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§14 The Eschatological Outcomes of the Conflict: The Vindication of the Faithful (Rev. 14:1–5)

The trinity of evil ones has now been introduced as the enemy of the saints on earth (12:13–13:18). They are given the authority to overcome them (13:7) and to seduce the rest of the world into worshiping the Evil One rather than God (13:16–17). Chapter 13 concludes with a resounding note of secularism’s triumph: the worldwide kingdom of the Evil One is firmly established within human history. This remains the current status of the battle between God and the Evil One on earth. Ironically, even as Christ’s exaltation begins a period of escalation in humanity’s conflict with evil, so also does it disclose the outcome of this battle, which has already been decided in God’s favor. The doxologies of the heavenly chorus have declared it, and the dragon’s banishment from God’s heavenly throne room has certified it. To repeat, John’s entire composition is concentrated by the central conviction of the “eternal gospel” (14:6): God’s reign has triumphed over the corrupting forces of evil.

This explains why John so quickly turns from his vision of global conversion to the anti-Christian kingdom to one that envisions God’s triumph over its evil powers and principalities. In this new vision of the final outcome of the war on earth between the dragon’s beasts and God’s people, the promised outcomes of salvation and judgment, already fulfilled in heaven, will be finally realized on earth.

This claim would not surprise John’s audience. According to their cosmology, shaped by Platonic thought, what happens in heaven determines what happens on earth. In this sense, the future period of salvation’s history has already been determined by what has already transpired in the heavenly realm: the “eternal gospel” is not that God will triumph at some point in the indefinite future; but that God has already triumphed through the Risen Christ in the definite past. This hope for God’s certain but future triumph must qualify the present situation on earth where evil is temporarily in charge. The evils of the current social order, and the oppression and suffering they produce in human life, are now understood by the empty tomb and endured by God’s people as manifestations of a defeated reign, destined for destruction at the end of the age.

14:1–3 / It is in light of this foundational theological conviction that the reader comes now to one of the most important passages in John’s book of visions. The importance of this vision for understanding John’s message is surprising, since Mounce has correctly summarized the consensus of biblical scholarship which characterizes this passage as “the most enigmatic in the book” (Revelation, p. 266). Two of its elements, however, seem clearly significant. First, John uses images that contrast to the previous description of the beast’s followers (13:5–18) and their eschatological destiny (14:8–11). The function of this contrast, which continues the contrast between the Lamb and the beast, is to help the reader interpret the “eternal gospel.” It will soon be announced by the first of three angels (14:6–7) in contrast to the oppressive and idolatrous Babylon whose destruction is announced by a second angel (14:8). The true Israel, which is established by faith in the claims of the eternal gospel, represents an alternative to Babylon and will ultimately endure. Babylon and those who worship the beast will be destroyed by God (14:8–11). In the light of this contrast, then, the tacit (and logical) imperative is made clear: follow the Lamb wherever he goes (14:4). Viewed from the perspective of its contrasting images, this passage focuses John’s account of Christian discipleship that is worked out within an historical situation of human suffering and abundant evil.

Second, the literary structure of this passage is carefully crafted to develop the theme of Christian discipleship: John first describes what he sees and hears (14:1–3) and then interprets his vision for his audience (14:4–5). Every single item of John’s account of his vision is a deliberate contrast to what he has just described as the reign of evil in chapter 13: the oppression has been exchanged for liberation, evil for good, suffering for celebration. John’s explanation of his vision, then, establishes the conditions for the eschatological reversal of history’s painful circumstances. By utilizing contrasting images, John invites the rhetorical question—for whom is this experience of liberation a reality?—and its requisite answer: the remnant of faithful disciples who resist the various seductions of Babylon and follow the Lamb wherever he goes!

The leading actors in this drama are already familiar to the reader. John has introduced the exalted Lamb in chapter 5. He is the worthy one whose exaltation has disclosed God’s victory over evil (cf. 5:1–8); and he is the Paschal Lamb whose death has purchased a people for God in order that they might co-rule on a new earth and co-serve God’s redemptive interests forever (cf. 5:9–10). John has also introduced this kingdom of priests in chapter 7 as the 144,000 who had the Lamb’s name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads (cf. 7:3–4).

It is fitting that John sees them standing on Mount Zion. In the OT, Mount Zion refers to the location where God’s promise of Israel’s restoration is fulfilled; for John, then, it is a place of profound eschatological significance (cf. Ladd, Revelation, p. 189). John uses this geographical reference as a theological idiom, similar to the writer of Hebrews who speaks of Mount Zion first in non-historical and transcendent ways (Heb. 11:10; 12:22) and then as the place where God’s eternal kingdom is located on earth (Heb. 12:25–28; cf. Isa. 24:21–23). Especially given the predictive nature of John’s composition (cf. 1:3), his use of Mount Zion probably refers here to the historical and eschatological (rather than a spiritual and existential) fulfillment of God’s promised restoration of the true Israel (Schüssler Fiorenza, Revelation, p. 186).

Rather than having the number/name of the beast, branded on their right hand and forehead, the 144,000 … had the Lamb’s name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads. The two names identify the faithful remnant as belonging to God’s reign, which the Lord shares with his Father (cf. 3:12; 5:13; 11:15; however, cf. 22:4). The beast’s blasphemous and slanderous words (13:6) are in contrast to the lyrics John hears sung by the 144,000 (cf. 15:2–4). The images of rushing waters and harpists playing the harps, which accompany the heavenly voices, suggest soothing and melodious words of divine praise.

John identifies their lyrics as belonging to a new song that the redeemed chorus sings before the throne of God. If we understand that the words of this new song are in continuity with those of the earlier “new song” found in 5:9–10, as well as with the remnant’s subsequent songs of “Moses and the Lamb” found in 15:3–4, then this particular eschatological hymn also celebrates God’s deliverance of the faithful Israel from its evil enemy. Only those who have been purchased for God by the slain Lamb could learn the song. Their capacity stems from being redeemed from the earth and establishes a final and most critical contrast with 13:7a, which told of the beast’s triumph over the saints on earth. The song and its loud volume expose the beast’s victory over the saints as short-lived; those martyrs killed by the Evil One are destined for Mount Zion.

14:4–5 / In giving meaning to his description of the heavenly scene, John is concerned only to identify the 144,000. He does so with three statements, each a commentary on the conditions of Christian discipleship and the current crisis facing the people of God. The first statement casts the faithful remnant as a community of pure constituents: they are those who did not defile themselves with women. The interpreter must initially resolve two interrelated exegetical problems: what is (1) the meaning of pure, which normally refers to sexual virginity; and (2) the identity of the women, whether John’s intent is misogynistic. The kind of asceticism that asserts that abstinence from sexual relations is the evidence of Christian devotion argues against NT teaching (cf. 1 Cor. 7:1–7) and is nowhere indicated in either Revelation or the larger Johannine tradition. It is better to view the community’s sexual chastity as metaphorical of its “pure” (or sanctified) relationship with God. This conclusion is consistent with OT rhetoric which often compares the faithfulness or unfaithfulness of Israel to sexual fidelity or infidelity (e.g., Jer. 18:13; Hos. 5:4). To keep pure, then, is to resist those evils which undermine the community’s covenantal relationship with God.

In line with this conclusion, the women symbolize opposition to God (Schüssler Fiorenza, Revelation, pp. 190–91). To view them literally would require us to think of the church as exclusively male and of celibacy as a condition for Christian discipleship. The interpreter can more precisely equate the women to the evil women of Revelation: the false prophetess, Jezebel, who misleads immature believers in the congregation at Thyatira into sexual immorality (i.e., spiritual infidelity) and idolatry (2:20); and the great prostitute of Babylon (17:1), who intoxicates the inhabitants of earth with the “wine of her adulteries” (17:2). Together, they symbolize the moral and theological evils, found inside and outside the church, that seduce unfaithful believers from the way of the Lamb.

In light of these preliminary conclusions, the first condition of faithful discipleship is to resist beliefs and behaviors that corrupt the community’s devotion to God. Schüssler Fiorenza is right in saying that the expression points to “the cultic purity of the Lamb’s followers” as well as to their holiness (cf. 21:9–11), which bears concrete witness to the character of God’s reign (Revelation, p. 190).

The second condition stipulates that they follow (akoloutheō) the Lamb wherever he goes. This is the only appeal to “formal” discipleship terminology found outside of the Gospels and Acts in the NT. For this reason alone, John’s phrase is a focus of our attention since it offers up another element for a normative (i.e., biblical) definition of Christian discipleship. According to John, Christian discipleship requires more than cultic purity; it requires a consistent and pervasively faithful walk along the way pioneered by the teaching of the exalted Christ (cf. Heb. 12:2), now conveyed through his Spirit (cf. John 14:26).

The final statement speaks less of the believers “sacrificial offering of themselves to God” (Mounce, Revelation, pp. 270–71) and more of God’s partnership with the believers as they walk on the Lamb’s way. The verbal idea is passive (were purchased), suggesting that it is God who extracts the faithful church from out of the marketplace of evil Babylon and sets it on the path to God’s shalom as firstfruits to God and the Lamb (cf. Jer. 2:3; Ladd, Revelation, p. 192). God’s salvation is the experience of a covenantal people, who live and worship in a relationship of shared responsibility. Faithful disciples of the sort who make up the 144,000 are untainted by the lies and fictions of secularism and materialism, and they are blameless and therefore acceptable to God. However, their eschatological fitness is not only the result of their faithful response to God and God’s Lamb; their faithfulness is a real possibility because of God’s empowering and enabling grace. From this pastoral perspective, then, John’s Revelation is written in order to respond to the fundamental concern of Christian formation: what does it mean to follow the Lamb wherever he goes?