Blog
Revelation 19:1-10 (Part 1)
By Joe Haynes
April 7, 2022
Last time, I introduced you to three plot themes converging in chapter 19. The largest of these was the love of the Lamb for His Bride, anticipated in 19:7, that the marriage of the Lamb has come and the Bride is ready! Then we saw, from 17:1 to 21:9, a tale of two opposite women, the apostate Roman Catholic Church, a.k.a., “the Great Prostitute,” and the Wife of the Lamb. Thirdly, we saw from their respective settings in 17:1 and 21:9, that the tales of each women follow the pattern of Israel’s exodus and destiny in the Promised Land. This last grand theme is so important, I believe, for the right understanding of these chapters that it bears repeating. You remember how the Book of Exodus narrates the miraculous, and grace-based rescue of the Hebrew people from Egypt? God’s own Word demanded the release of His people from their slavery, the ruler of Egypt, Pharaoh, refused. God’s miraculous punishments, called “plagues,” secured the people’s release by means of the ruin of Egypt’s economy and a catastrophic death toll exacted by God among the Egyptian population. Israel was free, but then the humiliated Pharaoh mustered his army and personally led them in pursuit:
And the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he pursued the people of Israel while the people of Israel were going out defiantly. The Egyptians pursued them, all Pharaoh’s horses and chariots and his horsemen and his army, and overtook them encamped at the sea, by Pi-hahiroth, in front of Baal-zephon. When Pharaoh drew near, the people of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them, and they feared greatly. And the people of Israel cried out to the LORD… (Ex 14:8-10).
What follows must be the most unexpected and sudden defeat of a military super-power in history. The means of Israel’s rescue became the means of Egypt’s defeat. God parted the sea-waters and Israel passed through on dry land; God then brought the waters back on Egypt’s army with no survivors.
Now it seems to me that we need to hold some of the threads of Revelation in mind as we approach the final conflict in Revelation 19. We saw that the prophecies of the seven trumpets in Revelation 8-9 incorporated allusions to the plagues with which God freed Israel from the hands of Egypt. We also saw that the prophecies of the seven bowls in Revelation 16 used plague-imagery from Exodus to depict the punitive hand of God behind the events those bowls foretold. Therefore, we should visualize the entire sweep of history from the trumpets through to the end of the bowls as one long exodus in which God is delivering His people and leading them out of symbolic Egypt. Every time a sinner is converted, every time anyone repents and believes in Jesus, another antitypical Israelite is added to the number of the redeemed. It is at this point that we see two stories in Revelation diverge. Two groups with radically different destinies waiting for them. One group cursed to die in the wilderness, and one group blessed to be led by the Lord into the land He promised. And the stories of both groups run side by side.
In this new kind of Exodus, those who follow the Lamb are to be understood as being added to the new nation He is gathering. But all symbolic imagery aside, what is actually seen is ordinary men and women, putting their faith in Jesus, living out their remaining years as Christians, and then dying. But in Revelation, those deaths of Christians during the past 16 centuries, are not to be seen as defeat but as deliverance. These are the redeemed being rescued one at a time. Year by year, generation by generation, and now, 16 centuries since the plagues of the seven trumpets began, can you imagine the number of the redeemed? Well this is the very multitude John saw represented in his vision, in chapter 7, where he writes,
After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, 10 and crying out with a loud voice, "Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!" (Rev. 7:9-10 ESV)
One of the elders tells John that these are the ones “coming out of the great tribulation…” who “have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Rev 7:14). So just before the trumpet prophecies predict God striking antitypical Egypt with plagues, John foresees the multitude who will be redeemed by the time the plagues are ended. John himself names the multitude, later on, as “[those who] have been redeemed from the earth” (14:3) and, “[those who] have been redeemed from mankind…” (14:4) The use of the word “redeemed” links the multitude to the imagery of God’s redemption and ransom of Israel from Egypt, as the Lord said on Mt. Sinai: " 2 "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery." (Exod. 20:2 ESV) And as Moses himself sang on the shores of the Red Sea, after witnessing God’s victory over the armies of Egypt: " 13 "You have led in your steadfast love the people whom you have redeemed; you have guided them by your strength to your holy abode." (Exod. 15:13 ESV) This is the New Testament era multitude whose redemption from among mankind, and from the earth, is shown to John in imagery established by the ancient exodus of Israel from Egypt. These are the ones who follow the Lamb. There is no lifetime of wandering in the wilderness for these blessed ones. They are not punished like ancient Israel was for doubting that God was able to give them the Promised Land. Their bodies may die but when they are resurrected they will cross into their inheritance.
But what about those who, like ancient Israel, do not trust God, those who, like the ten spies who gave the bad report, and like the generation of Israelites whom God would not allow to enter the Promised Land? This is the significance of what John sees in Revelation 17:1 when the angel carries him into the wilderness to see the apostate, unfaithful who do not follow the Lamb:
3 And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns. 4 The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her sexual immorality. 5 And on her forehead was written a name of mystery: "Babylon the great, mother of prostitutes and of earth's abominations." (Rev. 17:3-5 ESV)
This immoral woman is not to be understood literally as a woman, but as a symbol for all those who, because they do not “wash their robes and make them white in the blood of the Lamb,” will never enter the Promised Land. In other words, this Great Prostitute, Babylon, is a symbol for a multitude who, claiming to be God’s people, depart from the Gospel. Which then reminds us that the multitude of the redeemed, which John foresaw in chapter 7, is also symbolized as a woman—we hear that she has made herself ready in the praises of chapter 19:7, and in chapter 21:2 John, in his vision, sees her at last as the New Jerusalem prepared like a Bride for her husband. But of course, this is not the first time John had seen the multitude of the redeemed portrayed in symbol as this good woman.
For in Rev 12:1, he saw a great sign in heaven, “a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve starts”, who, like the woman, Jerusalem, in Isaiah 66:7, was about to give birth to a new nation (Isa 66:8), this good woman in Revelation, the symbol of the redeemed, was about to give birth to a new nation also. We studied that before and saw that the paganism of the Roman Empire was replaced by Christianity as the new religion of a new state. But in the politics and power struggle of an earthly kingdom, there was no room for the true redeemed of God’s people. So the woman fled into the wilderness, not to die like ancient Israel, but to be protected and nourished by God until the day of her wedding: "and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which she is to be nourished for 1,260 days." (Rev. 12:6 ESV)
So there are two women, symbolizing two multitudes in the wilderness: one apostate and unfaithful multitude, who perish in the wilderness, forbidden from ever entering the Land of Promise; the other the faithful, blood-bought multitude who follow the Lamb and therefore who are being gathered into a nation beyond numbering, being made ready for the day when the Bridegroom returns to claim His bride. The wilderness is not her home. She is only passing through on her way to somewhere else. But this insight, that the Bride of Christ is also the multitude of the Redeemed, helps us to recognize what is happening when we come to Revelation 19. For in the context of being shown the destruction of the Prostitute in chapter 18, John hears the Lord call out to His people in 18:4, to “come out of her” as the Gospel exodus continues up to the very last day. John hears the Lord call to her again in 18:20 with a happy command to rejoice over the judgment of the Prostitute. And in 19:1, we see the Bride of Christ, but as “a great multitude in heaven” doing exactly that.
Next time, then, now that we have the outlines of this wonderful story in mind, we will fill in some of the gaps. What should we make of the response of the elders and living creatures, and then of the voice from the throne in 19:4-5? Who is this mysterious multitude singing about the Bride in verses 6-8? (The fact that they sing about the bride in the third-person should make it clear to us that they are distinct from the bride.) And who are the guests invited to the wedding in 19:9? How should we understand that oddity that when John might have expected to see the Bride and the Lamb, instead, he is shown, in 19:11-6, a Warrior King and His army? I’ll leave you with just this hint to think about: when that army appears, the Exodus is finally complete.