3/24/2024
We’re reading through Revelation along with NT Wright’s Revelation for Everyone. These notes include discussions of topics of additional interest and attempt connections with more Old Testament material. Quotations on this page are from the NET Bible.
Then I saw another powerful angel descending from heaven, wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow above his head; his face was like the sun, and his legs were like pillars of fire.
Given everything we’ve studied so far, who is this?
There are quite a few Old Testament passages in which an angel shares characteristics with God himself, and it’s difficult to know how or even whether to distinguish between God and the angel. Here are a few of the earlier examples.
Genesis 16:7-13
The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring of water in the wilderness—the spring that is along the road to Shur. He said, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?” She replied, “I’m running away from my mistress, Sarai.”
Then the angel of the Lord said to her, “Return to your mistress and submit to her authority. I will greatly multiply your descendants,” the angel of the Lord added, “so that they will be too numerous to count.” …So Hagar named the Lord who spoke to her, “You are the God who sees me”
Exodus 3:2-6
Now Moses was shepherding the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to the mountain of God, to Horeb. The angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from within a bush. He looked, and the bush was ablaze with fire, but it was not being consumed! So Moses thought, “I will turn aside to see this amazing sight. Why does the bush not burn up?” When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to look, God called to him from within the bush and said, “Moses, Moses!” And Moses said, “Here I am.” God said, “Do not approach any closer! Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” He added, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Then Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.
Exodus 23:20-23
“I am going to send an angel before you to protect you as you journey and to bring you into the place that I have prepared. Take heed because of him, and obey his voice; do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgressions, for my Name is in him. But if you diligently obey him and do all that I command, then I will be an enemy to your enemies, and I will be an adversary to your adversaries. For my angel will go before you and bring you to the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, and I will destroy them completely.
He held in his hand a little scroll that was open, and he put his right foot on the sea and his left on the land.
Revelation 5:2-5
And I saw a powerful angel proclaiming in a loud voice: “Who is worthy to open the scroll and to break its seals?” But no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or look into it. So I began weeping bitterly because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or to look into it. Then one of the elders said to me, “Stop weeping! Look, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has conquered; thus he can open the scroll and its seven seals.”
Now, the powerful angel has an open scroll.
Why is it small? Best guess is that because the angel is massive in stature, the scroll is small in comparison, human-sized so John can take and eat
Then he shouted in a loud voice like a lion roaring, and when he shouted, the seven thunders sounded their voices. When the seven thunders spoke, I was preparing to write, but just then I heard a voice from heaven say, “Seal up what the seven thunders spoke and do not write it down.”
He reveals things to John that we are not supposed to know.
The hidden things belong to God alone (Deut. 29:29); until Jesus returns, we know in part only (1 Cor. 13:9). - Craig Keener
Deuteronomy 29:16-29 is the “curses” section of God’s covenant with Israel. In it, God delineates what judgment will look like if Israel turns to committed rebellion and also tells us “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but those that are revealed belong to us and our descendants forever, so that we might obey all the words of this law.”
In the 1 Corinthians 13 passage on love, Paul approaches a similar idea from an opposite direction, “Love never ends. But if there are prophecies, they will be set aside; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be set aside. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part, but when what is perfect comes, the partial will be set aside. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. But when I became an adult, I set aside childish ways. For now we see in a mirror indirectly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, just as I have been fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
Then the angel I saw standing on the sea and on the land raised his right hand to heaven and swore by the one who lives forever and ever, who created heaven and what is in it, and the earth and what is in it, and the sea and what is in it, “There will be no more delay! But in the days when the seventh angel is about to blow his trumpet, the mystery of God is completed, just as he has proclaimed to his servants the prophets.”
The angel spans all three tiers of the heavens, waters, and land creation model we’ve looked at in earlier classes. His size is possibly intended to portray this angel as more awesome than the Greek or Roman gods.
Daniel 12 asks, “How long?” Here the angel says, “There will be no more delay.”
Daniel 12:4-7
But you, Daniel, close up these words and seal the book until the time of the end. Many will dash about, and knowledge will increase.”
I, Daniel, watched as two others stood there, one on each side of the river. One said to the man clothed in linen who was above the waters of the river, “When will the end of these wondrous events occur?” Then I heard the man clothed in linen who was over the waters of the river as he raised both his right and left hands to the sky and made an oath by the one who lives forever: “It is for a time, times, and half a time. Then, when the power of the one who shatters the holy people has been exhausted, all these things will be finished.”
Then the voice I had heard from heaven began to speak to me again, “Go and take the open scroll in the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land.” So I went to the angel and asked him to give me the little scroll. He said to me, “Take the scroll and eat it. It will make your stomach bitter, but it will be as sweet as honey in your mouth.”
So I took the little scroll from the angel’s hand and ate it, and it did taste as sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach became bitter. Then they told me: “You must prophesy again about many peoples, nations, languages, and kings.”
Ezekiel 3
He said to me, “Son of man, eat what you see in front of you—eat this scroll—and then go and speak to the house of Israel.” So I opened my mouth and he fed me the scroll.
He said to me, “Son of man, feed your stomach and fill your belly with this scroll I am giving to you.” So I ate it, and it was sweet like honey in my mouth.
He said to me, “Son of man, go to the house of Israel and speak my words to them.
The man goes on to say the people of Israel won’t listen
“Take” and “eat” may just be words in common use, but it is worth considering whether they recall Jesus’ words at the Last Supper and Eve’s Genesis 3 failed temptation.