Rapture: The End-Times Error That Leaves the Bible Behind (44 page)

This imagery of both angels is taken directly from the prophet Joel: “Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Go in, tread, for the winepress is full. The vats overflow, for their wickedness is great” (3:13). In the winepress imagery, St. John also includes the truth asserted by Ezekiel: “As I live, says the Lord God, I will prepare you for blood, and blood shall pursue you; because you are guilty of blood” (35:6).

The second angel harvests the grapes, unbelieving Jerusalem, for crushing; and the crushing is horrible: “The winepress was trodden outside the city, and blood flowed from the winepress, as high as a horse’s bridle, for one thousand six hundred stadia” (14:20).

One thousand six hundred stadia is approximately 180 miles. It is no coincidence that this is the length of ancient Israel. When the Roman army under Vespasian and then Titus marched through ancient Israel to conquer Jerusalem, the toll was horrific.

What do you see when you imagine the winepress of God? If you are like most Christians, nothing specific comes to mind. But imagine the city of Jerusalem surrounded by crosses. So many crosses ring the city walls that the Romans run out of trees to cut down. When the Romans catch a Jew, they whip him and nail him to a cross. Beaten and bloody captives are lying about, awaiting their crucifixion when crosses becomes available. As the blood pours down from the crosses encircling Jerusalem, it looks like the very life of Judea is being crushed out of it.

Because of the Passover, it has been estimated that 2,700,200 people were trapped inside Jerusalem by the Romans. During the last five months of the siege, a million were killed (Apoc. 9:5;
WJ
, VI, 9:3;
AEV
, 96;
RKC
, 27). That is about seven thousand victims every day without rest for a full five months! These crucified Jews were elevated within sight of the city walls to instill fear in Jerusalem. The wounds of the crucified were approximately at the height of a horse’s bridle.

St. John mentions the horse’s bridle to anticipate the next visions, in which the ancient plagues of Egypt revisit Jerusalem. The horse’s bridle brings to mind the first exodus from Egypt, when the Hebrews passed through the Red Sea. When the Egyptian persecutors tried to pursue them with horse and chariot, the Red Sea surged and drowned the Egyptians and their horses. God later judged Egypt for its treatment of His people. Ezekiel painted a rather grotesque picture of this judgment of Egypt: “I will drench the land even to the mountains with your flowing blood; and the watercourses will be full of you” (32:6).

Just so, the new people of God were to pass through a red sea to obtain deliverance from the new Egypt, which was the Old Jerusalem. This sea would not be of salt water this time, but of the blood of those Jews who had attempted to keep Christians in bondage. The sea of red ringed Jerusalem and drenched the hills around it with blood, like a “great winepress … outside the city” (14:19–20).

The winepress image also recalls Isaiah’s beautiful love song about the vineyard of God that “yielded wild grapes” (5:1–7). As a result, the owner had to abandon his vineyard (cf. Ps. 80). Jesus borrowed this Old Testament analogy when He spoke of Jerusalem as a vineyard in Matthew. Because the tenants of the vineyard beat the owner’s servants, and ultimately killed the owner’s son, the parable ends with the tenants of the vineyard being put “to a miserable death” (21:33–46). Jesus was saying that the unfaithfulness of the priests and the Sanhedrin’s rejection of the Messiah would result in their downfall. The chief priests understood Jesus perfectly, so they “tried to arrest Him” (21:46). But within a generation, these leaders met the “miserable death” that Jesus had predicted. It may not always be pleasant or easy, but one thing remains: Jesus tells the Truth.

Now we know the battle strategy of the Lamb—namely, the Truth as told best in the Eucharist. But what of the Lamb’s Church? What is their strategy? This question is answered in Chapter 15.

This vision begins in the same place as the one we just examined, and as the initial vision of the scroll: in the throne room of God. We encounter the same “sea of glass” (15:2). This should reinforce our belief that these visions recapitulate each other. This vision does not break new ground chronologically.

At first blush, it seems as if the Church’s strategy is just as filled with singing as the Lamb’s. We clearly see that the Church in Heaven has already conquered the dragon and his beasts. Yet there has been no mention of the saints fighting! What kind of battle strategy is this? All singing and no fighting?

The strategy of the Lamb and the strategy of God’s People hearken back to Daniel, who, when forbidden by the government to pray to God, opened his window and worshiped as always, in defiance of the state (Dan. 6).

This was also the battle strategy of Daniel’s three friends under attack by a government hostile to their faith. Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael refused to worship a statue of the king, so they were thrown into a fiery furnace. The deuterocanonical portions of Daniel include the Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Holy Children. The three prayed and sang in the midst of their persecution (Dan. 3).

St. John calls Christians to hold to the truth of Christ in the same manner. This parallel is a small hint that scholars are correct when they claim that St. John used a copy of Daniel that included the deuterocanonical portions. This may be one minor reason rapturists have trouble understanding this book. They use a truncated Old Testament!

The Church, too, has a strategy of prayer in the face of a beastly government. Her prayer involves joining herself to the eucharistic celebration of Heaven. The Eucharist is the Church’s highest prayer.

The battle strategy of the Old Testament people of God was enunciated in the vision of the seventy weeks. If they would build the Temple of God, the Messiah would come shortly thereafter. It would involve work and much prayer, but that was their strategy. In much the same way, the battle strategy of the New Testament people of God is to build the new Temple of God, Christ’s Church. The prayer of the Eucharist does it best.

Here in The Apocalypse, St. John has twice paused to say, “Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints” (13:10; 14:12). The first time, this call immediately follows an admonition about the futility of armed conflict against the beast. “If anyone slays with the sword, with the sword must he be slain” (13:10). The second time follows a warning not to accept the mark of the beast; in other words, do not “worship the beast.” We must “fear God and give Him glory” (14:7).

This is how the battle is won! When faithful Christians refuse idolatry and immorality, when they endure even to the point of death, then the dragon and his beasts are defeated. Instead of worshiping the beast, the Church worships Christ. We see the same “singing of an ode” in this vision that we noticed in the Child’s strategy. The highest worship we can give the Lamb is in the Mass.

Keep in mind: this defeat of the dragon may not be immediately apparent here on earth. We must raise our line of sight from earthly events and comprehend that the victory that counts is the victory in
eternity
. The dragon will win his interim skirmishes here on earth through his strategy of raw power and deceit. But he will lose the
war
for all eternity. In fact, he already has lost. The dragon aims for a finish line that ends with our earthly death. The Church understands the Truth of a deeper reality: this world is not all there is. We are made for eternity. That is the strategy of the Church, flowing directly from the strategy of the Lamb that was slain.

So the singing in Heaven makes sense. It is a part of the Eucharist. The victors sing “the song of Moses” and “the song of the Lamb.” The song of Moses was first sung by the Hebrews when God parted the Red Sea for them and destroyed their enemies in the flood of its returning waters. Its inclusion anticipates the exodus theme of the next vision: the Church is the New Israel of God being freed from the tyranny of spiritual Egypt—physical Jerusalem. The song of the Lamb makes it clear that these are the citizens of the New Jerusalem: Christians on a spiritual exodus from the Old Covenant of Old Jerusalem. The mere mention of the Lamb should recall His Passion. This song of the Lamb is eucharistic.

Just as in the strategy of the Child, the singing of the Church in Heaven stirs angels to action. This time there are seven of them, bringing seven bowls of plagues that proceed from God’s Temple. St. John tells us that these “seven plagues … are the last, for with them the wrath of God is ended” (15:1). “The wrath of God always strikes the obstinate people with seven plagues, that is, perfectly, as it is said in Leviticus” (
COA
, XV). The seven bowls of plagues are enough to exhaust God’s wrath over the treatment of His Son.

This is an important point. “The wrath of God is ended” with these seven plagues. Therefore, just as the ancient Roman Empire cannot be reconstructed and then held responsible for the events of two millennia ago, neither can the modern Jews of Jerusalem be made responsible for the actions of the first-century Sanhedrin. Anti-Semitism is a twisted sort of Winkle Warp that ignores the history it finds inconvenient.

Present-day anti-Semites may try to hide behind religious reasons, but it is my experience that they have other motives. We must not be fooled into anti-Semitism; God’s wrath with Judaism was ended in the winepress of 70 A.D.—period.

Now that we know the strategies of the three personalities in Daniel’s seventieth week, a question remains: When it comes to pitched battle, which strategy will win out?

The vision of the Great Battle recapitulates the events of the earlier visions, with a new emphasis. Old earthly Jerusalem is cast in the role of Egypt, seeking to keep God’s New Covenant people in slavery to the Law. As we have noted, St. John anticipated this theme for us in the two prior visions.

Jerusalem’s judgment has been the overarching theme throughout The Apocalypse. Now we encounter new symbolism in that regard: “Come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot” (17:1). We know these visions are recapitulating, and we know that “the great” refers to Jerusalem, so we should suspect that this “harlot” is none other than Jerusalem.

In this vision, the object of God’s judgment is the city that “shed the blood of saints and prophets” (16:6; 18:24). This echoes the words of Jesus, when He spoke of Jerusalem. In Matthew, Jesus announced seven woes upon the religious leadership of Jerusalem. At the end of these woes, Jesus says, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you!… Behold, your house is forsaken and desolate” (Matt. 23:37–38). St. John will subtly reflect these seven woes of Jesus in the seven bowls of the Great Battle.

As if that were not enough to designate Jerusalem as the harlot, St. John links the harlot with Babylon. We already know that Babylon symbolizes Jerusalem: “Babylon the great, mother of harlots and of earth’s abominations” (17:5–6).

So we see that harlot is another code name for Jerusalem. This should not surprise us if we have read the Old Testament. The prophet Isaiah accused Jerusalem of harlotry: “How the faithful city has become a harlot, she that was full of justice! Righteousness lodged in her, but now murderers” (1:21).

So the names for Jerusalem thus far include the great city, Sodom, Egypt, Babylon, and the harlot. In addition, Jerusalem was the land-beast that cooperated with the sea-beast and will soon appear as the false prophet. Jerusalem’s judgment as the new Egypt is the focus of this vision. But the events are the same as when “the kings of the earth … and everyone, slave and free, hid in the caves” in the sixth seal (6:15). They are the same events as when “the four angels were released, who had been held … to kill a third of mankind” at the end of the trumpets (9:15). The seven seals examined these events from the King’s perspective; the seven trumpets examined them from the Sanhedrin’s perspective. The seven bowls examine the destruction of Jerusalem from the Church’s perspective.

The battle is waged by the Lamb against the beasts of the dragon for the benefit of the Church. The battle is placed in the context of the plagues that God visited upon Old Egypt in the time of Moses’ exodus. Now the “plagues” of Egypt start to work against Old Jerusalem, the symbolic Egypt, to the benefit of the New Jerusalem, the Church.

In the vivid imagery of apocalyptic literature, we see Jerusalem subjected to the same plagues as ancient Egypt had been: “foul and evil sores … blood … fierce heat … darkness … frogs … earthquakes … and great hailstones.” Since these are apocalyptic descriptions, we need not expect literal fulfillment in every detail (GR5, 6). The point of this vision is that the Church, the New Jerusalem, is being led in exodus from the slavery of Old Jerusalem, which is now the new Egypt (GR3).

There are interesting parallels between Jerusalem’s leadership and Egypt’s Pharaoh Ramses. They both wanted to keep the children of God, His
ekklesia
, in slavery to their law. God in His grace wanted to free His children, so both Pharaoh and the religious leadership of Jerusalem “cursed the name of God who had power over these plagues, and they did not repent and give Him glory” (16:9).

Everything will not be identical, however. In the first exodus, the Egyptian army attempted to cross the dry Red Sea to keep the Jews in slavery. This time the army that crosses the river is there to judge the “Egypt” that refuses to liberate the Christians. “The great river Euphrates … was dried up, to prepare the way for the kings from the east” (16:12). That was the direction over which Titus led his troops—drawn from all provinces of the empire, including “from the east.” The invasion of the sixth bowl precisely parallels the invasion of the sixth trumpet: they are one and the same event.