Revelation 10The Mighty Angel and the Little Scroll

“Another mighty angel.” The first scroll also came with “a mighty angel” (5:2). Now we have a second scroll, open already, not sealed.

This is a good angel, and a couple of clues point to that. First, he came down from heaven. Directionally, that points to a good angel. A lot of the bad angels were coming from the abyss, and others were chained on earth and had to be released when it was time.

Second, there’s positive imagery all around him: cloud, rainbow, sun.

I don’t believe this angel is Jesus: he receives no worship, and his actions point to an angel, a mighty angel, but not Jesus. But this is an absolutely magnificent heavenly being, coming down to earth. This is good imagery, and we’ll confirm that impression with the fact that his actions are good. They reflect him being a direct messenger of God, rather than a tool used by God like some of the bad angels, aka demons.

The point: God will use imagery to communicate even deeper than words at times. Open yourself up to that in your life. Has God ever used imagery to communicate to you, through creation, a vision, a dream or your imagination? What has He shown you, and how can you receive more?

First, the scroll is open. Unlike the other scroll we saw, which was sealed and needed to be opened (5:2), this one is ready to go!

John has been transported back to earth for this vision; he was in heaven from chapters 4–9. We don’t hear about his transfer. We just know he’s there, because the angel in front of him is standing on the earth.

Next, THIS ANGEL IS HUGE AND POWERFUL! He’s got a foot on the sea and a foot on the land. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to stand on the sea, but it doesn’t work out; that’s not really possible for a normal human. To have one foot in both places is authoritative, powerful, otherworldly, and it’s just a boss move. You don’t mess with this angel.

The foot on the sea and the land also foreshadows the beasts of 13:1 and 13:11, who come out of the sea and out of the earth. The angel has dominion, but he’s going to stand by for a minute later, when those beasts come out. Here he is demonstrating and asserting his authority to do and say what he establishes next …

… which is a loud shout, a roar. Again: authoritative, powerful, this is no joke. Anyone seeing this would have to recognize this flex. The angel is flexing! His roar signals the thunders to speak.

His shout echoes that of Yahweh, with the same language of shouting and roaring: Hosea 11:10, Amos 1:2, 3:8, Jeremiah 25:30.

In these Scriptures and others there are shouts of victory, joy, warning, praise, authority and battle, and they’re all powerful. Search the word “shout” in Scripture and you’ll find about 20 more. Study them and they’ll give you some impetus to do some shouting of your own! Your holy shout is powerful. Use it, literally, for God’s glory.

Have you ever heard someone shout from the bottom of their lungs? How did it make you feel? Have you ever done that? You’ve probably been to a sports game. You may have heard some ungodly shouts at certain points in your life, but you may have heard some godly ones too. Think about those moments, the startling shout. What did it feel like, and how can it be used for God?

We have seen seven seals broken open, each revealing that God was not pleased with the earth: the warmup. Now we’ve heard six of the seven warning trumpets, and many of them destroyed a third of the earth. These are pointing humans to repentance.

The thunders seem to be proposed here as another set of warnings to the earth, but they’re not to be shared by John. There’s more to come on this. In other words, there is presumably another set of worse wrath or warnings that could come, to see if anyone else will repent. But shhhh! “Seal up the vision” was told to Daniel too (Daniel 8:26).

This sealing up also points to the fact that we don’t know everything about the wrath of the end times. It’s a warning not to be rigid in our views on what will happen when, but to see the overall themes and the action steps God has given us, and to embrace the mystery of this period as well. The intent here is mystery and awe, not information. Speculation on these seven thunders betrays the Scripture’s intent.

Remember the rule of hermeneutics (Bible interpretation), the one we said in almost every study of the How to Study the Bible series: what did the author intend to the original audience? Bringing it together: mystery about the end times is required.

So why is mystery about the end times required by the Lord? How does that motivate us, and to do what? Answers from the room: it keeps us in faith, because if He showed us everything, our faith would only be in what we’ve seen. If He showed me the whole picture, I’d just run ahead and mess it up, so in His mercy He lets me walk it out. Mystery provokes our curiosity to look deeper. And seeing everything could leave us so paralyzed by fear we wouldn’t move.

In other words, the seven thunders are cancelled, not needed. The seventh trumpet will be the last warning. The bowls of total destruction and wrath are next. No more delay!

In Daniel 12:7–8 the angel there also lifts his hand to heaven before he swears by Him who lives forever. It seems that although Jesus forbids humans to swear at all, angels have commands at certain great epochs to make oath-like statements in this way.

“In the days when the seventh angel is about to sound”: the trumpet soundings have a season preceding, during and after. The sounding of this trumpet will continue, probably all the way through the bowls of wrath, just as each seventh includes the next grouping. It’s a season, not a moment as we imagine a literal trumpet blast to be. Otherworldly, as all of these events are: a sound reverberating for months, even years!

“The mystery of God will be accomplished.” This is a good thing! It points again to the fact that we don’t know everything. God’s going to do some surprise things in this season. Have room in your space for things that might surprise you a little: they’ll be in line with what’s happening here, they’ll feel and smell like it, but there may be some variation.

“Announced to his servants the prophets” may be referring to Old Testament prophets, or to present prophets like John himself, or even both. But the point is, John’s not the first one to say this. He’s following the bread crumbs, just like the other prophets.

Prophets were often echoing commands and intensifying God’s words, or echoing other prophets. They only added new information sometimes, but they were always in harmony with God’s words that came before them. This is helpful in discerning prophecy.

So the thunders aren’t happening. What’s next, then? Let’s stop there a second: God can change your plans, and even what you think are His plans! Wow!

Diane shared from the room: God set her free when she understood that there are seasons. He told her to hold what He’d given her with an open hand, because He had to get her out of a cul-de-sac to a place where He could take her left or right: “Father, this season, direct me.”

“Asked him to give me.” I wouldn’t have just snatched it out of the lion-roar-shout angel’s hand either. I would ask nicely! Good manners, John. Haha.

See the Old Testament echoes of Ezekiel 2:8–3:3, which echoes this almost word for word in places, and of Jeremiah 15:16–17, in this entire passage.

The angel commands him to eat, and prepares him for what it will be like to give this prophecy.

That’s really the only difference in the two narratives. The sour feeling later is the gut feeling when giving a justice or wrath prophecy. It tastes good because we long for justice. But the actual swallowing of what has to happen in order for there to be justice is VERY hard! There’s sweet hope in the words, but a sour reality of judgment will hit you in the gut. Makes sense.

Someone in the room shared that she once prayed almost a year for a man, and then in the middle of the night God told her to pronounce judgment. Her first thought was, “Oh God, have mercy.” She wanted justice for what he had done, but by then her heart was so invested in praying for his life. It can come out of the mouth sweet but hit you in the gut, and that’s the nature of a lot of prophecy.

Here we go: your prophecy is going to sound good to you rolling off the tongue, but the experience of it, when you have to stomach it in your gut, is going to be harsh and sour. That’s the nature of pretty much all end-times and wrath prophecies. The end of things, where God sets everything right, sounds good rolling off the tongue, because we do long for it. God put that longing inside us, and it’s not bad to long for it. But to stomach what actually has to happen is a harsh, violent and sour reality.

Someone in the room remembered a word given to her one Saturday night: God told her she was running from Him, though she hadn’t thought of herself that way for at least a year. The way to grow from it: now I know where I’m at, so let’s turn and seek God.

So John must have been wondering now if everything is done. Maybe this is the end? “I’m speaking this truth, and it sounds sweet. I’m swallowing this truth, and it’s hard to stomach. The thunders are cancelled. There will be no more delay. I guess that’s all I have to say? Question mark.” The answer is “No!” There’s still more to say. You’re going to describe next what exactly it is that won’t be delayed!

“Then I was told” (the NIV’s divine passive) is literally in the Greek “Then they said to me.” This is a direct command and commissioning from the Trinitarian Godhead to John.

“You must prophesy again.” John gets another commissioning to prophesy here in verse 11. His first commissioning was to write (1:11, 1:19; some group those as one commissioning, but you can separate them). Now it’s also to declare forth God’s words. Remember: this is a prophe-pocalypti-letter!

All three, prophecy, apocalypse and letter, are in John’s commissioning statements from heaven! God is very clear about what John’s supposed to do with this, and John follows it very precisely.

So why is this little interlude inserted in the main action here? This is in fact the third of six interludes in the book. We see from this commissioning of John that God has MORE TO SAY! There’s more that needs to be prophesied, and therefore more work to be done among “many peoples, nations, languages and kings.” God wants to be clear that even as the end is coming, there’s still more to be said and done.

The “kings” listed here diverts from other similar lists in the book, where kings aren’t normally included. It points to what will happen in the next three chapters: some kings will arise who will mistreat God’s people, and then the earth and they will be judged and handled by God. That mistreatment of God’s people and the judgment that follows is also part of the sour that’s going to hit John’s gut as he prophesies these things. It’s going to mean terrible times even for God’s people: not God’s wrath in that case, but humans putting tribulation on believers.