How to read the Book of Revelation (well)
Yet another 'prophecy' about the cease of the globe comes and goes—but nosotros know, like the proverbial motorbus, another one will be along soon. One of the reasons for this predictable yet disappointing procession is that we don't really know how to read the Volume of Revelation properly—the source of many of these failed forecasts.
Many people leave this final book of the Bible firmly airtight, and in some means I don't blame them. If you practice open information technology, it looks like a very strange text indeed, for at least two reasons. The first is that we oasis't read anything else quite like it, and we usually acquire how to read things by drawing on our past experience. The second is that, if we ask for help from other people, they will give u.s. a very wide range of possible views, most of which are completely contradictory. So what should we do?
There are actually some relatively straightforward things to bear in mind equally we read—though possibly the about important affair is just that: to engage our minds. God invites us to love him with our mind, likewise as our heart, soul and strength (Luke x.27), and the all-time thing we can do with Revelation is to keep our hearts and our minds connected with one some other. The vast majority of whacky ideas that have sprung from this book can easily exist dismissed if nosotros simply enquire 'Is this really plausible?'
Here are seven things to think nigh which volition make all the difference:
- Detect where this book is
Intermission for a minute; look at your Bible. Where is Revelation—is it inside or outside the covers? Why is it inside—why did it get role of what is at present our Scripture? The first followers of Jesus already had their own Bible, what we now call our Old Attestation, and it is worth considering why they felt the demand to add anything more than. The books of the Old Testament were testimony to God's words and actions in rescuing his people, being nowadays with them, and making his glory known to the earth. And and so, when God came once more to speak, act and save in the person of Jesus, they needed to include testimony to this also. Heb 1.i–2 puts it very clearly: 'Information technology the past God spoke…just now he has spoken by his Son…' The other documents in the NT testify to what God has done in Jesus, and how nosotros should live in the light of this—so Revelation must be doing the same. If, instead, information technology fix out a completely separate end-times scheme that wouldn't exist relevant for another 2,000 years, it would never have been included.
- Notice to whom this book is written
What kind of text is Revelation? Nosotros are given some important clues early, when the writer says 'John, To the 7 churches in the province of Asia: Grace and peace to you…' (Rev ane.5). Y'all might recognise this phrase, since information technology comes at the first of all of Paul's letters—it is the standard manner people wrote letters in the first century. Whatsoever else Revelation is, it is a letter, written to item people living at a particular time in a particular identify. So although it is writtenfor us as Scripture, it is non writtento us. We therefore need to consider how John's get-go audition would have understood it if nosotros desire to know how God wants to speak to us through it.
And of course information technology ways you tin visit these places today. You tin can meet the acropolis (upper fortified town) where 'Satan'due south throne is' (Rev two.13); y'all can visit the city that needed to 'Wake up!' (Rev iii.two) when it was besieged; you can even see the furred-up pipes that carried 'lukewarm' h2o (Rev 3.16) to Laodicea. Cold water is good for refreshing; hot water is good for healing; but lukewarm water is good for zilch! The Laodiceans' trouble was not lukewarm faith, but lukewarm 'works' (Rev 3.15).
- Notice the employ it makes of the OT
I once spent a week of my life counting the allusions to or echoes of the Old Attestation in Revelation's 405 verses. By the end of Friday afternoon I had reached 676—which is a lot of allusions! It ways nosotros cannot really move without bumping in an OT reference. (If you lot don't believe me, just compare Rev 1.12–17 with Dan ten.5–12). When Revelation'due south first hearers (Rev 1.three) come beyond thunder and lightning (Rev 4.5), trumpets (Rev viii.7) and locusts (Rev 9.three), they are much more than likely to think of Mt Sinai (Ex 19.xvi), the call to temple worship (Lev 23.24), and sentence and restoration (Joel 2.25) than they are to imagine either twee Christian art or armoured attack helicopters (yeah, that is one interpretation of Rev nine.3!).
- Notice the ideas that it borrows
If I started explaining what Jesus had washed similar this 'There was a girl who had a red cloak with a hood, and one day she set off into the woods…' and managed to weave in the gospel, you'd know what I was talking about. Or if I started off 'In that location was once a house with three bears, daddy behave, mummy bear and infant bear…' and ended with Jesus' death and resurrection, y'all'd recognise it. In the same style, when anyone in the first century read or heard Rev 12, they would immediately recognise it every bit the Python/Leto myth. (Yous can read it here in the works of Hyginus at myth 140.) The great dragon tries to impale the offspring of Leto, but she is rescued, gives nativity to Apollo and Artemis, and Apollo returns to slay the dragon. The story was used by Roman emperors to draw themselves as Apollo, the defeater of the forces of anarchy and the bringer of peace. Rev 12 turns it around: the emperor is the bringer of chaos, and merely Jesus is the one who brings victory and peace.
This is not an do in existence 'academic' in our reading. It is just the normal bailiwick of recognising that the Bible was speaking in the language of its context and civilisation, and this decisively shapes its meaning.
- Notice the way it uses numbers
Stop-times fanatics love to make use of numbers—and Revelation gives some warrant for this. But information technology makes use of numbers in a item way. First, it includes significant words with special regularity—so 'Jesus', the faithful witness, occurs 14 (= two ten 7), which is the number of perfect witness (since you need ii witnesses Deut 17.6, and you demand to know that 7 is the number of completeness, since at that place are seven days, 7 seas, seven continents and in the ancient earth vii planets). It as well uses 'triangular' numbers (think of the 15 reddish balls on a snooker table) such as 666. But information technology is non alone in this in the NT. The 153 fish (John 21.11) and the 276 people on Paul's boat (Acts 27.37) are also such special numbers!
Finally, Revelation uses a common form of numerology in the outset century (known as isopsephia in Greek or gematria in Hebrew) in which you add up the numerical value of the letters of a word to give the word's value. This is possible since, before the Arabic number system nosotros use today, all messages had a value and were used in everyday arithmetic. In this way, the number of 'the animate being' is the same as a the number of a man'south name (in this example Nero Caesar) since both add up to 666. This 'solution' to the puzzle of Rev 13.18 has been known in academic circles since the 1840s, but sadly has nevertheless not filtered down into popular reading. And that leads me to my terminal betoken…
- Notice that information technology is given to God'south people as a whole, non to usa each every bit individuals…
The opening of Revelation invites a approving on the one (singular) who reads and those who hear (plural, Rev 1.3). The situation envisaged is not an individual, with his or her own text, reading alone, but a lector at the front of the congregation reading aloud so that others can listen. (This is really the only possible social context of the church building'southward reception of the early Christian writings.) What is true for Revelation is true for all of the New Testament: it was in the first place given to the whole people of God for the building up of the whole people of God.
That means we need to aid 1 another to read and sympathize aright. Some of the things I take mentioned above might seem but a niggling technical and remote from everyday devotion. Merely it is now very easy to access this kind of information. You might want to start with my Grove booklet available post free here. Or you lot could plow to Craig Koester'due southRevelation and the End of All Things, or Michael Gorman'sReading Revelation Responsibly.
Or you might fifty-fifty want to buy my commentary in the IVP series, whose introduction addresses all these major questions around the text in an attainable form!
- …and for a item purpose
But the reason for thinking virtually these things is non so that nosotros can impress others with our knowledge—information technology is in gild that Revelation can exercise the work in and amongst us that it is designed to do. John, our 'brother in kingdom, tribulation and patient endurance' (Rev i.ix) wants us to sympathize how we can live as faithful witnesses, testifying to the victory that Jesus has won, in a world which is frequently hostile to God and his people.
In our post-Christendom world, it is a message we badly need to hear—without beingness sidelined by the latest dizzy scheme that has been dreamt up in ignorance. (This is a revised version of an article first published in October 2015).
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