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Revelation 11
18 The nations were angry, and your wrath came, as did the time for the dead to be judged, and to give your bondservants the prophets, their reward, as well as to the saints, and those who fear your name, to the small and the great; and to destroy those who destroy the earth."
I realize we covered this first phrase in our last study, but I have felt compelled for days to take a closer look at a key passage to internalize the implications of the perspective it offers us as well as how it was used in Acts 4 to release the same kind of power into the lives of faithful believers in the Lamb that we desperately need in our lives today.
Why do the nations rage, and the peoples plot a vain thing? The kings of the earth take a stand, and the rulers take counsel together, against Yahweh, and against his anointed, saying, "Let's break their bonds apart, and cast their cords from us." He who sits in the heavens will laugh. The Lord will have them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his anger, and terrify them in his wrath: "Yet I have set my king on my holy hill of Zion." (Psalms 2:1-6)
I want to take some time to reflect more deeply on this and discuss it while simultaneously listening to the inspiration Source that moved the prophets who wrote this. The Spirit can reveal to us personally what this means for our situations. Here are some questions that have come up I would like to discuss related to this passage.
What is the cause of this rage on the part of nations? What is this rage all about?
What do we get angry about? Are we not part of the nations, so could our anger provide some clues?
Nations are composed of people but are controlled by leaders. Is there differentiation between the raging of the leaders in this passage and what the rest of the people plot?
The next sentence speaks of the kings of the earth taking a stand and rulers counseling together against Yahweh and His anointed. Do leaders and rulers reflect the people in their raging?
What is the thing people plot and what is vain about that thing? What are they plotting?
Why is it vain? Very likely some answers can be found in the rest of this passage.
What kind of stand is taken by the kings of this earth? Is it a stand for something or against something or someone?
Rulers take counsel with each other. How are rulers different from kings?
Rulers take counsel while kings seem much more independent.
Whatever their stand involves, as well as the reason for taking counsel together, it is clearly in opposition to Yahweh and His Anointed one. What does this say about the likely reasons for the rage and the desire to conspire together?
It seems to be emerging here that whatever it is that Yahweh is about and is supported by the Anointed one, it must be viewed as a very serious threat to the nations of this world as well as the ability of rulers to carry on business as usual. What is it about Yahweh and His Christ (the anointed one) that presents such a clear and present danger and arouses rage and conspiring together to block this imminent threat seen coming from heaven?
What is the nature of the bonds and cords that makes kings and rulers rebel against them? We discussed this at length last time, but I feel compelled to spend more time on this again because it is so relevant to us right now.
Here is part of a passage we examined last time to unpack the meaning of the word bonds.
Run you back and forth through the streets of Jerusalem, and see now, and know, and seek in the broad places of it, if you can find a man, if there are any who does justly, who seeks truth; and I will pardon her. Though they say, As Yahweh lives; surely they swear falsely. O Yahweh, don't your eyes look on truth? you have stricken them, but they were not grieved; you have consumed them, but they have refused to receive correction: they have made their faces harder than a rock; they have refused to return. Then I said, Surely these are poor; they are foolish; for they don't know the way of Yahweh, nor the law of their God: I will get me to the great men, and will speak to them; for they know the way of Yahweh, and the law of their God. But these with one accord have broken the yoke, and burst the bonds. (Jeremiah 5:1-5)
I drew them with cords of a man, with ties of love; and I was to them like those who lift up the yoke on their necks; and I bent down to him and I fed him. (Hosea 11:4)
Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart; and you will find rest for your souls. (Matthew 11:29)
For both he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all from one, for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying, "I will declare your name to my brothers. In the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise." Again, "I will put my trust in him." Again, "Behold, here I am with the children whom God has given me." Since then the children have shared in flesh and blood, he also himself in like manner partook of the same, that through death he might bring to nothing him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might deliver all of them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. (Hebrews 2:11-15)
It is becoming even clearer to me now what this whole war is about. It is a war between bondsmen. As we have been saying from the very beginning of our study of Revelation, this battle is over motives, methods and message, not over who has greater power but the nature of power itself. In this context, what is becoming clear is what side we will choose to believe which will be evidenced by what kind of bonds we allow to control our minds and motivate our hearts.
The issue of bonds keeps emerging throughout Scripture and has to do with emotional bonding, not merely chains or bracelets to hold prisoners physically. This goes to the heart of the war between The Truth and the The Lie, the assertion by Satan that it is impossible to maintain order and prevent chaos and mayhem without use of some level of fear. God insists that creation is designed to function in complete freedom on the principle of agape love freely received and freely passed along. Satan says that the evidence proves this is untenable and therefore God's wisdom is faulty and in need of correction and His government is vulnerable to exploitation, and Satan appears to have proven his case by doing just that.
Jesus therefore said to those Jews who had believed him, "If you remain in my word, then you are truly my disciples. You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." They answered him, "We are Abraham's seed, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How do you say, 'You will be made free?'" Jesus answered them, "Most certainly I tell you, everyone who commits sin is the bondservant of sin. A bondservant doesn't live in the house forever. A son remains forever." (John 8:31-35)
The choice all of us must make (and we cannot avoid it sooner or later) is over who we will believe and serve. One side presents a god who looks and acts like Baal, meaning we assume God operates according to the reward/punishment system and that every sin requires punishment or a debt remains outstanding. The other option is to embrace the view of God whose heart has been revealed by His Anointed as ruling through means of love bonds that glue our hearts by appreciation for the surpassing love revealed through Jesus. We will choose our bonds. Will we choose fear bonds or love bonds?
No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You can't serve both God and Mammon. (Matthew 6:24)
Thus consider yourselves also to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Therefore don't let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. Neither present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God, as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin will not have dominion over you. For you are not under law, but under grace.
What then? Shall we sin, because we are not under law, but under grace? May it never be! Don't you know that to whom you present yourselves as servants to obedience, his servants you are whom you obey; whether of sin to death, or of obedience to righteousness? But thanks be to God, that, whereas you were bondservants of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching whereunto you were delivered. Being made free from sin, you became bondservants of righteousness.
(Romans 6:11-18)
But Jesus summoned them, and said, "You know that the rulers of the nations lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you, but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant. Whoever desires to be first among you shall be your bondservant, even as the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." (Matthew 20:25-28)
There arose also a contention among them, which of them was considered to be greatest. He said to them, "The kings of the nations lord it over them, and those who have authority over them are called 'benefactors.' But not so with you. But one who is the greater among you, let him become as the younger, and one who is governing, as one who serves. For who is greater, one who sits at the table, or one who serves? Isn't it he who sits at the table? But I am in the midst of you as one who serves. (Luke 22:24-27)
Again, I want to draw attention to the striking difference in the nature of the bonds relied on as the adhesive for holding together society and relationships. The world relies on hierarchy and fear bonds as the glue to bond nations and hold institutions together, while the kingdom of heaven relies solely on the bond of love from our heavenly Father as seen most clearly in the revelation by Jesus Christ. Only this love has the tenacious power to defeat the power of fear, for this love has within it the very power of the resurrection of this same Jesus who, by reliance on this power alone defeated the very essence of fear used by the nations, kings and rulers of this world to gain conformity to their demands. By defeating death itself, Jesus turned our paradigms upside down and challenges every assumption we have about God and as well as how to relate to everyone around us.
Go back to the passage from Psalms and plug in this information about the bonds God relies on and see how it reveals why the nations, kings and rulers demand to break out from under such bonds.
"Let's break their bonds apart, and cast their cords from us." He who sits in the heavens will laugh. The Lord will have them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his anger, and terrify them in his wrath: "Yet I have set my king on my holy hill of Zion."
If the nations rely on fear bonds for power, and God relies on the bonds of love to hold His kingdom together, it must be that the bonds that describe those belonging to God will define what the nations and rulers want to break away from and avoid at all cost.
All my affairs will be made known to you by Tychicus, the beloved brother, faithful servant, and fellow bondservant in the Lord. (Colossians 4:7)
I fell down before his feet to worship him. He said to me, "Look! Don't do it! I am a fellow bondservant with you and with your brothers who hold the testimony of Jesus. Worship God, for the testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of Prophecy." (Revelation 19:10)
Now I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things. When I heard and saw, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel who had shown me these things. He said to me, "See you don't do it! I am a fellow bondservant with you and with your brothers, the prophets, and with those who keep the words of this book. Worship God." (Revelation 22:8-9)
We have seen that the bonds and cords that heaven relies on represent the gentle kindness, compassion and love that marks the very essence of who God is and how He governs the universe. Because nations of this world derive their very existence through use of bonds opposite of those used by heaven, the principles as presented in the gospel of Jesus Christ are a mortal threat to the very foundation of the kingdoms of earth. No wonder kings, rulers and people scramble to counsel and plot together, strategizing how to counter such a threat. If the truth about God gets released into the open and too many people learn about it, the power of fear will lose its effectiveness to control the masses, and the whole systems of this world will be in danger of collapsing. Yes indeed!
The chief priests therefore and the Pharisees gathered a council, and said, "What are we doing? For this man does many signs. If we leave him alone like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation." But a certain one of them, Caiaphas, being high priest that year, said to them, "You know nothing at all, nor do you consider that it is advantageous for us that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation not perish." (John 11:47-50)
I want to visit the phrase from Psalm 2 again in this context. the peoples plot a vain thing... What was vain about the plotting of the rulers who took counsel together against Yahweh and His Anointed?
What was their plot? It was to silence the witness of Jesus about what God is really like, for His testimony was undermining their kind of authority and their ability to hold together the nation through deception, manipulation of emotions of the people, and fear of punishments or even being killed for refusing to comply with the demands of those in power. Making Jesus an example by having Him crucified as a criminal and despot, the rulers planned to instill such a level of fear that His followers and sympathizers would give up and the movement that was gaining such popularity could effectively be extinguished. Ironically it was fear of lost revenue and control that drove the religious rulers to kill Jesus in order to continue to use fear to stay in power themselves.
The question that follows is this – did this strategy succeed as intended? Let's look at the evidence.
Were they successful in putting Jesus to death? Yes, of course, and they did it with great fanfare in order to achieve the greatest amount of emotional impact on as many as possible to accomplish their desire to stay on top and keep everyone in line, compliant with their demands. But the next question is more telling. Did they keep Jesus and His followers silenced by putting Him to death?
We know the rest of the story. Despite temporary amnesia on the part of His closest disciples while Jesus was dead, the rulers could not escape their foreboding fears as they had hoped. The words of Jesus haunted the minds of the rulers even more, so they reminded Pilate of His predictions in order to gain authority to put a Roman contingent around the tomb to make sure Jesus stayed dead long enough to reestablish their authority by means of force. They were clearly held in bondage to fear.
Mary Magdalene was there, and the other Mary, sitting opposite the tomb. Now on the next day, which was the day after the Preparation Day, the chief priests and the Pharisees were gathered together to Pilate, saying, "Sir, we remember what that deceiver said while he was still alive: 'After three days I will rise again.' Command therefore that the tomb be made secure until the third day, lest perhaps his disciples come at night and steal him away, and tell the people, 'He is risen from the dead;' and the last deception will be worse than the first." Pilate said to them, "You have a guard. Go, make it as secure as you can." So they went with the guard and made the tomb secure, sealing the stone.
(Matthew 27:61-66)
Make it as secure as you can. These ominous words belie their fears that this might not be the end of their war against Yahweh and His Anointed as predicted in Psalms. Pilate felt just as uneasy as the other rulers who wanted to silence the voice of conscience, that gentle but relentless voice that was threatening the empires that rely on fear and coercion to say in power. The only security they could attempt after Jesus was put to death was absurd to anyone still thinking rationally. Armed soldiers sent to surround a dead man locked behind an extremely heavy rock and sealed by the most powerful empire on earth. All this proved to be a vain attempt to prevent God from bringing to life His beloved Son who had done nothing wrong but had only loved and forgiven everyone incessantly all the way to the point of His death on a cross.
What was the reason given by the priests and Pharisees for this security measure? The propaganda claims that had been used all along, that Jesus was a deceiver (though with no credible evidence to prove it). Added to this was the flimsy assertion that His disciples were plotting to steal the dead body of Jesus so they could claim He was alive. The likelihood of that option, especially given the disciple's condition of terror and distrust of everyone, was next to nil. Yet power reliant on fear will stop at nothing when it comes to excuses, accusations or conspiracy theories to justify whatever it takes to stay in control. Yet all this only exposed their own corruption once the Man called Truth broke out of the prison house of death. The power of truth about God's love could never again be suppressed as effectively, though it is still being attempted today.
Since then the children have shared in flesh and blood, he also himself in like manner partook of the same, that through death he might bring to nothing him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might deliver all of them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. (Hebrews 2:14-15)
The peoples plotted a vain thing. Thinking we can hide the truth about God's powerful love will always prove to be a vain thing, a hopeless objective. Yet generation and generation continues to try to silence the Spirit of truth by use of lies, coercion, bribery and political corruption. Not much has changed over thousands of years except that the evidence proving that Satan's system cannot succeed keeps increasing every day. Yet this does not deter power-hungry people from pursing their own agendas to exploit others to build empires for themselves.
The early believers in Acts 4 chose this prophecy from Psalm 2 as applying to their circumstance after being threatened by these same religious authorities for being too vocal about the good news of Jesus. Quoting this passage they reminded themselves and each other, that what was happening to them was no surprise to God, so they need not be afraid as they rested in the truth of God's passionate love for them. I suspect they may have had a better appreciation of the deeper meanings of this passage than we do at this point. But I firmly believe the time has now come for us to settle our hearts and our thinking to be firmly rooted in the truth that God's loving-kindness is everlasting, not conditional on our fickle behavior or moods, our ugliness and sin or our righteousness and wisdom.
These believer's lives had been transformed by daily being ravished in the ecstasy of joy of knowing God's love for them personally in every situation. This joy was their strength, and it was so important to them that they were very resistant to letting anyone steal their joy by dragging them back into the old patterns of fear which had controlled their lives previously. Living in God's love and favor gives life such purpose, meaning, fulfillment and richness that any thought of returning to old ways of grasping and rooting about among fellow thieves to eek out a miserable existence in the kingdoms of fear was no longer an option for them. They were determined to not let fear recapture their hearts. So what were they to do?
Old patterns of thinking and reacting were still wired in their brains, so when religious leaders demanded compliance to injunctions forbidding them to speak openly of the love of the Father exposed in the life of His Son Jesus, the believers instantly knew they had to fix their attention on God and fill their mind with His goodness, gentleness, perspective and His presence in order to counter the poisonous infection of fear attempting to take over their spirit.
Their choice of this passage in presenting their situation to God was not incidental. As I have meditated on this it is becoming clear that it outlines what is going on, both back then and in our day. If ever there was a need for clarity of perspective, it is today as we face increasing levels of intimidation, rampant corruption and deception, and assaults against conscience through fear and shame meant to force everyone into compliance to the agenda of the rulers and oligarchs of this world who are seizing power to force compliance of the masses with their selfish intents.
This is why I believe it is in our best interest to contemplate together this passage the early believers used and install it into our own psyche so that its power may be released into our hearts by the same Spirit that was poured out in Acts 4 in response to their eloquent and united petition presented to humanity's freshly inaugurated Representative in heaven.
Why do I mention this last Person as important to them? Imagine the liberating impact this perspective had on their thinking. They knew Scripture and were very familiar with the story of Job. For 4,000 years the position of representative of this earth had been held by Satan, swaggering around heaven's assembly of God's sons every time they convened for official business. The very name Satan literally means accuser, and that's what he specializes in doing. We find this in chapter 12 that we will study next. Satan is our enemy, yet he insisted that because humans reflect his character and treat each other like he treats us, he is our legitimate representative because we continue to give him authority, starting with Adam all the way down through today.
Note how he represented humans in the story of Job. He demanded permission to access Job's life and possessions to test Job's motives for serving God. In reality Satan was really accusing God's motives by implication. Satan's entire rebellion has been predicated on his insinuations, and later open insistence, that God has a dark hidden side, and if pushed far enough that dark side would be triggered to react in self-defense, self-protection and self-interest inconsistent with agape other-centered love. The war has always centered around God's reputation, and the very existence of agape love itself. Because humans were created to reflect hidden areas of God's psyche that could not be clearly discerned, every human reflector of God has become an issue of contention, an opportunity to challenge the truth about God, a witness providing resources to prove that Satan's assertions are correct and therefore Satan's solutions to the assumed problems of God are credible.
This may seem confusing or even unbelievable if one has not been aware of this perspective yet. But this is the amazing backstory in Scripture that helps to make sense of everything we are learning because it provides context and shows us how everything fits together properly. The context for every story throughout history is this war over whether God can be trusted or not, whether God's words and instructions are reliable. More importantly, God's motives and methods are being questioned as to whether they are as pure and selfless as His Son claims them to be.
This war went on in heaven as God's reputation came into question in the minds of intelligent beings all over the universe long before our world was formed as recorded in Genesis 1 and 2. This planet with its unique species of beings was designed to reflect in a new way God's 'dark side,' and was God's way of addressing the doubts raised in the minds of created beings that were weakening trust in His government. The more we understand this back story, the more we can appreciate the purpose of why God created our planet and why it is uniquely designed. This makes the stories of Scripture and especially the outline revealing the true nature of the war as presented in Revelation, suddenly come to life in ways we never imagined possible.
I present this as context for how the believers in Acts may have felt when they suddenly experienced a new kind of life full of joy in the Holy Spirit after Pentecost. They had come to believe the truth as it is in Jesus rather than the version of God taught by legal-oriented religious tradition that kept people's hearts in bondage to fear, shame and condemnation. Satan's power was challenged when Jesus brought to this world light so clear and stunning that it launched a revolution threatening the entire kingdom of darkness. The Son of God was sent by our heavenly Father to challenge the reign of terror by Satan who had so long claimed to represent humanity. Jesus came to redeem God's human reflectors on earth by recapturing Adam's dominion and to expose Satan's as a fraud.
Satan has ever pointed to selfish, sin-indulging humans as accurate reflections of the hidden regions of God's mind and heart, insisting that what is witnessed in sinful humanity after the fall is a more correct reflection of what God is really like. God's claim of agape love has been under severe attack since the inception of Satan's rebellion, and this issue has to be totally settled in the mind of every being throughout the entire universe before the war can be brought to an end. The same lie about love being ineffective to govern and maintain order circulates today as most still buy into Satan's insistence that God must do things the way nations and kings do things here on earth. This is a denial that God is in fact pure love, fully trustworthy and purely light with no hint of darkness at all.
Why do the nations rage, and the peoples plot a vain thing? The kings of the earth take a stand, and the rulers take counsel together, against Yahweh, and against his anointed, saying, "Let's break their bonds apart, and cast their cords from us." He who sits in the heavens will laugh. The Lord will have them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his anger, and terrify them in his wrath: "Yet I have set my king on my holy hill of Zion." (Psalms 2:1-6)
Today the leaders of the nations and rulers are counseling as to how to best crush out all resistance to their agenda to gain control of power over this world fully. They are finalizing and implementing their plans against Yahweh and the revelation of His character by the anointed Messiah Jesus Christ. They insist that the bonds of love are not effective enough and must be displaced by reliance on bonds of fear. They want to cast off the cords of love in exchange for chains of darkness as they imagine they can successfully defy the Kingdom of heaven. Yet all of this is seen as laughable nonsense and even ludicrous from heaven's perspective as all such plans will finally collapse in miserable failure in the end. We are presently witnessing the growing progression of this scenario right now.
What does it mean in Psalm 2 that God will speak to them in His anger and terrify them in His wrath? There is much that can be said about this, but keeping in mind the true meaning of God's kind of anger and wrath, it will be immediately clear that this is not referring to man's kind of anger or wrath but rather the respect God has to allow people to pursue their own way until the natural outcomes of their choices come to full maturity and they inevitably reap what they sow. This is not the reward punishment system but is the principle of everything bearing fruit after its own kind.
When it appears God speaks to someone in anger, it is not like when humans do so. Rather God's anger, and the word wrath in particular, refers to the intensity of His passion as well as His grief. We must keep in mind that God never acts different when He is passionate than how He would act otherwise. He always acts out of love because God is love. This means that the terror people experience comes from when they realize the consequences that will come on them when God releases them to experience what they have sown. This is how God's wrath is His respect for freedom.
"Yet I have set my king on my holy hill of Zion."
God moves forward in this war using His own motives, methods and messages despite all the confusion surrounding these things caused by misapprehensions about Him and false definitions of many of the words used to describe Him. God never changes, which means nothing can lessen or alter His love for everyone in the slightest. Because His design of authority is that those who choose to participate in His kingdom of love must give their consent to be synchronized with His principles of love, truth and freedom, the true King of kings and Lord of Lords will be exalted on God's holy hill of Zion through the praises of all who are willing to reflect the same character of God as is reflected by the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
God will not exalt Jesus relying on any forceful means but through the inward principle of love transforming every heart that consents to be healed. All who reject this healing regimen and spurn God's gracious protection, form characters in the likeness of Satan and are at last left to bear the awful fruit of shame, terror and will finally choose death to escape from the torment of love.
In the context of the 7th trumpet we are studying, all of this fits in perfectly.
the time for the dead to be judged, and to give your bondservants...their reward
Circumstances will coalesce to release so much light that everyone will experience the kind of judging that Jesus describes in John 3:19-21. The rewards of all who have had their hearts bonded to the heart of Jesus will be experienced in that day to full measure. That reward will be the same reward that motivated Jesus to endure the cross and disesteem the shame lies surrounding it. It is the reward of joy. This joy is the incentive that motivates all who emulate the Lamb, and this joy is the glue that bonds the hearts of all the loyal universe to each other to unite into one pulse of harmony, love and beauty throughout all eternity after the dark experiment of sin is finally in the past.
Looking to Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2)
Now the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord, the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:17-18)
