Soliloquy

In the brief intermission after the fourth trumpet sounds the eagle is introduced. What do we know of the eagle? There is much information about the character of the eagle as scavenger, bird of prey, and symbol of strength. I am convinced, however, that the meaning of the eagle lies in another direction altogether. From the beginning of the Apocalypse, when John is at worship and he is suddenly taken up into the throne room of the divine “One”, all the events that took place are announced by an angel somewhere in the vicinity of the altar in the throne room. When the scene moves to the earth and the fourth angel announces the darkening of the firmament of heaven, there is a pause. The eagle then enters the scene upon the earth, and announces the three woes to come. This is an indication that the eagle fulfills on earth the identical function of the angel in the throne room, that is, the eagle is a messenger. But of whom? The sounding forth of the first four trumpets contains a clue to this, that is, in the concept of the imitation of the divine. Just as the demonic imitates the divine and brings about confusion and deceit, so also the eagle is an imitation of the angel. The eagle is the messenger of the demonic, announcing to the world the intentions of the demonic in this battle with the divine. The eagle exists only in the semi-darkness of the earth. It exists, like the demonic, between earth and heaven. It is confined to a dimension from which it can never emerge. The eagle is a woe unto itself, living in the dimension of the absence of the divine. Consequently, it can imitate the angel and announce the coming woes.

The seven seals are followed by the seven trumpets, beginning in chapter 8. The last seal ended with a theophany of fire, announcing that the divine has arrived upon the earth. John begins to see stunning destruction unfolding upon the earth, and the instrument of destruction is fire. This is confusing, because the divine has just arrived as fire, and at first glance it seems as if the divine comes as destroyer. However, in the Apocalypse, the demonic imitates the divine. It is an imitation that is deceptive, as we learned in the letters to the seven churches, that people and events are not what they pretend to be. John called upon the churches to be aware and alert for this imitation. The first four trumpets unleash events that point in the direction of this imitation and deception. The sounding of a trumpet announces the arrival of someone special, imitating the Thunder that announced the arrival of the divine as fire upon the earth. In the Apocalypse, the sounding of the trumpets announces the coming forth of chaos, the demonic as fire upon the earth. The sounding of the first four trumpets brings the creation into convulsion. In the first, the heavens rain down fire upon the earth, in the second, the seas are struck with fire from above, in the third, the rivers and streams are struck by fire from the star Wormwood, and become deadly, in the fourth, the fires of the heavens are darkened so that day and night fade. The first four trumpets unleash fire. That is why in the opening of the seventh seal, the divine arrives upon the earth as fire from heaven. The divine fire confronts the demonic fire. The battle is being waged so that the new creation may come forth. The demonic strikes first, and is able to destroy one-third of everything. That is its limitation. The demonic that is limited by its own nature cannot destroy the completeness of the divine. But the worst is yet to come. There is now an interlude, in which the eagle announces the coming of three woes upon the dwellers upon the land. The eagle is a curious bird. It is unclean, living off the remains of the dead. It stands with the dead. It is the character of the eagle that allows us insight into what is to come. Perhaps the woes to come will speak of the day of the dead.

The opening of the seventh seal comes with great expectations. The spirit of the mystic, the apocalypticist, is filled with the completeness of everything that is symbolized by the throne room. This is the fulness of Presence, the completeness of the present. Time does not exist around the throne of the transcendent and its attendants. “When” the Lamb opens the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for half an hour. Where time does not exist, “when” does not exist. That the word introduces the opening of this seal indicates that something violent intrudes here, and that something is time. Time breaks up eternity so that it may make room for the coming forth of the temporal, that is, the human. The visionary sees the primordial Silence broken, lasting momentarily. Silence, which is fulness, may well be a metaphor for the divine one, the eternal one who must be broken so that the new creation, the temporal one, can come forth from its brokenness. Silence itself comes forth in its otherness as sound, hence the violence. While the Silence still prevailed, John witnesses a liturgical scene, full of praise and worship. The angel with the censer fills it with fire and casts it upon the earth. The scene shifts from heaven to earth. The violent rupture of the divine has taken place. This violence is described as thunder, voices, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake. John is witnessing a theophany, shifting from heaven to earth. The message is now the divine is manifested upon the earth, that is, the fire of the incense has cleansed the earth in preparation for the arrival of the divine. The Lord is in his holy temple, let the earth be Silent. For a brief moment John sees the earth as the throne of the divine. The dwelling of the Lord is with humanity. Just as creation is being re-enacted here liturgically, so we are to expect that there will be other iterations of events that will challenge humanity to abide in faith. When the Silence becomes its other, the Thunder, we see the divine differently. When the Silence is broken, it makes room for the coming forth of the Word. The ground is being laid for the incarnation.

How does the living one reveal himself in this interlude between the opening of the sixth and the seventh seal? The Apocalypse is a book of hints and allusions, smudged connections and subliminal evocations of myth and history in which vague metaphors are often given concrete historical meanings. Mythological frameworks allow the transcendent to become embedded in memory through narrative means. Consequently, meanings begin to generate and give shape to reality. John is in the throne room of the divine where he is having these visions. Perhaps this is not an extra-mundane dimension, and is merely a literary technique of narrative that facilitates the passing of the revelation from the divine through the medium, John. John’s mind at its several levels conveys the message through his own framework of meanings. It is through his unconscious stirrings that the vague connections to myth and history are conveyed to his churches. What we know of the living one is what John lets us know through his own understnding of his religous history. In all likelihood, John could not have failed to note, even at a subliminal level, that there is a break in the narrative of creation after the sixth day. He certainly was aware of the other narrative of creation where Noah leads the redeemed from the ark and celebrates the redemption in sacrifice and praise. These allusions allow us to see the continuity between the divine of old and the living one of the Apocalypse, and to conclude with John that this is one and the same. We can perhaps conclude that the opening of the first six seals, that is, the dismantling of creation, is a prelude to the calling forth of the new creation. This is indicated in the invocation of the living one as the “Amen!” in chapter 7, who shelters the redeemed with his “presence.” This presence is the gathering place of the past and the future. Presence is a place of reconciliation of what has gone and what is to come, the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega, the one who was, and is, and is to come. The presence of the living one is the new creation to be unveiled shortly. The living one is always the self-transforming one, the Lion that is really the Lamb, and the Lamb that is really the Shepherd. The Shepherd will wipe away tears, waters of mourning, and lead the redeemed to springs of living water, waters of hope. John presents the living one as the one who through myth and history has brought about the renewal of creation, and the resurrection of hope. The seventh chapter of the Apocalypse is a Divine Sabbath, a pause before the beginning of the new dawn, the first morning of the first day of the new humanity.

After the opening of the sixth seal there is an abrupt break in the unfolding of the revelation of the divine. Chapter 7 presents two visions the content of which offers hope and assurance that in spite of the cosmic calamities revealed in the opening of the seals, the divine has already sealed the faithful with salvation. John looks around the throne room, and gets a vision of four angels holding back the four winds from the earth. A fifth angel ascends from the rising of the sun, that is, from the horizon, the place where heaven and earth intersect, the place of union, the sacred center. The fifth angel has authority. It prevents the four angels from harming the earth. They were withholding something from the earth, the four winds. Wind is associated with spirit, and spirit is associated with renewal and cleansing. The four angels were preventing the renewal and cleansing of the earth, the sea and the tree. The fifth angel brings the seal of the divine, to mark the redeemed. In the first vision, 144,000 Israelites are sealed and protected. In the second vision, “great multitudes which no one can number” wearing white robes, have gathered before the throne of the living one, in worship. This great multitude that is sealed is the church assembled in worship. They sing a new song, in which they proclaim seven aspects of the living one: blessing, glory, wisdom, thanksgiving, honor, power, and might. They are then identified by one of the elders as those redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. In verse 17, he who is the Lamb will also be the Shepherd, and lead the redeemed to the new heaven. The living one as redeemer is the Lamb, and as ruler the Shepherd. After the massive destruction in chapter 6, these two visions are presented to assure the faithful that the divine is active on their behalf, and that their salvation is certain, for they have been sealed with the blood of the Lamb.