Behold! He is coming with the clouds

The Gospel of the Exalted Jesus (Pt. 3)

Look, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over him. Yes. Amen. Revelation 1:7

Mount Shasta, California, with clouds, Jan 25, 2024

The Second Coming of Jesus is an event I have heard about as long as I can remember. Growing up I sang hymns in church at the top of my voice like Jesus is Coming Again (“Coming again, coming again, Maybe morning, maybe noon, maybe evening and maybe soon … O what a wonderful day it will be, Jesus is coming again!”) or What if it were today? (“Jesus is coming to earth again—what if it were today? Coming in power and love to reign—what if it were today? Coming to claim his chosen Bride, all the redeemed and purified, Over the whole world scattered wide—what if it were today? Glory, glory! Joy to my heart ’twill bring; Glory, glory! when we shall crown Him King; Glory! glory! Haste to prepare the way; Glory, glory! Jesus will come someday).

There is good reason I heard and sung about Jesus’s coming again: Jesus talked about it and so did almost every book in the New Testament.

And despite a theological perspective that interprets his coming as a purely spiritual, personal encounter, the New Testament writers were unified in their understanding that Jesus’s return would be visible and physical.

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John’s notice of Jesus’s Return in Revelation

Revelation only reiterates and affirms in a very pointed and visual way what the rest of the New Testament already says. 

The return of Jesus on the white horse in Revelation 19 is one of the iconic images in the entirety of Scripture. 

And though the image itself is full of symbolism, the reality of the actual return of Jesus shines through—“I am coming soon,” Jesus himself says numerous times in Revelation.

A Mashup

But John introduced Jesus’s return first in Revelation 1:7—not in the words of Jesus, but as a notice:

Fittingly, verse 7 contains the conclusion to the gospel story that John summarized very briefly in 1:4-6—after referring to Jesus’s life, death, resurrection and exaltation, he concludes with the return of Jesus Christ—we see the conclusion to John’s introduction of Revelation as “the Gospel of the Exalted Jesus.”

But he concludes in an unusual way.

John did not use the words “Jesus will return” or “Jesus is coming again.”

Nor does he have the words of the two men in white robes in Acts 1:11: “Men of Galilee, why are you standing looking into the sky? This Jesus who was taken from you into the sky will come in the same way you saw him going into the sky.”

Instead, John put together two Old Testament passages that spoke of Jesus’s return.

And not just any passages, but two that Jesus himself used to speak of his return.

Unlike the first six verses, which contain no direct quotations from the Old Testament (though a number of allusions), v. 7 is entirely a mashup of OT texts from Daniel 7:13 and Zechariah 12:10. 

By mashup, I mean that John drew from the two passages, then worked them into one sentence that was not exactly like either passage, but used language from both.

He was specific enough in his wording that any of his first century readers familiar with the Jewish Scriptures would immediately recognize their source.

Further, this mashup introduced Daniel and Zechariah as two of the most alluded to OT books in Revelation. 

The Connection of these verses to the Gospels

Yet this grouping of Daniel 7 with Zechariah 12 also appears in Jesus’s eschatological speech in Matthew 24–25, though in reverse.

Here are Jesus’s words from Matthew 24:30:

And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and much glory.

John had heard Jesus speak these things on the Mount of Olives the week Jesus was crucified. Mark and Luke put similar words to Matthew in their Gospels, but in their own way. 

The Second Coming of Christ window at St. Matthew's Lutheran Church in Charleston, SC.

Now John has placed this remembrance into the introduction to Revelation, but with subtle differences. 

By doing so, John not only recalled words of Jesus that are also recorded in the Gospels, but also showed how the Old Testament writers previewed this very event in their prophetic words.

Now John as prophet reiterated them in his own way.

Daniel 7:13

The first text is Daniel 7:13, a quotation from a larger passage, Daniel 7:1-14. In Daniel’s vision in 7:13-14, the Son of Man is depicted as being presented before the Ancient of Days (Yahweh) to receive a kingdom. 

Jesus didn’t quote this text only on the Mount of Olives, but also at his trial before Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin regarding his second coming (Matt 26:64; Mark 14:62). 

Jesus knew this passage referred to himself and he knew if he quoted it, he would be sentenced to death for blasphemy—which happened. 

In the aftermath of the crucifixion and resurrection, John knew without hesitation that what Jesus said was true. 

And in Revelation 1:7, John affirmed Jesus’s prediction of his return.

In writing the words, “Behold, he is coming with the clouds,” John pointed readers back to Daniel and his Messianic vision of the Son of Man.

He also pointed to Jesus’s use of Daniel’s vision to refer to himself.

And finally, he firmly envisioned Jesus’s coming “on the clouds.”

Zechariah 12:10–14

The second part of Revelation 1:7 (which is two-thirds of the verse) drew from the prophet Zechariah, who lived in the late 500’s BC and encouraged the Jews to rebuild the temple after the exile (along with Haggai).

In Zechariah chapters 12–14, the prophet gave an oracle that combined both hope and judgment at the return of the Lord. 

John summarized Zechariah 12:10–14.

John did not quote the verses exactly, but condensed them into three succinct phrases: “and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all the tribes of the land will mourn over him.”

Here is a translation of Zechariah 12:10–14 from Hebrew (the “I” is Yahweh):

10 But I will pour out on the House of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication; and they will see me whom they have pierced, wailing over him as over a favorite son and showing bitter grief as over a first-born. 11 In that day, the wailing in Jerusalem shall be as great as the wailing of Hadad-rimmon in the valley of Megiddo. 12 The land shall wail, tribes, tribes alone: the tribe of the House of David alone, and their women alone; the tribe of the House of Nathan alone, and their women alone; 13 the tribe of the House of Levi alone, and their women alone; the tribe of the Shimeites alone, and their women alone; 14 and all the other tribes, every tribe alone, with their women alone.

In Matthew, Jesus only referred to the part in Zechariah 12:11-13: “And then they will see the sign of the Son of Man in the sky, and all the tribes of the land will wail” (Matthew 24:30). 

But Revelation 1:7 includes another phrase based on the Zechariah passage: “And they will look on me whom they have pierced” (Zechariah 12:10).

John altered “they will look on me” to “every eye will see him” and “whom they have pierced” to “even those who pierced him.” He then compressed the listing of tribes or clans to “all the tribes of the land”—which Jesus had already done in Matthew 24:30.

Unlike Matthew, John quoted this verse from Zechariah in his Gospel at the cross, “and again another scripture says ‘they will look on whom they pierced’” (John 19:39).

In John 19:31-37, John recounted the discovery of the Roman soldiers that Jesus was already dead when they went to break the legs of the three men crucified that day (so they did not break Jesus’s legs). One soldiers thrust his spear into Jesus’s side and out flowed “blood and water” (John 19:34). John, at the cross with Jesus’s mother, witnessed this event (see takeaway #2) and in his Gospel connected this action of piercing Jesus’ side with Zechariah 12:10: “and again another scripture says, ‘they will look on whom they have pierced.”

By including the Zechariah passage in Revelation, John accomplished several important purposes for Revelation:

1. He clearly connected the Coming One with the Pierced One of Zechariah: the Jesus coming again is the crucified Jesus (and identified with Yahweh). There are also connections to the Suffering Servant of Isaiah.

2. John connects the coming Jesus with the crucified Jesus of John 19 by citing the same Zechariah passage.

3. Like the Daniel passage, John once again pointed his readers back to a prophetic passage understood to be about the Messiah (Zechariah 12-14), and to Jesus’s own invocation of this passage “All the tribes of the land will wail.”

4. Finally, John set the Zechariah passage in its correct orientation to the future. The “in that day” that occurs ten times in Zechariah 12–14 is a day in the future. So is the second coming of Jesus.

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Judgment and hope

Why did John describe the coming of Jesus this way though?

For those who have trusted in the gospel, the return of Christ is good news.

But John indicates that the return of Jesus is one of eye-opening clarity for so many who have not: “every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all the tribes of the earth will wail because of him.”

Does John describe a return of vengeful judgment (like the end-times preacher who proclaimed that Jesus would return to execute his enemies)?

There is an implication of judgment here, but one dependent on the beholder. 

The Zechariah passage indicates that there may be repentance: “And I will pour out a spirit of compassion and supplication on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, so that, when they look on the one whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn” (Zech 12:10). 

Those who have put their trust in Jesus recognize their role in Jesus’s death, because they have sinned just like his actual persecutors. 

And they mourn that Jesus had to die for them, though the mourning is mixed with joy and dancing. 

On the other side, those who have rejected Jesus’s love and release for their sins, will gaze with horrified eyes when they realize their complicity in the death of Jesus—the one they pierced. 

They too will mourn because of him, but because they are judged in their own rejection of Jesus (see John 3:18). 

John waits until Revelation 19–20 to develop the “last judgment” at the return of Jesus, but it develops with these two trajectories, just as these two destinies are developed in John’s Gospel based on responses to the Incarnate God.

For those who have put their trust in Jesus, we can say with John at the end of Revelation 1:7, “Yes! Amen!”

For those John wrote to—including us—the return of Jesus is something we look forward to with hope and joy.

Observations on the Greek Text of Revelation

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7 Ἰδοὺ ἔρχεται μετὰ τῶν νεφελῶν, καὶ ὄψεται αὐτὸν πᾶς ὀφθαλμὸς καὶ οἵτινες αὐτὸν ἐξεκέντησαν, καὶ κόψονται ἐπ’ αὐτὸν πᾶσαι αἱ φυλαὶ τῆς γῆς. ναί, ἀμήν.