NOTES for Rev 22:6-21

John worships the angel, but the angel stops him. Yes, the apostle, and we together with him, witnessed the great power of angels. But like us they are only servants of the One who sends us a warning about how we must conduct ourselves in the coming trials and what we should be prepared for. The Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end—He is everything. Every person is capable of recognising that he is weak and feeble, and that he is a rather unpleasant being when one looks at everything that fills him within. Yet at all times—both now and when the apostle John wrote down what he had seen without hiding anything—people were equally weak and sinful. But every day can begin with the words with which Holy Scripture ends: “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.”

The traditional ideas of the overwhelming majority of the earth's peoples about the structure of the universe presuppose the existence of two or three worlds. Most often this means the upper world, the world of gods and higher spirits; the middle world, the world of human beings; and the lower world, the world of the dead or the world of shades, where lower, evil spirits usually dwell together with the shades of the dead.

In some cases the middle and upper worlds are joined, but the lower world is always perceived as separate, set apart from the world of the living. In principle, the biblical picture of the world is not fundamentally different from the traditional one: it speaks of "the heavens," the spiritual world, the world where God abides, the world that can be considered "upper"; of the "middle" world of the living; and of the "lower" world of the dead, which in Hebrew is called Sheol (in the Greek-language biblical books Sheol is called in Greek "Hades").

The biblical picture of the world begins to change already in the time of the later prophets, to whom the reality of the messianic Kingdom was revealed (they also sometimes called it the Kingdom of God). And in the liturgical, worshiping experience of the First Temple era, the Kingdom was revealed to the people as visions of the Throne of Glory, that Throne of God which some prophets also saw, for example Isaiah of Jerusalem.

These revelations changed the view of the people-community regarding the "upper world." The Kingdom of God, which was associated exclusively with "the heavens" and remained alien to the world of people, according to the testimony of the prophets was someday, with the coming of the Messiah, to enter the world of people as well. In the context of the prophetic tradition, the Savior's words about the Kingdom that has "drawn near" become understandable. He in fact came so that the Kingdom could enter our world, transforming it.

But if the whole world becomes part of the Kingdom, all the former divisions within it cease to be relevant. Now, after the coming of the Messiah, one can no longer speak of "the heavens" existing separately from the "middle world": the Kingdom now enters our world, and the former boundary between it and our world no longer exists. On the other hand, there is no longer a "lower world," Sheol in its former quality, since in that quality it is incompatible with the Kingdom.

Only the Kingdom remains, expanding its spiritual space in our world, and what the New Testament books call "the outer darkness." This darkness external to the Kingdom exists because in the world there are powers and people for whom the Kingdom is unacceptable and who, in turn, are incompatible with the Kingdom. They are the ones who find themselves in the outer darkness, on the underside of the transformed world. Not because they are driven out, but because of the choice they make of their own will.

The imagery of the Book of Revelation contains many elements traditional for the prophetic visionary tradition. Among these elements is the image of the Heavenly Jerusalem, which first appeared in the preaching of Isaiah of Babylon and was recorded in writing in the second part of the Book of Isaiah.

This image is connected with the traditional pre-exilic idea of the Kingdom as an earthly state with its capital in Jerusalem. Of course, the Messiah, who according to the pre-exilic prophetic tradition was to become the head of this state, was expected to establish laws in it that fully corresponded to the Torah. And the right to settle in it, as is not surprising, would belong only to those ready and willing to observe the established laws.

Of course, there is still much that is earthly and human in such ideas about the Kingdom. But the role of the Torah and the commandments given by God for life in the Kingdom is reflected in them quite adequately. It is another matter that the Kingdom itself turned out not to be what people expected to see in the pre-exilic period, when many still perceived it specifically as an earthly state. In the post-exilic period, largely thanks to the preaching of Isaiah of Babylon, ideas about the Kingdom began to change, although even in Gospel times they remained in the popular mind in many ways the same as they had been in the pre-exilic period.

And yet, if not to everyone, then at least to some it became clear what Jesus meant when He said that His Kingdom is "not of this world." But this, of course, did not free those seeking the Kingdom from keeping the Torah. It simply meant that the discussion now had to be not only and not so much about the external Torah, about legislation and religious norms and rules, as about the inner Torah, which for a person living a spiritual life becomes not simply a moral code but a spiritual core that makes keeping the commandments entirely organic. And only in this case, as can be seen, does the direct road to the goal open for the seeker of the Kingdom.

For a desert dweller, the image of water has always been a symbol of life. In the biblical books this image received additional meaning: it became a symbol of the Kingdom of God, or the messianic Kingdom, as it was revealed to the prophets.

Ezekiel sees a river of living water flowing from beneath the Temple he saw in a vision. It was revealed to him that the Second Temple, which the repatriates returning from the Babylonian captivity would build in due time, would meet the Messiah and see the beginning of the Kingdom that the Messiah would bring into the world. The righteous person, as the author of the First Psalm testifies, will come to the blessed land where rivers of living water flow: the path of righteousness ends in the Kingdom.

John also speaks of this same water of life: he sees it flowing straight from the Kingdom, whose triumph was revealed to him in his apocalyptic vision. The apostle testifies that this water, the life of the Kingdom, is available to everyone. The very breath of the Kingdom testifies to this life and calls people to share in it, and the Church, called in the text "the bride," as the other apostles often called her as well, bears witness to it too.

Here, as in few other places in the New Testament books, what formed the basis of the early Christian Church's teaching about salvation is clearly reflected: the Kingdom has already entered the world, its history began on the day of Pentecost, it is no longer future but present, and one can share in its life right here and now.

At the same time, its history has only just begun. The Kingdom is taking only its first steps in the world; an entire age still lies ahead of it, and by the standards of this old world it will last a long time. But an individual person does not need to wait for its completion and for the triumph of the Kingdom, the day when it will be revealed in all its fullness.

The possibility of living its life is available to everyone who desires it, even now, when the history of the Kingdom has only just begun. For its fullness is always the same; it is only revealed to the world in different measure at different stages of its becoming and entering the world. Therefore a person seeking the Kingdom can always find it in all the fullness he can contain. The history of salvation has begun, and the apostle calls every seeker to join it so that the day of the Messiah's return and the triumph of the Kingdom will become his day too.

This call has already sounded in the Gospel: let the thirsty come and drink the water of life freely. Now everyone can be joined to the Kingdom - not by merit, not by earning the right to such participation, but simply because he wants such participation and seeks it. But then there will also sound the warning that "the time is near." This can look strange if one remembers that the book was written almost two thousand years ago, and the end of history has still not come. Yet nearness here most of all means not chronology, but the inner logic of the process. The time is indeed near in the sense that history as such, history defined by its own purely historical laws, has truly ended.

What seems to us to be a continuation of the former historical process is in fact already metahistory, which is defined by the dynamic of the Kingdom's entry into the world. Of course, the projection of this dynamic onto our time is unpredictable in its dates, which can shift in either direction - and that is why the Savior says that only the Father knows the day and hour of His return in glory and of the end of times.

The issue here is not that the Father is deliberately hiding something, still less from the Son, but that according to our time, according to the time of the fallen world, there truly is no certainty about dates; they can change. But there is no longer anything that still has to happen in order for the Savior's return to become possible. Strictly speaking, all present history is the final stretch and direct preparation for His return, and therefore one can speak of the nearness of the times.

This, however, does not cancel the processes of spiritual self-determination of particular people, and sometimes of whole communities, taking place in the fallen world. It is precisely in this sense that the righteous, who are being sanctified still, and the unrighteous, who continue to do their unrighteous deeds, are spoken of. The age of the approaching Kingdom is an age of direct spiritual choice, which can already now be made for all eternity.

But one can, of course, postpone it to the very end, to the last day, to the moment when there will no longer be anywhere to go and one will still have to choose - for then refusal to choose will itself become a choice, and by no means a choice of the Kingdom. That is why the angel commands John not to hide the contents of the book, not to seal it: everyone must know about the present spiritual situation, about the spiritual meaning of our age and about its completion. Not for the sake of curiosity, but because this is a question of salvation, of the Kingdom and the "lake of fire," of life and death.