Trevor Laurence
This article is an adapted transcript from a message delivered on June 3, 2024 at the 2024 Empire Colloquium, hosted by the Centre for the Study of Bible and Violence in partnership with the Cateclesia Institute, held in Bristol, England.
In the book of Acts, there is a story about a man named Stephen—full of faith and the Spirit, grace and power—brought before the religious authorities and faced with the prospect of death.
Stephen is confronted with the choice every Christian must make in the face of unjust power: Will he retreat from Jesus in capitulation? Will he retaliate in kind against his attackers? He has walked with Jesus right up to precipice of martyrdom. Will he have the strength to hold on to Jesus and step into his presence?
In that moment, Stephen lifted his eyes, gazed up into heaven, and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at his right hand. In his hour of greatest need—and presumably, his greatest temptation—God showed him the throne room. And in that moment, he had everything he needed to hold fast the word of his testimony—and to fall asleep praying for his murderers.
In Revelation 4 and 5, God gives to us the same gift he gave to Stephen, and for the same reason—a glimpse into heaven to empower our faithfulness to and endurance with Jesus.
The Book of Revelation is a revelation from Jesus of Jesus, so that his church can follow the Lamb while the Dragon yet prowls. That ancient crafty serpent is happy to manipulate imperial beasts to exert social, political, and economic pressure to deny Jesus. But if he cannot make us leave the Lamb, he is content to make us look so much like the Dragon that nobody can tell the difference. If he cannot get you to turn your back on the Lamb, he is more than happy to have you try to accomplish the Lamb’s ends using the Dragon’s means—and to become more dragon-like in the process.
These twin temptations are present to theologians and biblical scholars as well: to provide religious legitimation for the empire’s idols, ethics, and institutions; and to provide religious legitimation for the church’s dragon-like power plays, culture wars, political alliances, eschewal of Christian virtue in the name of defending Jesus, and attempts to bridle the power of the beast for so-called kingdom purposes.
John is caught up into the heavenly temple—the true holy place—and he beholds the King we need to know is there if we are to hold fast to the word and way of Jesus.
This King possesses all authority. At the helm of the cosmos, there is only one throne. He who occupies it has no superior and bears the name “Lord God Almighty” (Rev 4:8) as the King who created all things by his will and reigns over every aspect of his creation (Rev 4:11). Just on the other side of the veil of the heavens, there is a king above this world whose reign is uncompromised and whose purposes are unthreatened, no matter how out-of-control the world may seem. Panic is a posture unbecoming Christian political theology and witness precisely because there is never a moment when the cosmic sovereign, who is the covenant Lord of love, is not enthroned and in control.
This King reigns in holiness. The four living creatures ceaselessly sing, “Holy, holy, holy” (Rev 4:8). To sing the holiness of the Lord is to proclaim that there is none like him, no rival king who can approach his glory and goodness, no opposing power in heaven or on earth that can impede his intentions.
All throughout the Old Testament, God’s people sing, “Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness?” (Exod 15:11). They know the answer, but they keep singing the question. Why?
They keep singing God’s holiness to remind themselves that they need not fear the dangers that seem to loom so large. They do it to rehearse that every other power they could ever be tempted to follow, every other king they might be tempted to serve, pales in comparison to their incomparable king.
Throughout history, worship has always been the first and most profound political act of God’s people. When Nebuchadnezzar demanded the exiles bow down to his statue, when Caesar required the empire to worship him as a god, when politicians and parties and regimes to this day call people to offer ultimate allegiance, recycle their propaganda, embrace their values, and make them the object of hope, worshiping God as the holy King puts the world on notice that every other authority is subordinate to the singular King who alone can claim our heart. And it simultaneously reminds us that “there is none holy like the Lord” (1 Sam 2:2) so that we can live with courage without bowing the knee to Caesar or mortgaging our character and witness in the resistance.
There is a reason why the tyrants of the world throw Christians in prison and tremble at the thought of weak saints gathering to sing “Holy, Holy, Holy.” They know that those people cannot be bent by ostentation or threat. They know that those songs will turn the empire upside-down.
This King reigns for eternity. The Lord God Almighty is he “who was and is and is to come” (Rev 4:8)—a stable hope for pressured people who preceded and will outlast every subordinate power.
The logic of messianic politics—the anointing of strong men as political saviors for the church—turns on the notion that the potentially compromising allegiance is necessary to achieve expedient results in seasons of desperate urgency. But Christians need not be so short-sighted. The horizons of our practical deliberations are far broader and so are not captive to the demands of political urgency. Ours is a king who shall outlast every foe, have the final word over history, and lead his people in love and joy long after every oppressor has faded into memory. God’s eternity empowers faithful endurance—resilience against compromise—for a time with the hope of the King who exceeds time.
In front of the throne, John observes a sea of glass (Rev 4:6). Throughout the Old Testament, the sea is a recurring image of the raging nations poised to burst upon Israel in the land—a deep metaphor for all the forces of the world that threaten to overwhelm the people of God. But underneath God’s feet, John beholds a sea as smooth as crystal, because from the perspective of heaven, all the roiling of the waters on earth against God’s church does not even register a ripple—powerless to overcome the purposes of the sovereign king.
God grants us a vision of the stilled sea in heaven so that we might persist in hope amid the storm upon the earth. He pulls back the curtain of heaven to show us what is really real, over and above and behind what our eyes are normally able to behold, so that we might live in line with true reality.
And yet, John sees trouble in heaven: no one is found worthy to open God’s sealed scroll (Rev 5:1–4). In several places in the Old Testament (Ezek 2:9–10; Zech 5:3; Isa 29:11; cf. Dan 12:4), a sealed-up scroll carries the message of God’s judgments in the earth—Yahweh’s promises to deal with unholiness, stop oppression, judge the wicked, and shatter every kingdom that competes against his dominion—and he seals up the scroll until it is time to open it up. If no one is found to open the scroll, then all hope of liberation is lost. But in heaven there rises one who is worthy to consummate God’s creation with justice.
Revelation 5 is an ascension scene, in which John witnesses from a different perspective something he has already seen. After Jesus’ resurrection, John watched from earth as Jesus went up into heaven to take his place as king. Now, he gets the view from above: Jesus appears in the throne room of heaven’s temple to take the scroll from the right hand of God.
When the ascended Christ takes the scroll, it is a declaration that he is the king Israel has been waiting for since Genesis 3:15—a true son of Adam, worthy to open the scroll, bring history to completion, and release the cosmos from the reign of the Dragon. But the Lion of the tribe of Judah anticipated in Genesis 49—who is the royal root of David announced in Isaiah 11—is a Lamb standing as though slain (Rev 5:5–6). The king who ascends is the crucified Lord. The Christ who is alone worthy to administer God’s delivering judgment conquered as a Lion by being slain as a Lamb.
And herein is the first and true transvaluation of all values—the ultimate revolution of worldly conceptions of power. The Lion of Judah shattered the serpent’s head not with dominating violence but by offering himself in humility and obedience as a Lamb to ransom sinners from death. Jesus exposed the impotence of imperial pretension by entrusting himself into the hands of God amid the verdict of death and receiving from a higher court the vindicating verdict of life in his resurrection.
Christians are a people who purport to live within a story where the gift of vindication follows the imposition of shame and where the power that breaks the deepest dominion is exercised in the self-giving of the cross. The Lion has conquered as a Lamb and taken the scroll, and Revelation declares that this royal Lamb will return in Lion-like glory to complete the task of disempowering the Dragon, bringing justice to the world, and renewing the cosmos as the dwelling place of God and humanity.
Faithful witness requires both dimensions of this heavenly vision. While the Dragon yet thrashes, we need to know that Jesus is our Lion. He has decisively broken Satan’s power and is coming soon to bring justice. That hope will stay your hand when you are tempted to believe that taking vengeance into your own hand is the only path to justice. And we need to know that Jesus is our Lamb, who triumphed not by killing, but by dying; who succeeds not by waging militant war in God’s name but by persevering in the apparent weakness of faith, hope, and love (which is true strength) in the face of every temptation and danger; who judges the world at the cross not through the naked exercise of coercive power but by revealing who they are and what they have become through the sheer contrast of his own existence.
Make no mistake, the Lamb is gathering an army. But it is an army that follows the Lamb wherever he goes—a host of witnesses who walk in the footsteps and character of their crucified King and conquer by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony, for they love not their lives even unto death.
In the throne room of heaven, the Lamb holds the scroll, and that is proof from God that faithfulness unto death is not failure. It is the most powerful form of resistance. It is conquering. It is overcoming by bearing witness in hope to the King who already triumphed by dying.
The apocalyptic vision of John’s glimpse into heaven breeds an existential security that animates faithfulness in the face of temptations to both recant and rage. Simply put, we have everything we most truly need at the throne of God and of the Lamb.
As scholars, theologians, Christians: may the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts bear witness to what is really real—to the King who sits enthroned in glory just beyond our current sight.
Trevor Laurence is the Executive Director of the Cateclesia Institute and the author of Cursing with God: The Imprecatory Psalms and the Ethics of Christian Prayer (Baylor University Press, 2022).
Image: Francisco de Zurbarán, Agnus Dei