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The
Book of Revelation and the End of Evil ‘No, there is
no escape. There is no heaven with a little of hell in it…. Out Satan must
go, every hair and feather.’ George
MacDonald ‘The
darkness is very deep; but our God has gone deeper still.’ Corrie
ten Boom Up
until about a decade ago, there were still people in the world who doubted the
objective existence of evil. My feeling is that these days such folk are a
dying breed. It used to be that when you wanted to cite an example of evil you
would immediately turn to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi holocaust. Now you only
have to go back as far as yesterday’s news. Terrorism, child abuse, mass
poverty, racism, intolerance, pollution of the environment, personal criticism,
religious conviction, any form of physical suffering: all these are
instinctively denounced, rightly or wrongly, as objective evils. Yet despite
our society’s hatred of these things, it is also stricken with a deep and
chronic anxiety about them. For despite man’s remarkable technological achievements,
despite his apparent mastery over nature, these phenomena continue to plague
him unabated. They continue to break into the comfort of people’s lives and
threaten their peace and wellbeing. Yes, people in our time fear these things
as evil. But perhaps what they fear even more is their own powerlessness before
them, their complete inability to explain or control them. One of the reasons
this is the case is because people today have lost the means by which to
identify the good, and without knowing what is good, how can you deal with what
is evil? Unable to combat evil’s objective manifestations, people are lost in
confusion: either they deny evil altogether, or they lump together as evil
anything fearful or threatening or unknown, without distinguishing between
those things that really are evil and those that are not, or else they spend
much of their lives searching for scapegoats, something or someone to blame, on
whom they can dump their pent up fear and anger about all the bad things that
happen in the world. Christianity
has always had a realistic understanding of evil. Evil is not just an idea. It happens. On the one hand Christianity
teaches that in itself, the world created by God is good. Nothing created by
him is evil. On the other hand, evil is real and no illusion. Eve was deceived
not by a bad thought, but by a bad being. When the Fathers of the early church
said that evil was essentially nothing, they didn’t mean what the Christian
Scientists mean, that evil is only a figment of the imagination. Rather what
they meant was that evil is essentially a lack – a deprivation of what is good
and true and right. So original sin consists in the lack of original
righteousness, the lack of due fear, love, and trust toward God. Evil has no
power to create; it thrives only by taking the good things God has made and
copying, corrupting, or destroying them. That is why in the book of Revelation,
the angel of the Abyss is called ‘Abaddon’ or ‘Apollyon’, both of which mean
‘destroyer’ (Rev 9:11). All
of this raises the perennial question about the origin of evil. Where did it
come from? Why did God let humanity fall into sin? However it is not my task to
speak today about the beginning of evil, but about its end. And I’ve been asked
to do so with special reference to the last book of the Bible, the Apocalypse
or Revelation of Jesus Christ. I am going to proceed in three steps: first of
all, I’d like to say some introductory remarks about the book of Revelation as
a whole. Here I shall present a number of factors I think ought to be kept in
mind as we read it. Secondly, I would like to identify the various forms or
manifestations of evil as they appear in the book of Revelation. What are the
tactics of the evil one? How does he go about his work? What things should we
really be afraid of, and what things are just froth and bubble? And finally I
would like to identify the weapons God uses in response to evil and in bringing
its reign to an end. Here we ask what is God’s plan for the end of evil? How
are we to tackle evil as we encounter it in our own world, and in our own
lives? So
first let us begin with some guidelines to reading Revelation. READING
REVELATION
Revelation is
not an Almanac
Although
the book of Revelation is commonly known in tradition as ‘the revelation of St
John’, the opening words of the book tell us that it is actually the revelation
of Jesus Christ, given to him by God himself, in order to show to his servants
what must soon or quickly take place (Rev 1:1). Most of us have been told that
it is wrong to read Revelation as if it were some kind of divine almanac, a
timetable to the world’s future. That’s true. Our church has rightly rejected
any use of Revelation or any other apocalyptic work to create a binding
schedule of events such as that found in chiliasm, the false teaching that
Christ will return visibly to this earth a thousand years before the end of the
world to establish an earthly dominion (Augsburg
Confession XVII.5; Theses of
Agreement VII). Yet
it is also wrong to think that Revelation has nothing to do with the future or
with world-changing, historic events. Its words are ‘words of prophecy’ (1:3).
Prophecy has to do with God’s supernatural intervention in human affairs both
in the present and the future. Words of prophecy are history-shaping words,
words that make history happen according to God’s judging and saving plans.
That means that while we shouldn’t read Revelation as a series of predictions,
we should read it as a proclamation whose contents do concern our ultimate
future, as that future is already being realised through God’s past and present
activity in our lives, in the life of the church, and in world history. The Centre of
Revelation is Jesus Christ
The
second point I’d like to make about the book of Revelation is that we read it
rightly only if we recognise that its true centre is Jesus Christ, the faithful
witness, the victorious Lamb who was slain. On this point Luther’s verdict, I
believe, was wrong. ‘My spirit cannot accommodate itself to this book’, he
said. ‘There is one sufficient reason for the small esteem in which I hold it –
that Christ is neither taught in it nor recognised.’ Yet even though many of
its words and visions, its symbols and figures of speech will always remain
shrouded in mystery for us, it is hard to miss its equally crystal clear
proclamation of Christ’s divinity, his atoning death for sinners, his victory
over sin, death and hell, and his church’s final and glorious sanctification. Heavenly
worship determines human history
The
third factor to keep in mind as we read the book of Revelation is that it
vividly demonstrates the fact that what happens in heaven, especially in
heavenly worship, directly determines what happens on earth in the history of
the world. God’s heavenly throne is depicted as the absolute centre from which
all divine action proceeds, action which intersects and involves the human and
non-human worlds. By opening the seals on the scrolls in heaven, the Lamb
actually causes the events written on the scrolls to unfold on earth. Worship,
not war, prayer, not politics, shape and decide the history of the world. Historical and
Social Setting
Finally
I’d like to say one or two words about the historical setting of the book. The
entire revelation, consisting of four main visions, was communicated to a
pastor called John, about whom himself we know very little, apart from the fact
that at the time he was exiled from his seven-point parish on the rocky Greek
island of Patmos. John in turn recorded the revelation and somehow forwarded it
to his congregations to be read aloud in their worship assemblies. The year
would have been around 80 or 90 AD, and Christianity was already flourishing in
Asia Minor, the region we know today as western Turkey. Yet
those early Christians were not without their fair share of trial and
tribulation. From within their own ranks, they faced the constant dangers of
rival doctrines, false teachers, discord and division, much as Christians still
do today. But over and above those troubles they faced a society that was
essentially hostile to their existence as an independent religion. The Roman
government took pride in its pluralistic tolerance of different religious
groups within the empire. Jews, pagans, philosophers, Zoroastrians, goddess
worshippers: all could live more or less happily side by side, as long as they
kept the law and didn’t cause trouble. But part of keeping the state law
involved participation in emperor worship. From the time of Emperor Domitian
(81-96) all residents in the empire were required to pay public, religious
devotion to the Roman emperor by acknowledging him as ‘God and Lord’. If you
were a polytheist, this was easy. But it was clearly something that no true
Jew, and certainly no Christian, could possibly take part in without denying
their faith. It is one thing to obey the king and honour the state. It is
another to bind your conscience over to it and give it equal place with God.
The persecutions that followed such non-compliance were probably never
systematic or widespread, but sporadically, from place to place and time to
time, we know that many Christians suffered such punishments as eviction,
exile, confiscation of property, and even torture and execution. It is into
this crisis that the revelation of Jesus breaks in as a dynamic power, a power
that delivers not merely psychological catharsis but categorical certainty that
through their worship, the faithful actually participate in the history-making
events of Christ’s victory and God’s judgement. MANIFESTATIONS
OF EVIL IN REVELATION
Persecution
One
of the first and most obvious manifestations of evil in the book of Revelation
is persecution, specifically directed at Christian believers. It’s right to
call the persecution of Christians an evil, but it’s what we might call a relative
evil. Its gravity depends on whether you’re responsible for it or simply
experiencing it. Here it’s important to observe the ancient distinction between
physical evil on the one hand, and moral or spiritual evil on the other.
Physical evil is the evil we suffer, the evil we experience against our will:
sickness, natural disaster, abuse and so on. Jesus tells us not to be afraid of
this kind of evil: ‘Do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the
soul’ (Matt 10:28). This kind of evil is nowhere near as great as the evil we
do, the evil we will. It is always better to suffer evil than to do it. The
secular philosopher Bertrand Russell, referring to the rising tide of
communism, once quipped ‘it’s better to be red than dead.’ To which the Russian
freedom fighter and orthodox Christian Alexander Solzhenitsyn replied, ‘Better
to be dead than a scoundrel.’ The
whole book of Revelation is directed to people who are suffering various forms
of attack because of their witness to Christ and their faithfulness to God’s
word. John himself has been exiled for his role as a Christian pastor. He
identifies himself as a brother and companion to his fellow-believers in the
tribulation that, he says, is ‘ours in Jesus’ (1:9). No Christian should be
surprised by this statement. It has been given to us, says Saint Paul, ‘not
only to believe in Christ, but also to suffer for him’ (Phil 1:29). ‘Everyone
who wants to live a godly life will be persecuted’ (2 Tim 3:12). ‘We must go
through many hardships [thlipseis =
tribulations] to enter the kingdom of God’ (Ac 14:22). And for the Christians
in Asia Minor who have suffered persecution there is more on the way. The
believers in Smyrna, who have already known false accusation, ridicule,
slander, looting, and the confiscation of property, are to expect imprisonment
and even death (Rev 2:9-10). The believers in Pergamum have already witnessed
the grisly execution of Antipas by being roasted alive (2:13). The mother
prostitute Babylon is drunk with the blood of the saints (17:6). In one vision
John sees under the altar of heaven the souls of those who had been killed -
probably by beheading (20:4) - for their faithful witness to Jesus. They cry
out for God to avenge their blood, but the answer comes that even more are yet to
be slain before the end (6:9-11). Our Lord warned that the last days would see
an ‘increase in wickedness’ (Matt 24:12). False teaching
A
more dangerous form of evil unveiled in the book of Revelation is false
teaching. No one becomes a false teacher by consciously choosing evil, but only
because he thinks what he teaches is good and true. Yet false teaching is much
more dangerous to the church than persecution, because by distorting or
supplanting God’s own word, it desecrates God’s most holy name and leads people
to put their confidence in false and uncertain objects of faith. This
seems to have been the case in Revelation too. Some teachers were going around
the churches in Asia Minor claiming to be sent by God, but upon testing it was
found that was not the case (2:4). Here we are reminded of the battles Saint
Paul faced with false apostles, who used all the right language - they too
spoke about ‘Christ’ and ‘Jesus’ and
the ‘Gospel’ - but whose message ultimately departed from the true
pattern of saving teaching (2 Cor 11:1-15; Gal 1:6-9; 2 Tim 1:13). Revelation
also speaks about false Jews, who seemed to be cashing in on the economic and
social privileges accorded by the state to the Jewish Diaspora communities, but
were really bound up in an alliance with anti-Christian forces (Rev 2:9; 3:9).
Then there were specific Christian sects: the Nicolaitans, the Balaamites, and
the followers of the self-appointed prophetess Jezebel (2:20-25). Their
teaching is characterised by an openness to syncretistic worship, claims to
superior or hidden knowledge, and accommodation to the promiscuous sexual mores
of the surrounding culture (2:2-6; 14-15; 20-25). In the case of Jezebel, a
symbolic name recalling the wicked wife of the corrupt King Ahab, we note that
‘she calls herself a prophetess’. Not only is her message not straight. She has
not been sent by God. She has bypassed the due process of testing and
ratification, and without a call has thrust herself and her ‘gift’ upon the
church in God’s name (cf. Jer 23:21).[1]
There are also references to other false prophets of international renown, one
of whom, by performing great miracles, lures even the saints into taking part
in false worship (Rev 13:12-15; 19:20). Related to the evil of false teaching
Revelation also speaks of more general moral evils such as idolatry,
fornication, murder, theft, magic arts, lying, cowardice, and unbelief
(9:20-21; 21:8; 22:15) Death
Another
evil depicted in the book of Revelation is death. The word ‘death’ occurs in
Revelation more than in any other book of the New Testament except the letter
to the Romans. Death is not just a biological event, but an evil power,
personified by the rider on the pale horse (6:8). Death wields its destructive
force through persecution, war, famine, plagues, and natural disasters (6:3-8).
Hades, which follows close behind death (6:8), is death’s twin. Satan
All
of the evils mentioned so far are simply weapons of Satan, the true enemy of
humanity and the mastermind behind all that is evil. ‘For our struggle is not
against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, authorities, and powers of
this dark world and against the spiritual forces in the heavenly realms’ (Eph
6:12). In Revelation Satan goes by a number of different names and is
represented by a number of symbolic figures. His name of course means accuser;
but he appears also as the dragon, the beast or monster, the great dragon, the
ancient serpent, the deceiver of the whole world, or simply the devil. In
addition to the weapons of evil already named, Satan relies on deception,
counterfeit, and, where these fail, straight out blasphemy against God’s name,
and false witness against his church and his people (Rev 13:6). First, there is
the ‘unholy trinity’: the dragon (Satan, the devil); the beast; and the false
prophet (13:11; 16:13; 20:10).[2]
Aping God, Satan also has his throne, though not in heaven, but on earth
(2:13). Caricaturing the true Messiah, the beast bears a physical wound and
appears to have come back to life (13:3, 14; cf. 5:6; 1:18). The second beast
looks ‘like a lamb’ (13:11), and like the true Lamb performs spectacular
miracles (13:13). He bestows a counterfeit mark on people’s foreheads (13:16;
cf. 9:4). The beast is even known by a parody of God’s name: ‘he was, is not,
and is to come’ (17:8; cf. 1:4). Together, the members of the unholy trinity
steal for themselves the worship which is due to God alone (13:4, 12; cf.
19:10; 22:9). These
are some of the forms or manifestations of evil in the book of Revelation. It
depicts Satan as a real being, and it depicts the evils he engenders as real
and present and actually happening in the world. In which case the solution to
these evils must also happen in that same world. Let us now turn to investigate
how God goes about bringing these evils, which characterise the work of the
evil one, to an end. HOW GOD DEFEATS EVIL Truth
If
Satan’s chief weapon is deception, then God’s chief weapon is truth. The book
of Revelation itself is a dramatic record of ‘the word of God and the testimony
of Jesus Christ’ (1:2). As a result, all its words ‘are the true words of God’
(19:9; 21:5; 22:6). Jesus Christ, the origin and bearer of its contents, is
‘the faithful witness’ (1:5), ‘he who is holy and true’, ‘the Amen, the
faithful and true witness’, whose name is ‘faithful and true’ and ‘the word of
God’ (3:7, 14; 19:11, 13). Everything he says and does, even in judgement, is
‘just and true’ (15:3; 16:7; 19:2). Three times in Revelation we find applied
to Christ a sentence quoted from Psalm 2:9: ‘he will rule them with an iron
sceptre’ (2:27; 12:5; 19:15). The iron sceptre, also symbolised by the sword
that comes from Jesus’ mouth, represents his true and life-giving word, by
which he destroys his enemies and asserts his cosmic and universal reign
(19:21). Resurrection
Having
been identified in the opening verses as the faithful witness, Jesus is
immediately called ‘the firstborn of the dead’ (1:5). What has happened to him
as firstborn signals what is to follow with his own kin. The hope of God’s
victory in the future is based not on a vague wish, but on the accomplished
fact of Christ’s bodily resurrection from death on the third day as attested by
eyewitnesses. The evils of death and hell, which threaten all people, lie
conquered under Christ’s feet. To those who are facing death, he declares: ‘Do
not be afraid. I am the first and the last. I am the living one; I was dead,
but now I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades’
(1:17-18). Keys mean power. Christ, not the devil, is the gate-keeper of death:
what he opens no one can shut (3:7). By his resurrection he has ‘overcome’ and
now rules with his Father with divine power (3:21). Resurrection stands for
divine vindication (11:1-12). Those who have been killed by the beast and
denied burial are seen to receive ‘the breath of life from God’ and are raised
to life. This first resurrection is but a prelude to the final end of all evil,
when God will crush Satan under our feet (20:4-6; cf. Rom 16:20). Worship
It
is surely no accident that the entire of vision of Revelation was given on a
Sunday, the Lord’s Day, the day of worship (Rev 1:10). Christ’s resurrection
spells the beginning of the end of evil. In worship the faithful participate in
that beginning. God has chosen the first day of the week, the day of
resurrection to be the first day of the new creation, the day on which he
begins to roll back the reign of evil. Revelation depicts no fewer than eleven
scenes of the heavenly liturgy in process. Through the church’s worship on
earth, constituted by the word of God and the testimony of Jesus, the Christian
faithful already experience here and now the end of evil and the beginning of
heavenly triumph. The wedding supper of the Lamb to which the blessed are
invited is a victory supper, ‘the great supper of God’ (19:9; 17-21). Through
it they look back to the foundational event on which all hope is based (‘we
proclaim our Lord’s death’) and forward to faith’s ultimate fulfilment (‘until
he comes’). By taking part in the triumph of the Lamb they anticipate their own
vindication (19:1-8). The Lamb
There
is startling irony in the fact that the great Satanic monster is defeated by a
wee slaughtered Lamb (5:6). The Lamb of course is also a lion (5:5), but his
victory has only been obtained through sacrifice, martyrdom, and blood, in
other words, through weakness. From the moment of his birth from ‘the woman
clothed with the sun’, the vulnerable infant Messiah, like all the offspring of
mother church, was hounded by Satan (12:1-17; cf. Mt 2:13-18). Even after
rising victorious from death, he bears in his body the scars of battle. The
significance and power of the Lamb’s blood is not limited to the moment of his
death. By his blood he has freed people from their sins (Rev 1:5) and purchased
and constituted a kingdom of priests for God (5:9). His blood continues to
cleanse the faithful from the stains of death (7:14), and is wielded by them
along with the true confession of faith as a powerful weapon against the
perpetual accusations of the evil one (12:11). Faithful
endurance
Another
of the weapons God wields against evil is the faithful endurance of his saints.
Repeatedly the hearers of the book of Revelation are exhorted to endure, to be
faithful, to remain patient, even to the point of death (2:10; 13:10; 14:12).
Endurance is not a purely passive thing. It consists in fortitude, humble
acquiescence to God’s will, a resolute firmness in the face of relentless
difficulty and opposition. It means recognising that sometimes the truth of
what we believe cannot be definitively proved,
but can only be upheld. In
Revelation the reward of eternal life is nowhere promised to those of fickle or
lukewarm faith, still less to those who retaliate, but only to ‘him who
overcomes’, that is, to those who, in imitation of Christ, stand firm and don’t
budge, who hold fast and let themselves be bound by God’s strong word and the
merits of Christ’s blood, even when doing so entails some kind of personal
loss (2:7, 11, 17, 26; 3:5, 12, 21;
21:7). Their capacity to endure is of course founded upon the truth of God’s
own word and the reliability of his promises. Even so, the humble and patient
endurance of Christians in suffering frustrates evil and lifts the sufferer up
into the blessed realm of eternity. By means of Christ’s own endurance two of
Satan’s chief weapons were turned against him: persecution and death. These do
not weaken, but only strengthen the church. Yes even death carries no threat
for the saints but can be embraced, looked forward to, as God’s gift of rest
from our heavy labours. There is ‘no rest’ for the wicked; in fact in the day
of evil they will yearn for death but not be able to find it (6:16; 9:6). But
those who die ‘in the Lord’, that is, those who die with a conscience set at
rest by faith in Jesus, are to be considered ‘blessed’ (14:11-13). Judgement
We
know that in his death and resurrection Christ achieved definitive victory over
sin, death, and Satan. As he declared just before his Passion, ‘Now is the time
of judgement on this world; now the prince of this world is driven out’ (Jn
12:31). At the same time we also know that the devil continues to ‘prowl around
like a roaring lion’ (1 Pet 5:8). He is active in these last days more than
ever, going about his work ‘filled with fury, because he knows that his time is
short’ (Rev 12:12). The evils of this age are the devil’s violent death-throes,
permitted by God for a limited time (13:7, 15). His total and final surrender
is yet to occur. And for this God has appointed the Day of Judgement, the climax
of history. On this day God, with the help of his angelic servants, will
separate for ever the clean from the unclean, the holy from the unholy, good
from evil (14:14-20). It will come suddenly and unexpectedly; it will be a
fearful day for all who have refused to repent, who are found sleeping or
unclothed, whose names are not written in the book of life (6:15-17; 16:10-15;
20:13-15). Satan and his servants, which includes death and Hades, will be cast
into the lake of fire, ‘the second death’, where they will suffer everlasting
torment (14:11; 19:20; 20:10-14; 21:8). The lake of fire serves God’s good
purposes since it spells the ‘death of death and hell’s destruction’. On that
day the harm done to God’s holy people over the ages will be avenged (19:2). This
delay between Calvary on the one hand and the Day of Judgement on the other is
the fruit of divine patience. God’s wrath is being poured out on the earth
(16:1-21) to test the world and lead people to repentance. God’s final
judgement is heralded by many minor acts of judgement by which he wants to warn
his people to renounce their sins of lovelessness and indifference and
immorality. Repeatedly in his messages to the churches in Revelation Jesus
threatens judgement: ‘If you do not repent, I will come and remove your
lampstand’ (2:5); ‘Repent, or I will come and fight against you’ (2:16); ‘Wake
up! Strengthen what is about to die…. Remember what you have received and
heard; obey it, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a
thief’ (3:2-3). These warnings from Christ are not a sign of irrevocable anger,
but of a love that wants to rescue sinners from the destructive effects of
their sin. Christ judges us now in order to spare us in the final judgement.
‘Those I love, I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent!’ (3:19). The New
Jerusalem
There
is one final solution to evil that I’d like now to mention. And that is the new
Jerusalem. The old Jerusalem, where Jesus was crucified, has gone the way of
Sodom and Egypt (11:8). The Christian’s true homeland does not lie there. Jesus
directs us instead to his own homeland, which he calls ‘the city of my God’
(3:12). It is a holy city, from which all evil and spiritual pollution is
definitively and eternally excluded (22:15). It is a heavenly city, which
descends to earth from God as a bride, a wife for the Lamb (21:1-4; 21:9-27).
Notice that it is ‘from God’: it’s not constituted from the bottom up, but from
the top down. In this city is embodied a new heaven and a new earth, a completely
new creation. In it God and man live together: heaven and earth are joined as
one. With its inauguration the voice from the throne announces: ‘Now the
dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his
people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every
tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or
pain, for the old order of things has passed away’ (21:4). These words echo the
song in Isaiah 25:1-12 which celebrates the Lord’s swallowing up of death at
the victory banquet on Mount Zion. To
live in the new Jerusalem is to return to the beginning, to Eden, to what life
was like before evil was known. In it flows the river of the water of life, the
river ‘whose streams make glad the city of God’ (Gen 2:10; Ps 46:4); on the
banks of the river is found ‘the tree of life’, from which mankind has been
separated since the Fall, but now whose leaves provide for the healing for the
nations (22:1-6). One ancient tradition identifies this tree with the cross of
Christ. Despite
the pristine, perfect, heavenly character of this city, we are surely right to
recognise it as the church. Here we have a mystery: the church is on earth, yet
according to this vision it comes from heaven; the church is human, yet
according to this vision it is divine. But there can be no doubting that the
church and the new Jerusalem are the same reality. In fact the church as we
know it – little struggling congregations gathered around the holy mysteries
and scattered throughout the world – is the very connecting point between this
creation and the next, between the city of this world, and the city of heaven.
Like this city, the church’s foundations rest on Christ and the apostles
(21:14; cf. Eph 1:20). Like this city, the church is Christ’s own bride, washed
and made holy by his blood and word (Eph 5:23-32). Like this city, the church,
which is ‘the light of the world’, shines with the glory of God as through it
God’s ‘many-coloured wisdom’ is proclaimed throughout the cosmos (Eph 3:10; cf.
Mt 5:14; Rev 21:11). Surely this is what the Holy Spirit was referring to
centuries before when through the prophet Isaiah he said: Arise,
shine, for your [fem.pl] light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon
you. See,
darkness covers the earth, and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the Lord rises upon you and his
glory appears over you. Nations
will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your
dawn (Is 60:1-3; cf. 66:10-11). CONCLUSION
Every
now and again parishioners come up to me and ask with a worried look on their
face: ‘Pastor, do you think things in the world are worse now than they used to
be?’ They’re worried about their children. They’re worried about their
grandchildren. They read the news headlines which daily parade violence and
lies and anti-Christian slander. They witness the rampant pornification of our
media and youth. They notice the horrendous statistics on abortion and divorce.
They are struck by the increasing sentimentalisation of our Church’s theology
from the grass roots level right through to the top, as people buy into the
liberal, politically correct agenda driving the greater deal of contemporary
religion. Yet
I wonder whether the evil in the world today is qualitatively any worse than
the evil of yesteryear, whether ten, a hundred, or a thousand years ago. Surely
now is as good as any time to be alive. But one thing is sure: with six billion
people on this planet, there’s more evil going around than ever before. Each
day thousands of human souls, assuming they come to see the light of day, are
born into the world only to be taken immediate captives to evil. Their own
wills, by nature weak and corrupt, are easily turned away from good and soon
become hardened in the habits of selfishness and vice. Not that anyone
consciously chooses evil; rather they mistake evil for good, or else they
settle for what is good without going on to pursue what is better or best. The
result is that entire societies suffer endemic slavery to the evils of hatred,
exploitation, violence, immorality, sloth, greed, and murder, and to the
multitude of false philosophies spawned by the rejection of the truth. Nevertheless,
there are many reasons not to despair. For one thing, evil also has a built-in shelf
life. Being nothing but destructive, it cannot help being also
self-destructive. Moreover, from the beginning God has actively intervened in
history to limit its effects. When Adam and Eve sinned, he did not turn a blind
eye, but justly confronted and punished their sin. He also limits its spread.
He expelled Adam and Eve from Paradise lest they should eat of the tree of life
and so perpetuate sin to infinity. He is jealous for his creation. It is good,
very good. He loves what his hand has made, and will not let it fall into utter
oblivion. God does not let evil run its own course, but uses it to serve his
good purposes. The devil only has as much power as God gives him, and even then
he is bound to God’s permissive will (Job 1:6 - 2:6). Recognising this fact is
not always easy. We see it better in retrospect. ‘You meant evil against me,’
said Joseph to his brothers, ‘but God meant it for good’ (Gen 50:20). We know
this truth in the here and now only by faith in God’s commitment to his chosen
that ‘all things work together for their good’ (Rom 8:28). Above
all, it is through our Lord’s atoning death and bodily resurrection that God
has revealed his dream for human history, namely ‘to bring all things in heaven
and on earth together under one head, even Christ’ (Eph 1:10). Christ’s rising
from death heralds in advance the end of evil and the future destiny of all who
belong to him. ‘He must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.
The last enemy to be destroyed is death’ (1 Cor 15:25-26). Christ in his wisdom
left it to the book of Revelation, the last book in the Bible, to open the
window a little for us to get a glimpse of this new evil-free reality, where
the Lamb serves as host at his own wedding party, and where day and night the
angels never stop singing the ‘Holy, holy, holy’ to the Almighty on his throne.
Yes, the new creation has already begun on earth, but how we long with patient
endurance for its completion. Let us not stop sending up the sweet-smelling
incense of our prayers, as we implore God with all his saints on earth: Finish
then thy new creation, Pure
and spotless let us be; Let
us see thy great salvation, perfectly
restored in thee; Changed
from glory into glory, Till
in heaven we take our place, Till
we cast our crowns before thee, Lost
in wonder, love, and praise. Adam G Cooper Lent, 2006Back to CLA Topics [1]
Apart from the prohibition against women teaching in 1 Timothy 2:12, this is
the only passage in the entire New Testament where a woman is the subject of
the Greek verb didaskein (‘to
teach’). [2] The beast is the counterpart to Christ and Michael. Michael in Hebrew means ‘Who is like the Lord?’. The worshippers of the dragon and the beast ask, ‘Who is like the beast?’ (13:4). |