Revelation – Cycle 2

The second cycle continues the pattern of subtle hints concerning what was to come. It reads like a ticking clock, building inexorably to the sound of the beating of drums of war.

Revelation – Cycle 1 is here.

In these early chapters, the careful placement of each symbol and allusion fashions a key to the prophecy. The covenant-literary patterns evident here are the foundations for increasingly greater revolutions, emanating like waves of sound or ripples in a pond. The key that Jesus turns in the Garden sets bigger wheels in motion in the Land and the World.

The cog wheel precision of the typological rhythm creates a stage for, and then anticipates, what will be revealed. As a forming and a filling, the prophecy recapitulates the Creation Week. Jesus was making all things new, and the judgment of the Jewish rulers was the next step in His conquest. The Firstfruits Church did not replace Israel so much as devour it from within, like a chick outgrowing its egg.

OVERVIEW OF REVELATION 1-5

The Lord commanded rest on the seventh day, yet the Sabbath is the first of the seven feasts stipulated in Leviticus 23. This is because the seven day week was a microcosm of the harvest year. The weekly cycle was the yearly cycle in miniature. In the same way, the first cycle in Revelation summarized the structure and purpose of the entire book.

The first cycle introduced Jesus; the second introduces His Church, moving us from Initiation to Delegation, from the transcendent authority of God to His chosen representatives. This gives us the heptamerous pattern of the first three major steps—the Levitical “head”—of the prophecy:

OVERVIEW OF CYCLE 2 (Revelation 1:9-20)

In some sense, this second cycle takes the second stanza of cycle one and expands it into a complete cycle. However, this Delegation is now expressed in architecture, and the imagery moves from Genesis to Exodus. Jesus is described as a metal man—the final form of the High Priest in the final form of the Tabernacle.

More subtly, there is also imagery from Day 2 of the Creation week. John begins on the waters below but is lifted up to the heavenly sea, turning to see one whose voice thunders like a torrent.

If we observe the pattern of the “ascension” sacrifice in the cycle, it becomes apparent that the “lower” half (forming) concerns John as the last trumpet, the final voice that speaks on earth, and the “upper” half (filling) concerns Jesus as the voice that speaks from heaven. In the midst, Jesus stands among the lampstands as the source of their light, mediating between heaven and earth by His Spirit.

See that you do not refuse him who is speaking. For if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven. At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” This phrase, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of things that are shaken—that is, things that have been made—in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire. (Hebrews 12:25-29)

As the Exodus step of Revelation 1-5, the cycle works through the elements of the Tabernacle of Moses.

 

THE TABERNACLE MAN

 

TRANSCENDENCE
Creation – Initiation (Ark of the Testimony) – Day 1

• The book of Revelation serves the same purpose as the book of Ezekiel, which is why it mimics its structure and content to a great degree.¹A Son of Man (Revelation 1, Ezekiel 2) The Throne-Vision (Revelation 4, Ezekiel 1) The Book (Revelation 5, Ezekiel 2-3) The Four Plagues (Revelation 6:1-8, Ezekiel 5) The Slain Under the Altar … Continue reading Like Ezekiel, John is in exile from Judea, although this was possibly voluntary exile. The Christians had been banned from the Temple, but now they were also enemies of the state. The New Testament witness was bookended by two Johns, both Levites. Like John the Baptist, John the Apostle was a Levite in the wilderness, but this wilderness was a Gentile one. The testimony of Jesus had moved from the Land to the Sea.
• Like Ezekiel, John is lifted up to see the sins of Jerusalem—exposed in symbolic terms—that he might serve as a legal witness against her. Indeed, John himself, a son of thunder, becomes the last trumpet before her destruction. James and John had desired to call down fire from heaven upon Samaria (Luke 9:54), but it was Jerusalem, not Samaria, that was the heart of the problem; as a doppelgänger of true worship, her wickedness was far more subtle and serpentine.²See Altar of the Abyss. Pentecost had to come before holocaust. The word holocaust is derived from the Greek holókaustos, an offering burnt whole on the altar. In order to render the city ripe for judgment, Jerusalem first had to be offered the fire of internal law. Once the Spirit had been blasphemed to the uttermost through the murder of the saints, God would be justified and vindicated in His judgment, and His consuming fire would see her “elements” melted and destroyed (2 Peter 3:10) on behalf of the whole empire, and indeed the entire world.
• The stanza is a ziggurat, working from John (Garden-Sanctuary) to the saints on the altar (Land), then via testimony and suffering to the entire oikoumene (World). Patmos, in the fifth line (Day 5) represents a “high place” among the Gentiles. Later in the Revelation, the mountains and the islands—as the “high places” of the Land (the Jews) and the Sea (the Gentiles) would first be shaken (Revelation 6:14) and then entirely removed (Revelation 16:20), wiping out the Old Covenant and its demarcated worship forever (John 4:20-21).
• The meaning of the name “Patmos” is uncertain, but according to J. B. Jackson’s A Dictionary of Scripture Proper Names, it means “my killing.” The islet is sterile, a barren rock, which explains its position in this stanza at Maturity, corresponding to the witness of the martyroi of Jesus as holy Trumpets, a fragrant New Covenant “cloud” of witness. In the next stanza, this man, the last Levite, would see the world from the Sanctuary in heaven.
• The “Altar” line has three tiers because it represents the Altar in Ezekiel’s Temple (Ezekiel 43:13-17) which was itself a miniature ziggurat. The “dry land” of Israel that ascended once again from the wild Gentile “sea” under the shepherding of Cyrus was only the altar of a much larger “temple” construct that incorporated the entire empire as a “household,” an oikoumene. This spiritual construct set the boundaries of the missionary journeys of Paul and the other Apostles. The saints would soon be offered upon this altar of Jerusalem and Judea, and indeed were already being offered. Zion would become Sinai, a burning mountain that would be cast into the sea (Matthew 21:21; Revelation 8:8).
• The three tiers of this “altar-land” (tribulation, kingdom, endurance) refer the Triune Office: Priest (Garden), King (Land), and Prophet (World). In the structure of the entire prophecy, this step describes the glorification of the ascended Christ as High Priest, a lamb with seven horns and seven eyes, a fulfilment of the unity of Moses, Aaron, and Hur on Mount Sinai (Exodus 17:8-16), and the completion of the combination of the three pieces of furniture in the Holy Place. In Revelation 16:19, the same device is employed when the city of Jerusalem is symbolically split into three parts, signalling the defeat of the Herodian Amalekites under the raised arms of a better Moses. ³For more discussion, see Everlasting Arms.

 

HIERARCHY
Division – Delegation (Veil) – Day 2

• The “Sinai” stanza recapitulates the process of Israel’s preparation for faithful testimony to the nations. The same process can be seen in the entire Revelation, which ends with the faithful Old Testament saints and New Covenant martyrs finally enthroned with Jesus as a human government in heaven.
• The Spirit hovers above the deep, then the Sabbath is honored, then John “hears” as Israel did at Sinai. “Behind me” refers to Israel’s turning back to Egypt in Numbers, as Lot’s wife turned back to Sodom (Genesis 19:26). In Numbers, the four horns of the altar were “measured out” as the four mountain peaks from which Balaam attempted to curse Israel. Instead of turning back, John—familiar with liturgy—turns instead to face the voice. The loud voice is Moses’s recitation of the Law to representatives of a new Israel, in this case the seven churches. The trumpet will bring down the walls of Jerusalem as the “firstfruits” of the world, and the “saying” is the faithful word of an all-seeing judge, a human elohim. The image is terrifying enough without all of this Mosaic import folded into it. It is also worth noting that, throughout the book, when Jesus appears to the saints He is the glorified Christ, but when He appears to the Old Covenant rebels and their co-conspirators, since their eyes remain veiled, He is still the Angel of the Lord. (2 Corinthians 3:14-15)

 

ETHICS: Priesthood
Ascension – Presentation (Bronze Altar)

The Ascension stanza alludes to the “heaven and earth” split in the entire cycle. It is thus twofold, with one stanza for the Bronze Altar (representing the dry land, or Canaan) and another for the Golden Table (representing the initial priestly fruit bearers, or the Levites).

• The matrix structure favors the Majority Text, thus omitting “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last.”
• The allusion here is to Moses’ requirement that a king of Israel copy out the Law by hand.

And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests. And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children, in Israel. (Deuteronomy 17:18-20)

• Because the kings of the land (Revelation 6:15; 18:8) had again forsaken the Laws of Moses and made treaties with Gentile rulers (in this case, Rome) rather than converting them, their kingdoms would fall.
• The “seven” in the Mediators/Atonement line corresponds to the seven sprinklings of blood on Yom Kippur and the seven bowls tipped out in judgment later in the prophecy.⁴See The Seven Bowls of Revelation. It is also related to the seven ewe lambs that Abraham set apart and offered to Abimelech as a witness to their covenant oath (Genesis 21:28), however, those were “bridal” ewe lambs, related to a well of water (an image of the womb).

Ascension – Presentation (Golden Table)

• The names of the cities of the seven churches—or at least their “Levitical” representatives, the pastors—are these seven offerings on the altar as Firstfruits lambs (Leviticus 23:12). When Jesus asked Peter to feed His lambs (John 21:15), it was for the purpose of fattening them for slaughter as sacrifices without blemish. If their fire was not indwelling (the internal law of the Spirit), then the fires of judgment would consume them in the coming tribulation (the external law of the letter).
• As James Jordan has observed, the characteristics of the seven churches, and the typological allusions, are a summary of the history of the Old Testament. The purpose is not to represent stages in church history (although in hindsight they well might, since God’s work always follows the same pattern), but to identify them as a New Israel, a sacrificial body that would face the same trials as Israel according to the flesh but without the tragic failures.
• The meanings of the names of the cities is also significant, corresponding to the seven steps from Creation to Glorification. See Living Menora.

 

ETHICS: Kingdom
Testing – Purification (Lampstand)

• What John sees is a greater revelation than that witnessed by Moses on Sinai. Instead of a “natural” tree inhabited by angelic fire (picturing a Spirit-filled Adam as the “third tree” in Eden), Jesus appears as a humaniform Tabernacle, a faithful Adam who has been tested, purified, and made perfect. Moreover, this Shekinah-tree is no longer alone. He is a Captain surrounded by representatives of the bridal army of a new Israel, a Gideon surrounded by flaming torches. But unlike Gideon, Jesus will not allow priestly vestments to become a cause of stumbling or idolatry.
• The theme at Maturity is “hosts” as clothing. The swarms, flock and schools of Day 5 find the human referent in the attempt of Adam and Eve to hide their nakedness with a false fruitfulness, the fig leaves. The Lampstand was a stylized almond tree (or, in Hebrew, a “watcher” tree, since almonds are eye-shaped), so these fruitful trees which “clothe” Jesus are also His eyes, His legal witnesses, His royal court. The same meaning is found in the Maturity stanza of Psalm 1, which speaks of the “fruit” and “leaves” of the faithful Adam. See The Blessed Man. Jesus’ faithfulness with the two trees of Eden (Priesthood and Kingdom), the pillars of the Temple (Jachin and Boaz), has transformed him into a third tree (Prophecy), a fiery pillar set on conquest. (This also explains the “architectural” referent of the three crosses upon Golgotha.)
• “Adam” appears in line 6, Day 6, Atonement/Coverings, but His clothing is described in terms of “clean feet,” a reference to the Laver that washed both the priests and the sacrifices. The line is split into two, describing the clean Covenant Head and His blameless (washed) Covenant Body.
• The final line is fivefold, “Mosaic.” The golden sash indicates that the work of the priesthood is complete. The Aaronic sash was made of linen, indigo and purple and scarlet yarns, an accoutrement that represented a gush of blood from the body of the sacrifice. These three colours refer to the three stages of bloodletting: indigo blood in the flesh, purple blood coming from the flesh, and red blood spilled on the ground as a testimony. In official terms, this is the ministry of Priest, King and Prophet. Jesus’ sash is kingly, that is, golden, possibly the same sash given to the Davidic gatekeeper in Isaiah 22:21. In Hebrew, the word “glory” (kavod) is related to the word “heavy” (kaved). Gold is heavy yet malleable, and thus fitting to serve as the most holy metal in the Tabernacle. The gilding of the sash reveals that the will of God has been done on earth, and this is the testimony of that completed work in heaven. Like Jesus, the sacrifice ascended “clothed” in a fiery cloud of glory. But this sash also has significance for the rest of the prophecy: Belshazzar was the final ruler of the empire of Babylon, whose founder was a “head of gold” (Daniel 2:37-38). As he drank from the golden vessels taken from Solomon’s Temple, the Lord told him that he had been weighed in the balances and found wanting. He did not have the glory God gave to his father, Nebuchadnezzar, who humbled himself and became a true king of kings (Daniel 5:3, 18-19, 27).

 

ETHICS: Prophecy
Maturity – Transformation (Incense Altar)

The description of Jesus’ physical attributes (as opposed to His official vestments) is sevenfold. His true virtue goes deeper than robes. He Himself is the creation in human form.

• The seven attributes pertain more to the process of sacrifice than to the Tabernacle. Jesus is at once the house, the High Priest and the sacrifice:
• Initiation: the whiteness singles Him out as being the “one of the flock” who is “without blemish” (Exodus 12:5; Leviticus 4:23, 9:2-3). This step also corresponds to the Ark of the Testimony as the “head” of the cruciform Tabernacle, whose contents all pictured the “light” of Day 1: white manna, white blossoms on Aaron’s rod, and the Ten Words engraved presumably in tablets of white stone. The head of the sacrifice was clean and did not require washing before being offered.
• Delegation: An allusion to a spiritual division rather than a physical cutting: circumcision of heart rather than of flesh. This step corresponds to the saints as lampstands in the second of the seven major steps of the prophecy. Instead of the Veil of Moses, there is revelation by the Spirit. In contrast to the holy fire that burned the edges of the camp of Israel (Numbers 11:1-3), this was a setting apart by internal fire.
• Presentation: Jesus “stands” upon the Altar, something that sinful priests were not permitted to do (Exodus 20:26). Jesus’ feet are upon the Bronze Altar, although not the Altar itself. They are related to the Bronze Laver, a “lake of fire” before the throne. Yahweh stands upon the Altar-mountain when He bows the heavens and bring His court to the earth (Exodus 4:20).⁵For more discussion, see “Bowing the Heavens” in Michael Bull, Inquiétude: Essays for a People without Eyes. Sitting is kingly, and walking is prophetic, but standing is priestly. Jesus is the “standing” sacrifice whose clean feet make the mountain smoke, and eventually split the altar in two once it has been deconsecrated (1 Kings 13:5; Zechariah 14:4).The lamb “standing” in Revelation 5:6 may be a rough Greek translation of the Hebrew Tamid, which refers to the “standing” or “continual” sacrifice.⁶See David Chilton, The Days of Vengeance, 172. Now ascended and glorified, Jesus will deal with the “standing” dragon (Revelation 12:4).⁷See The Standing Dragon. As the “Tabernacle Man,” Jesus is not consumed by fire but purified by it, the fourth man in the furnace of Nebuchadnezzar. He is not an Adam of dust, nor the flawed metal man of the oikoumene, whose feet of Herodian (Edomite) clay and Roman iron could not be mixed (intermarried). As in Isaiah 6, where a coal from the altar would be used to set fire to the city under the ban through the testimony of the prophet, the testimony of these Pentecostal “lampstand” saints would once again present Jerusalem as a whole burnt offering. It must also be noted that Jesus is the true lamb, as opposed to a dragon disguised as one, like the murderous Herods and their corrupted High Priesthood.
• Purification: There is no holy fire, only living water (from above), since Jesus has atoned for sin. The fire and the water have swapped places. The false doctrine of the Judaizers is later described as a flood from the mouth of the serpent/dragon (Revelation 12:15-68).
• Transformation: The “bridal host” is the prophetic testimony of Jesus in the Jew-Gentile Churches in Asia.
• Vindication: Because Jesus bore the curses of the Law, He is now qualified to bless and to curse. The sword with which He comes against the rulers of the Land in Revelation 19 is the Mosaic Sanctions of the covenant Oath that they had broken (Deuteronomy 28:15-68.
• Representation: His face reflects the glory of God, as Moses’ did. This also alludes to Samson, the famous bridegroom who was the seventh elected judge, and whose name means “Sunrise.”
• Since these seven lines are relatively long, it seems that each is threefold, a sevenfold expression of the “prophetic grid.”

 

	Priesthood Garden	Kingdom Land	Prophecy World
TRANSCENDENCE	And the head of him and his hairs	were white, as if wool,	white as snow,
HIERARCHY	and the eyes of him	were like a flame	of fire,
ETHICS: Priesthood	and the feet of him	were like fine bronze,	as in a furnace having been refined;
ETHICS: Kingdom	and the voice of him	was like the sound	of waters many;
ETHICS: Prophecy	and holding	in the right hand of him,	stars seven,
OATH/SANCTIONS	and out of the mouth of him,	a sword two-edged sharp,	going forth;
SUCCESSION	and the face of him	was like the sun shining	in its full strength.

• James Jordan notes that the presentation of Jesus as a Tabernacle highlights the corruption of Israel as a Temple. He writes:

Jesus appears in Revelation 1:12-20. He is the Standard by which the churches are measured, and by which Babylon and the Beast will be measured also. He is described as having seven characteristics in 1:14-16, and if we list these, we see that they form a chiasm. These seven characteristics will be used to measure the seven churches, and also provide an outline of the book of Revelation as a whole:

• The Temple and its sacrifices were being “measured” not merely because they were obsolete; after Pentecost, they had become, like all religions, a means of hiding from the face of God in Jesus Christ, a vehicle for rebellion against the Gospel.

 

OATH/SANCTIONS
Conquest – Vindication (Laver & Mediators)

• Christ is the High Priest who lays His hand upon the sacrifice (Leviticus 1:4), but now it is in order to identify John with His resurrection life, rather than with substitutionary death.
• The Priest-King stanza is threefold, working vertically through Word (Garden), Sacrament (Land), and Government (World), the three domains that were corrupted by Israel’s idolatry (Exodus 20:4), and were purified in reverse order by Jesus. He was hidden in the waters in baptism, hidden in the land in burial, and then hidden in heaven at his ascension in the cloud of glory. He was now ready to be revealed again from heaven against those who were suppressing the truth of His resurrection (Acts 1:11; Romans 1:18).⁹See Jesus’ Three Ascensions. But the main point of this architectural reference is that the Tabernacle Man was now claiming the entire world as His Temple. This is, after all, the “Joshua” step of the sequence. Notice that the first two stanzas are sevenfold, being completed missions. The third is only fivefold, being a mission as yet uncompleted.

WORD (Garden) – Heavens above (Jesus) – Most Holy Place

SACRAMENT (Land) – Land below (Jews) – Holy Place

GOVERNMENT (World) – Waters below the Land (Gentiles) – Courts of the Nations

• The central three lines of the final stanza are a microcosm of the three-tired construct of this step. John saw Jesus (Garden), the “I AM” (Land), who was about to judge the Jew-Gentile conspiracy against the Church (World).

 

SUCCESSION
Glorification – Representation (Shekinah)

The Shekinah stanza presents the mystery in its forming lines, then opens the mystery in its filling lines:

• The Exodus sequence ends with the blinding, multiplied light of heaven revealed as the indwelling fire within the saints on earth. Just as the glory of the Lord filled the Tabernacle of Moses and the Temple of Solomon, it now filled redeemed human beings.
• The Revelation describes the “retirement” of the angels as Covenant administrators and the investiture of a human government in heaven (the first resurrection), a new administration. Since Pentecost, believers are now God’s ministers of fire—“better” angels.¹⁰See “Better Angels” in Michael Bull, Sweet Counsel: Essays to Brighten the Eyes.
• The revelation of these pastoral “heads” and their congregational “bodies” as lampstands alludes to the judgement of Babylon in Daniel 5. By the light of the lampstand, the writing upon the wall was seen by Belshazzar. The Herods were like Babylonians kings, drinking with impunity from the priestly vessels of God, an image of the bondage of the “vessels” held captive by the “strong man” (Mark 3:27), But these kings, like Belshazzar, would be weighed and found wanting. The book of Revelation is the writing on the wall, this time written by the fingers of John’s hand.¹¹For more discussion, see “Weighed and Found Wanting” in Michael Bull, Inquiétude: Essays for a People Without Eyes.

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If you are new to this method of interpretation, please visit the Welcome page for some help to get you up to speed.

For a general structural overview of the Revelation, see Michael Bull, Moses and the Revelation: Why the End of the World is not in Your Future. There is also a helpful introduction to the “orthodox” preterist position here.

Wrangling fractals is tough work. If this was a blessing to you as a soldier of Christ, you can leave your tribute here. The next post in this series (the letters to the seven churches) will be patrons only.