Sermon Tone Analysis

Summary

Revelation 14 looks back at the 144,000, the sealed counterparts to those who bear the name and mark of the Beast (Rev 13).

The chapter includes messages from various angels who initiate the judgment of the wicked nations and their gods at the Day of the Lord.

In this episode we discuss the Old Testament imagery used to describe this judgment, including the Fall of “Babylon,” the winepress of God’s wrath, and the harvest of the earth with the sickle.

Introduction

Yeah, we’re going to get through the chapter, in part because the first five verses we’ve essentially already covered before.

So we might as well just jump in here so that we can get through the whole chapter.

The first five verses are the 144,000.

And so we’re not going to repeat that material.

You can go back and listen to earlier meetings for all of that.

So we’re going to jump in at verse 6.

So Revelation 14:6.

And I’m going to read to about verse 13.

So Revelation 14:6, we’re going to get three angels here that have messages.

So verse 6 says:

So that’s Revelation 14:6-13.

And a couple of comments on a few things in here.

First, the reference to the angel “flying” isn’t proof that angels have wings.

I thought I would throw this in here because of what I’ve said in the past.

You know, in other contexts where non-bird things fly (like the woman of Revelation 12) they are given wings, but we don’t get that detail here.

So if we look up the terminology in LSJ (which is the Liddell, Scott… Greek lexicon), elsewhere in classical Greek this same term (that’s used in Revelation 14:6) is used of flight that does not require wings.

For example, the flight of the soul, the flight of horses and chariots, the flight of javelins, the flight of dancers.

It’s really used of any quick motion.

If you’re looking for a specific textual reference, the Iliad 22.362, would be one.

But LSJ has all these sorts of things laid out.

So this doesn’t prove that angels have wings.

And Aune, in his Revelation commentary, actually bothers to comment about this, which I thought was kind of interesting.

He says:

It is of interest that this is the earliest reference in Jewish or Christian literature to an angel (apart from cherubim and seraphim) flying.

While cherubim and seraphim are described as having wings and as flying, angels in general are not (1 Chr 21:16 merely states that the angel of the Lord was seen standing between heaven and earth, not that he had wings or was flying).

Even in Rev 14:6, however, the flying angel is not necessarily described as winged.

Well, it isn’t described as winged.

The first clear reference to angels (and demons) with wings is found in Tertullian [ in his] Apologia.22.8.

So it’s the early Church Fathers where you first get the winged description applied specifically to angels.

So there you go.

This is church tradition.

It’s just something that… It is what it is.

It’s nothing sinister or evil or anything like that.

But I thought I should mention this because of things we’ve said before.

I just thought it was interesting too that Aune even bothered to comment on it.

But he did.

Mid-heaven

Now there’s a cosmological note to be made here.

We’ve commented a little bit on this language in an earlier episode, about this spatial area, the midst of heaven, or “midheaven.”

And Aune notes here of… You go back to Revelation 14:6.

He sees the angel flying directly overhead.

“Directly overhead,” this phrase is the same terminology that we saw earlier that denotes midheaven.

So Aune writes this:

The phrase petomenon ev mesouranēmati, “flying in midheaven”, means that the angel appeared in the place where he could be seen and heard by everyone on earth, since his message was directed to all human beings [ now here’s the interesting part].

This of course presupposes a world shaped like a flat disk rather than a sphere.

While Aristotle thought the earth was spherical (Cael.

2.14; 298a), it was more commonly thought to be flat and circular with Delphi at the center and surrounded by Ocean (Herodotus 5.49) or flat and rectangular (Ephorus of Cyme according to Strabo 1.2.28).

This conception of a flat, circular earth survived into Hellenistic and Roman times (Anth.

Graec.

9.778 [Gow-Page, Greek Anthology 1:300–301])

So this, again, denotes this sort of what I would call this prescientific, premodern cosmology.

And it does make sense of the phrase “flying in midheaven.”

If that means “in a place above the middle of the earth” (think of the earth as a round disc), then the description has meaning, because this is where you would go to make sure everybody hears you.

You’re at a central location, as opposed to going to one end or the other, or the edge of the circle, or whatever.

So there’s actually a point to the language here.

But the point is communicated by means of language that denotes this premodern cosmology.

The first angel’s message (in Revelation 14) is referred to as… The Greek term is actually the term for “gospel” (euangelion).

So in Revelation 14:6, ESV translates that the angel had “an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on the earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people.”

So this is the normal word for what you get in the New Testament for referring to Jesus’ work on the cross and the resurrection and so on and so forth.

Here it seems better to translate it just as a “good news” or “good message,” since the content of what this “gospel” is is defined in verse 7, which says (and this is the angel talking now):

You say, “Well, how is that good news?”

Well, it’s good news to the righteous, because they are about to be vindicated.

Babylon is about to fall.

The Lord is going to step in now into history and judge the wicked.

He’s going to put an end to the chaos system.

So you go to verse 8 and you get the second angel.

That angel’s message is “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, she who made all nations drink the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality.“

Now that phrase (“fallen, fallen is Babylon the great”) derives from Isaiah 21:9.

So I’m going to read that.

And it says here:

So again, this is a judgment passage.

The Lord is judging Babylon in Isaiah 21, and so that’s the context for what John has written here.

Now if you tie that into the earlier verse, about proclaiming to those who dwell on the earth, to every nation, tribe, language, and people… “Fear God...” Here’s the content of the good news before we hear that Babylon is fallen.

“Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come, and worship him.

All of you out there, and all nations, all tribes, all languages and people, worship him—worship Yahweh—who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water.”

Again, this combination of things in these verses… You can probably already tell.

This is the Psalm 82 judgment.

This is the reversal of the Deuteronomy 32 problem.

It’s the judgment.

This is Day of the Lord language—Babylon, the whole chaos system.

Of course, Babylon is the place from which this sprang—the fragmentation of the nations.

So Beale and McDonough write:

The phrase “fallen, fallen is Babylon” derives from Isa. 21:9, and it is equivalent to the ensuing statement there that the idols of Babylon are destroyed.

The destruction of the idolatrous system of the world is also in mind here, as chapter 13 and the immediately following verses 14:9, 11 bear out.

The Isaiah allusion is merged with another OT reference.

So they’re saying there’s also another passage we could look at here.

The title “Babylon the Great” is based on the identical name of the city in Dan.

4:30 [ specifically reading with the Septuagint (the Greek) there to match John’s Greek] (LXX/Theodotion [4:27 MT]).

In Dan. 4 the name forms part of an expression of the king’s self-glorification, for which he is about to be judged.

Now in Rev. 14:8 the latter-day Babylon meets its end.

So you know, the judgment of the Babel chaos.

It’s a judgment of the gods of the nations, in a more final sort of sense, because of John’s harkening back to Isaiah 21.

He loops that into this Day of the Lord judgment here to communicate the idea that not only are the gods of the nations going to be judged, but all of the nations should worship Yahweh.

So there’s this notion of, really, the Great Commission being accomplished.

This is the fullness of the Gentiles content.