Angelic gospel

Angelic gospel May 19, 2015

Three angels issue announcements in Revelation 14. The first angel  is said to be flying in midheaven (14:6), the same phrase used for the eagle who appears after the fourth trumpet blows (8:13). Both speak with a loud voice (8:13; 14:7).

The messages are somewhat contrasting: The angel announces three woes, and these woes are fulfilled in the release of the locorpions (9:12), the two witnesses (11:14), and the fall of the dragon to the earth, where he assaults the woman and her offspring (12:12). Now that the three woes have passed, angels replace the eagle in heaven, and they announce “good news” (euangelion, 14:6). The woes involve suffering and death for the saints; they are attacked, overcome, killed. But then the angels prophesy that the saints perseverance will pay off. They will remain faithful and God will remove their enemies.

The woes pronounced by the eagle provide an overall structure for the following chapters. The three woes match the last three trumpet sections. The three announcements of the angels seem to play a similar role. They anticipate the things that are to come.

If this holds, we should expect to see, roughly, a movement from fearing God the Creator to the fall of Babylon to the torment of beast-worshipers in fire and brimstone.

The first angel preaches the good news, “Fear God, give Him glory, worship Him.” That same triad appears in 15:4: The saints sing the song of Moses and the Lamb, which includes the line “Who will not fear, and glorify, for all nations will come and worship.” The first angel says that the Lord is the Creator of heaven, earth, sea, and springs, and the bowls are poured out on the sea, the springs and rivers, on the sun in heaven, and the throne of the beast. So the first angel’s announcement has verbal echoes in chapters 15 and 16.

The second angel announces the fall of Babylon (14:8). The very phrase “fallen, fallen is Babylon the Great” is repeated 18:2, announced by a glorious angel. 14:8 is the first hint we have of a feminine city who has wine of passion to give to the nations. It is the first reference we have to this wine, which becomes a major theme in the rest of Revelation (14:10; 16:19; 17:2; 18:3, 13; 19:15). We have read about the thumos of the dragon earlier, but after 14:8 the word appears regularly, usually of the passion of God (14:10, 19; 15:1, 7; 16:1, 19; 19:15), but also of the passion of Babylon’s πορνεια (18:3). Porneia has been a concern of Revelation since the letters to the churches (2:21) but now it is specifically the porneia of the harlot (17:2, 4; 18:3; 19:2). The fall of Babylon because of her drunkenness is the central concern of chapters 17-18.

The final angel warns that those who worship the beast will suffer torment in fire and brimstone forever and ever (14:9-10). We find nearly identical phrasing in 19:20: The beast and the false prophet are thrown into the lake of fire which burns with brimstone. After 14:10, “brimstone” (theion) is used only in 19:20, 20:10, and 21:8. Similarly, the threat of continuous torment “day and night” (14:11) is repeated in 20:10, where the beast and false prophet are tormented in the lake of fire forever. In short, the last angel’s announcement links with the details of chapters 19-20.

These verbal links are not exclusive. The “smoke” of the torment of the beast-worshipers (14:11) is linked to the smoke of fallen Babylon (18:9, 18; 19:3). The links between the three angels and the subsequent events of Revelation are not as clean and overt as the links between the three woes of the eagle and the episodes that follow. But the connections are strong enough to support the conclusion that the three angels of 14:6-11 lay out the sequence of events that plays out over the following chapters.


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