Caesar is Lord!?

The message is hard to avoid: Caesar is Lord! Coins circulate throughout the Roman Empire proclaiming the Emperor’s divinity. The “divine” power has increased since Julius, the first Caesar, established the Empire in 49 BC. One of his successors, Nero, now uses it in every area of life.

In the midst of this royal power, God is acting. He is ready to give the Apostle John seven visions of things that will “shortly come to pass” (Rev. 1:1). But what will this act accomplish? The circumstances in which this Jewish seer¹ found himself would prevent his participation in the events he is seeing. Or so it seemed.

The characteristics of John’s predicament exhibit the power of Rome. John’s description at the start of his first vision lists four of them. John says: “I, John, your brother and partner in the tribulation, kingdom, and endurance that are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos because of God’s word and the testimony about Jesus” (Rev. 1:9, HCSB²; emphasis added).

Things are not as they appear, however. The four elements of John’s self-location threaten Rome’s existence in subtle ways. Let’s look deeper into John’s circumstances to see why.

On Patmos

The uninformed observer might conclude John’s geographic location shows Caesar’s power. The apostle is “in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ” (Rev. 1:9). Our knowledge of the reasons for John’s location is meager. Here is one clue:

The Syriac version asserts that John was banished to Patmos under Nero (64 to 68 A.D.), and Tertullian synchronizes the banishment of John with the martyrdom of Peter and Paul under Nero.³

If this information is correct, John’s location shows Nero Caesar’s power to condemn suspected subversives to desolate islands. John has no recourse; no one can overrule Nero’s decree.

Caesar does not know what this banishment will produce, however. The true Divinity has been circulating his own message—the gospel of John’s Lord Jesus Christ— throughout the Empire. This true (and undermining) leaven⁴ has been spreading for the past generation. But this gospel message lacks a finale and the True God has now chosen the Apostle John to write it. Through a demonstration of unlimited power, he has ordained that Nero send John “to Patmos in order to receive a revelation.”⁵

This Revelation will contain things displeasing to Nero. Caesar thinks he has determined John’s physical location. The scroll leaving Patmos—“The Revelation of Jesus Christ”—will show his mistake.

In the Tribulation

Nero possesses an incredible power to do evil and he has exercised it to create John’s tribulation situation. Even as John writes the visions from God, this tyrant is burning Christians “to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired.”⁶ And, the Roman armies under general Vespasian are preparing to obey Nero’s command to invade the land of Israel. They may already be en route to the holy land; some may have already begun the 3-1/2 year scorched-earth campaign of destruction.⁷

John and his fellow Christians have known they would soon enter “the⁸ tribulation” (Rev. 1:9, NKJV; cp. Rev. 2:10, 22; 7:14). Less than forty years earlier, Jesus told them of “great tribulation” that would occur in their generation (Matt. 24:17, 34). This time of suffering would culminate with the Temple’s destruction and the end of the (Mosaic) age (Matt. 24:1–3). Through Nero’s irresistible actions, the pivotal time of suffering has arrived: “the end” (of the Mosaic Age) has come (cp. Matt. 24:6, 13, 14).

As with John’s physical location, Nero’s tribulation power is more apparent than real. The True God is setting him up. The armies of the false Empire will create the “great tribulation” of prophecy, but God’s true Kingdom will come through this turmoil. John and his fellow Christians “must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). John is now a “‘fellow-partaker in the tribulation;’ which is preliminary to ‘the kingdom.’”⁹

In the Kingdom

In a somewhat confrontational manner, John declares his kingdom status. “Confrontational” because Augustus, the second Caesar, had proclaimed the arrival of the “golden age” during his own reign. The Roman poets celebrated this development.

Horace lists the heroes of long ago, leading up at last to Augustus, who, he prays, will rule the world as Jupiter’s viceroy. Augustus will do justice on earth while Jupiter does the same from heaven. This is a narrative, with Augustus as its climax. . . . The poet prays to the Fates, to Mother Earth, to Apollo and to the Moon, asking that Augustus, the supposed descendant and heir of Aeneas, may now establish Rome and its world in peace and prosperity.¹⁰

Caesar and the bards believed this would be a kingdom like no other.

Even if Augustus had known, he would have seen no cause for alarm when, during his “golden age,” a Jewess gave birth to her firstborn son and called his name Jesus. This was no Empire-threatening development. Caesar would not have known this was the arrival of Israel’s true King.¹¹ Nor could the Emperor have guessed that Jesus would live about 33 years, suffer crucifixion, and then, almost 40 years later, occupy the central place in John’s Patmos visions.

During his lifetime, Jesus prophesied that his glorious kingdom was at hand. It would come through a time of “great tribulation” (cp. Matt. 24:1–3, 14, 21, 34). In this kingdom, his subjects would lack nothing (cp. 1 Cor. 3:21–22)—forever. This would be the true “golden age” in which Jesus would reign until all his enemies become his footstool (Psa. 110:1; Matt. 22:44; 1 Cor. 15:25–26).

An earlier prophecy had also spoken of this development. About five hundred years before Jesus’ birth, Daniel identified four successive kingdoms (Dan. 2:1–49). Speaking of the fourth, he said, “in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever” (Dan. 2:44).

As John received the Revelation, he is living in Daniel’s fourth kingdom—the Roman Empire. This kingdom’s sixth king, Nero, has banished him to Patmos and initiated “the great tribulation.” But John is also living “in the kingdom” God has established “in the days of these kings” (i.e., the Roman Caesars).

If any of the Caesars will believe the words of Jesus and the prophets, they will deduce that Jesus’s kingdom is destined to destroy their Roman Empire.

In Patient Endurance

The Caesars have known little of how John’s patient endurance (Rev. 1:9, ESV) will work against their kingdom and false claims to divinity. They have established and maintained Rome’s power through military conquest. Their weapons, tactics, and strategies are legendary.  The kingdom of God in which John lives will overcome them by an altogether different approach. It will do so through the “patience (Gk. hupomonē) of Jesus Christ” and his followers.

John and his fellow Christians know what their Lord requires of them. In his Olivet Discourse, Jesus told them how to respond to the tribulation they now face. He said, “In your patience (Gk. hupomonē) possess ye your souls. And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh” (Luke 21:19–20).

The Apostle Paul has shown them how these elements—tribulation, the kingdom, and patience—will combine to overthrow their persecutors:

So that we ourselves glory in you in the churches of God for your patience (Gk. hupomonē) and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that ye endure: Which is a manifest token of the righteous judgment of God, that ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which ye also suffer: Seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you. (2 Thess. 1:4–6)

God will “recompense tribulation” on the Roman Empire, Nero (its head), and all those aligned with them. This retribution will be a major theme in John’s visions.

Conclusion

God will soon expose Nero as a parody of true divinity. The God of Heaven has ordained John’s physical location. He has chosen the place for John to receive the seven visions of the Revelation. They will unmask Caesar’s lie.

John’s true Lord is using “the tribulation” to further establish his kingdom on earth. These kingdom-through-tribulation events will, in the end, bring the demise of Rome and her allies. They have usurped God’s glory; he will cast them “into a lake of fire.”¹² John lived to see the tribulation; he then prophesied “again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings” (Rev. 10:11).

“The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass” will show that the message “Caesar is Lord!” is a lie. It will show that the true King of kings is “Jesus Christ—He is Lord of all!”¹³

Postscript

Almost, two thousand years after John received the Revelation, the Roman Empire is viewed as ancient history. Many rulers, kings, and kingdoms have risen and fallen, but only one continues unabated: the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The heavenly kingdom in which John located himself in his first vision is alive and growing.

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1. A term Romans might use for John. —John Joseph Collins, Seers, Sybils, and Sages in Hellenistic-Roman Judaism, (Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2001).
2. This translation reflects the structure of the Greek text for the first three locations. “The introduction of the three datives “the tribulation, kingdom, and perseverance” (τῇ θλίψει καὶ βασιλείᾳ καὶ ὑπομονῇ) with only one article is a hint that they should be interpreted together as a unit in some fashion, especially after the same phenomenon has just occurred even more clearly in the immediately preceding clause.” —G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation: A Commentary on the Greek Text, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 200.
3. E. Hampden-Cook, The Christ Has Come, the Second Advent an Event of the Past: An Appeal From Human Tradition to the Teaching of Jesus and His Apostles, (London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., 1895), 107.
4. Matt. 13:33.
5. David E. Aune, Revelation 1–5, vol. 52A, Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas: Word, Incorporated, 1998), 81. Aune opts for another translation but states “there is no grammatical basis for excluding” this one.
6. Tacitus, The Annals of Tacitus: Translated Into English, With Notes and Maps, (London: Macmillan and Co., 1921), 15.44.
7. Vespasian marched into Galilee early in the Spring of AD 67. See Moses Stuart, A Commentary on the Apocalypse, vol. 1 (New York: M. H. Newman, 1845), 487.
8. The definite article appears in the Greek.
9. Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset, and David Brown, A Commentary, Critical, Experimental and Practical on the Old and New Testaments, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1976), 3:3:657. Emphasis in the original.
10. N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, vol. 4, Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013), 298–299.
11. The announcement of the birth of the “King of the Jews” did alarm Herod, the “king of Judaea” (Luke 1:5). That he saw Jesus as a challenge to the empire as a whole is problematic.
12. This is an anticipation of Rev. 19:20.
13. Acts 10:36, NKJV; emphasis added.