What is the Book of Revelation Really About?

by Monte Sahlin

Many conservative Protestant/evangelical Christians read the Book of Revelation as a tool for predicting the end of life as we know it. Is that the way God intended it to be read and understood, or did He have a different purpose in mind?

The document "is about how Christians can follow Jesus while living in an empire whose political, economic and cultural power is seductive. Revelation sets up a tension between Christians who accommodate themselves to the empire and those who separate themselves from and oppose the empire." That is a very different perspective, advocated by theologian Warren Carter.

It is consistent with the language and theme analysis scholarship that links the Book of Revelation to the sermon of Jesus in Matthew 24-25, which begins with the question (from the disciples), "When" will be the time of the end of the second coming, but moves into a response by Jesus that is about "how" to wait for His return. This theme of "how to wait" connects directly to the above perspective on Revelation and is probably closer to the original reading than many of the currently popular ways of reading the book.

What do you think? Why?

Comments

[Christy]

A book about Revelation, read on Memorial weekend in 2004, changed my life. "Restoring Broken Things," by Steven Curtis Chapman and Scotty Smith, asked about the 'meta-narrative' of the Bible. My automatic answer was that the Bible was the story of the great controversy (etc.). Their answer was that the big-picture story, from before creation to Jesus' return is that God so loved the world that he gave his only son to redeem us and not condemn us, and save us to be with him for eternity. He is restoring the broken relationships to wholeness.

Their premise is that Revelation describes who God is, why he is worthy of worship, who worships him, and how we worship him, and how we are restored to the perfection in him that he always intended. Maybe after 10 years, that's a very simplified memory on my part, and hardly a proper book review, but when I read Revelation now, it's the context I see. Revelation is not a code book of beasts and symbols to agonize over their meaning. It's a book about being restored to God's heart, now and for eternity.

[Trish]

I have become increasingly uncomfortable with our interpretation of Revelation. John doesn't even know what he is seeing as evidenced by the fact that he tries desperately to describe parts of the visions by referencing things he does know while still not adequately communicating things beyond his understanding. If he doesn't know, how arrogant of us to tell him, two thousand years later, what he saw. Additionally, as I become more attuned to Asian culture, I find that our euro-centric view of Bible prophecy, based on Reformation thinking, excludes the most populous regions of the world. Hmmmm....lots to think about.

[Rick]

Thanks for the share Monte. The book of Revelation is an incredible book, one that is very misunderstood. I was particularly impacted by a book by Gordon Fee titled simply "Revelation". He really helped unpack the book in a understandable but scholarly way. I've had many conversations about this book and am interesting in following the link on your site and on fb.