Quote from Bauckham's The Climax of Prophecy

From Richard Bauckham's, The Climax of Prophecy: Studies on the Book of Revelation, p. xv:

In his Introduction, Bauckham writes,

Chapter 8 (‘The Apocalypse as a Christian War Scroll’) investigates Revelation’s use and interpretation of another set of images drawn from apocalyptic tradition: those which relate to holy war and are applied in Revelation to the participation of Christians in God’s eschatological victory over evil. Study of the holy war motif in Revelation has been previously largely limited to the idea of God’s (and the Lamb’s) war against and victory over evil. This chapter shows that John carefully takes up Jewish expectations of a messianic war in which God’s people are to fight and win a military victory over their enemies, and reinterprets them, substituting faithful witness to the point of martyrdom for armed violence as the means of victory. Though military means are repudiated, the imagery of holy war is employed in the interests of active participation by Christians in the divine conflict with evil, following up the decisive victory which their Messiah, the Lamb, has already won. [Emphasis added -SMR]