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§4 Thanksgiving for God’s Reign: The Ground of Christian Faith (Rev. 4:1–11)

A clear break in John’s book of visions is indicated by the events of 4:1. The seer sees an open door, and he hears the angel’s trumpetlike voice summoning him to enter through heaven’s portal. This passage into the visionary world will lead John to understand what will take place on earth. This is not to say that what follows in this chapter is unrelated to what precedes it; in fact, the various visions of this book are interrelated according to the seer’s own commission (cf. 1:19). In our view, it is theology rather than chronology that provides the compositional axis to relate the visions together in a coherent fashion. And it is this chapter of wonderful doxologies that introduces the seven congregations to Revelation’s essential theological conviction: God is the eternal creator in whom all things have their meaning and find their importance.

This seam in John’s composition also cues the reader to a second primary section of this apocalyptic letter. According to the literary conventions of religious letters in the hellenistic world, the author’s thanksgiving to the gods follows his greetings to the audience. In Paul’s NT letters, thanksgivings express appreciation for his audience’s faith, love, and hope in God. Since Paul usually wrote to specific audiences whose condition was well known, God is thanked (eucharisteō; Rom. 1:8; 1 Cor. 1:4; Phil. 1:3; 1 Thess. 1:2) for the blessings and gifts that characterize the situation of that particular audience. Thus, the hellenistic thanksgiving relates the goodness of God more directly and specifically to the author’s perceptions of the audience’s situation.

In recent years, scholars have come to recognize that epistolary thanksgivings are carriers of significant rhetorical freight in that they usually introduce the author’s central theme or even a “table of contents” that then organizes the author’s subsequent, extended response to his audience’s crisis. In his pioneering work on epistolary thanksgivings, Paul Schubert (Pauline Thanksgivings) further suggested that the thanksgiving served a paraenetic or ethical purpose, calling the audience to live according to certain ethical ideals introduced there (see introduction). In Paul’s case, for example, these ideals were often expressed in terms of his “triad of Christian virtue,” faith-hope-love.

In the case of Revelation, however, John’s thanksgiving follows a Jewish model and is more liturgical and theological than ethical; its tone is worshipful and hopeful and assumes that the audience’s yet unspecified needs will be met by a good and powerful God. Revelation’s epistolary thanksgiving is about God rather than about the spiritual needs or moral ideals of John’s audience. In the NT letters of Ephesians and 1 Peter, where the author writes for several audiences, a traditional hymn of thanksgiving is substituted for the author’s more personal thanksgiving (cf. Eph. 1:3–14; 1 Pet. 1:3–12). In the hymn, God is praised (eulogētos; Eph. 1:3; 1 Pet. 1:3; cf. Rev. 4:9) for the redemptive work accomplished on behalf of God’s people in general. In both of these cases, the epistolary thanksgivings are similar in form and function to the berakah, the liturgical prayer of Jewish worship. Praise to God invokes confession of God as the faithful source of the community’s well being and as worthy of such praise. The author’s confession of God in praise, which intends to involve his readers, articulates the theological basis for the message of the whole letter, by which the readers then interpret their own situation and respond to God accordingly.

Chapter 4 of Revelation belongs to this second form of epistolary thanksgivings. Even though a berakah undergoes some changes in form when it moves first from the worshiping community, where it functions as a corporate prayer or hymn, to a literary composition, where it functions as an epistolary thanksgiving, its function remains the same: to express in praise the author’s essential theological commitments. In the case of either model, both audience and author declare their confidence in God’s saving grace and power and thereby establish a positive, more pastoral context for reading the entire letter. Because of God’s goodness and kind attention to the audience, whatever threatens their faith can be overcome.

Against this literary background, the interpreter can more easily recognize and understand the importance of the thanksgiving given to God as the ruler over all creation (4:9). Formal praise is offered by the heavenly congregation (4:8, 11) that surrounds God’s throne in eternal worship. John’s intent is to usher his readers into this heavenly occasion of worship, so that they join the twenty-four elders and four living creatures in their praise of God. A tone of theocentric praise and worship that begins here pervades the entire letter and evokes either hope or repentance; the readers are caused to understand the book’s foundational theme as that idea of God which is introduced by their praise. That is, the creator God is eternally established on the heavenly throne (4:8), and all creation finds its moorings in God, who is worthy to be praised (4:11).

4:1–2a / In our view, the interpreter of Revelation makes a mistake to find meaning in every image that casts this vision of the heavenly throne-room. The author intends a cumulative impression of divine majesty which evokes the reader’s praise of God and realization of God’s sovereignty over all things and events. This is not to indulge the romantic notion that language can express “truth” only in subjective and emotive discernment; yet, it resists the positivist notion that language can carry meaning only if it describes “brute” facts. The language of John’s Apocalypse is a part of both. In Revelation, metaphor is always evocative, but it also carries within it some indication of the “real world.” In this sense, John intends to declare his essential understanding of reality that all of life is ruled over by a sovereign creator, the God of Jesus Christ and his disciples. Yet, he also intends to create a concrete “sense” of the fundamental importance of this theological conviction to the worshiping community as it responds to the Lord God Almighty in the actual circumstances of its life with some measure of confidence that God has things under control.

John is summoned into heaven, the setting of his visions. It is a place entered only by angelic invitation and through the door of a prophetic trance (I was in the Spirit). John’s vision constitutes a religious experience and therefore yields spiritual power for the seer and spiritual edification for those with an ear to “hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”

Heaven is home to God, and before Christ’s heavenly enthronement (cf. Rev. 5) also to the Evil One (12:7). In that heaven is analogous to history, the very ambiguity found in a place where both God and the Evil One once coexisted (cf. Job 1–2) explains in part the ambiguity of Christian existence on planet Earth, where we experience the goodness of God and the treachery of social and personal evils. An element of Christian hope is that heaven will be replaced at the end of time by something “new,” where God’s people will experience only the shalom of God (cf. 21:1).

4:2b–6a / The invocation of heavenly praise is dominated by the image of a throne, the symbol of God’s sovereign authority over all that God has created. God is known only as the one who sat there (4:3), although John colors his impression of God with jasper and carnelian, suggesting “luminous splendor” (Caird, Revelation, p. 63). Encircling God’s throne is a rainbow that John describes as resembling an emerald—surely reminding the reader of a merciful God’s everlasting covenant with all creatures promised to Noah (cf. Gen. 9:8–17). God’s power is merciful and not coercive, indicating the Lord’s desire to transform (rather than to destroy) all things. Significantly, God’s promise to Noah, signaled by the rainbow, is tied to his authority as creator—the very point of the praises of the elders and creatures.

Surrounding the throne were … twenty-four elders, who themselves sit on twenty-four other thrones. The precise identification of the twenty-four elders is a well-known problem, and many solutions continue to be offered during the modern period of interpretation (cf. Morris, Revelation, pp. 86–87). The function of the elders within Revelation, however, seems reasonably clear: they form a heavenly chorus that continually sings God’s praises on behalf of God’s people. Further, the number twenty-four, a derivative of twelve, symbolizes the people of God, whom the elders represent in heaven by their praises to God (Boring, Revelation, p. 105). In that the heavenly liturgy is exemplary, these heavenly doxologies actually belong on the lips of the worshiping community on earth.

As to their particular identity, our suggestion begins with Jesus’ “last will and testament” given at the Last Supper (cf. Luke 22:28–30). Jesus promises to those disciples who remain loyal to him the right to rule with him in the messianic kingdom. Jesus identifies them as rulers over an eschatological Israel, in contra-distinction to the leaders of “official Judaism” who have relinquished their right to rule by their rejection of him as Messiah. The significance of Jesus’ use of “throne” in the passion narrative, then, is twofold: first, it signifies that the eschatological Israel of God consists of only those who are faithful to God’s Christ (Luke 22:28; cf. Rev. 14:1–5); and, second, those who rule over eschatological Israel as their elders are those apostles to whom Jesus delivers his “testament” and in whom he has entrusted the responsibility for Israel’s restoration (Luke 22:29–30; cf. Rev. 21:14).

If we suppose that John recognizes the vision of the twenty-four elders by the Jesus tradition, then for him the heavenly chorus of elders exemplifies the community of the “true” Israel that has remained faithful to the apostolic witness of Christ. In our view, then, the elders are not specifically the risen apostles, long since martyred; rather, they represent the community they founded and continue to nourish through their memories and teachings. This interpretation looks back to the messages delivered to the seven churches, and especially to those whose spiritual difficulties stem from forsaking apostolic teaching or from the attacks of the synagogue. The theological ground of their return or continuing fidelity to Christ is mirrored in the elders’ praise of God’s sovereign rule.

Coming from the throne John saw flashes of lightning and heard rumblings and peals of thunder. Perhaps these are indicators of God’s power like on Sinai (cf. Heb. 12:22–29) or of the apocalypse of God’s salvation like at Christ’s death and resurrection (cf. Matt. 27:51–54; 28:2–3). In Revelation, however, these phenomena serve as fanfare for the testimonia of God’s triumph (8:5; 11:19; 16:18). This interpretation seems especially apropos in the light of the immediate context that celebrates God as sovereign creator.

Before the throne were seven lamps … blazing, which are also the seven spirits of God, the Holy Spirit (cf. 1:4). The pentecostal use of “fire” as a metaphor for the empowerment of the Spirit may help explain John’s image of “blazing lamps,” here in apposition to the “sevenfold Spirit,” as an element of God’s reign (cf. Acts 1:6–8; 2:1–4; 1 Cor. 4:20–21). According to Johannine teaching, God sends the Paraclete to the community of Christ’s disciples (John 14:16–17) both to teach (John 14:26) and to comfort (John 14:27) in light of the church’s present situation. The rule of God is not removed from the experience of God’s people on earth; God is always for Christ’s disciples and with them in transforming power.

The sea of glass, clear as crystal has been interpreted in conflicting ways. In that John ties it to the throne, the sea is another symbol of God’s reign. Within Revelation, the sea, like the heaven in which it is found, belongs to the old and not the new creation (21:1). It is the location of evil (13:1; cf. Ps. 74:12–14; Isa. 51:9–10), through which God’s people must pass on their new Exodus to the promised land, the kingdom of God (15:1–3; cf. Exod. 14:21). In finding the sea in this vision of God’s heavenly throne, and by not finding it in John’s concluding vision of the new Jerusalem, the reader is made more aware that the destiny of the old order, including evil and death, is an ingredient of God’s plan.

4:6b–8a / Drawing upon images found in the theophanies of Ezekiel 1 and Isaiah 6, John describes a group of four angelic beings he sees in the center, around the throne. As in Ezekiel’s vision of the cherubim (Ezek. 1:6, 10), these four living creatures have the likenesses of a lion … an ox … the face of a man … a flying eagle, and are covered with eyes, in front and in back—an image of God’s omniscience. Their six wings correspond to Isaiah’s vision of the seraphs as well, which flew above God’s throne (cf. Isa. 6:1–2).

While there is general agreement that these creatures are angelic, the significance of their four visages is contested among scholars. There are some who understand the four creatures by the angel myth in Jewish apocalypticism that occurs in the rabbinic midrashim on Ezekiel 1 and Isaiah 6. There are still others who understand the images by the astrology of the ancient Near East and its possible influence on the prophets Ezekiel and Isaiah, if not also upon John. In light of John’s visionary world, we understand the creatures as angelic representatives, perhaps “celestial doubles,” of God’s animate creation, which is inherently higher than inanimate creation according to a Jewish theology of creation. Thus, within the heavenly order as John would understand it, each angel symbolizes the highest, most noble creature of its particular species in God’s created order. For example, among all the birds of creation the eagle in flight “best” illustrates the glory of the creator God. Therefore, even as the twenty-four elders offer praise to God as representatives of true Israel, so also the four living creatures offer praise to God as representatives of all creation; together creature and creation will participate in God’s redemption of all things.

4:8b / The hymn they sing echoes the seraphs’ declaration of God’s holiness in Isaiah 6:3. No claim for God’s rule is compelling that fails to include God’s holiness. The reign of a holy God insists that all creatures on earth, represented in the throne room by the four living creatures, are accountable to God and obligated to give the Lord their worship and praise (cf. Rom. 1:19–20). John’s emphasis, however, is on the creator’s eternality: God is the one who was, and is, and is to come (cf. Rev. 1:4; Exod. 3:14). Such a confession is shorthand for the conviction that God, as creator, is Lord over all things. The title for God, Lord God Almighty, used repeatedly in Revelation, underscores John’s conviction that God’s will for creation will prevail over the evil powers. Further, in that God intended creation for good (cf. Gen. 1:31), John is confident that creation’s history will proceed assuredly toward a redemptive conclusion—the theological ground of his book of visions.

4:9–10 / The doxological nature of this scene continues, even though John shifts his field of vision from the four living creatures to the twenty-four elders, whom he has already introduced in 4:4. The elders offer God their continual worship in concert with the thanksgiving declared by the creatures because God lives for ever and ever.

There is this difference, however: whereas the creatures praise God perpetually (4:8b), the elders’ worship concludes in a particular act: They lay their crowns before him who sits on the throne (cf. 4:4b), a sign of their humble submission to God’s rule (cf. Matt. 18:1–4). The effect is to make their subsequent and singular acclamation of God’s worthiness for worship climactic and definitive for all of Revelation.

4:11 / The final and most important doxology is fashioned according to deeper logic of Jewish hymnody: the worshipful acclamation of God’s glory and honor and power (4:11a) expresses the conviction that God created all things (4:11b). Notice that John changes the last item of the earlier triad of glory, honor, and thanks (4:9) to power, thereby underscoring his consistent claim for God’s ultimate authority over world history and its ruling elite. In this light, the doxology claims that the purpose of creation is in accord with God’s will by which all things have their being. The humble worship of the elders in laying their golden crowns before God’s throne is reflected in their exaltation of God, who has created the creation by your will and not for the world and its rulers (or even for the church and its elders).

The creator’s purposes for creation, however, are in keeping with the character of God’s reign as indicated by the cumulative force of chapter four’s two concluding doxologies. The Trisagion (“Holy, Holy, Holy”; 4:8) of the living creatures attributes absolute holiness to God, suggesting that God simply will not tolerate evil and is at odds with the natural inclinations of a fallen world and the anti-Christian kingdom which rules over it. The glory and honor and power which the elders then attribute to God in the second doxology (4:11) suggest that it will be God, and not the powers of the evil dominion, who will ultimately determine the destiny of world history. The holy God, who abhors evil, and the worthy God, who is all-powerful, is our Lord and God. These two confessions suggest that God’s final triumph over the forces of death and darkness is inevitable and our worship logical. As a shorthand way to speak of God, the heavenly doxologies are especially relevant for the readers of Revelation, who are under spiritual siege precisely because their worship of God is inhibited by confusing and painful traumas of life and faith, indicated in the two preceding chapters. For John, theodicy is finally settled in doxology, when the worshiping community on earth echoes the choruses of the heavenly community.