book of revelation theme: the bride and the reject
TRANSCRIPT
Book of Revelation Theme:The Bride and the Reject
by
Damien F. Mackey
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Essentially Revelation is about the divorce of one ‘woman’ … and the marrying of anew, faithful one. The scroll of Revelation 5:1 is actually a bill of divorce; the divorcebeing completed in the most emphatic manner with the annihilation of the harlot
city, “Babylon”.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Introduction
Every new disturbance in the world, be it of natural causesuch as earthquakes, tsunamis or hurricanes; political, suchas the Gulf War crises, Islamic Jihads and Russian aggression;or economic, for example the new wave of food shortagessweeping the world, finds its modern-day interpreter with theBook of Revelation in hand. Depending upon one’s political orreligious proclivity the Beast of Revelation (Revelation13:11) can be, now the President of the United States, or,previously, Saddam Hussein rebuilding the city of Babylon, oreven the Pope ruling Catholicism. This sort of frenzied
speculation became particularly apparent as Year 2000approached, with the ‘millennium bug’ seriously biting theloony cultist fringe. For the Israeli government then had todeport a group of American ‘Christians’ for fear that they hadviolent intentions towards the Old City, suspecting them to beamongst fanatics who believe that the ancient Temple ofJerusalem is destined to be rebuilt in the near future. Thiswould mean firstly clearing away - even with a bomb ifnecessary - the great Moslem shrine, the Dome of the Rock,that now occupies the mount.Meanwhile, certain Protestant and evangelical groups continueto persist with the notion, conceived during the Reformation,that the Pope is Antichrist and that the ‘Roman CatholicChurch’ is the “famous prostitute” of Revelation, “riding ascarlet beast which had seven heads and ten horns” (17;2, 3),the seven heads being also “the seven hills” (18:9). Thislatter, they insist, must be a reference to Rome with itsSeven Hills. And they puzzle as to why prayerful, Bible-believing Catholics cannot see this.The Modernist crisis has only reinforced this view in theirminds, especially when they learn of ‘Catholic’ bishopsdenigrating the Bible and supporting Gay Acceptance, etc.No doubt some of these non-Catholic brethren are genuine intheir beliefs. They are certainly firm in them. Leo Harris forinstance, writing the Foreword to Thomas Foster’s The Pope,Communism and the Coming New World (Acacia Press, Victoria),having acknowledged that: “In the present remarkable days,with the Holy Spirit touching the lives of many people in boththe Roman Catholic and main-line Protestant churches, one mayfeel reluctant to expose the errors found in any churchsystem”, feels constrained nonetheless to add a point thatwill be taken up more vehemently by Foster himself: “However,it is no light matter that any one man should arise and claimsupreme headship over the church as Christ’s solerepresentative or vicar”.Foster himself will go so far as to identify the Pope asAntichrist (which name, he insists, literally means in theplace of Christ).I personally know of Protestants who, whilst likewise beingquite uncomfortable with the concept of the Papacy, areprepared nonetheless - in the current climate of ecumenism -not to make too much of an issue out of it, but to accept that
there is presently going on throughout the world what theymight call a ‘mustering of all people of good will’ (includingeven Roman Catholics). Perhaps this new outlook is the firststirring of unity; the graces of the ecumenical effort.We Catholics have of course a view quite different from theseProtestants regarding the Pope and the Church. We acknowledgethe Pope to be the appointed Vicar of Christ on earth (cf.Matthew 16:18), the very foundation of the Church, andinfallible in matters of faith and morals. The Church weconsider to be pre-eminently Marian (even before it wasPetrine). The Blessed Virgin Mary, according to John Paul II,“is the image of the Church whom we likewise call mother”(Homily 18 November 1980. Cf. Lumen Gentium, #63). Wetherefore shudder at the accusation made by Luther-inspiredProtestants that the Catholic Church is to be identified withthe loathsome “Harlot” of the Apocalypse, which derogatorytitle we consider to be a most appropriate label for theModernist ‘World Wide Church of Darkness’ (cf. Pope St. PiusX).In this article I shall be endeavouring to show - hopefully toassist ecumenical efforts by clearing away misgivings, butespecially to provide Catholics with a defence againstunwarranted accusations by Protestants - that the mysteryWhore, “Babylon the Great”, is not Rome at all (eitherphysical or spiritual) but the ancient City of Jerusalem whereJesus himself was crucified - and where many of the Prophets(beginning with Abel), Apostles and disciples of Our Lord weremartyred. In this way I hope to establish that the Whorecannot possibly have anything to do with the Catholic Church.I shall be arguing here that the Book of Revelation hasalready been literally fulfilled; that it was fulfilled withthe destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman armies under Titusin 70 AD, corresponding to the burning of “Babylon” inApocalypse ch.s 17-18, and that its relevance for us today isallegorical and symbolical (e.g. the above-mentioned likeningof the Harlot, which is a city, with Modernism, which is asystem of thought with a corresponding praxis). Indeed this viewaccords perfectly with John Paul II’s statement to a C20thaudience that the Book of Revelation is ‘symbolical andfigurative in meaning’.Essentially Revelation is about the divorce of one ‘woman’(one formerly just ‘woman’ who had gone bad), and the marrying
of a new, faithful one. The scroll of Revelation 5:1 isactually a bill of divorce; the divorce being completed in themost emphatic manner with the annihilation of the harlot city,“Babylon”. I am indebted to Kenneth Gentry (Jr.) in “APreterist View of Revelation” for spelling this out. E.g. [pp. 51-2]:
When viewed against the backdrop of the theme of Jewishjudgment, personages (a harlot and a bride), and the flowof Revelation (from the sealed scroll to a capitalpunishment for “adultery” to a “marriage feast” to thetaking of a new “bride” as the “new Jerusalem”), thecovenantal nature of the transaction suggests that theseven-sealed scroll is God’s divorce decree against his OldTestament wife for her spiritual adultery.In the Old Testament God “marries” Israel (see esp. Ezek.16:8, 31-32), and in several places he threatens her with a“bill of divorce” (Isa. 50:1; Jer. 3:8).(In C. Marvin Pate’s Four Views on the Book of Revelation,Zondervan, 1998. The word “preterist” is based on a Latinword præteritus, meaning “gone by”, i.e. past).
Also I want to clear up the serious problem (one ofcommentators own making) whereby the Apostles, expecting(according to such commentators) Christ’s final coming(Parousia), in their own day, were thus mistaken because thatdid not come about - still has not. Such an interpretationwould suggest that Our Lord had passed on to his intimatefriends the wrong time-table. This is, of course, quiteunacceptable. My argument here will be that the Apostles werereferring first and foremost to Christ’s victorious coming in70 AD, thus freeing the early Church from her Judaïc (nowcorrupted and nationalistic) connections.The destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD may not mean a lot to usnow in the C20th -especially we who have grown up withWestern-based education that tends to eschew (or notunderstand) everything Semitic - but it meant a heck of a lotto those of the Apostolic era, who were mostly Jews, and whocontinued to worship in the Jerusalem Temple and thesynagogues virtually to the very end.(One has only to recall how stunned St. Jerome was with thefall of Rome to realise that even great Saints are still verymuch a part of the environment in which they live).
The emphasis here will be on the historico-literal.
A. Some Illustrations of this Interpretation:
The historico-literal level of biblical interpretation is themost basic one, and Popes and Saints have urged that Scripturescholars firstly identify that level. Saint Thomas Aquinashimself was utterly convinced of its importance; for,according to Monsignor G. Kelly, in his refutation of Fr.Raymond Brown and co. (The New Biblical Theorists, p. 13): “St. ThomasAquinas is usually cited as a leading Church doctor who knewthe importance of discovering the literal sense”. Obviously there can be only one historico-literal fulfilmentof anything.I am now going to illustrate with biblical examples theapproach to the interpretation of Revelation being favouredhere: namely, of an early historico-literal fulfilment - butallowing for later, spiritual interpretations (The Catechism of theCatholic Church, #’s 115-119, identifies 3 levels of meaning in thespiritual category, as well as the literal level - thus four“senses” all up).
Example 1: The sack of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in c.590 BC.
This has many parallel likenesses to the sack of Jerusalem bythe Roman armies under Titus in 70 AD (which last I claim tobe the historical culmination of Revelation). That is notsurprising since the same city, in the same geographicallocation, is involved. But the details of the first incidentcan never be entirely duplicated in the second (despite whatcertain psycho-historians seem to think). That is obvious! By70 AD there would be no Babylonian armies, no KingNebuchednezzar, no prophet Jeremiah, and so on. The connectioncan be only an allegorical one - ‘like, but not the same as’.But let us take the better-known example of St. John theBaptist.
Example 2: “In the Spirit of Elijah”
Our Lord Jesus Christ confirmed that the Baptist was the oneof whom the Old Testament prophet Malachi had foretold:“Behold, I will send you Elijah” (4:5; cf. Matthew 11:14). ButSt. John himself insisted that he was not the literal Elijah
(John 1:21): he came “in the spirit of Elijah”. Obviously onlyElijah himself could fulfil the literal conditions of his ownday.Likewise, only one scenario can literally fulfil Revelation -and that I suggest is the scenario pertaining to thedestruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. The many later scenariosare imbued, so to speak, with Revelation’s “spirit”; thisbeing most emphatically true of our own era, with the Bride ofthe Lamb apparently following Her Spouse in his Passion, Deathand Resurrection.But there can be only one literal fulfilment.Now, for the “Marian Dimension”, I turn for Example Three to theBooks of Hosea and Isaiah, especially to the famous Virgin andImmanuel of Isaiah. Since this example will be important inthe context of the entire article, I must now convert it intoa whole new section in its own right.
B. The Hosea/Isaiah Paradigm
In 1998 I wrote an article entitled “Isaiah and His SixChildren” (now in need of updating), in which I made a casefor identifying Hosea and Isaiah as one and the same person,having, all up, two wives and six children. Hosea’s/Isaiah’schildren had God-inspired names that were to be of symbolicalimportance to the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Moreover,Hosea’s name, like Isaiah’s, indicates God as ‘Saviour’.The prophet Hosea was actually commanded by God to pantomimethe tragic situation of Israel’s infidelity to God, by takingfor his wife an adulteress from the harlot nation of Samaria(northern Israel). ‘Go, marry a whore, and get children with awhore, for the country itself has become nothing but a whoreby abandoning Yahweh’ (Hosea 1:2). God knew that this woman, aproduct of her environment, would be unfaithful to theprophet, but He nevertheless urged Hosea to take her backafter her infidelity, as a sign to Israel that God was patientand long-suffering and was also prepared to take backunfaithful Israel (3:1-3).The prophet Isaiah apparently married a good woman, entitled“prophetess” (Isaiah 8:2); who - if Hosea and Isaiah were oneand the same - would be another of his wives.Be all that as it may, this bad wife/good wife scenario is infact, I now believe, the whole tension of the Book ofApocalypse.
The pantomime that Hosea/Isaiah had played out in c.700 BCwould now be approximately re-enacted by Jesus Christ himself,the Saviour, in his divorce of the unfaithful earthlyJerusalem (Judaïsm) and his marriage with his new Bride, theheavenly Jerusalem. This time there will be no taking back ofthe adulteress, Jerusalem - even though He had passionatelylonged to do so: ‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem ... How often have Ilonged to gather your children, as a hen gathers her chicksunder her wings, and you refused!’ (Luke 13:34). His patience with her had at last run out, so to speak.When we read Isaiah’s prediction that the “young woman”[Hebrew: almah] was with child (Hebrew literally “hasconceived”) and would soon give birth to a son, “Immanuel”, weimmediately think of Mary and Jesus. And this is as it shouldbe. St. Matthew, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit,applying to the Isaian text a spiritual sense - indeed afuller sense than Isaiah himself had intended - convertsIsaiah’s “young woman” into “Virgin”. With the Blessed VirginMary, Isaiah’s prophecy was fulfilled spiritually - and, ofcourse, perfectly.This does not mean, though, that Isaiah himself had foreseenin a literal (or photographic) way the fulfilment of thisprophecy in Christ; but, rather, he expressed the hope thatChrist fully realized. St. Matthew and the Church have seen inthe birth of Christ from the Virgin Mother the perfectfulfilment of this prophecy.That Isaiah had in his own mind something quite contemporary,pertaining to his own era of c. 700 AD, is quite obvious fromthe terms in which the prophecy is stated. At the timeJerusalem was under threat from Syria and northern Israel(Ephraïm), and Isaiah was addressing Ahaz, the King ofJerusalem, and his father’s House (cf. Isaiah 7:17).Isaiah 7:10-22 all wonderfully interconnects:
Once again Yahweh spoke to Ahaz and said, ‘Ask Yahweh yourGod for a sign for yourself coming either from the depthsof Sheol or from the heights above’. ‘No’, Ahaz answered,‘I will not put Yahweh to the test’. Then He said:‘Listen now, House of David: are you not satisfied withtrying the patience of men without trying the patience ofmy God, too?’
[Comment: Note how Isaiah has switched from calling Yahweh,‘your God’ (Ahaz’s God), to ‘my God’. For Ahaz and hiscolleagues had rejected Yahweh as their God].
The Lord himself, therefore, will give you a sign.It is this: the maiden [almah] is with child
[Comment: The Hebrew verb indicating conception, harah, is setin the past tense].
and will soon give birth to a son whom she will callImmanuel.
[Comment: The Virgin Mary did not call her Son, “Immanuel”,but “Jesus”, as the angel Gabriel had specifically orderedher: “... you must name Him Jesus” (Luke 1:31). Nevertheless,Jesus is more perfectly Immanuel, ‘God-with-us’, than wasIsaiah’s son of that name].
On curds and honey will he [i.e. Immanuel] feed until heknows how to refuse evil and choose good.
[Comment: Isaiah will explain the significance of the “curdsand honey” 7 verses further on, and later so shall I].
For before this child knows how to refuse evil and choosegood [i.e. before this child already conceived has reachedthe age of reason], the land whose two kings terrify you
[Comment: to identify the “two kings” and their “land”, weneed to go back to verse 1 of this same chapter 7 of Isaiah -these two kings who terrify King Ahaz and Jerusalem are “Rezonthe King of Aram (Syria) [and ...] Pekah ... King of Israel”,who had already tried once to take Jerusalem].
will be deserted.
[Comment: And why did the land of Syria and Israel become“deserted”? Because within a few years - before Isaiah’s sonImmanuel had had time to reach the age of reason, as theprophecy tells - Assyria’s Tiglath-pileser III (biblical“Pul”) [and his presumed son], Shalmaneser V, took away intocaptivity Syria and northern Israel, cf. 2 Kings 15:19; 16:7;17:3. That all sounds like good news to King Ahaz, because theKing of Assyria - whom he had called in to help him - wouldget rid of his two enemies. But Yahweh was not about to do the
wicked Ahaz any favours. The King of Assyria would become afar worse menace to Jerusalem than ever had Syria and Israel,as we are now going to be told].
Yahweh will bring times for you and your people and yourfather’s House, such as have not come since Ephraim brokeaway from Judah [i.e. that had occurred 200 years earlier,in c. 920 BC, when Jeroboam took the northern tribes awayfrom King Solomon’s son, Rehoboam, ruler of Judah]: namely,the King of Assyria.
[Comment: The King of Assyria will cause trouble for Judah toparallel the tragic split in half of the kingdom in the daysof Solomon’s son, 200 years earlier, when Pharaoh “Shishak” ofEgypt came up and took Jerusalem and sacked the Temple ofYahweh].
That day [when this happens, in a few years time] Yahwehwill whistle up mosquitoes from the Delta of the EgyptianNile [i.e. the Egyptian armies that, coming ostensibly tohelp Judah against Assyria, will only cause furthernuisance value, trampling the land, and getting defeatedinto the bargain by the Assyrians], and bees from the landof Assyria [i.e. the Assyrian armies], to come and settleon the steep ravine, on the rocky cleft, on the thorn bushand on every pasture [in other words, these armies will bea total nuisance in the land of Judah].On that day [when this happens, in a few years time] theLord will shave with a blade hired from beyond the River:namely the King of Assyria, the head and hairs of the body,and take off the beard, too.
[Comment: “Hired blade”: what a fitting description of theAssyrian scourge! King Ahaz had indeed ‘hired’ the King ofAssyria to help him, 2 Kings 16:7. But the Assyrians wouldeventually chop down the Judæans like an efficient blade, or“axe”, as Isaiah will call the Assyrian a bit further on,10:15].
That day [when this happens, in a few years time] each manwill raise one heifer and two sheep, and because of theabundance of milk they give, all who are left in thecountry will feed on curds and honey. [The feeding on curdsand honey, that will be the lot of young Immanuel, does not
mean prosperity, but that that is all that will be left onwhich to feed. Why? Because:] That day, where a thousandvines used to be, worth one thousand pieces of silver, allwill be briar and thorn. Men will enter it with arrows andbow since the whole country will revert to briar and thorn.On any hillside hoed with the hoe no one will come for fearof briars and thorns; it will be pasture for cattle andgrazing for sheep.
[End of Isaiah 7]
Christians, growing up with this OT reading, will immediatelyrecognise it as pertaining to Jesus Christ. But parts of ithave seemed strange, such as mention of “curds and honey”,even inappropriate, such as “the King of Assyria”. That isbecause the text cannot be made to fit literally the time ofOur Lord; though it fits Him spiritually, and perfectly. Itwas not in his time fulfilled in the literal sense that Isaiahhad intended, which was - as we have just seen - enframed inthe context of the Syro-Ephraïmite and Assyrian wars of c. 700BC. Whilst Isaiah prophetically ‘foresaw’ in the Holy Spiritthe Blessed Virgin Mary and Jesus, his reference was, forhimself and his contemporaries, a far more down-to-earth andimmediate one. Remember that little Immanuel’s birth was meantto be “a sign” from God to King Ahaz and his House whom Isaiahwas addressing outside the walls of Jerusalem (7:11).But what sort of immediate sign for Ahaz and hiscontemporaries would have been the virginal birth of JesusChrist, 700 years later!I am not talking here of course about the salvific value ofChrist’s Birth, which indeed embraced King Ahaz, hiscontemporaries, and indeed the entire human race.Whilst the point of this “sign” for us, with the hindsightadvantage of the New Testament, is Salvation - the miraculousbirth of the God-Child Jesus Christ - the point of it fromIsaiah’s perspective was very much a chronological one. Whatthe prophet was telling King Ahaz and the people of Jerusalemwas that even before his little Immanuel would reach the ageof consent, “to refuse evil and choose good”, the Assyrianarmies will have swept away Jerusalem’s northern enemies. (WasIsaiah’s young wife standing beside him when he told the Houseof David that she was with child and would soon give birth?)
Now, Immanuel was not the only one in Isaiah’s family to servesuch a symbolic purpose. “I and the children whom Yahweh hasgiven me are signs and portents in Israel” (8:3, 18), Isaiahtells us. Then, in the next chapter, he goes on to relate thathe “... went into the prophetess, she conceived and gave birthto a son ... Maher-shalal-hash-baz”. This boy-child, too,would be a sign for Judah regarding the progress of theAssyrian armies. Thus, in Isaiah’s mind, there would have beennothing miraculous about the birth of Immanuel. The youngwoman and Immanuel were of his own family; his wife and son.
The ‘Holy Family’ of the Old Testament
The prophet Isaiah’s outspokenness before young king Ahazwould not have endeared him to that proud monarch who went onto become one of Jerusalem’s most evil kings. Though Scripturedoes not spell it out, there is the implication that Isaiahand his family eventually had to flee Jerusalem to escape kingAhaz’s wrath. This would make Ahaz a forerunner of Herod (cf.Matthew 2:13-14). Here is the reasoning behind such anassumption:
Immanuel we are told, would, before he reached the age ofreason, “feed on curds and honey” (Isaiah 7:15). What doesthat signify? It suggests that the family must have beenobliged to head north, away from Jerusalem, to the regionthat had already been devastated and depopulated by theAssyrian armies, where briars and thorns had taken theplace of abundant vineyards, and where “all who are left inthe country will feed on curds and honey” (vv.22, 23).
Now St. John the Evangelist, in the Book of Revelation, picksup this theme of Immanuel and his mother fleeing into thewilderness to escape the wrath of the ‘king’:
The woman brought a male child into the world, the son whowas to rule all the nations with an iron sceptre, and thechild was taken straight up to God and to his throne, whilethe woman escaped into the desert, where God made a placeof safety ready, for her to be looked after in the 1260days (12:5-6).
This “male child”, the victorious One, who rides the whitehorse, is the Christ, victorious in his Passion and
Resurrection (cf. 5:5). Pope Pius XII stated unequivocally:“He is Jesus Christ” (as quoted in Opus Dei’s The Navarre Bible:Revelation, p. 70).This is actually quite obvious from Revelation’s furtherdescription of Him (19:12-16):
... the name written on Him was known only to Himself, hiscloak was soaked in blood. He is known by the name, TheWord of God. From his mouth came a sharp sword .... He isthe one who will rule [the pagans] with an iron sceptre,and tread out the wine of Almighty God’s fierce anger. Onhis cloak and on his thigh there was a name written: ‘TheKing of Kings and The Lord of Lords’.
He is also Immanuel, “God-with them” (21:3).
As to Revelation’s “Woman”, the “Marian Dimension” of this hasalready been ably explained by others. The Woman also, ofcourse, represents the Church; and, in literal terms, thefledgling Church of St. John’s day, the new Bride, which wasforced to flee into the desert for the duration of 1260 days(i.e. 42 months or 3 and a half years - see below); no doubtin obedience to Our Lord’s Olivet command to his faithful toleave the city of Jerusalem on the eve of her destruction(Matt. 24:15-17,20-22; cf. Mark 13:14):
So when you see the disastrous abomination, of which theprophet Daniel spoke, set up in the Holy Place (let thereader understand), then those in Judæa must escape to themountains .... Pray that you will not have to escape inwinter or on a sabbath. For then there will be greattribulation such as, until now, since the world began,there never has been, nor ever will be again.
[Comment: That this “great tribulation” refers literally to apre-70 AD scenario - and not to any later time, including theC21st - is obvious from the mention of the “sabbath”restricting the movements of peoples in Palestine. All thatJewish legalism went right ‘out the window’ after thedestruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD].
Jesus Christ challenges “the reader” to “understand” about the“Abomination that makes desolate”, from which the faithful
must flee. But what might have been a riddle then for hiscontemporaries is really made easy for us by St. Luke, who,removing all the mystery, tells us that this refers to thepagan armies that will encompass Jerusalem (Luke 21:20). Theseare perhaps the Gog and Magog of Revelation 20:8 - the ideafor which St. John borrowed from Ezekiel 38 and 39 - themulti-nation armies of the ruling empire that would attackJudæa and Jerusalem.“Armageddon” (Revelation 16:16) perhaps refers to Jerusalem’sstrong northern fortress of Har Magedo.St. John picks up this, Our Lord’s command to flee, when hewrites: “A new voice from heaven; I heard it say, ‘Come out,My people, away from [Babylon] so that you do not share in hercrimes and have the same plagues to bear. Her sins havereached up to heaven ...’.” (Revelation 18:4, 5; cf. 18:2).The 1260 days (i.e. 42 months or three and a half years)pertain to the period of the Jewish war in the era 66-70 AD.Now the Virgin Mary did not flee into the desert at this timein history, and for that precise duration of time; for She wasno longer on earth, having taken her place beside her Son inheaven. So, just as in the case of Isaiah’s young wife, theliteral details cannot be made to fit Mary. And yet the Womanof Apocalypse, in the far-sweeping gaze of the Holy Spirit,does symbolise Mary, as does Isaiah’s “maiden”. Fr. Kramer wastherefore quite wrong in his blanket assertion in The Book ofDestiny (p. 276) that: “The woman of chapter twelve is not theBlessed Virgin Mary”. Opus Dei, on the other hand, is mostemphatic about this Marian connection, based on Pope St. PiusX (ibid., p. 26):
As in the case of the parables, not everything in theimagery necessarily happens in real life; and the sameimage can refer to one or more things - particularly whenthey are closely connected, as the Blessed Virgin and theChurch are. So, the fact that this passage is interpretedas referring to the Church does not exclude its referringalso to Mary. More than once, the Church’s Magisterium hasgiven it a Marian interpretation. For example, St. Pius Xsays: ‘Everyone knows that this woman was the image of theVirgin Mary ...’.
Less satisfactory, though, do I find Opus Dei’s implicationthat the Holy Spirit’s text has trouble fitting a specific,given scenario (p. 97):
The mysterious figure of the woman has been interpretedever since the time of the Fathers of the Church asreferring to the ancient people of Israel, or the Church ofJesus Christ, or the Blessed Virgin. The text supports allof these interpretations but in none do all the detailsfit.
Such a misalignment is, I believe, forced upon those who failto recognise in the entire Revelation a consistent historico-literal substratum: namely, that of the era of the Apostles.All of Revelation’s prophecies strongly reflect actualhistorical events in St. John’s near future, though - as isobvious to any sound commentator - they are set in apocalypticdrama and clothed in poetic hyperbole.There will be no problem fitting details once one has theappropriate matrix; the matrix that the Holy Spirit has inmind.Having said that, there is no harm in one’s allegorizing (oneof the three spiritual senses) the whole situation of theWoman fleeing into the desert from the great Red Dragon as thecurrent banishment of Marian devotion, by the Modernists, tothe desert of oblivion, or the rejection by Catholics of OurLady of the Rosary (Fatima) and her message.It seems to me that the historico-literal sense is necessaryto the spiritual sense in a way analogous to the need of thesoul for the body. Admittedly the soul can exist without thebody, even in Heaven, but there is an incompleteness therethat will be resolved only on the last day.
Unmasking the Whore, “Babylon the Great”
St. Augustine, in his The City of God, juxtaposed two cities - thecamp of the just and that of the evil - from Cain and Abelright down to his own day circa C5th AD. Taking a lead fromthis, but adopting alongside it the perspective relevant tothis article, of the good and the evil woman - of divorce andre-marriage - I shall be contrasting Christ’s Bride with theDevil’s Harlot Woman.
The Kingdoms of Israel and Judah (Jerusalem) are typified inmany Scriptures (e.g. Isaiah 1:8, Lamentations 2:13) as aWoman. In Ezekiel, Israel is likened initially to a helplessgirl-child upon whom God (as Father) took pity, nourishing herand watching her grow. Afterwards He dressed her in finery and(as Bridegroom) took her for His spouse; eventually crowningher with queenship so that she became the envy of the nations(16:4-14).But, with the passing of time, she became infatuated with herown beauty; using her fame to make herself a prostitute(v.15); even going beyond the excesses of a prostitute (vv.21, 33-34).For her punishment, God handed her over to “all the lovers”[i.e., the nations], with whom she had been trafficking, butwho had become sick of her filthy ways (v. 28). These were totreat her in the same way as were treated in antiquity “womenwho commit adultery and murder ... stripped ... stoned and runthrough with a sword” (vv. 38, 40).
1. Thus did Assyria do to the northern kingdom of Israelwhich Ezekiel calls Jerusalem’s “sister”. (Fulfilled inc. 720 BC, conventional dating).
2. And so, God warns through Ezekiel, would the Babyloniansdo to Jerusalem for not having learned from her sister’smistakes. (Fulfilled in c. 590 BC, conventional dating).
For the Lord Yahweh says this: “I now hand you[Jerusalem] over to those you hate, to those in whomyou have lost interest. They will treat you withhatred, they will rob you of the fruits of your laboursand leave you completely naked. And thus your shamefulwhoring will be exposed .... As you have copied yoursister’s behaviour, I will put her cup in your hand”.
The Lord Yahweh says this:“You will drink your sister’s cup, a cup that is wideand deep, leading to laughter and mockery, so ample thedraught it holds. You will be filled with drunkennessand sorrow. Cup of affliction and devastation, the cupof your sister Samaria, you will drink it, you willdrain it; then it will be shattered to pieces andlacerate your breast.
I have spoken - it is the Lord Yahweh who speaks”.(Ezekiel 23:28, 29:31-33, 34).
3. And St. John is right in line with this Old Testamenttradition. In Apocalypse he prepares the Jews for thesecond destruction of Jerusalem (by the Romans), just asIsaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel had done for the earlierdestructions, of Israel (by the Assyrians) and Jerusalem(by the Babylonians). Revelation is absolutely saturatedwith references from Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel and Ezekiel;for, according to Fr. Kramer (ibid., 3-4. My emphasis):
The Apocalypse is a prophetical book (IV.1), and itranks St. John with the prophets of the Old Testament(X.11). The “mystery of God” had been declared by His“servants the prophets (X, 7) .... [Apocalypse] is so largely arestatement of the Old Testament prophecies, that some have called it amere compilation.
All the seemingly idiosyncratic imagery used in the Book ofRevelation by Saint John the Evangelist (e.g. “wormwood”,“burning mountain”; “blood sun”, “great hailstones”, etc.)turns out upon investigation to be ‘re-cycled’ imagery in thesense that it has already been used - and its meaningestablished - in the Old Testament. Thus the above graphicimage by Ezekiel of Jerusalem as the drunken whore, holdingthe cup of wrath in her hand, is exactly the same image ofJerusalem that we find in the Book of Revelation (thoughseparated in time from Ezekiel by about half a millennium);the harlot drunk with wine and holding a golden cup in herhand. Thus St. John (17:4-6):
The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and glitteredwith gold and jewels and pearls, and she was holding agolden winecup filled with the disgusting filfth of herfornication; on her forehead was written a name, a crypticname: ‘Babylon the Great, the mother of all the prostitutesand all the filthy practices on the earth’. I saw that shewas drunk, drunk with the blood of saints, and the blood ofthe martyrs of Jesus ....
Here the martyrs of the Old Testament (“saints”) aredistinguished from those of the New Testament (“martyrs ofJesus”); but they all suffered their fate in the one same
city. This city, this vile ‘woman’, is apostate Jerusalem! Sheis also called “the Great City” (e.g. Revelation 14:8; 18:10),and, again, “the Great City known by the symbolic names Sodomand Egypt, in which their Lord was crucified” (11:8).Derogatory names like “Sodom”, “Gomorrah” and “Egypt” wereindeed code-names - or, rather, labels of contempt - appliedby the Old Testament prophets to Israel and Jerusalem turnedharlot. Thus Isaiah addressed Jerusalem’s leaders: “Hear theword of Yahweh, you rulers of Sodom; listen to the command ofour God, you people of Gomorrah ... What a harlot she hasbecome, the faithful city, Zion, that was all justice!”(Isaiah 1:10, 21; cf. Jeremiah 23:14).And St. John, in turn, picks up this usage for Jerusalem -clearly Jerusalem because she is the only city of which it canbe said “in which their Lord was crucified” - and he appliesto her the mystery name of “Babylon”, “a cryptic [symbolical]name” (17:5).And, in case we missed it, St. John goes on to tell us of this“Great City” that: “In her you will find the blood of prophetsand saints, and all the blood that was ever shed on earth”(18:24). Now the Evangelist’s description could not possiblyapply to Rome, despite what even good commentators seem tothink. E.g:
Opus Dei (op. cit.) on Rev 17:1-19:10: “This first section ofthe final scene begins with the depiction of the city ofRome (described as the great harlot, the great city, greatBabylon), its punishment, and its connexion with the beast(the symbol of absolutist antichristian power personifiedby certain emperors (cf 13:18).
Fr. Kramer (The Book of Destiny, pp. 387-8): “The name of theharlot was written on her forehead. Seneca (“Contro. V.i”)says that Roman harlots wore a label with their name ontheir foreheads. That would make this verse point to Rome,since this woman is the figure of the great city. St. Peter(I Peter, V.13) writes from Babylon, by which he surely[sic] means Rome.
[Comment: Roman harlots may indeed have worn a label on theirforeheads, which was ancient practice, but it was of Jerusalemthat Jeremiah shouted: “You had a whore’s forehead” (Jeremiah3:3)].
Note that Rome does not figure at all in the Old Testamentuntil we come all the way down to its very last history,Maccabees (c. 150 years before Christ, conventional dating).Rome is there mentioned, but not at all in terms of St. John’scondemnatory: “In her you will find the blood of prophets andsaints, and all the blood that was ever shed on earth”.Rather, Rome is spoken of most favourably, even eulogised, bythe inspired Maccabean writer. Moreover, the Maccabees hadactually formed an alliance with Rome (I Maccabees 8:1, 12-16).And obviously, from St. John’s description of “Babylon” interms of great antiquity, it cannot refer to any modern-day(historically recent) city.No, St. John’s “Babylon” refers to Jerusalem!In fact Our Lord himself told the Pharisees in what great citythe blood of all holy men had been shed, and was still beingshed (Matthew 23:35-39):
‘... you will draw down on yourselves the blood of everyholy man ... from the blood of Abel ... to the blood ofZechariah ... whom you murdered between the sanctuary andthe altar [i.e., of the Jerusalem Temple]. I tell yousolemnly, all of this will recoil on this generation.Jerusalem Jerusalem, you that kill the prophets and stonethose who are sent to you! ... Your House [Temple] will beleft to you desolate [cf. Abomination that makes desolate],for I promise, you shall not see Me any more until you say:Blessings on Him who comes in the name of the Lord!’(Matthew 23:35-39).
‘This generation’
There is a lot for us to chew over in this statement alone.For starters, here is mention of that coming of Christ thathas so baffled exegetes, that seems emphatically to pertain tothat generation. Yahweh God, who had conceded to Israel a 40-year probation in the desert under Moses (c. 1400 BC), wouldnow again in the time of His Beloved Son allow for about 40years (c. 30-70 AD), a full generation, to enable the Apostlesto gather in whomsoever was destined to be saved. And just asMoses, with assistance from his loyal Levite priests, had tocarry, cajole and exhort his people during the trying sojourn
in the wilderness, so do we find St. Peter, with his loyalteam of Sts. John, Paul, etc., doing the same.
Thus St. Peter: “You must repent ... every one of you must bebaptised in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness ofyour sins, and you will receive the gift of the HolySpirit. ... Save yourselves from this perverse generation”.(Acts 2:38, 41).
And St. John: “I am writing this, my children, to stop yousinning; but if anyone should sin, we have our advocate withthe Father, Jesus Christ ...”. (I John 2:1).
And St. Paul: “The Holy Spirit says: If only you would listento Him today; do not harden your hearts, as happened at theRebellion [Moses’s day], on the Day of Temptation in thewilderness, when your ancestors challenged Me and tested Me,though they had seen what I could do for forty years”.(Hebrews 3:9)
St. Paul in fact most eloquently tried to lift the peoples’minds above the earthly Jerusalem that was passing away, tothe heavenly Jerusalem. “What you have come to is nothingknown to the senses [as it indeed had been in the case ofthose at Mount Sinai, with fire, noise etc.] ...” (Hebrews12:18, etc.).
St. Peter again: “... men with an infinite capacity forsinning ....They may promise freedom but they themselves areslaves ... to corruption; because if anyone lets himself bedominated by anything, then he is a slave to it; and anyonewho has escaped the pollution of the world once by coming toknow our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and who then allowshimself to be entangled by it a second time and mastered, willend up in a worse state than he began in. It would even havebeen better for him never to have learnt the way of holiness,than to know it and afterwards desert the holy rule that wasentrusted to him. What he has done is exactly as the proverbrightly says: The dog goes back to his own vomit, and: Whenthe sow has been washed, it wallows in the mud”. (2 Peter2:14, 19-22).
And St. John again: “Write to the angel of the church inSardis and say, ‘... I know all about you: how you are reputed
to be alive and yet are dead. Wake up; revive what little youhave left: it is dying fast. ... Repent. If you do not wakeup, I shall come to you like a thief, without telling you atwhat hour to expect Me’.” (Revelation 3:1-4).
In this way many were saved, “a huge crowd” (Revelation 19:6).But “the apostasy” of which St. Paul warned (2 Thessalonians2:3), and from which St. John, too, was trying to hold backthe seven churches of Asia (Revelation 1), and from which,too, St. Peter and the other Apostles would have been strivingto protect Judæa and Samaria, was ever working its way also -as it had with Moses’s generation as typified at Meribah andMassa in the desert (Psalm 94).The ‘fruits’ of this apostasy would ultimately be massdestruction.Thus I believe the above texts of the Apostles to be allapproximately contemporaneous witness and exhortation - notwritings separated by decades, before and after thedestruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD! The Jewish people(especially) would be given a full generation of 40 years tochange, with the Apostles urging them not to fall back.Eventually the destroying angel would pass by those who hadbeen marked with the sign of the Lamb, that is the baptisedwho had persevered in their faith. But those who wore the markof the beast (Revelation 14:10), the apostates, would bedestroyed, and violently.This is exactly what Jesus Christ had prophetically alluded toprior to his Passion, when he - having had placed before Himby “some people” the examples of
(i) those slain by the Roman troops of Pilate,and
(ii) others killed by a falling tower – hadinsisted:
‘Unless you do penance you will all perish as they did [thatis, by a violent death]’ (Luke 13:1-5). [Not to mention thedanger of spiritual death].For at the end of the 40 years of probation thousands uponthousands of Jews did die violent deaths at the hands of theRomans, with towers likewise falling upon them, and missiles,stones and fire.
Our Lord’s warning applies to all wicked generations,including our own. And we have also had a ‘John and a Paul’(in John Paul II) telling us, specifically with reference toRevelation, that Vatican II is most essentially a Council ofAdvent, of the Coming.But let us once and for all get away from the idea that somemodern-day Beast is going to implant 666 micro-computer chipsin the foreheads of his followers. More plausibly the ‘mark ofthe beast’ is - like a Satanic aping of the tau marked upon theforehead by the angel in Ezekiel (9:4) - an invisible,spiritual character that the destroying angel could discern,to kill or to spare.Nor should anyone be living in fear of terrible storms of hailof unnatural size. [Comment: I first wrote this beforeSydney’s awesome hailstorm in April of 1999, when some claimedto have seen hailstones even “the size of a bucket”]. The“great hailstones weighing a talent each” of Revelation 16:21are undoubtedly the same as those of the exact same weight asdescribed by the Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus,eyewitness to the ultimate destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD(The Jewish War, 3.7.9, cf. 3.7.10, emphasis added): “...catapults ... threw at once landed upon them with great noise,and stones of the weight of a talent were thrown by the engines thatwere prepared for that purpose, together with fire .... whichmade the wall so dangerous that the Jews durst not to comeupon it”.They were stones from the Roman catapults, not hailstones fromthe clouds.Josephus’s description of this doomed generation, fittinglypunished, completely backs up Our Lord’s numerous complaintsabout it being “an evil and adulterous generation”, (e.g.Matthew 13:39; Mark 8:12; Luke 11:29), and even worse thanSodom and Gomorrah (Matthew 10:15; 11:24 Mark 6:11; Luke10:12). Josephus wrote in retrospect (ibid., 5.10.5): “Neitherdid any other city ever suffer such miseries, nor did any ageever breed a generation more fruitful in wickedness than thiswas, from the beginning of the world”.Is there an analogous situation with the post-Vatican IIgeneration - again one of history’s worst? Is its time ofprobation also running out? Those blessed to have the gift of Faith need to be exhortersand encouragers like the Apostles were to their “perverse
generation”, to save some at any cost (cf. Romans 11:14; ICorinthians 9:22).
“Must Soon Take Place”
Revelation is a book of urgency. The events it describes wereto happen soon. [When the Bible says “soon”, it means soon, asin the case of the birth of Isaiah’s Immanuel - not in theThird Millennium!]. We learn that lesson when we start readingRevelation at its beginning. Plato, in The Republic, had statedan important maxim: “The beginning is the most important partof the book”, and this principle holds a special significancefor the would-be interpreter of Revelation. “Unfortunately”,as Gentry rightly notes (op. cit., p. 40), “too many prophecyenthusiasts leap over the beginning of this book, neversecuring a proper footing for the treacherous path ahead”.The key to Revelation is found in St. John’s beginning (1:1a,3):
This is the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Himto show His servants what must soon [Gk. tachos] takeplace .... Blessed is the one who reads the words of thisprophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take toheart what is written in it, because the time is near [Gk.engys].
Again, in case we missed it, St. John repeats this soon-nessat the very end (22:6):
The angel said to me, ‘These words are trustworthy andtrue. The Lord, the God of the spirit of the prophets, sentHis angel; to show His servants the things that must soontake place’ .... Then he told me, ‘Do not seal up the wordsof the prophecy of this book, because the time is near’.
Just as it would have been senseless for Isaiah’s “sign” forking Ahaz to have been something that would not occur until700 years later, so would John the Evangelist - according toGentry (op. cit. p. 42) “... be taunting [the churches]mercilessly if he were discussing events two thousand or moreyears distant. God answers the anxious cry “How long?” byurging their patience only a “little while longer” (6:10-11).Revelation promises there will no longer be “delay” (10:6)”.
The angel’s command to St. John not to seal up the scroll isalso tellingly in favour of this “soon” interpretation. Theprophet Daniel, by contrast, had been commanded by the angelto keep his “words secret and the book [scroll] sealed untilthe time of the End”, because the things Daniel was shown werenot to happen for a long time in the future - in fact severalhundred years later, in the time of the Apostles’ generation.For Our Lord himself had, during his important OlivetDiscourse when facing the Temple of Jerusalem, referred to the“abomination that makes desolate of which the prophet Danielspoke” (Matthew 24:15; cf. Mark 14:13).We know from Josephus’s history that the Roman armies ofCestius Gallus, that came up to (and surrounded) Jerusalem in66 AD, and had all but conquered the city, had suddenly, moststrangely, retreated. Even Josephus recognised the hand ofProvidence in this most unexpected turnabout. Many Jews, hesaid, fled the city at the time - no doubt e.g. those obedientto Jesus Christ’s Olivet warning. And Josephus is correct inseeing this intermission as only intensifying the pressureultimately, so that with the return of the Roman armies thefinal destruction of Jerusalem, when it came (in 70 AD), wouldbe total. Thus would be fulfilled Our Lord’s prophecy that‘Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the timeof the Gentiles are fulfilled’ (Luke 21:24).St. John recalls this in Revelation 11:2: “But exclude theouter court [of the Temple]; do not measure it, because it hasbeen given to the Gentiles. They will trample on the holy cityfor 42 months”.As Gentry has observed (op. cit., p. 66): “... the tramplingof the temple in AD 70 (Dan. 9:26-27) after its “abomination”(9:27; cf. Matt. 24:15-16; Luke 21:20-21) ends the Gentiles’ability to stamp out the worship of God. In Daniel 9:24-27,Matthew 23:38-24:2, and Revelation 11:1-2, the “holy city” andits Temple end in destruction”.But how do the “times of the Gentiles” relate to the forty-twomonths of Revelation 11:12)? Well, the period would range fromthe spring of 67 AD - when Emperor Nero sent his general,Vespasian, to put down the revolt of the Jews - to August 70 -when the Romans breached the inner wall of Jerusalem,transforming the Temple and city into a raging inferno: aperiod of forty-two months.
The five months of Revelation 9:5 pertain specifically to theperiod when the Jewish defenders held out desperately (onemight say, fanatically), from April 70 - when Titus began thesiege of Jerusalem - until the crescendo at the end of August.According to Gentry (61): “This five months of the Jewish warhappens to be its most gruesome and evil period” (cf. Wars,5.1.1, 4-5; 10:5; 12:4; 13:6).
The Setting
Palestine, not the world, is the stage for the drama ofRevelation, despite translations that tell us of Christ’sjudgment bringing mourning upon “all the tribes of the earth”(NIV). Literal translation of the text shows that St. Johnactually focusses on all the tribes of “the land” (Gk. tês gês),the well-known Promised Land in which the Jews lived. Weshould probably translate the Greek word hê gê as ‘the land’rather than ‘the earth’ in the great majority of cases wherethis occurs in Revelation. According to Gentry (p. 72):
After mentioning the redeemed/sealed of Israel in 14:1-5,John turns his attention to further judgements on the landby means of three woes (14:6-21) and the seven bowls(chaps. 15-16). Though the prophecies are crafted indramatic hyperbole, they refer to historical events. Forinstance, consider the reaping of the grapes of wrath:“they were trampled in the winepress outside the city, andblood flowed out of the press, rising as high as thehorses’ bridles for a distance of 1,600 stadia” (14:20).For compelling reasons, “the city” here appears to beJerusalem:
(1) John defines the city earlier as Jerusalem (11:8);(2) the “harvest” is in “the earth/land” (Gk hê gê;14:15-19);(3) this judgment falls on the place where Jesus wascrucified; “outside the city” (John 19:20; cf. Heb.13:11-13); and(4) the Son of Man “on the cloud” (Rev. 14:14-15)rehearses Revelation’s theme regarding Israel (1:7).
The distance of blood flow is 1,600 stadia, which isroughly the length of the land as a Roman province: The
Itinerarium of Antoninus of Piacenza records Palestine’slength as 1664 stadia.This prophecy refers to the enormous blood flow in Israelduring the Jewish war. Allow me to document this.In his Wars Josephus writes: “the sea was bloody a longway” (3.9.3); “one might then see the lake all bloody, andfull of dead bodies” (3.10.9); “the whole of the countrythrough which they had fled was filled with slaughter, andJordan could not be passed over, by reason of the deadbodies that were in it” (4.7.6); “blood ran down over allthe lower parts of the city, from the upper city” (4.1.10);“the outer temple was all of it overflowed with blood”(4.5.1); “the blood of all sorts of dead carcasses stood inlakes in the holy courts” (5.1.3); and “the whole city randown with blood, to such a degree indeed that the fire ofmany of the houses was quenched with these men’s blood”(6.8.5).
The Burnings
The burning up of a third of the trees of “the land”(Revelation 8:7) reminds of the Romans’ setting villages onfire in conjunction with their denuding the land of its trees.Gentry (ibid.):
Note what Josephus writes about the policy of the Romans:“he also at the same time gave his soldiers leave to setthe suburbs on fire, and ordered that they should bringtimber together, and raise banks against the city” (Wars5.6.2).
The Romans destroyed the trees in Israel for fuel and forbuilding their weapons: “All the trees that were about thecity had been already cut down for the making of the formerbanks” (Wars 5.12.4). “They cut down all the trees thatwere in the country that adjoined to the city, and that forninety furlongs round about” (Wars 6.1.1; cf. 3.7.8;5.6.2). Of Vespasian’s march on Gadara, Josephus writes:“He also set fire, not only to the city itself, but to allthe villas and small cities that were round about it (Wars3.7.1.; cf. 4.9.1). Galilee was all over filled with fireand blood” (Wars 3.4.1.). Vespasian “went and burnt Galileeand the neighbouring parts” (Wars 6/6/2).
When the temple finally burns, Josephus moans: “One wouldhave thought that the hill itself, on which the templestood, was seething hot, as full of fire on every part ofit” (Wars 6.5.1).
And, of course, ultimately the whole city of Jerusalem goesup in flames so that as the Romans take the Jews captive toRome, they relate that they are from “a land still on fireupon every side” (Wars 7.5.5.)
“Babylon”, the code name for the impious city of Jerusalem,was “ruined within a single hour”. “They see the smoke asshe burns” (Revelation 18:9, 19).
A friend of mine remarked that, if our times are following apattern parallel to all of this, then what sort of punishmentis our world in for!
‘Great Tribulation’
Now the ‘great tribulation’ of which Our Lord spoke is noneother than the ‘great tribulation’ of which St. John wrote in,e.g., Revelation 7:14 (cf. Matthew 24:21). These are not meantto be separated by millennia! No need to extrapolate to, say,the Third Millennium, to find the “great tribulation” [though,allegorically, modernistic Relativism today are ‘in thespirit’ of the religious persecution that the Jews were thensuffering at the hands of their own people]; the sevenchurches of Revelation (1:9; 2:9-10, 13) were already feelingthe strain of it.And no need even to go to Rome and Nero for a terriblepersecution of the early Christians. Jerusalem is far enough.On the eve of Nero’s accession, there was a great famine that“spread over the whole empire” (Acts 11:28; cf. Matthew 24:7).“It was about this time that King Herod started persecutingcertain members of the Church. He beheaded James the brotherof John, and when he saw that this pleased the Jews he decidedto arrest Peter as well” (Acts 12:1-3).Some Church Fathers thought that Nero was the Beast ofApocalypse, having shown that his name adds up to 666; theBeast’s heads being the succession of Roman emperors. Be thatas it may, in Herod (not either of the Herods contemporary
with Jesus, of course) the Beast would have found anappropriate ally. Thus (Acts 12:21-23):
... Herod, wearing his robes of state and enthroned on adaïs, made a speech to them. The people acclaimed him with,‘It is a god speaking, not a man!’, and at that moment theangel of the Lord struck him down, because he had not giventhe glory to God. He was eaten away with worms and died.
Need we even necessarily go to the Eternal City of Rome forthe martyrdom of Sts. Peter and Paul? I don’t know. St.Peter’s bones, we are told, lie beneath St. Peter’s in theVatican. But that is not necessarily proof that he died there(cf. Exodus 13:19, where Moses carried Joseph’s bones fromEgypt to Israel). In this regard, I was interested to read inthe Opus Dei commentary re the two witnesses of Revelation 11,who definitely died in Jerusalem (v. 8), that “because the twowitnesses testify to Jesus Christ and die martyrs, traditionidentifies them with Sts. Peter and Paul ...”.But the two witnesses of Revelation could just as well -perhaps even more likely - be two other of the Apostles slainin Jerusalem before the city’s destruction by the Romans: e.g.James the Lesser. Eusebius (The History of the Church) wrote indetail about this great miracle-working Patriarch of Jerusalemwhose martyrdom, he says, was “instantly followed” by thecapture of Jerusalem by the Romans (13:1).Some of the Fathers thought that the two witnesses would beEnoch and Elijah, said not to have died. But this could beonly in an allegorical sense; in the sense of the twowitnesses coming “in the spirit” of Enoch and Elijah (like St.John the Baptist).The next thing we read in Scripture is Jesus’s telling hisdisciples re the Temple that ‘not a single stone standing herewill be left on another’ (Matthew 24:2), and then afterwardstelling His four chief Apostles, Peter, Andrew, James andJohn, privately (the famous Olivet Discourse), about whatwould happen to Jerusalem.The Book of Revelation is Our Lord’s revealing all of thisthrough St. John now, several decades later, to an audiencefar larger than just the select four. The Book of Revelationis, I maintain, a continuation of the Gospels and especiallyof the Olivet Discourse. Why, then, don’t commentators realise
the obvious; that Sts. Peter and John are referring toJerusalem; but under the cryptic name of “Babylon”?And why “Babylon”, instead of, say, “Sodom” or “Egypt”?There is a sad and biting irony in this choice of epithet.Whereas the Babylonians had been they who had destroyed theTemple of Jerusalem the first time round, now it will be theJews themselves, nick-named “Babylon”, who will be responsiblefor burning to the ground their very own Temple. And this timeit would be irrevocable.Admittedly, what makes somewhat confusing the identifying ofRevelation’s “Babylon” is that this scarlet Woman is portrayedas riding on a Beast whose description, “seven hills”, seemsto point clearly to Rome. Commentators then take the wholepackage, Woman plus Beast, as pertaining to Rome; which city -according to tradition - did persecute the followers of Jesus.However, according to the following, this description couldactually fit Jerusalem(http://musingsofanoldpastor.blogspot.com.au/search?q=seven):
The City on Seven Hills Jerusalem was known long before Rome as the city of SevenMountains/hills.Rev 17:9: And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The sevenheads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth.
1. Mt. Gareb, 2. Mt. Acra, 3. Mt. Goath 4. Mt. Bezetha, 5.Mt. Zion, 6. Mt. Ophel, 7. Mt. Moriah.
Revelation more naturally evokes the image of Jerusalem asthe city seated on seven mountains in 17:9 than Rome. Theview that Babylon is a cipher for Jerusalem in theApocalypse cannot then be dismissed on the basis of thiscommon objection; not only can it be defended that theevidence of 17:9 can fit Jerusalem, there are strongreasons to believe that it in fact does most properly fitJerusalem. ….
[End of quote]
Nevertheless, we have already seen in the paradigmatical OldTestament cases of Israel and Jerusalem that two protagonists,not one, were involved, namely:
1. The once just Woman turned Harlot; and;2. Her suitors who have wooed her in the past, made her rich,but who eventually come to loath her, then turn on her anddestroy her.
So some could argue that the same situation is to be found inRevelation: 1. The Woman, Jerusalem, rides on 2. Roman power,but is to be distinguished from the latter which willeventually cause her destruction. The Woman is Jerusalem; theDestroyer is Rome.
When was the Book of Revelation Written?
What has exacerbated the whole exegetical problem of properlyinterpreting Revelation on a literal level is, I believe, theconventional opinion that St. John wrote this Apocalypse inhoary old age, in c. 95 AD, about a quarter of a century afterJerusalem had been destroyed. Hence many commentators areloath to see any relevance for Revelation in the destructionof Jerusalem in 70 AD. Protestant and Catholic writers alikeaccept the late 95 AD date of authorship (Protestant ThomasFoster sharing this view in common with Opus Dei and Fr.Kramer).However, with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran,there has emerged a new scholarship of great expertise astypified by Fr. Jean Carmignac, showing that the books of theNew Testament literature (esp. the Gospels), were composedmuch earlier than was originally thought.And the signs are that the entire New Testament, includingRevelation, pre-dates 70 AD.I believe that there is abundant evidence in the Apocalypse toindicate that it was written early. In fact the reason thatprevented my writing this article initially was: Where tostart? There is so much! My effort in the end had been greatlyassisted by my finding Gentry’s preterist interpretation onthe eve of commencing this article.The whole Book of Revelation is focussed upon the Holy Landand especially Jerusalem. The Temple; the golden altar; the 24elders keeping watch at Beth Moked in the north from where anattack might come (and general Titus did in fact takeJerusalem from there, at the city’s weakest point); thesabbath restrictions; etc., etc.
Apart from their late dating of St. John’s Revelationpreventing commentators from recognising the obvious, that“Babylon” is Jerusalem, this path they have taken leads theminto other awkward anomalies as well. It is commonly believedthat St. Paul had already completed his missionary activityand had been martyred well before St. John the Evangelistwrote the Book of Revelation. Paul is given the credit forhaving established the seven churches to which John laterwrote. This view forces commentators into making such strangeobservations as Fr. Kramer’s: “... St. John could not haveinterfered in the administration of the churches in thelifetime of St. Paul” (op. cit., pp. 7-8).Oh, no? Was St. Paul (who even refers to himself as a verylate arrival on the scene, I Corinthians 15:8) greater thanSt. John, the Beloved Disciple of Our Lord? St. Paul himself would answer us an emphatic: ‘No’! Of hisvisit to Jerusalem after his 14 year absence, he tells us:“... James, Cephas and John, these leaders, these pillars, shook handswith Barnabas and me .... The only thing they insisted on was thatwe should remember to help the poor ...” (Galatians 2:9, 10).St. John was by no means subservient to St. Paul; butapparently gave orders to the latter.All the Apostles had a hand in establishing the churchesthroughout Judaea and Samaria, as Jesus Christ had commandedthem, and then “to the ends of the earth”, which St. Paulboasted had been achieved even in his day (Colossians 1:23).And Our Lord told the Apostles, “solemnly”, that they wouldnot have completed “the rounds of the towns of Israel beforethe Son of Man comes” (Matthew 10:23).We had better look now briefly at that particular ‘Coming’.
The ‘Coming’ for the Apostles
The Son of Man refers on various occasions to his ‘coming withHis kingdom’ in the context that it would occur whilst some ofthose present were still alive (e.g. Matthew 16:28; Luke9:27). Liberal modernist exegetes, imagining that Christ couldhere be referring only to his final and definitive Coming,love to point out that, because it has not occurred to thisday, Jesus Christ was prone to error, was not omniscient, andthat the Apostles who had expected His coming in their daywere deluded (especially St. Paul).But there may be more than one biblical ‘coming’.
Only a matter of about a week after Our Lord had addressed theabove words to His disciples, there had occurred theTransfiguration, to which St. Peter would refer back in lateryears in the context of “the coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ”(cf. 2 Peter 1:16 and 1:18-19). At least, it seems to havebeen a kind of preview of the real thing. The risen Lord toldPeter, in regard to John: “‘If I want him to stay behind tillI come, what does it matter to you? You are to follow Me’. Therumour then went out among the brothers that this disciple[John] would not die. Yet Jesus had not said to Peter, ‘Hewill not die’, but, ‘If I want him to stay behind till Icome’.” (John 21:21-23)Since the Apostles greatly yearned for the ‘coming’ of JesusChrist, could that have been the definitive ‘coming’ at theend of the world? I suggest not. Too far away. Rather theApostles were yearning for a ‘coming’ of Jesus in their ownday; one that would, in some cases, coincide with theirmartyrdom, their being uplifted into Heaven (as in the case ofthe deaths of the two witnesses). Apparently Christ hadapprised them of this; for St Peter wrote: “I know the timefor taking off this tent is coming soon, as Our Lord JesusChrist foretold to me” (2 Peter 1:14). Presumably the Masterwould also have told St. Paul; for did he not ‘show [Paul] howmuch he himself must suffer for My name’ (Acts 9:16)?Was this ‘coming’ for the Apostles therefore the kind ofconsoling heavenly visitation that St. Stephen Protomartyr hadexperienced just before his death (Acts 7:56): ‘I can seeheaven thrown open ... and the Son of Man standing at theright hand of God’?Did it, for many of them, coincide with his victorious comingin 70 AD as the Rider upon the white horse, to oversee thedestruction of harlot Jerusalem and the now-corrupted Judaïcsystem?Because Our Lord’s predictions are - for those who believe himto be the Word Incarnate - infallible, there must have been a‘coming” already in the days of the Apostles, of thatparticular generation. 70 AD (conventional dating) is then thelikely date for it.The 40 years of probation for the ‘woman’ were now up. It wasto be divorce and execution.
