Chapter 10
Revelation 22:11 — “Let the evildoer still do evil, and the filthy still be filthy, and the righteous still do right, and the holy still be holy.”
A young woman sits across the table from her pastor. She has been reading the book of Revelation on her own for the first time. Her father died two months ago. He was kind, generous, the sort of man neighbors trusted. But he never entered a church, never prayed, never said the name of Jesus with anything but casual habit. She has come to the last chapter of the Bible, and one verse has stopped her cold. “Let the evildoer still do evil, and the filthy still be filthy.” Her eyes are wet. “Does that mean it’s too late for him? That he stays whatever he was, forever?”
That is the traditional reading. G. K. Beale, in his major commentary on Revelation, treats this verse as a statement of permanent, settled destiny. The time for change is over. Whatever a person is when the end comes, that is what they remain for eternity.1 Grant Osborne reads it similarly: the verse announces that character has become fixed and the final division between righteous and wicked is permanent.2 Robert Mounce calls it a solemn warning that moral conditions have become unchangeable.3 In this reading, Revelation 22:11 is a closing gavel. The wicked are frozen in wickedness. The holy are frozen in holiness. No movement is possible.
The pastoral weight of this reading is enormous. If character and destiny are locked in at the end, then the question of the dying moment collapses. There is no window. There is no threshold encounter. There is only the final snapshot of who you were, preserved without change into eternity. I take this reading seriously. It deserves a careful answer.
Before we examine the defense, we need to see Revelation 22:11 in its full surroundings. The verse sits inside a rapid sequence of sayings that close the entire book of Revelation. Here is 22:6–17, quoted at length so the reader can feel the pace and the mood:
And he said to me, “These words are trustworthy and true. And the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, has sent his angel to show his servants what must soon take place.”
“And behold, I am coming soon. Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book.”
I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things. And when I heard and saw them, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who showed them to me, but he said to me, “You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers the prophets, and with those who keep the words of this book. Worship God.”
And he said to me, “Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near. Let the evildoer still do evil, and the filthy still be filthy, and the righteous still do right, and the holy still be holy.”
“Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay each one for what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.”
Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates. Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.
“I, Jesus, have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star.”
The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price. (Revelation 22:6–17, ESV)
Several features of this passage deserve attention. The genre is apocalyptic. Revelation is the most densely symbolic book in the New Testament. Its language is vivid, layered, and steeped in Old Testament echoes. It does not read like a doctrinal handbook. It reads like a prophetic poem, full of images that point beyond themselves.4
Look at the key verb. “Let the evildoer still do evil” translates the Greek imperative let him still do wrong (Greek ho adikōn adikēsatō eti, “the one doing wrong, let him do wrong still”).5 This is a third-person imperative. It is a command in form, but its force is permission or concession: “let him go on doing what he is doing.” The same imperative pattern governs all four clauses. Each one says: “let this person keep being what they are.”
Now notice the trigger. Why does the angel say this? Because “the time is near” (Greek ho kairos engys).6 The nearness of the end is the reason for the statement. This is urgent language, not metaphysical language. It presses the hearer to decide now because the moment of reckoning is close.
Plain Words
Apocalyptic comes from the Greek word for “unveiling” or “revelation.” Apocalyptic literature uses vivid symbols, cosmic battles, and dramatic visions to talk about God’s final victory. Revelation is the prime example. Imperative is a grammar term for the command form of a verb (“Go!” or “Let him go!”). A third-person imperative gives a command about someone else: “Let him do this.”
The verse also echoes Daniel 12:10, which reads: “Many shall purify themselves and make themselves white and be refined, but the wicked shall act wickedly. And none of the wicked shall understand, but those who are wise shall understand” (ESV). Daniel 12 is the background text.7 In Daniel, the contrast between the wise and the wicked is not a frozen destiny. It is a description of how people respond to crisis. The wise see what is coming and prepare. The wicked miss the signs and keep going as they are. John picks up that same pattern in Revelation 22:10–11. He even reverses one detail from Daniel: Daniel is told to “seal up” the prophecy (Dan. 12:9); John is told “do not seal up” the prophecy (Rev. 22:10).8 The time for secrecy is over. The time for decision is now. That is the mood.
The traditional reading treats Revelation 22:11 as a doctrine about what happens to people forever. I want to show that this misreads the verse at three levels: its rhetorical function, its immediate context, and its Old Testament roots.
The clearest clue to the meaning of 22:11 is the sentence right before it. “Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near.” The verse that follows is the consequence of that nearness. Because the end is close, people will be caught as they are. The evildoer will still be doing evil when the Lord arrives. The holy will still be doing right. The point is not that God has locked their character in place. The point is that the clock is running out, so whatever you are now is what you will be when the trumpet sounds.
This is the language of urgency, not the language of permanent fixity.9 Think of it like a teacher saying, “Pencils down in one minute. Whatever you have written is your answer.” That statement does not mean the student can never learn more. It means the test is about to end. The force of the statement comes from the approaching deadline, not from a claim about the student’s permanent nature.
Urgency or Fixity?
Revelation 22:11 says, in effect, “The time is near, so be who you will be, now.” It is a call to decision before the end, not a statement about what happens to people for all eternity. The urgency reading harmonizes with the rest of the chapter. The fixity reading contradicts it.
Andrew Hronich makes this same distinction with care. He notes that D. A. Carson cites Revelation 22:10–11 as evidence for ongoing sin in hell, but Hronich points out that the verse’s real parallel is Daniel 12:9–10, and its concern is the present response to coming judgment, not the eternal state.10 Hronich quotes Shawn Bawulski, who puts it sharply. The wicked keep doing wrong not because they look forward to an eternity of wickedness. They do so because, unlike the righteous, they “fail to anticipate the beginning of the fulfillment of prophecy and the imminently coming judgment.”11
That is exactly right. The verse describes what people are doing before the end, not what they are doing in eternity.
Here is the strongest reason to doubt the fixity reading. If Revelation 22:11 really does teach that character and destiny are permanently frozen, then it stands in open conflict with the verses just six lines later.
Start with Revelation 21:25. John has just described the New Jerusalem in breathtaking terms: walls of jasper, gates of pearl, streets of gold. And then he says something astonishing about those gates: “On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there” (Rev. 21:25). The gates of the City of God are never closed. Not sometimes open. Not open during business hours. Never shut.12
In the ancient world, a city closed its gates for one reason: to keep enemies out. Open gates meant safety. They meant the war was over. But they also meant access. In the oracle of Isaiah 60, which provides John his source material here, the gates “will always stand open, they will never be shut, day or night, so that people may bring you the wealth of the nations” (Isa. 60:11). The gates were left open for a purpose: to allow the nations to come in.13
Robin Parry (writing as Gregory MacDonald) builds his case on exactly this point. He observes that within John’s symbolic geography, there are only two places to be: inside the City (salvation) or outside the City (the lake of fire, in light of 21:8, 21:27, and 22:15). The gates are always open. And the nations walk through them.
“In John’s interpretation of the prophetic message [of Isaiah 60] by means of the Jerusalem vision the motif of the open gates is given a quite new, and positively decisive significance for his entire hope for the future. . . . John announces nothing less than that even for this world of the lost the doors remain open!”
— Robin Parry (Gregory MacDonald), The Evangelical Universalist, ch. 9, quoting Mathias Rissi
Parry goes further. He traces the identity of “the nations” and “the kings of the earth” throughout Revelation. These are not neutral figures. In 6:15, the kings hide in terror from the wrath of the Lamb. In 17:2, they commit adultery with Babylon. In 19:19, they join the Beast to make war on Christ. There is no doubt that these kings end up in the lake of fire. Yet in 21:24, the very same kings of the earth bring their glory into the New Jerusalem through the open gates.14 John even changed the wording of his source text, Isaiah 60:3, from “kings” to “kings of the earth” to make sure the reader catches the connection.15
Now move six verses past our text. Revelation 22:17 delivers a triple invitation:
The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.
Who is the Bride? In Revelation, the Bride is the glorified Church (19:7; 21:2). And to whom does she speak? Parry asks the pointed question: in the visionary world of the final chapters, who else is there to invite except those in the lake of fire?16 The promise of the water of life was first made to the Church in 21:6. Now in 22:17, the Church extends that promise outward. The Spirit and the Bride call to those outside the City: “Come.”
Parry on the Invitation of the Bride
“The Spirit and the bride issue three invitations to come. Now the metaphor of a bride has only been used in Revelation of the church in its state of eschatological glory (19:7; 21:2). This bride, then, is the glorified church-prophetic. But to whom does she speak? One plausible audience is those in the lake of fire (after all, who else is there?). The promise of the water of life is made by Christ to the church in 21:6. In 22:17 it seems that the bride of Christ, the glorified church, offers this life to those in the lake of fire. If they wash their robes, they can enter the city and drink from the river.”
— Robin Parry (Gregory MacDonald), The Evangelical Universalist, ch. 9This is the key tension. If 22:11 teaches permanent fixity of character, then 22:17 is meaningless. Why would the Spirit and the Bride call “Come!” to a world of people who cannot possibly respond? Why would the gates stand open for a city that no one can enter? But if 22:11 is a call to urgency before the coming judgment, then 22:17 is its perfect companion: the time is short, the invitation is real, and the door is open.
Notice, too, the condition for entering the City. Revelation 22:14 says, “Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates.” The right to enter does not rest on having been inside all along. It rests on washing one’s robes. This is the language of repentance and cleansing through the blood of the Lamb. Just one verse later, 22:15 describes those outside the City: “Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters.” The picture is of two groups, one inside and one outside. The gates stand open between them and the invitation rings out. The condition for crossing from outside to inside is not a prior decree. It is a washed robe.33
Where would someone outside the City wash their robes? In John’s symbolic geography, the only place outside the City is the lake of fire. The question answers itself. If the gates are open, and the invitation is live, and the condition is a washed robe, then even the fire serves a purpose: it burns away what is unclean so that the person can enter.
One of Parry’s most striking arguments concerns the “first-fruits” language of Revelation 14:4. The 144,000 (whom most scholars identify with the Church) are called “first-fruits to God and the Lamb.” A first-fruits offering was the first sheaf of the harvest, given to God as a promise that the rest of the crop was on its way.17 If the redeemed are the first-fruits, then the nations are the rest of the harvest, still to come.
This reading also makes sense of a small detail in 22:2, where John describes the tree of life in the New Jerusalem. Its “leaves are for the healing of the nations.” John added the phrase “the nations” to his source text in Ezekiel 47:12.18 The nations need healing. And John places that healing after the final judgment. This fits a reading in which the nations, purified and drawn by grace, enter the City through the open gates.
I am not arguing here that Revelation teaches dogmatic universalism. I hold conditional immortality as my working view, with genuine openness to universal restoration. But the point for this chapter is simpler: the book of Revelation does not teach that character is permanently fixed. It does not close the door. On the contrary, it keeps the gates open, posts the Spirit and the Bride at the threshold calling “Come,” and shows the nations walking in.
The roots of this verse confirm the urgency reading. Daniel 12:10 describes people responding to a crisis: “Many shall purify themselves and make themselves white and be refined, but the wicked shall act wickedly.” This is not a statement about eternal states. It is a prophecy about how people behave when the pressure comes. Some will turn to God. Others will keep going as they are.19
Beale himself, in a work co-edited with D. A. Carson, reads the Daniel passage this way. He sees it as foretelling that some in the latter days will fail to see the fulfillment of prophecy and persist in sin, while the wise will recognize and obey.20 But if Daniel 12:10 is about present-tense response to approaching judgment, and Revelation 22:11 echoes it directly, then the Revelation verse carries the same force. It is a warning to the present, not a decree about eternity.
Henri Blocher, no universalist himself, makes the point well. He asks whether it would be normal for God to allow sin to go on forever simply because He allows it now. Blocher answers his own question: “Is not the point that God tolerates at present what he will no longer when his patience comes to an end?” What is strange, Blocher says, is not that God should someday suppress sin. What is strange is that He has not done so already.34 The patience of God in the present does not require the permanence of sin in the future. That distinction matters for how we read 22:11. The verse describes what is happening now, under God’s patience. It does not describe what must happen forever.
All four strands of the argument point the same direction. The rhetorical function says urgency. The open gates say welcome. The “Come” of 22:17 says invitation. And the Daniel background says crisis-response, not frozen fate. The fixity reading fails at every level.
Does This Reach the Dying Moment?
Even read at its hardest, this verse describes the state of things at the very end of all things. It speaks to the eschaton, the great final reckoning, not to the dying moment of any single person alive today. It is a call to decide before the end comes. And the same chapter keeps the gates open and the invitation live. Revelation 22:11 says nothing about the dying moment. It does not say the person on their deathbed has been frozen in place. It does not say the last breath locks everything down. The verse looks forward to the cosmic end, not backward to anyone’s hospital bed. If there is a threshold encounter between the dying person and the living Christ (see Chapter 1 and Chapter 24), this verse does not touch it.
The scholarly battle lines on this verse fall into two camps, and the divide is largely about genre.
On the traditional side, G. K. Beale reads Revelation 22:11 as confirmation that the eschatological divide between righteous and wicked is permanent. In his view, the imperative form carries a tone of divine decree: God lets people become what they have chosen, and the result is irreversible.21 Grant Osborne shares this reading and stresses the judicial character of the statement. Osborne sees it as a solemn pronouncement that the time for repentance is past.22 Robert Mounce likewise calls the verse “a statement of the awesome finality of one’s moral choice,” though he also notes its roots in Daniel 12:10 and the function of urgency.23
David Aune, in the Word Biblical Commentary, provides a more cautious reading. He stresses the verse’s connections to Daniel and notes the hortatory character of the passage. Aune treats the four imperatives as rhetorical, shaped by the conviction that the end is imminent, rather than as a metaphysical statement about permanent states of being.24
Richard Bauckham, whose work on the theology of Revelation remains a standard reference, draws attention to the way Revelation balances judgment imagery with the scope of God’s saving purpose. Bauckham argues that John’s use of Old Testament imagery, including the pilgrimage of the nations, should be read within the prophetic tradition’s hope for universal worship of the God of Israel.25
Robin Parry provides the most detailed case for reading Revelation 22:11 as urgency rather than fixity. As we have seen, Parry traces the journey of the nations and the kings of the earth through the entire book. He notes that Beale tries to argue that “the nations” in 21:24 are the redeemed, not the rebellious nations. But Parry responds: “This is simply false. 5:9 and 7:9 do not refer to the saints as ‘the nations,’ but as a kingdom redeemed from among the nations. In both texts the term ‘nations’ refers to the bigger, non-redeemed group from which the saints come. Elsewhere in Revelation the titles ‘the nations’ and ‘the kings of the earth’ are always reserved for the enemies of Christ.”26
Thomas Talbott, whose reading of Revelation is cited approvingly by Manis, makes a similar observation about the gates. The lake of fire, in Talbott’s reading, is itself a form of purifying encounter with God’s presence. Those outside the City can wash their robes. Where else would they do so, Talbott asks, “except in the lake of fire?”27 If the fire purifies, and the gates remain open, then the image is not one of permanent exclusion but of ongoing invitation.
I do not ask the reader to accept the full universalist reading of Revelation. Beilby’s more modest case for postmortem opportunity does not require it. But I do ask the reader to notice what the text says and what it does not say. It does not say that the doors are shut. It says they never close.
James Beilby’s framework is worth mentioning here because it shows how even a non-universalist can make good use of the open-gates imagery. Beilby argues that the saving encounter with Christ can happen after death, especially for those who never had a genuine chance to hear the gospel. The open gates of the New Jerusalem, the continuing invitation of the Spirit and the Bride, and the tree whose leaves heal the nations all sit naturally within Beilby’s model. The door to the City does not close at the moment of death.35
Objection: The Verse Plainly Teaches Permanent Fixity
“Revelation 22:11 says it outright: the evildoer keeps doing evil, the filthy stays filthy. This is not urgency. It is an announcement that there will be no more change.”
Look at the verse in its context, not in isolation. The sentence immediately before it says, “the time is near.” That is an urgency marker. It tells us why the statement is being made: the end is approaching, so the current state of each person is about to matter in a way it never has before. Read in context, the verse says something like: “Since the end is near, the evildoer will still be doing evil when it arrives.” The righteous, too, will still be doing right. That is a different claim from “no one can ever change again.”28
Beyond that, the same chapter offers the water of life “without price” (22:17). If no one can change, the offer is empty. The text itself resists the fixity reading.
This is Beale’s strongest response. He argues that “the nations” in 21:24–26 are the already-redeemed from every nation. But as Parry notes, the phrase “the nations” and “the kings of the earth” carry specific referents throughout Revelation. They are the enemies of Christ: the kings who commit adultery with Babylon (17:2), who hide in terror from the Lamb (6:15), who join the Beast for war (19:19).29 To suddenly reassign these titles to the redeemed without explanation would confuse the reader. John’s audience would naturally connect “the kings of the earth” in 21:24 with the same figures they have been tracking since chapter 6.
And Revelation 22:17 presses the point: “Let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.” The invitation is open. The thirsty are not identified as people who are already inside the City. They are anyone who desires the water.
This objection deserves a fair hearing. Apocalyptic is not just poetry. It carries real theological claims. I agree. But the theological claim must be read according to the genre’s own conventions.30 Apocalyptic literature uses vivid symbols: a beast with seven heads does not mean a literal seven-headed creature. A city with streets of gold does not mean literal gold streets. And a statement that “the evildoer still does evil” does not necessarily mean eternal, unbreakable fixity of character. The doctrine taught by this verse, when read in its apocalyptic context, is the doctrine of urgency. Decide now. The time is short.
Consider a parallel example. In Revelation 6:16, people cry out to the mountains, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne.” No one reads this as a literal geography lesson about mountains collapsing on people. We read it as a vivid image of terror before God’s judgment. The same care should govern our reading of 22:11. The verse uses the conventions of apocalyptic rhetoric to press an urgent choice on its hearers.36
The verse also teaches something about God’s patience. He does not override the will. Those who are doing evil are permitted to continue. But permission is not permanence. The same God who permits the evil also keeps the gates open and sends the Spirit and the Bride to call “Come.”
The Tension Only the Urgency Reading Resolves
If Revelation 22:11 teaches permanent fixity, then 22:17 is an empty invitation to people who cannot respond. If 22:11 teaches urgency before the approaching end, then 22:17 is its companion: the clock is running, the invitation is real, and the door is wide open. Only the urgency reading lets both verses mean what they say.
We have seen that Revelation 22:11 is a call to decide, not a decree of frozen destinies. Its roots are in Daniel’s description of how people respond to the approaching end. Its context is a chapter that holds the gates wide open and extends the invitation of the Spirit and the Bride to anyone who is thirsty. Read as urgency, it sits naturally among its neighbors. Read as permanent fixity, it contradicts them.
This matters for the book’s larger argument. The apocalyptic urgency of Revelation does not close the door on saving grace at or after death. It does the opposite. It reveals a God who keeps the gates open, who sends the Bride to call “Come,” and who offers the water of life without price. The same chapter that says “let the evildoer still do evil” also says “let the one who is thirsty come.” Revelation closes the Bible not with a locked gate but with an open one.31
For a fuller treatment of Revelation’s Book of Life passages and what they tell us about names and destinies, see Chapter 11. For the shut-door parables and how they compare to Revelation’s open-door imagery, see Chapter 8. For the universal-scope passages and the breadth of God’s saving purpose, see Appendix D.
And for the reader who has sat with the young woman’s question, the one who lost her father and read those words in Revelation’s closing chapter: no, this verse does not teach that your father is frozen in place forever. It teaches that the time is short and the choice matters. It also teaches that the gates of the City of God are never shut, that the Spirit and the Bride are still saying “Come,” and that the water of life is offered without price to anyone who thirsts. If the God of Revelation keeps the door open at the end of all things, I believe He keeps it open at the end of a single life too.32
↑ 1. G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 1130–33. Beale treats the imperatives as conveying the sense of divine judicial decree, confirming the irreversibility of the eschatological division.
↑ 2. Grant R. Osborne, Revelation, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002), 787–89.
↑ 3. Robert H. Mounce, The Book of Revelation, rev. ed., New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 402–3.
↑ 4. On the nature of apocalyptic genre and its conventions, see Richard Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), ch. 1. Bauckham stresses that apocalyptic imagery should be interpreted symbolically, not as a literal script of future events.
↑ 5. The verb αδικησατω (adikēsatō) is a third-person aorist active imperative from αδικεω (adikeō), “to do wrong, to act unjustly.” The word ετι (eti) means “still, yet.” The construction carries a concessive or permissive force: “let him go on doing what he is doing.” See BDAG, s.v. αδικεω.
↑ 6. ο καιρος εγγυς (ho kairos engys), “the time is near.” Kairos denotes not clock time but a decisive season, an appointed moment of reckoning. See BDAG, s.v. καιρος; also Beale, Revelation, 1129.
↑ 7. The allusion to Daniel 12:10 is widely recognized. See Beale, Revelation, 1130–31; Mounce, Revelation, 402; Aune, Revelation 17–22, 1221. The verbal parallels are close: Daniel speaks of purifying and acting wickedly; John adapts the contrast into four parallel imperatives.
↑ 8. This reversal is noted by several commentators. In Daniel 12:9, the prophet is told, “Go your way, Daniel, for the words are shut up and sealed until the time of the end.” In Revelation 22:10, John is told the opposite: “Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near.” The contrast marks the shift from concealment to disclosure, from distant future to imminent arrival. See Hronich, Once Loved, Always Loved, ch. 14.
↑ 9. This distinction between urgency rhetoric and metaphysical fixity is central to the present argument. Apocalyptic literature regularly urges present decision in light of the approaching end without thereby making metaphysical claims about the permanent constitution of persons. Compare the “be ready” parables of Matthew 24–25, which press the hearer to be prepared without implying that preparation is impossible.
↑ 10. Andrew Hronich, Once Loved, Always Loved: A Rigorous Case for Universal Restoration (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock), ch. 14. Hronich engages D. A. Carson’s use of Rev. 22:10–11 as evidence for ongoing sin in hell (found in Robert A. Peterson and Edward Fudge, Two Views of Hell [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2000]) and shows that the verse’s concern is the present, not the eternal state.
↑ 11. Shawn Bawulski, quoted in Hronich, Once Loved, Always Loved, ch. 14. Bawulski’s point is that the wicked continue in wickedness because they miss the signs of the times, not because they are rehearsing their eternal role.
↑ 12. Rev. 21:25 (ESV): “and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there.” The emphatic formulation stresses the permanence of the openness. On the meaning of this verse and its connection to Isaiah 60:11, see Parry (MacDonald), The Evangelical Universalist, ch. 9; Beale, Revelation, 1096.
↑ 13. Isaiah 60:11: “Your gates will always stand open, they will never be shut, day or night, so that people may bring you the wealth of the nations.” On Isaiah 60 as the background to John’s vision of the New Jerusalem, see Bauckham, Theology of the Book of Revelation, ch. 6; also J. P. M. Sweet, Revelation (London: SCM; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1979), 310.
↑ 14. Parry (MacDonald), The Evangelical Universalist, ch. 9: “The Christ they attack is the King of kings (19:16) and the ruler of the kings of the earth (1:5), and he defeats them (19:21). There can be no doubt that these kings of the earth find themselves in the lake of fire. Yet it is the very same kings of the earth of whom we read that they enter the New Jerusalem via the open gates in order to bring their splendor into it.”
↑ 15. John changed Isaiah 60:3’s “kings” to “kings of the earth” to ensure the reader connects these figures to their earlier appearances. Mathias Rissi suggests the change was made in light of Psalm 89:27. See Rissi, The Future of the World, SBT 2/23 (London: SCM, 1972); cited in Parry, The Evangelical Universalist, ch. 9.
↑ 16. Parry (MacDonald), The Evangelical Universalist, ch. 9. Parry observes that the Bride (the glorified Church) issues the invitation to “come” and take the water of life. Within the visionary world of Revelation, the most plausible audience for this invitation is those outside the City—that is, those in the lake of fire.
↑ 17. Rev. 14:4: “These have been redeemed from mankind as firstfruits for God and the Lamb” (ESV). On the first-fruits metaphor and its implication that the church is a guarantee of a larger harvest to come, see Parry (MacDonald), The Evangelical Universalist, ch. 9: “The first-fruits was the first sheaf of the harvest, which was offered to God and which functioned as a guarantee that the rest of the harvest was on the way. . . . This is best interpreted to imply that the nations are the rest of the harvest.”
↑ 18. Rev. 22:2b: “The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.” John added “the nations” to Ezekiel 47:12, which mentions only the medicinal properties of the trees along the river. This deliberate addition continues John’s emphasis on the nations’ ultimate healing. See Parry, The Evangelical Universalist, ch. 9.
↑ 19. Daniel 12:10 (ESV): “Many shall purify themselves and make themselves white and be refined, but the wicked shall act wickedly. And none of the wicked shall understand, but those who are wise shall understand.” The verse describes differing responses to the eschatological crisis, not permanent ontological states.
↑ 20. G. K. Beale, “Daniel,” in G. K. Beale and D. A. Carson, eds., Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007). Beale reads Daniel’s prediction as foretelling that some will fail to perceive the fulfillment of prophecy and persist in sin. See also Hronich, Once Loved, Always Loved, ch. 14, who notes the irony of Beale’s own reading undermining Carson’s use of Rev. 22:10–11 as a proof text for ongoing sin in eternity.
↑ 21. Beale, Revelation, 1130–33. Beale connects the imperatives to the idea of judicial hardening, in which God “lets” the wicked become what they have chosen.
↑ 22. Osborne, Revelation, 787–89. Osborne stresses the judicial finality of the pronouncement while acknowledging the Daniel 12 background.
↑ 23. Mounce, Revelation, 402–3. Mounce notes both the urgency element and the finality element, though he in the end reads the verse as confirming the permanence of eschatological states.
↑ 24. David E. Aune, Revelation 17–22, Word Biblical Commentary 52C (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1998), 1221–23. Aune’s treatment is more cautious than Beale’s, emphasizing the hortatory character of the passage and its roots in the Danielic tradition.
↑ 25. Richard Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), especially his treatment of John’s use of the pilgrimage-of-the-nations motif from Isaiah 60 and the relationship between judgment and the universal scope of God’s saving purpose.
↑ 26. Parry (MacDonald), The Evangelical Universalist, ch. 9. Parry’s point is that the term “the nations” and “the kings of the earth” have consistent referents throughout Revelation, always designating the enemies of Christ. For Beale’s counterargument, see Beale, Revelation, 1097–98.
↑ 27. Thomas B. Talbott, The Inescapable Love of God, 2nd ed. (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2014). See also R. Zachary Manis, Sinners in the Presence of a Loving God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), who cites Talbott’s reading of the Revelation 21–22 material approvingly. Talbott asks: “where else could those outside the city wash their robes except in the lake of fire?” (Talbott, Inescapable Love, ch. 9).
↑ 28. The distinction is between a descriptive claim (“when the end arrives, people will be caught as they are”) and a metaphysical claim (“people can never change again”). The former is consistent with urgency; the latter requires fixity. The text supports the former, not the latter.
↑ 29. The “kings of the earth” (hoi basileis tēs gēs) appear in Revelation at 1:5; 6:15; 17:2, 18; 18:3, 9; 19:19; and 21:24. In every occurrence prior to 21:24, they are opponents of Christ or allies of Babylon. Parry’s argument is that the referent does not change in 21:24 without explanation; John intends these to be the same figures, now entering through the open gates. See Parry, Evangelical Universalist, ch. 9; Vernard Eller, “How the Kings of the Earth Land in the New Jerusalem,” Katallagete/Be Reconciled 5 (1975): 21–27.
↑ 30. On reading apocalyptic literature according to its own generic conventions, see Bauckham, Theology of the Book of Revelation, ch. 1; also G. B. Caird, The Language and Imagery of the Bible (London: Duckworth, 1980), ch. 14. The general principle is that apocalyptic imagery conveys theological truths through vivid symbols, and those symbols should not be pressed into literal-propositional service without attention to their rhetorical function.
↑ 31. This is a point worth letting the reader feel. The final book of the Bible, a book full of judgment and fire, ends not with a closed door but with an open one, not with a decree of permanence but with an invitation: “Come.” On the significance of this for the theology of Revelation, see Parry, Evangelical Universalist, ch. 9; Bauckham, Theology of the Book of Revelation, ch. 6. For the universal-scope passages that undergird this reading, see Appendix D.
↑ 32. On the perimortem encounter and the grounds for believing that the dying person can still respond to Christ, see Chapter 1 and Chapter 24. On the conscious intermediate state and the soul’s capacity for response during the dying process, see Appendix C.
↑ 33. Rev. 22:14 (ESV): “Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates.” The condition for entry is not prior inscription but present cleansing. On the connection between robe-washing and repentance through the blood of Christ, see Rev. 7:14: “They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” See Parry, Evangelical Universalist, ch. 9; also Beale, Revelation, 1139–40.
↑ 34. Henri Blocher, “Everlasting Punishment and the Problem of Evil,” in Nigel M. de S. Cameron, ed., Universalism and the Doctrine of Hell (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992), 301. Blocher’s argument is directed against the view that ongoing sin in hell justifies ongoing punishment. His point, which Hronich deploys against Carson’s reading of Rev. 22:10–11, is that God’s present tolerance of sin does not imply its eternal permanence. See Hronich, Once Loved, Always Loved, ch. 14.
↑ 35. James Beilby, Postmortem Opportunity: A Biblical and Theological Assessment of Salvation after Death (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2021). Beilby’s case is narrower than the universalist one: he argues for the possibility of a saving encounter after death, especially for the unevangelized, without claiming that all will in the end be saved. The open-gates imagery supports his case without requiring the full universalist conclusion. For the broader case and how it differs from Beilby’s, see Appendix D.
↑ 36. On the general principle of not pressing apocalyptic imagery into literal-propositional service, see G. B. Caird, The Language and Imagery of the Bible (London: Duckworth, 1980), ch. 14; Bauckham, Theology of the Book of Revelation, ch. 1. Caird warns against treating symbolic language as if it were technical philosophical language. The apocalyptic seer communicates through pictures, and those pictures have a point, but the point is not always the one a modern reader assumes.