| The Apocalypse of Jesus Christ Now, let’s turn to the book of Revelation. I am a preterist, but I think most preterist readings of Revelation are insufficient. Revelation is not merely about a Jewish-Roman war, but is rather more fully about the Apostolic Age and the sufferings-unto-glory of the Church. It doesn’t prophesy battle movements. It does prophesy the fall of Jerusalem, but that because of its importance in bringing the old covenant to its fulfillment in the new. And what do we know about the old covenant? We know that it was a covenant of angels . This is what the apostle Paul writes in Galatians—the Torah was given through angels . Paul knows this because in the Old Testament, when the glory-cloud descended and a prophet entered into it, he saw God’s council of angels. That cloud descended on Sinai, swirling with angels. The leader and head of those angels was the Second Person of the Trinity acting as the “Angel of the Lord.” He was the chief of God’s angelic hosts (I am not suggesting an incarnation into angelic nature, but “head” in a symbolic sense.). Psalm 8 tells us that God made man “for a little while” lower than the angels, but that man would ultimately be “crowned with glory and honor.” Hebrews tells us that Christ is now crowned with glory and honor. In Christ, man has grown up . The Angelic End and the Raising of Man Revelation marks the end of the old covenant. It marks the end of the covenant of angels. In Revelation 4–5, we see “twenty-four elders.” We know these are angels and not men, for if you count the angels in Revelation, it comes out to exactly twenty-four. In order to do this, however, one need to subtract the character called “Another Angel.” The “Another Angel” is Jesus Christ, acting as the Angel of Yahweh, ending the covenant governed by angels. This becomes apparent when “Another Angel” takes on theophanic characteristics. In Revelation 10, He has attributes attributed to one “in the likeness of a man,” seated upon God’s throne in Ezekiel chapter 1. In Revelation 8, He takes fire from God’s altar—the same fire that constituted Isaiah as a prophet—casting it upon the Earth. This fulfills Christ’s words in the Gospel of Luke, that He came to “cast fire on the Earth.” |
| The bond of unity and ever-growing love between husband and wife is designed to give humanity a basic experience and awareness of a growth in love toward unity with God, made possible by Jesus Christ. Marriage, according to the Apostle, is a type of Christ and the Church. It is intended to instruct us, not by means of abstract concepts or in books or words, but in an actual living experience, about Christ and the Church, and our whole relationship with God. Inasmuch as we see that neither man alone nor woman alone bears a complete prophecy, for the man cannot bear fruit alone, nor can the woman, it is clear that the revelation of our salvation includes both Christ (who is revealed through the male prophets) and the Church (which is revealed through the female prophets), and that Christ saves us through the Church. There are two important aspects of the revelations that take place through human gender. The first is given through the nature of prophecy in the Old Testament, and in particular, the context of the revelation that was given through the men prophets and that which was given through the women prophets. The second aspect of this revelation is the understanding that the covenant between God and His people is not a legal agreement, but a marital relationship. It is important to understand both these aspects of God’s use of gender as prophecy in order to understand a correct, Orthodox Christian view of the respective roles of men and of women, and to have a clear understanding of the meaning of marriage. The Covenant as a Marital Relationship Neither the Old Covenant nor the New Testament were “legal agreements,” rather they were spousal relationships. This was the great error into which the Old Israel fell, and which the prophets warned them about. Israel did not recognize and receive the Christ because He came to her as a heavenly bridegroom seeking his bride. Israel, conceiving the covenant as a “legal contract,” anticipated a stern earthly ruler, come to enforce a violated treaty and establish his will by military and political means. It is for this same reason that Western Christianity fell into an idolatrous concept of atonement. It is important for us to realize this fact: the Old Covenant was and the New Testament is, a spousal relationship. Only with this realization can we understand the nature of human gender as prophecy and revelation. A brief survey of the book of the Prophet Hosea will summarize the message of all the holy prophets and suffice to open this understanding to us. Before we examine the prophecy of Hosea, let us look briefly at the way the expression “whoredom” is used in several places in the Old Testament, because the word is significant in Hosea’s revelation. “Do not prostitute your daughter, to cause her to be a whore; lest the nation fall into whoredom, and the land become full of wickedness.” (Lev.19:29) |
| 1Gkz Heb repeats every beast of the earth Noe +LXX the Lord God Overview: God makes his covenant with Noah out of love and in order to eliminate all apprehension from his mind (Chrysostom). God promises that he will never again bring a flood upon earth, even if people become constantly habituated to following the evil thoughts of their inclination (Ephrem). This covenant, which God makes with Noah and with all those creatures that come out of the ark with him (Ephrem), will never be broken (Gregory of Nazianzus). 9:8–11 Establishing a Covenant God Makes His Covenant with Noah Out of Love. Chrysostom: God’s purpose, therefore, was to eliminate all apprehension from Noah’s thinking and for him to be quite assured that this would not happen again. He said, remember, “Just as I brought on the deluge out of love, so as to put a stop to their wickedness and prevent their going to further extremes, so in this case too it is out of my love that I promise never to do it again, so that you may live free of all dread and in this way see your present life to its close.” Hence he said, “Behold. I make my covenant,” that is, I form an agreement. Just as in human affairs when someone makes a promise he forms an agreement and gives a firm guarantee, so too the good Lord said, “Behold, I make my covenant.” God did not say that this massive disaster might come again to those who sin. Rather he said, “Behold, I make my covenant with you and your offspring after you.” See the Lord’s loving kindness: not only with your generation, he says, do I form my agreement, but also m regard to all those coming after you I give this firm guarantee. Homilies os Genesis 28.4. 691 God Will Never Bring a New Deluge upon Earth. Ephrem the Syrian: And his Lord spoke to [Noah], as he desired that Noah hear, “Because of your righteousness, a remnant was preserved and did not perish in that flood that took place. And because of your sacrifice that was from all flesh and on behalf of all flesh, I will never again bring a flood upon the earth.” God thus bound himself beforehand by this promise so that even if mankind were constantly to follow the evil thoughts of their inclination, he would never again bring a flood upon them. Commentary ok Genesis 6.13.2. 692 |
| The prophet Isaiah calls the New Covenant eternal : “Incline your ear, and come unto me: hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David” ( Is. 55:3 , see Acts 13:34). The distinguishing feature of the New Covenant, as compared to the Old, was that other nations will be called to it besides the Jews, who all together will form a new Israel, the blessed Kingdom of the Messiah. The prophet Isaiah thus wrote about this summoning of the heathen nations in the name of God the Father: “It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth” ( Is. 49:6 ). A little further on the Prophet Isaiah expresses joy on this occasion: “Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth in to singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child, for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife...For thou shalt break forth on the right hand and on the left; and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited” ( Is. 54:1,3 , see Gal. 4:27 ). Here the prophet portrays the Old Testament Hebrew Church in the form of a married woman, and the heathen nations – in the form of a barren woman, who will later bear more children than the first wife. Osee also predicted the calling of the Gentiles to take the place of the Judeans fallen from the Kingdom (Os. 1:9 and 2:23). In the Old Testament period the affiliation with the Kingdom depended on nationality. In the New Testament times the necessary requirement for belonging to the Kingdom of the Messiah would be faith, about which wrote Habbakuk: “The just shall live by his faith” (Hab. 2:4, Is. 28:16 ). In contrast to the Old Testament laws, written on stone tablets, the new law of God will be written on the hearts themselves of the New Israel, that is, the will of God will become an inseparable part of their being. This inscribing of the law on the hearts of the renewed Israel will be done by the Holy Spirit, of which write the prophets Isaiah, Zechariah and Joel. As we shall see, the prophets, when speaking of the grace of the Holy Spirit, often call it water. Grace, like water, refreshes, cleanses, and gives life to a person’s soul. |
| Of the reconciliation with God, we read: " For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. " In another place, the Apostle writes to former gentiles: " You who were once alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy and blameless, and irreproachable in His sight " (Rom. 5:10; 2 Corinthians 5:18-19; Col. 1:20-22). Of the establishment of the New Testament [or covenant] the Apostle Paul reminds the Jews of Jeremiah " s prophesy: Behold days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the House of Israel, and with the House of Judah … not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they did not continue in My covenant, and I grew weary of them, says the Lord. For this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord; I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people … For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more . And later the Apostle explains: For where there is a testament, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator. For a testament is in force after men are dead, since it has no power at all while the testator lives (Jer. 31:31-34; Heb. 8:8-12, 9:16-17). In speaking about the sanctification of believers the Apostle Paul compares Christ " s ordeal to the sacrifices carried out in the Old Testament temple: When Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, nor with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood, He entered the Most Holy place once and for all, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, Who through the Holy Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? … For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified (Heb. 9:11-17). |
| The Old Testament account of creation that we listened to clearly indicates this order of realities. But it leads us a further step forward. It has structured the process of creation within the framework of a week leading up to the Sabbath, in which it finds its completion. For Israel, the Sabbath was the day on which all could participate in God’s rest, in which man and animal, master and slave, great and small were united in God’s freedom. Thus the Sabbath was an expression of the Covenant between God and man and creation. In this way, communion between God and man does not appear as something extra, something added later to a world already fully created. The Covenant, communion between God and man, is inbuilt at the deepest level of creation. Yes, the Covenant is the inner ground of creation, just as creation is the external presupposition of the Covenant. God made the world so that there could be a space where he might communicate his love, and from which the response of love might come back to him. From God’s perspective, the heart of the man who responds to him is greater and more important than the whole immense material cosmos, for all that the latter allows us to glimpse something of God’s grandeur. Easter and the paschal experience of Christians, however, now require us to take a further step. The Sabbath is the seventh day of the week. After six days in which man in some sense participates in God’s work of creation, the Sabbath is the day of rest. But something quite unprecedented happened in the nascent Church: the place of the Sabbath, the seventh day, was taken by the first day. As the day of the liturgical assembly, it is the day for encounter with God through Jesus Christ who as the Risen Lord encountered his followers on the first day, Sunday, after they had found the tomb empty. The structure of the week is overturned. No longer does it point towards the seventh day, as the time to participate in God’s rest. It sets out from the first day as the day of encounter with the Risen Lord. This encounter happens afresh at every celebration of the Eucharist, when the Lord enters anew into the midst of his disciples and gives himself to them, allows himself, so to speak, to be touched by them, sits down at table with them. This change is utterly extraordinary, considering that the Sabbath, the seventh day seen as the day of encounter with God, is so profoundly rooted in the Old Testament. If we also bear in mind how much the movement from work towards the rest-day corresponds to a natural rhythm, the dramatic nature of this change is even more striking. This revolutionary development that occurred at the very the beginning of the Church’s history can be explained only by the fact that something utterly new happened that day. The first day of the week was the third day after Jesus’ death. It was the day when he showed himself to his disciples as the Risen Lord. |
| There are two important aspects of the revelations that take place through human gender. The first is given through the nature of prophecy in the Old Testament, and in particular, the context of the revelation that was given through the men prophets and that which was given through the women prophets. The second aspect of this revelation is the understanding that the covenant between God and His people is not a legal agreement, but a marital relationship. It is important to understand both these aspects of God " s use of gender as prophecy in order to understand a correct, Orthodox Christian view of the respective roles of men and of women, and to have a clear understanding of the meaning of marriage. The Covenant as a Marital Relationship Neither the Old Covenant nor the New Testament were " legal agreements, " rather they were spousal relationships. This was the great error into which the Old Israel fell, and which the prophets warned them about. Israel did not recognize and receive the Christ because He came to her as a heavenly bridegroom seeking his bride. Israel, conceiving the covenant as a " legal contract, " anticipated a stern earthly ruler, come to enforce a violated treaty and establish his will by military and political means. It is for this same reason that Western Christianity fell into an idolatrous concept of atonement. It is important for us to realize this fact: the Old Covenant was and the New Testament is, a spousal relationship. Only with this realization can we understand the nature of human gender as prophecy and revelation. A brief survey of the book of the Prophet Hosea will summarize the message of all the holy prophets and suffice to open this understanding to us. Before we examine the prophecy of Hosea, let us look briefly at the way the expression " whoredom " is used in several places in the Old Testament, because the word is significant in Hosea " s revelation. " Do not prostitute your daughter, to cause her to be a whore; lest the nation fall into whoredom, and the land become full of wickedness. " (Lev.19:29) |
| The Church knows about the miraculous, salvific and healing power of the Cross and of the sign of the Cross from her centuries-old experience. The Cross protects a person travelling, working, sleeping, praying. Indeed in all places, through the sign of the Cross, Christ " s blessing comes down upon every good deed which we undertakë «The Cross is the protector of the whole world, the Cross is the beauty of the Church, the Cross is the power of kings, the Cross is the foundation of the faithful, the Cross is the glory of the angels and the sore of the demons», sings the Church at festivals of the Cross. The teaching on the Holy Cross as a symbol of divine dispensation and as an object of religious veneration is expounded by St Isaac the Syrian in one of his newly-discovered works. According to St Isaac, the power in the Cross does not differ from that through which the worlds came into being and which governs the whole creation in accordance with the will of God. In the Cross, the very same power lives that lived in the Ark of the Covenant, itself surrounded by fearful veneration on the part of the people of Israel. The Ark was venerated, he answers, because in it the invisible Shekhina (Presence) of God dwelt. The very same Shekhina is now residing in the Cross: it has departed from the Old Testament Ark and entered the New Testament Cross. The material Cross, whose type was the Ark of the Covenant, is, in turn, the type of the eschatological Kingdom of Christ, states St Isaac. The Cross, as it were, links the Old Testament with the New, and the New Testament with the age to come, where all material symbols and types will be abolished. CHURCH TIME The Church exists on earth, yet at the same time she is turned towards heaven; the Church lives in time, yet breathes eternity. This experience of communion with eternity forms the basis of the church calendar and the cycle of worship throughout the year, week and day. It is in the year that the Church recollects and experiences the whole history of the world and the human person, the entire «economy» of the salvation of the human race. In the yearly cycle of feasts there passes before us the life of Christ from His Nativity to His Crucifixion and Resurrection; the life of the Mother of God from her Conception to her Dormition; and the lives of the saints glorified by the Church. In the scope of a week and of a single day the entire history of the salvation of the human race is also renewed and recollected in worship. Each cycle has its centre towards which it is directed: the centre of the daily cycle is the Eucharist, the centre of the weekly cycle is Sunday and the centre of the annual cycle of celebrations is Christ " s Resurrection, Easter. |
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