The wedding
Epilogue (Rev. 22:6–21)
The last sixteen verses of the book of Revelation are a kind of appendix or epilogue, containing an assortment of warnings and exhortations. Three main themes, however, stand out.
First, John is concerned to authenticate his book, to demonstrate its authority. It was Jesus himself, he affirms, who sent his angel to give John this testimony for the churches (vv. 6, 16). In consequence, John both ‘heard and saw’ what he went on to record (v. 8), and his words are ‘trustworthy and true’ (v. 6). One particular expression, with slight variations, John uses five times, namely ‘the words of the prophecy of this book’ (vv. 7, 9, 10, 18, 19). His readers’ duty towards this revelation is clear. They are to ‘keep’ it (vv. 7, 9), that is, to believe and obey it. They are not to ‘seal’ it (v. 10, i.e. conceal it), but to make it known to others. And in doing so they must neither add to it nor subtract from it (vv. 18–19).
Secondly, John issues his appeals and warnings against the background of anticipated judgment. When Christ comes, he will ‘give to everyone according to what he has done’ (v 12). Then will take place the terrible separation. Those who have washed their robes will be blessed, enjoying access to the tree of life and to the new Jerusalem (v. 14), but unredeemed sinners and liars will be excluded, like pariah dogs outside the city (v. 15).
Thus Jesus Christ, who originated all things as Creator, will consummate all things as Judge. For he is ‘the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End’ (v. 13). These very same titles are attributed both to God (1:8) and to Christ (1:17; 22:13). With these tremendous claims of Christ, John opens and closes his book. Everything is contained within these parameters. More than that, John’s perspective is that even before creation and after judgment Jesus remains the same. For he is the living one, the eternal one (1:17). So he challenges us today to repent of our cowardly compromise and instead to be his faithful witnesses, following him if necessary even to a martyr’s death.
‘I am coming soon!’
The third and most distinctive feature of the book’s epilogue, however, is that it is punctuated three times by the grand affirmation of Jesus: ‘Behold, I am coming soon!’ (vv. 7, 12, 20).
Does this mean that Jesus and his apostles predicted that his return would take place almost immediately, and that they were mistaken? This is a widely held view, but it is not necessary to reach this conclusion, for a number of reasons.
First, Jesus said that he did not know the time of his coming (Mark 13:32; cf. Acts 1:7; 2 Thess. 2:1ff.); only his Father knew. It is therefore antecedently unlikely that he would pronounce on what he knew he did not know. He was not ignorant of his ignorance.
Secondly, Jesus and his apostles urged his followers in other places to marry and have children (Eph. 5:21ff.), to earn their own living (2 Thess. 3:6–10), and to take the gospel to the ends of the earth (Matt. 24:14 = Mark 13:10; Matt. 28:19; Rom. 11:25). These instructions are hardly compatible with an imminent parousia. Some of the parables also implied delay (e.g. Matt. 25:19).
Thirdly, Jesus did predict the destruction of Jerusalem within the lifetime of his contemporaries, and it is sometimes hard to discern whether he is referring to this or to the end (e.g. Mark 13:30).
Fourthly, ‘apocalyptic’ is a particular literary genre with its own literary conventions. For example, it expresses what will happen suddenly in terms of what will happen soon. Some of the prophets of the eighth and seventh centuries BC, for example, regularly announced that ‘the day of the Lord is near’ (e.g. Joel 2:1), although it did not begin to materialize, with Christ’s coming, for several more centuries. In other words, there is often a gap between promise and fulfilment, since it is only ‘through faith and patience’ that we inherit the promises (Heb. 6:12, cf. Heb. 11:39).
How then should we interpret the adverb ‘soon’? We need to remember that, with the great events of Christ’s coming, death, resurrection and exaltation, the new age had dawned (e.g. Luke 11:20; Acts 2:17; 1 Cor. 10:11; 2 Tim. 3:1; Heb. 1:2; 1 Pet. 1:20; 2 Pet. 3:3; 1 John 2:18), and that there is now nothing on God’s eschatological calendar before the parousia. The parousia is the very next event on his timetable. ‘It was, and still is, true to say’, wrote Charles Cranfield, ‘that the Parousia is at hand’.36 Thus Christian disciples are characterized by faith, hope and love. Faith apprehends the already of Christ’s achievement. Hope looks forward to the not yet of his salvation. And love characterizes our life now in the meanwhile. So ‘soon’ may be chronologically inexact; but it is theologically correct.
Fifthly, Jesus intended his followers to be both patient and vigilant, like farmers waiting for the rain (Jas. 5:7ff.) and like householders on their guard against thieves (Matt. 24:42–44. Cf. 1 Thess. 5:1–4; Rev. 3:3; 16:15).
In the context of the book of Revelation, Christ’s repeated assurance ‘Behold, I am coming soon’ has a special significance. It indicates that, although he is coming to judge, he is also coming to complete the salvation of his people, coming as the heavenly bridegroom to claim his bride.
The wedding
We have seen that John develops three metaphors of eternal life, each illustrating in a different way the perfect relationship with God which awaits us in the end. The first was an architectural model, namely the gates, walls and foundations of the new Jerusalem, which needs no temple since the whole city is the inner sanctuary of God’s presence. Next came the garden, paradise restored, with continuous access to the tree of life and the water of life. Thirdly, and much more personally than the city and the garden, John refers to the eternal union of Christ with his church in terms of the wedding of the bridegroom to his bride.
According to Jewish custom, a marriage took place in two stages, the betrothal and the wedding. The betrothal included an exchange of promises and gifts, and was regarded as being almost as binding as a marriage. The betrothed couple could be called ‘husband’ and ‘wife’, and if a separation took place, it would have to be a ‘divorce’ (see Matt. 1:18–19). The wedding followed some time after the betrothal and was essentially a public social occasion. It began with a festive procession, accompanied with music and dancing, in which the bridegroom and his friends went out to fetch his bride, who will have made herself ready. He would then bring her and her friends and relatives back to his home for the wedding feast, which might last as long as a week. During it the bride and bridegroom would receive a public blessing from their parents, and be escorted to the nuptial chamber where they would consummate their marriage in the intimacy of physical union.
The Bible betrays no embarrassment about sex and marriage. It is uninhibited in its use of the marriage metaphor to depict the covenant between God and Israel. Yahweh’s love for Israel is portrayed, especially by Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Hosea, in bluntly physical terms. Speaking through Ezekiel to Israel, God said,
‘You grew up and developed and became the most beautiful of jewels. Your breasts were formed and your hair grew, you who were naked and bare.
‘Later I passed by, and when I looked at you and saw that you were old enough for love, I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness. I gave you my solemn oath and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Sovereign Lord, and you became mine’ (Ezek. 16:7b–8).
Jesus himself implied, in a daring statement, that he was his followers’ bridegroom, so that while he was still with them it would be inappropriate for them to fast (Mark 2:19–20). Then Paul, though much maligned as a misogenist, developed the metaphor further. He pictured Christ as the bridegroom, who had loved his bride the church and sacrificed himself for her, in order that he might present her to himself unblemished and radiant (Eph. 5:25–27). When Paul added that ‘this is a profound mystery’, he seems to have meant that the ‘one flesh’ experience in marriage symbolizes the union of Christ with his church (Eph. 5:31–32).
It is this same vivid imagery that John picks up. He has already declared that ‘the wedding of the Lamb has come’, that ‘his bride has made herself ready’ and that ‘those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb’ are blessed (19:7, 9). Mixing metaphors, John has also described the new Jerusalem as ‘coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband’ (21:2, 9).
But where is he? He is nowhere to be seen! It is not for the bride to fetch the bridegroom, but for the bridegroom to go and fetch his bride! She has made herself ready, beautifully dressed and bejewelled. Now, however, she can do no more than wait – except that she takes the liberty of expressing her longing for him: ‘The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!”’(v. 17). For the supreme ministry of the Holy Spirit is to bear witness to Christ, and the supreme desire of the bride is to welcome her bridegroom.
It is thus that the book of Revelation leaves the church – waiting, hoping, expecting, longing, the bride eagerly looking for her bridegroom, clinging to his threefold promise that he is coming soon, and encouraged by others who echo her call ‘Amen. Come, Lord Jesus’ (v. 20; cf. 1 Cor. 16:22).
Meanwhile she is confident that his grace will be sufficient for her (v. 21), until the eternal wedding feast begins and she is united to her bridegroom for ever.
I think and hope that my readers will have been impressed by the picture of Christ that John has painted in the book of Revelation – the eternal Christ who never changes, but who challenges us to follow him today. We have seen him now supervising his churches on earth, now sharing God’s throne in heaven, now controlling the course of history, now calling the world to repentance, now riding on a white horse to judgment, and now promising to come soon to claim and marry his bride.