13. Revelation: Images of Judgment and Hope
Revelation: Images of Judgment and Hope
When turning to the book of Revelation from the rest of the New Testament, the ordinary modern reader may feel as though they are entering a foreign country. Instead of narratives and letters containing plain statements of fact and imperatives, one comes to a book full of angels, trumpets, and earthquakes; of beasts, dragons, and bottomless pits.
The hermeneutical problems are intrinsic. The book is in the canon; for us it is God’s Word, inspired of the Holy Spirit. Yet when we come to it to hear this word, most of us in the church today hardly know what to make of it. The author sometimes speaks forthrightly: “I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering and kingdom and patient endurance that are ours in Jesus, was on the island of Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus” (1:9). He writes to seven known churches in known cities with recognizable first-century conditions.
At the same time, however, there is a rich, diverse symbolism, some of which is manageable (judgment in the form of an earthquake; 6:12 – 17), while some is more obscure (the two witnesses; 11:1 – 10). Most of the problems stem from the symbols, plus the fact that the book often deals with future events, while at the same time it is set in a recognizable first-century context. The problem is also related to the thoroughgoing way that John sees everything in light of the Old Testament, which he cites or echoes over 250 times, so that every significant moment in his narrative is imaged almost exclusively in Old Testament language (see How to 2, pp. 428 – 29).
We do not pretend to be able to resolve all the matters, nor do we imagine that all of our readers will be happy with everything we say. It seems necessary to say at the outset that no one should approach Revelation without a proper degree of humility! There are already too many books on “Revelation Made Easy.” But it is not easy. As with the difficult passages in the Epistles (see pp. 71 – 73), one should be less than dogmatic here, especially since there are at least five major schools of interpretation, not to mention significant variations within each of the schools.
But we are also bold enough to think we have more than an inkling as to what John was up to. So we will lead you into some hermeneutical suggestions that make sense to us. But exegesis comes first, and in this case exegesis is especially crucial, for this is a book on which a lot of popular books and pamphlets have been written. In almost every case, these popular books do no exegesis at all. They jump immediately to hermeneutics, which usually takes the form of fanciful speculations that John himself could never possibly have intended or understood.
The very best introduction to Revelation — how it “works” as a book, its basic point of view, and its theological contribution to the Bible — is by Richard Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); for an “easy read” commentary intended for the lay reader, you may wish to look at Professor Fee’s Revelation in the New Covenant Commentary Series (2011), where what is given here is spelled out in a bit more detail.
THE NATURE OF REVELATION
As with most of the other biblical genres, the first key to the exegesis of the book of Revelation is to examine the kind of literature it is. In this case, however, we face a different kind of problem, for Revelation is a unique, finely blended combination of three distinct literary types: apocalypse, prophecy, and letter. Furthermore, the basic type — apocalypse — is a literary form that does not exist in our own day. In previous cases, even if our own examples differ somewhat from the biblical ones, we nonetheless have a basic understanding of what an epistle or a narrative, a psalm or a proverb, is. But we simply have nothing quite like this. Thus it is especially important in this case to have a clear picture of the literary type we are dealing with.
Revelation as Apocalypse
The book of Revelation is primarily an apocalypse. It is only one — though a very special one, to be sure — of dozens of apocalypses that were well-known to Jews and Christians from about 200 BC to AD 200. These other apocalypses, which of course are not canonical, were of a variety of kinds, yet they all, including Revelation, have some common characteristics. These common characteristics are as follows:
1. The taproot of apocalyptic is the Old Testament prophetic literature, especially as it is found in Ezekiel, Daniel, Zechariah, and parts of Isaiah. As was the case in some prophetic literature, apocalyptic was concerned about coming judgment and salvation. But apocalyptic was born either in persecution or in a time of great oppression. Therefore, its great concern was no longer with God’s activity within history. The apocalyptists looked exclusively forward to the time when God would bring a violent, radical end to history, an end that would mean the triumph of good and the final judgment of evil.
2. Unlike most of the Prophetic Books, apocalypses are literary works from the beginning. The prophets were primarily spokespersons for Yahweh, whose spoken oracles were later committed to writing and collected in a book. But an apocalypse is a form of literature. It has a particular written structure and form. John, for example, is told to “write, therefore, what you have seen” (1:19, emphasis added), whereas the prophets were mostly told to speak what they were told or had seen.
3. Most frequently the “stuff” of apocalyptic is presented in the form of visions and dreams, and its language is cryptic (having hidden meanings) and symbolic. Therefore, most of the apocalypses contained literary devices that were intended to give the book a sense of hoary age. The most important of these devices was pseudonymity, that is, they were given the appearance of having been written by ancient worthies (Enoch, Baruch, et al.), who were told to “seal it up” for a later day, the “later day” of course being the age in which the book was now being written.
4. The images of apocalyptic are often forms of fantasy rather than of reality. By way of contrast, the nonapocalyptic prophets and Jesus also regularly used symbolic language, but most often it involved real images — for example, salt (Matt 5:13), vultures and carcasses (Luke 17:37), senseless doves (Hos 7:11), half-baked bread (Hos 7:8), et al. But most of the images of apocalyptic belong to fantasy — for example, a beast with seven heads and ten horns (Rev 13:1), a woman clothed with the sun (12:1), locusts with scorpions’ tails and human heads (9:10), et al. The fantasy may not necessarily appear in the items themselves (we understand beasts, heads, and horns) but in their unearthly combination.
5. Because they were literary, most of the apocalypses were very formally stylized. There was a strong tendency to divide time and events into neat packages. There was also a great fondness for the symbolic use of numbers. As a consequence, the final product usually has the visions in carefully arranged, often numbered sets. Frequently these sets, when put together, express something (e.g., judgment) without necessarily trying to suggest that each separate picture follows hard on the heels of the former.
The book of Revelation fits all these characteristics of apocalyptic but one. And this one difference is so important that in some ways it becomes a world of its own: Revelation is not pseudonymous. John felt no need to follow the regular formula here. He made himself known to his readers and through the seven letters (chs. 2 – 3) he spoke to known churches of Asia Minor, people who were his contemporaries and companions in suffering. Moreover, he was told not to “seal up the words of the prophecy of this scroll, because the time is near” (22:10).
Revelation as Prophecy
The major reason John’s apocalypse is not pseudonymous is probably related to his own sense of the end as already/not yet (see pp. 151 – 53). He is not, with his Jewish predecessors, simply anticipating the end. He knew that it had already begun with the coming of Jesus. Crucial to this understanding is the advent of the Spirit. The other apocalyptists wrote in the name of former prophetic figures because they lived in the age of the “quenched Spirit,” awaiting the prophetic promise of the outpoured Spirit in the coming age. Thus they were in an age when prophecy had ceased.
John, on the other hand, belongs to the new era. He was “in the Spirit” when he was told to write what he saw (1:10 – 11). He calls his book “this prophecy” (1:3; 22:18 – 19) and says that the “testimony about Jesus,” for which he and the churches are suffering (20:4; cf. 1:9), “is the Spirit of prophecy” (19:10). This probably means that the message of Jesus, attested by him and to which John and the churches bear witness, is the clear evidence that the prophetic Spirit had come.
What makes John’s apocalypse different, therefore, is first of all this combination of apocalyptic and prophetic elements. On the one hand, the book is cast in the apocalyptic mold and has most of the literary characteristics of apocalypse. It is born in persecution and intends to speak about the end with the triumph of Christ and his church, and it is a carefully constructed piece of literature, using cryptic language and rich symbolism of fantasy and numbers.
On the other hand, John clearly intends this apocalypse to be a prophetic word to the church. His book was not to be sealed for the future. It was a word from God for their present situation. You will recall from chapter 10 that to prophesy does not primarily mean to foretell the future but rather to speak forth God’s word in the present, a word that usually had as its content coming judgment or salvation. In Revelation, even the seven letters bear this prophetic imprint. Here, then, is God’s prophetic word to some churches in the latter part of the first century who are undergoing persecution from without and some decay from within.
Revelation as Epistle
Finally, it must be noted that this combination of apocalyptic and prophetic elements has been cast in the form of a letter. For example, if you were to begin by reading how John both opens (1:4 – 7) and concludes (22:21) you will note that all the characteristics of the letter form are present. Furthermore, John speaks to his readers in the first person/second person formula (I . . . you). Thus in its final form the Revelation is sent by John as a letter to the seven churches of Asia Minor.
The significance of this is that, as with all epistles, there is an occasional (see pp. 60 – 61, 90 – 91) aspect to Revelation. It was occasioned at least in part by the needs of the specific churches to which it is addressed. Therefore, to interpret, we must try to understand its original historical context.
THE NECESSITY OF EXEGESIS
It may seem strange that after twelve chapters in this book, we should still feel constrained to contend for the necessity of exegesis. But it is precisely the lack of sound exegetical principles that has caused so much unfortunate and speculative interpretation of Revelation to take place. What we want to do here, then, is simply to repeat, with Revelation in mind, some of the basic exegetical principles we have already delineated in this book, beginning with chapter 3.
1. The first task of the exegesis of Revelation is to seek the author’s, and there with the Holy Spirit’s, original intent. As with the Epistles, the primary meaning of Revelation is what John intended it to mean, which in turn must also have been something his readers could have understood it to mean. Indeed, the great advantage they would have over us is their familiarity with their own historical context (which caused the book to be written in the first place) and their greater familiarity with apocalyptic forms and images. At the same time they had a thoroughgoing acquaintance with the Old Testament that most contemporary Christians lack, so that they would immediately have heard and recognized the source of John’s echoes and allusions to the Old Testament and understood what he was doing with them.
Since the book of Revelation intends to be prophetic, one must be open to the possibility of a secondary meaning, inspired by the Holy Spirit but not fully seen by the author or his readers. However, such a second meaning lies beyond exegesis in the broader area of hermeneutics. Therefore, the task of exegesis here is to understand what John was intending his original readers to hear and understand.
2. One must be especially careful of overusing the concept of the “analogy of Scripture” in the exegesis of Revelation. The analogy of Scripture means that Scripture is to be interpreted in the light of other Scripture. We hold this to be self-evident, based on our stance that all of Scripture is God’s word and has God as its ultimate source. However, to interpret Scripture by Scripture must not be tilted in such a way that one must make other Scriptures the hermeneutical keys to unlock Revelation.
Thus, it is one step to recognize John’s new use of images from Daniel or Ezekiel or to see the analogies in apocalyptic images from other texts. But one may not assume, as some schools of interpretation do, that John’s readers had to have read Matthew or 1 and 2 Thessalonians, and that they already knew from their reading of these texts certain keys to understanding what John had written. Therefore, any keys to interpreting the book of Revelation must be intrinsic to the text of Revelation itself or otherwise available to the original recipients from their own historical context.
3. Because of the apocalyptic/prophetic nature of the book, there are some added difficulties at the exegetical level, especially having to do with the imagery. Here are some suggestions in this regard:
a. One must have a sensitivity to the rich background of ideas that have gone into the composition of Revelation. The chief source of these ideas and images is the Old Testament, but John also has derived images from apocalyptic and even from ancient mythology. But these images, though deriving from a variety of sources, do not necessarily mean what they meant in their sources. They have been broken and transformed under inspiration and thus blended together into this “new prophecy.”
b. Apocalyptic imagery is of several kinds. In some cases the images, like the donkey and elephant in American political cartoons, are constant. The beast out of the sea, for example, is a standard image for a world empire, not for an individual ruler. On the other hand, some images are fluid. The “Lion” of the tribe of Judah turns out in fact to be a “Lamb” (Rev 5:5 – 6) — the only Lion there is in Revelation. The woman in chapter 12 is clearly a positive image, yet the woman in chapter 17 is evil.
Likewise some of the images clearly refer to specific counterparts. The seven lampstands in the prologue (1:12 – 20) are identified as the seven churches, and the dragon in chapter 12 is Satan. On the other hand, many of the images are probably general. For example, the four horsemen of chapter 6 probably do not represent any specific expression of conquest, war, famine, and death, but rather represent this expression of human fallenness as the source of the church’s suffering (6:9 – 11) that in turn will be a cause of God’s judgment (6:12 – 17).
All of this is to say that the images are the most difficult part of the exegetical task. Because of this, two further points are especially important:
c. When John himself interprets his images, these interpreted images must be held firmly and must serve as a starting point for understanding other images. There are six such interpreted images: The one like a son of man (1:13) is Christ, who alone “was dead, and . . . [is] alive for ever and ever!” (1:18). The golden lampstands (1:20) are the seven churches. The seven stars (1:20) are the seven angels, or messengers, of the churches (unfortunately, this is still unclear because of the use of the term “angel,” which may in itself be yet another image). The great dragon (12:9) is Satan. The seven heads (17:9) are the seven hills on which the woman sits (as well as seven kings, thus becoming a fluid image). The prostitute (17:18) is the great city, clearly indicating Rome.
d. One must see the visions as wholes and not allegorically press all the details. In this matter the visions are like the parables. The whole vision is trying to say something; the details are either (1) for dramatic effect (6:12 – 14) or (2) to add to the picture of the whole so that the readers will not mistake the points of reference (9:7 – 11). Thus the details of the sun turning black like sackcloth and the stars falling like figs probably do not “mean” anything. They simply make the whole vision of the earthquake more impressive. However, the locusts with crowns of gold, human faces, and women’s long hair (9:7 – 11) help to fill out the picture in such a way that the original readers could hardly have mistaken what was in view — the barbarian hordes at the outer edges of the Roman Empire, who served as a constant threat to the Empire and were thus duly feared.
4. John expects his readers to hear his echoes of the Old Testament as the continuation — and consummation — of that story. You will find this happening at every turn. For example, the presentation of Christ begins with a doxology to him (1:5b – 6) that echoes the sacrificial system and uses the language of Exodus 19:6 to refer to the church as the new people of God, redeemed by Christ. This is followed by an announcement of his coming, which is a collage from Daniel 7:13 and Zechariah 12:10. The picture of Christ that follows is based primarily on Daniel 10:6 but is a superb collage of that passage with Daniel 7:9, 13; Isaiah 49:2; Ezekiel 1:24. In Revelation 5 the presentation of Christ climaxes as the “Lion of the tribe of Judah” (cf. Gen 49:9), the “Root of David” (cf. Isa 11:1), turns out to be a “Lamb, looking as if it had been slain” (from the Passover and sacrificial system). Similarly the preliminary, temporal judgments pictured in the first seven trumpets (chs. 8 – 9) echo several of the plagues that fell on Egypt in Exodus 7 – 10, while the final judgment of Rome in chapters 17 – 18 is expressed in language and pictures from the several prophetic judgments on Babylon and Tyre in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel — and Rome itself is called Babylon.
Good exegesis of the book of Revelation, therefore, requires one to be constantly aware of these Old Testament echoes, since in the vast majority of instances the Old Testament context of these echoes gives you clues as to how John intends his own images and pictures to be understood.
5. One final note: Apocalypses in general, and Revelation in particular, seldom intend to give a detailed chronological account of the future. Their message tends to transcend this kind of concern. John’s larger concern is that, despite present appearances, God is in control of history and the church. And even though the church will experience suffering and death, it will be triumphant in Christ, who will judge his enemies and save his people. All of the visions must be seen in terms of this greater concern.
THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT
As with most of the other genres, the place to begin one’s exegesis of Revelation is with a provisional reconstruction of the situation in which it was written. To do this well, you need to do here what we have suggested elsewhere — try to read it all the way through in one sitting. Read for the big picture. Do not try to figure out everything. Let your reading itself be a happening, as it were. That is, let the visions roll past you like waves on the shore, one after another, until you have a feel for the book and its message.
Again, as you read, make some mental or brief written notes about the author and his readers. Then go back a second time and specifically pick up all the references that indicate John’s readers are companions in his suffering (1:9). These are the crucial historical indicators.
For example, in the seven letters, note 2:3, 8 – 9, 13; 3:10, plus the repeated “to those who are victorious.” The fifth seal (6:9 – 11), which follows the devastation wrought by the four horsemen, reveals Christian martyrs who have been slain because of the “word” and the “testimony” (exactly why John is in exile [1:9]). In 7:14 the great multitude, who will never again suffer (7:16), has “come out of the great tribulation.” Suffering and death are again linked to bearing “Jesus’ testimony” in 12:11 and 17. And in chapters 13 – 20 the suffering and death are specifically attributed to the “beast” (13:7; 14:9 – 13; 16:5 – 6; 18:20, 24; 19:2).
This motif is the key to understanding the historical context and fully explains the occasion and purpose of the book. John himself was in exile for his faith. Others were also experiencing suffering — one had even died (2:13) — for the testimony of Jesus. While John was “in the Spirit,” he came to realize that their present suffering was only the beginning of woes for those who would refuse “to worship the beast.” At the same time John was not altogether sure that all the church was ready for what was ahead of them. So he wrote this “prophecy” that he had seen.
The main themes are abundantly clear: The church and the state are on a collision course; and initial victory will appear to belong to the state. Thus he warns the church that suffering and death lie ahead; indeed, it will get far worse before it gets better (6:9 – 11). He is greatly concerned that they do not capitulate in times of duress (14:11 – 12; 21:7 – 8). But this prophetic word is also one of encouragement — for God is in control of all things. Christ holds the keys to history, and he holds the churches in his hands (1:17 – 20). Thus the church triumphs even through death (12:11). God will finally pour out his wrath on those who caused this suffering and death and bring eternal rest to those who remain faithful. In that context, of course, Rome was the enemy that would be judged.
It should be noted here that one of the keys for interpreting the book of Revelation is the distinction John makes between two crucial words or ideas — “tribulation” and “wrath.” To confuse these and make them refer to the same thing will cause one to become hopelessly muddled as to what is being said.
Tribulation (suffering and death) is clearly a part of what the church was enduring and was yet to endure. God’s wrath, on the other hand, is his judgment that is to be poured on those who have afflicted God’s people. It is clear from every kind of context in Revelation that God’s people will not have to endure God’s awful wrath when it is poured out on their enemies, but it is equally clear that they will indeed suffer at the hands of their enemies. This distinction, it should be noted, is precisely in keeping with the rest of the New Testament. See, for example, 2 Thessalonians 1:3 – 10, where Paul boasts of the Thessalonians’ “persecutions and trials” (the same Greek word as “tribulation”), but he also notes that God will eventually judge those “who trouble you” (the verb form of “tribulation”).
You should note also how the opening of seals 5 and 6 (6:9 – 17) raises the two crucial questions in the book. In seal 5 the Christian martyrs cry out, “How long, Sovereign Lord, . . . until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?” The answer is twofold: (1) They must “wait a little longer” because there are to be many more martyrs; (2) judgment is nonetheless absolutely certain, as the sixth seal indicates.
In seal 6, when God’s judgment comes, the judged cry out, “Who can withstand [the coming wrath of the Lamb]?” The answer is given in chapter 7: those whom God has sealed, who “have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (7:14).
THE LITERARY CONTEXT
To understand any one of the specific visions in the book of Revelation it is especially important not only to wrestle with the background and meaning of the images (the content questions) but also to ask how this particular vision functions in the book as a whole. In this regard Revelation is much more like the Epistles than the Prophets. The latter are collections of individual oracles, not always with a clear functional purpose in relation to one another. In the Epistles, as you will recall, one must “think paragraphs,” because every paragraph is a building block for the whole argument. So also it is with Revelation. The book is a creatively structured whole, and each vision is an integral part of that whole.
Since Revelation is the only one of its kind in the New Testament, we will try to guide you all the way through it rather than simply offer a model or two. It should be noted, of course, that the basic structure is clear and not an object of debate; differences come in how one interprets said structure (see How to 2, pp. 426 – 36).
The book unfolds like a great drama in which the earliest scenes set the stage and the cast of characters, and the later scenes presuppose all the earlier scenes and must be so understood for us to be able to follow the plot.
Chapters 1 – 3 thus set the stage and introduce us to most of the significant characters. First comes John himself (1:1 – 11), who is the “seer” and will be the narrator throughout. He was exiled for his faith in Christ, and he had the prophetic insight to see that the present persecution was only a forerunner of what was to be.
Second, there is Christ (1:12 – 20), whom John describes in magnificent images derived from Daniel 10 and elsewhere as the Lord of history and the Lord of the church. God has not lost control, despite present persecution, for Christ alone holds the keys of death and Hades.
Third, there is the church (2:1 – 3:22). In letters to seven real, but also representative, churches, John encourages and warns the church. Persecution is already present; the church is promised more. But there are many internal disorders that also threaten its well-being. Those who are victorious are given the promises of final glory.
Chapters 4 – 5 further help to set the stage. With breathtaking visions, set to worship and praise, the church is told that God reigns in sovereign majesty (ch. 4). To believers who may be wondering whether God is really there, acting on their behalf, John reminds them that God’s “Lion” is a “Lamb,” who himself redeemed humankind through suffering (ch. 5). And so all heaven bursts forth in praise to “him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.”
Chapters 6 – 7 begin the unfolding of the actual drama itself. Three times throughout the book visions are presented in carefully structured sets of seven (chs. 6 – 7; 8 – 11; 15 – 16). In each case the first four items go together to form one picture; in 6 – 7 and 8 – 11 the next two items also go together to present two sides of another reality. These are then interrupted by an interlude of two visions, before the seventh item is revealed. In chapters 15 – 16 the final three group together without the interlude precisely because they lead directly into the final visions of chapters 17 – 22. Note how this works out in chapters 6 – 7:
1. White horseman = Conquest
2. Red horseman = War
3. Black horseman = Famine
4. Pale horseman = Death
5. The martyrs’ question: “How long?”
6. The earthquake (God’s judgment): “Who can withstand [the wrath]”
a. 144,000 sealed
b. A great multitude
7. God’s wrath: the seven trumpets of chapters 8 – 11
Chapters 8 – 11 reveal the content of God’s temporal judgments on Rome. The first four trumpets, echoing the plagues of Egypt (Exod 7 – 10), indicate that part of this judgment will involve great disorders in nature; trumpets five and six indicate that it will also come from the barbarian hordes and a great war. After the interlude, which expresses God’s own exaltation of his “witnesses” even though they die, the seventh trumpet sounds the conclusion: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah” (Rev 11:15).
Thus we have been brought through the suffering of the church and the judgment of God on the church’s enemies to the final triumph of God. But the visions are not finished. In chapters 8 – 11 we have been given the big picture; chapters 12 – 22 offer details of this judgment and triumph. What has happened is something like looking at Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. At first, one is simply awestruck at the sight of the whole of the chapel; only later one can inspect the parts and see the magnificence that has gone into every detail.
Chapter 12 is the theological key to the book. In two visions we are told of Satan’s attempt to destroy Christ and of his own defeat instead. Thus, within the recurring New Testament framework of the already/not yet, Satan is revealed as a defeated foe (already) whose final end has not yet come. Therefore, there is rejoicing because “now [has] come the salvation . . . of our God,” (Rev 12:10) yet there is woe to the church because Satan knows his time is limited and he is taking vengeance on God’s people.
Chapters 13 – 14 then show how for John’s church this vengeance took the form of the Roman Empire, with its emperors who were demanding religious allegiance. But the empire and the emperors are doomed (chs. 15 – 16). The book concludes as a “tale of two cities” (chs. 17 – 22). The city of earth (Rome) is condemned for its part in the persecution of God’s people. This is followed by the city of God, where God’s people dwell eternally.
Within this overall structure several of the visions present considerable difficulties, both as to the meaning of their content and of their function in context. For these questions you should consult one of the better commentaries (see appendix).
THE HERMENEUTICAL QUESTIONS
The hermeneutical difficulties with the book of Revelation are much like those of the Prophetic Books surveyed above in chapter 10. As with all other genres, God’s word to us is to be found first of all in his word to them. But in contrast to the other genres, the Prophets and Revelation often speak about things that in their case were yet to be.
Often what was “yet to be” had a temporal immediacy to it, which from our historical vantage point has now already taken place. Thus Judah did go into captivity, and they were restored, just as Jeremiah prophesied; and the Roman Empire did in fact come under temporal judgment, partly through the barbarian hordes, just as John saw.
For such realities the hermeneutical problems are not too great. We can still hear as God’s word the reasons for the judgments. As we may properly assume that God will always judge those who trample on the heads of the poor and sell the needy for a pair of sandals (Amos 2:6 – 7), we may rightly assume that God’s judgment will be poured out on those nations who have murdered Christians, just as it was on Rome.
Furthermore, we can still hear as God’s word — indeed, must hear — that discipleship goes the way of the cross, that God has not promised us freedom from suffering and death but triumph through it. As Martin Luther rightly put it in the hymn “A Mighty Fortress”: “The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him . . . the body they may kill, God’s truth abideth still: His kingdom is forever.” Thus Revelation is God’s word of comfort and encouragement to Christians who suffer, especially believers who suffer at the hands of the state, precisely because they are Christians. God is in control. The slain Lamb has triumphed over the dragon (Rev 12:7 – 12).
All of this needs to be heard again and again in the church — in every geographical setting and in every age. And to miss this, is to miss the book altogether.
But our hermeneutical difficulties do not lie in hearing this word, the word of warning and comfort that is the point of the book. Our difficulties lie with that other phenomenon of prophecy, namely that the “temporal” word is often so closely tied to the final eschatological realities (see pp. 206 – 11). This is especially true in the book of Revelation. The fall of Rome in chapter 18 seems to appear as the first chapter in the final wrap-up, and many of the pictures of “temporal” judgment are interlaced with words or ideas that also imply the final end as a part of the picture. There seems to be no way one can deny the reality of this. The question is, what do we do with it? We have already spoken to this question in chapter 10. Here we simply offer a few suggestions.
1. We need to learn that pictures of the future are just that — pictures. The pictures express a reality, but they are not themselves to be confused with reality, nor are the details of every picture necessarily to be “fulfilled” in some specific way. Thus when the first four trumpets proclaim calamities on nature as a part of God’s judgment, we must not necessarily expect a literal fulfillment of all the details of these pictures. Their point, made by the deliberate echo of God’s plagues against Pharaoh, is to encourage believers under Rome’s soon-coming oppression that God’s “plagues” will fall on Rome as well.
2. Some of the pictures that were intended primarily to express the certainty of God’s judgment must not also be interpreted to mean “soon-ness,” at least “soon-ness” from our limited perspective. Thus when Satan is defeated at Christ’s death and resurrection and is “hurled to the earth” to wreak havoc on the church, he knows his time is “short.” But “short” does not necessarily mean “very soon,” as if, for example, John thought that these things must happen during his lifetime, but something much more like “limited.” There will, in fact, come a time when he will be bound forever, but of that day and hour no one knows.
3. The pictures where the “temporal” is closely tied to the “eschatological” should not be viewed as simultaneous — even though the original readers themselves may have understood them in this way (cf. pp. 206 – 11). The eschatological dimension of the judgments and of the salvation should alert us to the possibility of a “not yet” dimension to many of the pictures. On the other hand, there seem to be no fixed rules as to how we are to extract or to understand that still (for us) future element. What we must be careful not to do is to spend too much time speculating as to how any of our own contemporary events may be fitted into the pictures of Revelation. The book was not intended to prophesy the existence of Communist China, for example, or to give us literal details of the conclusion of history.
4. Although there are probably many instances where there is a second, yet-to-be-fulfilled dimension to the pictures, we have been given no keys as to how we are to pin these down. In this regard the New Testament itself exhibits a certain amount of ambiguity. The antichrist figure, for example, is a particularly difficult one. In Paul’s writings (2 Thess 2:3 – 4) he is a definite figure; in Revelation 13 – 14 he comes in the form of the Roman emperor. In both cases, his appearance seems to be eschatological. Yet in 1 John, all of this is reinterpreted in a generalized way to refer to the false prophets who had invaded the church (1 John 2:20 – 23). How, then, are we to understand this figure with regard to our own future?
Historically, the church has seen (in a certain sense, properly so) a variety of world rulers as an expression of antichrist. Adolf Hitler surely fit the picture, as did Idi Amin for a generation of Ugandans. In this sense many antichrists continue to come (1 John 2:18). But what of a specific worldwide figure who will accompany the final events of the end? Does Revelation 13 – 14 tell us that such is to be? Our own reply is, not necessarily; however, we are open to the possibility. It is the ambiguity of the New Testament texts themselves that leads to our caution and lack of dogmatic certainty.
5. The pictures that were intended to be totally eschatological are still to be taken so. Thus the pictures of 11:15 – 19 and 19:1 – 22:21 are entirely eschatological in their presentation. This we should affirm as God’s word yet to be fulfilled. But even these are pictures; the fulfillment will be in God’s own time, in his own way — and will undoubtedly be infinitely greater than even these marvelous pictures.
Just as the opening word of Scripture speaks of God and creation, so the concluding word speaks of God and consummation. If there are some ambiguities for us as to how all the details are to work out, there is no ambiguity as to the certainty that God will work it all out — in his time and in his way. Such certainty should serve for us as warning and encouragement, as it did for the book’s original recipients.
Until Christ comes, we live out the future in the already, and we do so by hearing and obeying his word. But there comes a day when such books as this will no longer be needed, for, “No longer will they teach their neighbors . . . because they will all know me” (Jer 31:34). And with John, and the Spirit and the bride, we say, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.”