Fast and Furry-ous

Today I did a tongue-in-cheek post spoofing a dispensational critique of recapitulatory parallelism in Revelation. But now I’d like to make a serious point. Revelation frequently uses the deus ex machina. I suppose sniffy literary critics would mark it down on that account. But why does Revelation do that? I can think of two reasons:

i) God’s people often find themselves is apparently hopeless situations. Revelation is a case in point. 1C Christians were a powerless persecuted minority. These are situations in which nothing short of a miracle (literally, not figuratively) will rescue them from their predicament.

I think Revelation frequently uses the deus ex machina in part to encourage beleaguered Christians. Our extremity is God’s opportunity.

Of course, that’s not something we can count on. But the walk of faith alternates between hope and assurance. In some cases we have an ironclad promise from God. In other cases we lack that level of certainty. But we always have hope. Hope and promise are enough to keep us going.

Alec Guinness once made a comedy entitled Situation Hopeless... But Not Serious. In a way, that’s often the Christian experience. No matter how desperate our situation in this life, there’s always an out–if not in this life, then the afterlife.

ii) I think another reason goes to poetic justice. There are movies in which the good guy wins while bad guy loses, but it’s not enough to beat the bad guy. To rub it in, the hero arranges things so that the villain mistakenly imagines he won, only to discover, at the last minute, that he really lost. To think you won, only to find out that you lost, is far more deflating than simply losing.

And it’s like that in Revelation. Time and again the Devil and his minions are within a hair’s breadth of winning, only to have God snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, in a stunning, punishing reversal of fortunes. God strings the Devil along; let’s the Devil gain on God’s people, catch up, and overtake; makes the Devil think he has an insurmountable lead–only to throw the race at the very last minute. The Devil doesn’t know what hit him until it’s too late. Until the dust settles and he finds himself on the wrong side of the finish line, with the Christian quarry lining up for ribbons. The Devil is forever Wile E. Coyote to the Christian’s Road Runner. Carnivorous Vulgaris to Accelleratii Incredibus.