Joy In Heaven
JOY IN HEAVEN
REVELATION 19:1-5
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
We are accustomed to think of joy in heaven over a sinner who repents. Here it is ultimately over those who will never be able to repent. This may seem frightful, until we remember that it is over those who made it so hard for others to believe, those who fought to the last against the truth, those who were the incarnation of Satan’s hatred even as the church is of Christ’s love. In addition, Christ in his judgment of the great white throne can discriminate between those who had sold themselves to satanic powers for gain and power, and those deluded ones who were swept along by the current of the age.
The NIV does well to render “the roar of a great multitude” (19:1); it reverberates like peals of thunder (see also 19:6). “The smoke from her” (19:3): for mortal minds it is as difficult to conceive of perfect sinless bliss as of utter, inexorably just condemnation. Therefore both are described in purely symbolic language, which should always be treated as such. The best chapter to study the symbolic language of judgment is probably Isaiah 34. In Isaiah 34:1-4 we have universal judgment involving even the heavenly bodies (but are they rulers?); the earth is strewn with corpses and the mountains flow with blood. In Isaiah 34:5 the general judgment is particularized by Edom, and in Isaiah 34:6-7 we have the soil manured with fat and blood. In Isaiah 34:8-10 we have it as active volcanic waste, but in Isaiah 34:11-17 it is inhabited by animals, real and mythological, that do not live among pitch and brimstone. From this we should grasp that we do not have any unitary picture of judgment; we are allowed to judge its reality by the putting together of mutually incompatible pictures which give some idea of the awefulness of God’s judgment. The picture of smoke continually rising (19:3; see also 18:18; Isaiah 34:10) is taken from Genesis 19:28, so linking the destruction of Babylon with that of Sodom and Gomorrah.