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Summary
This episode continues our series on John’s use of the Old Testament in the book of Revelation.
We resume with material in Rev 1:4 not covered in the previous episode and move the discussion into verses 5-6.
What is the relationship of the seven churches to the seven spirits before God’s throne?
How do they relate to the seven lampstands and stars in verses 12-16?
What passages from the Old Testament is John alluding to and why?
Well, we find ourselves still in Revelation 1.
And we’re still in verse 4 (at least we will be a little bit).
We covered a lot in verse 4 last time, specifically the phrase “who is and who was and who is to come.”
There are some things still in verse 4 that I want to say something about and then move into verses 5 and 6.
So that’s where we’re going to camp out today, really: Revelation 1:4-6.
And I’m just going to read verse 4 to get us started here.
It says that:
So to launch here, we want to talk about the seven churches and the seven spirits.
It’s transparently obvious John is writing to seven churches.
And then he mentions… He throws in this line about “the seven spirits who are before his throne” (God’s throne).
So if you just looked at this verse, it doesn’t connect these spirits, even though they’re both seven (seven churches and seven spirits).
So you sort of intuitively connect them (mentally, anyway).
The verse doesn’t actually do that.
So it raises the question, “Well, who are the seven spirits before the throne of God?” Later in the chapter we’re going to get a little more information.
That’s where connections are made, and we’re going to get there because we’re not going to stay in verses 4-6.
We’re going to have to jump out a little bit into verses 12-16 to help us understand what’s in 4-6 specifically.
But we’ll get to that in a moment
If you keep reading into the book of Revelation, you run into some things that contribute to what we did just read in verse 4—this whole thing about the seven
churches and the seven spirits.
So if you keep reading, when you hit verse 12, you’re going to run into another seven—seven golden lampstands (Revelation 1:12).
So as we’ll see, these are actually better understood as menorah branches.
Like if you can think of a menorah lamp in your head, these would be the branches actually.
So these are actually seven menorah branches, not seven separate lampposts (to use a modern description).
And in verse 16, we run into seven again.
This time it’s seven stars in the right hand of the glorified son of man.
So we’ve got these sevens.
Now in verse 16, the seven stars are identified as angels of the seven churches.
So the seven stars are actually seven angels, and they are connected here.
In verse 16 it starts, but when you get to verse 20, it’s even more specific.
So really from verse 12, verse 16, and verse 20, you put all those together and go back and read verse 4 and this is where you start to get the connections.
So we’ve got seven stars identified as angelsof the seven churches (verses 16 and 20).
The seven lampstands are identified as the seven churches (also in verse 20).
And if you keep reading, again, in Revelation 3:1
that’s the glorified son of man from Revelation 1:16) is also said to have the seven spirits(that’s language from Revelation 1:4).
And that implies that the seven spirits of 1:4 are in fact these stars who are angels of the seven churches.
So all these things are connected.
And there’s actually a good deal to support John making these connections, using these images together collectively and intertwining them.
There’s actually a good deal of precedent for that in Second Temple Jewish literature.
I’ll just give you one example from Beale’s commentary here.
He writes:
A similar phenomenon [all these elements] is traceable in 1 En.
90:20–25, where “seven white ones” [who are in that passage identified as angels] and
[are also mentioned with] seventy “stars”…
…Also identified with angels.
So 1 Enoch 90 does this.
And it’s based on the context of things that the writer of 1 Enoch found in the book of Daniel (imagery in Daniel 7:10, in Daniel 9:2, 24, and in Daniel 12—this star language, this celestial language).
Also in 1 Enoch 21:3, Beale says, there are seven stars that are equivalent to seven angels.
He writes:
This evidence suggests that these stars [here in Revelation] are heavenly angelic beings (see 1 En.
86:1–3 and 88:1, where stars also symbolize angels).
So again, there’s precedent for this.
And just by way of a quick summary, in verse 4 we’ve got seven churches that are in Asia.
We have seven spirits who are before God’s throne.
And then if we keep reading, verses 12, 16, and 20, these seven stars are identified as angels.
The seven lampstands are the seven churches.
And the stars are also the seven spirits, so they’re also angels.
I mean… And John is drawing this (as Beale noted of 1 Enoch) from a number of passages.
I mean, John knows all this stuff in Daniel.
He knows about the star language in Daniel and elsewhere, where you have angels identified as stars.
But now he’s looping in lampstands and all this other stuff.
So it’s already feeling a bit convoluted.
[laughs] You know, like, “Can’t John just cite an Old Testament verse, like, close to its entirety and just talk about it and move on?”
And the answer is, “No! No, he just doesn’t do that.”
And we talked about this in the introduction.
I’m going to keep bringing this up, at least for the first few episodes in this series, that this is not what John does.
John has thoughts running through his head (or putting him in the context of the vision, he sees things).
And his mind is so filled with lots of the Old Testament that he just starts picking things off the shelf to describe for his reader what it is that he’s seeing and also what it means,
telegraphing what the imagery is pointing to.
And it is not as easy as a verse-by-verse citation.
He just throws it all into the blender.
So to this point, we’ve got seven spirits (who are stars, who are angels) identified with seven churches (also called lampstands).
We also have… Let’s not forget Jesus in all this.
Jesus, the glorified son of man, is “in their midst.”
And that is the wording of Revelation 1:13.
Now again, the “son of man” language is easy to see.
We’re going to hit it now and we’re going to hit it in the next section as well.
And you should all know it comes from Daniel 7 where the son of man gets the deity epithet, “the one who rides on the clouds” and “comes with the clouds.”
And Daniel 7, as well, features the Ancient of Days (hair and clothing white as snow, pure wool, with a throne of fire).
Now I’m going to go back just before we get a little too far into this.
I’m going to read you, just so it’s in your head… I mean, a lot of it already is.
And I know that because we’re familiar with our audience here.
But I’m going to read Revelation 1:12-16.
So we got verse 4 (the seven spirits and the seven churches).
And then we hit verse 12:
You already know that that isn’t from Daniel 7, and again, we’ll get to all these details either in this or the subsequent episode.
14 The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow.
His eyes were like a flame of fire,
That’s verse 14.
And you know that, “Well, in Daniel 7, that’s the language about the Ancient of Days, not the son of man.”
You’re correct.
“Why is John mixing the two?” Again, just hold on.
15 his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters.
If you’re thinking, “Well, that sounds a little bit like Ezekiel chapter 1 and chapter 43,” well, yeah, it does.
Again, John is throwing it all into the blender.
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