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This is it, the Apocalypse - How to Read Revelation
84 Plays4 months ago
Revelation is often read as a predictive prophecy for the Western Church, full of obscure symbolism and veiled oracles awaiting future fulfillment. However, if we take seriously the context of the letter, and seek to understand the purpose of apocalyptic literature - we’ll find the letter becomes less cryptic and far more practical to its original audience. Nick explores how this letter would have served as both a challenge and a form of encouragement to Jesus communities seeking faithful allegiance to Jesus in a world that demanded allegiance to the Emperor.
Resources Referenced: In the Shadow of Empire, Revelation chapter by Greg Carey, Edited by Richard Horsley, Exiles: the Church in the Shadow of Empire by Preston Sprinkle, Reading Revelation Responsibly by Michael Goreman, Revelation for the Rest of Us by Scot McKnight, Tim LaHaye, Revelation Unveiled, “Towards an Ethical Reading of the Apocalypse: Reflections on John’s Use of Power, Violence, and Misogyny,” by David L. Barr, Revelation (Word Biblical Commentary), Revelation (The New International Greek New Testament Commentary) by G.K. Beale
Interlude Music: Radioactive Cover by Joel Ansett
Theme Song: Believe by Posthumorous
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Transcript
Introduction to Revelation
00:00:00
Speaker
It's the RepairDyne Podcast and today is your lucky day because we're having a couple conversations on the book of Revelation. It's one of the most confusing and abused books in the Bible, but we think it's important. So we hope you're here for it.
00:00:12
Speaker
Let's get into it.
00:00:27
Speaker
Revelation is the most rabid outburst of vindictiveness in all recorded history. This is a quote attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche. Ooh, starting with a Nietzsche quote. This might be a first for us.
00:00:38
Speaker
Revelation is the most consistently and relentlessly violent text in all the canonical literature of all the world's great religions, according to John Dominic Crossan. Revelation is misogynist fantasy.
00:00:50
Speaker
The apocalypse means death to women. Tina Pippin. Revelation is neither apostolic nor prophetic. Christ is neither taught nor known in it.
00:01:01
Speaker
Martin Luther. Now that took a turn. I'm real excited to get into some Revelation now.
Understanding Revelation's Audience
00:01:06
Speaker
The book of Revelation is probably the strangest and scariest book in the Christian Bible. It isn't even accepted as scripture by some followers of Jesus in some traditions.
00:01:16
Speaker
But in the tradition that we've inherited, it is. So I think it's worthwhile to try to learn how to read it and how to read it well. Sam Lutheran. So I'm ready just to just pitch it out of the camera. To a lot of Christians in the West, even those who accept it as scripture, the book is radioactive, right? But we just avoid it altogether. And if that's you, these episodes are for you. It definitely seems like many people are terrified of Revelation.
00:01:40
Speaker
And then you get a select few who are super excited about it and they want to talk about it all the time. Dear Pastor, the guy who keeps asking to teach a class on Revelation is the one who shouldn't be allowed to teach that class. Absolutely. Do not let that guy teach the class.
00:01:55
Speaker
It starts like this. The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must happen very soon. Revelation 1.1 Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy aloud, and blessed are those who hear and obey the things written in it, because the time is near.
00:02:13
Speaker
At the outset, we know that we should be reading the book of Revelation as the first audience would have read it, right? It's the same method we'd use for any other book of the Bible. It wasn't written to me.
00:02:25
Speaker
What was the first audience told? That the things in the book are going to happen very soon and the time is near from their vantage point, of course. Once you get to the end of Revelation, though, you realize that a lot of the events hoped for didn't actually happen very soon, right? Jesus didn't return on the white horse, the eternal kingdom of God, forever and ever, amen, didn't actually happen in that context.
00:02:50
Speaker
But I think that's the exception and not the rule. I think we still should primarily be reading Revelation as revelation about things present to the author and audience, not revelation to some unspecified future audience.
00:03:04
Speaker
This futuristic way of reading would be a strange way to read almost any literature, I'm convinced, and it makes the meaning of the literature meaningless to the original recipients because it quite literally is not for them.
00:03:15
Speaker
Like the author would have to be like, OK, you seven churches who I've addressed specifically. i know this looks like it's for you, but you're going to have to ignore it because it's actually for people living 2000 years later. Yeah, this letter to you is foil for a communication that I actually have for someone else.
00:03:31
Speaker
There's a really funny social media account that I follow, and it has AI Jesus and his disciples having conversations. It sort of pokes fun at the notion that Jesus or the biblical authors weren't talking to the people that they were actually
Revelation: Past Text or Future Prophecy?
00:03:44
Speaker
addressing.
00:03:44
Speaker
And one of them, Jesus says something like, you will be persecuted for my name's sake. And the disciples are like, ah for a second there, I thought you were talking about us. And AI Jesus says, no, I'm talking to George in Nebraska, watching Fox News 2000 years from now.
00:04:00
Speaker
It's pretty entertaining and pretty cutting. I feel like sometimes I see this set up in kind of a false dichotomy where either revelation is all about these early churches and things going on in that time and place. And therefore, it's kind of irrelevant to us.
00:04:13
Speaker
Or it's written in such a way that it is to be interpreted as all about futuristic events that are relevant to us. So in order to make revelation relevant to us today, we kind of have to read it as futuristic prophecy. Yeah, I think that just misses the genre type that Revelation is and the way that genre communicates not only to its audience, but also provides insights for future readers as well.
00:04:35
Speaker
As apocalyptic literature, Revelation is intended to provide hope through struggle and oppression. According to the apocalyptic expert and biblical scholar C. John Collins, one of the hallmarks of an apocalypse is that it's intended for a group in crisis.
00:04:51
Speaker
We talked about this a little bit in the Apocalyptic Son of Man series. There would be no comfort or hope to that original audience if Revelation was all about predictive events far into the future, in lands not occupied by the original audience or their offspring.
00:05:06
Speaker
This is precisely why it says that it's talking about things happening very soon. There's a sense of imminence to it. And in case there was any doubt, the beginning of Revelation tells us exactly who the original audience was.
00:05:20
Speaker
The seven churches in the Roman province of Asia Minor. But like I said, since all the events in Revelation didn't happen very soon, that could kind of be bothersome to someone that's more apologetically inclined.
00:05:34
Speaker
But when we're familiar with other Jewish apocalyptic literature, we quickly realize, I think, that it all speaks the same way. It paints a picture of imminent vindication and rescue for God's oppressed people, like Daniel in 1 Enoch.
00:05:50
Speaker
It does this to provide God's covenant people immediate hope in the character and the power and the loyalty of God to them. It gives them a hope to latch onto through any season, no matter when that final vindication would actually come.
00:06:03
Speaker
As Eugene Peterson says, Revelation is not prediction, but perception. So in theological circles today, i hear a lot of conversation about like a timeline of events described in Revelation, usually by people who are trying to kind of map all of these events and symbols onto history or onto events going on in our present day.
00:06:21
Speaker
Is it fair to say that when Jewish apocalyptic literature describes multiple events, it's not necessarily to predict a specific timeline of events that will occur in the future?
Hope in Historical Context
00:06:30
Speaker
Yeah, I don't think it's trying to give specificity ah this will happen at this time, then this, then this.
00:06:36
Speaker
And it's all going to start like like the ball is going to start rolling in 2026 or something, you know, 2026 years from now. I really don't think we should be reading it with that type of specific chronological time frame expectation.
00:06:51
Speaker
I just don't think it's trying to do that or has the capability of doing that. It's interesting. In the book of Daniel, it describes events that are historically grounded. It describes like Greek kings coming to power and doing their thing, different battles that are historical in nature.
00:07:08
Speaker
And then all of a sudden it jumps to like after the abomination of desolation and all that bad stuff with Antiochus Epiphanes, it all of a sudden jumps to like this hope for immediate vindication that God's kingdom would come like a stone crushing the oppressive kingdoms of the world.
00:07:25
Speaker
Well, did that actually happen after all those events in that time frame? After, you know, Antiochus Epiphanes profanes the temple and the Jews are being persecuted in that second temple period? Well, no, but like they hoped for it and they really believe that God would provide vindication. And maybe in some way God did. i mean, we think through Jesus, God kind of did in a way.
00:07:46
Speaker
But I mean, if we're going to read it as like predictive prophecy, the book of Daniel just had it wrong. Like that didn't happen in that order in that time frame. Unless you're going to have some weird view like and then there's a huge gap between this verse and that verse and millennia later, this gets fulfilled.
00:08:04
Speaker
ah Sure, maybe there's like a way to read it that way. I just think we're getting it all wrong when we're asking this type of literature to give us a detailed and accurate timeline of when what will take place.
00:08:17
Speaker
Yeah, sounds like it's more like the author is painting the current situation that his readers are in within a larger context of history. Here are the events that you've seen leading up to this. And then keep all this in perspective, knowing that the day of the Lord will come in the future. yeah Even if you don't see it, it's true that it will happen. It's true.
00:08:36
Speaker
Even if you're persecuted and you're killed for the for righteousness sake, your blood will cry out for justice in until the day that you will, in fact, be vindicated, and in the book of Daniel, you will be resurrected to see that final vindication.
00:08:52
Speaker
So yeah, apocalyptic literature puts everything in perspective, and it gives you a glimpse into the future, ah future hope where God reigns and the oppressive kingdoms of the world are brought to nothing.
00:09:04
Speaker
It doesn't matter so much whether that happens tomorrow or next year or several hundred years later. It will happen. And you'll be a participant in that via resurrection.
00:09:15
Speaker
So it's using those future events that the author trusts will happen in order to frame the current circumstance, not necessarily to lay out a nice, neat timeline. Exactly. It's not about speculation.
00:09:26
Speaker
It's about giving perspective and encouragement in the present moment. Welcome to the new age, to the new age, welcome to the new age.
00:09:42
Speaker
One other phrase in the opening of Revelation might be kind of useful to talk about here as well. In Revelation 119, it says, Therefore, write what you saw, what is and what will be after these things.
00:09:53
Speaker
Now, sometimes people take this to be a deciphering tool for the book of Revelation. This verse is taken sometimes as like a a plot for all of history. Well, like European history. So all of history. Oh, yeah. The only one that matters, right?
00:10:06
Speaker
In this scheme, only a tiny portion of Revelation is actually taken as contemporary and relevant to the original audience. But from like chapter four onward, the majority is about future things far off to that audience.
00:10:20
Speaker
Taking the book as a plot of Euro-American history is really problematic, I think. I think some people go even further. Some interpreters not just seeing this kind of contemporary audience and future audience divisions in Revelation.
00:10:34
Speaker
There are some who actually take the seven letters to the seven churches at the beginning of this letter and see these as being symbolic of ages of Western church history. So they're even reading those seven letters as a form of really cryptic predictive prophecy.
00:10:49
Speaker
Yeah, you're not wrong. ah Tim LaHaye is the author of a book series that was popular in the last century here in the United States, at least. I don't know if it had worldwide distribution, but the series called Left Behind.
00:11:01
Speaker
he has a commentary on Revelation as well, if you want to call it that. But he tries to justify his version of what's called dispensational interpretation. His first guiding principle is this.
00:11:12
Speaker
When the plain sense of scripture makes common sense, seek no other sense. That sounds good, right, man? ah Yes, it raises some serious questions, though. Exactly. He doesn't answer the obvious question.
00:11:25
Speaker
Plain sense to whom? To me? in the US in 2025? Obviously not. The plain sense needs to be the plain sense to the original Second Temple Messianic Jewish audience.
00:11:38
Speaker
But he mentions Second Temple Judaism a grand total of zero times in his book. He seems to have no interest in learning from the original author-audience interaction based on their context.
00:11:51
Speaker
He doesn't mention apocalyptic genre. He doesn't seem to be aware of it at all. He thinks apparently that the plain meaning can be discerned by him and his western mind and in a modern world.
00:12:03
Speaker
It's very odd. That would be seriously problematic with any New Testament letter. It's especially problematic with Revelation because it's the specific genre type that is so unique to this context.
00:12:16
Speaker
Yeah, to not recognize the genre type. but you're just You're going to be mishandling the text. I don't care if it's in the Bible or somewhere else. You just don't know what you're doing. We kind of have biographies and histories.
00:12:29
Speaker
We have letters today. like Those are all genre types we're kind of familiar with. There is nothing quite like apocalyptic literature that I'm familiar with that's popular today. So for us to be like, oh, well, this part here, written in a genre that I have no familiarity with, I can just go ahead and take the plain sense of, is so bizarre to me.
00:12:46
Speaker
Yeah, what I mean, what if I picked up a book of haikus and I took them to be case law? but like yeah I would have the strangest misapplications of this. like I wouldn't know what I was doing. I wouldn't know what I was talking about.
00:12:59
Speaker
And that's what we do when we disregard the specific genre type of a book like Revelation. It's really not all that unique. It's very known what it is and what it's attempting to do.
00:13:12
Speaker
Our task is to recognize that and then to learn from its theologizing from within that genre type.
Modern Misinterpretations
00:13:18
Speaker
I think that if we take our own plain meaning of these texts, whatever is obvious to me that it means, that you know, according to my mind, this would render the original meaning of the text useless.
00:13:31
Speaker
What's the point of reading the Bible if I'm going to interpret it according to my particular knowledge and experience? That's somewhat inevitable, of course, but it's simply going to mean what I want it to mean if I don't at least try to ground it in its context. And at that point, it has no authority to speak anything new into my life at all.
00:13:52
Speaker
So why regard it as canon, as scripture, as authoritative? LeHaye demonstrates this is exactly what he's done. He's reduced the meaning of revelation to what makes sense to him, according to a particular context and knowledge base.
00:14:07
Speaker
A striking example of this is exactly what you brought up. He says that though the seven churches addressed in the beginning of Revelation are real, you know, they're real historical churches, he says there's a double meaning where they also represent different periods of church history throughout the ages.
00:14:25
Speaker
So he says the church in Ephesus is represents also the Apostolic Church from 30 180. And the church in smyrna represents the persecuted church to The church in represents the state church from to from 1517.
00:14:42
Speaker
kaattira represents the papal church from five ninety to fifteen seventeen
00:14:49
Speaker
It's plain meaning the text, Nick. Plain meaning? What's wrong with this? It obviously can't have been plain meaning to anybody living before 1900. represents the apostate church from nineteen hundred until today just the plain meaning of the text tonight plain meaning what's wrong with this it obviously can't have been the plain meaning to anybody living before nineteen hundred Yeah, what are the chances that a Christian in Ethiopia or India or China, even today, would have come up with this exact pattern of ages? It's a big fat zero. Exactly.
00:15:22
Speaker
Lahey seems to be seeing the Bible through his own very specific religious tradition and, if we're honest, political lenses, which unfortunately blinds him, I think, to what the original author meant for that audience.
00:15:37
Speaker
To state it really clearly, this is disrespectful to the Bible. It's doing violence to the Bible's meaning. It's to make the Bible mean what makes sense to me and what I want it to mean.
00:15:49
Speaker
i always find these kind of approaches really funny because it's such a bizarre understanding of like the perspicuity of Scripture, you know, the ease of Scripture to be understood. We've criticized some people today who will say, oh yeah, you know, the perspicuity of Scripture means that everything that it means should be easily understood by somebody today.
00:16:05
Speaker
We've pushed back and we've said, well, the perspicuity should be to the original audience. Right. So I believe that the original audience of Revelation would have more or less understood most of what he was writing about, symbols he was using and the the meaning they had.
00:16:18
Speaker
But under LeHaye's interpretation, it means that so much of the meaning of this letter was completely lost to its original audience. Right. There was no original perspicuity, but it became perspicuous 2,000 years later in America. Yeah, it's like such a narcissistic reading of scripture.
00:16:36
Speaker
Imagine John visiting the church in Sardis and they wanted to discuss some of the specifics from his letter. just kind of rolls his eyes. and He's like, come on, guys, stop being such a literalist. I'm annoyed that you would read this as an actual letter to you. Try to be open to the the fuller sense that won't be clear for another 2,000 years. Right, exactly.
00:16:53
Speaker
Wait for a second there. I thought you were talking to me when you addressed me. I'm writing to, was it George in Ohio? Exactly. There are really big problems with the general assumption that Revelation is primarily coded language that needs to be unlocked about future events.
00:17:11
Speaker
That wasn't true for the first century audience, and it's not true for us. Scott McKnight comments that for dispensationalists, the book of Revelation, at least from chapter four in, is entirely about that tribulation, kind of at the end of world history.
00:17:26
Speaker
This means that from chapter 4 in, the text is more or less irrelevant to almost all of church history, especially to the folks that it was written to Imagine I send you a text, Matt, and I say, make sure you get your EV credit before Mr. Spraytan in the White House ends the program.
00:17:42
Speaker
Typical sort of text would send me. Exactly, yeah. You would naturally assume I'm using a pejorative to refer to the current president of the United States, right? And that I'm referring to making sure you get an electric vehicle credit and right away in case the program is discontinued under Doge, right?
00:17:57
Speaker
If we read that text like LeHay reads Revelation, we would read it as if I'm referring to some future man with a spree tan living in some different house that happens to be white about a different EV program that doesn't refer to electric vehicles.
00:18:12
Speaker
Heck, for all we know, I'm actually referring to a rancher in Washington state in the year 4032, a guy who raises competition horses. For all we know, EV stands for Equestrian Voucher to get a free horse or something like that. Right.
00:18:26
Speaker
And spray tan refers to his side gig of leather tanning on his ranch. Right. Like, it's not only odd, but it's disrespectful to the intention of that text when we rip it completely out of its context and just don't take its plain meaning to that original audience.
00:18:44
Speaker
When we rip Revelation out of its first century context and start using its language to apply to any old random thing going on in the world today that I happen to be fixated upon, usually for political reasons, that's equally as disrespectful.
00:18:58
Speaker
Ask anyone outside the United States and perhaps the state of Israel to read the left behind books. And I think you'll quickly see that this approach looks an awful lot like propaganda for American national interests and those aligned with our national interests.
00:19:14
Speaker
It has nothing to say about or to the global people of God. And it frames everything as the U.S. s and maybe the state of Israel against the world, which is like the the U.N. or Russia or something like that. Right. Depends on which a decade. Exactly. Yeah.
00:19:27
Speaker
Caitlin Schess actually talks quite a bit about how dispensationalism was more or less co-opted for propagandistic purposes in the Cold War era. This itself should tell you that the approach is hopelessly detached from the original meaning of Revelation, and it's been captured by worldly, nationalistic interests, the powers of the world.
00:19:48
Speaker
So, how should we approach Revelation if it's not a code for Western world history? i think first, we need to read it as it was meant to be read. We need to read it as apocalyptic, just as we read other apocalyptic texts, keeping firmly in mind the original audience and the issues they faced.
00:20:07
Speaker
That's going to take some work, but we need to attempt to do so. Secondly, only then can we discern its wisdom for us today. We need to figure out how to apply the wisdom from its context to our time and our place.
00:20:21
Speaker
This will take community and discernment as we negotiate with the text and try to discern what its wisdom could mean for our communities in our time and place. So there's not a dichotomy between reading this in its original context and then also finding relevance to us today.
00:20:38
Speaker
Absolutely not. And that's the only way we're going to find legitimate relevance for us today is if we respect that original context. Otherwise, i guess we could go the route of making things up but that won't do if we want to respect the Bible.
00:20:52
Speaker
Raise my flag, adorn my clothes. It's a revolution, I suppose. So, how do we read it as it was meant to be read?
Jewish Influences and Messianic Traditions
00:21:03
Speaker
Well, this is not going to be exhaustive. i have no intention of walking through every part of the book of Revelation here. 74-part series. Exactly. It would be a fun one. Revelation's a fascinating book.
00:21:15
Speaker
But we'll give a couple pointers here, maybe. First, we need to recognize the original context. This is a Jewish messianic work of literature. Revelation is one of the most explicitly Jewish writings in the New Testament.
00:21:28
Speaker
Though we don't know exactly who this John character is, John is a Jewish name. Though the book is written in Greek, its particular construction, according to scholars that know what they're talking about, is Hebraicized.
00:21:41
Speaker
Hebraicized, meaning the author will write. In Greek, sometimes it's really weird or awkward because he's like thinking in Hebrew and then just kind of like writing Greek equivalents. Something like that. That's what scholars call it, but I don't know what I'm talking about.
00:21:54
Speaker
This I do know. No other New Testament book makes even close to the number of allusions to the Hebrew Bible, as does the book of Revelation. Hebrew Bible allusions are ubiquitous, demonstrating the author's deep familiarity with his inherited scriptures.
00:22:09
Speaker
I imagine it almost like a DJ who's like mixing a new song by sampling all these other little bits of old songs. Those old songs are like the Old Testament. and He's just like weaving them all together into this tapestry that he's creating.
00:22:21
Speaker
And as we already mentioned, Revelation is also of the specifically Jewish apocalyptic genre type. It reads like Enoch and other apocalypses. It's also not the only Christian or messianic apocalyptic text. We've got others. They just didn't make their way into our canon.
00:22:37
Speaker
It's unapologetically messianic in that it seeks to exalt Jesus. But notably, it isn't interested in distancing itself from its Jewish roots, as we would see in like the Protestant reformers or something like that.
00:22:50
Speaker
It doesn't see Jewish identity as a problem. In fact, it assumes one, I think. And it lambasts the Jews who cave to empire and the power structures of the world as those who call themselves Jews but are not, right Because of this critique, some scholars think that it's anti-semitic.
00:23:09
Speaker
But I actually disagree. The author is clearly critiquing some aspects of Jewish identity, of course. But I think for him, it's really a critique from within. Much like I would critique evangelicals for many things that they do or say or believe today.
00:23:24
Speaker
The author isn't attempting to destroy Jewish identity, but rather I think he's trying to advocate for what he sees as true Jewishness. The author is convinced that authentic Jewish identity is one that submits to King, Messiah, Jesus and isn't diligent to the powers of the world.
00:23:42
Speaker
In fact, I think this sort of functions as the impetus for the book. encouragement for the persecuted, predominantly Jewish, Jesus-following congregations in the Roman province of Asia Minor.
00:23:54
Speaker
Yeah, it is interesting. If he really wanted to be anti-Semitic, it feels like he would have written in the Greek philosophical style, and you certainly wouldn't have seen allusions to the Hebrew scriptures. Like, if he really didn't want to be associated with the Jewish people, he would have written in a very different way. Right.
00:24:11
Speaker
I think so. So while we might have loved it if the author had worked to generalize everything he wanted to say in the style he was writing in, for better or worse, we've got a text written in a very Jewish context by a person who saw themselves very much within Judaism, writing a critique to others within Judaism, and doing so in a way that exalts Jesus as the Jewish Messiah.
00:24:33
Speaker
It feels like we can't really understand Revelation if we're going to try to abandon its Jewishness. Yeah, but I don't think we can, and I don't think we should. and What about the persecution?
00:24:45
Speaker
Like we said, apocalyptic is usually birthed out of a context of persecution, where people are oppressed or having a really hard time.
Persecution and Roman Politics
00:24:52
Speaker
So what was the persecution that this audience was facing?
00:24:56
Speaker
There wasn't broad persecution, but there were some intense persecutions in the early centuries of the Jesus movement, though they were somewhat geographically confined. The worst seems to be that of Diocletian in the late 3rd century.
00:25:10
Speaker
But there was also a brutal persecution by Nero in about 64 and Domitian in the 90s, which is I think the context of Revelation. It's sort of unclear if he's referring to like the Nero persecution or the Domitian one. Maybe he's doing some things with symbolism from the Nero one.
00:25:27
Speaker
We probably don't have to solve that. But it is clear that his audience was facing pressures from the Empire. I'm personally convinced that the argument for the number of the beast is referring to the Emperor Nero in particular.
00:25:40
Speaker
He calls it the number of a man, which I think we should just take to mean Nero. There's a textual variant, actually. It's one of the earliest manuscripts we have that reads 616, but most manuscripts read 666, which is what people know it as.
00:25:55
Speaker
In any case, if we use Gematria for the Hebrew letters, 616 and 666 both plausibly refer to Nero. I won't go through all the details here, but I've seen the argument and I think it's kind of interesting.
00:26:07
Speaker
In any case, though, in the book of Revelation, the beast is routinely described as the emperor or the empire itself. So even if the Gematria doesn't line up here, even if it's not referring to Nero in particular, the meaning of the number of the beast and the mark of the beast is actually still clear.
00:26:25
Speaker
It's a symbol of allegiance to the emperor and to the empire. And that's clearly how it acts within the story of Revelation as well. Exactly. Yep. So what was going on in these specific churches in Asia Minor?
00:26:38
Speaker
Why address these churches and not others? Because they represent the seven stages of Western church history. history
00:26:47
Speaker
In the century before the birth of Jesus, Rome was sort of going through an existential crisis. Julius Caesar ended up consolidating far more power than any of the previous heads of the republic, and he was declared dictator for life.
00:27:00
Speaker
When he was assassinated in 44 BC, a lot of folks hoped for a return to the republic with the balanced powers of the senate and the other elected magistrates. But when Octavian took power in 27, under the guise of restoring this balanced order, he took the Republic even further down this dictatorial path and declared himself Rome's first emperor, basically establishing the Roman Empire as we know it.
00:27:26
Speaker
as emperor As emperors became more and more powerful in the intervening years, they were increasingly seen by the people not just as political leaders, but also as sort of like divine figures.
00:27:38
Speaker
This is called apotheosis, the divinization of the emperor. Octavian, or Augustus, he was officially deified after his death, beginning the practice of emperor worship.
00:27:50
Speaker
I'm just so surprised that political leaders would consolidate power for themselves. It's so bizarre. By the use of divine language. Oh man, good thing nothing like that ever happens today. Exactly.
00:28:01
Speaker
But this imperial cult became especially strong in the eastern provinces, particularly in, you guessed it, Asia Minor, where the Churches of Revelation are located.
00:28:12
Speaker
Dr. Greg Carey summarizes these elements really nicely. He says he describes that there was an imperial competition established by the provincial council in the region in 9 BC for the purpose of honoring Augustus.
00:28:26
Speaker
In fact, a crown would be given to those who honored the emperor with the most enthusiasm. Augustus's birthday was thought to be the beginning of all blessings. And the regional administrator, this guy named Maximus, he announced the emperor's birthday as the beginning of the gospel.
00:28:43
Speaker
Does that ring a bell? Mark one one. and he recognized that birthday as the beginning of the calendar year. It would be New Year's Day in perpetuity. Augustus was called the savior of the world for bringing peace, the Pax Romana.
00:28:59
Speaker
The region had a bunch of shrines to the emperor by the end of the first century, when Revelation was written, and the cities would compete to host these festivals and games intended to honor the goddess Roma.
00:29:11
Speaker
Again, Kerry shows that these rites and festivals and games and shrines and calendar holidays, they all functioned to bind the community together and form their identity as members of the imperial cult.
00:29:25
Speaker
Since the economy became so entwined with this civic religion, we could call it, it became very costly for those who remained loyal to Jesus to even function in the economy.
00:29:37
Speaker
Revelation 13.17 notes that those who didn't participate, who didn't take the mark of the beast or the mark of Nero, they suffered severe economic exclusion.
00:29:48
Speaker
And that's what the mark of the beast is all about, forcing people to accept and embrace the imperial cult with all of its benefit and luxury it brings. It's always interesting to me the way in the ancient world they didn't make any kind of a division between what was religious and what was secular like we do today.
00:30:04
Speaker
so these aspects of pagan worship and in some places even this emperor worship that you're describing were just like built into the typical rhythms of life and politics in Roman culture. Which is interesting that when we read Revelation and we see criticisms of things that look like they might be kind of religious or spiritual or maybe might be political...
00:30:23
Speaker
We shouldn't be seeking to try to divide those two because those were not distinct concepts for them. Right. It's funny. Even today, i really don't think they're distinct either.
00:30:33
Speaker
We like to imagine. Exactly. We have the wool pulled over our eyes where we think there's separation of church and state. But maybe this is the conversation for the next episode. But I mean, i think our imperial system, our national identity also enshrines a bunch of religious elements.
00:30:53
Speaker
We talked about this on our episodes about power a year ago. i mean, we have pledges of allegiance and the songs we sing or chant together, sometimes in church congregations.
00:31:05
Speaker
We put our hand on our heart and look at a flag and have a solidarity around that identity that it's offering. We just celebrated 4th. A massive holiday for everyone in our culture where everyone goes nuts and spends way too much money and blows things up in celebration of I don't know exactly what killing people because our tax prices are too high or and something like that.
00:31:26
Speaker
But in any case, all of these elements function as a religion. We just don't call it that. It's a little trick. We've individualized religion. So like Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, the major religions.
00:31:41
Speaker
Oh, those are for like you and your private mind or life or whatever. You do your yoga in the morning or your Christian meditation. And that's cool. You actually belong to this bigger thing, this nation, this country.
00:31:57
Speaker
Well, all we've done is privatize what we call religion and then not call the true religion religion. We've called that citizenship or responsible societal living or something like that. Patriotism or love for country.
00:32:11
Speaker
Right. We don't call it religion, but it is. It's religion in all the ways that matter. Exactly. We digress. Back to Revelation here.
Faithfulness in a Corrupt Culture
00:32:20
Speaker
The challenge for the audience of Revelation was to remain faithful to Jesus even when it meant resistance to the dominant culture and economy of their region.
00:32:30
Speaker
The reason why the seer sees faithfulness to Jesus as being at odds with the dominant culture and economy is that the dominant culture and economy was built on systemic injustice, a prosperity for some built on the blood of others.
00:32:46
Speaker
Rome, the famously hierarchical culture, the bottom rung of this was a huge portion of the population that were effectively slaves. Right. Oh, yeah.
00:32:58
Speaker
I'm breaking in. I'm shaping up. Checking out on the prison bus. This is it. The apocalypse.
Literary Devices and Symbolism
00:33:10
Speaker
Let's talk a little bit more about that apocalyptic genre. To read Revelation as apocalyptic is to recognize the common themes in the apocalyptic genre and to discern how it's employing those themes theologically for its Jesus-exalting purposes.
00:33:27
Speaker
So some of the literary devices that are prevalent in this genre type would be like the use of patterns, for example. These can be like numbers, repeated themes, recurrent vocabulary, and things like that.
00:33:39
Speaker
The reason for this seems to be twofold. Since apocalyptic is typically always written by and to oppressed people, like a people in crisis, the use of patterns and themes and allusions allows the writer to kind of veil their language a little bit, since the language is typically polemical against the powers of the day.
00:33:58
Speaker
Maybe that's why you talk about the number of the beast rather than simply naming Nero outright. Exactly. The sensors might pick up on that. The algorithm might notice that you said nero They didn't want to get demonetized. Couch that a little bit.
00:34:12
Speaker
But secondly, the the use of these literary devices is an effective way to capture the imagination of the listener as well. It's the equivalent of an ancient movie. You don't necessarily make a movie in black and white unless you're that really lame Robert Pattinson movie that came out a couple years ago.
00:34:29
Speaker
but You make it in color typically, right? You layer in dramatic sound effects and a stellar score to help capture the imagination. You tell a true story about the world, but with exaggeration and and lucid color, because the goal is to grasp the attention of the watcher, or in this case, of the of the hearer, right?
00:34:49
Speaker
Remember, Revelation is to be read aloud. One of the more prevalent features of Revelation is the use of numbers. You'll notice this right away when you start reading. Three and a half. You know, three and a half years is used repeatedly to represent a limited period of time. And this is riffing off of Daniel, if you're familiar.
00:35:07
Speaker
666, like we said, is used to refer to the beast or the Roman emperor. 7 is used as a number of completion. 12 and 24 are used to refer to the elect of God, the saints. 1000 is used to inspire a sense of grandioseness and awe and perhaps longevity.
00:35:26
Speaker
It's a big mistake to think that numbers are being used literalistically. think everyone kind of understands this to one degree or another. But I do notice some inconsistencies and interpretations where some numbers are thought to be symbolic, while we double down on others as having literal numeric value.
00:35:44
Speaker
For example, oftentimes interpreters will see the 1,000 years of Revelation as having literal numeric value, but I've never seen those same interpreters take the 10 days of persecution in Revelation 2.10 as having literal numeric value.
00:35:59
Speaker
Right? Like, that'd be kind of weird. Like, hey, church in Smyrna, you know, the devil's going to persecute you for a week and a half. Don't worry, though. Things will be fine after that. So crossing the days off on the calendar. Yeah, it's a little weird. Like, the letter wouldn't have even been circulated in that amount of time at that time.
00:36:14
Speaker
Yeah, we definitely have some numbers in our culture that carry kind of specific meaning or kind of a feeling like 13 or something in a poem or movie would be seen as ominous or foreboding. author doesn't need to explain that.
00:36:25
Speaker
but But the numbers used in Revelation don't tend have the same significance for us today that they might have for an ancient audience. think easy for us to imagine that anything that seems precise, especially a number, must be functioning as predictive prophecy just because of the way that we're kind of accustomed to reading scripture.
00:36:40
Speaker
But we've got to be open to the fact that, no, that may not be how numbers were being used by an ancient writer. And the more we're familiar with how those numbers are used in that genre type, the more ability we'll have to actually recognize what they're doing and how they're functioning in that text instead of misappropriating their meaning.
00:36:57
Speaker
Another feature of Revelation as apocalyptic literature is its employment of contrasts. and This is really fun. For example, like the sea represents chaos, while the land and the city represent order and stability.
00:37:10
Speaker
This is really similar to other ancient Near Eastern and Greek mythological texts. The beast, the dragon and the prostitute represent a counter, kind of like an adversarial team that opposes God, Jesus and the saints. Ooh, 3v3. Exactly.
00:37:27
Speaker
The beast, who is the Roman emperor, is a counterfeit of the lamb. The beast had a wound healed and the lamb was slain. The beast was expected to rise and the lamb had already risen. It's kind of a fun contrast.
00:37:43
Speaker
A really important feature is its use of coded language to refer to present-day realities to the author. He refers to Jerusalem as Sodom, an image that recalls unfaithfulness and neglect of the widow and the outcast.
00:37:57
Speaker
It's interesting, actually, a lot of folks associate Sodom with a different sin, but in Ezekiel 1649, the prophet says that they were judged for economic injustice. In his words, this was the guilt of your sister, Sodom. She and her daughters had pride, excessive food and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.
00:38:19
Speaker
And Jerusalem is associated with that. He refers to Rome as Babylon throughout, again, using that coded language. It's not that coded, though. I mean, he does describe it as like sitting on the seven hills, which is obviously talking about Rome, which famously was built on seven hills.
00:38:37
Speaker
He could have been more cryptic if he wanted to. like he was really trying to make sure that nobody missed the symbolism there. What's funny is that some modern interpreters do miss that Babylon actually obviously is talking about the Roman Empire. Like it's clearly his critique running through the entire book of Revelation. It's kind of weird to not see it.
00:38:58
Speaker
But what about the big elephant in the room? The violence? Hmm. Like we said at the outset, Friedrich Nietzsche said, it's the most rabid outburst of vindictiveness in all recorded history.
00:39:10
Speaker
Maybe a little bit of hyperbole there, but that was his perspective.
Imagery of Power and Love
00:39:14
Speaker
And again, John Dominic Crossan says it's the most consistently and relentlessly violent text in all the canonical literature of the world's great religions.
00:39:23
Speaker
Is that true? I think someone is forgiven for thinking so, because at first blush, it is bloody. It does look violent. And it is littered, obviously, with warfare type of language.
00:39:36
Speaker
But I think we need to take a step back and observe a couple things going on that make it really interesting. First, we need to acknowledge that Revelation was written in a violent world, an even more violent world than ours.
00:39:49
Speaker
A good way to portray true power or victory in that world is to do so with the language common to the time, that of a military victory. It's an interesting turn when we read carefully, we begin to see that there's sort of an irony to the use of bloody language.
00:40:08
Speaker
And here's what I mean. It's like the seer is employing common vocabulary for how the powers of the world have always exerted their force, right? Through blood, through violence, through military oppression.
00:40:18
Speaker
But he ends up flipping the script upside down in a couple key ways. It kind of leaves the listener pondering questions like, well, what is true power?
00:40:29
Speaker
Force or self-giving love? Taking or giving? Might or meekness? We're pretty lucky to live in a time and place where violence is relatively rare.
00:40:39
Speaker
My probability of dying violently tonight is pretty low compared to most humans throughout history. I think that can make it hard for us when we encounter descriptions of violence to see beyond the violence to some greater purpose that it's intending to serve within its narrative.
00:40:53
Speaker
We tend to want to see violent language as always being either an endorsement of violence or maybe as an ironic subversion of violence. What if the apocalyptic violent language is simply a way of communicating the scope of victory rather than the means?
00:41:07
Speaker
It could well be the case that Revelation is both inverting imagery of violence and also employing it as a sort of obvious method of achieving victory in their world. An obvious symbol, a sign, a way to showcase that victory.
00:41:22
Speaker
But I don't want to skip past this just yet. I do want to sit with the subversive, ironic element here a little bit. Because there's something profound going on, I think. David Barr notes that there is a symbolic inversion.
00:41:36
Speaker
In Revelation 5, 4-6, we see the Lion of the tribe of Judah. But in Revelation 5, 6, 12, 13, 8, the Lion has become a lamb slaughtered.
00:41:48
Speaker
He calls this not only a narrative inversion, but also a moral inversion. that evil only appears to be conquered by power, but it's inverted so that what actually conquers evil is the lamb who gave its own life in love.
00:42:04
Speaker
The text points out that the lamb's robe is drenched in blood. It's its own blood, not the blood of its enemies. Richard Hayes said, the shock of this reversal discloses the central mystery of the apocalypse god overcomes the world not through a show of force but through the suffering and death of jesus the faithful witness Richard Baucom said,
00:42:30
Speaker
when the slaughtered lamb is seen in the midst of the divine throne room in heaven in revelation five six and seven seventeen the meaning is that christ's sacrificial death belongs to the way god rules the world When the lamb riding on the white horse comes down and is ready to destroy his enemies, he draws a sword and speaks.
00:42:54
Speaker
The sword is actually words that come out of his mouth. The word of God judges the enemies, not a bloodied sword that passes violently through the bodies of the enemies.
00:43:05
Speaker
Again, it's this weird sort of inversion, but using very bloody, violent language. Hmm. Michael Gorman, in his really great Revelation commentary called Reading Revelation Responsibly, he says, Christ conquers by cruciform faithful resistance, not by inflicting, but by absorbing violence, not by actually killing, but by speaking his powerful word.
00:43:32
Speaker
Be almost like in a violent superhero movie today where the superhero spends half the movie regaining his powers so he can finally get revenge on the villain who killed his family. And in the last moment, right when you're expecting that final blow that ends the villain, the script is flipped and the hero decides not to use violence.
00:43:50
Speaker
Like we would be so used to that type of story that when it's flipped, we would be really sensitive to seeing our expectations were subverted there. Maybe for somebody accustomed to Jewish apocalyptic literature, where violence is the means of victory, often this sort of inversion that you're describing would have really stood out to them.
00:44:10
Speaker
I think absolutely. me and you who are much more aligned convictionally with like the peace traditions, those committed to nonviolence, the pacifists. I mean, me and you probably wouldn't write a book like Revelation, right?
00:44:22
Speaker
We would prefer images of gentleness, lowliness, meekness. Kind of stick with the Sermon on the Mount, right? would be easy for us to be just turned off as modern readers committed to nonviolence by the language of Revelation.
00:44:37
Speaker
But it's actually that problematic, bloody language that heightens the sense of irony when it's twisted at the end and where true power is demonstrated to be self-giving love on behalf of the other instead of the taking of the life of the enemy.
00:44:54
Speaker
There's a lot there, and I'd encourage everyone to read the book of Revelation and sit with these themes. It may just challenge our conception of the nature of power and of reality.
00:45:07
Speaker
But the big picture. What is Revelation all about? In a macro sense, I think Revelation is a restoration of Eden. No more curse is what's proclaimed in Revelation 22.3. The creation intention is restored.
00:45:25
Speaker
The process of redemption is complete. Revelation obviously had a lot to say about the Roman Empire and about the Jesus community's relationship with it.
00:45:36
Speaker
But I wonder, what does it have to say to us today in our context? And that is what we're going to talk about next episode. I'm looking forward to it. Welcome to the new age, to the new age.
00:45:49
Speaker
Welcome to the new age, to the new age. Next time, part two of this conversation where things get a little bit challenging for we American Christians. i hope you stick with us. We'll talk to you then.
00:46:04
Speaker
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