a man of one tribe has killed a man from another tribe. Lawrence announces that, having no tribe of his own, he will carry out the punishment, shooting the guilty one. The murderer is brought forward; and it is none other than Gassim. Lawrence is incredulous, but executes the judgment. As Lawrence walks away, a tribal chief is heard to remark, “Then it was written…”
From the beginning of Revelation, John is told that what he writes “must soon take place.” His words record what God has written, from before the foundation of the world. Neither men nor angels can alter what the scrolls declare, and we who have inherited that word must embrace what will come, both the good and the bad. The pattern of salvation history is “Suffering, then Glory.” But the last word will belong to Jesus.
Now when these things begin to take place, straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near. (Luke 21:28)