The Theology of the Book of Revelation

by Richard Bauckham

  12 thymos, translated ‘wrath’ in both these phrases, may mean ‘passion’ in the first (cf. also 18:3), but is clearly meant to link the two phrases.

  13 There are significant variant readings in the textual tradition of this verse (including laos for laoi), but this translation is of the most probably original text.

  14 For the various views on the millennium which have been held during Christian history and are held today, see R. Bauckham, ‘Millennium’, in S. B. Ferguson and D. F. Wright, ed., New Dictionary of Theology (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1988), 428–30; R. G. Clouse, ed., The Meaning of the Millennium: Four Views (Downers Grove, Illinois: Inter-Varsity Press, 1977).

  CHAPTER 5

  The Spirit of prophecy

  STATISTICS

  Compared with references to God and Christ, references to the Spirit in Revelation are comparatively few. But it would be a mistake to conclude that in the theology of Revelation the Spirit is unimportant. As we shall see, the Spirit plays an essential role in the divine activity of establishing God’s kingdom in the world.

  More important than the comparative rarity of references to the Spirit is the fact that they fall into numerical patterns comparable with those we have seen to have theological significance in relation to Revelation’s terms for God and Christ. References to the Spirit fall into two major categories: those which refer to ‘the seven Spirits’ and those which refer to ‘the Spirit’. The ‘seven Spirits’ are peculiar to Revelation’s symbolic universe. There are four references to them (114; 3:1 ; 4:5; 5:6). Four, as we have previously noticed, is the number of the world, as seven is the number of completeness. The seven Spirits are the fulness of God’s power ‘sent out into all the earth’ (5:6). The four references to the sevenfold Spirit correspond to the seven occurrences of the fourfold phrase which designates all the peoples of the earth (5:9; 7:9; 10:11; 11:9; 13:7; 14:6; 17:15). They also correspond to the 28 (7 × 4) references to the Lamb, which, as we noted in our last chapter, indicate the worldwide scope of the Lamb’s complete victory. The seven Spirits are closely associated with the victorious Lamb (5:6): the four references to them indicate that the Lamb’s victory is implemented throughout the world by the fulness of divine power.

  As well as these four references to ‘the seven Spirits’, there are also fourteen references to ‘the Spirit’. Seven of these are in a category of their own: the injunction which is repeated in each of the seven messages to the churches: ‘Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches’ (2:7, 11, 17, 2953:6, 13, 22). This leaves seven other references, four in the phrase ‘in the Spirit’ (1:10; 4:2; 17:3; 21:10), two citing words of the Spirit (14:13; 22:17), and one in the phrase ‘the Spirit of prophecy’ (19:10). It is notable also that the word ‘prophecy’ itself occurs seven times (1:3; 11:6; 19:10; 22:7, 10, 18,19).1

  THE SEVEN SPIRITS

  The seven Spirits, called in 1:4 ‘the seven Spirits who are before [God’s] throne’, have sometimes been identified, not as the divine Spirit, but as the seven principal angels who, in Jewish angelology, stand in the presence of God in heaven (e.g. Tob. 12:15). But Revelation itself refers to these seven angels (8:2) in terms quite different from the way it refers to the seven Spirits. Moreover, although the term ‘spirit’ could certainly be used of angels (as frequently in the Dead Sea Scrolls), it very rarely has this meaning in early Christian literature and never in Revelation.

  The seven Spirits should be understood as a symbol for the divine Spirit, which John has chosen on the basis of his exegesis of Zechariah 4:1–14, a passage which lies behind not only the four references to the seven Spirits but also the description of the two witnesses in 11:4. It seems to have been the key Old Testament passage for John’s understanding of the role of the Spirit in the divine activity in the world. If we wonder why he should have attached such importance to this very obscure vision of Zechariah, the answer probably lies in the word of the Lord which he would have understood as the central message of the vision: ‘Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the LORD of hosts’ (Zech. 4:6). The question to which the message of Revelation is the answer was: given the apparently irresistible might and worldwide power of the beast, how is God going to establish his rule on earth? Zechariah 4:6 indicates that it will be not by worldly power like the beast’s, but by the divine Spirit.

  In Zechariah’s vision he is shown a golden lampstand on which are seven lamps. John could not have failed to connect this with the seven-branched lampstand that stood in the holy place in the temple (cf. Exod. 25:31–40; 40:4, 24–5). Beside the lampstand are two olive trees (Zech. 4:3). As John no doubt understood the narrative, Zechariah asks first about the identity of the seven lamps (4:4–5) and then about the identity of the olive trees (4:11–13). His first question is not immediately answered directly. First he is given the oracle just quoted (‘Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit’: 4:6), followed by further words of the Lord which expand on this point (4:7-10a), and then his question is directly answered: ‘These seven are the eyes of the LORD , which range through the whole earth’ (4:10b). John evidently took this sequence to mean that the seven lamps symbolize the seven eyes of the LORD , which are the divine Spirit. We postpone for the moment the question of the identity of the olive trees.

  In John’s vision of heaven he sees seven lamps burning before the divine throne, which he identifies as the seven Spirits (Rev. 4:5). Since the heavenly sanctuary was understood as the model on which the earthly sanctuary was constructed and in John’s visions it therefore contains the most important contents of the earthly sanctuary (cf. 8:3–5; 11:19; 15), these seven lamps correspond to the seven lamps which burned ‘before the LORD’ (Exod. 40:25) in the earthly sanctuary. They are the lamps of Zechariah’s vision. No doubt a lampstand is presupposed, but it is probably significant that John does not mention it: the lampstands he mentions are on earth (1:12–13, 20; 2:1, 5; 11:4). As the seven lamps before the throne in heaven, the seven Spirits belong to the divine being. This is why the reference to them in the ‘trinitarian’ blessing of 1:4–5a is also to ‘the seven Spirits who are before his throne’.

  But if these references associate the seven Spirits with God, in 5:6 they are very closely associated with the Lamb, who is said to have ‘seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent out into all the earth’. The echo of Zechariah 4:10b is clear. In Revelation the eyes of Yah weh are also the eyes of the Lamb. This has an exegetical basis in Zechariah 3:9, where John would have taken the ‘stone with seven eyes’ to refer to Christ and the seven eyes to be the same as those of Zechariah 4:10b.

  Probably Revelation 5:6 identifies the seven Spirits with both the seven horns and the seven eyes of the Lamb. It is important to realize that the eyes of Yahweh in the Old Testament indicate not only his ability to see what happens throughout the world, but also his ability to act powerfully wherever he chooses. The message of the prophet Hanani in 2 Chronicles 16:7–9, which makes verbal allusion to Zechariah 4:10b (16:9: ‘the eyes of the LORD range throughout the entire earth’), clearly understands this verse, as John did, in connexion with Zechariah 4:6 (‘Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit’). Hanani rebukes king Asa for having relied on the power of an army instead of on Yahweh, whose eyes range throughout the world to help those who rely on him.2 This connexion between God’s all-seeing eyes and his power John makes explicit by adding seven horns, the well-known symbol of strength, to the seven eyes. Probably he noticed that in Zechariah the power of Yahweh is opposed to the power of the nations inimical to God’s people, symbolized by four horns (Zech. 1:18–21). Similarly, in Revelation, the seven horns of the Lamb are the divine power set against the horns of the dragon and the beasts (Rev. 12:3; 13:1, 11; 17:12–13). The crucial question, however, is the nature of this divine power.

  The seven horns and the seven eyes belong to the description of the Lamb when he first appears in Revelation: as the slaughtered Lamb who has conquered (5:5–6).
They represent the power of his victory. The seven Spirits are sent out into all the earth to make his victory effective throughout the world. While God himself, the One who sits on the throne, dwells in heaven, not yet on earth, and while the Lamb, victorious through his death on earth, now shares his Father’s throne in heaven, the seven Spirits are the presence and power of God on earth, bringing about God’s kingdom by implementing the Lamb’s victory throughout the world. Thus John’s understanding of the seven Spirits corresponds broadly to the common early Christian understanding of the Holy Spirit’s relation to God and to Christ, as the divine power which is now the Spirit of Christ, the manner of the exalted Christ’s presence in the world and of the present effect of Christ’s past work.3 It remains to be seen whether the seven Spirits are also related to the church in the way that early Christians commonly envisaged the Spirit.

  The seven Spirits are related to the two witnesses of 11:3–13, not explicitly but via the allusions to Zechariah 4. The two olive trees of Zechariah’s vision are said to be ‘the two anointed ones [literally: ‘sons of oil’] who stand by the Lord of the whole earth’ (4:14). Revelation’s two witnesses are ‘the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth’ (11:4). If’the two olive trees’ have a significance for John more than simply as a way of referring to Zechariah’s vision, it is probably that the two are prophets (cf. 11:3, 10), anointed with the oil of the Spirit. But in identifying them with two lampstands, he has modified the symbolism of Zechariah’s vision. He must mean that they are lampstands bearing the lamps which are the seven Spirits, though since he has chosen to have only two witnesses, according to the requirement for valid witness, and therefore only two lampstands, he cannot refer to the seven Spirits without confusing the imagery intolerably. Nevertheless, the implication is clear that the seven Spirits are the power of the church’s prophetic witness to the world, symbolized by the ministry of the two witnesses. The universality of this witness is suggested by the phrase from Zechariah, that they ‘stand before the Lord of the earth’, which also relates their universal witness to God’s or Christ’s lordship of the world. It is therefore through their prophetic witness that the seven Spirits are sent out into all the earth. The horns and the eyes of the Lamb are the power and discernment of their prophetic witness, which is their faithfulness to the witness Jesus bore. Through this witness the seven Spirits make the victory of the Lamb effective universally.

  Similarly the seven churches are represented as seven gold lampstands (1:12, 20; 2:1). Zechariah’s single lampstand, holding seven lamps, is divided into seven lampstands to correspond to the seven individual churches of Asia, which, as the number of completeness, in turn represent all the churches of the world. This makes it possible for the seven Spirits to be explicitly mentioned in connexion with the churches. Christ is called ‘the one who has the seven Spirits of God and the seven stars’ (3:1). Since the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches (1:16, 20), there is a hint of some kind of correspondence of the seven Spirits to the seven churches. But it can be no more than a hint, while it is not yet explained in what the ‘conquering’ required of all the churches consists. Only when the churches’ role of prophetic witness to the world is explained (beginning in 11:3–13), can the hint be understood. It is as the lamps on the seven golden lampstands that the seven Spirits are sent out into all the earth.

  Thus it could be said that the seven Spirits as the divine power released into the whole world by the victory of Christ’s sacrifice are the power of divine truth: the power of the church’s faithful witness to the truth of God and his righteousness against the idolatries and injustices of the world under the sway of the beast. As the power of truth the seven Spirits can be represented both as eyes (for discernment) and horns (for power). It is instructive to compare the seven Spirits, in this respect, with their counterpart in the satanic trinity. If the dragon, who gives his throne and authority to the beast (13:2), is the satanic parody of God as the One who sits on the throne, and the beast, who recovers from a mortal wound (13:3), is a parody of the slaughtered Lamb, it might seem that the false prophet (as the second beast is called in 16:13; 19:20) must be a parody of the seven Spirits. But this is not quite the case. He corresponds not to the seven Spirits as such, nor, as is sometimes claimed, to the Christian prophets as such, but to the two witnesses, who represent the church’s prophetic witness inspired by the seven Spirits. His prophetic activity relates to the whole world (13:12–17; 16:13–14), as does that of the two witnesses. He performs signs (13:13–14; 19:20), as they do (11:6). He makes the world worship the beast (13:12), which is tantamount to worshipping the dragon (13:4), just as the career of the two witnesses brings the world to worship God (11:13), including no doubt the worship of jesus, which in Revelation is tantamount to the worship of God. Whereas the two witnesses do all this by the power of truth, the false prophet does it by deceit (19:20) and coercion (13:15–17). But the very killings with which he enforces his lies are the Christian martyrdoms which manifest the power of truth. This is how Revelation understands the contrast: ‘Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit’ (Zech. 4:6).

  THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTIAN PROPHECY IN THE CHURCHES

  The seven Spirits represent the fulness of the divine Spirit in relation to God, to Christ and to the church’s mission to the whole world. This is what distinguishes the references to the seven Spirits from the references simply to the Spirit. The latter concern the activity of the Spirit through the Christian prophets within the churches.4 We shall briefly consider these references before enquiring into the relationship between the two ways of speaking of the Spirit.

  All fourteen of the references to the Spirit concern, in various ways, the Spirit’s inspiration of John’s prophecy, the book of Revelation itself. Only one of these cases (19:10) also has a wider reference to Christian prophecy in general, though we can assume that in all cases the activity attributed to the Spirit could be paralleled in Christian prophecy other than John’s.

  There are four references to John’s reception of visionary revelation ‘in the Spirit’.5 Twice he says that he ‘was in the Spirit’ (1: 10; 4:2), twice that the angel ‘carried him away in the Spirit’ (or: ‘by means of the Spirit’: 17:3; 21:10). Parallels to these expressions in other literature6 make it clear that the reference is not to John’s human spirit (as in NRSV and some other translations) but to the divine Spirit as the agent of visionary experience. The two references to transportation by the Spirit (17:3; 21:10), in which John is taken to a new visionary location, are based especially on a common formula in Ezekiel (3:12, 14, etc.), who is the Old Testament prophet on whom John most modelled his accounts of his own prophetic experience and claims. The four references are strategically placed: at the two beginnings of John’s whole vision, on earth among the churches (1:10) and in heaven in the divine throne-room (4:2), and at the beginnings of the two parallel visions of Babylon (17:3) and the New jerusalem (21:10). The effect is not merely to associate parts of John’s visionary experience with the Spirit, but to attribute the whole of it to the agency of the divine Spirit.

  The Spirit enables John to receive the visions in which he is given his prophetic revelations. The Spirit thus performs a role distinct from the chain of revelation by which the content of John’s prophecy comes to him from God (God – Christ – angel – John: 1:1; cf. 22:16). The Spirit does not give the content of the revelation, but the visionary experience which enables John to receive the revelation. These references to the Spirit do constitute a claim to real visionary experience underlying the book, though this does not mean that the book is simply a transcript of that experience. The book is far too complex and elaborate a literary composition for that to be possible, and much of its meaning is embodied in purely literary form. Whatever John’s visionary experiences were, he has transmuted them, by a long process of reflection, study and literary composition, into a literary work which communicates their message to others. But even more than
a claim to visionary experience, these four references to the Spirit are a claim that his prophecy is divinely inspired. They complement the claim that the revelation came from God and reinforce the very strong claim to divine authority (cf. 22:18–19) by which John places his work in the same category as the canonical prophets – or gives it in a certain sense even a higher status, as the final prophetic revelation in which the whole tradition of biblical prophecy culminates (cf. 10:7).

  Besides these references to the Spirit as the agent of visionary experience, others are to the Spirit as inspiring prophetic oracles. Each of the messages to the seven churches has, as its final or penultimate component, the ‘proclamation formula’, calling for attention to what has been said: ‘Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.’ This is no doubt modelled on the formula which is prominent in the tradition of the sayings of jesus (Mark 4:9, 23, etc.) and deliberately recalls that formula, for the seven messages are the words of the exalted Christ. Each begins, ‘Thus says … ’, followed by a description of Christ. Thus what the Spirit says is what the exalted Christ says. He inspires the prophetic oracles in which the prophet John speaks Christ’s words to the churches. No doubt this is also implicitly the case with oracles in which the exalted Christ directly addresses the churches but where the Spirit is not explicitly mentioned (16:15; 22:7, 12–13, 16, 20).

  However, the Spirit’s words are not always those of the exalted Christ. In the two other instances in which Revelation explicitly attributes words to the Spirit they are not the words of Christ. In 14:13b they are the Spirit’s response to the words of the heavenly voice John hears. As John obeys the command to write the beatitude (14:13a), the Spirit inspiring him adds an emphatic endorsement of it. In 22:17a, the prayer, ‘Come!’, attributed to the Spirit and the Bride, is addressed to Christ, as the response to Christ’s promise to come in 22:12. (The same promise and response recur in 22:20.) The meaning of ‘the Spirit and the Bride’ cannot be that the Spirit here inspires the prayer of the whole Christian community, for the prayer of the Spirit and the Bride is followed by an invitation to Christians who hear it to add their own prayer to it: ‘And let anyone who hears say, "Come!"’ This formula is a parallel to that in the seven messages: ‘Let anyone who has an ear hear … ’ The latter is the appropriate response to a Spirit-inspired prophecy, the former to a Spirit-inspired prayer. So we are to think of Christian prophets (or simply John himself) praying in the Spirit and so giving a lead to the prayers of the whole church. What the Spirit prays through the Christian prophets is what the church in her eschatological purity, ready for the coming of her husband the Lamb (cf. 19:7–8; 21:2), should pray, and so the prayer is ascribed to ‘the Spirit and the Bride’.