The Revelation: Boys vs. Girls

On Thursday, August 1 of 2013, I presented my final lecture in a four-week series at God’s House of Prayer, a sim in the virtual world called Second Life where I do most of my social media interaction.  This is the text of that last lecture..

Hi.  I’m Yolanda Ramírez, “YoYo Rez,” and I’d like to welcome you to House of Prayer for the final week of my lecture series.  I’d like to thank Reverend Brett for giving me this opportunity to share some of my thoughts.  It’s not something I do often.  In fact, this is my first time in 5 years of being on Second Life that I’ve done anything like this.  As soon as I finish tonight, I’ll get right to work on my next lecture series, which will probably be in 2018.

Like all other weeks, this lecture is in text.

You can get an abbreviated outline of the talk by clicking the box to my right, your left.

Series: SOME SAY THE WORLD WILL END IN FIRE

Lecture IV: INTERPRETING REVELATION, THE BOYS vs. THE GIRLS

Let’s jump right in:

Part A: THE FAITH OF MY MOTHERS

Tonight, as promised, I’ll take a look at two final ways the church has approached the interpretation of the Revelation: “Historicism,” the belief that the events described in Revelation map out the entire past 2000 years of Christian history, from the ascension of Christ, through the rise of Europe, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Age of Enlightenment, and up to modern times; and “Idealism,” an approach that says Revelation events are symbols of the seemingly endless struggle between good and evil, with no single symbol in the book tied directly to any single historical moment, and the eternal promise of Christ’s ultimate victory over evil.

I also mentioned I’d be casting this talk in terms of creation’s greatest divide: the Boys vs. the Girls.  That’s mostly just for fun – I could have done it along any number of other divides, like Prose vs. Poetry, or Priests vs. Prophets, or Coke vs. Pepsi.  But making it Boys vs. Girls had a special appeal to me, because it spotlights different ways of thinking about Scripture – the staunch, literal, structured, dogmatic and organized way I tend to associate with stereotypes of Male thinking; and the softer, more social, compromising, gentle, and imaginative demeanor I associate with Female thinking.   Neither of those is better than the other, in general – you can’t build safe bridges without staunch, structured thinking, but you also can’t have brilliant product & marketing breakthroughs without social imagination that envisions new paths.

More on that stuff later.  But for now, I’ll confess the real reason I break the discussion down into Boys vs. Girls: because it gives me a chance to talk about my grandmother.

My father’s mother – my grandmother on the Irish side of my family – was a pious woman, filled with faith.  For all the years I knew her, she had the same Bible, leather-bound but worn and beaten from daily use.  She read her Bible with a hunger in her heart and a highlighter in her hand, marking and underlining verses that spoke to her, and then underlining them again when they kept speaking to her the next time through.  I was a little girl, and that Bible of hers was the biggest book I’d ever seen.  I was in awe of it.  You see, I wasn’t allowed to write in MY books, so I knew it must be a Special book, worth reading over and over, and worth breaking the Don’t Write In It rule.

Grandma knew that book well.  She’s passed on now, and she lives with the Author.  The Bible she cherished was given to me when she died, and it’s beside me on my bookshelf right now.  Her highlights and multiple underlines are still there, and her notes in the huge margins still speak to me from across the decades. 

In Grandma’s thoroughly marked-up Bible, the book of Revelation is the part with the least-worn pages.  Galatians is an underline festival.  Ephesians actually has passages with big circles around them.  And the Gospel of John?  I think Grandma wrote more words in the margins than the Apostle John wrote in the text.

But the Revelation is oddly empty.  Not entirely, because there are notations here and there.  But only one verse, for her, merited her most impressive markup, the yellow-highlight-triple-underline-stars-in-both-margins treatment.  That verse was Revelation 21:4.

“And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and death shall be no more, nor mourning, nor crying, nor sorrow shall be any more, for the former things have passed away.”

Forget questions like “Who is the Beast?”  and “What does 666 mean?”  Grandma didn’t fret about such questions, and went right to the answer, right there in that verse.  “God shall wipe away all tears” – that is Grandma’s Revelation.

Forget debates about mid-trib vs. pre-trib vs. post-trib raptures.  Let the scholars fight that out.  “No more death.  No more mourning.”  That’s her Apocalypse, the real unveiling.

And those debates about whether the seals and trumpets and bowls are separate plagues, or the same set of plagues restated and re-emphasized?  Secondary details, like the men of the family sitting in the living room arguing about baseball stats and the rule changes in football.  “Crying shall be no more.  Sorrow shall be no more.”  For my Grammy, that was the real promise of the End Times, no matter what those End Times looked like.

She wrote her scholarly commentary on Revelation 21:4 – Yellow highlighter.  Then an underline.  Then a second underline.  Maybe years later, a third underline.   And in her waning days, stars in the margin, so that those of us left behind, including her nerdy, bookworm granddaughter, would always remember what the Revelation was really about.

Do you feel the emotion of that verse?  Do you feel how it outweighs every other line and fulfills what the Slain Lamb had been up to all along?  Grammy’s commentary gets to the very heart, the purest emotion, of our love affair with the Almighty.  I could stop right now and say, “That, my friends, is the Revelation, and no more needs to be said.”

Of course, I won’t.  After all, Grammy’s granddaughter really IS a nerdy little bookworm,  so I can't bypass the opportunity to share how other scholars who aren't my grandmother view that very same verse from Revelation.

Part B: THE FAITH OF OUR FATHERS.

Let’s look at the Revelation 21:4 insights of the Boys, the Scholars of our faith.

JOHN WESLEY.  Awesome man, a driving force behind the Methodist movement and multi-continent revivalism.  His written commentary on this verse shows that he found it to be important because it provided proof that the scene being described was extra-temporal, not locked into time, and instead situated within the eternal.  He mentions the tears, but makes clear that his interest in the verse is in its usefulness as a way to support an interpretative framework he fancied.

MATTHEW HENRY:  Brilliant mind, powerful thinker, Henry was a Welsh Presbyterian writer and theologian.  His view on Grandma’s verse: It was meant to remind us we cause our own tears through our own sins, so we’d better shape up and let God be God, and abandon sensual and worldly pleasures that muddy and poison the waters of our lives.

And then JAMIESON, FAUSSET & BROWN:  Founders of what would become the National Bible Society of Scotland.  Their commentaries are a staple, critically important, scholarly, lauded by Charles Spurgeon and admired to this day.  Their take on Grandma’s verse?  They found it “useful”  in its proof that the events described take place outside of the millennium.

Yeah.  That’s it.

JOHN DARBY:  I love this guy.  He’s most noted for inventing the Rapture.  Okay, okay, sorry, he is most noted for promoting the pre-tribulation Rapture that he discerned from the pages of Scripture in the 1820s, (and which no one had noticed before then, to any great extent).  What was his take on Revelation 21:4, about how God will wipe away all tears, ending death, and mourning, and crying, and sorrow?  Darby is pleased that the verse “reflects the elimination of a mediatorial kingdom,” praises “its application of the two-fold portion of the Final Blessedness,” and admires that it shows a new world “recast as a great ‘Rephidim.’ ”

I had no idea what most of that meant when I read the commentary.  And I didn’t expend a lot of effort to find out.

One last example of Boy Scholars, somebody still living:

JOHN MacARTHUR, noted American Evangelical Christian pastor.  MacArthur has an exhaustive audio commentary on the Revelation of John.  MacArthur is detail-oriented.  In his commentary, he dedicates two full hours to the first three verses of Revelation chapter 21.

That isn’t a typo – two hours of commentary on verses Rev. 21:1 and Rev. 21:2 and Rev. 21:3.  That's what detail-oriented means.

Verse 21:4 is Grandma’s verse.  To that, MacArthur dedicates 8 minutes.

I’m not kidding.  After two hours of insights, MacArthur gives 8 minutes of reflection on the verse my grandmother saw as the most worthy one in the Revelation.  They aren’t a very satisfying eight minutes either – I’ll recap it here for you in under 30 seconds:

• MacArthur thinks out loud about the negative grammatical structure of the verse.
• He rebukes anyone who thinks the verse might mean there will be tears in heaven.
• He opines about how resurrected bodies might not have tear ducts.
• He states that eternity is not a water-based experience.
• He complains lightly that John is needlessly repetitive about “no tears” and “no crying” and says, “I guess he wanted to cover all his bases.”
• Then, he’s out of there, away from that uncomfortable verse, and back to the good stuff about how much suffering will be endured by the enemies of John MacArthur and of Jesus Christ.

It’s almost as if Wesley, Henry, Darby, MacArthur, and the others have no idea what to do with the raw, powerful emotion of Grandma’s verse.  Each of them dissects it, looking for hints of doctrine and dogma to round out his eschatological weapons rack. 

Please don’t misunderstand me.  I really AM a nerdy bookworm, and after this chat, I’m going to go research what “Rephidim” means so I can understand Darby better.  But I wanted to emphasize how stark a difference there sometimes can be between how scholarly men and pious, believing women can approach the Word of God.

The Masculine side of our faith, I believe, is on the whole more inclined and better suited to embrace the doctrine, the dogma, the legalities, and the historical data of Scripture.  Those are NOT dirty words – we need doctrine, dogma, and details, so that we can focus our faith.  The Feminine side of our faith, I believe, is more inclined and better suited to use Scripture to explore the Lord’s heart for his people, to envision his imagery and poetry, and to empathize.  And boys, those are not dirty words, either.

I say Boy vs. Girl to highlight tendencies, not to imply firm divisions of the sexes and their styles of interpretation.  Of course there are overlaps and exceptions.  I’m emotional and empathetic, but according to my boyfriend, when I debate Scripture I sometimes “fight like a boy.”  For his part, I see him as a tough, manly, analytical thinker -- but I’ve also seen tears in his eyes during our morning devotionals in the Psalms.  There is overlap, and I think each of the sexes is strong where the other is wanting and in need of support.  Peter instructs us: “Always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; but do it with gentleness and respect.”  I think men, overall, are better equipped for the first part of that verse: Ready with reasons, prepared for defense.  I think women, overall, are better equipped for the latter half: ready with gentleness, prepared for respect.

And it’s in that spirit that I contrast the last two approaches to Revelation: Historicism and Idealism.

Part C: HISTORICISM

“Historicism” launched into prominence during the Protestant Reformation, six centuries ago.  It existed before that, of course, but it really came of age in the 1500s.

The Reformation was a boy’s movement, really.  If I said, “Name some prominent men of the Reformation!”  many in this room could call out, “Wycliffe!  Luther!  Calvin!”  If I said, “Name some prominent women of the Reformation!”, the Google searches would begin.  Many initial hits would mention the wives of Wycliffe, Luther, and Calvin, who were wonderful supporters to their men while the boys held their Reformation.

The Reformation was a conflict of politics, doctrines, authority, and accusations of heresy.  As a result, the Historicist approach to Revelation was a natural fit for the thinking of the age.  It focuses on politics, doctrines, authority, and accusations of heresy throughout the stretch of Christian history.  You may remember that in an early lecture, I mentioned Martin Luther’s rejection of the Revelation as a legitimate book of the New Testament.  I also mentioned he had a complete turnaround after eight years – and from that point on, he began to use the Revelation of John as a strategic weapon to battle the iron grip the Roman Church had over Western Christianity.  The Jesuits fought back against that on two fronts: half of them became Futurists (“You’re wrong, none of the stuff in Revelation will happen until the very end of time!”), while the other half became Preterists (“You’re wrong, because everything in Revelation has already happened!”)  The Jesuits saw no problem with these contradictory stances.  Nothing smoothes over contradictions better than a common enemy, after all.

A Historicist maps all of Christian history to identify events and spiritual beings in the text with actual human events and human beings.  Almost without fail, Historicists put themselves in the last chapters and events of Revelation, and work backward through history from there.  Nobody, as far as I can tell, creates a Historicist interpretation of Revelation that ends in the year 4500 A.D., two and a half millennia from now.  What fun is that?  How could Revelation be interesting if our own historical age is only found up through chapter 6, with 16 more chapters that won’t even take place until I’m long dead and buried?

Therefore, Historicist Martin Luther saw the End of Time as coming in the 1600s.

Historicist Charles Wesley, brother of John, saw it coming in his own 1790s.

Historicist William Miller knew it would be in the 1840s.

Historicist Uriah Smith saw it scheduled for the early 1900s.

Hal Lindsey, author of The Late Great Planet Earth, fancied 1989.

Each and every one of these men wrote convincing, detailed expositions on why they were right about their interpretations.  They prayerfully and, I believe, piously and honestly searched the Scriptures, and in them, they found the point-by-point layout of history that led to their own doorsteps.  They were all wrong.  It’s safe to say that now.

Want to have fun at a gathering of believers who are talking about the Signs of the Times?  If you’re in a bratty mood, wait for everyone to share his or her own insights on how modern events and wars and politics and natural disasters point to the End of Time being near, in our own lifetimes.  When everyone is in agreement, satisfied that they’ve all shared an unshakable truth, speak up and announce: “I think Christ will come after the year 2900 A.D.  That’s just the sense I get from the Bible, especially those spaceships in Ezekiel.  Definitely no sooner than that.”

Then sit back and watch the temperatures rise. 

Part D: IDEALISM

When little boys play games, the games develop rules, hierarchies, conflicts, battle simulations, and complex strategies.  When little girls play games, the games are social explorations of tea parties and food sharing and ever-shifting rules of how the imagination is allowed to express itself.  Think of the brief history of video gaming – boys were the predominant audience in the brutal years of constant-action Shoot-‘ Em-Ups.  But when Sims entered the scene introducing a social, rule-flexible opportunity, sales soared in the female market.  Plots and story lines became more complex, until now, girls account for 44% or more of gamers.

Idealism wasn’t invented by girls, but it certainly has the light rules and flexible understandings that tend to appeal to the Feminine side of our race.  The most famous spokesman for Idealism is the mind-bogglingly famous theologian, St. Augustine of Hippo.  Everyone in today’s Western church – Romans Catholics, Lutherans, Baptists, Calvinists, Protestants of all flavors – like to trace their own ideas back to Augustine.  He’s been called the most important Christian thinker of the thousand-plus years between St. Paul and Martin Luther. BUT … when Augustine writes about the Revelation, modern Historicists, Preterists, and Futurists start getting a little embarrassed by him.  He becomes that distant uncle with the past you don’t really talk about.  (We all have that guy in our family, right?)

Idealism looks at the book of Revelation as a poetic expression of symbols and principles, an ever-shifting kaleidoscope view of the heart of God.  We are a people, says this view, who live as representatives of glory and righteousness, but who are trapped in a mortal tent that sees evil everywhere and suffers persecution.  The forces of the Enemy seem tireless, but we have a hope, the One Blessed Hope: in the End, evil is conquered, and Christ will come in glory to end all death and suffering and pain, and to break once and for all the grasp of the enemy on the human realm.  Then we shall see as God sees, and end our spiritual thirst by drinking from Living Waters.

Every age is an expression of the Revelation.  Are you trying to identify the seven-headed dragon?  He manifests in every decade, in every human institution and government.  Do you wish to pinpoint the Antichrist?  There are many antichrists, and the spirit of antichrist does battle on the Church in every age.  Do you wish to find the exact date when the Millennium starts and Christ reigns from Jerusalem with His rod of iron?  The Kingdom of God is within you, and Christ rules there, even with that iron rod, for those whom He loves, He will both chastise and comfort from within.

Do you hear that?  That sound?  It’s the grinding of Historicist teeth, the frustration they feel when they hear such light, flimsy, wishy-washy interpretation.  “There’s a meaning for every point, and a point for every meaning!” they might say.  “You’re over-spiritualizing the Lord’s final battle plan!”

But the Idealist would disagree.  You don’t approach poetry for its data points; you approach it for its overall sense and feel and guiding ideas & principles.  You don’t approach parables by demanding to know the actual names, ages, and addresses of the people in the story so that you can verify all specific claims.  Poetry and parables are experienced and absorbed and applied to one’s life.  To subject a poem or a parable to point-by-point analysis for the extraction of doctrines, dogmas, and timelines would be like trying to dissect a baby bunny while it’s still alive.  It’s just wrong.  You’ll destroy everything valuable and worthwhile about the bunny with every slice of your Historicist knife.  So, you don’t analyze Revelation – you appreciate its spirit and its principles.  You recoil from its horrors.  You melt and take refuge in its promises.  You feel what it’s like to truly believe that one day, every tear, every sorrow, every moment of mourning will be taken away.

Back to the Historicist: “But that’s a horrible way to interpret the Scriptures!  Don’t you realize there is a Golden Rule of Interpretation?  The Rule is – You must take every word of Scripture at its plain face value, every word at its primary, usual, literal meaning unless otherwise indicated by the text!”

And the Idealist: “Do you feel there is a primary, usual, literal meaning to Revelation’s swarm of breastplated locust with horse bodies, lion teeth, men’s faces, and women’s hair?”

THE HISTORICIST: “Yes.  Those are helicopters.  Hal Lindsey said so.”

THE IDEALIST: “I see.  But Uriah Smith said the locust were the sweeping armies of Islam.  Matthew Henry said they were the first great corruptors of the Christian Church, false teachers. Wesley said they were Persians. Jamieson-Fausset-Brown suspect the Turks.”

THE HISTORICIST: “So you deny they’re helicopters?” 

THE IDEALIST: “Not at all.  I affirm that they’re helicopters, and Islam, and false teachers, and Turks, and Persians, and so much more in the future.”

THE HISTORICIST: “How can one symbol be ALL those things?  That’s crazy talk!”

THE IDEALIST: “No.  That’s Girl Talk.”

THE HISTORICIST: “There’s no definitive divide between female and male interpretation styles!”

THE IDEALIST: “Relax.  That was a metaphor.”

THE HISTORICIST: “God would never end His canon of sacred Scripture with a book that couldn’t be understood precisely, crisply, and clearly, once we have the key!”

THE IDEALIST: “You feel it’s not in God’s nature to have us see Him in a mirror, dimly?  Through a glass, darkly?”

THE HISTORICIST: “Ah, you are alluding to 1 Corinthians 13:12.  You know, there are fascinating analyses of that verse from various hermeneutical schools—“

THE IDEALIST:  “I’ll bet.  Say, I’m going to head off for some tea …”

And so – Idealism.  It’s an approach that’s not satisfying to my inner Scholar.  It’s without firm conclusions, and it’s as maddening as the sentiment in the old joke: “I shot an arrow in the sky.  It missed.”

But it has this in its favor: It can look at Historicism and say, “That’s a good insight, those historical events were part of the essence of Revelation.”  It can envelop Preterism and say, “You’re right, those things happened in the past, the first manifestation of the Revelation’s timeless principles.” And it can break bread with Futurism, agreeing, “These things must all come to pass, until heaven and earth pass away.”

Idealism can look peacefully upon all other approaches to Revelation.  The other schools, on the other hand, can be united on their common loathing of any interpretation system that doesn’t come with a Secret Decoder Ring.

Should Revelation be decoded?  Or should it be experienced and felt?  After four weeks of lectures, I can’t answer that for you.  Like the Revelation itself, this series has been filled with details, but presents no firm, fixed picture of what is true or false.

But I do leave you this: I leave you my Grandmother.  Throughout your life, you’ll hear other believers decoding the book of Revelation for you.  Some of their insights will be brilliant.  Some of them will be utterly loopy.  But as you are bombarded by spins and twists and data and timelines from every school imaginable, I pray there always be a part of you that steps back from the deciding, and simply experiences the book.  I pray that in some of your moments, it will be enough to highlight a verse, to underline it, to underline it again, to put some stars in the margin, and finally accept that one day, you’ll get to hug the Author and say, “Now I see clearly.  Now I understand.”

I’ll end tonight with the same words I use to end all of my blog posts:

“Marana Tha,” …  “Maran Atha”

 – “Come, O Lord”; “Our Lord Has Come.”

*** HERE ENDS THE LECTURE SERIES ***