Comments on Revelation 1:1-8
Revelation is one of the strangest books in the Bible, and certainly one of the most misunderstood. So as we start this study of Revelation, it’s a good idea to think about the best way to approach it.
The best way to begin is to think about what the name of the book means. “Revelation” means “to reveal,” or to expose what has been hidden. The word “apocalyptic” means the same thing: to expose or to make known. This book is meant to reveal or disclose things that would otherwise be hidden or unrecognized. Think of an audience attending a play. They see all the action on the stage, and may start to think that what they see is everything that’s going on. But if the backdrop and curtains would be taken away, the audience would see that there’s a lot more going on than they would otherwise be able to see: lighting and prop technicians hard at work, costume and make-up artists getting the actors ready, and so much more. The same thing is true for what is happening all around us in the world: we may think that “what you see is what you get.” But there is so much more going on than what we can recognize with human senses. There are spiritual forces at work that are influencing and affecting the affairs of the universe. Modern science is wonderful, but it can only go so far. There are aspects of the cosmos that are beyond our ability to observe, measure, and analyze. We can only see and understand them if they’re revealed to us.
Think of Revelation as our back stage pass: this is our chance to learn about what’s going on “behind the scenes” that influences this world that we live in. It is a vision (or perhaps a series of visions) that the apostle John had, in which God showed him more than what we would otherwise be able to see. In the midst of the suffering and distress that fills human life, John’s vision showed him that there is a larger cosmic purpose to it all, and it gave him a promise of the ultimate victory of God and his people over the powers of evil. But the insights that John received from God weren’t meant just for him: he was instructed to share what he learned with the seven churches that he was serving as a pastor.
Because what he experienced was so different from ordinary human experience, John couldn’t simply describe what happened: our language doesn’t have the words and concepts to do it. John had a dilemma: how do you express something that words can't describe? How do you use earthly words to describe heavenly realities? He decided to use symbols, to express a reality that points to a more profound reality. Symbols, by the way, are not simply substitutes for saying something straight-out. In other words, we can’t get out a magic decoder ring that helps us recognize that when John wrote “A,” we should understand that he meant “X.” Sure, it may mean “X,” but it also means so much more: more than we could ever explain. Revelation is meant to capture your imagination and make you see things in ways that you’d never be able to otherwise. There are some books of the Bible that are meant to be read logically and straightforwardly. For example, Paul’s letter to the Romans is a well-reasoned logical discussion of Christ’s grace. But if we try to read Revelation the same way, we’ll misunderstand it, just like you’d misunderstand a book of poetry if you read it like a chemistry textbook. John engages our senses through his use of art, symbols, and images in order to stir our imagination. As they work through you, you'll experience truth he's expressing, more than if he laid it out in declarative form. John’s intention was not to baffle or confuse, but to express truth in the best way possible. To do so, he used images from the rest of the Bible. One Bible scholar has found that Revelation has 518 Scripture references in just 404 verses! It only misses 6 of the 39 books of the Old Testament (the New Testament doesn’t really count because it was still being put together when Revelation was written). In a sense, Revelation doesn’t really tell us anything new: it just tells us in a new way what we already know from the rest of Scripture.
That’s not to say that Revelation is a disorganized hodge-podge of ideas. Like any good work of art, it all flows together, but not necessarily in a logical progression. As we look at this book, we’ll see that it is organized in groups of seven (a symbolically significant number for John). But it isn’t organized chronologically: first this happens, then that, and so on. If you try to read Revelation that way, you’ll start to get hopelessly confused somewhere in Chapter 8 as the same situations start to be described in different ways.
There are four basic ways that we can try to understand Revelation. The first, which is most common these days, is the “futurist” approach. When we read Revelation this way, we focus only on what John’s vision tells us about the end times. While it certainly does tell us about what will happen in the future, that isn’t the only thing the book is about. It also describes what’s going on right now, and what has happened in the past. A futurist reading blinds us to the lessons about right now that John’s vision offers. A second way to read it is “historically:” John’s vision is about what was happening in John’s time. In a sense, this is also true. We can learn about what God was doing for these faithful Christians as they faced horrendous persecution. But this approach is also limited because it puts everything in the past; Revelation means nothing for us today. Third, we can read Revelation as an example of comparative religion, and think about how John’s book is similar to what we may find in other religions of the time. We can see how John borrowed from other religions to make his point. But if this is the only way we read it, then we may be tempted to think that all religions are the same. But they’re not. The fourth way to approach Revelation, which the way I’ll do it, is called the “historical-prophetical” approach. To put it simply, Revelation describes all of history: past, present, and future. It is closely tied to the situation that John and his seven churches experienced, but it’s not limited to it. It offers us news about the future: the promise of a New Jerusalem and the annihilation of evil, but it’s not just about the future. John’s vision is rich enough to speak to all generations of believers, including ours, because the issues that it explores are ones that we continue to experience. Or to word it another way, the spiritual forces that were at work in John’s time are still at work today, and will continue to influence human life until the end.
Revelation is a profoundly Christ-centered book. It is all about what Jesus has done, and how his victory over the forces of evil continues to be at work in our lives and in our world. That’s why, as John introduces us to his vision, he begins with a description of Jesus’ glory, the way that his self-sacrifice gave us the status of being God’s people, and of the victory that he will win in the future. The “revelation” isn’t a revelation of some broad, vague, general spiritual stuff. It is “the revelation of Jesus Christ,” as John’s opening words tell us. The whole point of the vision is to help us understand Jesus better. And as we understand Jesus more, we know more and more what it means for us to be his people.
The best way to begin is to think about what the name of the book means. “Revelation” means “to reveal,” or to expose what has been hidden. The word “apocalyptic” means the same thing: to expose or to make known. This book is meant to reveal or disclose things that would otherwise be hidden or unrecognized. Think of an audience attending a play. They see all the action on the stage, and may start to think that what they see is everything that’s going on. But if the backdrop and curtains would be taken away, the audience would see that there’s a lot more going on than they would otherwise be able to see: lighting and prop technicians hard at work, costume and make-up artists getting the actors ready, and so much more. The same thing is true for what is happening all around us in the world: we may think that “what you see is what you get.” But there is so much more going on than what we can recognize with human senses. There are spiritual forces at work that are influencing and affecting the affairs of the universe. Modern science is wonderful, but it can only go so far. There are aspects of the cosmos that are beyond our ability to observe, measure, and analyze. We can only see and understand them if they’re revealed to us.
Think of Revelation as our back stage pass: this is our chance to learn about what’s going on “behind the scenes” that influences this world that we live in. It is a vision (or perhaps a series of visions) that the apostle John had, in which God showed him more than what we would otherwise be able to see. In the midst of the suffering and distress that fills human life, John’s vision showed him that there is a larger cosmic purpose to it all, and it gave him a promise of the ultimate victory of God and his people over the powers of evil. But the insights that John received from God weren’t meant just for him: he was instructed to share what he learned with the seven churches that he was serving as a pastor.
Because what he experienced was so different from ordinary human experience, John couldn’t simply describe what happened: our language doesn’t have the words and concepts to do it. John had a dilemma: how do you express something that words can't describe? How do you use earthly words to describe heavenly realities? He decided to use symbols, to express a reality that points to a more profound reality. Symbols, by the way, are not simply substitutes for saying something straight-out. In other words, we can’t get out a magic decoder ring that helps us recognize that when John wrote “A,” we should understand that he meant “X.” Sure, it may mean “X,” but it also means so much more: more than we could ever explain. Revelation is meant to capture your imagination and make you see things in ways that you’d never be able to otherwise. There are some books of the Bible that are meant to be read logically and straightforwardly. For example, Paul’s letter to the Romans is a well-reasoned logical discussion of Christ’s grace. But if we try to read Revelation the same way, we’ll misunderstand it, just like you’d misunderstand a book of poetry if you read it like a chemistry textbook. John engages our senses through his use of art, symbols, and images in order to stir our imagination. As they work through you, you'll experience truth he's expressing, more than if he laid it out in declarative form. John’s intention was not to baffle or confuse, but to express truth in the best way possible. To do so, he used images from the rest of the Bible. One Bible scholar has found that Revelation has 518 Scripture references in just 404 verses! It only misses 6 of the 39 books of the Old Testament (the New Testament doesn’t really count because it was still being put together when Revelation was written). In a sense, Revelation doesn’t really tell us anything new: it just tells us in a new way what we already know from the rest of Scripture.
That’s not to say that Revelation is a disorganized hodge-podge of ideas. Like any good work of art, it all flows together, but not necessarily in a logical progression. As we look at this book, we’ll see that it is organized in groups of seven (a symbolically significant number for John). But it isn’t organized chronologically: first this happens, then that, and so on. If you try to read Revelation that way, you’ll start to get hopelessly confused somewhere in Chapter 8 as the same situations start to be described in different ways.
There are four basic ways that we can try to understand Revelation. The first, which is most common these days, is the “futurist” approach. When we read Revelation this way, we focus only on what John’s vision tells us about the end times. While it certainly does tell us about what will happen in the future, that isn’t the only thing the book is about. It also describes what’s going on right now, and what has happened in the past. A futurist reading blinds us to the lessons about right now that John’s vision offers. A second way to read it is “historically:” John’s vision is about what was happening in John’s time. In a sense, this is also true. We can learn about what God was doing for these faithful Christians as they faced horrendous persecution. But this approach is also limited because it puts everything in the past; Revelation means nothing for us today. Third, we can read Revelation as an example of comparative religion, and think about how John’s book is similar to what we may find in other religions of the time. We can see how John borrowed from other religions to make his point. But if this is the only way we read it, then we may be tempted to think that all religions are the same. But they’re not. The fourth way to approach Revelation, which the way I’ll do it, is called the “historical-prophetical” approach. To put it simply, Revelation describes all of history: past, present, and future. It is closely tied to the situation that John and his seven churches experienced, but it’s not limited to it. It offers us news about the future: the promise of a New Jerusalem and the annihilation of evil, but it’s not just about the future. John’s vision is rich enough to speak to all generations of believers, including ours, because the issues that it explores are ones that we continue to experience. Or to word it another way, the spiritual forces that were at work in John’s time are still at work today, and will continue to influence human life until the end.
Revelation is a profoundly Christ-centered book. It is all about what Jesus has done, and how his victory over the forces of evil continues to be at work in our lives and in our world. That’s why, as John introduces us to his vision, he begins with a description of Jesus’ glory, the way that his self-sacrifice gave us the status of being God’s people, and of the victory that he will win in the future. The “revelation” isn’t a revelation of some broad, vague, general spiritual stuff. It is “the revelation of Jesus Christ,” as John’s opening words tell us. The whole point of the vision is to help us understand Jesus better. And as we understand Jesus more, we know more and more what it means for us to be his people.
posted by Rev. Peter de Vries, Old Union Presbyterian Church @ 11:00 AM
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