Preaching Transcripts and Mp3's: Introduction to Revelation

Tools, Themes and Tips for Taking on Revelation

Let me start with a confession. I didn’t want to do Revelation this summer. I mean, I really didn’t want to. When Zach and Dan and I started talking about what to take on and they started to gravitate towards revelation, I dragged my feet. Here’s how bad I didn’t want to do Revelation…when they asked me for a counter proposal…I suggested…Leviticus.

You know why? Because I would have literally rather done any of the other 65 books.

You see even though Leviticus is many people’s least favorite book of the Bible, at its worst, is just dull. Revelation seems to bring out the crazy.

For any of you who maybe haven’t heard of Revelation, or maybe are new to the Bible all together, it is the final book and without a doubt, strangest, book of the Christian Scriptures and is full of bizarre and often disturbing imagery.

I mean, here are just a few attempts to illustrate passages of this book.

I mean, this text can be disturbing even when it is illustrated in lego dioramas.

And some of us have known or will know perfectly normal people get totally and unhelpfully obsessed with this Revelation…Something I’ve never seen happen with Leviticus. I mean, seriously, when was the last time you heard of someone going to a seminar on the interpretation of Leviticus or when was the last time you read a fictionalized account of Leviticus?

Anyway, how did Dan and Zach respond to my counter-proposal.

Mockery.

So here we are…

But, I’m not alone in my hesitance to take on this book am I. Dan and Zach notwithstanding, a lot of responsible preachers and students of the scriptures have kept this book at arms length.

For example, John Calvin, maybe the most careful theologian and Biblical interpreter in the last 600 years, wrote a commentary on every book of the Bible…except revelation.

And maybe, some of you feel similar hesitance about taking on the book of Revelation as I did. Maybe you’ve tried to read it and found it bizarre and confusing. I think my friend kind of got to the heart of it when she offered this on my facebook page a little while ago…

And that is really the question…can we answer that question ‘what does this book mean.’ Before it can be helpful, before we find utility in this text to live better lives (which I believe is something we can expect any Biblical text to offer), we have to understand what John means by all these crazy images.

And that is the problem. While the first generation would have easily understood the conventions and recognized the symbols...for us it is going to take a little more work.

But, before we can dive into the question

“What does revelation mean?”

we have to ask a more basic question.

“How do we decide what any text means?”

_____

So, many of us have websites that we can blow hours on if we’re not careful…one of mine is:

SongMeaning…I can blow hours on this site.

People get on this site and debate what songs mean.

And it can get a little heated. A lot of songs contain symbolic language makes it a little difficult to know for sure what they are talking about. It seems like a few years ago, if you went on this site the discussion surrounding the meaning of almost every song was a debate between:

Iraq war/God/a girl

These disagreements were based on vague impressions and mental associations between the words and symbols and the interpreter’s world.

And I always want to ask a very basic question on this site.

What is our criteria for determining the meaning of a song?

What are the criteria of evidence and coherence that are sufficient for me to accept an interpretation.

Are there criteria, or does it boil down to a ‘feeling’ of ‘yeah that one feels right and the others don’t.’

Are there tools we can use to help us get to a less subjective answer to the question “what does this text mean?”

And whenever I hear people talk about what a Biblical text ‘means’, particularly when it is controversial, I have the same question.

Are there any basic criteria that can guide us as when our default method for interpreting texts encounters resistance.

Well, there is one basic principle that Bible Scholars in our movement tend to use as a guide to help them determine the meaning of a text:

A text can’t mean what it never meant.

Before we apply a text to our lives, or speculate what it might mean in our time, we have to ask, what did it mean in its original time, place, culture and context.

One author described the process of interpretation with a phrase he borrowed from a hobbit...in order to understand the scriptures, we have to ‘go there, and back again.’

And so that is how I am going to organize the balance of our time. First we are going to give you some tools to ‘go there’ and try to figure out how this text might have functioned in the early church…and then we will talk about how, once we are rooted in that reality, we can ‘come back again’ and find application to our time and context.

So first have to GO THERE.

I. Going There

Revelation isn’t some sort of puzzle that you need to figure out to understand future events…it is a gorgeous work of inspired literature…in a genre that would have been very familiar to those who read it… that, when read against its historical backdrop, speaks words of encouragement and correction into every generation.

The key to what any Biblical text ‘means for you’ is what it ‘meant for its original audience’. And revelation isn’t somehow a special exception. Look at the opening sentence:

This is first and foremost a book of God speaking encouragement and correction into current events…for the original audience.

John was a pastor, writing with passionate concern that ordinary men and women (in Asia minor at the close of the first century. And he while he also wrote a remarkable book…Revelation was almost certainly intelligible to the ordinary men and women who heard it read in the time it was written. It isn’t a sort of puzzle written to the last generation that every intervening generation will get wrong because we don’t have the right current events.

So one way people who talk about Scriptural interpretation talk about it is that there are 2 gaps that we have to bridge before we can hope to understand what a passage “means”

I. The Literary Gap (it is a different genre of literature than we have ever encountered)

II. The Historical Gap

So let’s start with the Literary Gap.

I. The Literary Gap

So let’s start with the literary gap. The primary reason that Revelation is so puzzling is that it is a piece of literature that was common in the first century but we are entirely unfamiliar with.

The symbols and literary forms are totally foreign to us. When we pick up this text which is an inspired text of God’s self disclosure, but it also a stylized piece of first century art, well it would be kind of like handing our i-pod full of Tupac and Radiohead and the flaming lips handing it to the author of this book as he sat on his desert island. He wouldn’t know where to begin.

Table Activity:

There are 3 clues in the first 4 verses to what kind of literature this is. Can you find them?

1. 1:1 “revelation” “which God Gave him to show” “He made known by sending his angel”

2. 1:3 “prophecy”

3. 1:4 “letter”

1. 1:1 “revelation”/Greek “Apocalypse”

Note: Not the book of Revelations – It is the Revelation – or the Apocalypse

NPR – the summer of the apocalypse

“And there's an odd plethora of Comic Apocalypses (this summer)”

Multiple examples of films about the end of the world or about the end of civilization…including the film that came out last weekend…WWZ

But this is unhelpful because it confuses apocalypse and dystopia. We have essentially made these synonyms. A dystopia is a story about the end of the world or the collapse of civilization (either due to disease, or natural disaster, or monsters, or political mismanagement…or in the case of zombies, all of the above) and the social chaos that ensues…or the full on end of the world (e.g. by an asteroid).

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am a sucker for Dystopia…in the last couple years I have read no fewer than 10 dystopic novels (including WWZ the novel the film is based on)…this summer is full of dystopic films…and the television is banking on dystopic shows…but my current favorite piece of dystopic art is the Song Tables and Chairs by Andrew Bird

Dystopia and snacks…sounds like every Baptist seminar on Revelation I have ever been to.

We are fascinated with how civilization will fall and how the world will end. And when we hear that this book is an “apocalypse” we assume that it is predicting how civilization will fall and how the world will end.

But Apocalyptic ≠ Dystopia

But Apocalyptic is just a type of literature communicated in symbols that would be easy for insiders to understand but would not get them in trouble with outsiders.

The reason that “Apocalypse” is translated into English as “revelation” is because the purpose of an apocalypse is to make current events clear through a series of highly visual symbols and explanations by transcendent messengers.

Reading revelation like it is a straight narrative of the end of the world is like looking at a Picasso painting and coming to one of two conclusions:

i. This guy is a terrible artist…or…

ii. The world is much stranger than I see it

This great art is totally puzzling to us until we understand the conventions of the genre. In the same way, we can read revelation as a history document published a few thousand years too early and come to one of two conclusions

i. This guy is a raving lunatic…or….

ii. The future is going to be very very weird

But if we read revelation as an instance of apocalyptic art…we come away with a much different picture. First, this is a brilliant piece of art that was written by a loving pastor to churches that were either suffering or compromising in an artistic genre that they would understand.

2. 1:3 “prophecy”

Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy

This is what most people think of…the OT has lots of prophecy…and the NT has one too.

But most people are not familiar enough with OT prophecy to know what to expect from a NT prophecy – the primary purpose of prophecy in the Hebrew Scriptures is not telling the future…if you were to actually calculate the % of old testament prophecy that talks about the future 5% might be too high…and many of those verses talk about the present and future at the same time.

The primary purposes of prophecy are correction and encouragement.

And as you will see…those are the two big themes of Revelation. This text has hard words of correction for those who are off course and tender words of encouragement for those who are hard pressed. And a couple chapters about the future. And, in that way, it is totally in line with the OT prophetic tradition.

3. 1:4 “letter”

Multiple references to the churches stressing this text’s status as a letter.

-v 4 – “John to the seven churches that are in Asia:”

Letters are to a particular place and setting. To understand what is going on in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, you need to know a little bit about 1^st century Corinth…which leads us to our second gap.

These aren’t the ratings of a simple fisherman stuck on a desert island…this is a complex and inspired work of art…inspired by God to speak correction and encouragement into that generation in such a way that it still matters ion ours…it is a work with a rich, complex, web of symbols, that is so deeply conversant with every thread of OT promise that it is impossible to count the connections with the OT…and it is a work that borrows three different genres that appeal to Hebrew and Roman members of the early church.

II. The Historical Gap

-The first rule of biblical interpretation– the Bible can never mean what it never meant

-the original context controls meaning – and original meaning sets the parameter for contemporary application – Revelation is not somehow exempt from this process.

This book was written by a pastor in exile to 7 churches that were in what is today Turkey…a region that was firmly under the power of the Roman empire.

The Roman Empire in the second half of the first century was dominated by two men who were, frankly, crazy: Nero and Domitian. And part of their madness was not just that they claimed to be God…that was part of the emperor job description…but they demanded to be worshiped on penalty of death.

Nero and Domitian were separated by a series of emperors who enacted a kind of a ‘don’t ask don’t tell policy.’ If you don’t make trouble we won’t come looking for you. But the book was written near the end Domitian reign, at kind of the peak of his madness, where he was passing decrees that everyone needed to worship him…or die. And that was going to go poorly for the Christians who, didn’t really feel like that was something they could do.

But the very worst of it was still to come. In the next couple hundred years, sporadic persecution would be replaced with empire wide persecution under the reigns of Diocletian.

And so, John writes an apocalyptic, prophetic, letter just as Domitian is about to drop the hammer. Which means that there are 4 temporal categories that we can file any of the symbols and passages of this book into:

How you sort the events of revelation into these bins will determine which of the many possible interpretations you will come to.

So where does this leave us? Well first we have to ask a question, what would this have meant to the original community it was addressed to. But it is not enough to leave it there, as a kind of hisotic academic discipline. Then we have to…

II. Come Back Again

…and ask, given what this meant to the original hearers, how does it speak to us in our context and our generations.

So how do we come back again.

Why didn’t I want to teach Revelation? Why did it scare our friend? Why didn’t Calvin write a commentary?

Well because better men and women have been wrong. I mean frankly, that is what it comes down to.

But why are so many so hesitant to take this book on…well, its because of those who weren’t.

I mean look at this list of what the ‘enemies’ in Revelation have been identified as over the last two hundred years, often by some of the Chruchs’ best theologians:

Date	Enemy	Author
5^th Century	Vandals	Caesarius of Arles*
6^th Century	Visigoths	Apringius
7^th Century	Arians and Donatists	Bede**
Reformation 16^th-20^th	Roman Church	Luther, Edwards, etc...
Early 20^th Century	Mussolini and Hitler	Various
1960-70’s	Cold War Figures	Various
Early 1990’s	Gulf War Figures***	Various (including me)
Current	Islamic Terrorists, EU, Multinational corporations

My interpretation of revelation was deeply affected by seeing books that interpreted it as the events of the gulf war that are signaling the end of the world…in a Christian book $1 table a couple years later

It is enough to make a wise and thoughtful person who handles their Bible seriously a little gun shy.

But take a look at that list for a second. What do all of the armies and movements and figures on that list have in common? They were all pretty terrifying to the person reading revelation in that time.

Anti-European American sentiment has also recently made the EU and the UN prominent characters in the interpretation of Revelation…and of course…the other political party.

I mean, if Caesarius and Bede and Luther blew it and John Calvin was too cautious to even take it on…what makes me think I’m going to get it right?

So let me ask a question, why are intelligent, well adjusted, humble Christians reluctant to take on Revelation. Well, because many smarter, more spiritual individuals who have seen its symbols in their generation have been wrong.

I’m always skeptical of preaching that essentially says “the church has believed this for years…but they are wrong. You should listen to me instead.”

And if they have all been wrong, what are the chances that I am the one who is going to get it right?

But let me pose an alternate way of looking at it. What if they haven’t all been wrong. What if they have all been right. What if the same terrors that John was warning and encouraging the first century church about recur in every generation?

What if Caesarius was right to see the Visigoths in this text?

And Bede was right when he saw the Donotists in these pages?

And later authors who saw the WWII Axis or Cold war powers, or middle eastern oppressors…what if they were right too?

And what if the developing world Christians who have seen the economic power of America as the villain of this book…what if they have been right as well?

You see, by respecting John’s historical and literary context…by recognizing that his symbols largely correspond to political, religious, and military realities of his era…it frees us to see Revelation as practical instructions for how Christians are supposed to deal with oppressing power.

And whatever you fear…John is talking about that. Whatever is enticing you or intimidating you right now, in this generation…John is talking about that.

And whatever your children and grand-children will fear in 20, 30, or 70 years…John is also talking about that.

Understanding the historic situatedness of Revelation better prepares us to identify its characters in our generation…and profit from it in our time. Who is our Rome – who are the imperial powers that demand our allegiance that we are called to resist.

Who is the beast who would compel us with power?

Who is the cultural prostitute who would entice us with bread and circuses?

Who is the liar that emerges from chaos as a parody of the lamb.

Who is the monster that emerges from the land full of propaganda?

You see, if you take it this way, then you escape the precarious position of saying, every previous generation who identified these figures in their generations were wrong…and my generation alone is right…and when the world changes and your identification of these figures is overturned…you lose interest in the book. Instead, all of those previous interpretations were right…and watchfulness is a consistent thing.

This isn’t a book written just to the last generation…but it also isn’t just a book written o the first generation. It is a book written to the 7 churches…which is John’s way of representing the entire church.

Everything after this got cut and isn’t on the MP3

So let’s wrap up with a case study on how to go there and back again. Lets look briefly at what might be the most difficult and controversial text in the book. It is so obtuse and difficult, we had actually planned to skip over it. It is so difficult that I read no fewer than 8 commentators and no 2 of them agreed on what this was all about. The trumpets. In particular, trumpet 5 and 6.

Rev 9:3 Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth… 6 And in those days people will seek death and will not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them.

7 In appearance the locusts were like horses prepared for battle: on their heads were what looked like crowns of gold; their faces were like human faces, 8 their hair like women's hair, and their teeth like lions' teeth; 9 they had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the noise of their wings was like the noise of many chariots with horses rushing into battle. 10 They have tails and stings like scorpions, and their power to hurt people for five months is in their tails. 11 They have as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit. His name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he is called Apollyon.

13 Then the sixth angel blew his trumpet, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar before God, 14 saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, “Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.” 15 So the four angels, who had been prepared for the hour, the day, the month, and the year, were released to kill a third of mankind. 16 The number of mounted troops was twice ten thousand times ten thousand; I heard their number. 17 And this is how I saw the horses in my vision and those who rode them: they wore breastplates the color of fire and of sapphire and of sulfur, and the heads of the horses were like lions' heads, and fire and smoke and sulfur came out of their mouths. 18 By these three plagues a third of mankind was killed, by the fire and smoke and sulfur coming out of their mouths. 19 For the power of the horses is in their mouths and in their tails, for their tails are like serpents with heads, and by means of them they wound.

Now, what do many modern interpreters see when they read these chapters. Helicopters. Drones.

But ask yourself, what might this have meant to the 7 churches.

What are the clues. Well, there is a lot of talk about horses….and one very important phrase:

“Release the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.”

The Euphrates was the border between the two great empires: Rome and the Parthians (the ancient Persians[1]). The Parthians lurked as a shadow of fear just beyond the Euphrates for Rome’s near eastern territories. The Romans and Parthians battled for ancient near eastern territories for hundreds of years. And the terror of the Parthians were their mounted Calvary:

The Parthians had developed a devastating military innovation. They had learned horsemenship from the steppe peoples to their east…those who would become the Mongols…but the learned how to work steal from the Romans. So they fielded an armored cavalry of archers who could fire from armored horseback. They were called the cataphracts, and they were terrifying. A terrifying military power building on the eastern border.

So what about the helicopters and tanks? Well in every generation, these have been read as the ‘building army just beyond the Euphrates.’ The specter of a foreign conqueror that strikes fear. In just the last 100 years it has been Iraq, Iran, Communism, and now, it is terrorism we fear…a great army to the east. So as these threats have come and gone, has every generation been wrong.

One commentator says– John “lavishes detail on the locust”…these almost mechanical locusts – many see modern machines (helicopters)… “We too have seen terrible machines in our day: monsters, whether helicopters or other military equipment, designed…to strike terror into human hearts for the sake of power and empire. Who is to say that such machines do not ultimate come, like these insects-on-steroids…from the bottomless pit, under the direction of Apollyon?” 87

And are those in our generation who are identifying the riders and the locust as machines of military power wrong? Not really. John saw the Parthian Cataphract. But there will always be a terrifying army building on our borders with scary new military technology. In essence, every generation, who saw the locus and the hoard in their generation has been right. It is the military power that causes you to fear.

In Roman Asia minor, it was the Parthian riders who had seemingly mystical skills to rain down ordinance from armored horseback. And X feared the Visagoths, Luther feared the power of the church in Rome, Hal Lindsey feared the communists, Many today fear terrorists, Syrian Christians right now fear both Assad and the rebels…many non-western Christains fear the US and/or China…we fear the other political party…and my children will fear people and armies that I could not conceive of yet. We all have different Parthian raiders. But there will always be Parthian raiders…until there aren’t.

For us it might be ideological bombers – terrorists who infiltrate our public spaces (or maybe what you fear is the other political party). And Jesus is saying, yeah, they may run you through. The world is full of powers (cosmic and human and the feedback between them) that can do you damage. But those that belog to the Lamb cannot really be damaged. The lamb wins through self giving to death. His people should not fear natural disaster, , or the Parthian horde. They are not immune to them, but can overcome through the victory of the slaughtered lamb.

Is Revelation about the past or the future…or the present. Yes!

[1] 247 BC to 224 AD