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Revelation 19:1-10 (Part 2)
By Joe Haynes
April 15, 2022
I am thankful that in God’s Providence, it falls on this day to record this video. That on this day when we remember our Saviour’s words, “It is finished,” I have the great privilege of being able to share this passage of His Holy Word with you in making this video. In our last session, we saw how the themes of the Lamb and His Bride, of the Two opposite women, of the antitypical Exodus from Egypt and preparation for the ultimate conquest of the Promised Land--how these multiple themes all come together in Revelation 19 as the storyline of the entire Bible comes to a head.
So now, turning to Revelation 19:1-10, and scanning your eye down the page, notice that one prominent word that is repeated four times: “Hallelujah!” The word is shouted four times, by three groups, and then notice that those three groups are described in ways that make them stand out from each other.
“After this I heard what seemed to be the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, crying out, ‘Hallelujah!’” (Rev. 19:1 ESV); then the same group, “Once more they cried out, ‘Hallelujah!’” (Rev. 19:3 ESV);
then a second group, “And the twenty-four elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God who was seated on the throne, saying, ‘Amen. Hallelujah!’” (Rev. 19:4 ESV);
then the third group, “Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, ‘Hallelujah!’” (Rev. 19:6 ESV).
The first group in verse 1, and the third group in verse 6, look similar except, on the one hand John hears “what seemed to be the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven” (v1) and on the other hand he hears, “what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder…” (v6). Our quest in these next sessions is to find out who each group represents, so that we can get the most benefit out of hearing their testimonies of God’s wonderful grace.
The first group we encounter cry out “hallelujah!” in verse 1. Who are they? They are God’s people who have a testimony about how God has saved them and how He has acted on their behalf in the past and in the present. Look back once more to 18:4, where a voice from Heaven says, “Come out of her my people…” The voice that calls them “my people” can only be God’s voice. Then again, in 18:20, the same voice appears to speak with a command “Rejoice over her, O heaven, and you saints and apostles and prophets…!” So we can say that the people addressed by the voice from heaven are God’s people since He called them His people; the people addressed in 18:20 include the saints and apostles and prophets—which could mean all those who belong to the New Covenant, or it could be a way of referring to all those Christians who have ever lived and died. Notice though that 18:20 emphasizes what God has done for them. Then, in 19:1, they all do as they are told and they rejoice over how God has proven Himself by what He has done:
After this I heard what seemed to be the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, crying out, "Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, 2 for his judgments are true and just; for he has judged the great prostitute who corrupted the earth with her immorality, and has avenged on her the blood of his servants." (Rev. 19:1-2 ESV)
That theme of the Lamb coming to claim the Bride He has loved for a very long time, the Bride He knows, might be why here, these people reciprocate that intimate, personal love by expressing not only that God has known them, but that they have known Him too. The people of God claim God as their God—that’s what their song sets forth in verse 1. “Salvation and glory and power belong to our God…” Then, in verse 2, they describe His praiseworthiness in terms of having been proven “true and just” in his judgments. Instead of looking back over the past and doubting whether God is true or whether He is fair, their experience of His double faithfulness is basis of their confidence in Him here. And this confidence they have in Him is confidence they have learned as they have seen what He has done: “…For he has judged the great prostitute who corrupted the earth with her immorality, and has avenged on her the blood of his servants," (Rev. 19:2 ESV). You need to notice that they praise their God, first for His faithfulness; second for the justice they will have by now seen God pour out on the Roman Catholic Church (“for he has judged the great prostitute…”); third, because when God will have judged the Prostitute, they will know He did it for His bride—for those whose blood was shed by the Roman Catholic Church: those martyred by the Prostitute. God has known who His servants are, those who lost their lives for His sake, and He has remembered them personally and acted justly on their behalf. So all those whose voice sounds to John like “the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven”--those martyrs, and all God’s people, with a single voice, in jubilant unison, sing “Hallelujah!” “Hallelujah” for how the God who knows them and the God they know has acted savingly toward them and on their behalf in the past.
But they’re not finished. Another reason is added, and they praise God again in verse 3, crying out a second “hallelujah!” “Once more they cried out, ‘Hallelujah! The smoke from her goes up forever and ever.’," (Rev. 19:3 ESV). This time they praise their God because, at the time this rejoicing happens, they will see the smoke rising up continually from the burning of the Roman Catholic Church—the great prostitute identified in symbol as an adulterous woman, the opposite of the Bride, and as a city, the opposite of the New Jerusalem, representing not those who keep God’s covenant but those who break it. The smoke rising up forever represents some kind of visible evidence, or memorial, of their destruction and will be a constant reminder of God’s truth and justice, and His actions avenging the blood of those of his servants who were murdered by those who were not his servants.
Now some scholars say that the multitude speaking these first two hallelujahs are not people at all. Some, like Dr. Robert L. Thomas, say that the individuals loudly praising God in verses 1-3 must be angels. He says this because he sees verse 5 calling “all you his servants” to praise God, which they do beginning in verse 6, which then is taken by him as evidence that the voices praising God before verse 5 must not be the voices of God’s human servants.[i] His logic is fairly simple: if the voices after verse 5 are obeying the command in verse 5, then they are the people identified as “all you his servants”. Therefore, the voices before verse 5 belong to some other group other than people who are called God’s servants. So, he thinks, they’re angels. I think that’s wrong.
By the same logic, since, in 18:20, it is people (including saints, apostles, and prophets) being called to rejoice, as soon as we read of the loud multitude doing exactly that in 19:1, we need to conclude that these are the voices of God’s saints and apostles and prophets. Which would mean that neither the second group, called “all you his servants” (v5), nor the first group (including “saints, apostles, and prophets”, 18:20) are angels. They are all people. When 18:20 uses “heaven” as a figure of speech for all those saints and apostles and prophets; when verse 1 says what John heard “seemed to be” voices in heaven, you should not just assume it means angels in a celestial place called “heaven” but that somehow the figurative language about heaven indicates some kind of connection with where the Two Witnesses went in 11:12; with the voices praising God in 11:15; with where the bride of Christ is first glimpsed in 12:1; and the dragon, in 12:3(!); where war arose in 12:7; as the spiritual dwelling place of God’s people in 13:6. Whatever conclusion you reach about the symbolic significance of “heaven” in Revelation, it doesn’t automatically mean these are angels saying “hallelujah” in 19:1-3. We’ve already seen how personal this is for them—they are people known by God who know their God, who have a testimony to share about God’s salvation and faithful actions in the past, and in the present, as they see the smoke of the prostitute’s burning rising up forever. Angels know that God is praiseworthy, and they praise Him; but Christians experience the saving grace of God through Jesus Christ and praise Him in a way that angels never can.
This personal experience of God’s saving grace, in the testimony of the first multitude that gives voice to the first two hallelujahs in verse 1 and 3, suggests, I think, that all of these hallelujahs are raised by people with personal experience of Christ that angels never know. But each hallelujah-raising group is described in ways that show some distinction between each testimony. There is good reason to see from the words with which they praise God, the groups in verses 1-3, then verse 4, then again in verses 6-8, that each of these three groups are meant to be seen as people who have personally been redeemed by God, just like ancient Israel was redeemed by God from slavery in Egypt.
With these personal testimonies in mind, then, look again at that word, “hallelujah”, in verse 1, verse 3, verse 4, and verse 6. Most English translations leave this word untranslated. It’s not even a Greek word. It’s a Hebrew word that means “Praise Yahweh!” You hear it a lot in church, and in Christian songs, maybe even from time to time in pop-culture, but it’s a Bible word. But for such a well-known word, and an important Bible word at that, it’s very strange how rarely this word is used in the New Testament. It never appears anywhere else in the entire New Testament except here, in verse 1, verse 3, verse 4, and verse 6. Just these four times. So when we see it here, we need to see it like a very rare jewel, and its presence is significant.
“Hallelujah” is so rare, even in Hebrew, I could only find it in the Psalms, and then, only 23 times. Dr. Thomas lists the places he found it, saying, “In the Hebrew text, it appears at the end of Psalms 104, 105, 115, 116, 117, at the beginning of Psalms 11 and 112, and at the beginning and end of Psalms 106, 113, 135, and 146.”[ii] Aune’s volume in the Word Biblical Commentary says, “The term ἁλληλουϊά, “hallelujah,” is a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew liturgical formula halĕlû-yāh, meaning “praise Yahweh” (occurring twenty-four times in the MT)…”[iii] The same writer adds, “The term “hallelujah” is used in the Psalms both in the titles to individual psalms… and as conclusions to individual psalms...” and, “The rabbis puzzled about the absence of the word “hallelujah” in the Psalter before Ps 104…”[iv] So “hallelujah” might be common Christianese today but it is fairly rare even in the Hebrew text of the Book of Psalms!
“And the twenty-four elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God who was seated on the throne, saying, ‘Amen. Hallelujah!’” (Rev. 19:4 ESV). I’ve explained the symbolism of the twenty-four elders and four living creatures before (you can find that in my sessions on Revelation 4-5). In sum, they represent the whole priesthood of all believers, the entire true Church, along with the ministers of the Word, the apostles and prophets and pastors and teachers who preach God’s Word. So it seems wonderfully appropriate that when all the saints cry out “hallelujah” as their testimony looking back on God’s saving grace, as their exodus is finally complete, that, in John’s vision, the only response from the elders and living creatures is to say, “Amen. Hallelujah!” Yes, yes! Praise God! Other scholars have noted, “these very words, ‘Amen, Hallelujah,’ appear at the end of the fourth division of the Psalms in the Hebrew Bible (106:48) as an invitation to the hearers to respond to the book as a whole.”[v] It’s the last word. Amen. The work of God through the death of His Son on the cross was finished when Jesus cried out, “It is finished.” The work of God applying that atonement to all those souls beloved by the Passover Lamb is finally complete—the exodus is complete, when the elders and living creatures say, “Amen. Hallelujah!” The elect have been brought in. As the Apostle Paul anticipates in Romans 11:25, “"the fullness of the Gentiles has come in." (Rom. 11:25 ESV) This is the very last time these symbols for the Ministers of God’s Word appear in the book of Revelation. Because, when this is fulfilled, and this day arrives, the time for preaching is finally ended.
So then, the question that should be making our hearts beat faster, is this: if this passage has just predicted the end of preaching, and the completion of the spiritual exodus, the rescue of all God’s elect from among the nations of the earth, then whose testimony is it that cries out in praise one last time in verse 6? Who sings that final hallelujah? Praise God, when the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, God will have one last act of saving grace to perform, applying the atonement accomplished in the death of Jesus, our Passover Lamb, to those who will at last, see Him for who He is. We turn to verses 5-10, to answer this mystery, in our next session.