The Book of Revelation – Part 41 – The Opening Vision of Christ (Part Two)

As we head into the second part of the opening vision of Christ we need to always to remember to pay attention to when the book itself identifies symbols for us.  In this case Christ himself tells us what the candlesticks are and the stars.  The candlesticks are identified as the seven churches of Asia and the stars are the angels or messengers of those churches.

The first symbol is clear and that is each church that Jesus is going to address is represented by a candlestick in his presence.  It is a powerful image of the relationship between the churches and Jesus himself.  The great mistake people make here I think is that they start thinking future tense and what does this symbolically mean for the future and really there is no statement about this with the candlestick imagery.

The star represents a double possibility of either being the angel over each church or a symbolic representation of the pastor or bishop of each church. The problem is the best translators often end up leaning more toward the angel side of things.  Either way ‘ the messenger” is in Jesus’ hand and thus in His care and authority.

The double image is very powerful if we divorce it from future expectations.  That each church, along with its angel or bishop, is in Christ presence.  That He is both concerned with the church and the ‘messenger’ which speaks to it is one of sovereignty and providential care.  I also believe this is also true of any church.

The great mistake people make, in my opinion, is to assume that there are only seven candlestick and seven messengers.  If the imagery is correct then there is a candlestick and star for every church that has ever existed.  Christ has been concern about every church and ‘messenger’.  They and us go about our business in the world and that image is very common one.  People meeting and a preacher preaching are what people see.  In the heavenly realm, the image is one of a candlestick burning in the very presence of Christ with its angel in the palm of his hand waiting His direction.  One is common but the other image that is given here is something that impacts the spiritual side of life with great force.

This is why the church age theory fails for me because it ultimately reduces the imagery in this part of the book of Revelation to a Western concept of time instead of looking at the relationships between these images in relationship to Christ.  It also fails allow us to come to a realization that all churches no matter what time they have existed are in God’s presence and under his care.  The only real reason there are seven at this time is it is the seven that Christ wants to specifically address at that time.  This along with the other sevens later in the book cause me to think this seven imagery is something to help those churches recall this book was written to them and they need to take heed to its contents.

Next: The Opening Vision of Christ (Part Three)

The Book of Revelation – Part 40 – The Opening Vision of Christ (Part One)

The Opening Vision of the Book of Revelation is that of Christ.  The vision starts in verse 9 of chapter one and extends until the end of the third chapter.  The vision includes a direct vision of Christ and then also his words to the seven churches which take up all of chapters two and three.

I have not forgotten the opening eight verses as they tell us who the writer is – John and specifically who the recipients are – the seven churches of Asia minor who Christ will be addressing.  The purpose is to reveal Jesus Christ and to bless those who take time to read it and understand it.  It identifies itself as prophecy but prophecy has three purposes – 1) to show forth the future or possible futures that will or can be; 2) to exhort the people of God to repentance or righteousness and/or 3) show the true reality of spiritual conditions in the world, heaven or in people.

Visions in prophecy can do all these things as well.  The real trick is to find the clues that tell I us the difference.  Also what might have been future to the original reader might have already been fulfilled in the past for us.  Isaiah spoke of a virgin being with child in his day which was a prophecy for the future in his day, but when Mary became pregnant with Jesus it was present for her and ultimately it is a past event for us.  I say that to remind us that some of these visions my have already been fulfilled.

There also needs to be something said about chronological order as well.  Prophecy does not always follow a chronology and even another apocalyptic book – Daniel bears this out.  In Daniel you see visions of future kingdoms that will be raised up and then torn down but later visions either repeat this or offer explanation to the process of certain changes but they do not necessarily follow  timeline and they jump around a bit.  The same could be true for Revelation.

That said I think this particular vision was present for John as he saw it and in the past to us.  The point of the vision is to send a message to the seven churches directly from Christ using John as the scribe.  Christ is seeking to reveal himself more fully to them and the opening vision begins doing that right away.

If we were to take the gospels and the writings of Paul and other writers only without Revelation we would get the image of Jesus as suffering servant and one who died for the sins of the world.  Revelation already begins to deepen that by creating a picture of a powerful figure who is present with his church and watching over each church with special care. There is power here to act and bring to judgment.  The visual image is one of Christ as divine where the rest of the New Testament touches Christ’s Humanity. Without Revelation much of our understanding of the majesty and divinity of Christ is lost.

Next: The Opening Vision of Christ (Part Two)

The Book of Revelation – Part 39 – The Knowledge and Mystery of the Seven Churches

The first thing we need to dismiss is the idea that the churches represent some seven ages of the church because if we are going to interpret Revelation with an eye on how it was originally understood we need to realize these seven churches were real churches with real people with real leaders.  Jesus is addressing them and not some vision of the future for the church universal.

So what then do we know about them?

The Church of Ephesus

The church of Ephesus was addressed in its own book Ephesians by Paul and Paul left Timothy there to be its bishop at the time of the Pastoral Epistles.  The temple of Diana was its central core and became a place of dispute between Paul and the silversmiths in Acts.  In Roman times the city was the capital of Asia Minor.  It was ultimately the area’s richest and most influential city.  It remained so until the Goths sacked it in the third century AD.

The Church of Smyrna

The church of Smyrna is shrouded in mystery because very little is known until later when church fathers like Polycarp and others write of it.  At the time of Revelation being written it was constantly in competition with its two neighbors Ephesus and Pergamum to be the best city in Asia Minor.  It had a significant Jewish colony and so the church was probably made up of both Jews and Gentiles.  Other than that the Bible and other sources tell us little of the church at the time.

The Church of Pergamum

The church in Pergamum is not as well known either.  The city was constantly a place that changed hands but it had one main feature which was its temple to the god Zeus.  It was a proper roman city and the church in it would have been faced on every side with this fact.

The Church of Thyatira

Thyatira is mentioned as the place Lydia was from who met Paul and Silas when they were in Philippi in the book of Acts.  The city was known for the dyes and textiles, thus Lydia was a seller of purple.  The town was devoted to this trade so all of its occupants were tradesmen both Jew and Gentile.

The Church of Sardis

Sardis had been almost destroyed in a earthquake in 17AD.  It would have been a place that had old rebuilt buildings and new construction.  It was a prominent city until the Turks came in the middle ages.  The synagogue at Sardis during the time of John and Revelation is well constructed and elaborate indicating a prominent Jewish community.

The Church of Philadelphia

The church in Philadelphia was another in the midst of a prominent Jewish community.  It had been a place very devoted to the emperors and emperor worship and so when Christians cam along refusing to do so, Christians are often persecuted here during Roman occupation.

The Church of Laodicea

Laodicea receives passing mention by Paul in Colossians.  Part of the archeology of the ruins of the city shows something very interesting.  Not having a good water supply they attempted to pump one in from another source but they tried to be creative about it and instead of using aqueducts like the romans they used clay pipes.  In the distance, it took to travel from the source the sun would make the cold water lukewarm and if the clay pipes were not replaced promptly – sludgy warm water resulted that was undrinkable.   The city was also known for its banking industry, black wool trade and eye salve.  Also of note again is the prominent Jewish community.

All of these churches had Jewish communities who would have understood symbolism and prophetic visions from a Jewish point of view.  Give also the churches in the same cites were made up of both Jewish and Gentile believers, this symbolism would have been known to the churches as well.  One of the great things modern interpreters almost completely ignore is how Jewish people would perceive symbolism like the 144,000 and the city of Jerusalem coming down from heaven.

The other thing they all had in common is they were on the same trade route with Roman roads and in prominent cities for Roman.  Roman persecution of the church happened regularly in this area and most of these cities had temples dedicated to pagan gods.  These symbols would also be used as well and everyone would have understood them as well.

My point is that the Book of Revelation was meant to be understood by the original readers and those readers had a certain conception of those symbols and images that if we are to interpret correctly we must as best as possible try to find and understand.  Many of these understandings are unfortunately lost but others are known and we should respect them.

Next: The Opening Vision of Christ

The Book of Revelation – Part 38 – Vision by Vision and Visions within Visions

The structure of the Book of Revelation I think offers us interpretive clues as well.  In my understanding their are certain overarching visions that span good portions of the entire book.  Within those overarching visions are visions that interrupt the flow of those overarching themes and they may help us understand the overarching visions a little better in some respects.  There are also stand alone visions that are not under the overarching ones and often fill space between the overarching visions.

In any case the placement of these visions might tell us somewhat about how to interpret them and may have some bearing on how to interpret them as to whether they are speaking of exhortation, explanation or revealing of the future. If they are prophetic it might also give us some insight into whether or not they have been fulfilled or not.  The lists of each kind of them follows:

Overarching Visions

The Opening Vision of Christ

The Seven Seals

The Seven Trumpets

The Seven Bowls

The Fall Of Babylon

The Return of Christ

Interrupting Visions

The 144000 and the Great Multitude

The Angel and the Little Book

The Two Witnesses

Armageddon

Stand Alone Visions  

The Woman, The Dragon and the Child

The Beast From the Sea

The Beast From the Earth

The Lamb and the 144000

The Vision of Three Angels

A Scene in  Heaven

My plan is to go through the book again interpreting it as I go but using these structural understandings.  One other thing must however be considered and that is what we know and don’t know about the seven churches of Asia Minor at the time of the writing of the book.

Next: The Knowledge and Mystery of the Seven Churches

The Book of Revelation – Part 37 – Roadmap of the Future?

To give the short answer to the question of: Is the Book of Revelation a Roadmap to the Future?, I would have to say NO.  There are future elements to the book but not everything in it is about the future and I am not sure we can say that it is a roadmap because that would assume the order to the book means something like we would perceive a timeline from a western point of view.  I think not and in large part it is because there are indeed certain rules when interpreting the Bible and we violate many of these when coming to this book.

The great challenge I had in observing this book was setting aside everything I had been taught and just letting the book speak for itself.  The first rule that I see violated is the idea that we have in interpretation that we should never read into the scripture but draw our meaning out of it.  Most interpreters of the Book of Revelation violate this rule on a regular basis.  I think to assume modern technology, a timeline or even giving symbols in the book modern understandings is to read into the book.  One of the classic ways this is done by some is to assume the book describes a period of time known as the Great Tribulation, but the book itself does not say this.

The other failure is to respect throughout the book the author of the book’s purpose and what the original recipients of the book would have understood about the book.  This is quite evident when people hit verse one of chapter four and basically ignore what the seven churches would have thought about the visions of Revelation.  It is written in symbols they would have understood and would have guided their future action.

For that matter, one of the big assumptions is about the nature of prophetic literature and in particular apocalyptic literature.  Prophecy in the Bible does not spend the vast majority of its time predicting the future.  Rather, it spends most of its time trying to bring the people it is addressed to a certain action to either change or fulfill the future spoken of in the prophecy.  This also leads to another assumption about prophecy that must go when looking at Revelation – that once God prophesies something it is set in stone, but any look at Old Testament prophecy will show that some prophecies are not fulfilled and often the reason is the conditions change from the time the prophecy is made.  Revelation may have the same time locked conditionality so now that 1900 years have passed some of the prophecies made in it are now null and void.  We also have to concede that some of them may have been fulfilled and some of the revelations in the book may have not been about the future at all but showing the present spiritual state of things from God’s perspective.

The real challenge for me is how to proceed in interpreting the book but I think I must go back to the beginning and look at it again with the idea that each vision is something either past. present or future or a combination of all three in that the thing revealed has always been.  Each vision stands on its own and as part of a whole.  The overarching purpose also remains that each vision is Jesus revealing something of himself to the seven churches.

Next: Vision by Vision and Vision’s within Visions

The Book of Revelation – Part 36 – The Book of Revelation’s Purpose

The real difficulty in in interpreting any book of the Bible is finding out why it is written.  Once you find out a book’s purpose you can use that understanding to guide your understanding of the rest of the book.  In the case of the book of revelation we have to deal with some multiple issues when discerning the books purpose.

1. We need to ask who is really the inspiration and in effect the writer of the book of Revelation.  John is putting the pen to the paper, but the fact remains he is simply recording what he is told to record and what he sees.  In a very real way, the entire Trinity is the author of the book and John is acting more like a scribe than an author.  Much like Paul probably used a scribe to dictate his letters, God is using John to dictate a letter of his own.

2. “The Revelation of Jesus Christ” – Not a revelation of future events, not a revelation of secret Bible codes but to reveal Jesus Christ himself.  Every statement and vision is about revealing something about Jesus Christ.  It should be noted that the images of Jesus in the Book of Revelation are unique in many ways even to the New Testament.  It is one of the rare looks of Christ as Conqueror and King.  The rest of the New Testament depicts Christ as servant and sacrifice, but the book of Revelation depicts him as not only the Lamb, but also the Lion and King of Kings and Lord of Lords.  It is in revelation that we see an image of Jesus as a ruler with a ‘rod of iron’.

3. The recipients of the book of Revelation were seven churches who really existed in Asia Minor (Turkey).  They were populated with real people at the time of the writing and all of these churches needed something from this book.  Jesus has a message for them and it does not stop at the end of chapter 3.  Their issues and problems are the guiding force of the visions that are seen.  I have more to say on this later, but part of the purpose of Revelation is to address the problems and issues of these seven churches and the moment we forget that, we are doing a great disservice to this book.  It would be like reading 1st Corinthians and not wanting to understand the issues facing the Corinthian church.

4.   “Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after these things.” – the real problem with this segment of the first verse of revelation four is that it can point to several things.  It really does not point to a timeline but a general statement about the future, sort of.  There is no indication of timeline here or how long it will take before these things come to pass.  NO version of this phrase gives a time idea except a future tense which could be a day to millennia.  There is definitely a purpose of future revelation of events, but how long and what they are connected to is never spoken.  It also leaves open the possibility that some of the visions depict events that have already taken place some even in the time of the seven churches.

5. There are several expressions in the book of Revelation that indicate the original recipients would understand what was being said.  To me this also points to a purpose that was more first century than modern times.

As I look down the road at interpreting this book I am going to have to say that the main problem I am going to have is not that the interpretation does not make sense but that modern Christians have been conditioned to an interpretation that does not consider these things at all.  In large part, most current thought on the book of Revelation is focused on having some roadmap of the future.  While there is a future view aspect to the book of Revelation, that is not its main purpose which is to reveal Jesus Christ as he is.  Unfortunately, I have to deal with the common interpretations of Revelation and put them out of our heads so we can start fresh.

Next: Revelation – Roadmap of the Future?

The Book of Revelation – Part 35 – The Final Message

Revelation 22 ends with a final message that actually contains several quick messages that need to be heeded.

1) Verses 10-13 are an admonition to let the prophecy stand open and not be closed and that each person will ultimately be held responsible for what they do because Christ is the Alpha and Omega.

2) Verses 14-15 offer a differentiation between the righteous that will inherit eternal life and the unrighteous who will not.

3) Verse 16 is a direct address by Jesus that he has told the churches these things.  There might be a clue in some way to the purpose and understanding of the book of Revelation as a whole here.

4) Verse 17 is a call for people to come to Christ and his church.

5) Verse 18-19 are a solemn warning not to add or take away from the words of this prophecy, the penalty for which is addition to the plagues found in the book and loss of eternal life.

6) Verses 20-21 are a final admonition to people to remember that Jesus is coming quickly.

Oddly enough this acts like other epistles at the end as writers are trying to squeeze in each sentence as they run out of paper.  At the same time, these words are calling us back to the original recipients of this letter the seven churches.  I don’t think they would have looked at these words in the same way we do. It would have been looked at  a something that would have happened in their lifetime, but then it didn’t happen so that leaves us with many questions still to answer.

This concludes the first stage of my struggle with the Book of Revelation which is to observe the text and simply read what the book says.  Now it is time to find some sort of meaning to the book through interpretation.  I want to start with trying to find the book’s purpose.

Next: The Book of Revelation’s Purpose

The Book of Revelation – Part 34 – The River and Tree of Life

Revelation 22 opens with another vision and it appears to be inside the New Jerusalem as there is mention of ‘middle of the street’ and the place where the throne of God is.  The picture is of a straight river that runs to the tree of life.  The tree of life itself gives off a different fruit every month and their are twelve of them.  Given all the other changes like no sun or moon this seems to be the only way to tell time in the new earth.  There will no longer be any curse and the Lord will be the light so there is no more night because the Lord is always with the people.  The picture is the picture of eternal life with Christ.

To the people of the seven churches, the symbolism would have been obvious from Genesis.  Particularly the Jewish Christians would have recognized the Tree of Life and God dwelling permanently with his people.

The section ends with an affirmation that these things will be done and that the person who heeds this prophecy will be blessed.  In response even John himself falls at one of the angels feet, but the angel reminds him that he is just a servant of God like himself.  There is only one thing left for John to write.

Next: The Final Message

The Book of Revelation – Part 33 – All Things Become New

In Revelation chapter 21 we see the beginnings of a new things.  The old heaven and earth are gone and so God creates something new.  New heaven, new earth, New Jerusalem and ultimately new order of the universe for mankind.

The first thing that is seen in the new world is that God will once again be dwelling with men.  When you look at this first paragraph you see a restoration of many things mankind had before the fall: 1) Dwelling with God – He being their God and they being his people; 2) No tears, no death, no morning, no pain — all that part of the old world has passed away.

There is also God’s promise that he is making all things new and that anyone who is part of this world can come freely to the waters of life and be called His son.  There is also a warning however that not everyone will be here in this new world and their part is the lake of fire – the second death.

The scene then shifts to the New Jerusalem which is described by an angel as the bride, the wife of the Lamb.  This city is described as basically a cube that is so large that we are definitely talking not only a large place for it to sit on the earth, but that the new earth must be significantly larger that the one we are currently on.  It is a city that is made of everything you can see as precious from gold to the most precious of stones. The most significant thing about this city is the absence of the temple.  It is not necessary as the Lord will be the temple.  It also has no light because the lamb of God will be its light and the light of the whole world.

Next: The River and Tree of Life

The Book of Revelation – Part 32 – The Great White Throne

Text: Revelation 20:11-15

Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

Revelation chapter 20 ends with a picture of judgement, the person on the throne is debatable.  Some say it is Christ, others say it is the Father.  I think it is the Father.  Mostly this is because we already have a fairly good description of Christ through the who book, but here is someone who differently described and is so powerful in his ability to judge that the old heaven and earth basically melt into nothing in his presence.  It is because of this I think we may be dealing with the final judgement of all things that were created as the Father is the final authority in all things.

In this judgement every person is judged from the least to the greatest.  While those who earlier in the chapter who did not worship the image of the Beast or take his mark are guaranteed not to taste fo second death, the rest must be judged by the one on the throne to see if they also taste of eternal life or the second death.

In this vision, judgment and justice takes place on two levels — first the books are opened and people are judged on what they have done,  This does indicate that part of final judgment is based on deeds and the passage does not say exactly how this works but it is present.  The second part of judgment and the ultimate determining factor is the Book of Life:  if you are in it, you go on to eternal life; if you are not or have been blotted out, the second death in the Lake of Fire.  The book of life has been mentioned before in Revelation several times as this determining factor.

Another thing that happens in this passage is that Death (Sheol?) and Hades are thrown in the lake of fire as well.  This indicates that these places are temporary and will ultimately be swallowed up by the one final place of eternal judgement, the Lake of Fire.

Next: All Things Become New