Revelation Ch 10 (Tuesday of the Second Week of Advent)

Then I saw another powerful angel coming down from heaven. He was robed with a cloud, with a rainbow over his head. His face was like the sun, and his feet were like fiery pillars. He held an open scroll in his hand. He put his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land. He called out with a loud voice like a lion roaring, and when he called out, the seven thunders raised their voices. When the seven thunders spoke, I was about to write, but I heard a voice from heaven say, “Seal up what the seven thunders have said, and don’t write it down.”

Then the angel I saw standing on the sea and on the land raised his right hand to heaven. He swore by the one who lives forever and always, who created heaven and what is in it, the earth and what is in it, and the sea and what is in it, and said, “The time is up. In the days when the seventh angel blows his trumpet, God’s mysterious purpose will be accomplished, fulfilling the good news he gave to his servants the prophets.”

Then the voice I heard from heaven spoke to me again and said, “Go, take the opened scroll from the hand of the angel who stands on the sea and on the land.” So I went to the angel and told him to give me the scroll. He said to me, “Take it and eat it. It will make you sick to your stomach, but sweet as honey in your mouth.” So I took the scroll from the angel’s hand and ate it. And it was sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I swallowed it, it made my stomach churn. I was told, “You must prophesy again about many peoples, nations, languages, and kings.”

Commentary

This is an episodic chapter, a kind of prophetic intermezzo by way of introduction to further revelation…. Does this refer to the oncoming Parousia, the Second Coming of Christ? No, in the first place because in Christ's words “of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the Son of Man” (Mark 13:32); and secondly, because the Parousia as a whole will take place not within time, as measured by earthly times and ages, but extra-temporally and supra-temporally, with the beginning of a new time. If one were to relate this text that “there will be no more time” to the Parousia then it would be necessary directly to infer that this prophecy has not been fulfilled, since Christ's Parousia did not come in John's days. The last prayer of revelation, “even so, come” (22:20), leaves us as ignorant as before, though in Christian longing for and expectation of that advent. And so we should set the lack of any length of time in the general context of the train of events prophesied here in Revelation: it means that the last hour of the world is now approaching, the time of the Antichrist is drawing near, corresponding to the last woe and the last trumpet. However, it must be firmly established that the historical chronology of this accomplishment, as with that of the preceding ages (the six trumpets), remains unknown even here. (Apocalypse)

As a result, time is not empty; it is not the “vanity of vanities” of Ecclesiastes. Rather, time is full of eternity and asymptotically approaches it, more and more fully reproducing its image but without ever becoming identical to it modally, in mode of being. This appearance of the image of eternity in time is, in this sense, the end of time, which means that it also must have a beginning. Thus, the angel of Revelation swears, by the Creator of all things, who “liveth for ever and ever,” that “there should be time no longer” (10:6), for “the mystery of God” (10:7) has been accomplished. (Lamb of God)

Musical Selection

I am the lamb of God, the seven seals are in my hand
I sit beside the Father, Lord and ruler over all the land
The mysteries of heaven have all been revealed to me
The time is drawing near at hand for the seventh angel all the world to see

With one foot on the land and one on the sea
He'll swear with his hand raised high
Time no longer can be

I am the seventh angel, the time is near for me to fly
I'll come before the father, the one who will be seen by every eye
There'll be silence in heaven before the seven trumpets sound
Then music like thunder right before the time that I come down

With one foot on the land and one on the sea
I'll swear with my hand raised high
Time no longer can be