Seven Deadly Spirits - T. Scott Daniels

Next Sunday, Sept. 19th we begin a series taking us through the seven letters to the churches in Revelation 1-3. Revelation is an important and difficult part of Scripture. There are lots of different views and interpretations of this book. Some base our understanding of the future on Revelation. Some see it as primarily symbolic and not literal. Some avoid it all together. Our focus for the next few weeks will be in the first three chapters. I thought a little help in preparation would be good. The following are quotes from T. Scott Daniel’s book, Seven Deadly Spirits: The Message of Revelation’s Letters for Today’s Church.

I believe the purpose of this great and awesome revealed word to the early church was not to give the church the key to predict the future but to give the followers of Christ in the first century the ability to view from the perspectives of the divine the culture that surround them. (19)

The primary force that opposes the gospel in John’s vision from Patmos is not the beast or the Antichrist but the principality and power he names Babylon. (20)

Babylon holds a special place in the great and populated pantheon of Jewish oppressors and captors, especially for the biblical prophets. Particularly in the book of Daniel, the reader discovers that the primary problem of Israel’s second great exile was that life in Babylon wasn’t nearly as oppressive as their days of slavery in Egypt. Egypt violently oppressed the Israelites. Although many people died at the hand of Pharaoh, the children of Israel were not invited or tempted to become Egyptians. The distinct problem of the Babylonian exile was that the culture of Babylon gave enough freedom and offered enough wealth and power to their Israelite and Judean captives that the greatest risk the people faced was not slavery and oppression but that their children would become Babylonians. In fact, when we read the famous stories of Hebrew children facing the fiery furnace rather than bowing to the king and Daniel accepting the lions’ den rather than accepting restrictions to his faith, we realize that their faith was demonstrated in their ability to resist the lure of the Babylonian empire and not be assimilated into or be conformed to the culture. (20)

Situated in another empire, Rome, John the Revelator recognizes that the primary challenge his brothers and sisters in the early church face is not just sporadic persecution but the constant lure to compromise with the new Babylon. Like Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and Daniel before them, the first-century Christians must constantly be alert to the ways the empire is pressing them into its mold. The book of Revelation gives the early church the language – the linguistic glasses if you will – to see that the goddess Roma (the spiritual embodiment of the power of Rome) will not give them the abundant life she promises; instead, like Babylon she will lure them into a variety of compromises that will conform them to her values and rob them of the abundant and eternal life they have received and are experiencing through the Lamb. (21)

The Revelator recognizes that it takes a special set of skills to live a faithful Christian life in caesar’s Babylon. Certainly the “visible Caesar” represents the continual threat of violence and persecution inflicted on those who seem suspicious to the status quo because of their perceived disloyalties. The larger letter of Revelation, and the letters within the letter, contains many references to endurance, long-suffering, and hope beyond physical death, but John seems equally to recognize the threat of the “hidden Caesar” that invites us to compromise. To find Caesar in all his hiding places requires the believer to see the world apocalyptically. The spiritual survival of the early Christians depended on their ability to not see Rome as the eternal city but to see her as another Babylon on the way to implosion and collapse (Rev. 19). Followers of Christ cannot view the economics of the empire as “just business”; rather, they must have the insight to see it as the trap and lure of the beast. Disciples, who are committed to overcoming evil with good, must not view political and military power as a necessary means to a peaceful end, but they must be able to recognize in caesar’s chariots and horses the never-ending cycle of the principalities and power’s attempts to overcome coercive power with more coercive power and to stop violence through the use of greater violence. (22)

Each church is caught in a tug-of-war between Christ and its surrounding culture. In each letter, the church is called by the one “who walks among the seven golden lampstands” (Rev. 2:1) to “listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches” (2:7) and to “conquer” or overcome the forces that are keeping it from fulfilling its divine purpose and character. (22-23)