sevens and threes

In my last post, I spoke of three characteristics of biblical apocalyptic literature with regard to the book of Daniel: dreams and visions; prophetic words (interpretation of dreams and visions); and exhortations for right living.  The three categories are also present in Daniel's New Testament counterpart, the Revelation to John.

Just as the purpose of Nebuchadnezzar's dream (Dan 4) was to change the king's way of life, so Revelation's dreams and visions point toward specific acts of human faithfulness to God.  Dreams lead to exhortations for right living.  In fact, the very heart of Revelation, embedded in one of John's dramatic descriptions, is one such call to action.  Before we can repeat that call, however, it is necessary to locate the heart of the book of Revelation.

Revelation, like other works of biblical literature, is built upon certain textual features which point to a central message.  In biblical literature, meaning goes hand-in-hand with structure.  That which is textually central is central in terms of message.  John's primary purpose for conveying his dreams to others may be found at the literal center of the text of Revelation.  In Revelation, that center may be found amidst Revelation's repetitions of the number 7.

Revelation features a long middle section (6:1-16:21), so marked because it encompasses three completed series of "sevens".  The first "seven" begins in chapter 6, when "the Lamb that was slaughtered", first seen in chapter 5, begins to open the seven seals of the scroll which he was worthy to take from the hand of the one seated upon the throne.  This is followed by a second series of "sevens"--seven angels blowing seven trumpets (8:2-11:19). Finally, seven plagues, or "bowls of God's wrath", are poured out upon the earth (15:1-16:21).  This is the third "seven".

Of course, it should be noted that seven is a prime number in the Bible, ubiquitous and rich in meaning.  God created the heavens and the earth in seven days.  After seven sevens or forty-nine years, Israel enjoyed a Jubilee year--rest for the land, return of property to previous owners, release of slaves (Lev 25).  If the seventh day of creation meant rest for God, so too the fullness of time after seven sevens for God's creation.  Seven was synonymous with rest and freedom after the labor.  At the Bible School last weekend, students pointed out other sevens.

• Joseph's dreams, seven fat and skinny cows (fourteen in all) meaning seven years of plenty succeeded by seven years of scarcity, and seven ears of healthy and sickly grain, meaning the same (Gen 41).
• Naaman's washings in the River Jordan, cleansing him of his leprosy (2 Kgs 5).
• seven words of Jesus from the cross (which is, of course, a compilation from the four gospels).  A service of the seven words is a tradition on Good Friday for many churches here.

As seven relates to the book of Daniel, we also pointed out two sevens from the stories we told.  The fiery furnace into which were cast Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego as the price of their obedience to God, was heated "seven times" beyond normal.  Yet beyond the sevenfold wrath of Nebuchadnezzar's oven, the three friends of Daniel came out unscathed (Dan 3).  For failing to heed the prophecy of Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar was driven from human society until "seven times" should "pass over" him, after which he would learn of the sovereignty of God.  Nebuchadnezzar's return to power, his exaltation as it were, did not come without a sevenfold humiliation (Dan 4).

All these sevens add up, not to some mathematical sum, but to a theological truth.  In the fullness of time, after what will be has been, upon completion, after seven "days", creation is new.  

But in the midst of those sevens, there is labor.  In the heart of the sevens there is pain.  In the belly of the sevens there is tumult.  And so it is with Revelation.

Each of the three sevens in the heart of Revelation tells of suffering.  If by some chance the reader could miss that suffering, the text underscores it with another sequence in the exact center of the three sevens.   Amidst the middle seven, the seven trumpets, are "three woes" (8:13-9:12; 9:13-10:14; 12:12).  They begin right where one might expect them to begin, after the fourth trumpet is blown, in the middle or second sequence of the three sevens (8:12-13).  Within the three sevens, thus, is another three.  Amidst the three sevens of suffering are three woes.  And amidst the three woes, as one might expect--"let anyone with an ear to hear listen" (see the refrain of Rev 2-3)--is the central call of Revelation, the Word of God for his people.

That call may be found in Revelation 12, and that will be the subject of my next post.

-Joe  

dreams, words, life

I taught on the apocalyptic literature of the Bible, the books of Daniel and Revelation, at Bethany Bible School last Saturday.

I enjoyed both my study of these texts in the weeks leading up to last weekend and the actual presentation and interaction with students around these books.  For the sake of clarity and simplicity, I chose three main features of biblical apocalyptic literature (based on  my own reading and re-reading of Daniel and Revelation).

1. Dreams and Visions
2. Prophetic Words
3. Exhortations for Right Living

The three are inter-related.  Dreams and visions are the means by which God, sometimes through angels, communicates to human beings (e.g., Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, John of Patmos).  Yet, because those dreams or visions usually are cryptic, those who receive them seek understanding through prophets.  The prophets give words to the visions, that is, they provide interpretation.  Finally, however, neither the dreams nor their interpretations are ends in themselves but calls to right living for the ones to whom they have been given.  Thus, the prophet’s job is not only to interpret but to exhort, to urge on toward faithfulness.

One example may be drawn from Daniel 4.  King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon has a dream of a large tree with its top in the heavens (one is reminded of the tower of Babel in Genesis 11).  The tree is beautiful, its reach vast, its fruit abundant, its shade and its branches a shelter for many.  This is the vision.
 
On the other hand, in spite of its beauty, its appearance is terrifying for the king, for he also hears a “holy watcher” command that the tree should be “cut down” (Dan 4:13ff).  Nebuchadnezzar, as with his dream of a great statue in chapter 2, does not have words for his fear.  And it is precisely those words which might bring relief.  So Nebuchadnezzar calls upon Daniel for interpretation.  Daniel tells him that the tree is not really a tree, but the king himself, his greatness and his sovereignty (4:22).  As for the tree being cut down, Daniel tells Nebuchadnezzar that his kingdom will be taken from him “until [he has] learned that the Most High has sovereignty over the kingdom of mortals, and gives it to whom he will” (4:25).  This is the interpretation, the prophetic words which explain the dream.

Finally, although Nebuchadnezzar’s fate is sealed—he will be driven from human society (4:25)—it is so only in the absence of Nebuchadnezzar’s own repentance.  The decree of heaven for Nebuchadnezzar is fixed as Nebuchadnezzar is—not as Nebuchadnezzar might be.  And because even now there is hope for Nebuchadnezzar, or at least to leave him without excuse, Daniel gives the word of exhortation.

“Atone for your sins with righteousness, and your iniquities with mercy to the oppressed, so that your prosperity may be prolonged” (4:27).

This is the call to right living.  Of course, the king did not heed it, and had to find out the hard way that God is God over even Nebuchadnezzar’s realm (4:28ff.).

These categories may also be applied to the New Testament’s apocalyptic offering, Revelation, which will be the subject of my next post.

-Joe

prophetic desperation

My last entry, on prophetic loneliness, ended by introducing another characteristic of the prophets--desperation.

I came to this realization in the course of teaching the topic last month. As I was desperately trying to communicate my message (as always, across vast language and cultural barriers), I sensed how the words and actions of the biblical prophets also reflected desperation.

For the small group activity, I had asked the students to find examples from the prophetic books that fit four categories of prophetic communication that I had identified from my own reading.

They are:

1. Analysis and Truth-telling. The prophet looks around at the world and observes that it is not as God designed it to be. Then the prophet tells the truth about the world. I think here of Amos, for example, in chapter 8:4-6. He identified the social situation of his time and decried it as it was.

2. Prophetic Displays/Dramatizations. The prophet enacts before the people the message he is trying to communicate to them. The prophet Hosea, for example, married a prostitute in order to show Israel that they were prostituting themselves with gods who were not God, with gods who neither loved Israel nor had married her (as Yahweh had) (Hosea 1-3).

3. Parables and Allegories. We think of parables in the ministry of Jesus, who certainly continued the prophetic tradition of the Old Testament. One of my favorite parables is that which Nathan told to David after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba and murdered her husband (2 Sam. 12)

4. Visions. The prophets saw visions and reported them. I chose to highlight Isaiah 6.

In the course of proclaiming again these texts, I realized a common thread: God is persistent in trying to reach God's people. God is desperate to turn the people back to himself. Consequently, God uses the prophets in many and various ways. If simple analysis and truth-telling does not get through, God will dramatize the people's sin before their very eyes; the prophet performs a drama. Where words cannot communicate, perhaps actions stand a chance. On the other hand, perhaps the limits do not lie with words but with the manner of words; not analysis but imaginative portrayal will get through. In desperate times--but not only desperate--only story, parable, hits home. Still, If even parable will not do, perhaps a vision of the Holy Itself will convince one of his sin. In the case of Isaiah, "a man of unclean lips living among a people of unclean lips", purification begins with the prophet.

There are doubtless many ways to tackle a subject as big as the prophets. For this time and place, this was mine.

-Joe

things above

For me, some of the most fascinating features of African spirituality are dreams and visions (North Americans also have them, yet our dominant worldview is largely closed to their reality).

I have recently experienced a close convergence between something I have been reading about in a book about African "religious thought" and an experience as related to me by a pastor friend.

The book was explaining a certain Congolese Christian evangelist's experiences of an "underground world", accessed via water, inhabited by witches and sorcerers who convene to plot evil against the inhabitants of the earth. The authors describe these worlds, as described by the Africans who experience them, as "contain[ing] the same features as the material world, but in malign forms that are inversions or perversions of their visible representations" (Ellis and Ter Haar, 50).

We might recognize this same characterization in the pastor's account.

He described to me the story of a certain man whom he knows. One day, studying in his university's library, the man looked up to notice a number of children from his home, rural village entering the library. He thought the sight most strange, conceiving of no reason why such children should suddenly appear at his institution of study. Suddenly, accompanied by the children, the man found himself in a location "beside the sea". He then witnessed a most gruesome scene: people from all sorts of ethnic groups--"black, white, Indian" [some of the prominent groupings of South African society]--"drinking one another's blood" at the behest of certain witches who held them captive. One of the witches took a knife and, giving it to the man, ordered him to cut out the heart of a white man there hanging by his feet from a tree. The man first refused; yet under duress, he complied. "I will never forget the screams of that white man," the man would later tell the pastor. To make a long story short, the witches also tried to cut the man himself. However, when one thrust the knife into his belly, it bounced back as if repelled by strong rubber. Another witch chided the other, "I told you we are unable to do anything to people who have been washed in the blood of that man." "They [the witches] do not even like to say the name of Jesus," the pastor explained to me. Following this, the man woke up in the hospital in Mthatha.

Just as the authors, in their analyses of certain accounts from the continent, describe an alternative world that "contains the same features of the material world", so we notice that, according to the pastor's telling, the man experienced things more real than we would commonly ascribe to dreams. He really felt himself to be "by the sea"; felt the knife twist into the white man's flesh; heard his screams; felt the knife bounce off his own flesh.

And just as the authors describe that world as an "malign inversion" of the visible world, so the invisible world is dominated by witches, ostracized evildoers in the visible world. The invisible world in the pastor's story, similarly characterized by the authors, is also a "perversion"; the atrocities committed there are the utmost extremities of human discord in the visible world. As such--extremely perverse, extremely painful--the invisible world is, in a sense, more real than the "real" world, for it exposes the pain common to many--yet known by few--in the visible world. Though humans are not often literally seen to consume one another's blood, we actually do whenever we curse, abuse, and kill one another.

Yet the malign "underworld" is not the only invisible world; neither is it the most real.

When a certain man named John "was in the Spirit on the Lord's day", he saw, perhaps like the man in the pastor's story, "a great multitude which no one could number from every tribe and people and language." These, however, were not those who drink the blood of one another; "these are those who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb" (Rev. 1:10, 7:9, 14).

"But I do not like to tell my people such stories," the pastor says to me, closing the book on his acquaintance's encounter with witches. "Jesus is more powerful."

The world below does not determine life on this earth; the world above does (Col. 3:1-4; Eph. 2:1-7).

-Joe

The work cited above is Stephen Ellis and Gerrie Ter Haar, Worlds of Power: Religious Thought and Political Practice in Africa. Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2004.