There was an excursus in the series of seals between the sixth and the seventh, so is there one here in the series of trumpets between the sixth and the seventh, this excursus is divided into two parts. First, the angel and the little scroll (chapter 10) and, second, the two witnesses (chapter 11).

Whatever else these symbols involve, they have to do primarily with the people of God, or at least the people of God are brought back into center stage. What are they doing while all of these judgments are coming upon those who dwell on the earth?

10 :1 And I saw another strong angel coming down out of heaven, arrayed with a cloud; and the rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire; 2 and he had in his hand a little book open: and he set his right foot upon the sea, and his left upon the earth; 3 and he cried with a great voice, as a lion roareth: and when he cried, the seven thunders uttered their voices. 4 And when the seven thunders uttered their voices, I was about to write: and I heard a voice from heaven saying, Seal up the things which the seven thunders uttered, and write them not. 5 And the angel that I saw standing upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his right hand to heaven, 6 and sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created the heaven and the things that are therein, and the earth and the things that are therein, and the sea and the things that are therein, that there shall be delay no longer: 7 but in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he is about to sound, then is finished the mystery of God, according to the good tidings which he declared to his servants the prophets.
8 And the voice which I heard from heaven, I heard it again speaking with me, and saying, Go, take the book which is open in the hand of the angel that standeth upon the sea and upon the earth. 9 And I went unto the angel, saying unto him that he should give me the little book. And he saith unto me, Take it, and eat it up; and it shall make thy belly bitter, but in thy mouth it shall be sweet as honey. 10 And I took the little book out of the angel’s hand, and ate it up; and it was in my mouth sweet as honey: and when I had eaten it, my belly was made bitter. 11And they say unto me, Thou must prophesy again over many peoples and nations and tongues and kings.

What you are now doing is looking at the redeemed party. You’re looking at the people of God. You’re looking at the whole thing from another slant. It doesn’t mean you’re necessarily making a break temporally or chronologically between the sixth and the seventh.

The Vision

A mighty angel is yelling out to so many people. It’s like the mighty angel, in chapter 4 and chapter 5. We needed somebody who was going to yell out to the whole universe who is worthy to approach this God and open the seals and bring forth God’s purposes.

There is a rainbow above his head. There was some kind of rainbow in the vision of chapter 4 connected with the throne of God. That may come out of the language of Exodus as well, much of the Apocalypse does. Remember the pillar of fire and the pillar of cloud giving protection and guidance in the Old Testament? It may come out of that sort of language.

There are some strong parallels in the description between this passage and the angel in Daniel, 12:7,

This angel comes from the very presence of God. This is an angel on the good side. It’s not one of the demonic powers that have come out of the pit. This angel is under a divine commission, with clouds of glory, the presence of brightness and holiness upon him, commissioned from God himself.

This is a little scroll, it has no seals, it’s wide open. It is not in the hands of deity, It’s in the hands of this angel. This scene has its closest parallel to Ezekiel 2:8–3:3.

John uses the Old Testament very often to develop his symbols, but he doesn’t use the symbols in exactly the same way as in the Old Testament.

You have to assess them within John’s context, not simply within the context of the Old Testament book.

Ezekiel 2:8. “ ‘You, son of man, listen to what I say to you. Do not rebel like that rebellious house; open your mouth and eat what I give you.’ Then I looked, and I saw a hand stretched out to me. In it was a scroll, which he unrolled before me.” It’s an open scroll. “On both sides of it were written words of lament and mourning and woe.

And he said to me, ‘Son of man, eat what is before you, eat this scroll; then go and speak to the house of Israel.’ So I opened my mouth, and he gave me the scroll to eat. Then he said to me, ‘Son of man, eat this scroll I am giving you and fill your stomach with it.’ So I ate it, and it tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth.”

Why does he touch the land and the sea?

Later in chapters 12–13. we find a triumvirate of evil, a kind of mirror image of the Trinity. There is the great Beast of chapter 12, who’s clearly identified for us as the Devil. “That great Serpent,” we’re told in chapter 12. Then chapter 13, there is a beast out of the land and a beast out of the sea.

A little farther on for us as Antichrist and False Prophet, and they’re all bound up in the schemes of the Devil himself in chapter 12 in John’s theology, the three tries to displace God.

You have the angel from God standing with one foot in the sea and one foot on the land and now pronouncing judgment,

God is saying, “Yes, there is the Devil. Yes, there is the beast out of the sea and the beast out of the land, but there is still only one sovereign God.”

“There will be no more delay; there will now be judgment.

Nothing escapes his sovereignty, his rights as Creator and Sovereign.

Seal it up.

John is about to write it down as he has been doing, and this is a voice from heaven. “Seal up what the seven thunders have said and do not write it down.”

There are parallels to this in Scripture, the most notable is in Daniel 12. In Daniel 12:9, the prophet is told to shut up the words and seal the book until the time of the end.

That vision is not going to be understood and unpacked until the time it is fulfilled. It’s not even going to be revealed or disclosed until the time of the end. In other words, there are some things God reveals and some things he does not reveal.

Deuteronomy 29:29? “The revealed things belong to us and to our children forever, but the secret things belong to God.” God has not revealed everything.

Paul in 2 Corinthians, chapter 12. He’s caught up into the third heaven, whether in the body or out of the body he doesn’t really know.

There he is shown things, he says, which are not lawful to be uttered.

He says the gospel itself was given to him by revelation (Galatians, chp 1). It is his burden, his responsibility to articulate it, but now for his own strengthening he’s permitted to see certain things in heaven which he is not allowed to talk about.

Although we don’t know what the seven thunders spoke, that they’re thunders suggests judgment. That there are seven of them suggests a certain parallelism to the other sevens of judgment. We’re about to have seven bowls. We’ve had seven trumpets and seven seals. It may be another way of saying, “Look, there are judgments and judgments that I haven’t even introduced yet,” which is a frightening thought.

You’re in history here with sequences of judgments taking place in history.

 

And still people do not repent.
We can not confuse the content of the thunders with the content of the little scroll. When the angel shouts, the voices of the seven thunders spoke, and what they said is sealed up, but the scroll is presented as being open to view, open in content.

What is on the scroll?

What does it say?

Well, we can make an intelligent guess. It’s at that point that the angel raises his hand and announces there will be no more delay. Maybe there are two choices in terms of identifying the content of the scroll.

You can either identify the content of the scroll as the content of this prophecy against many peoples and nations and kings, in which case the content of this little scroll is of apiece with all of the judgments that are coming down the pike.

Or you can see it this way, remembering that these two excursuses, if they match the excursuses in the sequence of seals, are looking at things more from the perspective of God’s people,

First, he’s given the little scroll, and then, in addition to the little scroll, he’s told he must prophesy again about many peoples, nations, languages, and kings.

It could be that the little scroll content is bound up with the content of chapter 11, which is still dealing with the people of God, as we’ll see more closely next week. Then from chapter 12 on again, you’re getting a whole vision of judgment of people again. I think there you have some of this prophecy against peoples, nations, languages, and kings. John fulfilling the second part, of this commission,

The question, therefore, in terms of chapter 11 is whether the content of the little scroll is the same as the content of 10:11, the commission to prophesy, or there are two parts: the content of the little scroll is in particular for the people of God and is, thus, equivalent to chapter 11, and then the command to prophesy to all of the kings, nations, priests, and so on is picked up again in chapter 12 as the judgments continue there.

The mystery, the secret.

verse 7. “In the days when the seventh angel is about to sound his trumpet, the mystery of God will be accomplished, just as he announced to his servants the prophets.”

The mystery of God, the musterion of God. It is associated with the sounding of the seventh trumpet.

The term mystery, musterion in Greek, is found 27 or 28 times in the New Testament. It does mot mean what we think as a normal Mystery, for us means either something that is in essence intrinsically mysterious, beyond comprehension. Another normal for us today is, something where everything seems dark, but once you get to the end of the narrative, all is explained. Neither of those senses is what is meant in the New Testament use of the term.
The New Testament use of the term varies a bit, but in almost every instance, probably 24 or 25 out of the 27 or 28), musterion is a term that comes from apocalyptic literature. The corresponding Semitic word is found only in the book of Daniel: raz, mystery. It is bound up with that which has been hidden in times past by God and is now revealed.

Now it may not have been absolutely hidden, but it was hidden at least in some measure in times past and now revealed. When you look at concrete passages in Paul, for example, in Colossians 2:2, the mystery of God there is Christ, hidden in some measure in times past but now disclosed, in whom are hidden the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

In Romans 11:25 you have, “I give you a mystery,” and it’s bound up with Israel. That passage is difficult.

he most remarkable passage in the New Testament on mystery language could be the last three verses of Romans 16: 25–27.

25Now to him that is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which hath been kept in silence through times eternal, 26but now is manifested, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the eternal God, is made known unto all the nations unto obedience of faith: 27to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory for ever. Amen.

On the one hand, the gospel is said to be something that is prophesied in the past and is fulfilled in the new. On the other hand, insofar as the gospel is mystery, it’s said to be hidden in the past and revealed in the new.

How can one and the same gospel be said, on the one hand, to be prophesied in the past, thus disclosed, and now fulfilled in the new, the events come to pass, and, on the other hand, said to be hidden in the past, mystery, and only now revealed?

in the New Testament, both things are emphasized because both things are true in slightly different ways.

There are text that insists that Christ in his coming, birth, ministry, sufferings, death, and resurrection is fulfilling Old Testament Scripture. But in Christ’s own day are bawled out, as in Luke 24, if they haven’t read the Scriptures in those lights.

“Jesus says to the two he met on the Emmaus road.
Who understood that the messianic King who would be Son of God, son of David, one with God, one with David, would also be suffering servant and slaughtered lamb?

So many of the prophecies were bound up with typologies, structures of thought that are not just clear prediction.

God has also given us prophecies that are not verbal predictions but models, types, patterns: a whole priesthood system to show us what a mediator between God and man looks like; a sacrificial system to show what alone was going to avert God’s wrath; a temple with an approach to the Most Holy Place to show that you can’t just saunter into the presence of God who is angry with you, whose fire comes out and devours the people; a covenant community to show you what a covenant community looks like; a kingdom to anticipate the kingdom of God; a temple, sort of type of the great antitype, the very abode of God himself.

God predicts things by models, by types, by patterns, and not just by institutions and rites and religious heritage but by people: So King David becomes a type in the later Prophets. “I will send my servant David.” Yes, Yahweh, in Ezekiel 34, is the great shepherd of Israel who will come and shepherd his people. Then he says, “And I will send my servant David who will shepherd my people Israel.” Then along comes Jesus and says, “I am the Good Shepherd.”

When you come to this remarkable passage about mystery, it’s very important. Where do you find the first passage on mystery? You find it in the teaching of Jesus, Mark 4, Matthew 13 parallels. “This mystery of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world. That is, this kingdom insofar as it has been hidden in the past and is now being revealed already in my ministry.

This passage is pointing to the time of this seventh trumpet, the mystery of God, that is the dawning of the new age, the dawning of the kingdom, the coming of the kingdom, the coming of the Messiah, is now brought to accomplishment.

This seventh will bring us right up to the consummation. It will be fulfilled. This mystery of God is now utterly disclosed. “There will be no more delay!

Now then, “The voice that I had heard from heaven spoke to me once more.”
It says, “ ‘Go and take the scroll that lies open in the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land.’ And I went to the angel and asked him to give me the little scroll. He said to me, ‘Take it and eat it. It will turn your stomach sour, but in your mouth it will be sweet as honey.’ ” What does that mean?

This is how it is for us today, for a Christian who is striving to live for Jesus.

Ezekiel 2:8–3:3, but there are other passages. Do you remember how the psalmist says in Psalm 119, “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth”?

At one level, this seer, you and me, takes in the words of God from the scroll, the Bible, and they’re wonderful. Isn’t that our experience as a Christian?

You work hard on the words of God, and as you study them, as you think about them, as you hide them in your heart, they delight you.

The Word of God is wonderfully nurturing when it’s allowed to play its proper place in our minds and hearts.

You turn it over in your mind, and then it feeds you and nurtures you. It rebukes. It calms. It exhorts. It edifies. Then it gets down in your stomach and gives you a first-class bellyache.

It’s the peculiar experience of prophets, like a David, like a Jeremiah, like an Ezekiel.

You cannot give out the Word of God until you take it in. You ingest it. You eat the scroll. That’s the point. It’s not that the scroll is made of chocolate or something or that they’re forced to eat paper. You’re dealing in symbolism again. You’re taking this material, and you have to ingest it. It has to become yours. As you take it in, because it is the Word of God, it is nurturing. It is wonderful to you.

Then there is the burden you have to give out. In Jeremiah’s time, in Ezekiel’s time, in John the seer’s time, judgment.

Isaiah 6. “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple.” Isaiah really sees is just the hem of his garment. He doesn’t actually look on God himself. In every case where it says, “I saw the Lord,” there’s always immediately some qualifying feature about it until the new heavens and the new earth.

When Isaiah looks on this, he recognizes how terribly sinful and guilty he is. How can he stand in the presence of deity? “ ‘Woe to me!’ I cried. ‘I am ruined! I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.’

” In the earlier chapters, he has cried “Woe” to the people. “Woe to the people for this. Woe to the people for that. Woe to the people for something else.” Now he stands in the presence of God and says, “Woe is me. I am undone.” Everyone is abashed before this God.

But God the Almighty commissions one of his seraphs to go and purify Isaiah’s lips, and as he stands there in the presence, his guilt taken away, his sin atoned for, he overhears the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” Isaiah, freshly cleaned up, cries out from the bottom of his heart, “Here am I. Send me!”

So God says, “Go.” Isaiah is commissioned. And what is he commissioned to preach? “Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving. Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.” How do you like that for a positive message?

“For how long, O Lord? “Until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant, until the houses are left deserted, until the fields are ruined and ravaged, until the Lord has sent everyone far away …” That is, in exile. “… and the land is utterly forsaken.”

Isaiah had it as his burden to preach judgment and judgment and judgment and judgment and judgment and judgment, and it would not stop until the exile came, until the people were slaughtered, the people transported.

In our generation, can we be preachers of the gospel of Christ without also being preachers of judgment? As Western culture goes to hell in a fancy car, how do you get to be a preacher of judgment without just sounding like an angry man?

How do you do it with tears and compassion but nevertheless thunder, “Thus says the Lord,” so that as you study the Word of God, it’s sweet to you, and you realize that what you must say will give you a stomachache? Isn’t that part of the crisis of the ministry today?