Have you tried reading the book of Revelation recently? It’s a tough read. There happens to be a ton of really odd images and symbols that do not make sense to the untrained eye. Yet, those images and symbols can also be very exciting as we hear from a wide range people speculating about what all of this means.
Five Ways to Read Revelation
Preterists(past) are people who read revelation through the lens of first century people. They seek to read Revelation as a message to first century churches dealing with issues these churches were facing at the time.
Historicists read the book of revelation as a grand view of history from the first century onward.
Futurists(Predictive) read Revelation with eyes of future events. Mostly everything in the book of Revelation is dealing with future things.
Idealists(Theo-poetic) approach the book of revelation as a book of timeless truths dealing with God, nations and the overarching plan for the world.
Our approach we will be taking is a fifth approach. An alternative way of reading Revelation. This approach pulls from the other approaches to a degree by seeking to approach the book of Revelation on its own terms.
In this fifth approach we will read Revelation through the lens of the first century Christian’s reading this. We will place ourselves on the ground of those first century Christians and take the words written as they would have taken them. We will seek to understand how they understood. While we do this we will also pull from the idealist approach and seek to read Revelation in the context it was written as a way to interpret our present realities. What the original audience took from Revelation, we will seek to apply to our times.
Who Wrote It? And To Whom?
In verse one & two of chapter one we are told that this “revelation(not revelations) of Jesus the annoited One” about “what must soon take place” was “made known by sending his messenger(angel) to his servant John.”
John, could very well be the beloved disciple, Jesus’ best friend, or it could be a John we have yet to meet yet in church history.
What we do know about John is that John has been exiled to the island of Patmos.
Long before he wrote Revelation, John had been teaching these ideas, and that made Rome very nervous. From our perspective today, Rome’s response to John seems very overdone…He did not have a sword and there was no army to follow him, just a few pockets of insignificant people singing spirituals about Jesus whom they claimed as their Lord.
Scot McKnight
Patmos was not a penal colony, nor was it a deserted, uninhabitable island. John was exiled to the island to remove him from any position of influence in Western Asia Minor.
Scot Mcknight
John is writing as he says in verse 4 to the seven churches in Asia. What this means is John is not writing to you or to me. He is writing to first century people using the language of Old Testament prophets to help them understand how to live faithfully in the age they are in.
Why Is John Writing?
If you grew up like me, then you will likely remember the talks about the rapture happening at any moment, or maybe you remeber reading the books or watching the movies of the Left Behind series. Maybe you felt the fear of being one of those left behind at Jesus’ surprise second coming. Maybe you felt the pain of thinking about how hopeless our world truly is because of the message being preached that the world is getting worse day by day and it will only continue to.
If you grew up like this you may believe the message of Revelation by John is one of dire warning. It can come off like a last ditch effort from God to end the canon of the Bible by giving future generations a secret message about how all of this will end in doom and gloom.
You may view the book of Revelation as a way to decode the mystery of when Jesus will rapture us good folks out or to be able to spot the mark of the beast that will likely doom whoever it takes it forever.
But what if we got it all wrong?
Did you know the term “rapture” is never used in the book of Revelation?
Did you know the term “anti-Christ” is also not used in the book of Revelation?
Did you know that revelation did not say anything new according the rest of the canon of the Bible?
Did you know that the early church reading this letter would not have read it thinking about us but rather would have read it applying it to themselves?
Revelation is not a book to prepare us for our secret passage out of this world that we have to left to ruin. Revelation is a book that encouraged and uplifted the saints of old in a time of intense persecution.
What Is Revelation?
In verse one John tells us exactly what type of letter this is. “The revelation of Jesus the annoited one.”
“Revelation” means “the revealing”, so John is revealing something of importance to the audience of the seven churches. Another word that could replace “revelation” is the word “apocalypse.”
Apocalyptic literature was a type of Jewish literature(Daniel, Ezekiel) that would “recount a prophet’s symbolic dreams or visions that reveal a heavenly perspective on history in light of its final outcome”, (Tim Mackie).
John also calls this book a “prophecy” in verse 3. A prophecy is “God’s word spoken through a prophet,( Tim Mackie). When John calls this book a prophecy he is putting in the long line of prophecies in the Old Testament giving it the same weight as those books of old. A prophecy would be given by God through a prophet to either comfort or warn people during a time of crisis.
Summary
John is writing apocalyptic literature to reveal a prophecy concerning the seven churches of Asia in the first century. This letter is not written to you or me though we may pull truths from this letter to apply to our lives. This revelation though is being written to comfort and uplift those first century churches in a time of crisis.
Revelation is not about the antichrist, but about the living Christ. It is not about a rapture out for this world but about faithful discipleship in this world. That is, like every other New testament book, Revelation is about Jesus Christ- “A Revelation of Jesus Christ”(Rev. 1:1)- and about following him in obedience and love. “If anyone asks, ‘Why read the apocalypse?’, the unhesitatingly answer must be, ‘To know Christ better.’”
Michael J. Gorman(Reading Revelation Responsibly)
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