Rapture: The End-Times Error That Leaves the Bible Behind (34 page)

Christ praises the Philadelphian Christians for their faithfulness. He refers again to “the synagogue of Satan.” Christ promises to make these persecutors of His Church “learn that I have loved you” (3:9). This phrase could have easily been spoken by Abraham to Sarah when they discussed Hagar! This anticipates one of the major themes of The Apocalypse. Christ wants it to be clear to all the world that from this point forward, He loves His Church as His chosen people. As we noted in Galatians and Hebrews, one major reason the Temple had to be destroyed was to clear up latent confusion over where one met God, in the Jerusalem Temple or in the Church.

To those who “conquer” by remaining faithful to Christ, He promises to “write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem which comes down from my God out of Heaven, and my own new name” (3:12).

He has already anticipated the Jewish persecution of the Church with two references to “the synagogue of Satan.” That persecution will take center stage very soon in the book. He also has anticipated eternal damnation in the “second death” and eternal life in the “book of life.” Now he anticipates the “New Jerusalem,” which we will not see in its full manifestation until the very end of the visions. St. John is preparing us by mentioning it here. Finally, he alludes to the writing of “the name of my God” on the conqueror. This is preparing us for the mark of God that will take center stage soon, in juxtaposition to the famous mark of the Beast.

Christ accuses the last Church, Laodicea, of complacency stemming from their material wealth. He warns them that “those whom I love, I reprove and chasten” (3:19). This is a sobering thought, especially since the rest of the book will discuss tribulation. Notice there is not a hint of a secret rapture to save them from hardship. God shows us His love through chastening.

Christ continues, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me” (3:20). Protestants often use this verse to invite a prospect to be “born again.” But notice the context. Christ is inviting
Christians
, not unbelievers, to eat with Him. This is an invitation to share in the Eucharist. At the Eucharist, Christians are invited to open their lives to Christ’s Kingdom and “eat with Him.” Christ always keeps His promise: “I will come in to him” (cf. John 6). As we will see, even this mention of the Mass is an anticipation of a major theme of this book.

Yes, these churches were struggling against complacency, materialism, immorality, heresy, and persecution—just like any age. We encounter the struggle against apostasy and error in almost all of the epistles. These were real churches, with real people struggling against real hardships to be the kind of Christians Christ was calling them to be. The solution to these problems is the sacraments, particularly the Eucharist. It will become crystal clear in later visions that this is where Christ strengthens us through His supernatural presence. That is why St. John ended his letters with an invitation to commune with his Lord.

In Chapters 4 through 11, we encounter St. John’s vision of the scroll. All other visions recapitulate this first one. It comes in two parts: the seven seals of a scroll and the seven trumpets contained in the last seal. The seals view the judgments from the perspective of the King (Christ), and the trumpets recapitulate these judgments from the perspective of the judged. (This uses the same plan of visions as Daniel did. The statue vision looked at the four kingdoms to come through the monarch’s eyes, and the beast vision saw these empires through the eyes of the conquered peoples.)

Perhaps we should mention that rapturists make a rather large issue out of the fact that there is no mention of the Church in Chapters 4 through 18. They take this as a signal that the Church is not present on earth because all the born-again Christians have been secretly raptured away from the Great Tribulation.

This holds no water. The saints—those who make up the Church—are mentioned eleven times in these chapters, on average almost once every chapter. These saints are
on earth
. If they had been “raptured” away, it would have been a very secret rapture indeed—so secret that St. John never even mentions it!

We must not lose sight of the major message, however. Yes, the vision is punctuated with the seven seals and seven trumpets. But the central element is the scroll. What does the scroll contain? No one knows until it is opened, and at first it seems as if no one will be able to reveal it.

The visions begin with St. John on earth, and a door to Heaven opens. A voice invites him to enter Heaven and says, “I will show you what must take place after this” (4:1). This establishes the book’s historical setting. The letters to the churches have been read. The events to be examined immediately follow the time of these churches: the first century.

Once in Heaven, St. John encounters “a throne [that] stood in Heaven, with one seated on the throne” (4:2). Twenty-four elders and four beasts worship God there. The twenty-four elders hearken back to the twenty-four sets of twenty-four priests that we find in 1 Chronicles 24. The Temple of the Old Covenant had twenty-four priests on duty at any given time, and they would take their turns every twenty-four days. These twenty-four elders in The Apocalypse probably represent the entire priesthood of the New Covenant (GR3). They might also represent the twelve Apostles and twelve patriarchs (GR4).

Victorinus took the “jasper and carnelian” appearance of God to symbolize judgment by flood (clear jasper) and judgment by fire (reddish carnelian). The rainbow symbolizes the eternal promise of God never to judge by water again (Gen. 9:11). The “sea of glass” reminds us that we can approach this fearsome, judging God only through the grace bestowed at Baptism (
COA
, IV).

The four living creatures are probably cherubim, as were the four living creatures in Ezekiel’s vision. “They never cease to sing, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!’ ” (4:8).

This is the “holy, holy, holy” to which we join our voices during every Mass. As other authors have noted, the Liturgy of the Church is never far from St. John’s mind as he records his visions. The Apocalypse will circle back again to the praise that Heaven is continually pouring upon God: He is worthy because of who He is and what He has done. The twenty-four elders join in the praise of God: “Worthy art Thou, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for Thou didst create all things, and by Thy will they existed and were created” (4:11).

The scroll that “no one in Heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open” (5:3) is the central, unifying element of the entire first vision, which, encompassing seven chapters, is the longest single segment of The Apocalypse. Yet rapturists usually ignore the scroll and its significance. They spend time on other details, such as the locust, the scorpions, the wormwood, and the falling stars, but not on the scroll. This is a mistake. The rest of this vision entails the opening of the seven seals that hide the contents of this scroll. The seven seals encompass also the seven trumpets, the three woes, and the seven thunders.

Origen wrote that the scroll was the Old Testament. In this he was following Victorinus’s commentary on The Apocalypse. I agree with Origen. But we must always keep in mind that the entire Old Testament points to Christ and His Kingdom, whose true nature remains shrouded in mystery until the seals are broken. What was hidden in the Old Testament was revealed in the Messiah.

Even though the scene is in God’s throne room, the only one able to break the seals on the scroll is “the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David” (5:5). Why? Because He “has conquered.” When He opens the scroll, Heaven “sang a new song, saying, ‘Worthy art Thou to take the scroll and to open its seals, for Thou wast slain and by Thy blood didst ransom men for God from every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and hast made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on earth” (5:9–10).

We must take a moment to understand this song, because it reveals the scroll’s message. Christ is able to open and reveal the contents of the hidden message in the scroll because of His Passion. That sacrifice established a Kingdom with priests, an ecclesiastical Kingdom containing people—both Jew and Gentile—of every nation. These people will unite and reign on earth in a spiritual, ecclesiastical Kingdom, rather than a physical, political one. The hidden message of the scroll reveals the true nature of the Messiah’s Kingdom.

To us in the twenty-first century, this may not seem like exciting news. To those in the first century, it was earth-shaking. No longer was Jew-versus-Gentile the important distinction. Now it is ransomed-versus-unbelieving. The Kingdom was established, but not in the manner the Sanhedrin had expected. This was a priestly Kingdom, the Church.

That is the message of the scroll. It is the hidden message of the Old Testament. The message is revealed to the entire world
when the seals of this scroll are opened
. Although the chosen of God understood this before 70 A.D., the world did not. The seals relate the details of the destruction of the Temple. That event signaled to the world that Christ had delivered on His promise of judgment in the Olivet Discourse. Until that event, many might have thought of Jesus as just an interesting Jewish boy. No longer!

The scroll’s message was hidden in the Old Testament. It was conceived on Calvary. It was publicly proclaimed at Pentecost. It was finally affirmed and vindicated when the seals were opened and the Temple was judged. There is now a new people of God, made up of Jew
and
Gentile. God’s
ekklesia
(Church) is not limited to one ethnic group or one geographical location. All peoples will come to the one table of this Kingdom and eat together. Further, the leader of this New Covenant is not just an inspiring human, but someone who can reach from beyond the grave to judge His enemies, because He has conquered death.

That is the central message of this vision. Do not lose sight of it as the seals, the trumpets, the woes, and the thunders unfold. Christ and His Church are being vindicated in the judgment on the Sanhedrin. His Church is being publicly proclaimed as God’s New Covenant People.

St. John will return to this mystery at the very end of this vision. He will make explicit what we have just drawn out of Heaven’s song. We will discuss the mystery of the Kingdom further at that point, but it helps to know ahead of time that this is the message of the scroll and its seal. Christ is being publicly vindicated for the victory already won when He “wast slain.”

St. John looks for the Lion that has conquered, but he actually sees “a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes” (5:6). Again the symbolism of numbers in The Apocalypse becomes apparent (GR2). No one I know of has in his home an image of Christ as a seven-eyed, seven-horned lamb.

The glory of the Lion is that He gave Himself as a Lamb for the redemption of the world. He “has conquered so that He can open the scroll and its seven seals” (5:5). This self-sacrificing path to victory is to be an example to His followers. We will see that the victory of the saints will come through spiritual strength, by keeping their faith in the Truth while enduring suffering—not by reliance upon physical strength, deception, or political power.

The Lion’s exclusive ability to open the seals should remind us that He is still in control. Even when events on earth look as though they are careening out of the Almighty’s control, they are not. The Lamb is still the only One who opens the seals of history.

The conquering Lion, the slain Lamb, has already established a Kingdom. This reign of Christ on earth will be examined in detail when we reach Chapter 20. But notice that even here in the very first vision, the coming of this Kingdom is already spoken of in the past tense. The Kingdom is in existence even before the events of The Apocalypse take place, even before we get to the description of the Millennium.

This is impossible for rapturists to explain. They do not believe God’s Kingdom was established when the Lamb “didst ransom men for God from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.” In fact, they do not believe the Kingdom will even be established until seven years after this scene in Chapter 5 of The Apocalypse. St. John’s obvious reference to the Passion assures us that the Church is correct: “As Eve was formed from the sleeping Adam’s side, so the Church [the Messianic Kingdom] was born from the pierced heart of Christ hanging dead upon the Cross” (
CCC
, par. 766).

Christ’s sacrifice established His Kingdom and motivates thanksgiving to and worship of the Lamb. They “sang a new song” in honor of the Lamb (5:9). We will closely examine this act of singing, later, in the second recapitulating vision.

For now, let us just say that it is the same event as the “marriage supper of the Lamb” (19:9). This marriage supper is commonly recognized by Catholic commentators as the Mass. The Mass can be described not only as a sacrifice, but also as a meal, and here as a song.

It may be easy for us to miss the significance of this for those in the first century. In taking Communion, a Catholic eats with everyone else present. But when the Church began, Jews obeyed the Old Covenant dietary laws. Gentiles ate unclean foods in unclean circumstances. These two groups just did not intermingle! Before the Church, no one could even imagine these two groups eating together.