Judgment: Wrath of the Lamb

by Brian Godawa

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  Apollyon is referring to Jesus’ prophecy:

  Matthew 23:34–24:2

  34 Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, 35 so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. 36 Truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation. 37 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! 38 See, your house is left to you desolate...

  1 Jesus left the temple and was going away, when his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple. 2 But he answered them, “You see all these, do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.”

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  The rebellion of the angels led by Azazel and Semyaza: 1 Enoch 9:7-9; 10:4-13. Their story is fictionalized in the novel, Enoch Primordial, book 2 of Chronicles of the Nephilim (Embedded Pictures Publishing, 2014)

  Watchers cast into Tartarus: Jude 12-16: 2 Peter 2:4-11, 17; Genesis 6:1-4. 1 Enoch 1-16 (Book of the Watchers) is an extended amplification of the Genesis 6 passage. My novel series Chronicles of the Nephilim recounts the story of the Fall of the Watchers in Enoch Primordial and Noah Primeval.

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  Apollyon’s connection to the locust demons:

  Revelation 9:1–11

  1 And the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit. 2 He opened the shaft of the bottomless pit, and from the shaft rose smoke like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke from the shaft. 3 Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth. 4 They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any green plant or any tree, but only those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. 5 They were allowed to torment them for five months, but not to kill them, and their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it stings someone. 6 And in those days people will seek death and will not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them. 7 In appearance the locusts were like horses prepared for battle: on their heads were what looked like crowns of gold; their faces were like human faces, 8 their hair like women’s hair, and their teeth like lions’ teeth; 9 they had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the noise of their wings was like the noise of many chariots with horses rushing into battle. 10 They have tails and stings like scorpions, and their power to hurt people for five months is in their tails. 11 They have as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit. His name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he is called Apollyon.

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  The gathering of remnant Israel back to the land prophesied in the Old Testament: “Ezekiel 36:24 I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land.

  Amos 9:9–15 9 “For behold, I will command, and shake the house of Israel among all the nations as one shakes with a sieve…14 I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel, and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them;…15 I will plant them on their land, and they shall never again be uprooted.

  Micah 2:12 I will surely assemble all of you, O Jacob; I will gather the remnant of Israel; I will set them together like sheep in a fold.

  “Isaiah 11:10–12 In that day the Lord will extend his hand yet a second time to recover the remnant that remains of his people, from Assyria, from Egypt, from Pathros, from Cush, from Elam, from Shinar, from Hamath, and from the coastlands of the sea. 12 He will raise a signal for the nations and will assemble the banished of Israel, and gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth.

  Remnant theology is that only the true believers WITHIN Israel are the true Israel: Romans 11:1–6 1 I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! For I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. 2 God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he appeals to God against Israel? 3 “Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life.” 4 But what is God’s reply to him? “I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” 5 So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. 6 But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace.

  Jesus is coming to judge the Jews of the first century because they killed him. He will then give the kingdom to another “people” a new congregation of the Lord: Matthew 21:33-44

  Also: Luke 19:11, 27 As they heard these things, he proceeded to tell a parable, because he was near to Jerusalem, and because they supposed that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately…But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me.’ ” (parable about Israel not prepared for God’s arrival in Messiah)

  Also: Matthew 22:2–7 “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son, 3 and sent his servants to call those who were invited to the wedding feast, but they would not come…5 But they paid no attention and went off, one to his farm, another to his business, 6 while the rest seized his servants, treated them shamefully, and killed them. 7 The king was angry, and he sent his troops and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.

  Gentiles who were not God’s people are now God’s people: Romans 9:23–26 23 in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory – 24 even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles? 25 As indeed he says in Hosea, “Those who were not my people I will call ‘my people,’ and her who was not beloved I will call ‘beloved.’ ” 26 “And in the very place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ there they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’ ”

  The gathering of Christians, before or after the parousia (judgment-coming of Christ on Jerusalem), is the promised restoration of the twelve tribes of Israel, that is, the remnant of true Israel: “The author’s insistence on an equal number (12,000) from each of twelve tribes indicates his interest in the eschatological restoration of the the twelve-tribe nation of Israel (Luke 22:30; 24:21; Acts 1:6; see Geyser, NTS 28 [1982] 389). The eschatology of the late OT and early Jewish periods emphasized the hope of the restoration of Israel (Deut 30:3–5; Isa 11:11–16; 27:12–13; 49:5–6; 54:7–10; Jer 31:7–14; Ezek 37:15–23; Hos 11:10–11; Pss 106:47; 147:2; Bar 5:5–9; 2 Macc 2:7; Sir 36:11; Tob 13:13; 1 Enoch 57; 90:33; 4 Ezra 13:12–13, 39–47; 2 Apoc. Bar. 78:5–7; T. Jos. 19:4; Pss. Sol. 11:2–7; 17:26; Shemoneh Esreh 10; m. Sanh. 10:3; Matt 19:28). In m. Sanh. 10:3 the opinions that the ten tribes will not return and that they will return are juxtaposed. This motif of the restoration of Israel was transmuted in early Christianity into the gathering of the elect from the four winds at the Parousia (Mark 13:27 = Matt 24:31; 1 Thess 4:16–17; 2 Thess 2:1).” David E. Aune, Revelation 6–16, vol. 52B, Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas: Word, Incorporated, 1998), 436.

  The gathering of Israel or “return from exile” is fulfilled in the New Covenant: This is a complex theological issue. The single best source for understanding this principle is probably N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, Christian Origins and the Question of God (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1992).

  But one example can show how the language of the gathering into the land is a reference not to a modern geopolitical nation-state and physical land, but rather a metaphorical image of God drawing both Jew and Gen
tile from all over the earth.

  Eze 36:24–28 I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land. 25 I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. 26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. 28 You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.

  The language in this passage is all related to the new covenant. Notice the elements of the promise in Ezekiel 36: 1) sprinkle clean water on you (the sprinkled water of our clean conscience in the new covenant Hebrews 10:22); 2) I will give you a new heart of flesh and new spirit (the new heart and spirit of the new covenant Romans 2:28-29; Hebrews 10:22); 3) I will put my Spirit within you (The new covenant Holy Spirit is in us 2Corinthians 1:22; Ephesisan 1:13); 4) Cause you to walk in my statutes (This Scripture is fulfilled in the new covenant Hebrews 8:10; 10:15-18) 5) Take you from the nations and bring you into your own land (Acts 2). This last promise has transformed from the literal land of Israel into all the earth because when Messiah came, the whole earth became his inheritance, not merely the single plot of land on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Jesus is our “inheritance,” he is the Promised Land. For a more in depth examination of this notion, see Brian Godawa, Israel in Bible Prophecy: The New Testament Fulfillment of the Promise to Abraham (Embedded Pictures Publishing, 2017).

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  CHAPTER 2

  The omens surrounding Vespasian’s rise to power, including messianic pretensions:

  Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, Vespasian 5.6-7

  “one of his high-born prisoners, Josephus by name, as he was being put in chains, declared most confidently that he would soon be released by the same man, who would then, however, be emperor. Omens were also reported from Rome: Nero in his latter days was admonished in a dream to take the sacred chariot of Jupiter Optimus Maximus from its shrine to the house of Vespasian and from there to the Circus. Not long after this, too, when Galba was on his way to the elections which gave him his second consulship, a statue of the Deified Julius of its own accord turned towards the East; and on the field of Betriacum, before the battle began, two eagles fought in the sight of all, and when one was vanquished, a third came from the direction of the rising sun and drove off the victor.” http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/12Caesars/Vespasian*.html

  Dio Cassius, Histories 65.1.1-4

  “Such was the course of these events; and following them Vespasian was declared emperor by the senate also, and Titus and Domitian were given the title of Caesars. The consular office was assumed by Vespasian and Titus while the former was in Egypt and the latter in Palestine. Now portents and dreams had come to Vespasian pointing to the sovereignty long beforehand. Thus, as he was eating dinner on his country estate, where most of his time was spent, an ox approached him, knelt down and placed his head beneath his feet. On another occasion, when he was also eating, a dog dropped a human hand under the table. And a conspicuous cypress tree, which had been uprooted and overthrown by a violent wind, stood upright again on the following day by its own power and continued to flourish. From a dream he learned that when Nero Caesar should lose a tooth, he himself should be emperor. This prophecy about the tooth became a reality on the following day; and Nero himself in his dreams once thought that he had brought the car of Jupiter to Vespasian's house. These portents needed interpretation; but not so the saying of a Jew named Josephus: he, having earlier been captured by p261 Vespasian and imprisoned, laughed and said: "You may imprison me now, but a year from now, when you have become emperor, you will release me.”

  Dio Cassius, Histories 65.8.1

  “Following Vespasian's entry into Alexandria the Nile overflowed, having in one day risen a palm higher than usual; such an occurrence, it was said, had only taken place only once before. Vespasian himself healed two persons, one having a withered hand, the other being blind, who had come to him because of a vision seen in dreams; he cured the one by stepping on his hand and the other by spitting upon his eyes.” http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Cassius_Dio/65*.html

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  Prophecy of a “ruler from the east” or “from Judea”: “But now, what did most elevate them [the Jews] in undertaking this war was an ambiguous oracle that was found in their sacred writings, how, “about that time, one from their country should become governor of the habitable earth.” The Jews took this prediction to belong to themselves in particular; and many of their wise men were thereby deceived in their determination. Now, this oracle certainly denoted the government of Vespasian, who was appointed emperor in Judea.” Flavius Josephus, The Wars of the Jews, 6.5.4.

  [Some understand that this meant Herod, others the crucified wonder-worker Jesus, others again Vespasian.] Slavonic addition, Loeb, vol. 2, p. 658.

  “The majority were convinced that the ancient scriptures of their priests alluded to the present as the very time when the Orient would triumph and from Judaea would go forth men destined to rule the world. This mysterious prophecy really referred to Vespasian and Titus, but the common people, true to the selfish ambitions of mankind, thought that this exalted destiny was reserved for them, and not even their calamities opened their eyes to the truth.” Tacitus, The Histories, 5.13.

  “It may be that mysterious prophecies were already circulating, and that portents and oracles promised Vespasian and his sons the purple; but it was only after the rise of the Flavians that we Romans believed in such stories.” Tacitus, The Histories, 1. 10.

  “An ancient superstition was current in the East, that out of Judea would come the rulers of the world. This prediction, as it later proved, referred to the two Roman Emperors, Vespasian and his son Titus; but the rebellious Jews, who read it as referring to themselves, murdered their Procurator, routed the Governor-general of Syria when he came down to restore order, and captured an Eagle.” Suetonius, Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Vespasian, 4.

  These passages were drawn from a chart by C.N. Carrington on his article, “The Flavian Testament” that details the oracles surrounding Vespasian as “the ruler” and their interpretations at the time. http://carrington-arts.com/cliff/FlavSyn.htm

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  Josephus on Vespasian as messiah:

  Flavius Josephus, The Wars of the Jews 6.5.4 §312-313

  “But now, what did most elevate them in undertaking this war, was an ambiguous oracle that was also found in their sacred writings, how, “about that time, one from their country should become governor of the habitable earth.” (313) The Jews took this prediction to belong to themselves in particular and many of the wise men were thereby deceived in their determination. Now, this oracle certainly denoted the government of Vespasian, who was appointed emperor in Judea.” Flavius Josephus and William Whiston, The Works of Josephus: Complete and Unabridged (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1987), 743.

  Josephus upon being captured by Vespasian:

  Flavius Josephus, The Wars of the Jews 3.8.9 §400-404

  “[Josephus to Vespasian]: “Thou, O Vespasian, thinkest no more than that thou hast taken Josephus himself captive; but I come to thee as a messenger of greater tidings; for had not I been sent by God to thee, I knew what was the laws of the Jews in this case, and how it becomes generals to die. (401) Dost thou send me to Nero! For why? Are Nero’s successors till they come to thee still alive? Thou, O Vespasian, art Caesar and emperor, thou, and this thy son. (402) Bind me now still faster, and keep me for thyself, for thou, O Caesar, art not only lord over me, but over the land and the sea, and all mankind; and certainly I deserve to be kept in closer custody than I am now in, in order to be punished, if I rashly affirm anything of God.” (403) When he had said this, Vespasian at present did not believe hi
m, but supposed that Josephus said this as a cunning trick, in order to his own preservation; (404) but in a little time he was convinced, and believed what he said to be true, God himself erecting his expectations, so as to think of obtaining the empire, and by other signs foreshowing his advancement.” Flavius Josephus and William Whiston, The Works of Josephus: Complete and Unabridged (Peabody: Hendrickson, 1987), 657.

  Suetonius on Vesapasian’s awakening of imperial desires based on omens that followed him:

  Suetonius, Lives of the Caesars, Vespasian 4:5, 5

  “There had spread over all the Orient an old and established belief, that it was fated at that time for men coming from Judaea to rule the world. This prediction, referring to the emperor of Rome, as afterwards appeared from the event, the people of Judaea took to themselves; accordingly they revolted and after killing their governor, they routed the consular ruler of Syria as well, when he came to the rescue, and took one of his eagles…While Otho and Vitellius were fighting for the throne after the death of Nero and Galba, he began to cherish the hope of imperial dignity, which he had long since conceived because of the following portents….” [Suetonius then describes multiple ones including the consultation of the oracle at Carmel in Judea.) http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Suetonius/12Caesars/Vespasian*.html