Covenant Heart
Principled Iconoclast
Why is it that we always approach the Revelation from the standpoint that it intends to convey an exact outline of specific places, persons and events? How do we get people to question that premise? Forget that the entire book is a vision, and that vision reports are a well defined literary genre! Never doubt that we are reading the book incorrectly!
While referring to past time and future time, the Revelation is concerned mainly with timeless truths and spiritual realities that are applicable for Gods people in every age. We dont need to be expert in Biblical apocalyptic or symbolism to get Johns point. This gives the Revelation back to the church. Thats good. This book has a vital message for us. We must not surrender it to self-proclaimed experts in prophetic divination. To read the Revelation as a coded book to be deciphered to produce literal, end-time prophecies is disingenuous. It impoverishes, weakens and divides the church needlessly over esoteric notions. This book is an apocalypse, a vision, a prophecy, an epistle and a worship manual. We need to do justice to each purpose. To read Johns vision primarily as predictions misses that it is above all a work of profound theology.
John freely reinterprets and adapts earlier prophecies to his purpose. The descriptions of the plagues of the seven trumpets (Re 8:6-9:21) and the bowls (16:1-21) show a very schematized pattern that conveys meaning in itself. Among other things, their content recalls the plagues of Egypt and the Exodus, Jerichos fall to Joshuas army, the locusts of Joel, Sinaic theophany, the contemporary fear of invasion by Parthian cavalry and likely the eruptions of Vesuvius that had recently terrified the whole Mediterranean world. John takes peoples worst experiences and fears of wars and natural disasters, he magnifies them to apocalyptic proportion, and then casts them in Biblical terms. His point is not to predict a sequence of events. His point is to explore the meaning of divine judgment impending on a sinful world. Above all else, the Revelation is to be read theologically!
Johns symbols and images resonate with the social, political, cultural and religious world of his day. First century people understood these images (Vesuvius eruptionsnot nuclear war!). Rooted in Johns day, these images are not timeless symbols, no. But the opposite error is to be avoided alsoreading them as coded messages to be translated into prophecies about literal places and people. The last of seven bowls results in the fall of Babylon in an earthquake of unprecedented power (Re 16:17-21). If this is a literal prediction, it is soon contradicted by later images of the fall of Babylon. Images must be known in their first century context before we contextualize them to our own time. Where the Revelation is concerned, the extremes of the historist and futurist interpretative systems are to be shunned. Of course granting that, we lose our impetus for endless speculation about these futuristic odysseys.
Plotted on a map, the seven churches stand in order of a circular visit beginning at Patmos. A little sensitivity to this work may suggest that this is deliberate, and that Johncarried by the Spiritgives us a vision with a very unusual feature. These letters introduce the vision in a way that invites us to read the book from seven very different perspectives within a broader situation common to all of the churches. The spiritual pathologies seen in the seven letters relate to the contents of Johns broader visioninjustice, compromise, corruption, heresy, war, purity, martyrdom, truth, worship, witness and final victory, etc. Such are the theological issues of the vision. There is Gods answer to the modern, secular heresy that wastes us everywhere. It is needed desperately to shape in us his vision of the Christian in the world. We must face those issues! But instead of using Johns vision to shape our engagement in a battle that rages all around us, the very word we need today is pushed into the future! Then we wring our hands and wonder why it is so bad.
Whats bad is our refusal to apply this weaponthis bookto our day. The remedy is not to hatch creatively new and ever more expansive eschatologies. No, in each church, the call is to "hear" what the Spirit says (Re 2:7,11,17,29; 3:6,13,22) to the churches (plural). This shows that the seven are representative of true congregations of the Lord, and that all the letterswith the whole vision that they introduceare for the whole church today. Its time we listened.
Blessings,
Covenant Heart
While referring to past time and future time, the Revelation is concerned mainly with timeless truths and spiritual realities that are applicable for Gods people in every age. We dont need to be expert in Biblical apocalyptic or symbolism to get Johns point. This gives the Revelation back to the church. Thats good. This book has a vital message for us. We must not surrender it to self-proclaimed experts in prophetic divination. To read the Revelation as a coded book to be deciphered to produce literal, end-time prophecies is disingenuous. It impoverishes, weakens and divides the church needlessly over esoteric notions. This book is an apocalypse, a vision, a prophecy, an epistle and a worship manual. We need to do justice to each purpose. To read Johns vision primarily as predictions misses that it is above all a work of profound theology.
John freely reinterprets and adapts earlier prophecies to his purpose. The descriptions of the plagues of the seven trumpets (Re 8:6-9:21) and the bowls (16:1-21) show a very schematized pattern that conveys meaning in itself. Among other things, their content recalls the plagues of Egypt and the Exodus, Jerichos fall to Joshuas army, the locusts of Joel, Sinaic theophany, the contemporary fear of invasion by Parthian cavalry and likely the eruptions of Vesuvius that had recently terrified the whole Mediterranean world. John takes peoples worst experiences and fears of wars and natural disasters, he magnifies them to apocalyptic proportion, and then casts them in Biblical terms. His point is not to predict a sequence of events. His point is to explore the meaning of divine judgment impending on a sinful world. Above all else, the Revelation is to be read theologically!
Johns symbols and images resonate with the social, political, cultural and religious world of his day. First century people understood these images (Vesuvius eruptionsnot nuclear war!). Rooted in Johns day, these images are not timeless symbols, no. But the opposite error is to be avoided alsoreading them as coded messages to be translated into prophecies about literal places and people. The last of seven bowls results in the fall of Babylon in an earthquake of unprecedented power (Re 16:17-21). If this is a literal prediction, it is soon contradicted by later images of the fall of Babylon. Images must be known in their first century context before we contextualize them to our own time. Where the Revelation is concerned, the extremes of the historist and futurist interpretative systems are to be shunned. Of course granting that, we lose our impetus for endless speculation about these futuristic odysseys.
Plotted on a map, the seven churches stand in order of a circular visit beginning at Patmos. A little sensitivity to this work may suggest that this is deliberate, and that Johncarried by the Spiritgives us a vision with a very unusual feature. These letters introduce the vision in a way that invites us to read the book from seven very different perspectives within a broader situation common to all of the churches. The spiritual pathologies seen in the seven letters relate to the contents of Johns broader visioninjustice, compromise, corruption, heresy, war, purity, martyrdom, truth, worship, witness and final victory, etc. Such are the theological issues of the vision. There is Gods answer to the modern, secular heresy that wastes us everywhere. It is needed desperately to shape in us his vision of the Christian in the world. We must face those issues! But instead of using Johns vision to shape our engagement in a battle that rages all around us, the very word we need today is pushed into the future! Then we wring our hands and wonder why it is so bad.
Whats bad is our refusal to apply this weaponthis bookto our day. The remedy is not to hatch creatively new and ever more expansive eschatologies. No, in each church, the call is to "hear" what the Spirit says (Re 2:7,11,17,29; 3:6,13,22) to the churches (plural). This shows that the seven are representative of true congregations of the Lord, and that all the letterswith the whole vision that they introduceare for the whole church today. Its time we listened.
Blessings,
Covenant Heart
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