Eternal Tables

What images of heaven do you have? What excites you most about it?

So far, I have painted a very positive and uplifting portrait of table fellowship as it occurs throughout the Bible. But I would be doing the topic a great injustice if I failed to point out the one negative depiction of a “table” in Scripture. But rest assured it is a “table” at which Christians, i.e., believers in the Lordship of Jesus Christ, will not sit.

Revelation 19 offers a symbolic vision of what Judgment day will be like for believers and unbelievers. As believers in Christ, we will be seated at a wedding feast as we await the arrival of our groom (Jesus Christ) (Rev 19:6-9). It is a picture of unparalleled purity and magnificent glory! The church, the bride of Christ, will finally be married to her groom! This is the moment that history has been awaiting since the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. All impurity has been taken away and the church comes face to face with her Lord.

But there is another “table” in Revelation 19. This scene is descriptive of what will happen to unbelievers and other enemies of the cross. It is not a wedding banquet but rather is a gory supper where the unrepentant and evil are reduced to corpses that will be eaten by buzzards (19:17-21). To be sure, it is a picture of victory since Jesus is shown to arrive at the battlefield as a blood-soaked warrior with a sword who has not yet stopped slaying his enemies (19:11-16). Once his enemies are slain they are then eaten by scavenging birds.

Revelation 19 is meant to form a contrast of ideas: what Judgment will be like for the followers of Christ (wedding banquet) and what it will be like for those who are evil (gory supper). Though the latter “table” scene is gory, it is one that we Christians should not fear. The identity of the enemies of God should be clear: the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters, and all liars (21:8). Evil is personified as an army that opposes God and his people, wages war against them, but is ultimately defeated. In contrast, our “table” scene at the Judgment is a beautiful wedding feast. This wedding scene is the pinnacle of the Bible’s table fellowship scenes. Revelation 19 is worth meditating on when it seems as though the stakes are stacked against the followers of Christ. The victory is ours!