Introduction to the Book of Revelation
Author:
The writer identifies himself as John the Apostle (1:1, 4, 9; 22:8). John also wrote the Gospel, 1, 2, and 3 John. There are many parallels to John’s Gospel in Revelation.
Justin Martyr (ca. 100-165), Irenaeus (ca. 135-202), and others in the early 2nd century church identified the apostle John as the author.
John is the secretary of the revelation revealed directly from Jesus Christ (1:1, 10-11; 22:16, 18-20).
Date/Recipients/Occasion:
Revelation was written during the time of persecution under the reign of Domition (A.D. 81-96). Most scholars date the book around A.D. 95.
Revelation is addressed to seven churches in Asia Minor (1:4, 11; 2-3), in an area now part of western Turkey. Each church is either encouraged or rebuked according to their response to current persecution (2:1-3:22).
Persecution had already fallen on some Christians (1:9; 2:9, 13; John was exiled to the Island of Patmos) and more was coming (2:10; 13:7-10). Roman emperors began to require worship of their person as divine around Domition’s reign and following. The refusal to worship these “divine” emperors is the basis for the persecution that arises during the book of Revelation. We have evidence that during the reign of Trajan in A.D. 113 that Christians were required to worship emperors:
Some Christians were being tempted to turn away from Christ and give in to emperor worship. Heretical teachings were on the rise and some Christians were being tempted to follow them and compromise with an increasingly pagan society (2:2, 4, 14-15, 20-24; 3:1-2, 15-17).
Some Christians were crying out for justice (6:10) because it seemed as if the ungodly were going to do away with God’s people and God wasn’t doing anything about it. There hearts were weakening and feeble.
Revelation comes at just the right moment to give these Christians a heavenly vision of Christ, their King and His sovereign Kingdom. What these folks needed most was a vision (like Isaiah’s) of the Sovereign God on His throne to remind them that the universe hasn’t spun out of His control. They needed to seem Him sovereignly sitting upon His throne with everything happening under his omniscient eye and in His absolute control. They also needed to see that their present suffering will soon come to an end. Jesus Christ is on His way to gather His Church, wipe away every tear and comfort them into His everlasting presence. But they also needed to see that Jesus Christ was coming to bring justice for those who are currently persecuting His body and remove them to everlasting judgment.
Summary Purpose:
Take heart, Beloved, God is on His throne and nothing is currently happening in your experience that He is not in absolute control over. Just as your Savior has suffered, now you are suffering. But just as He has been received into glory, so you too will soon be relieved from your suffering and received into everlasting glory. Jesus Christ will soon come and bring justice on those who are currently persecuting you and through His victory He will bring everlasting peace that you long for.
Therefore, stand fast and faithful. Your God is on His throne. Look up here and see the Heavenly vision and see how what God is doing in Heaven is affecting what is happening on earth. You will soon be home and all will be made right. Look to your reigning Savior and press on for His glory alone.
G.K. Beale has suggested that the main theme of the whole book is: “The sovereignty of God and Christ in redeeming and judging that brings them glory, which is intended to motivate saints to worship God and reflect his glorious attributes through obedience to his word.”
Interpretive Approaches:
(as summarized in Beale, 44-49)
1. The Preterist View
The term “preterist” comes from the Latin “praeteritus” meaning “gone by,” i.e., past. One writer puts it this way, “The closer we get to the year 2000, the farther we get from the events of Revelation” (Gentry, 37). Preterism therefore holds that the vast majority of prophecies in John’s letter occur in the first century, or soon after. The prophecies were future for John and his audience, but they are now in our past. There are two forms of the Preterist interpretation:
a. Revelation is a prophecy of the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, which means that the book of Revelation was written prior to A.D. 70.
“Babylon the Great” is apostate Israel who joins Rome in persecuting Christians. One of the purposes of the book is to encourage Christians that their Jewish persecutors will soon be judged (A.D. 70) and to assure the readers that they are now the true Israel.
Problems:
1. This view tends to be motivated by a postmillennial view of eschatology that views the church age as progressively getting better and better until we reach a “golden age” before the second advent of Christ. Therefore, to have a period of suffering and persecution before the second advent, parallel to the golden age, would be contradictory. Therefore, in order to remove such suffering, the preterist approach limits most of the book’s prophecies of salvation and judgment to A.D. 70 and emphasize that these prophecies reached their climax during this time.
2. Revelation makes use of the Old Testament throughout the book. In fact, this is often the key to understanding the symbolism. By far, Daniel is used more than any other book, with a heavy use of Dan. 2 & 7. If this is the case, Dan. 2 & 7 focus on the judgment of the nations, not limiting it to unbelieving Israel. Also, Dan. 2 & 7 see a universal judgment rather than just Israel.
b. Revelation is a prophecy of the fall of the Roman Empire, “Babylon the Great,” the persecutor of the saints, in the fifth century A.D.
Part of the purpose of the book then is to encourage Christians to endure their persecutors and not compromise their witness to a falling empire.
Problem:
While this view is certainly an improvement on the first, but this view suffers from a similar criticism of the first. The fulfillment of the final judgment prophecies would not fit with the historical fall of the Roman Empire during the fifth century A.D. While there might be an allusion to a partial fulfillment, the consummated fulfillment is much broader than Rome.
2. The Historicist View
There are many versions of this view. Primarily this interpretation sees Revelation as predicting the major movements of Christian history. This view has traditionally seen invasions of the Goths and Muslims into Christian locations as fulfillment of some of the prophecies. The corruptions of Rome, the reign of Charlemagne, the Protestant Reformation, Napoleon and Hitler have all been found in John’s Apocalypse. This clearly has been the most popular view throughout church history, up until our present day. This is the interpretive view behind the confessional statements which refer to the Pope as “the” antichrist.
Problems:
This view limits the prophecies of the Apocalypse to Western church history, leaving aside the worldwide church. What about Christians in other parts of the world that know nothing of our particular struggles. Can they agree with our particular reference?
Also, how would this view by projecting fulfillment into the future been relevant to the first-century Christian readers?
3. The Futurist View
There are two forms of the futurist interpretation, both teaching that chps. 4-22 are referring exclusively to the a future time immediately preceding the end of history.
a. Dispensational Futurism (Heavy emphasis upon Literalism)
1.) the restoration of ethnic Israel to its land (apparently beginning directly prior to the events in 4:1-22:5)
2.) the church’s rapture into heaven
3.) a seven-year tribulation
4.) the antichrist’s reign
5.) the assembly of evil nations to fight over Jerusalem
6.) Christ’s second coming, when he defeats the evil nations
7.) his earthly millennial reign
8.) Satan’s final rebellion at the end of the millennium, when he gathers together unbelievers from throughout the world to fight against Christ and the saints
9.) Christ’s eternal reign together with the saints in a new heaven and new earth
b. Modified or Historical Futurism
This view doesn’t interpret Revelation as literally as the “popular” view above does, nor does it hold to as strict chronological order of the visions in future history. It holds to the church as being the true Israel and that there will be no pretribulation rapture. Rather, Christians will pass through a period of trial. However, the emphasis is still upon the future aspect of the book.
Problems:
The futurist position encounters the difficulty that the book would have had no significant relevance for a first-century readership. The majority of the book has nothing to do with their present experience.
Besides, this view lacks an exegetical understanding (along with other chronological views) of the parallelism within the book.
4. The Idealist View
This view see Revelation as a symbolic, even idealist, portrayal of the conflict between good and evil, between the forces of God and of Satan. The most radical forms of this approach see no reference to historical events but are simply principles of a timeless depiction of spiritual war. A less radical view would see these events of spiritual war as having repeated embodiments throughout the church age.
Problem:
This view, unlike the previous two views, sees very little interest in particular historical events and has very little to say “specifically” to any group.
5. The Redemptive Historical View of Modified Idealism
This view acknowledges a final consummation in salvation and judgment. However, it is eclectic in that it borrows from the best of the other positions.
It sees no specific prophesied historical events to be discerned in the book, other than the final coming of Christ to deliver and judge and to establish the final form of the kingdom in a consummated new creation.
This view isn’t as concerned with trying to pinpoint a historical reference to the symbols as it is trying to get to the theological point of the symbol. The Apocalypse symbolically portrays events throughout history, which is understood to be under the soveriengty of the Lamb as a result of his death and resurrection. He will guide the events depicted until they finally issue in the last judgment and the definitive establishment of his kingdom.
This means that specific events throughout the interadventual age may be identified with one narrative or symbol. The majority of the symbols in the book are transtemporal in the sense that they are applicable to events throughout the age of the church.
Therefore, the historicist may sometimes be right in their precise historical identifications, but wrong in limiting the identification only to one historical reality. The same may be true about the preterist and futurist positions.
The general problem with the first three views is that they are more concerned with finding the historical reference and therefore satisfied that they have interpreted the symbol or vision. The fourth view, in its more radical form, isn’t concerned with any particular historical events. The preterist view seems so concerned with the past that it has very little to say to the present and future church. The futurist view seems so concerned with the future that it has very little to say to the past and present church. The idealist seems more concerned with spiritual truth to the neglect of the present experience of the church.
A modified idealist view recognizes that God could have communicated His comfort and exhortations to the church in any manner that He chose. He could have used a narrative style or even epistolary, which is so frequently used in the New Testament. However, He chose to use visions, symbols, pictures to communicate the truth of the current life of the church and their future hope.
The modified idealist view is able, at any stage in church history, to ask: “Is God sovereign in my present suffering as a Christian?” According to Revelation, the answer is a resounding, “Yes!” And in order to communicate this truth, God chose to use apocalyptic literature (which necessarily must be interpreted differently than other genres) to paint pictures with graphic designs and colorful symbols.
Therefore, the message could easily carry over to any culture, time, and place where Christians were experiencing the woes of this present age and looking for the blessings of the age to come. God is using this Heavenly vision to transform your present view of the world. On earth it looks as if the church is being displaced by evil in the world. But from a Heavenly perspective (or the real world) you will see that God is absolutely sovereign and nothing is happening outside of His immediate control. Rather than earth being unaffected by God, we see things happening in Heaven and as a result we see the effect upon the earth and its forces.
Structure:
There are basically two approaches to the structure of the book of Revelation:
The Futurist or Chronological View:
This view states that because 1:19 mentions three sections: 1) “what you have seen” (Past) (1:9-1:18); 2) “what is” (Present) (2:1-3:22); and 3) “what must happen after these things” (Future) (4:1-22:5) that the majority of the book lies in the future around the time of the second advent of Christ.
The problem with such approach is that there are many things pertaining to the future in 2:1-3:22 and there are many things pertaining to the present in 4:1-22:5. This seems to be a rather artificial reading of the book.
The Progressive Recapitulation or Parallelism View:
This view has observed the repeated combined scenes of consummative judgment and salvation found at the conclusions of various sections throughout the book.
There are no less than 7 references to cycles leading up to judgment and the Second Advent of Christ.
Cycle 1: seven seals, 4:1-8:1Cycle 2: seven trumpets, 8:2-11:18Cycle 3: symbolic figures and the harvest, 11:19-14:20Cycle 4: seven bowls, 15:1-16:21Cycle 5: judgment of Babylon, 17:1-19:10Cycle 6: white horse judgment, 19:11-20:10Cycle 7: white throne judgment, 20:11-21:8 A final intensified judgment is found in 17:1-18:24 that brings the judgments to a close and a final intensified salvation found in 21:9-22:5 brings the consummation of the new heavens and new earth following the return of Christ. This marks the final vision of the perfected, glorified church which parallels the first vision of the imperfect church (1:9-3:22).
The dominant themes throughout the book are judgment, persecution, and salvation. With each movement through the cycles, each of these increase with an “already and not yet” intensification until we reach the climax of deliverance in the new heavens and new earth.
G.K Beale suggest the following structural outline:
Bibliography:
Bauckham, Richard. The Theology of the Book of Revelation. Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Beale, G.K. The Book of Revelation. NIGTC, Eerdmans, 1999. (Definitive amillennial commentary on Rev.)
Boring, Eugene M. Revelation. Interpretation. John Knox Press, 1989.
Hendriksen, William. More Than Conquerers. Baker, 1967. (Best introductory amillennial commentary on Rev.)
Irons, Lee. “What Should I Read on Revelation?” Kerux 14:1 (May 1999) 26-43.
______________. Sermons on Revelation (www.redeemeropc.org)
Kline, Meredith G. “The First Resurrection.” WTJ 37 (1975) 366-75.
______________. “Har Magedon: The End of the Millenium.” JETS 39:2 (June 1996) 207-222.
Pate, Marvin C. ed. Four Views on the Book of Revelation. Zondervan, 1998.
Poythress, Vern S. The Returning King: A Guide to the Book of Revelation. P&R, 2000.
______________. “The Revelation of Jesus Christ” in New Geneva Study Bible. Foundation for Reformation, 1995.
Strimple, Robert B. “The Amillennial View” in Three Views on the Millennium and Beyond, Zondervan, 1999.
Wilcock, Michael. The Message of Revelation. BST. IVP, 1975. (Next best introductory amillennial commentary on Rev. after Hendriksen.)
The Best Introductions to Reformed Amillennial Eschatology:
Hoekema, Anthony A. The Bible and the Future. Eerdmans, 1979.
Venema, Cornelius P. The Promise of the Future. Banner of Truth, 2000.
