When Power Claims God

Introduction

Over the past year, an alarming number of voices in American Christianity have claimed that God has anointed political leaders.

Recently, reports surfaced that military commanders have even invoked the Book of Revelation to rally troops, saying that the President...

“has been anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his return to Earth.”

Whenever sacred texts are used in this way...

...whenever scripture is invoked to sanctify war...

...the church must pause and return to the text itself.

War requires careful and communal discernment.

The Book of Revelation requires careful discernment.

The Book of Revelation is one of the most misunderstood books in the Bible.

Written near the end of the first century by a man named John, who had been exiled to the island of Patmos.

Revelation emerged from a community living in the shadow of the Roman Empire.

It is apocalyptic scripture, in other words, an unveiling that is filled with visions, symbols, and cosmic imagery.

These images were not meant to serve as a roadmap for predicting modern geopolitical events.

Rather, they helped early Christians make sense of their lived reality under imperial domination.

In Revelation, Rome is symbolically named Babylon...

...the great city whose powers appear unstoppable but whose judgment is certain.

Yet… the book does not end in destruction… we think of Armageddon when we think of Revelation and the end of the world...

But Revelation ends with hope...

“Look, God’s dwelling is here with humankind… he will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

Revelation holds together deep pessimism about the brutality of empire with deep optimism about God’s ultimate justice.

For centuries, powerful nations have sometimes used the Bible to justify conquest and colonization.

Theological doctrines, such as the Doctrine of Discovery, even supported European colonial expansion...

...the doctrine that claimed lands inhabited by non-Christians could be seized in the name of Christ.

In response to these histories, modern scholars developed what is called postcolonial biblical interpretation.

This is where scripture is read from the perspective of those who lived under the empire rather than those who wield imperial power.

...and when Revelation is read from that perspective, something becomes clear...

...it is not a book written to empower the empire...

...but a book written to expose it.

Which brings us to an important truth: there are times when rulers claim divine purpose for human conflict. When such occurs, Scripture calls God's people to discernment and faithful resistance.

Friends, the question for us to wrestle with today is this: How do we discern the voice of Christ when rulers claim divine authority for their actions?

Listen First to Jesus

Today, it seems as if we live in a world where every conflict is interpreted as a sign that the end has begun.

Every war, every rumor of war, every geopolitical shift becomes evidence that history is about to collapse.

Voices rise claiming special insight...

Voices insisting they know what God is doing and when the final chapter will unfold.

For many Christians today, this is exactly how the Book of Revelation is treated.

It becomes a lens through which every headline is decoded, and every conflict is assigned prophetic meaning.

But long before Revelation was written, Jesus himself addressed this very temptation.

In our gospel text today, the disciples ask Jesus a question that has fascinated believers for centuries: When will the end come?

Jesus' response is striking.

He does not give them a timetable.

He does not point to specific wars or rulers.

Instead, he begins with a warning...

“See that no one leads you astray.”

...and then he adds something even more surprising...

“You will hear of wars and rumors of wars...but the end is not yet.”

Wars will happen.

Conflicts will arise.

Nations will rise against nations.

But Jesus tells his followers not to panic and not to assume that these events signal the final moment of history.

The first instruction Jesus gives his disciples about the end times is not a prediction.

It is discernment.

History is full of moments when people have tried to attach biblical prophecy to current events.

Christians once claimed Napoleon was the Antichrist.

Others believed Hitler’s rise fulfilled Revelation.

During the Cold War, many believed nuclear conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union would trigger Armageddon.

Each generation has been tempted to read Revelation like a roadmap of future wars.

...and each time, history has proven those predictions wrong.

So when someone claims that a modern war will ignite Armageddon, the first place Christians must go is not speculation...

...but the words of Jesus.

Jesus says… “See that no one leads you astray.”

Faithfulness in uncertain times does not mean deciphering prophetic codes.

It means remaining grounded in the voice of Christ.

...and the voice of Christ tells us that wars may shake the world...

...but they do not determine the timetable of God.

We discern the voice of Christ by listening first to Jesus.

Read Revelation from the Margins

...and part of that discernment is reading revelation from the margins.

Imagine hearing the Book of Revelation for the first time...

...not as a modern reader sitting comfortably in a pew.

...but as a small Christian community under the shadow of the Roman Empire.

Rome controlled the economy.

Rome controlled the military.

Rome even demanded worship of the emperor as divine.

Refusing that system could cost you your job, your property, or even your life.

...and into that world came a vision...

Rome is not eternal.

The empire that seems unstoppable will fall.

The powers that demand worship will be judged.

The Lamb of God will ultimately reign...

Friends, Revelation was not written to emperors.

It was written to people living under the empire.

In the first Revelation reading, the sixth bowl prepares the way for what later becomes known as Armageddon.

But notice what actually happens.

Demonic spirits go out to the kings of the earth, performing signs and gathering them for battle.

The text does not celebrate their war...

...it exposes the deception behind it.

Empire believes it is acting with power and authority...

...yet it is being drawn into destruction.

...and then, suddenly, Christ interrupts the scene with a warning...

“See, I am coming like a thief. Blessed is the one who stays awake.”

The point is not predicting a battlefield...

The point is watchfulness.

The mysterious place called Armageddon appears only once in the entire Bible.

It is not a map of future war.

It is symbolic language revealing the ultimate collapse of imperial power.

Revelation is not teaching Christians how to wage war.

It is teaching persecuted believers how to remain faithful when the empire demands allegiance.

For centuries, powerful nations have used scripture to justify domination.

The church is complicit as well...

For years, missionaries sometimes arrived alongside imperial expansion.

As the African theologian Musa Dube famously summarized...

“When the white man came, he had the Bible, and we had the land. After we prayed, the white man had the land, and we had the Bible.”

Post-colonial biblical scholars remind us that scripture must be read from the perspective of those who suffer under power, not those who wield it.

When Revelation is read from the perspective of empire, it becomes a weapon used to justify violence.

...but when Revelation is read from the margins...

...from the perspective of the persecuted church...

...it becomes something else entirely.

It becomes a message of resistance and hope.

It becomes a message of resistance and hope.

...and that means whenever Revelation is used to rally nations toward war, we should pause.

Because the book that exposes the empire should never be used to empower it.

We discern the voice of Christ by listening first to Jesus and reading Revelation from the margins.

Follow the Crucified Lord

...and as Christians we follow the crucified Christ in that discernment.

We are living in a moment when the language of power and war is becoming increasingly normalized.

The Department of Defense becomes the Department of War.

Warships are no longer named after states or ideals...

...but entire classes of ships now carry the name of political leaders.

Military briefings speak openly about targets, operations, and decisive strikes.

Even our entertainment shapes how we imagine conflicts.

Video games like Call of Duty place players inside simulated battlefields where success is measured by missions completed, enemies defeated, and points earned.

...and recently that line blurred even further when government messaging about military strikes adopted imagery that looked strikingly familiar to those games.

Real war...

...presented in the language of gameplay.

When the language of battle becomes ordinary...

...when national power begins to sound sacred...

...when war begins to feel inevitable...

...it becomes easy to assume that history itself is moving toward one final decisive battle...

...and that God must be on our side.

That is remarkably close to the world in which the Book of Revelation was first heard.

Rome celebrated its military victories.

Generals marched through cities in triumphal parades.

Coins bore the emperor’s image and declared him lord and savior of the world.

Power looked like conquest.

...and then John gives the church a vision.

Heaven opens.

A rider appears on a white horse.

But the rider is not Caesar.

It is Christ.

Our second reading from Revelation describes the rider as Faithful and True...

...and John says that from his mouth comes a sharp sword.

Notice the detail carefully...

The sword is not in Christ’s hand.

It comes from his mouth.

The weapon of Christ is the word of God...

...truth that exposes the lies of empire.

...and then John gives us another striking detail.

Christ’s robe is already stained with blood before the battle even begins.

The one who confronts the empire is the one the empire tried to destroy.

The crucified one now stands as Lord.

James Cone reminds the church that the cross reveals what happens when systems of domination encounter God’s liberating love.

The cross was Rome’s instrument of terror.

It was designed to crush resistance and silence those who threatened the system.

...but the resurrection exposes the lie at the heart of empire.

Friends, the one executed by imperial power is the one whom God vindicates.

Empire demolishes school buildings.

Empire guns down its citizens who demand democracy.

Empire are the ones who send a smiling secretary to do fist pumps during war updates.

Empire crucifies.

God raises the crucified.

...and in that act, the powers of death are exposed for what they are.

They are real.

They are violent.

...but they are not ultimate and that gives me hope.

This is why Revelation ultimately asks the church a question of allegiance.

When rulers claim divine authority for their actions...

...when war is framed as part of God’s plan...

...when empire begins to sound like the voice of heaven...

Christians must remember who the true Lord is...

Not the emperor.

Not the nation.

Not the empire.

The true Lord is the Crucified and risen Christ.

...and the reign of that Lord does not look like domination.

The victory of the Lamb is not the triumph of empire...

It is the triumph of...

...truth over lives...

...justice over domination...

...and life over every power of death...

Kerygmatic Fulfillment

Now some of you may have been listening to all of this and thinking...

“Exactly. Iran is the empire in this story. The United States is the force standing against evil.”

Others…

...may be hearing the same sermon and thinking the opposite....

“The United States is the empire in this story.”

That is the difficulty of reading Revelation in the middle of history.

Every nation is tempted to imagine itself as the righteous power in the story.

Rome believed that about itself, too.

Rome believed its armies were bringing peace to the world.

Rome believed its victories were divinely favored.

Rome believed it was saving civilization from chaos.

...and yet the Book of Revelation was written to people living under Rome, not leading it.

Which brings us back to the question we asked earlier...

How do we discern the voice of Christ when rulers claim divine authority for their actions?

Today we named three guides...

First, we listen to Jesus.

Jesus warned his followers not to be led astray by wars and rumors of wars.

Second, we read Revelation from the margins...

...remembering that this book was written as resistance literature for communities living under empire.

Third, we follow the crucified Lord...

...the one whom the empire executed and whom God raised from the dead.

...because the victory of God does not come through the triumph of nations.

The victory of God comes through the Lamb who was slain.

...and so we, the church, bear witness...

...not to the power of empire...

...but to the reign of Christ formed in holy love.

Christ is Lord.

Not Caesar.

Not an empire.

The crucified and risen one is our Lord.

In the name of our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. Amen.