Revelation 19:3 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Revelation 19:3

Comments

The words are taken from Isaiah 34:10. It is a passage in which Isaiah handles the judgment of Edom, yet it is applied here to Babylon. Passages which refer to Tyre are applied in the same way. This teaches us how to interpret such passages in Isaiah. They have a specific primary application to the nations addressed in Isaiah’s day, but they also apply to the enemies of the church in general and highlight different aspects of those enemies. For this reason it is appropriate to apply them to Babylon, the great enemy, at the end of the world.The twenty-four elders representing the people of God in Old and New Testaments, and the four living beasts representing the angelic host, worship God on account of this display of divine justice. They worship in abject humility, casting themselves bodily before the Lord. The body is so united with the soul that what the one does is always congruous with what the other does. The bodies of the twenty-four elders are prostrate before the Lord because their hearts are also prostrate. The angels have no bodies but their hearts are in a similar posture. The battles which the Lord’s people fought could not have been won without the Lord’s intervention. He strengthens us during the battle, and he strikes the final blow against the enemy. The saints therefore fall before him to acknowledge that they owe him everything. God sits on the throne which is his rightful place of authority. He receives our worship as his due. Glory is properly assigned to the Triune God alone.

Application

She is destroyed, but the smoke never abates. In other words, there are some things in eternity, in glory, that the redeemed will always remember. They will always have some memory of the Day of Judgement. Not a sad memory – there is only untainted happiness and glory in heaven – but a sobering memory. You couldn't say, for example, that in a million years-time, amidst the wonders and the glories of heaven, we will have forgotten what redemption was all about, so that we might wonder, in our great liberty of mind, ‘What would it be like without God? Would it be so bad? We would forget the episode of planet earth, and the rebellion of man, and his antagonism to God?’ No, the smoke will rise for ever. There will be, in some form, a sobering recollection of the tragedy of mankind's ever turning away from God.

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Revelation 19:3 Commentary and Bible Study