Some years ago we focused our advent messages at Tallowood on the book of Revelation. A good friend in our city did the same this year. My kids went to a church in Kentucky where the pastor said when he was a child they had a red dragon in their nativity scene. This comes straight from John’s teaching in Revelation 12. Now we see the dragon again and a beast with ten horns and seven heads (13:1). People worshiped this beast (13:4). To the first-century Christian, the beast may have represented the Roman Empire or the emperor.
Who might have been the beast in the first century? Whose name held a numerical equivalent of 666? Bruce Metzger uses the Hebrew letters in Nero Caesar and produces the number 666. Certainly, the Roman emperors in John’s time were forcing people to worship them. They made coins with their blasphemous claims to deity written on them. These coins were the commerce of the first century. How do Christians respond when a ruler claims to be God? Twice John tells us this calls for patient endurance and faithfulness to Jesus Christ. Like the three Hebrew children in Daniel 3, followers of Jesus can never worship anybody besides God. This led to persecution in the first century and in the centuries since, right up to the present moment.
Romans 13:1-7 calls for submission to authorities. Revelation 13 calls for discernment and resistance against evil authorities (13:9-10). We live our lives in the balance of these two. If a leader serves God and produces fruit of righteousness we submit, but if a leader blasphemes the name of God, we must resist. This calls for wisdom, patient endurance, and faithfulness to Jesus. Still, we must not be surprised if following Jesus eventually costs us our freedom and our lives. Generations of Christians, going back to Christ himself, have suffered similar losses.
John had a message for first-century Christian martyrs: “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.” How are martyrs who die in the Lord blessed? First, they receive rest from their labor. We sing, “There is a place of quiet rest, near to the heart of God. Second, their deeds follow them. Paul, too, envisioned a testing of our works by fire (1 Corinthians 3:10-15). Good deeds last. Worthless deeds are consumed by fire. God still knows his faithful people. Others will recognize them as well. C. T. Studd put it well: “Only one life. ‘twill soon be past. Only what is done for Christ will last.”
