The core of the book of Revelation, chapters 12 to 14, tells the Great Controversy story in a series of six scenes, divided into two sets of three each. The series opens with a nightmarish child-eating, mother-chasing dragon with heavenly origins (ch. 12), followed by two scenes of coercive, worship-demanding monsters, one from the sea and one from the land (ch. 13). The overall message of these first three scenes is bad news of hard times for those on earth.

Chapter 14 counters with three more scenes. The first, a huge choir (or army?), stands in front of the Lamb on Mount Zion (vss. 1–5) in the highest attainable state of ritual purity, perhaps reflecting Israel’s preparation to receiving the law at the foot of Sinai, or of Israel’s army before going into battle. The 144,000 have the Lamb’s and God’s names on their foreheads, they know a new song, they have been redeemed and offered up as a harvest sacrifice to God, and they don’t tell lies! This is the best form of godly living the people of God can offer the world.

The remaining scenes in the chapter feature angels delivering divine messages and carrying out the divine will upon earth. The first angel appears in verses 6–12, proclaiming the gospel by uttering three commands: fear God; glorify God; worship God. To prevent any possible confusion, God is identified as the One who created heaven and earth, sea and fresh water. The message’s urgency is underlined by a reference to the arrival of God’s judgment hour.

The second angel delivers its message quoting Isaiah 21:9 predicting Babylon’s fall. Named almost 250 times in the Old Testament, Babylon was the antithesis of God’s city, Jerusalem. Babylon’s prosperity meant Jerusalem’s decline and bad news for God’s people. The angel points forward to Babylon’s sudden collapse. The fall of Babylon receives more coverage in the book of Revelation than any other event: chapters 16:12 to 19:10.

The third angel’s message is the grimmest of the three, and its twofold reference to the ongoing punishment of people who worship and receive the mark of the beast causes Seventh-day Adventists distress. There is a legitimate way around the picture of eternally burning torment. It involves reading the passage in its Old Testament sense, in light of such passages as Isaiah 34:10, where the smoke of a destroyed Edom "goes up forever," reflecting the Old Testament image of a sacked and burning enemy city smoking in the distance. (See also, Joshua 8:20 and Judges 20:40). In other words, the Hebrews understood "forever" to mean "until the fires go out," rather than as reference to a parallel universe where punishment endures, literally, forever.

The final scene opens with the Son of Man on clouds (vss. 14–20), echoing Daniel 7:13ff. The extravagant imagery of grain and grape harvests evokes thoughts of the return of the Lord to earth. It extends imagery from Joel 3:13 to refer briefly to God’s victory over the enemy in the final eschatological battle, which is the focus of most of the remaining chapters of Revelation.

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