Even though John’s pressing concern is to help his congregations see beyond the propaganda of empire and understand the implications of joining in the adulation of the emperor and the economy of Rome (Rev. 12:1-14:13; 17:1-19:10), his visions do not begin there – and this is highly significant. Whatever its power, wealth, and reach, Rome is not the center of the cosmos. God’s throne – the throne that God now shares with God’s Anointed one, Jesus – is. John would have his audiences take their bearing from this center, to see the powers of the moment from this vantage point (Rev. 4:1-5:14).¹

John shows us “a throne set in heaven” (Rev. 4:2) and the One “who lives into the ages of ages” (4:9, 10) seated forever on the throne of the cosmos, not merely for a spell on the throne of one of earth’s little fiefdoms. Concentric circles of angels, archangels, and all the company of heaven establish this center firmly in our minds as we hear their acclamations in ever-growing numbers. The reminder of God’s place in the cosmos immediately relativizes all temporal powers and authorities. God is, moreover, “the Almighty,” the Pantokratōr, whom John introduced as such in the opening paragraphs of his work (Rev. 1:8), keeping this term before his audiences throughout (Rev. 4:8; 11:15; 15:3; 16:7; 19:6, 15; 21:22). While Pantokratōr is a frequent epithet of God in the Greek translation of the Jewish Scriptures,² the Christ-followers in Roman Asia could not but hear a contrast with the autokratōr, the reigning Caesar, named as such in inscriptions throughout these cities, whose stature is significantly diminished in the comparison. The power of the Pantokratōr is manifested in his creation (“all things, seen and unseen,” as the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed states) and, on this basis, all creatures owe God absolute allegiance and obedience: “You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive the glory and the honor and the power, because you created all things and because of your will they existed and were created” (Rev. 4:11).

As Revelation’s visions unfold, John underscores the smallness of all political and other authorities – “the kings of the earth, the potentates, the generals, the rich, the mighty” – when set in comparison to God and God’s Anointed. In the face of God and the Lamb coming in judgment, to satisfy their “wrath” in the face of the cumulative injustice perpetrated on their earth against their own creatures by their own creatures, these seemingly powerful political, military, and economic figures cry out to the hills and rocks in their abject terror and powerlessness to cover them and hide them (Rev. 6:12-17). Whatever military power enjoyed by nations that pride themselves on such strength, John shows his audiences that the power and the forces at God’s disposal are exponentially greater and more fearsome (Rev. 8:6-9:19).³ When John finally shows us the vast majority of the people who live in the cities alongside the Christians addressed by him, they appear as the deviant minority gathering around their idols and the demonic powers behind them, making the fatal error of setting their lives in orbit around false, secondary “centers” (Rev. 9:20-21).

By this strategem, John might challenge Christians in America, for example, to remember that, while the American political scene is important, it does not enjoy ultimacy. The obsessive concerns and relentless agendas of one or the other major political parties are not the starting point for Christian engagement – though far too many Christians expressing themselves (and thus, “witnessing”) on social media seem to model otherwise. Our fixed starting point is the throne of God and of God’s Anointed, and the amplitude of the babel around us requires that we engage in continuous recalibration of our minds and intentions around this center. John would have us maintain the critical and affective distance we need to remain centered on God, the Lamb, and their global agendas, and that we approach our engagement in the “local” politics of the American scene from a firm grounding in that location. To the extent that we do so, and speak and act accordingly, we bear witness to the Pantokratōr to whom all owe their primary allegiance. To the extent that we allow ourselves to take our fundamental bearings from political tribes, we have been drawn into one 21st-century equivalent of idolatry, giving primacy to circles and programs that are, at best, secondary.

A second scene at the center of the cosmos opens by drawing attention to a scroll in the right hand of God and raising the question, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and to break its seals?” (Rev. 5:2). As Revelation’s narrative unfolds, the opening of this scroll is connected with the manifestation of God’s judgments upon God’s rebellious creation and the hastening of the transfer of the kingdom of this world to the kingdom of God. The question is really, as one discerns from hindsight, “Who merits taking the reins of history and driving it on to its consummation?” John allows for a dramatic silence, a lack of action as no one comes forward. None of those who might be considered “masters of the world” or “economic titans” or the like have demonstrated that they are worthy. Only God’s Anointed one, Jesus, presented in traditional terms as “the lion from the tribe of Judah, the root of David” and appearing as a slaughtered-but-standing lamb, who is said to have “conquered so as to open the scroll and its seven seals” (Rev. 5:5).

Jesus’ means of “conquering,” of course, involved his giving over of his own life as a ransom: “you are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals because you were slain and you ransomed for God [people] from every tribe and language and population and nation, and made them a kingdom and priests for our God” (5:9-10). This is the pattern for “conquering” that John continues to hold up throughout Revelation. Holy ones participate in the defeat of Satan “because of the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony, and they loved not their lives even unto death” (Rev. 12:11). Those who stand before God and sing “the song of Moses … and the song of the Lamb” conquered by their consistent resistance to the pressure to worship the beast and to receive the mark of allegiance to the beast (15:1-2) which, in John’s vision, would also require “not loving their lives even unto death” (Rev. 12:11).

The Lamb’s way of conquest, pursued by those who “follow the Lamb wherever he goes” (14:4), is the way of faithfulness in witness and in deed, in stark contrast to the Beast’s manner of conquering. When we finally encounter the figuration of Roman heads of state in Revelation 13, we find them exercising rule through military strength (“Who is like the beast, and who is able to wage war against him?” Rev. 13:4), boastful demagoguery (“speaking big and slanderous words,” Rev. 13:5), and silencing the opposition (“it was granted to him to wage war against the holy ones and to conquer them,” Rev. 13:7).

In the vastly changed circumstances of the 20th- and 21st-century American representative democracy, in which vocal Christians have penetrated the highest echelons of government and occupy influential lobbies around the same, John’s vision of the means by which the Lamb has “conquered” and demonstrated his “worthiness” – and the contrast of this with the means employed by the Beast and his allies – raises poignant questions. Wright and Bird regard the concept of the kingdom of God to provide “a vision and vocation for faithful action that works to bring God’s kingship over every facet of human life.”⁴ How we go about doing this is of great importance. Christians in America have been attracted to using the coercive power of the state to implement some of their goals for changing the direction of American society – and they have claimed that they are, in fact, making headway for God by doing so. “Dominion theology” asserts that Christians are to infiltrate society’s multiple networks of power to use their control of those structures to advance a “Christian” agenda for the transformation of society. Whatever case is to be made for such approaches, John does not seem to lend it support. Is it because he could not envision the time when it would be possible? It is impossible to say. The testimony he has left, however, only commends following Jesus’ example rather than relying on the coercive power of the state. In this, he would seem to be supported by a broader consensus among New Testament writers. As Wright and Bird suggest,

A good deal of the New Testament, following directly from the teaching and example of Jesus himself, is about the radical redefinition of power: power in weakness, power through humble service, power and indeed victory through self-sacrifice.⁵

“Conquering” is an image that too many Christians seem to be taking at face value and thinking that “beating” the opposition is intended, whether in verbal attacks, silencing opposing voices in the public arena, garnering enough votes (even if we need to redraw district lines to do so), and the like. How Christians promote their goals for human society is part of Christian witness, and John, at least, seems to suggest that those means also bear witness to the character of Jesus and his manner of “conquering.”⁶ Imitating the means employed by worldly powers, which often involves “pandering to political leaders so that they might let us share their podium,”⁷ carries with it the threat (or perhaps the promise!) of finding ourselves entirely comfortable in Babylon’s bed.

The material in this post will appear in modified form later this year in David A. deSilva, Living in an Unholy Empire: Revelation’s Call to a Higher Allegiance (Hendrickson Publishing, 2026).