Breaking the Code

As the city had fallen in the past because of lack of vigilance, so now the Sardians are reminded to be watchful and to shake off their apathy. If, however, they “do not wake up,” Christ says, “I will come like a thief,” that is to say, he will come when he is not being expected. The language is strongly reminiscent of Jesus’ own words concerning h

Also by this period, all seven cities addressed by Revelation had some combination of temples, altars, and shrines to various emperors and members of their family. Pressure to participate in the imperial cult would never have been greater.

Smyrna became a large and prosperous commercial center. The city was renowned for its loyalty to Rome and its ritual worship of the emperor. In 195 BC, almost three hundred years before the writing of Revelation, the people of Smyrna dedicated the world’s first temple to the goddess Roma. In AD 26, almost seventy years before John’s banishment, Smy

Pergamum, about fifty miles north of Smyrna, was a city that had many claims to distinction. Since the second century before Christ, it was the capital of the Roman province of Asia. No traveler could visit Pergamum without being impressed by its welter of temples and altars. The greater part of the city stood in the shadow of a great hill that was

Lest the reader fail to grasp the significance of the Hebrew name, John adds the Greek equivalent, Apollyon (9:11). John’s vision may represent a subversive satire of imperial ideology. Domitian claimed Apollo, one of whose symbols was the locust, as his patron deity; in John’s cosmos, however, “Apollo” is a creature of the abyss, the chief of a ho

In his description of these, John makes use of symbolism drawn from many parts of the Old Testament: the earthquake from Haggai (2:6), the sun turned black and the moon turned to blood from Joel (2:31), the stars fallen from heaven like figs from a fig tree (Isaiah 34:4), and the sky rolled up like a scroll (Isaiah 34:4). The use of cosmic convulsi

the explicit number, 144,000, symbolizes completeness—not one of the redeemed is missing.

Also favoring the close of the first century as the time of the composition of Revelation is the fact that, according to 2:8-11, the church in Smyrna had been persevering under trials for a long time, whereas according to Polycarp,2 the bishop of Smyrna in the first half of the second century, the church there did not yet exist until after the time

John may subscribe to the idea that the desert tabernacle and the Jerusalem temple were models of the cosmos (see Josephus, The Antiquities of the Jews 3.6.4 §§122-23; 3.7.7 §§180-81; Philo, The Special Laws 1.66). We have already encountered the accoutrements of the holy places and inner courts in John’s heaven (Revelation 6:9; 8:3-5) and will aga