Fr. Stephen De Young: So verse nine: “After these things”—another transition—“I looked and behold: a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands.” He’s got— Okay, so there’s all these people from all over. They’ve all got the white robes. Remember the white robes from back in the letters to the churches. This is what you get when you overcome. This is what the elders had, the elders where there were some humans up there. This is now all of these folks. And the palm branches are symbols of victory: “to him who overcomes,” that refrain from the letters.

And crying out with a loud voice, saying: Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb. All the angels stood around the throne and the elders and the four living creatures, and fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying: Amen, blessing and glory and wisdom, thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever, Amen.

So we had the beginning of the judgment when the sixth seal was opened. Then we pressed pause; time out. [Laughter] The angels hold back sort of the destructive forces. So that we can, all the people of God, be sealed, and now they’re all gathered together into that heavenly worship we saw before. Everybody’s now brought in, all those people who were sealed.

Verse 13: “Then one of the elders answered, saying to me: Who are these, arrayed in white robes, and where did they come from? And I said to him: Sir, you know.” [Laughter] Notice again, it’s just one of the elders. It doesn’t say who. Could be himself. He could be talking to himself again.

So he said to me: These are the ones who came out of the great tribulation and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore, they are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple. And he who sits on the throne will dwell among them.

A couple things there. So the first one is the great tribulation, and now I’m going to disappoint everyone again, because I know you’ve been told by some of our American eschatologically oriented friends that the great tribulation is something, maybe a seven-year period, that is some time in the future. So the basic problem with this is that the book of Daniel talks about the great tribulation in the present tense. Daniel talks about it in the present tense. So that means this isn’t something that’s going to happen in particular in the future.

And if you look at that great tribulation language, which is not only in Daniel; it also appears in other Second Temple literature—it even appears in the Dead Sea Scrolls—that is a way of describing the period of time from the “end of the exile,” because after 70 years a group of the remnant of Judah get to go back. They establish Judea as first a Persian province, and then it becomes a Seleucid Greek province, and then it becomes a Roman province. They’re allowed to go back this time. So they don’t all go back; a bunch stay in Mesopotamia, a bunch stay in Egypt. People are scattered all over the place. But they get to back and establish that.

But the presence of God never returns to the Temple when they rededicate it. But, equally as importantly, as we say, they’re under this foreign oppression. So the Persians don’t treat them that badly, but that doesn’t last that long. Alexander the Great comes through and makes fairly short work of the Persians. And Seleucis is given Syria, ends up getting Judea, and the Greeks, especially under Antiochus IV Epiphanes, brutally oppress and martyr the people of Judea. Romans get basically invited in. In order to try to help them get free and stay free from the Seleucids, the Maccabees, the Hasmoneans, sign a treaty with Rome, mutual protection treaty with the city of Rome, and that doesn’t work out so good for them. They end up getting annexed by Rome. So the great tribulation is a way of referring to that period, that whole period where the exile kind of ended, but it really didn’t. It really didn’t.

And so they were looking forward to— From the Jewish perspective, they were looking forward to the coming of the messianic age that would represent an end to that great tribulation. That’s why the idea of the Romans getting overthrown was so tightly connected. “We’re not going to be under foreign oppression any more. We’re going to really be back in the land, with our own king, able to purify the Temple and do the things correctly, and everything will be back like it should be, like it was when David was king.” That’s sort of how they’re looking at it. And in that it’s not that, it is this great tribulation.

Q2: So they didn’t believe God was—? Did the Temple enter into it?

Fr. Stephen: Well, no, he hadn’t… So when you read the dedication of the tabernacle, dedication of the first Temple, there is this appearance of what’s called the theophanic glory cloud, comes rushing into the— There’s these visible signs and all of these things that happened. And that’s not recorded as happening when they rebuilt it under Nehemiah. Then of course it gets wrecked again by— And the ark of the covenant isn’t there; they don’t have the ark of the covenant any more. It gets wrecked again by Antiochus Epiphanes. He comes in and desecrates it, sacrifices pigs on the altar to Zeus. When the Maccabees rededicate it, you get the oil that lasts eight days instead of one, so we have a festival to celebrate a really good quality product. [Laughter] But that’s it. I mean, that’s the miracle that happens when it gets rededicated; there’s not this big display of power.

When Pompey comes into annex Judea, he marches right into the holy of holies and is kind of blown away by the fact that there’s nothing there, because he’s expecting to find some elaborate idol, some kind of something. He walks in, and it’s a big empty room, basically. So he kind of— That actually helped them with the Romans, because the Romans are like: “Ah, they worship God sola mentis, only with their minds. This must be some refined religion.” But because Pompey’s confused— He walks right in there: he doesn’t drop dead; nothing happens to him.

Q1: Touching the ark of the covenant used to be fatal.

Fr. Stephen: Oh, yeah! Nadab and Abihu! You couldn’t get anywhere near! So there’s this awareness that they have that things still aren’t right.

Q2: I have a follow-up question. In that case, what rends the veil of the Temple when Christ dies?

Fr. Stephen: Well, it’s opened up to sort of display that there’s nothing there.

Q2: Oh!

Q1: To see in.

Fr. Stephen: To everyone.

Q2: It’s already parted.

Fr. Stephen: So there are various— Various Jewish sects have various reasonings as to why that is. Generally it’s something needs to happen. Foreign domination needs to go away. Or it’s because the Sadduccees are completely corrupt and this is the wrong high priestly family, so if we get one of them and restore the true priesthood… There are various versions of what it will be, but sort of that’s part of the mark, then, that the tribulation is over, the messianic age has come.

There’s also, when it tears— That’s part of the whole inversion that happens, that the Messiah does come, and they crucify him. And instead of the presence of God coming back, it rips from top to bottom, and there’s nothing there.

Q2: Coming in rather than going out.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah. That all sort of ends up getting— The expectation at least gets inverted.

All that is to say that St. John is actually extending the great tribulation, beyond— Because by the time he’s writing this, the Temple doesn’t exist. The Temple in Jerusalem doesn’t exist at the time that he’s having this vision and that this is being written, the physical Temple in Jerusalem, at least, because he’s going to mention the Temple here, but he’s not talking about the physical one. So the physical Temple’s been destroyed. He’s extending the great tribulation forward until the end. So he’s saying the hardships being faced by the Christians, him being in exile on Patmos, the people being martyred—that’s all part of the great tribulation.

Q1: Are we in the great tribulation now?

Fr. Stephen: Yes.

Q4: You said [Inaudible] was alive? [Laughter]

Fr. Stephen: Yeah. So he’s extending that and taking it from, again, just the Judeans to applying to, again, the people of God, which for him is Christians, which includes Judean Christians, and everybody else. So that will continue until Christ’s return when everything is set right and re-established.

These folks have the white robes. Remember, we’re picking up on the language from before: “to him who overcomes.” So these are the people who have emerged victorious from the great tribulation. That’s why they’ve got the white robes; that’s why they’ve got the palm branches. They’ve emerged victorious from the great tribulation, that we’ve all been through. The seals we saw, like the four horsemen, that’s part of it, what’s going on in this age. That’s part of the great tribulation.

And notice they’ve washed— The robes are white because they’ve been washed in the blood of the Lamb. Washing something in blood usually we don’t associate with making it white. [Laughter] But the point here is— We talked here last time a little bit about the Day of Atonement. Remember, the blood was taken and used to purify the physical things, the physical elements. Blood was also used in the ordination ritual. Why did these things have to constantly be purified? What was the whole purpose of the Torah and all of these regulations, all the washings people had to do, the purifying of everything with blood on the Day of Atonement? It was so that people who were otherwise sinful could come into the presence of God, so God could continue to live in the camp or the Temple in the midst of a people who were sinful. The sin had to be sort of managed with this system.

So the blood of Christ now, superior to the blood of a goat—you don’t have to do it every year; you don’t have to do it… It once and for all has purified them and made them able—you notice—“to serve day and night in his temple.” So it’s not like the priesthood of the Torah, where, before the time of their service came, they had to go through all of the purification rituals again to be able to come safely into the presence of God, and they had to abstain from their wives, and they had to change what they ate, and they had to do all the washings. Now, day and night, they’re in God’s presence in heaven, because they’ve been purified once and for all with the blood of Christ.

Q2: “And be washed in the blood of the Lamb.”

Fr. Stephen: Verse 16: “They shall neither hunger any more nor thirst any more. The sun shall not strike them, nor any heat. For the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne will shepherd them, and lead them to living fountains of waters. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” Tribulation over. Notice again, they’re reigning and serving as priests. This is what people are doing once they get to the presence of God, on this ongoing basis. We talked before about what priests do. They offer sacrifices—these folks aren’t offering sacrifices any more. They offer prayers and intercessions. So this is what the saints in glory are doing, again, here, according to the book of Revelation.

Chapter eight. Now we get to the seventh seal! So now we unpause. We were paused there for a minute; now seal seven.

“When he opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. And I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and to them were given seven trumpets.” Remember how I said there’s these cycles in everything St. John writes? Well, here’s another one. We get to the seventh seal and now: okay, hand out seven trumpets to seven angels. So we’re going to start another cycle of seven.

“Then another angel, having a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne.” So we have this heavenly altar, this golden altar. What kind of altar is it, based on what we just had? It’s an altar of incense. So there’s multiple altars in the Torah. You’ve got the altar of incense, which was a horned altar; it had horns at the four corners. That was in the holy place in the tabernacle and then in the Temple. So it was sort of in front of the curtain to the most holy place. And that was the place where the priests did most of their business, because at morning and evening—this is the first commandment about worship in the Torah—morning and evening, they come and offer incense on the altar of incense with prayers. This is where we get matins and vespers.

The altar of burnt-offering, which is what we usually think of as the altar for sacrifices, was in the courtyard; it was outside the tabernacle proper or the Temple proper, for reasons that are kind of obvious, having to do with huge amounts of greasy smoke from burning animals, sometimes whole. Didn’t work so well inside a tent made of goathair. So that was outside.

So this is before the throne. Where in the tabernacle or the Temple, or our church for that matter, is the throne of God? Back in the back, in the most holy place. And the altar, the altar of incense, is his footstool. Our church is set up the same way. The high place, behind the altar, is where the throne of God is. There’s places in the liturgy where we bless the high place. That’s why, when I go back behind the altar when we’re about to do the readings, that’s why I don’t stand in the middle. I stand off to the side, because Christ is in the middle, enthroned there, with the altar as his footstool. It’s the same set-up.

So when he sees it in heaven, altar, no curtain in heaven: altar of incense in front of it, which is made of solid gold. The way the incense altar worked is that you had coal burning there all the time, and then you would offer incense on it. And then censers were used to take the incense other places. So you would take a coal from the altar and put it in the censer, and then take incense from the altar and put it in the censer, and now you’ve made it mobile, so that you can take that incense that’s being offered to God—that you can take it and use it to purify the space; you can take it outside to purify the space. And so this is the image here of what’s happening with this angel. This angel has this gold censer, and he’s taking from the altar the coal and the incense, and that incense is being offered up with the prayers of all the saints.

But why is he taking—would he take that in a censer? Because he’s going to take it and use it to purify some space. So what is purifying the space? What is the incense here? What did we just get told it was? It’s the prayers of all the saints. So the prayers of the saints are now going to purify something. These are the same saints we were just talking about, who are there, who are part of the worship, who are serving and offering their prayers and intercessions.

Verse four: “And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, ascended before God from the angel’s hand. Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and threw it to the earth, and there were noises, thunderings, lightnings, and an earthquake.” So that’s pretty epic.

Q1: Yeah!

Fr. Stephen: Censer smash. So what’s he purifying with the censer? The earth. The earth, that’s what he’s using the incense to purify. Kind of a violent purification, but so that’s the idea. But again, what is the incense? It’s the prayers of the saints. The imagery we saw with the seals was about authority; it was about Christ taking back authority over the whole creation, ultimately authority to judge. Now we’re going to have another set of seven that we’re approaching with the seven trumpets. This one isn’t going to be focused on Christ’s authority and his rule; this one is going to be focused more on ritual purification, turning the creation, the earth, back into sacred space, which it was originally. When you read Genesis 1, the seven days are structured, are patterned after temple dedication rituals in the Ancient Near East. When on the seventh day God rests, we tend to read that overly literally, like God needed a break: he’d been working real hard, so he took it easy for one day. But that rest is actually “sat down,” i.e., he’s enthroned at the end of it, within his temple, which is the whole cosmos.

The temple got defiled; the temple’s not doing so great right now if we look at the whole world as supposed to be sacred space. But so, that process is now beginning, because previous to this we had the saints in heaven: the temple of God is now this heavenly temple still, of which the one on earth was a copy. But what we’re going to see as we progress now is that the earth is now going to become the place where God dwells—the whole creation, not just the heavens.

Verse six: “So the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound.” Verse seven: “The first angel sounded,” meaning blew his trumpet— Well, I don’t know for sure, but some of you may be picturing the long, skinny trumpet, like on top of a Mormon church or something. Got to roll back. This is more like a shofar. [Laughter] This is like a ram’s horn, like a shofar that they’re blowing.

“The first angel sounded, and hail and fire followed, mingled with blood, and they were thrown to the earth, and a third of the trees were burned up, and all green grass was burned up.” So did anybody find— Did anybody recognize that phrase there, “hail and fire, mingled with blood,” where that might have appeared in the Bible before?

Q2: Sodom and Gomorrah?

Fr. Stephen: No, it’s fire from heaven.

Q2: Egypt?

Fr. Stephen: Egypt. The plague on Egypt. Remember the hail and the fire that came down together? On Egypt. And notice it takes out a third of the vegetable life.

Q1: And all the grass.

Fr. Stephen: Yeah.

Verse eight: “Then the second angel sounded, and something like a great mountain, burning with fire, was thrown into the sea, and a third of the sea became blood, and a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.” Is that reminiscent to anybody of anything?

Q1: A volcano?

Fr. Stephen: Yeah, but plague on Egypt, right? Turn the water to blood?

Q1: Oh, yeah.

Fr. Stephen: Verse ten:

Then the third angel sounded, and a great star fell from heaven, burning like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The name of the star is wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died from the water because it was made bitter.

That’s not directly one of the plagues on Egypt, but remember when they were wandering in Sinai? They come and they find the bitter water, and Moses throws the wood into it and it becomes sweet? This is the reverse. This is the reverse, and notice: a third, again, of the waters.

Verse twelve: “Then the fourth angel sounded, and a third of the sun was struck, a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of them were darkened. A third of the day did not shine, and likewise the night.” Remember the darkness over Egypt, one of the plagues? Well, we’ve got that third metaphor. And notice this can’t be all just going in order, because remember: sixth seal. Remember, all the stars fell out of the sky and the sun was darkened and the moon turned to blood? [Laughter] And now it’s back and only a third? So it’s literally impossible to read this as a literal succession of future events. We’ve got these cycles that overlap.

Q2: I couldn’t stay at home watching it? [Laughter] Because the moon has turned to blood.

Fr. Stephen: Verse 13: “And I looked, and I heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice: Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth! Because of the remaining blasts of the trumpet of the three angels who are about to sound.” We’ll pause there. So now we get this: “Oh, you’re really in trouble! It’s about to get worse!” [Laughter] As I said, we’re coming through now from the perspective of purification. This doesn’t look like purification; this looks like the opposite! [Laughter]

Q1: [Inaudible] with a vengeance!

Fr. Stephen: Because things keep getting smote, at least a third of them. [Laughter]  We’ve got stuff falling out of the sky: mountains and stars and meteors and all of these things. But that third number is important, because— Well, there’s no spoilers; people have read this before. When we get into Revelation 12, when we get to chapter 12, which we won’t tonight, but when we get to chapter 12, we’re going to see that the dragon, the serpent, the devil, throws a third of the stars of heaven down. And we’re going to see some interesting things there in terms of that number and that third. But these thirds that we’re seeing and the judgments we’re seeing, and the fact that they’re associated with the plagues in Egypt is a tip-off, because before the final plague comes on Egypt—the Passover, the death of the firstborn of Egypt—God comes to Moses and tells him what he’s doing.

He says he’s going to do two things that night. The first thing he says is that night he’s going to judge “all the gods of Egypt,” which is a good tip-off that from the perspective of Exodus at least they’re not fictional characters. God doesn’t need to judge the Marvel Cinematic Universe; he doesn’t need to judge Star Wars: it’s fiction. So the gods of Egypt are not fictional. They include pharaoh, but there are demonic forces, there are demonic powers that have control of Egypt, that the people of Egypt have followed, have worshiped, have given control over them and over Egypt, and God is coming to judge them because he’s going to liberate not just his people from them but potentially any of the Egyptians who want to—because the second thing he says he’s going to do is he’s going to make a distinction between the people of Egypt and the people of Israel. So what does he mean by that? Because obviously there was already kind of a distinction.

Previous to that, when you read about the plagues, the plagues didn’t fall on the place, the land o’ Goshen, the place where the Israelites were living. So there was darkness over everywhere except where the Israelites were living. The water all turned to blood except where the Israelites were living. Frogs everywhere except where the Israelites were living. But we know from various parts of the story that the Israelites and the Egyptians were living right next to each other. It wasn’t like: only Israelites live here, Egyptians live in other places. So the Egyptians who happen to live in Israelite neighborhoods lucked out when it came to plagues! [Laughter] They got away scot-free.

But now there’s going to be a distinction, and the way God makes that distinction is with the Passover ritual. He says: here’s what you do. You get the lamb, drain the blood, use the blood to mark your door, eat it together. He gives them the instructions, and there are going to be people who follow that and people who don’t follow that. And so that night, everyone who follows that is an Israelite. It doesn’t matter their DNA, doesn’t matter their skin color, doesn’t matter any of that. Anybody who doesn’t follow that, those instructions, is an Egyptian. Again, doesn’t matter their DNA, doesn’t matter their skin color, doesn’t matter who their great-great-great-great-grandfather was: if you celebrate the Passover, you’re now an Israelite.

And this carries over through the rest of the Torah. The way you become an Israelite is you go and you get circumcised and then you celebrate the Passover. It’s right there in the Torah. That makes you—now you’re an Israelite. Doesn’t matter where you’re from. If you’re a woman, you can’t get circumcised, so you marry a circumcised man and eat the Passover. That’s what brings you in.

So that’s how this distinction is made between the people who are going to belong to God and the people who belong to those other spirits that are being judged. What St. John wants us to think here is of the plagues on Egypt and on that distinction. This is why we have a third, because there’s a separation happening here.

When God created originally, and that was his temple, as we were just saying, what was the first thing that defiled it? The devil, right? [Laughter] You’ve got this snake-walker. It’s not a literal snake. The serpent, the devil, is in there. So not only should Adam and Eve not have sort of gone with him on the whole tree thing, but they should have run him out of town. They should have protected and purified that sacred space. They should have thrown him out. Didn’t. Sided with him instead. And then, through their death, he ended up getting ownership rights.

So to purify the creation as sacred space, we’ve got to separate who’s on which side. And if our number, coming up in chapter 12 for the number of demonic spirits that are out there, is a third, then people who have allegiance to them are probably also going to be about a third. So the plagues are falling on them. The plagues are falling on them.

But if we think back to the plagues on Egypt, that distinction wasn’t made till the very last one, which means what? Which means if you’re an Egyptian and you watched the first nine plagues unfold, you watch Moses confronting pharaoh, and you say, “You know what? I think Yahweh the God of Israel is the one I want to follow. I think want to be one of these people. I think I want to leave Egypt with them,” then when the Passover comes, you have the opportunity to do that.

Q2: Would the Passover go to everybody, then? Not just to Moses and friends?

Fr. Stephen: Yeah. And we’re told a mixed multitude comes out of Egypt.

Q2: Oh! Okay.

Fr. Stephen: And people with Egyptian names.

Q1: Like Moses.

Fr. Stephen: But not just Moses.

Q1: No.

Fr. Stephen: And not just Moses’ immediate family who all have Egyptian names. So, yeah, they’re ethnically completely mixed from a DNA-type perspective. God is creating a new people that didn’t exist before. He says he’s doing that.

So that means those nine plagues could potentially have driven any of those people to repentance, because, I mean, why do this in sequence? We need to purify the earth. Okay, that’s easy: kill all the wicked. [Snap] Done! [Laughter] Right? Purified. But that’s not how God does it. Step by step. And the people are observing. That angel with the “Woe"s is calling out to somebody, warning somebody that it’s about to get worse: now’s the time to switch sides; now’s the time to get over. So this is still, just like we saw with the seven seals and Christ taking his authority back, every judgment is a call to repentance. It has the potential—the tribulation, the suffering—has the ability to become the cause of repentance for people, so they can end up being part of that number with the white robes.

As we cycle through again now, from this other perspective of sacred space, the same thing is true. The same thing is true. That’s why God doesn’t just—[Snap] Boom, it’s done. But he extends this period to give these opportunities for repentance.

There are a lot of fascinating things, as an aside before we finish— a lot of fascinating things with that “a third” number in history. Like, it turns up a lot. The black plague. The Thirty Years’ War killed about a third of people. [Laughter] So, interestingly, that “third” number pops up here and there. And, of course, as we said last time, there were people in all those times saying, “Look! A third of Europe was dying of plague! This was it!” But again it’s not literal. It’s supposed to point us to the fact that there are other spirits, other than the Holy Spirit, that are animating people and that people are following in this world. And God is not just about destroying them and punishing them for it, but he’s about giving them the opportunity to repent, until he reaches that point that we started out talking about tonight, where it needs to be brought to an end and the time for repentance is closed.

So that’s what we see unfolding with these first four trumpets. And when we come back next time, next week—same bat time, same bat channel—we’ll pick up in chapter nine and do the final trumpets. And then we’ll get into some more stuff, Enoch and Elijah showing back up, people eating books. Thank you, everybody!