Fr. Thomas Hopko: We are now actually at the fifth of the seven last— the seven sets of visions that we have, and this fifth vision—it’s in the fifteenth chapter—where we have the other portent in heaven. And it’s this vision where we have the seven angels with the seven plagues and the seven bowls of wrath that they are over. And then there appears again another vision of these particular actions of God.

Here I just want to say that probably this particular part was prophetic in the usual, everyday sense of the term, that it was predicting what was coming, and it could even mean Babylon certainly, without a doubt, symbolizes Rome when the letter of Peter from Rome in the New Testament even says the Church of Babylon greets you. So you see Rome was like the counterpart of Jerusalem, and so the Babylon that is fallen, Rome was symbolizing that.

So this probably has to do with some actual events that were going on that we don’t quite know what they were, but at the same time I just would want to repeat that this— once that happens, it becomes kind of universal in the expectation of the Christians during the time of the final tribulation between the crucifixion and glorification of Christ, the outpouring of the Spirit, and the end of the world, and the final coming of Christ.

Here we have again this vision, and then we have again those who are belonging to the Lamb who are faithful: they sing the song of Moses, and Moses’ song is a victory song again; it’s the conquering song, and it is the song of the Lamb. So the song of Moses, the servant of God, becomes the song of the Lamb. And the song is there:

Great and wonderful are thy deeds, O Lord God the Almighty; just and true are thy ways, King of the ages. Who shall not fear and glorify thy name, O Lord? For thou alone art holy. All nations shall come and worship thee, for thy judgments have been revealed.

And then you have the seven angels with their seven plagues and their seven bowls of wrath, bringing about the downfall of Babylon and ushering in this final era, which is the vision of the end.

It continues in this way, and I’m not going to comment too much about it, because it’s pretty much repetitious, just to make a couple of points here again. You have again the songs that are sung during this, and here again we’ll raise this hymn, because as I mentioned, this is a liturgical book and it has to do with worship and it’s in the context of worship. So we have the song:

Just art thou in these thy judgments, thou who art and wast the Holy One. For men have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink; it is their due. And I heard the altar cry: Yea, the Lord God Almighty, true and just are thy judgments.

Now anyone with a scriptural mind can’t help but thinking when you hear these kind of hymns, they’re reminiscent of the hymns of the old covenant, and perhaps the quintessential hymn, which in our Church is sung on the vigil of Easter, the resurrectional feast, which is the hymn of the Three Young Men in the fiery furnace. And you know, they’re in the furnace, they refuse to worship the idols, they refuse to set up what Nebuchadnezzar has built. When they are supposed to hear the songs of the music, they’re all supposed to bow down. And here of course the connection is bowing before the beast, bowing before the idols, being apostate to God. But during this time of tribulation, the Christians are also in the fiery furnace, and they are also called to bear witness and not to bow down to the foreign gods or to any of the idols.

We just would mention here with the Three Young Men in the furnace, as a prophetic writing that is referred to— Because Daniel is referred to in this Apocalypse all the time, as we have seen. Various parts, especially the seventh chapter, and then the final chapter, and then the visions of Daniel with the kingdoms and all that kind of thing: it’s a very similar type of literature. But the point— The only point I want to make now is that, you know, they say, when the king says, “Do you think that your God will save you if I throw you into the fiery furnace?” And it’s very important that we know the answer that they give. They say, you know, “Live forever, O King!”—Eis polla eti, Despota, you know. [Laughter] “Live forever. You are the king”—even though he’s the most wicked person in all the earth, whom, by the way, the Prophet Jeremiah said he is God’s servant and even God’s anointed one.

So all this suffering and the plagues and so on is still coming from the hands of God in some way, certainly according to Scripture. Amos says, “If the city perishes, is it not I who has done it? says the Lord.” For example, September 11: if God wanted to stop it, he could’ve; he just didn’t, so it’s from the Lord: you’ve got to deal with it. And so they’ve got to deal with all these tribulations and these in Babylon. It’s interesting. They are in Babylon. That’s the point, you see, that Babylon is going to be fallen. But this is reminiscent of that hymn.

But when this most wicked king of all the earth says, “Do you think that your God will save you?” They don’t say, “Sure!” They don’t say, “Oh, yeah, of course. Name it and claim it! We’ll just tell him: Save us. And he will.” What they say to this most wicked king who ever lived, they said, “Our God is certainly capable of doing that but it is none of your royal business whether he does or not.” They say, “We have no need to answer you in this matter, O King. Our God does whatever he wants to do, and whether he saves us or whether he doesn’t, we will still not worship the image and the idol that you have set up.”

And that’s important to remember, and especially when they’re in the fire, and then the fourth Figure comes, the Angel of the Great Counsel, who’s an image of Christ himself, as the fourth Figure, as of a Son of Man, and they’re dancing in the flames, then Shadrach—or, depending which names you use, the Hebrew or the Babylonian—he gets up and he says a prayer in the service. It’s quoted here. He says, “Just art thou in all that thou hast done to us. Thou art just in all that thou have done to us.” So with all this tribulation and persecution and blood and everything, there’s never ever a cry of complaint. “You know what you’re doing, God. You are God. Our task is to believe and be faithful and endure, period. And that to trust that in the end we will be vindicated. But even that’s in your hands. If you want us to perish, we’ll perish.” And no one can be a martyr to Christ unless they’re willing to perish. No way. You’ve got to be ready to die. And if you’re not ready to die, then you don’t belong to the Lamb.

So you have this, and that’s why we heard yesterday, where it says that— how pleasing it is to the Lord, the death of his witnesses. And that, of course, is also a quotation of the psalter: “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.” And we sing that in church quite regularly, on certain feast days.

In any case, I just wanted to point that out. “True and just art thy judgments. Thou art just in these thy judgments, thou who art and wast the Holy One.” And “men have shed the blood of the saints and the prophets.” So you’ve got to be ready to shed the blood, or, as one of my kids once said, “Do you mean that if you’re going to follow God, you’ve got to be ready to make an ash of yourself?” [Laughter] I said, “Yes, you do.” You’ve got to be ready to be burned up! Then God does what he wants.

The other point to mention in this particular set, that is important, is the graphic descriptions of the suffering of the just, and also the fact that you have mentioned here very specifically the Euphrates River. That’s in Iraq, and that is Babylon also. The original Babylonia is Iraq, and that’s where, of course, the people are exiled; that’s where Nebuchadnezzar takes them; that’s where they sing, “On the waters of Babylon, there we have fallen…” We sing it. We sang it last Sunday at matins; we’ll sing it again this Sunday; we’ll sing it again next Sunday, if you have matins and if you sing what you’re supposed to.

C1: We do.

Fr. Thomas: There you go. That psalm is that we are in the exile, and that Babylon is the condition of this world that we’re in until the Lord comes. We are all on the waters of Babylon all the time. We are in a foreign land. This is not where we belong, and we can never forget Jerusalem, and if we do, we pray that our tongue would cleave to our mouth and that our right arm would wither and all that.

But then you have that horrible—in the psalm also—blessed are they who smash our babies on the rocks. And people always get a little excited about that. I know some churches where they don’t even sing it. But the holy Fathers tell us a very simple thing: If you don’t kill the children of Babylon when they’re little, they grow up and kill you. So if you don’t kill your passions and your sins before they get hold of you, you’re gone. So you don’t play around with Babylonian kids; you kill them. And the rock is Christ, as Nilus of the Sora said, and that’s actually quoted in the opening Prologue of St. Benedict’s Rule for monks in the West, that very psalm, 137.

But here you have the Euphrates, and so that’s Babylon. And then you have all that is coming from there. And you have the dragon again, the false prophet, the three foul spirits, all that we’ve been talking about. We won’t continue on it, but it’s also— Assembling there is that famous Armageddon. In Hebrew, Armageddon, it’s that mountain of Geddeon where this last battle, so to speak, is supposed to take place, which means that it would be geographically in the old Babylon, which is the present Iraq.

The seventh angel— It finishes with the seventh angel, this particular group. And I just want to point out a couple little things here. One is that when this is finally over, you have it written: It is done. It is done; it is finished. Now, anyone again who knows Scripture knows that those are the final words of Christ from the cross in John’s gospel, tetelestai in Greek, one word: It is finished. And most people think that that means that Jesus is going to die. That’s not what it means! It means it’s now fulfilled, it’s now completed, everything is now done, there’s nothing left to do. So when the final— When you go through all these things, you finally get to the point where it is finished.

And then there’s flashes of lightning, noise, thunder, pouring rain like we had last night, the great city split into three parts, and God, remember, the great Babylon, to drain the cup of the fury of his wrath, and then it is over. Of course, the Christian hearing this, they cannot help but think that when the Christ is crucified, that you have the thunder, the lightning, the rock split, and then it’s finally done; it’s finally finished, and then the kingdom will be ushered in.

But we’ve got to go a little bit more here, because you have the seven angels with the seven bowls, and they come and say, “I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who is seated upon the many waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, pornea, and [upon] the wine of their fornication, the dwellers of the earth have become drunk.” And then you see the woman sitting on the scarlet beast, full of blasphemous names, and the woman is arrayed in purple and scarlet—sometimes she’s called the scarlet harlot. And it says, “This is Babylon the Great, mother of all the harlots and of earth’s abominations. And I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.”

That Babylon is what’s killing the martyrs, and she’s drunk with it. This imagery here is a very technical biblical imagery. Those who are not faithful to God are considered fornicators and adulterers. You read the prophets; that’s the main symbol. The main symbol of the relation of Yahweh with Israel, Christ with the Church, it’s marriage. And the faithful marriage through everything, forgiving everything: that’s what you find in the holy Scripture. And that’s why, as we already saw in the 14th chapter, I believe it was, only virgins enter the kingdom, only those who are washed in the blood of the Lamb, only those whose sins which were scarlet like the harlot are then washed in the blood of the Lamb to become white as snow to enter the kingdom.

So the teaching is very—how can you say?—encouraging. Part of this whole writing is for encouragement, consolation, comfort, and exhortation, and edification. Well, you can’t be more comforted, more edified, and more exhorted, more receiving a better exhortation than to know that if you believe in the Lamb and are faithful to him and are ready to die with him, all your sins are forgiven, and you are restored to virgin status with the Lord himself! And you become his bride again.

And in the end we’re going to see, just in a few minutes, that the final coming kingdom is the marriage of the Lamb. It’s a marriage that takes place at the end. It’s finally consummated. And by the way, in Latin, when he says, “It is done,” in Latin it’s Consummatum est. It’s consummated, and that has certain connotation. It even led Thérèse of Lisieux in the West to say the cross is the bed on which the divine Bridegroom consummates his love affair with his whory harlot adulterous bride. Whoa! [Laughter] And that’s why we begin Holy Week with the song, “Behold, the Bridegroom comes,” because he comes to wash us and to take us home and so on. And then when he dies, it is done; it is finished.

So this is continuing in this same line, scarlet beast decked with jewels: she has gold and jewels and all this kind of stuff, and she’s the one with whom all the kings of the earth fornicate and betray God. And then this is what is now going to be destroyed by the Lamb who is going to conquer.

And then it says that the beast and the harlot, and you have this kind of double trinity here—the beast, the other beast, and the scarlet harlot, as opposed to he who sits on the throne, the Lamb, and the Spirit—is thrown down into the bottomless pit and goes into unending perdition, because their names are not written in the Book of Life. So we’re going to see about the Book of Life here, whose name’s written in the Book of Life. And only those who do the works of God are written in the Book of Life, and that requires a comment, too, because we have this kind of popular teaching, “we’re saved by faith, not by works.” But as a matter of fact, according to Scripture—the proverbs, the psalms, Jonah, the prophets, the letter to the Romans, and the Apocalypse says—and James, of course—you only prove your faith by your works. And we’re going to see at the end that what’s written in the book is what you have done—not what you’ve said, not what you’ve claimed, not what you claim to have believed, but it’s kata erga, it’s according to the works. So what’s written are those works in that Book of Life.

We’re getting toward the end and we hear about the Book of Life. From the foundation of the world, their names are not in it, those marked with the beast; those sealed by the blood of the Lamb, they are written: their names are written in the book because they suffer together with him. So that particular section ends with: “These are of one mind and give over their power and authority to the beast,” those who are lost. “They will make war on the Lamb, but the Lamb will conquer them. And he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those with him are called— klitoi, eklektoi and pistoi, called, chosen, and faithful.

It’s very interesting that the present— Some of you have probably heard of Metropolitan Hilarion, who’s the head of the External Affairs Department of the Moscow Patriarchate; he was here in Dallas, had a picture in the paper with George Bush. Remember? Yeah, you know, his mother took him as a boy to Georgia under the Communists, because Georgia was a little freer. Not your Georgia, but the Georgia there. [Laughter] And she wrote a book about being a Christian under Communism, and that’s the title of her book: Called, Chosen, and Faithful; Nazvannyy Izbrannym Vernym. That’s the title of her book; it comes from the Apocalypse.

So those enter only with him who are called, who are chosen, and who are faithful. That’s who enters in with the Lamb, and then destroys the beasts and the harlot and Babylon. And it says very particularly in the end of the next chapter that the woman that you saw, this scarlet harlot, with the beast, sitting on the beast, is the great city which has dominion over the kings of the earth, and probably that originally meant Rome, because it’s going to speak of the seven hills and so on, and Nero and the persecution that came from Rome. So Rome stands for the Babylon; it’s the counterpart to Jerusalem. It’s where the kings and the emperors of this world live. But the Lamb has become the King of the kings and the Lord of the lords, and his kingdom is already given because he’s already exalted at the right hand of the Father, and so all of this is going to be torn down.

So then you get to the 18th chapter, the mighty voice and all those apocalyptic images again, over and over and over again. And then you have the line:

Fallen, fallen is Babylon the Great! It has become a dwelling-place of demons, a haunt of every foul spirit, a haunt of every foul and hateful bird. For all nations have drunk the wine of her impure passions, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her. And the merchants of the earth have grown rich with the wealth of her wantonness.

But then I heard another voice from heaven, saying, “Come out of her, my people. Come out of her, lest you take part in her sin, lest you share in her plague. For her sins are heaped high as the heavens. God has remembered her iniquities. Render to her as she herself has rendered. Repay her double for her deeds.

And that was that horrid psalm we heard tonight: “May their kids…” I mean, ooh, the Bible’s awful! [Laughter] Very realistic, though. You love to destroy? Well, you’ll get destroyed yourself. You want to curse? You’re going to be cursed yourself. You’ve destroyed and attacked and hurt everybody? Now it’s your turn. So this is the same kind of thing you have here.

Mix a double draft for her in the cup that she mixed. Make it twice as potent! For she glorified herself and played the wanton. So give her a like measure of torment and mourning, since in her heart she says, “A queen I sit. I am no widow; mourning I shall never see.” So shall her plague come to a single day. Pestilence and mourning and famine, and she shall be burned with the fire, for mighty is the Lord God who judges her.

And then it says:

The kings of the earth who committed fornication with her and were wanton with her will weep and wail over her when they see the smoke of her burning, and they will stand far off in fear of her torment and say, “Alas! Alas! Thou great city, thou mighty city, Babylon. In one hour has thy judgment come!”

Now in that, just a little comment on that expression, “in one hour.” In Slavonic, v yedinom chasov. It’s the hymn of light of the matins of Great and Holy Saturday, which I think the Byzantine Church doesn’t pay much attention to, but the Russians love it. People all come to church to hear that song and then they leave! [Laughter] It’s the good thief who’s made worthy of paradise in one moment. But actually that’s how we translate it in English; it’s actually “in one hour.” And that’s what you have here: “in one hour.”

And so again there’s this connection that Babylon is destroyed when Jesus is crucified. In one moment, when he dies, Babylon is destroyed! The devil is crushed! Think of Chrysostom’s Paschal homily and so on. But that one— And it’s repeated three times: “in one hour.” “In one hour, all this wealth has been laid waste.” “In one hour she has been laid waste.” “Rejoice, O heavens! In one hour the judgment has come.” So you have this final victory that is somehow connected, even in hymnology in our Church, with the death of Christ on the cross, because our liturgy hymnology takes this one hour and applies it to the moment that he dies. That’s when the victory comes.

“What city was like the great city?” And then they all mourn and they weep and they say, “Alas! Alas!” and “Oioi! Oioi! Woe! Woe!” and all those kind of things. And then you have this litany, which I will not read, but just to point out that it keeps saying all the destruction of Babylon, and it ends every time with: “No more. No more.” “So shall Babylon the great city be thrown down with violence, and shall be found no more. The sound of harpers and minstrels, of flutes and players and trumpets shall be found and heard in her no more. A craftsman of any craft shall be found in thee no more. The sound of the millstone will be heard in thee no more. The light of lamps shall shine in thee no more. The voice of bride and bridegroom shall be heard in thee no more.” So it’s over, you see. How many times it says “no more,” you’d better get the point here. [Laughter]

And the merchants were great and all the nations were deceived by her sorcery and in her was found the blood of the prophets and the saints and all who have ever been slain on earth. The claim is that anyone who’s been slain for God and goodness and justice and truth, they are the victims of Babylon. They are the victims of Babylon. And then the Lord comes to destroy Babylon.

Then it continues in the 19th chapter. And just remember: chapters are very artificial things; there’s no chapters in the original writing, so you can’t… Well, whatever. After this: “I heard what seemed to be a mighty voice of great multitude in heaven, crying, ‘Alleluia! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God!’ ” How many times have we heard that already? That’s just over and over. “ ‘For his judgments are true and just. He has judged the great harlot, who corrupted the earth with her fornication, and he has avenged on her the blood of her servants.’ Once more they cried, ‘Alleluia! The smoke from her goes up forever and ever.’ ”

And then you have the return of the 24 presbyters, the four beasts, all the angels; they’re making another appearance here, and they’re all seated on the throne, and the Lamb is there, worshiping God, saying, “Alleluia! Amen. Alleluia!” Someone once said, “The coming kingdom will be nothing but Amen and Alleluia, whereas this world is input and feedback and discussion groups.” [Laughter] So we have [from] the throne a voice crying, “Praise our God, all you his servants, you who fear him, small and great,” and that expression, “those who fear him,” it doesn’t mean, you know, the people who fear God which is the beginning of wisdom. And as I mentioned the other night, God can only say, “Fear not,” to people who fear him. If we don’t fear him first, it doesn’t make any sense to say, “Fear not.” And “fear not” is the most repeated commandment in the Bible, the most repeated commandment: “Don’t be afraid.” But you’ve got to be afraid first. [Laughter] You’ve got to be afraid first. You’ve got to shake first, fear and trembling; then God can say, “Don’t be afraid.”

So he says here, “Those who fear him, small and great,” but we should know that expression, “those who fear him,” there was a technical term for the Gentiles who worshiped the God of Israel. In the other parts of Scripture, where it speaks: “God-fearers came to him,” “Those who feared God,” “Cornelius was a God-fearer,” it meant a Gentile who had already accepted the God of Israel. So what that sentence would mean: “All you who his servants, who belong to Israel and to him, and those who fear him, small and great.”

And then it says, “I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the sound of many waters (again), like the sound of mighty thunder peals (again)”—this is all repeated every time—“crying, ‘Alleluia, for the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exalt and give him the glory. For the marriage of the Lamb has come.’ ” And that’s the final symbol of the heavenly Jerusalem: the marriage supper of the Lamb of God. So finally we’ve got it here.

The marriage of the Lamb has come! And his bride has made herself ready. It was granted her to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure, for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the angel said to me, “Write this down: Blessed are they who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” And he said to me, “These are true words of God.” Then I fell on my face (again).

They’re always falling on their face, too, remember?

Fell down again at his feet to worship him. But he (the angel) said to me, “You must not do that. I am a fellow servant with you.”

“I’m not God.” The angel’s not God. “I’m a fellow servant with you.”

“And your brethren who hold the martyria, the testimony, the witness of Jesus, worship God.”

And the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of propriety.

Now here, just a couple comments can be made. Jesus of course uses in the gospels the imagery of the coming kingdom as a bridal chamber. And during Holy Week we also say, “I see thy bridal chamber all adorned. I cannot enter.” The [foolish] virgins aren’t ready to go in. So it’s all this imagery of entering the bridal chamber and becoming one with the Lord. That’s us! We are this bride.

I can’t resist saying how once a woman in my church named Vera—that means “faith” in Russian—she was shaking at me a newspaper clipping from The New York Times, and she says, “Father, look at this! Look at this! It’s terrible! Look at this!” And it was written by a guy named Tom Driver who was a psychology of religion or something teacher at Union Seminary in New York, where he was trying to make the case that Jesus was married: Jesus must have been married, because a rabbi had to be married and marriage was a big thing in Israel and you had to have kids; it would have been unheard of that he would be unmarried, and so on. So she goes: “Isn’t this awful!?” Then she kind of lost her nerve a little and she said to me, “He wasn’t married, was he?” [Laughter]

And it was pre-Dan Brown days, so I couldn’t get to Mary Magdalene on that one, but I decided to have some fun with her—you know I like to do that. And so I said to her, “Vera! You’ve been in this Church all your life; you’ve been teaching Church school, and you don’t know whether he’s married or not!?” And she said, “Oh, yeah, that’s true. He’s not married.” I said, “What!?” [Laughter] “What!?” She says, “Was he married?” I say, “Of course he was!” And she said, “Really!? Who’s his wife?” And I said, “We are.” We are. We’re his bride. He came for us, into the pit of hell, to love us to the end and to make us one flesh with him. And one of the first titles of the Messiah in Scripture, Mark 1, John 1, is Nymphios, Bridegroom. So he’s the Bridegroom and we are his bride. So when it says the marriage of the Lamb has come and the bride has made herself ready, that’s all these martyrs and prophets and everybody who got killed; that’s how they get ready. They get their white robes and everything, and they’re ready to enter into the marriage supper of the Lamb.

And then it says, “It was granted her to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure,” and then it says, “The fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.” Now, just another interesting little point is when the priest is vesting for the Liturgy and is putting on the white robe which we made a big point of here enough already—it’s got to be white, it’s baptismal, it’s the resurrected body, it’s those who are clothed in Christ—what he says is the line from Isaiah; the priest says— How does it begin? Quick, help me! I don’t have my book. But anyway, what it says in the middle is, “Thou hast adorned me as a bride, thou hast set a crown upon my head, and as a Bridegroom thou hast adorned me with beauty.” So it’s the clothing of the celebrant has the crown that makes him show that he is— “Thy priests, O Lord, are clothed in righteousness; thy holy ones shall exalt with exultation. Thou hast set a crown upon my head; thou hast put a white robe upon my body.” All this is said when we are serving the Liturgy.

Again, I’ll give a little commercial here. On Ancient Faith Radio, I have commentary on the Divine Liturgy, very detailed, and I’m doing the vesting at the moment, and I’ve already done eight of them and I’m not finished yet. In fact, I did 30 and I haven’t gotten to “Blessed is the kingdom…” yet. [Laughter]

But in any case, this is all very familiar liturgical worship language. That’s the point. It’s liturgical worship language: the crown, the white robe, the robes, the beauty, the glory, the Bridegroom, the Lamb, the marriage supper—and the marriage supper is the holy Eucharist. He’s the Lamb that you eat at the supper; he’s the Food of the supper: the Lamb that’s slain, the Bread of life. So this is all there in these texts.

And one more little comment from this particular passage. When the angel comes and John falls down in front of the angel, the angel says to him, “Stand up. I’m a servant, just like you.” But in the gospels when people fall down in front of Jesus, he never says, “Stand up.” He doesn’t say, “I’m a servant just like you,” because he’s not; he’s the Son of God. And that’s one of the proofs of his divinity, so to speak. He never says, “Oh, I’m a sinner like you,” or “I’m just human.” No! They fall down and worship him and he accepts it. He accepts it.

So then you have again these horses. The white horse comes again. And we saw this is in Zachariah; it’s in the Old Testament: the four horsemen of the Apocalypse and all that. And it says, “He who sat upon it is called faithful and true, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire. On his head are many diadems. He has a name inscribed which no one knows but himself, and is clad in a robe dipped in blood. And the name by which he is called is the Word of God.” And that’s the Johannine title for Jesus: “In the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God; the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. The Word became flesh.” So the Logos is the title. So the Apocalypse gives him the title: the Word of God.

“And the armies of heaven are arrayed in fine linen, white and pure”—there you go again. “Followed him on the white horses, and from his mouth issued the sharp two-edged sword”—and that’s again an image of the Word. Letter to the Hebrews: “The Word of God is a two-edged sword, sharp and cutting to the bones and marrow, the ligaments and bones,” or whatever it says there; it’s Hebrews 4.

And then it says, “And from his mouth issues this sharp sword. He will rule them with a rod of iron; he will tread the wine-press of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.” And then, interestingly, it says, “On his robe and on his thigh he has a name inscribed, and the name is King of kings and Lord of lords.” Now here it says, “on his thigh,” and that’s the sharp sword of the Lord of God is connected to what he has on his robe and on his thigh. Well, again, in our Church the bishops and the higher-ranking clergy and the clergy who are confessors and preachers, they wear that thing on their side when they’re vested. It’s called epigonation; goni means your knee, actually, but maybe they should lift it up, put it more on their thigh. [Laughter] But very often even written on that is: “The Word of God” or “The King of kings and the Lord of lords,” so that particular vestment piece is from here. It shows you have the power of the Word of God which is the two-edged sword. And then when we put it on, we have the line from the psalm, “Gird up thy thigh and reign for the sake of righteousness and truth” and all that kind of stuff. It’s all this military imagery, which the whole Divine Liturgy is nothing but a victory celebration with processions and Alleluias and armies and thighs and white robes and all and crowns and incense. It’s all here.

And then of course you have the beast and the false prophet have to be thrown down again. They have to go into the fire of brimstone, and they have to be slain. Now you get to this very difficult chapter 20, which is where there’s a big debate, especially among dispensationalists and all people like this. I think it’s so important that I’m going to read it; I think we have some time for that. Where it says:

I saw an angel come down from heaven, holding in his hand the key of the bottomless pit and the great chain. He seized the dragon, the ancient serpent, which is called the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it after him, that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were ended. After that, he must be loosed for a little while.

What does that mean? Then it says:

I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom judgment was committed. And I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded (or killed) for the witness to Jesus and for the Word of God, and who had not worshiped the beast or his image and had not received the mark on their foreheads or on their hands; they came to life, and they reigned with Christ a thousand years. The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended. This is the first resurrection. Blessed are they and holy are those who share the first resurrection. Over these the second death has no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and they shall reign with him a thousand years. When the thousand years are ended, Satan will be loosed.

It’s the same thing repeated another way.

Satan will be loosed from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations which are at the four corners of the earth: Gog, Magog gather for battle at Armageddon and so on. They marched all over the place, and the devil who had deceived them was finally thrown down in the lake of fire. The beast and the false prophet were, and they were tormented day and night forever and ever and ever.

And then I saw a great white throne of him who sat upon it, and from his presence earth and sky fled away; no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and the books were opened. Also another book was opened, which is the Book of Life, and the dead were judged by what was written in these books by what they had done.

Their works! And then it says:

The sea gave up all the dead, and Hades and Sheol (that’s the place of the dead in the Old Testament) gave up all the dead. All were judged by what they had done. Then death and Hades (Sheol) were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. If anyone’s name was not found written in the Book of Life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

That’s the entire twentieth chapter. What does it mean? I don’t know! [Laughter] There’s a lot of interpretations of it. Some people like St. Irenaeus thought there would be a thousand-year rule of Christ on the earth with the righteous and then the end would come. There are different theories, and then of course there are theories all over the place. You said Hal Lindsey will come to give the second opinion next week? [Laughter] I mean, what does all that mean? Well, I don’t know, but I’ll tell you, since you invited me, what I think is the most plausible teaching, and it’s found in Justin, it’s found in Augustine, and I think when you go through this it’s the most plausible teaching. I got this actually from one of our students who wrote a master of theology paper on this issue. His name was Thomas Dale Homuth Brown, and he became a priest, and he died one Sunday giving the cross after Liturgy at the age of 40-something. A really good guy.

But I have to, as I say, for the sake of full disclosure, this was his conclusion, and I thought it was the most convincing that I had read, and he had Church Fathers to support it and so on. In one word, what it was was this: “Thousand” does not mean “complete and total,” as we know; it’s a period of time. It’s a long period of time, but not a very long period of time. But it’s something that goes on for a while but then ends. What the theory is is that that thousand year where Jesus is glorified on earth and during which time the saints and the martyrs are entering into the kingdom to reign with him over and against those who worship the beast and have the image and the mark on them, they come to life and they reign with Christ and the rest of the dead are not come to life until the thousand years is over. This is the first resurrection.

I think that what this is is the age of the Church, because in the Church, allegedly, we are already dead to this world, we are already alive to God, we are already raised, and we are already baptized; we already eat and drink at the marriage feast of the Lamb, we already eat and drink in the kingdom of God, we already participate in the Lamb of God who was slain and becomes our food, we are already vested with all the garments of salvation—it’s already given to us, but it’s not given to all! And so that first death and the first resurrection is baptism in Christ, being raised with him and worshiping him on earth while this other persecution is going on. And then the Lord God—even though you get killed, you can’t be killed. I always think about how Jesus said in the gospels—he said, “They will beat you, they will reject you, they will put you in prison, they will kill you—but not one hair of your head will perish.” You want to say, “Thanks a lot. Why the first part, then?” [Laughter]

Well, that’s the whole point. All this will be done to you, but you cannot be killed. You already belong to the kingdom. You already live by the power of God, even when you’re slain, just like Jesus when he was slain was in fact actualizing the power of God! The power is in that being slain, in that love, in that fidelity, in that truth, in that righteousness, that even death cannot stop you. So I think it’s a very good theory that that’s what that means.

But then that thousand-year period ends and the Satan is let loose and can rule all over. Here, I think that this is not necessarily beloved Fr. Thomas’, but it is a classical understanding, certainly of my teacher, Verhovskoy, where he said that the end comes—the end comes—of human history, that ushers in the parousia, when there are no more martyrs, there are no more prophets, there are no more faithful people: the abomination of desolation enters the Church itself, and the apostasy of Christians is the end. And that’s when the devil is let loose, even to destroy those who claim to be Christians, because there are no righteous left.

I once asked this beloved professor of mine— I used to have to see him every week for three hours a week even after I had a doctorate. Boy, I took a lot of kidding of my colleagues from that one. I used to be walking over to his house and they’d say, “Don’t forget: from the Father alone!” [Laughter] Against filioque and so on. But anyway, I’d ask him— It would get boring sometimes, so I’d try to stir him up a little, so I asked him once, “Do you think it’s the end of the world?” He said, “My dear, you don’t know.” And I said, “I know. I’m just checking if you know.” [Laughter] And it was under communism, and he said, “It’s obviously not the end of the world.” I said, “It’s obvious?” “Oh, it’s obvious, of course. It’s obvious it’s not the end.” And then he of course quotes the Lord Jesus in the apocalyptic chapters of Matthew and Mark—Matthew 13, Mark 24—where Jesus said, “Nation will rise against nation. The people who belong to God will be persecuted; they will be killed,” and so on, but then Jesus says, “But the end is not yet.” That’s the penultimate period. The ultimate period is when the Christians themselves apostatize.

And I think that’s where we are right now, frankly. What communism could not destroy and the only thing it could do was produce martyrs and prophets and people with white robes and crowns, the modern secularized investment pornea industry drug traffic and everything will produce, and then as Flannery says, “You’ll read the Bible and write: Nice point. I agree with you, God.” Or in Wise Blood, where, you know: “No one tells you what this Bible means. You tell yourself what it is.” That’s the end, and I think this is what this Satan being loosed—it says it twice! “Satan will be loosed from his prison, will come out to deceive the nations which are at the four corners of the earth. Gather them for battle,” and so on.

So this loosing at the end, you can say, “When will the end come?” And I think a theological answer can be: when there are no more martyrs, when there are no more prophets, when there are no more people who are faithful, when there’s no one ready to suffer with the Lamb, no one’s ready to shed their blood for anything. They even go to church to be happy and healthy and live long and die on a golf course in Florida with their kid just accepted to Harvard or something. And you go to church so that God will help you to have that happen!

And that’s what I mean yesterday where I stirred the pot a little bit about Christianity becoming a religion after its establishment, because in the early Church we prayed not to have your cross taken away; you prayed to be able to bear it! You prayed to be faithful and die, not to be kept alive and be healthy and happy. You went to the martyrs’ grave to celebrate the Eucharist, offer your body with them to God, broken and shed. You didn’t go there to get healed. Healing is a very ambiguous thing here, very ambiguous. In fact, John Chrysostom says if you really believe that you’ve been healed by the Lord in some miraculous, powerful way, know that it’s only for one reason: more crosses, greater witness, greater suffering. You see? More time in this fallen world.

So the healing is never— That’s a penultimate— But then even when religion itself and Christ himself and God himself is simply our servant for what we want, and then we pray for the things that Babylon is providing, then it’s over. Then it’s over. And I think this is what this is trying to say. So then the Satan is loosed again, and then you have the— It ends with: “Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. If anyone’s name was not found written in the Book of Life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. But those who have died in the first death, the second death can’t touch them.” Those who have died with Jesus and suffered with him and died, the second death which is being thrown into hell, can’t touch you. Even death itself can’t touch you; nothing can touch you.

But it’s interesting that in this chapter also, everybody’s raised, including all the evil ones. Everybody’s raised and has to stand before the throne of the Lamb. We’re going to get this this Sunday from Matthew’s gospel. He sits upon the throne, the angels and all the righteous are with him, and then everyone stands in front of him, and then they have to stand: Were they with him or were they with the beast? Whom are they sealed with? Whom do they belong to? And hopefully that’ll be our last chance to say, “No, no, no! I don’t want to be with the beast any more.” And if that happens, fine, we think that the Lord will have mercy. But it may not happen.

Okay, we’ll continue here. “Then I saw a new heaven, new earth. The first heaven and first earth had passed away. The sea was no more. And then I saw the holy city: New Jerusalem,” which St. Paul says in Galatians is our mother. The New Jerusalem coming from on high is our mother. And St. Cyprian for example will say, “If you do not have God as your Father, you do not have the New Jerusalem as your mother.” And the New Jerusalem is already experienced on earth in the Church. The Church is “Shine, shine, New Jerusalem” already! That’s where we are. We have the foretaste of this New Jerusalem until it comes down from heaven. So he sees it coming down from heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

I heard a great voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling of God is with human beings. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them, and he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more; neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more. The former things have all passed away.”

And by the way, that’s virtually a direct quotation of the Prophet Isaiah, and we use that even in our funeral: “where there is neither sickness nor sorrow nor sighing, but life everlasting,” and so on. It’s all the tears are wiped away.

And then it says, “And he who sat upon the throne said, ‘Behold, I make all things new.’ ” Now, it’s very important: he didn’t say, “Behold, I make all new things.” He said, “I make all things new.” So the new heaven and the new earth is the original creation, renewed, re-created, restored, reglorified, reconstituted. It isn’t that this world simply is destroyed and there’s a new one that he creates from nothing—no! No, this world— And Gregory [the] Theologian said when he hangs on the cross, in that one moment, when he crushes Babylon and says, “It is done,” he said one drop of his blood re-creates the whole creation. And that’s Isaiah also, the new heaven, the new earth.

And then he says, “Write this! For these words are trustworthy and true.” And he said to me, “It is done!”

You got it again, the same expression: “It is done! It is finished. It’s over.”

“It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without price from the fountain of the water of life. He who conquers—

You got it again, right? In every one of those letters to the seven churches, he’s the One who conquers; he comes to conquer; those have to conquer in him—the whole works, right?

“He who conquers shall have this heritage, and I will be his God, and he shall be my son.”

And here the women are sons, also; they have the status of sons. They have everything that Christ is, everything that Christ is. Now listen to this list.

“As for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted; as for murderers, fornicators, adulterers, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their lot shall be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone which is the second death.”

But those who have died in the first death, together with Jesus on the cross, in the baptismal water and in every Eucharistic celebration, the second death can’t touch them. So this is the second death. And they will all be perishing in the second death. Then it says:

There came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues (the bowls of wrath), and he spoke to me saying, “Come!”

And by the way, how many times does this book say, “Come!”? I didn’t stress that before, but it’s constantly saying, “Come! Come up and see. Come forward.” That’s also a very liturgical thing. “Come! Draw near! Come let us worship!” And it’s going to end with the bride and the Spirit saying, “Come!” So “Come” is very important. So he says:

“Come, and I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” And in the Spirit he carried me away to the great high mountain and showed me the holy city of Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God.

It’s not the geographic place on earth; it’s the one in heaven, coming down from the heavens with God, having the glory of God, its radiance was like a rare jewel, like jasper, clear and crystal. It had a great high wall with twelve gates. The gates were twelve angels. The names of the twelve tribes were there. And so you have the twelve, and then you have four sides, each with three gates, which makes twelve. And then the wall of the city has twelve foundations and there are sitting the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

Now, we already said a million times that twelve is the number of the saved, and the 144,000 is twelve times twelve thousand, and it’s from the Gentiles and the Jews. So here you have this twelve all over the place.

“And then he told me to measure it.” Like Ezekiel did in the Old— And then, what is it? 12,000 stadia, 144 cubits. It’s all multiples of twelve, this particular city. It’s the city that’s being measured. And then you have the list—I will not read it—of all the stones that are around on the foundation of this city, and they are in fact the stones of the horoscope; they’re the stones of— Well, let’s see: jasper, sapphire, agate, emerald, onyx, carnelian, chrysolite. But they’re turned around backwards, and that means that the Lord conquers also the elemental powers of the cosmos.

And I even have some pictures here from frescoes. You can’t see them very well, but just to give you an idea. They’re here somewhere. [Laughter] Where in these kind of biblical type of frescoes they showed it. That would be one, like a vision like that, see? Oops, sorry. [Papers rustling] See, the Lamb, the invisible God, the 24 presbyters, the 12,000s from each of the tribes and each of the nations, and then around them are those gems. And on this other one, the gems are even more pronounced. [Papers rustling] And it’s a book about the Divine Liturgy; that’s why it’s there. You see, it’s Serbian. But you have the Christ now enthroned, he who sits upon the throne, surrounded by the angels, the four beasts of the Apocalypse, and then you have these stones all the way around. See, it’s from the Apocalypse.

And then, to continue, this is the city. Then you could say, “Where’s the Temple?” And the answer is: “I saw no Temple in the city.” There’s no Temple in the city. “For its Temple is the Lord God, the Almighty, and the Lamb.” That’s our Temple. “And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine upon it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. By its light shall the nations walk.” Lumen gentium: that’s also Isaiah, “He will be a light to the nations.” And Symeon says that when he holds the baby Jesus in Luke.

The kings of the earth shall bring their glory to him, and its gates shall never be shut by day, and there shall be no night there. They shall bring unto him the glory and the honor of the nations. Nothing unclean shall enter it, nor anyone who practices abominations or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.

They are there. So it’s very interesting: there’s no Temple, but the city has gates, but they have no doors on them! It’s open. Anybody can enter who wants to. If they believe in Christ, they can enter. If they’re ready to suffer with him, they enter. It’s up to us whether or not we enter, not up to him. He’s done it all here. And then of course you can’t read this without thinking of the Paschal hymn that’s used at every Divine Liturgy. Sometimes the people don’t hear it because the priest says it after he distributes Communion. And by the way, he says, “Behold, this has touched your lips, shall wash away your sins, purge all your iniquities.” That’s from Isaiah; that’s the seraph with the coal. And by the way, the Greek word for the spoon that you get Communion from, it’s the word for the tongs in Isaiah that holds the burning—

I can’t resist telling you, because I’m a grandfather. Once a teacher called up my daughter, Mary—she’s a presvytera, a priest’s wife—and she says, “You know, Mrs. Solak, I think we might be having a problem with Benny.” He was always having problems, Benny. [Laughter] But anyway, she said, “What is it this time?” And she said, “Well, I heard him telling a little boy that you eat fire in your church.” So my poor daughter, Masha, she says, “Fire? I mean, we have fire, we have incense, but we don’t eat fire.” So then Benny comes home. She says, “Benny, what have you been saying in [school] about eating fire [in church]?” He says, “We do! It’s a burning coal! It’s like fire!” And he was reading the Communion prayers, you know? [Laughter] Hey, he took it seriously! Like, you know, you’re burned away.

I can’t resist also saying one time I was talking with Benny when my daughter was having another boy, Niko, and I was asking him, like a good grandfather; I said, “Benny, do you pray?” “Of course, Grandpa!” he says. I said, “Do you know the Lord’s Prayer, Our Father?” I think he was about four years old. He said, “I’ve known this since I was born.” [Laughter] I said, “Okay, that’s nice. ‘I’ve known it since I was born.’ ” So I said, “Can you say it for me now?” And he said, “Yeah,” and he got through it. Then I said, “Well, you know, that’s kind of long and kind of difficult, so there are other prayers, like you could just say, ‘Lord, have mercy’ or ‘God, help me,’ like if things are going bad. There are little prayers that you can say; it’s good.” And I said, “The prayer, like, ‘Lord, have mercy,’ that’s the shortest praer. It’s a good prayer.” He looked at me and said, “That’s not the shortest prayer, Grandpa.” I said, “It’s not? What is?” And he said, “Amen!” [Laughter] So in the Apocalypse you have— They say Amen and Alleluia. That’s it! So, Benny, he’s in there. [Laughter]

Then it says, “They showed me the river of the water of life, bright and crystal, flowing from the throne of God. The Lamb through the middle of the street of the city, and on either side of the river the tree of life”—so we’re back at the beginning of the Bible again, in paradise: “The tree of life, with its twelve kinds of fruits.” Twelve again. All the fruits that you possibly can possibly have: “every good gift.” “...and yielding each fruit each month, and the leaves of the tree were for the healings of the nations, and there shall be no more anything accursed. For the throne of God and of the Lamb—” and don’t forget they’re sitting on the same throne—“and those who conquer sit on the same throne with them—” It’s all one and the same throne! It says, “—shall be in it. And the servants shall worship him. They shall see his face, and his name shall be on their foreheads. And night shall be no more. They need no light or lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they shall reign forever and over.”

Now, I got into Isaiah with the light of the nations and the fire and the burning coal and all that, because we sing in church—we have the odes of the canon, and they follow the biblical odes. The first one is Moses; the second one is penitential—it’s only done during Lent. Then you have Hannah; then you have Habakkuk. Then you have Isaiah; then you have the Three Youths, and then you have the Magnificat. And then you have the Benedictus. So that’s how our worship goes. But the point being there, Isaiah provides a lot of these words, and so what we sing and say—and it’s the last ode on Pascha, and the priests say it at the Liturgy after giving Communion:

Arise and shine, the New Jerusalem, for the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. And you, Theotokos, be exceedingly glad in the resurrection of that Son whom you have borne.

And then we continue:

O Pascha of the Lord, O Passover great and holy, O Wisdom, Word, and Power of God, count us worthy to have communion with you, more truly, in the never-ending Day of your kingdom, the Day without evening.

And that’s how we culminate the Divine Liturgy in church. We are actually there in that reality that we already participate in and are expecting to come and to be more perfectly. So this is what we have there, and the light and the lamp is the Lamb himself.

Then he said to me, “These words are trustworthy and true. The Lord, the God of the spirit of the prophets has sent his angel to show his servant what must soon take place. Behold, I am coming soon!”

Now again we could talk about that “soon.” We did it a couple nights ago. What is soon for God? What is soon for us? Already in 2 Peter in the New Testament that was a problem, because the people who were against the Christians, probably certain heretical types, said, “Where is he? Where is the Lord’s coming? You see, he’s not here yet! You guys are nuts. What are you waiting for?” And then the answer that Peter gave—the author of that book said that with the Lord a thousand years is like a watch in the night. He has a different understanding of time than we have, and what is soon for him and what is soon for us. But we always must be in that status that it is soon, it is now. But we never guess and we never know because Jesus refused to tell us. He said, “I’m not telling you. You cannot know this. You have to be ready,” but we do pray: “Come, Lord. Come quickly. Come soon,” and that he is coming. “I am coming soon.”

I always thought that if nowadays somebody asked us that question, “Hey, your Lord is supposed to come. Where is he? They thought he was going to come in the first century; he didn’t come. St. Paul thought he was coming; he didn’t come. Every age thought he was coming; he still didn’t come. And here you guys are hanging out now.” So I think we could make a couple answers from the Apocalypse. One would be: Because the full number of the saved is not complete. That’s what Jesus himself said in Peter. The other one is that— because there has to be this full number. Also you could say, “What is soon?” You could get into that. But sometimes I think a very good answer, which I like to use, is to say, “I am so glad that they were wrong on that point! Because if they were right, I wouldn’t be here, and neither would you.” [Laughter]

So he’s been waiting around for us, guys. But also he’s waiting for the time of complete and total apostasy on the part of Christians. So let’s make sure we’re not part of that gang, because that’s the end. That is the end. So anyway, then it continues.

He said, “These words are trustworthy and true. Blessed is he who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book.” I, John, am he who heard and saw these things, and when I heard them and saw them, I fell down on my face and worshiped—

Again, always doing that.

—at the feet of the angel who showed them to me, but he said to me, “You must not do that. I am a fellow servant with you—”

This already happened once.

“—and your brethren the prophets, with those who keep the words of this book.”

Worship God and nothing else, not angels, not anything. And worship of angels, by the way, was also a sign of apostasy, because you worship elemental powers and all that, and not the God of the angels.

Then he said to me, “Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near. Let the evil-doers still do evil. Let the filthy still be evil, and the righteous still do right, and the holy still be holy.”

I know that we’re in Tennessee, and you mentioned Elvis, but Johnny Cash sings this line. [Laughter] There’s a song of Johnny Cash where he sings these words. It’s a fantastic thing; look for it. I love it.

“Let the evil-doer still do evil, let the filthy still be filthy, and the righteous still do right, and the holy still be holy, until he comes.”

“Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense to repay everyone for what he has done!”

Again: done. The works. Then it says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” so we’re back to the beginning of the book again. It’s called in literary terms [an] inclusio poetica: you begin with it and you end with it. You start with the tree of life, you start with paradise, and then you end with it at the end, and everything is filled in in between. Then he says:

“Blessed are those who wash their robes in the blood of the Lamb (of course), and they may have the right to the tree of life—”

nd of course the tree of life in our tradition is the cross of Christ on which we have the twelve fruits, and the very Fruit, which is Christ himself, the Lamb of God. So the tree of life is there:

“—that they may enter the city by the gates. Outside are the dogs and the sorcerers and the fornicators and the murderers and the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood. I, Jesus, have sent my angel to you with this martyria, this witness, this testimony, for the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, the bright Morning-Star.”

Then it ends with the Spirit and the Bride say:

“Come, let him who hears say Come. Let him who is thirsty come. Let him who desires to take the waters of life without price come. I warn everyone who hears the words of this prophecy of this book, if anyone adds anything to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of this book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and the holy city which are described in this book.”

Now, these words are found in the Torah of Moses; they’re in Deuteronomy, twice, where it says, “Nobody adds to this and nobody takes anything way.” And I think that I mentioned that in 19th-century polemics, when we were not as polite as we are now, the Orthodox polemicists used to say to Western Christians, “The problem with Rome is that they add. The problem with the Reformed people is that they take away.” So we neither add something that shouldn’t be there, like, I don’t know, the infallibility of the pope or something, but we don’t take anything away either. And then it says, it finishes:

He who bears witness to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.”

That means Christ, the faithful Witness. “Amen!” says Benny. “Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!” And then it ends: “The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints. Amen.” And that’s the end of the book.