Fr. Stephen De Young: Verse eight: “And another angel followed, saying: Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she has made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.” There’s an image! And it’s alluding to imagery that, as we mentioned a little while ago, before we started recording, we’re going to get into in chapter 17. We’re going to see how St. John introduces these things and then… Remember, he mentioned the beast before he talked about the beasts a couple of chapters ago. This is the same thing. We’re going to find out more about Babylon, what city that is, why it’s a “she,” and why she is “drinking of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.”

But—spoilers—Babylon, the Babylonian Empire, was the first major world empire, the original Babylonian Empire, not the— Nebuchadnezzar that we think of, the Babylonians in the Old Testament, that’s the Neo-Babylonian Empire. So the Babylonian Empire is mid-second millennium BC, and that’s really the first empire in terms of— I mean, there were always kings who would make the kings of neighboring cities their vassals and that kind of thing, but when we’re talking about the Martu who set up the first Babylonian Empire in the city of Babylon, Hammurabi being the most famous one, Amorites— Hammurabi, for example, got his sandals imported from Crete. Hammurabi in Babylon was forging things out of bronze; that’s why it’s called the Bronze Age. He was getting the copper from Cyprus and the tin from what’s now Afghanistan. This is a known world empire, and economically dominating, politically dominating, the world. And then the Bronze Age collapse happens and it all falls apart.

The story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 is really a very condensed version of the rise and fall of the Babylonian Empire. That’s why it’s the Tower of Babel: Babylon. So Babylon is an image, functions sort of like the beast from the sea, in that it’s not just referring to that city in particular, which was kind of in ruins at this point. It’s not just referring to that empire, but becomes symbolic of what St. Augustine would call the city of man, as opposed to the city of God: world empire as such.

Part of this last judgment is that this sort of imperial world power, opposed to God, is now destroyed, which is, as we’ll see when this gets developed more in chapter 17, really bad news for all the people who were worshiping it, the fact that it’s now wiped out: the thing you were putting all your hope and all your trust in. But this, again, isn’t just something that happens at the end of time, because, remember, part and parcel of Daniel’s vision of the succession of empires with the different beasts who all get sort of congealed here is that there’s a succession. There’s one after the other, and they all rise and they all fall, which makes them very different [from] God, the true God, but which also means anyone who is putting their trust and their hope in them is going to be left out.

I’m trying to remember who it was who said, “He who weds himself to the spirit of the age soon finds himself a widower.” [Laughter] But that’s what happens. The people who put their trust in the Assyrian empire and the Assyrian gods—I would say left out in the cold, but they were mostly left dead when the Babylonians showed up. And guess what happened to the Babylonians when the Persians showed up, and guess what happened to the Persians when Alexander the Great showed up, and guess what happened to Alexander the Great’s successors when the Romans showed up, and on and on and on.

Some more spoilers for chapter 17—this should lose some listeners—the current embodiment of this imperial power is the United States of America. Hasn’t been for very long—it was Britain until World War II—but now it’s us and—guess what—I don’t think in that much time it’s not going to be any more. So putting your trust— “Put not your trust in princes and sons of men in whom there is no salvation.” That includes presidents, that includes prime ministers, that includes kings and queens: that includes everybody, because it’s one after the other. And they’re all glorious. You go and look at the art of the British Empire, the depictions of Britannia, and the sun never sets on the British… And you look at some of the horrors that were involved in that in various places, but ultimately it all comes crumbling down. There’s as much blood on the way out as there was on the way in. It’s just roles tend to get reversed.

So yeah, this also—this statement also—is good news for some people and bad news for some other people. For all the people whose hope and trust was in this world and its system, this is very bad news. For the 144,000, for those who weren’t part of it, this is great news: this is deliverance when this happens.

“The wine of the wrath of her fornication”: we’ve talked before about how, when you see “of” in an English translation of the New Testament, it’s a punt. It means there was a Greek genitive word, which can be translated, interpreted, in a whole bunch of different ways, or you can just say “of” and be non-committal. [Laughter] The connection here is that— “The wine of her fornication” meaning that the wine represents her fornication. So the idea is that— The people who were worshiping and serving Babylon and this system were fornicating with her is the idea, so it’s comparing that to sexual immorality, which was a common image in the Old Testament. When God comes and reproaches Israel because they’ve been following after the gods of the other nations and that kind of thing, he compares it to “I was your husband and you went out and fornicated.” So that’s picking up that same imagery.

And then the wrath is not like her wrath against these other people; it’s the wrath engendered by her fornication. So by participating in this fornication, they brought this wrath upon themselves. And what is wrath? Wrath is being on the wrong end of that correction. Wrath is when you start out as first and you end up as last. That’s loss, suffering: wrath.

Verse nine: “Then a third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice: If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on his forehead or on his hand, he himself shall also drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out full strength into the cup of his indignation.” That “full strength” means not mingled with water is the analogy, so it’s just straight.

“He shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.” We’ll pause there before we get to verse eleven. Again, this is sort of expanding on that imagery regarding Babylon. If you’re one of the followers of the beast, one of the worshipers of the beast who gets his mark instead of God’s, then you’re also going to— This is to say, “I’m talking about you. This isn’t just the other world leaders or the rich or the powerful. If you’re a part of this, this is you.”

And notice, it doesn’t say they’re going to be tormented in hell; they’re going to go and get sent and get flogged by demons or something, stabbed with pitchforks. It says that they’re going to be “tormented by fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.” Well, what does that mean? Well, what happens to someone who is unrepentantly wicked in the Old Testament, say, when the walk into the tabernacle or they touch the ark of the covenant?

Q1: They die.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, and specifically, if you look at Nadab and Abihu, everybody’s two favorite biblical characters, who are the sons of Aaron, who go into the tabernacle drunk at the wrong time to offer incense, it says fire comes out from the presence—the presence of the Lamb here, from the presence of the Lord, from the presence of Yahweh—and consumed them. As we’ve talked about a lot as we’ve talked about the Torah and how it worked, to come into the presence of God as wicked, unrepentant, sinful, rebellious, hardened in our rebellion and hatred of God, is this horrible experience that’s described all through the Old Testament in these fire terms that get picked up again here. They’re going to come into the presence of the Lamb and, contra to the people we were just talking about like the 144,000 who have nothing to fear when they come into the presence of Christ, for these people that’s a profoundly fearsome and terrible experience.  Why? Because he hates them? No! Because they hate him. Because they hate him.

Hebrews uses this language that our God is a consuming fire. That fire image is used by the Old Testament prophets in two ways. We approach God and we come into the fire of his holiness. When that happens, one of two things happens. Either that fire purifies us—because none of us show up totally pure, but that fire either purifies us— They usually use images of metal being refined in a fire. All the impurities get burned away, and all you have left is the pure, precious metal. Or we’re consumed. If all we are is impurities, we’re consumed. That’s the imagery they use.

So that’s the same imagery here, because what did the first angel say? “Get ready; God’s coming.” For these people, this is this profound, wonderful promise; for you, if you’re one of these people, it’s going to be really bad. But notice, it isn’t St. John seeing this happen. It’s an angel proclaiming this as a warning to those people, before it happens—immediately before it happens, but before it happens. And just like what the other angels said, this isn’t just one thing for one day in the future; this is a thing for every day.

St. John is asking the question to his readers, in our modern language: How much have you sold out? Because a fair number of St. John’s readers were striving hard to follow Christ and suffering, but there were also people among the original people who heard this who weren’t really trying so hard and maybe, because of that, weren’t suffering so much, who were trying to straddle the fence, keep one foot in the Roman system and one foot in the Church. When the chips were down, sometimes maybe they’d stay a Christian, and maybe sometimes they didn’t, depending on what the stakes were and an immediate decision. And so this warning is addressed to them: Have you been participating? Because, remember, this image of the mark was connected to participating in the commerce, in the day-to-day things of this world. This is given again as a warning, because if you’re reading this or you’re hearing this, it’s not too late for you.

Verse eleven: “And the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name.” Notice— So we have this: this is ongoing forever. But notice that verb: “who worship the beast and his image.” It’s actually a participle, but that’s a verbal noun. That’s present tense. It’s not “those who worshipped,” like you did this and now you’re doomed, you did this and now you’re punished. Even in this torment that’s being described, they continue to follow the beast and his image. Again, this is unrepentant. This is unrepentant evil. As long as their lack of repentance is ongoing, so is their suffering.

Verse twelve: “Here is the patience of the saints. Here are those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus.” “Here is the patience of the saints” sounds… weird, but that’s essentially an introductory thing of “I’m about to describe why it is that the saints are able to be patient.” He’s using “patient” because, again, think about the martyrs: “How long, O Lord, will you allow this to go on?” And then he defines what he means by saints, what he means by holy ones, because that word is used, for example, to describe angels. The ones he’s talking about here are the ones who “keep the commandments of God” and then we have this—it’s translated “and the faith of Jesus.” So first of all you have a horrible “of” punt there: “the faith of Jesus,” what does that mean? Jesus had faith and they have the same faith?

As we’ve talked about a bunch of times before, the word “faith” is translated “faith” and sometimes “believe”—it’s the same word—or “belief” is better translated “faithfulness.” So this should be like the faithfulness to Christ, faithfulness related to Christ. And that’s parallel to, back there, “these are the ones who follow the Lamb wherever he goes”: that idea of faithfulness.

Notice also the prominence there, that it’s actually mentioned first: keeping the commandments. So it’s maybe a—no offense, but this may be a “sorry” to our Protestant friends that, in addition to faith, we see keeping the commandments listed here. It’s almost like faith is not alone or all by itself. [Laughter] But also that faithfulness consists of something. So this is not saying, “Those who keep the commandments and who have the right ideas in their heads.” Just bluntly it isn’t. And Protestants don’t have to believe that; I’m not trying to caricature, but I take my digs once in a while. [Laughter] The faithfulness consists— These are not like two radically different things, like you could do one and not the other. Keeping the commandments of God is being faithful to Christ, and being faithful to Christ means that you will keep the commandments of God. You can’t have one of those without the other one. So that’s what he’s talking about.

And those people, they’re able to be patient, meaning literally long-suffering. They’re able to remain faithful despite suffering. Why? Here we go.

Verse 13: “Then I heard a voice from heaven saying to me: Write: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on. Yes, says the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors, and their works follow them.” The “from now on”: here’s another place where this is clearly not talking about the distant future. If you die now: “Aw, man! If I’d just died right before Christ returned, then I’d be blessed, but now…” [Laughter] So “from now on” isn’t even written—I mean, it is from when St. John is having the vision, but really it’s from Christ’s resurrection, which wasn’t that long ago, as St. John is writing this; it’s decades, but not that long. So that’s that.

“Blessed are those who die from now on”: why? And, remember, this is why the saints are able to endure suffering in this life and remain faithful: because when they die on this earth, “they rest from their labors”—so they rest from that suffering; that suffering is over; all of that is over—“and their works follow them.” But what they did in this life—in being faithful to Christ, in keeping the commandments—that endures.

When someone who’s a follower of Christ dies in this world, there are things that end and there are things that don’t end. The love that they shared with people does not end. That follows after them. The goodness, the peace, the person they became in Christ: that all follows them; that all endures forever. But things like suffering, pain, sin, weakness, struggling: that dies; that’s over. And so we can say that that person is blessed. That person is blessed, no matter how they died, whether they were tortured to death by the Romans, whether they’d died in an old age in their sleep. However it was, if they were a follower of Christ, they were blessed. Doesn’t matter how old or how young they were.

That’s a radical thing! In the ancient world, the blessed person is the one who had a long life and no bad things happened to them. Aristotle wrote and wrote and wrote about this: read the Nicomachean Ethics, the Eudemian Ethics. It’s all about: How do you live a happy life? Is it even within your power, because isn’t there fortune involved? Some people just have bad fortune and suffer a lot; they can’t really said to be happy. And how does virtue play into it? All these things. But a person who dies young, a person who’s tortured to death, a person who lives in poverty? This is not the blessed person. This is not the blessed person in the ancient world.

A person with that mindset, a person with a pagan Roman mindset, is not going to be long-suffering in the way that Christians were. If you went and tortured them and said, “I want you—” If you tortured a pagan Syrian and said, “I want you to deny Baal and worship Jupiter,” he’d be like: “Sure! No skin off my nose! They’re probably the same dude anyway.” [Laughter] There was not someone— But so this is why the saints could do it, because they know that, whatever happens, what’s the worst thing that can happen to you in this world, in this life? You can die a horrible death. I mean, that’s pretty much the worst thing that can happen. And if that puts you into this blessed state, if that becomes a hope instead of something you’re afraid of, then you’re truly blessed in this life, because then you really have nothing to fear. This is where that saying, “No one can harm the righteous man,” comes from, because even if you kill him, you’ll only put an end to all the bad things he’s had to struggle with and deal with, and all the good follows him.

Verse 14: “Then I looked, and behold: a white cloud, and on the cloud sat one like the Son of Man, having on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle.” This imagery is again straight out of the book of Daniel.

Q1: Is this starting a new cycle?

Fr. Stephen: No, not yet. We’re coming up to the end, though. In Daniel, there’s this story—when we loop around and get to Daniel in a few years we’ll go over it in more detail, but it’s actually kind of a remix of the enthronement of Baal, but where Daniel sees the Ancient of Days, and then he sees “one like a Son of Man,” which originally meant someone who looks human, essentially, someone who looked like a human, but riding on clouds come up before him, and he’s then given authority and power. St. John is using this imagery and expanding on this.

That riding the clouds language doesn’t maybe impress us that much, but this was imagery that was used of Baal. Baal was the cloud-rider; that was one of his titles, because he was a storm-god. This was a symbol of divinity and power. That imagery gets applied to Yahweh the God of Israel in several psalms and in other places. One of them we read tonight at vespers: “He walketh upon the wings— He maketh the clouds his chariot; he walketh on the wings of the wind.” So what’s being juxtaposed here in Daniel is this looks like a human—this looks like a human, but he’s riding the clouds of heaven, which is a mark of divinity. And so this figure of the Son of Man in Second Temple Jewish literature, pre-Christian Jewish literature, is this apocalyptic figure, and it gets connected very quickly—even in the book of Enoch, 1 Enoch, third-century BC—gets connected to the Messiah as this divine Messiah figure.

He’s going to come on the clouds of heaven to judge, and Christ himself refers to this several times in the gospels, especially in St. Matthew’s gospel. He uses the title Son of Man for himself all over the place, connecting himself to this figure, but this specific imagery in St. Matthew’s gospel and St. Mark’s gospel, he talks about, at one point just straightforwardly, the same imagery St. John is using here. He says, “When the Son of Man comes on the clouds of heaven with his holy angels to judge.” He just straight out throws it out there, but he also says to the high priest, when the high priest kind of corners him and says, “All right, spill it. Are you the Messiah?” No, he says, “Are you the Son of God?” And Christ says to him, “Henceforth, you will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven.” That “henceforth” is really like “next time you see me, this is what it’s going to be.” [Laughter] And that’s when the high priest says, “We don’t need any more witnesses! We’ve heard him blaspheme right in front of us.” So this is abundant— What St. John is doing here would be abundantly clear to his original Jewish readers, that this is Christ and this is now the image of the last judgment. The sickle, you use it at the harvest.

When Christ is talking about the last judgment, again, especially in St. Matthew’s gospel, over and over again he uses these images of a harvest. You’ve got the wheat and the weeds; you’ve got the wheat and the chaff, this idea of harvest and separating. He was talking to farmers, which makes it a very— These people were subsistence farmers, so they knew about these kind of things, so it was a very helpful metaphor for them. But that same metaphor is being picked up here by St. John. He’s coming now with this sickle to judge, meaning to separate out.

Verse 15: “And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to him who sat on the cloud: Thrust in your sickle and reap, for the time has come for you to reap, for the harvest of the earth is ripe. So he who sat on the cloud thrust in his sickle on the earth, and the earth was reaped.” So where’s this temple? We’ve talked about it; it’s in heaven.

Q1: I thought they were on Mt. Sinai.

Fr. Stephen: Right, but there is no temple there now. That’s where the Lamb was.

Q1: Yes, that’s true.

Fr. Stephen: But this is now coming on the clouds of heaven. We went back. Remember, there was the angel in the midst of heaven? So we’ve gone back to heaven. So this is the heavenly sanctuary.

Now’s the time— This is another piece of imagery, again picking up on what Christ used, that for a time the wheat and the weeds are allowed to grow together, because you don’t want to go and try and get rid of the weeds because you might kill all of the wheat in the process. The time comes [when] you’ve got to— at the harvest, [when] these things get separated out. So there’s people— Using the language he’s been using, marked by God and people with the mark of the beast; they’re all living together. Things aren’t necessarily going well for the people with the mark of God, but they’re all living together. So now’s the time [when] things are going to be set right; this is going to be separated out. So he thrusts the sickle in; harvest begins.

Verse 17: “Then another angel came out of the temple which is in heaven”—making it explicit there—“he also having a sharp sickle. And another angel came out from the altar who had power over fire, and he cried with a loud cry to him who had the sharp sickle, saying: Thrust in your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth, for her grapes are fully ripe.” Now we’re talking about grapes. This is where the title of Grapes of Wrath came from, actually.

We’ve got a: “It’s ripe. This is the time.” We talked before about the last judgment. There’s a time known only to God, when judgment happens. God gives time for repentance because he wills that none should perish, but he also won’t let evil take place forever. There’s a time known only to him, whereas we see in the Scriptures, in the life of the whole world, in terms of the final judgment and Christ’s return, in terms of any given nation or people group, in terms of any individual person, where the need to put an end to evil in God’s sight outweighs giving more time to repent. That’s the point at which that person leaves this world, that nation or group is judged, when the whole earth will ultimately be set right.

Q1: Why is it always related to wine and cups when he talks about wrath?

Fr. Stephen: When it talks about wrath?

Q1: Yeah. Is it just because of getting drunk on power or something? Or is it like—?

Fr. Stephen: Drunkenness and wine, especially unmingled wine, meaning without water, not watered down, straight, pure—it’s sort of biting, burning, caustic, take a shot of whiskey… [Laughter]

Q1: I understand that in the ancient world, wine was the main thing you drank, but it was always mixed.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, you would cut it.

Q1: It’s so potent it’s almost like poison.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, and there’s that burning element of it. And also there’s a connection with— There’s a Hebrew idiom for wine where wine is called the blood of grapes, so there’s sort of a blood connection there, too, that I think factors in there.

Verse 19: “So the angel thrust his sickle into the earth and gathered the vine of the earth and threw it into the great wine-press of the wrath of God.” So, contra “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” this is not talking about the Union Army. I’m just going to throw that out there. I am not pro-Confederate, even though I now live in Louisiana, but this is also not talking about the Union Army. [Laughter] “The vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored” is what I’m referring to, which is referencing this.

Verse 20: “And the wine-press was trampled outside the city, and blood came out of the wine-press, up to the horses’ bridles, for 1,600 furlongs.” I like that they use furlongs. Oh, they did the math in the Orthodox Study Bible notes. 184 miles. [Laughter]

Q1: [Inaudible]

Fr. Stephen: Yes, roughly, give or take. And the size of a horse’s bridle, so that deep and that far. So the idea is not [that] we’re supposed to get an exact measurement of “this is exactly how much blood of grapes…” You see the blood, the blood of grapes. The idea is: it’s a lot. It’s not a little trickle; it’s a torrent. It’s a torrent.

So is this just saying, “Hey, man, you’re going to get squished if you don’t get right”? This is actually picking up on sacrificial imagery. I know that’s not immediately apparent to us, but this is part of why St. John invoked the temple in heaven when he’s talking about this. We don’t think about what the Temple was actually like, because— And this is, thankfully for me—I’m very happy to be a priest of the new covenant; I don’t have to go around throwing blood, I don’t have to butcher animals, I don’t have to… There’s lots of stuff I don’t have to do. But at the Temple, because there were constantly animal sacrifices going on, and because all the blood had to be drained and disposed of, there were these big gutters that were sort of full of blood and offal all the time, coming out of the Temple.

Q1: Gross.

Fr. Stephen: This is not an appealing image to us. The smell would be even less appealing, I’m sure. But so this was sort of the concept, when sacrifices were going on. So this imagery of this wine-press of God’s wrath from which all this blood is pouring is applying sacrificial imagery to this. This exact image is going to be developed again more in the next cycle in a few chapters, because a new cycle actually starts next chapter, in chapter 15, beginning of chapter 15. We’re going to get another set of seven.

This’ll be developed more, but this is pointing to this sacrificial image. And this image is used when the Day of the Lord, the Day of Yahweh, is talked about by the Old Testament prophets. They use this language of the Lord preparing his sacrifice, of the Day of the Lord, of the Day of Judgment. What they’re talking about is—literally they use this descriptive language—the armies of the enemies of God and their horses. And those are all slaughtered and offered as a sacrifice, meaning offered as food, to the animals of creation—the vultures, the buzzards, the beasts all come and eat. God sort of puts on this banquet for the scavenger animals, the unclean animals, this sacrificial banquet of all of his enemies.

St. John is here at the end of this cycle sort of dropping the first beginning of that image. He’s going to develop it more at the end of the next cycle when he comes back to it. I won’t tease that any more, but we’ll come back to that idea. But that’s what’s going on here with this huge torrent of grape-blood, wine, going on here, is the idea that this has turned into this sacrifice. That’s a sort of inversion image that’s common in other places, too. There’s a point in the psalms—I can’t remember the psalm number off the top of my head—where it talks about— It might be in Isaiah, not the psalms… I’m drawing a blank. I need to wrap up. It’s getting too late. Need more caffeine. [Laughter] But where it talks about God smashing the heads of Leviathan and giving it as food to the Ethiopians. It’s the same kind of thing, him taking this enemy that represents chaos and death and destruction and then not only defeating it but then giving it as nourishment to his creation and bringing life out of it.

That’s even true of the wickedness in the world. This is an image of God taking all the wickedness in the world that’s come to this fruition and turning around and turning it into a sacrifice, turning it into something that can give life. As I mentioned, we’ll go ahead and stop here. We’re at the end of a chapter. We’re about to begin another cycle, so this is kind of a perfect spot. Thank you, everybody.