Revelation 14:6-20

Revelation 14:6-20 : the fearful doom of the impenitent pagans is announced in a triple vision of angels (Revelation 14:6-13), whereupon a proleptic summary of the final judgment on the world follows (Revelation 14:14-20). In 6 13, 12 13 and καὶ ἐν τ. ἀ. (10) are the only specifically Christian touches; but the latter need not even be a scribal gloss, and 6 11 is intelligible as the outburst of a vehement Jewish Christian apocalyptist. The stylistic data do not justify any hypothesis of an edited source. The first angel (Revelation 14:6-7) announces (εὐαγγελίσαι here, and perhaps also in Revelation 10:7, in neutral sense of LXX., 2 Samuel 18:19-20; Dio Cass. lxi. 13) to the universe the news that the divine purpose is now to be consummated, but that there is still (cf. Revelation 11:3) a chance to repent (implicit, cf. Mark 1:15). The sterner tone of Revelation 8:13 to Revelation 9:21 is due to the fact that men were there accounted as strictly responsible for their idolatry and immorality. Here the nations are regarded in the first instance as having been seduced by Rome into the Imperial cultus (Revelation 14:8-9); hence they get a warning and a last opportunity of transferring their allegiance to its rightful object. The near doom of the empire, of which the prophet is convinced even in the hour of her aggrandisement (Revelation 13:8), is made a motive for urging her beguiled adherents to repent in time and her Christian victims to endure (Revelation 14:12). The substance of this proclamation is not much of a gospel, and the prophet evidently does not look for much result, if any. Its “pure, natural theism” (Simcox) is paralleled by that of Romans 2:5 f.