On Thursday,
July 11 of 2013, I presented a lecture at God’s House of Prayer, a sim in the
virtual world called Second Life where I do most of my social media
interaction. I’ll be using this blog to
post the four lectures they’ve asked me to give during the month of July. Below you’ll find the first installment.
Lecture 1:
Approaching the Approaches to Revelation
I’d
like to welcome you to God’s House of Prayer.
This is the first of four 30-minute lectures I’ll be delivering on how
to begin reading the book of Revelation.
Please
note that it isn’t a study of the Revelation.
We won’t be doing a systematic study of each chapter, verse by
verse. Instead, this short lecture
series is about the Revelation … why
it’s such a difficult book to read, why it leads to so much disagreement and
conflict among believers, how it ever found its way into the New Testament, and
what major approaches church fathers and Bible scholars have used over the
centuries to help us wrestle with its messages and meanings.
It’s
all the stuff I wish I had known before I read a single verse of the book.
For
those of you who are pastors, ministers, or other clergy, this might be a
quaint revisiting of some of your classes from Days Gone By in seminary.
For
the avid Biblical researchers among us, this will also be a review, a
far-too-brief summary of the wealth of ideas that relate to the book.
But
those of you who are non-researchers, non-clergy, believers growing in faith,
Bible readers moving from milk to meat and starting on the path of studying to
show yourself approved – you are my main audience tonight. You are the reason I wanted to create this
short lecture series.
We’ll
let all those other guys, those pastors and scholars, hang around … but this
lecture series is for you.
Some
housekeeping before I start:
(a)
Tonight’s lecture is entirely in text. The down side of that is you don’t get to
hear peppy, charismatic voice modulations from an energetic speaker. The up side is … you can sneak off to the
bathroom and not miss a thing, thanks to the wonders of scroll back.
(b)
There is no note card. The outline of the lecture is to my left,
your right, so that you can gauge our progress through the talk. I will, however, be posting the full text
tomorrow at my blog, and I will make links to that available as the series
continues.
(c)
We’ll return to voice at the end of 30
minutes. When I finally shut up,
we’ll have a time for questions, comments, and voice discussions.
And
away we go …
REVELATION: THE
BOOK OF CONFLICT
When
Reverend Brett first announced that I’d be giving this lecture series on the
book of Revelation, an odd thing happened.
People began to contact me, friends and fellow believers. They wished me luck with the lectures. They told me whether or not they’d be able to
make it on this day, at this time. And
more than a few of them qualified their good wishes with some version of the
words: “I probably won’t agree with you, but it sounds interesting!”
And
that seems a pretty normal reaction, no?
But
I want you to think about it … because that very reaction tells you a LOT about
the church’s 19-century-long love/hate relationship with the book of
Revelation.
First
of all – (1) Think how that reaction from my friends would have sounded if
Brett had announced that I was lecturing on any other book of the Bible. If the announcement had read, “YoYo Rez will
be talking about the Gospel of Matthew, and four distinct ways you could
approach it, based on the Church’s history of interpretation,” I’m pretty sure
that no one would have said, “Well, I probably won’t agree with you, but sounds
interesting.”
Similarly,
at last Sunday’s House of Prayer sermon--when Brett announced that he’d be giving
us insights into Ephesians 2--if I had texted in local chat, “I probably won’t
agree with you, but sounds interesting,” I would have gotten a stern
post-sermon talking to.
That
reaction, that readiness to disagree which seemed acceptable in the context of
the book of Revelation, comes off as silly at best, rude at worst, when applied
to another part of the Bible.
It
doesn’t sound rude when applied to
the Revelation, because we as a church agree that the Revelation is divisive, a book written in conflict, interpreted in
conflict, and proclaiming conflict.
Second
– (2) Another fascinating thing about the reaction “I probably won’t agree with
you, but it sounds interesting” is this: The announcement hadn’t mentioned a
single thing I believe about the Revelation. The announcement did mentioned 4 historical approaches to
interpreting the book. It mentioned that
all four would be covered. It suggested
we could learn something from each of the approaches.
But
it didn’t say a word about which approach I favor.
Nonetheless,
any number of my fellow believers, dear friends all, assumed they were going to
disagree with me, despite my not having given the smallest clue about my
preferred hermeneutic or exegesis.
This
shows that the Revelation triggers
emotions. Not one of us can perform
exegesis on the Revelation without first sloughing through a vast swamp of
eisegesis … because more than any other book of the Bible, this is the one we
were all told about before we set eyes on it.
I think most of us will admit that’s true. First
we were told what it all meant; then
we tackled actually reading it.
So,
this means we’re about to do a dangerous thing, those of us gathered here
today. We’re about to consider a text
that for 19½ centuries has raised emotions and caused division, one that has
turned brother against brother and father against son.
Happy
trails to us, huh?
But
there’s good news, too. Revelation 1:3
offers a unique promise: “Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy,
and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it,
because the time is near.”
This
crazy, madcap collection of nightmares, beasts, multitudes in anguish and
multitudes in glory comes with its own set of seven blessing scattered
throughout its chapters … seven Revelation Beatitudes, for the Revelation uses
the same Greek word for “blessed” that Jesus used with his disciples. This first Revelation Beatitude assures us
that it’s worth it to hear the Revelation declared, and to declare it aloud, no
matter how strange we may find it, and no matter how many emotions it stirs or
how much it threatens to cause division.
If
we move past the risks, we move into those blessings.
(Side note: Those of you who missed Nak Earst's recent series on the original Beatitudes -- make him do the services for you all over again. They're not to be missed!)
WHY IS
REVELATION SO HARD TO GRASP?
I
mentioned eisegesis just now. That’s
usually considered a bad approach to interpreting the Bible. But there’s a reason we all have to approach
the book of Revelation with pre-existing ideas about what it means. In fact, there are a number of reasons. For my purposes tonight, we’ll say that that
number is exactly three.
REASON NUMBER 1:
Revelation can’t be taken literally.
Many
of us in the Evangelical community call ourselves literalists. We even recall the old bumper stickers: “God
Said It, I Believe It, That Settles It.”
We take a certain level of justifiable pride in the simplicity of our
acceptance of the Bible, and we can handle a few similes and metaphors and
statements of hyperbole in the sacred text.
Jesus, we know, isn’t really a
shepherd, he is like a shepherd. He isn’t really
a vine or a door … he shares attributes with those that we need to ponder to
appreciate. He doesn’t really expect us to hate our mothers and
fathers … he is making a powerful point about how deeply we need to hold our
commitment to him.
We’re
great Bible readers when it comes to literal passages with a sprinkling of
symbolism, clearly explained.
But
when we enter the world of the Revelation, all our literalist tendencies are
turned on their heads. We’re told not to be literal (“Those seven
heads I just mentioned on the dragon?
They’re seven hills and seven kings too, get it, get it?”) We’re tricked
into expecting one symbol while being handed another (“Turn around and see the
Lion. Whoops! Gotcha, the Lion you expected is really a
Lamb. Whoops! Gotcha, the Lamb that isn’t a Lion isn’t
really a Lamb either, get it, get it?”)
We’re teased with bits of
information we aren’t permitted (“Whoa, do you hear those voices in the seven
thunders saying really cool things? No,
don’t write them down. Leave your
readers wondering so they don’t get it, don’t get it.”)
To
make matters worse, even the parts of Revelation that feel literal wind up fooling us.
Think of the 144,000 children of Israel who are sealed in chapter
7. Many who take a Futurist approach to
Revelation (one of the 4 approaches this lecture series will cover) breathe a
literalist sigh of relief when they encounter that passage, and conclude that
it refers to 144,000 real, literal Jews who will be saved during a future
tribulation.
But
take note: Revelation is again tricking our literalist minds! Because if we take that number 144,000
literally, and if we take the Jewish identity of the crowd literally, then we
would also have to take literally what the text says about where each part of
that crowd came from – 12 thousand souls from each of the 12 tribes of
Israel. That is a literal impossibility, since 10 of the 12 tribes had literally disappeared by the literal time that John literally heard those words. John would have known that while he
listened. We know it now, too, and are
left as confused in our literalism as when we entered the passage.
REASON NUMBER 2:
The Revelation demands extensive external knowledge.
As
philosophical descendents of the Reformation, we share in a sola scriptura commitment – a belief
that our scripture is a definitive source and authority for our doctrines. That said, even the Westminster Confession of
Faith recognizes that there will be parts of Scripture, unrelated to salvation,
that simply aren’t easy for all believers to understand. In its first chapter, it declares that “[a]ll
things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto
all.”
In
effect: Some Scriptures require a little help to make them clear to the modern
mind.
By
“a little help,” we usually mean a bit of historical context or other small
details that help make a text come alive.
For example, consider a non-Revelation example, the story of the
Pharisees asking Jesus if it’s right to pay taxes to the Romans, and Jesus
asking for a coin to point out Caesar’s picture is on the coin, meaning it
belongs to him anyway. A typical lay
reader would have little trouble understanding that passage, and might perhaps
require only a reminder that “Caesar” was the title of the ruler of the Romans,
who were occupying Judea at that time.
Additional information might enrich the tale – for example, pointing out
that a coin with a human form on it was often considered idolatrous by Pharisees,
and that Jesus was making a more ironic and damning observation when he asked,
“Whose face is on this coin?” after a Pharisee had been the one to hand it
over. But note: these bits of
information simply enhance the story; the basic massage was clear without the
information added.
The
same is not true for passages in the book of Revelation. The images in this book come so quickly, and
are so bizarre, one often can’t tell where even to start. Consider these lines from the description of
the third horseman of the opened seals in chapter 6, traditionally called
Famine. We’ll start with the King James
Version:
“And when he had
opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld,
and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his
hand. And I heard a voice in the midst
of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of
barley for a penny; and see thou
hurt not the oil and the wine.”
Our
first barrier is Elizabethan English.
Here, a penny is not a penny, a “measure” isn’t very descriptive to the
modern mind, and there isn’t a clue what “not hurting the oil or wine” might
be about. In addition, we have a pair of
balances. What, a first-time reader will
wonder, is a pair of balances? Something
out of gymnastics?
An
industrious reader might decide to jump over to another version of Scripture,
if his particular congregation allows that.
Being of a particularly free-spirited bent, he goes right to the other
end of the biblical spectrum, the New Living Translation:
“When the Lamb
broke the third seal, I heard the third living being say, "Come!" I
looked up and saw a black horse, and its rider was holding a pair
of scales in his hand. And I
heard a voice from among the four living beings say, ‘A loaf of wheat bread or
three loaves of barley will cost a day's pay. And don't waste the olive oil and
wine.’ ”
You
may think that clears some matters up, but consider it from the mind of a new
lay reader. Comparing two popular
versions of Scripture has raised a number of questions:
Q: Why do the
versions contradict, one saying a penny and another saying a whole days pay?
Q: Why is one
selling grains while the other one is selling cooked loaves of bread?
Q: Why is one
talking about the oil and wine getting hurt, while the other just says it’s
getting wasted?
Q: If the
balances are scales, what do they represent?
Justice? Commerce? Weight loss?
Am
I exaggerating the difficulties of that little pair of verses about the third
horseman, Famine? The older I get, the
more I don’t think so. As a teacher of
high school students, I’ve come to learn that the moment you presume some piece
of “universal” knowledge, you’ll run into more people than you imagined who
have no clue what you’re talking about.
They won’t understand that balances means scales. They won’t find “penny” to be a meaningless
hurdle, nor will they know it comes from “dinarius,” the coin paid for a full
day’s work. They might not even pick up
from the two verses that the third horseman should
be called Famine.
Please
note: I, for one, don’t think of the
third horseman as Famine, no matter how skinny he looks on Metallica album
covers or in the movie The Crow. I think
of him as “The Horseman of Vast Economic Disparity and Social Injustice
Resulting from a Minor Drought.”
Here’s
the external knowledge that leads me to that conclusion:
·
AGRICULTURE:
Wheat and barley are shallow-rooted plants that suffer quickly in a
drought. Grapes and olives have deeper,
farther-reaching roots that help them survive lighter droughts. In a minor drought, grains perish, while
olives and grapes (the source of the oil and wine in the verse) remain
unharmed.
·
MICRO
ECONOMICS: A laborer in the era of the Revelation was generally granted a
denarius for a day’s work. A “choinix”
of wheat was considered the daily ration he needed to survive … choinix being
the “measure” mentioned in the verses, and an indication that workers were
living hand to mouth, with only the option of buying the cheaper, less
nutritious barley if they had other mouths to feed.
·
MACRO
ECONOMICS: Grains contributed to breadstuffs, the staples of the lower working
classes. Olives and wines were more of a
luxury in Asia Minor (where John is writing), predominantly enjoyed by the
upper classes. The third horseman shows
that staples are rare for the poor but luxuries are plentiful for the rich in
this seal’s scenario.
·
HISTORY:
In the era when this book was written, droughts did in fact touch the Asia
Minor area, both during Nero Caesar’s reign and during the later reign of
Domitian. In the latter case, Domitian
actually ordered that olive and grape production not be halted in favor of
wheat and barley cultivation – a literal manifestation of an order not to harm
the oil and wine.
And
there you have it – the “Third Horseman
of Vast Economic Disparity and Social Injustice Resulting from a Minor
Drought.” The third horseman was not
simply Famine, but a harbinger of a time when a day laborer could barely scrape
by on minimum-wage dinarii, while the
wealthy continued to dine in opulence, despite measures that could have been taken to withstand the minor
environmental downturn.
That
was a LOT of effort to put into a pair of short verses – and that was just
effort spent pointing out what they really say.
We didn’t even start to get into what they might mean in the context of
John’s full vision.
And
don’t worry – I won’t be doing a lot of that “Microscope On The Text” approach,
even though I feel that is the most fruitful way to get to the meaning of the
Revelation. My point in taking that
close a look is to drive home one idea: That it is an act of irresponsibility
to send a new Christian into the pages of Revelation with no pre-reading,
upfront guidance, and constant supplemental support throughout the reading.
REASON NUMBER 3:
It is written in a rare genre.
You
may have forgotten that I was in the middle of three points. This final one is a lot shorter -- the
Revelation is written in a specific, quirky genre, one you’ve probably heard
about: apocalyptic.
What
do I mean when I say “genre”? Not to
turn all English teacher on you, but – a “genre” is a specific category of
literary composition marked off by its unique form, style, and content. The Bible is a collection of various
genres. The Psalms are written in the
“poetry” and “song” genres. The
Chronicles are in a “historical narrative” genre. Jeremiah is in the “prophetic” genre. Job is in the rarer genre of “theodicy.” Paul communicated through the “epistolary”
genre, letters. Jesus didn’t write, but
according to the gospels he did teach almost exclusively in the genre of “parable.”
And,
as I mentioned, the Revelation is written in the “apocalyptic” genre. You may even recall that the other name for
the Revelation is “The Apocalypse,” a translation of the Greek word for
“revelation.” Apocalyptic was a style of literature most popular from 200 B.C.E.
to 200 C.E. (Those are B.C. and A.D.,
for you folks who went to college in the 20th century.)
The
apocalyptic genre pops up in other parts of Scripture, most notably in portions
of Joel, Zechariah, Isaiah, and of course in Daniel, extensively. The Revelation, however, is the only book of
the Bible that embraces it without interruption. Even the opening letters to the churches at
the start of Revelation – technically part of the epistolary genre – are
delivered within the apocalyptic framework.
John is already in the spirit and hearing apocalyptic voices when he composes
the epistles. Revelation is all
apocalyptic through and through, and the symbols it uses are part of a complex
code agreed upon by writers in the genre.
What
writers do I mean? For many years, we
only had a handful of non-Biblical examples of the apocalyptic genre, most
notably the books of Enoch and the Assumption of Moses (both of which are
directly quoted in Scripture in the Letter of Jude). Now, thanks to the 1945 discovery of ancient
documents in the Nag Hammadi region of Egypt, we have dozens of non-Biblical
examples of the genre as well.
There’s
only one point I want to drive home right now about apocalyptic
literature. It is not the same as prophecy.
The two “genres” are completely different in nature. Many readers of Revelation might think they
are reading prophecy with fancier symbolism and cool creatures, but there is a
fundamental difference between prophetic and apocalyptic literature:
Traditional Biblical prophecy is a mixture of what will happen and what might
happen. Biblical Apocalyptic is simply
what must happen, no mights at
all. In apocalyptic, there is no wibble
room … there are no options like those often offered in traditional prophecy,
that if a person or a nation turns from their ways, they can avoid the wrath to
come.
The
prophetic very often provides two paths, two possibilities: the Big Bad is
coming, OR you can avoid the Big Bad by turning from your ways and returning to
the Lord. Think Jonah, the case study
for how God can turn from his wrath completely (and irk the prophet at the same
time).
In
Apocalyptic, no options remain. Nothing
can get better before it gets worse.
It’s game over. There’s
only the Big Bad, followed by a world to come.
IN CONCLUSION
When
we advertised this lecture series, we said we would discuss 4 distinct
approaches to reading the Revelation. As
you can see, this first week was spent approaching
the approaches, without even getting there.
And to make matters worse, I got through this entire introduction
without ever once saying the words “Left Behind” or “Illuminati.” What crazy kind of introduction to Revelation
is this?!
Next
week, I’ll discuss the writing of the Revelation, its author, and the tough
time it had making its way into the Scriptures and staying there … including
Martin Luther’s own rejection of the Revelation with the words: “I can in no
way detect that the Holy Spirit produced it ... Christ is neither taught nor
known in it.”
After
that, I will indeed begin to cover the four prominent hermeneutical models
available for understanding the Revelation – Futurism, Preterism, Historicism,
and Idealism. But for now, I’d like to
step back and allow people here to voice some of their own ideas, or ask any
questions they might have, and maybe even get a nice, raucous, non-emotional
and non-divisive discussion going.
Voicers
will often say, “I yield the mic.”
Instead, I’ll say: “I yield the alphabet.”
Thank
you.
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