How to read the Book of Revelation
However another 'prophecy' about the end of the world comes and goes—just nosotros know, like the proverbial charabanc, some other one volition be along soon. One of the reasons for this predictable nevertheless disappointing procession is that nosotros don't really know how to read the Book of Revelation properly—the source of many of these failed forecasts.
Many people go out this last book of the Bible firmly closed, and in some means I don't blame them. If you exercise open it, it looks similar a very strange text indeed, for at to the lowest degree two reasons. The start is that we haven't read annihilation else quite like it, and nosotros usually learn how to read things by drawing on our past experience. The 2d is that, if we ask for help from other people, they will give us a very wide range of possible views, virtually of which are completely contradictory. So what should we do?
There are actually some relatively straightforward things to bear in mind equally we read—though perhaps the most important thing is just that: to appoint our minds. God invites us to dear him with our heed, as well as our heart, soul and force (Luke ten.27), and the best thing we tin can do with Revelation is to keep our hearts and our minds connected with ane another. The vast majority of whacky ideas that have sprung from this book can easily exist dismissed if we simply ask 'Is this really plausible?'
Hither are 7 things to think virtually which volition make all the difference:
- Notice where this book is
Intermission for a infinitesimal; look at your Bible. Where is Revelation—is it within or outside the covers? Why is information technology within—why did it become part of what is now our Scripture? The first followers of Jesus already had their own Bible, what we now call our Quondam Testament, and it is worth considering why they felt the need to add annihilation more. The books of the Old Testament were testimony to God'southward words and deportment in rescuing his people, beingness present with them, and making his glory known to the world. And so, when God came again to speak, human action and save in the person of Jesus, they needed to include testimony to this also. Heb 1.1–2puts it very clearly: 'Information technology the past God spoke…but now he has spoken by his Son…' The other documents in the NT testify to what God has washed in Jesus, and how nosotros should live in the low-cal of this—so Revelation must exist doing the same. If, instead, information technology ready out a completely divide end-times scheme that wouldn't exist relevant for another 2,000 years, it would never have been included.
- Notice to whom this book is written
What kind of text is Revelation? Nosotros are given some important clues early on, when the writer says 'John, To the seven churches in the province of Asia: Grace and peace to y'all…' (Rev one.5). Y'all might recognise this phrase, since it comes at the first of all of Paul's letters—it is the standard way people wrote letters in the first century. Any else Revelation is, it is a letter, written to particular people living at a item time in a particular place. So although it is writtenfor usa as Scripture, it is not writtento us. We therefore demand to consider how John's showtime audition would have understood it if nosotros desire to know how God wants to speak to u.s. through it.
And of course information technology ways you lot can visit these places today. You can run into the acropolis (upper fortified town) where 'Satan's throne is' (ii.13); you can visit the city that needed to 'Wake up!' (3.2) when it was besieged; you lot tin can even see the furred-up pipes that carried 'lukewarm' water (3.16) to Laodicea. Common cold water is skillful for refreshing; hot water is good for healing; but lukewarm water is proficient for null! The Laodiceans' trouble was not lukewarm religion, but lukewarm 'works' (three.15).
- Notice the employ it makes of the OT
I once spent a week of my life counting the allusions to or echoes of the Old Testament in Revelation's 405 verses. Past the end of Fri afternoon I had reached 676—which is a lot of allusions! It means we cannot actually movement without bumping in an OT reference. (If you don't believe me, just compare Rev 1.12–17 with Dan 10.5–12). When Revelation'due south start hearers (Rev 1.3) meet thunder and lightning (Rev 4.5), trumpets (8.vii) and locusts (nine.iii), they are much more likely to think of Mt Sinai (Ex xix.16), the call to temple worship (Lev 23.24), and judgement and restoration (Joel ii.25) than they are to imagine either twee Christian fine art or armoured assail helicopters (aye, that is one interpretation of Rev nine.three!).
- Notice the ideas that it borrows
If I started explaining what Jesus had done like this 'There was a girl who had a red cloak with a hood, and 1 solar day she set off into the woods…' and managed to weave in the gospel, you lot'd know what I was talking almost. Or if I started off 'There was once a house with three bears, daddy bear, mummy bear and babe bear…' and concluded with Jesus' death and resurrection, y'all'd recognise it. In the same way, when anyone in the first century read or heard Rev 12, they would immediately recognise information technology equally the Python/Leto myth. (You can read it here: http://world wide web.theoi.com/Text/HyginusFabulae3.html at myth 140.) The great dragon tries to kill the offspring of Leto, only she is rescued, gives birth to Apollo and Artemis, and Apollo returns to slay the dragon. The story was used by Roman emperors to depict themselves as Apollo, the defeater of the forces of chaos and the bringer of peace. Rev 12 turns it around: the emperor is the bringer of chaos, and simply Jesus is the 1 who brings victory and peace.
This is not an practise in being 'academic' in our reading. It is just the normal discipline of recognising that the Bible was speaking in the linguistic communication of its context and civilization, and this decisively shapes its pregnant.
- Observe the way information technology uses numbers
End-times fanatics love to make utilise of numbers—and Revelation gives some warrant for this. But it makes use of numbers in a detail style. First, it includes significant words with special regularity—and then 'Jesus', the faithful witness, occurs 14 (= 2 x 7), which is the number of perfect witness (since you need two witnesses Deut 17.6, and 7 is the number of completeness). It as well uses 'triangular' numbers (think of the xv red balls on a snooker table) such as 666. But it is not alone in this in the NT. The 153 fish (John 21.eleven) and the 276 people on Paul's boat (Acts 27.37) are also such special numbers!
Finally, Revelation uses a common class of numerology in the first century (known as isopsephia in Greek or gematria in Hebrew) in which you add up the numerical value of the letters of a word to give the give-and-take's value. This is possible since, before the Arabic number system nosotros use today, all letters had a value and were used in everyday arithmetic. In this way, the number of 'the beast' is the same as a the number of a man's name (in this case Nero Caesar) since both add up to 666. This 'solution' to the puzzle of Rev 13.18 has been known in academic circles since the 1840s, but sadly has all the same not filtered down into popular reading. And that leads me to my final point…
- Find that it is given to God's people as a whole, not to us each every bit individuals…
The opening of Revelation invites a blessing on the one (atypical) who reads and those who hear (plural, Rev 1.3). The situation envisaged is non an individual, with his or her own text, reading alone, but a lector at the front of the congregation reading aloud then that others can listen. (This is actually the only possible social context of the church's reception of the early on Christian writings.) What is true for Revelation is truthful for all of the New Testament: information technology was in the first place given to the whole people of God for the edifice up of the whole people of God.
That ways we need to assist one another to read and sympathize aright. Some of the things I have mentioned above might seem only a piddling technical and remote from everyday devotion. But it is at present very easy to admission this kind of information. Y'all might want to commencement with my Grove booklet available mail service free hither http://grovebooks.co.u.k./products/b-28-how-to-read-the-volume-of-revelation. Or yous could plough to Craig Koester'due southRevelation and the Stop of All Things, or Michael Gorman'southReading Revelation Responsibly.
- …and for a item purpose
Only the reason for thinking near these things is not so that we tin impress others with our noesis—it is in society that Revelation can do the work in and amongst u.s. that it is designed to do. John, our 'brother in kingdom, tribulation and patient endurance' (Rev 1.9) wants us to understand how we can live as true-blue witnesses, testifying to the victory that Jesus has won, in a earth which is frequently hostile to God and his people.
In our mail service-Christendom world, it is a message we desperately need to hear—without beingness sidelined by the latest featherbrained scheme that has been dreamt up in ignorance.
This article was first published at Christian Today on 8th October 2015
Follow me on Twitter @psephizo
Much of my piece of work is done on a freelance ground. If you lot have valued this mail service, would y'all considerdonating £one.20 a month to support the production of this blog?
If you enjoyed this, do share information technology on social media (Facebook or Twitter) using the buttons on the left. Follow me on Twitter @psephizo. Like my folio on Facebook.
Much of my piece of work is washed on a freelance basis. If y'all accept valued this post, y'all can make a single or repeat donation through PayPal:
Comments policy: Good comments that engage with the content of the postal service, and share in respectful contend, can add real value. Seek first to empathise, then to exist understood. Make the most charitable construal of the views of others and seek to larn from their perspectives. Don't view fence as a conflict to win; accost the argument rather than tackling the person.
Source: https://www.psephizo.com/revelation/how-to-read-the-book-of-revelation-2/
0 Response to "How to read the Book of Revelation"
Postar um comentário