1:1b "He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John,"
In the second half of verse one, the theme of revelation (in the general sense) is continued. There is some difficulty in identifying with certainty the agents in this verse, but the general idea is straightforward. The two most likely interpretations are as follows: 1) "He [God] made it known by sending his [God's] angel [Jesus functioning as a messenger] to his [God's or Jesus'] servant John;" or 2) "He [Jesus] made it known by sending his angel [an angelic spirit messenger] to his [Jesus'] servant John."
I prefer the second interpretation for several reasons. In the first few chapters, and even in the immediate context, Jesus Christ is specifically named many times and is never, unless this case is the exception, referred to as an "angel." He seems to be distinguished from the angels referred to elsewhere, such as the "angels of the churches." Linguistically it also makes sense for Jesus to be the one who "made it known" in v. 1b since 1) in v. 1a Jesus is given the revelation from God for the purpose, it seems, of His (Jesus') "showing" to "his" (God's or Jesus') servants the things soon to take place, and since 2) it is the "revelation of Jesus Christ," which as we noted is best understood as meaning the "revelation from or belonging to Jesus Christ." Therefore the subject of v. 1b, the primary revealer, is best understood as Jesus, not as God (the Father). This makes the "angel" a being who belongs to Jesus (and therefore probably a normal angel, and obviously not Jesus). The best evidence, though, comes from the end of the book, where in 22:16a, Jesus says in fairly plain language, "I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you about these things for the churches."
It is also noteworthy to consider that in the genre of apocalyptic, it is common for a prophet or a seer to be guided through a series of fantastic visions by an angelic being. There are a number of examples of this in the Old Testament, including episodes in the books of Daniel and Zechariah (from each of which much imagery is drawn in the Revelation). It is possible that Jesus Himself mainly fulfills this role in the Revelation, and indeed it is mainly Jesus who speaks to John and leads him through visions in the first several chapters. This is the one greatest weakness of the view I have tentatively taken here. It is not until much later in the book that an "angel" who is clearly not to be identified with Jesus is explicitly said to "show" John anything. This can perhaps be accounted for, though, by speculating (and we can only speculate on this) that an angel did in fact lead John through all of the visions, but John did not specifically mention this angel at each point because he was so enraptured by the visions themselves, and by the glory of the victorious Lamb on whom the visions focus.
In any case, the fact that there are several levels of mediation--that the content of the revelation which ultimately comes from God the Father first passes through the hands of Jesus and possibly another angel before it even reaches John, who in turn, as we will see, writes it down and sends it to seven churches--highlights the transcendence of God and the way in which He "condescends" or "comes down" to communicate and have fellowship with His people. In the language of Reformed confessions of the 17th century, without God's voluntary condescension in covenanting and relating with His people by means of His self-revelation (through prophets and the Scriptures, for instance), His people would have no "fruition" of Him--no ability to perceive or recognize Him or reason to Him.
In His essential being, God is utterly different than the world He has created. Creation is limited, changeable, and dependent or contingent, while He is unlimited, unchangeable, and totally independent in His essential being. This gives philosophers and theologians of all stripes hives when they try and put it all together in a consistent metaphysic or doctrine of God. How can these things interact and be reconciled with each other without destroying the essential properties of either? Can a timeless, changeless, all-determining God remain who He is as God and yet truly and meaningfully create and then interact with His creation, with all of its contingencies and historical progression?
While there is inevitable mystery here at some point, the biblical and historical-theological paradigm for beginning to properly answer these questions has been there all along, although often ignored. In an orthodox formulation of the doctrine of the person of Christ, the historic Christian Church (ever since the Council of Chalcedon in 451) has always confessed that Jesus Christ is one person with two distinct but inseparably joined natures, a human nature and a divine nature. Each nature retains all of its essential properties (so the human nature cannot become omnipresent, nor can the divine nature be emptied of omniscience, etc.), and the two natures are truly joined together forever in one person. The one person is the Logos, the eternal and divine Son of God. It is not as though the incarnate person Jesus Christ is a person other than the eternal Word, the Second Person of the Trinity. Rather, Jesus' personal identity as the Word and the eternal Son of God is fundamental to His being, and He came down, or "condescended" to take on an additional, human nature, in order to relate to us and ultimately to accomplish redemption on the cross and in the resurrection.
This is how God has always related to His creation while remaining the eternal, infinite, independent God in Himself. The incarnation of Christ was a one-of-a-kind, unique event, to be sure, but in a way it was also nothing more than the redemptive-historical culmination of God's consistent pattern of "coming down" (cf. Ex. 3:8) to relate to His people in ways they can understand. Because God takes upon Himself attributes that are not essential to who He is, in order to relate with His creation, He can truthfully speak of having a dynamic relationship with His covenant people, ebbing and flowing with them and truly responding to their faithfulness or sin with appropriate judgments or rewards, even while He is the One who decreed all of it--whatsoever comes to pass.
This is the way to understand passages that speak of things like God "relenting" or "changing His mind." It's not mere anthropomorphism, as many theologians have argued. Neither is it only a change "from our perspective." Rather, such verses express truthful things about God as He acts in relationship with His people, even if these things are in tension with what we understand God to be like in His essential divine nature as the great and eternal "I AM."
So it makes good sense for God to use a number of mediators, both in the administration of His covenants (so Moses and Jesus are both called covenant "mediators" in Scripture), and more broadly in all of the prophetic material He reveals to His people through His spokesmen, the prophets and apostles. God is also often seen in Scripture employing His angelic ministers to carry out His purposes on the earth. Jesus is helped by angels a couple of times during His earthly ministry. The Mosaic Covenant is said by Paul to have been "ordained" or "put in place" through angels (Gal. 3:19). And, as we have already noted, angels sometimes guide prophets through series of visions.
We as God's people should be both awed and touched by the fact of God's gracious condescension in revealing Himself and His purposes to us through prophets and angels. We should be awed by the fact that He is so high and lifted up in His divine glory that no mere creature could ever attain to the knowledge of Him in his or her own strength or wisdom (much less His favor, given the reality of sin); and we should be touched by the fact that in God's tender lovingkindness and covenant faithfulness He has condescended and ultimately come so far down as to, in the person of His Son, have been crucified in the place of unworthy sinners, to bring them to Himself in salvation.
It was a great mercy to the first century Christians to whom the Revelation was addressed that God revealed to them events that were to transpire within their lifetime, so that they could be prepared--prepared to triumph over evil by remaining steadfast and faithful through intense Jewish and Roman persecutions, even if it meant death. While the Revelation does not directly address (many) events in our future today, wicked rulers still exist today, persecutions exist today, and the need for perseverance in the faith exists today as ever. Therefore it is a great mercy of God that He condescended to inspire the Revelation and include it in the holy canon of Scripture, from which His Church could draw encouragement and instruction for ages to come.
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Revelation Reflections: Intro & Verse 1:1a
(I have lots of different series and things going on the blog already, I know, but as a companion activity to some memorization I'm doing that involves the book of Revelation, I decided to start writing some reflections on each verse as I go through it. I have memorized chapter 1 and so I started writing about v.1a, and it turned into a long introduction to what could, some day, become a theological and devotional type commentary (not an in-depth exegetical or overly scholarly one.) For lack of a better place to put such writings for now, they will go on my blog. Stay tuned for more N. T. Wright stuff and Baptist Faith & Message stuff.)
1:1a "The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show to His servants the things that must soon take place."
The name of the book comes from the second word of this introductory verse (actually the first word in the Greek), "apocalypse" or "revelation." It is said to be the "revelation of Jesus Christ." The temptation of a devotionally oriented commentary or sermon at this point is to declare that understanding the complex timelines and symbolism of the rest of the book isn't nearly so important as understanding that the book's main end is to reveal the person of Jesus Christ. Inasmuch as all Scripture as the inscripturated Word of God reveals God's character and points to the culmination of His redemptive work in Jesus Christ, there is nothing wrong with this idea in itself, but it's not the point of the verse here. For it goes on to read, "which God gave Him to show to His servants the things that must soon take place." It is therefore far better to read the construction as saying simply that the revelation belongs to or comes from Jesus (and more ultimately from God the Father). According to this opening verse, the content of the revelation is not Jesus per se (although He is of course the hero of the book and of all redemptive history), but rather "the things that must soon take place." The revelation is the gift of God, through the hands of Jesus Christ, to God's servants, revealing events "soon to take place."
Already two key points from this opening verse must be kept in mind going forward through the book. First, the "revelation" is just that: a revelation. An unveiling. A document intended to give insight. As we struggle to read, interpret, understand, and apply this book, comparing and contrasting different end-times schemes and doctrinal systems that attempt to deal with it consistently, we are often tempted to think that the revelation is actually a closed book that will never allow itself to be subject to successful interpretation, and that we ought therefore to give up on the task. Perhaps we should content ourselves with drawing only very broad, vague spiritual principles from the book, or simply take note of the nice things it says about Jesus and His ultimate victory over evil. There's nothing wrong with those approaches as a part of a holistic approach, but the very title of the book does not let us remain at that level. The revelation is intended to reveal specific things to the servants of God, things which we will discuss in detail.
Why do we have such difficulty, then? Has God failed to reveal His purposes with clarity? Certainly not! A couple of considerations help us here. While the Holy Spirit in a sense intends the book to speak to servants of Christ throughout the ages, John's intention in writing is to communicate certain things to specific servants of Christ in his own time. We will read more about this later on in the chapter. But we must realize that modern readers are a secondary, and not primary, audience for John. Therefore we already have one degree of distance from the text--a historical one. Another category of difficulty we face is the way the book is steeped in ancient Jewish language and symbolism. While written in Greek, it is an awkwardly Hebraic Greek, and it is employed to make vastly numerous allusions to various events, themes, and symbols in the Hebrew Scriptures, mixing the metaphors and using the ideas in new ways to express the events John saw in his visions. If we struggle to immediately understand the meaning of the symbols and metaphors, it is not because John or the Holy Spirit intended to obscure the truth from our minds' eyes, but rather because we have been poor students of the Old Testament, and particularly of the writings of the ancient Prophets. The antidote would be, therefore, more meticulous study of the Old Testament, in addition to more study of the historical context and events involving the first century churches in Asia Minor.
Second, and on a related note, the events revealed in the book are said to be events that will "soon take place." On the face of it, this would seem to indicate that the content of the book is prophetic material speaking of events which were about to happen shortly from the perspective of John's original audience. If this verse were the only time or manner in which John said something like this, it would perhaps leave room for a broader array of interpretations or implications of the word "soon," involving notions other than true temporal imminence in the normal, human sense of "soon." As we will see, though, John belabors the point of temporal imminence using several different terms and at the strategic points of the beginning and end of the book. If we see much of the revelation's content as being parallel with material in Jesus' Olivet Discourse in the latter portions of each of the three synoptic gospel accounts (as interpreters from many different schools do), this point is strengthened by Jesus' repeated insistence that the events of which He spoke would happen within a generation of His hearers, so that some who stood in His presence during His ministry would "not taste death" until they saw Him coming in His kingdom, the temple in Jerusalem destroyed by armies, etc. (cf. Matt. 24:34; Matt. 16: 20; Lk. 21:20).
This would seem to rule out approaches to the material in the rest of the book of revelation that say its contents prophesy mainly or only about events which are supposed to take place in our modern day future, near the end of world history before Christ's personal return. It simply stretches credulity to say that terms like "near," "soon," and "at hand" could connote, to John's original readers, anything other than their normal sense in other contexts (misguided appeals to 2nd Peter 3's 1000-years-as-a-day-to-the-Lord idea notwithstanding). This will become more forcefully clear in later verses of the first chapter when John introduces himself warmly to his audience as a "brother" and "partner" with them in tribulation, which tribulation he describes as intensifying but then gloriously ending in a short while, in the rest of the book. It would be insensitive, inappropriate, and indeed foolish for John to comfort his readers with assurances of nothing but far-distant future victories of Christ over the evil characters of the vision (even if final chapters do momentarily glance at far-distant future events). 2000 years is a mockery of the hope of a "short" while, no matter what one thinks "short" might mean, when the intense suffering of persecuted first century Christians is in view.
Moreover, as we continue through the book, and keep an eye both on Old Testament apocalyptic language and symbolism, and another eye on first century events of which we have great record, it should be relatively obvious that at least the interpretation offered here has strong enough biblical and historical warrant that it should be seriously considered, and comports with the idea that events in John's visions were truly soon to come to pass when he wrote. This idea, by the way--internal evidence--convinces me personally of the early date (c. 65 AD) for the revelation's authorship, as opposed to the more popular c. 95 AD date. If John insists he is prophesying of events in the near future, and then if as we study we see strong possible correlations between his visions and known events of the first century, especially events leading up to and including the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, we as Bible believers are constrained to posit an early date of authorship. The primary sources of external evidence related to this question severely lack multiple independent attestation, and the primary source is linguistically ambiguous at best at the key point of contention (viz. a cryptic reference in Irenaeus' Against Heresies to either the apostle John, or to his vision itself being seen in the reign of Domitian).
So "futuristic" approaches to interpreting the rest of the book have a lot to overcome textually and historically in order to gain credibility, apart from demands in the rest of the constructs of their systematic theology which all too often are eisegetically read into every chapter of the revelation. "Historicist" approaches, which see the events described in the bulk of the book as prophetically laying out major events in the entire progression of church history, have a similar problem here. Even though, as we will see, Jesus commands John to write not only the things he "has seen" and "those that are," in addition to "those that are to take place after this," it is precisely this latter category of future events that John says to be imminent. It is not as though only the early stages of John's visions reveal imminent events. Therefore, while the historicist rightly recognizes the progressive nature of history referred to in the revelation, he or she fails to see that the overwhelming focus of the entire book (small exceptions as there may be) is events of the imminent future, not thousands of years of progressive church history.
What of "idealists," those who read the contents of revelation either as mere highly allegorical symbolism describing general spiritual truths in the world or inside believers' hearts and minds, or else as describing truly historical events (even perhaps in John's day) which nevertheless are repeated cyclically throughout church history, intensifying until a cataclysmic end at the return of Christ? Many idealist amillennial scholars have contributed significantly to the church's understanding of the book of revelation--at least as much as those from other positions if not more--especially in their ability to perceive and point out repetition and recapitulation between certain chapters of the book, where events are not intended to be read chronologically but rather in almost a spiral fashion, where camera angles are changing in John's visions yet the text is still describing identical events.
There is legitimacy to aspects of this approach in a couple of respects. First, there is indeed recapitulation to be found in the revelation. The judgment sequences of seals, trumpets, and bowls is one widely-recognized instance of this. The later chapters are more difficult and heavily disputed with regard to the question of recapitulation; still it is clearly present in many places and very important for understanding the book as a whole. Second, it is important that even with the concretely historical referents of the book in mind, in the course of a proper interpretation, the interpreter never forgets that the book ultimately reveals God Himself and something of the way He tends to interact with the world. Therefore there are principles we can learn from the tribulation of first century Christians and their perseverance and faithfulness through it all, all of which still powerfully affects and applies to us as we continue to challenge "beastly" evils in our world today, bearing witness to King Jesus in life and word even at the cost of our lives if necessary.
At the end of the day, however, two main problems arise with idealism as a total approach to interpreting the revelation. General patterns do recur in certain ways, and at different levels, throughout history, because of the way God interacts with the world out of His consistent, unchanging, divine character. But the comprehensive level of detail in New Testament prophecy regarding events of the "last days" is so great that--while God certainly has the ability to do this--it is an awkward thought that history would repeat itself so precisely, and so many times, as to fulfill every detail of the apocalyptic prophecies of the New Testament every time a new intensity of fulfillment occurs. This is particularly clear when one realizes that so much of New Testament eschatology deals specifically with the end of Israel's old covenantal economy, and the destruction of first century Jerusalem at the hands of the Roman armies. The more fundamental problem with idealism, though, is that it fails to appreciate the enormous implications of the events described in revelation, with respect to the progress of redemptive history and the consequences of first century events for the rest of the world. When the "soon," "at hand," and "near" events of the revelation finally transpired in the first century, it was not in order that similar but more and more cataclysmic apocalyptic events would transpire throughout the rest of history, but rather--as we will discuss at more length in later sections--that a new age of a completely different character would dawn and bring unprecedented blessings to the nations of the earth.
An idealist interpreter may respond at this point by saying that since the bringing of new blessings to the world through the progress of the gospel can be understood as a gradual, progressive process (and I agree it should be), it is possible to conceive of the prophesied judgments that allow for these blessings as coming in a cyclical, repeated, gradually increasing way as well. He or she might also point to Old Testament texts which seem to have had initial fulfillment in Old Covenant Israel's kingdom experiences but are also later fulfilled more perfectly by Christ (e.g. the promises of the Davidic Covenant concerning David's "son," which in a way refer to Solomon but ultimately point to Christ). At this point, I would want to observe that Old Testament near-and-far "typological" prophecy patterns are not quite the same as what most idealist interpreters do with New Testament prophecies, and I would also appeal again to the astounding level of detail and specificity in the New Testament end-time prophecies that make cyclical or progressive fulfillment unlikely at best. Consider that with the coming of Christ in the virgin birth, no one today expects an even "fuller" fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy in Isaiah 7:14. There is an important difference between typology and cyclical/idealistic thematic fulfillment patterns. Typology involves fulfillments at categorically different levels during different stages of redemptive history (i.e. between covenant administrations), whereas idealist interpreters of New Testament eschatology posit multiple, ongoing fulfillments of identical prophecies within a single era of redemptive history (viz. the church age), at only gradually increasing levels. While events at the very end of church history as we know it, which I believe are only explicitly in view in one passage in the revelation (although other passages are organically related to it), will involve very, very broad thematic similarities to cataclysmic first century events, I hope to show that the details of the actual prophetic texts related to each time frame are too disparate to identify with each other, or to see fulfillment patterns of the "idealist" type happening with them.
As is probably clear by now, I take a historic "preterist" approach to interpreting John's apocalypse, meaning that I see most (but not all) of the prophecies in the book as having been fulfilled in the first century. This means that I do not see the revelation as prophesying mainly about events in our future today. What, then, is the book's relevance to us today, if not to warn us of "soon" coming tribulation? I believe the answer is threefold.
First, as we see the events prophesied in revelation fulfilled in the first century, we stand in awe at the faithfulness of God in keeping His promises, and His great justice and grace in executing His redemptive purposes in the world through judgment and salvation, and bringing to pass the beginning of the New Covenant kingdom era known also as the "church age." Our faith is bolstered by the fact that Jesus' own apocalyptic predictions concerning the doom of the temple in Jerusalem were one hundred percent correct.
Second, although the book does not prophesy specifically of tribulation we are to undergo, the rest of the New Testament makes it clear that throughout the church age, suffering is normal for Christians, and that "through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom" (Acts 14:22). Therefore, we can learn from and be encouraged by the faithfulness of early Christians who did undergo persecutions and hardships spoken about specifically in the revelation, as we seek to sacrificially serve our neighbors and witness to the kingship of Christ before a hostile world, even today. We must see from the revelation how the first century martyrs were vindicated in an initial kind of way by God's doing, and that their deaths were not in vain. Neither would ours be, if we remain faithful.
Finally, with the bulk of the events of the revelation having been fulfilled in the first century, three great obstacles to the worldwide spread of the gospel have been taken out of the way: a centralized aristocracy of officials of apostate Judaism, the intense persecutions of a powerful, united, universal empire, and Satan's decisive power to continue deceiving the nations of the earth. Though there are and will be many challenges remaining until Christ's Second Advent at the end of this world's history as we know it, God did some important things in the first century to allow for the beginning of the process of making disciples throughout the whole earth. Those events are relevant today even as pastors preach the Word week by week, as missionaries cross cultures for the sake of bringing Christ to more peoples, and as laymen go to work six days to continue bringing the whole of creation under submission to Christ's benevolent rule and stewardship, to the glory of God the Father.
Even though it is true that Christ has many more enemies still today, and must rule from the right hand of God in heaven until all the rest of His enemies are made a footstool for His feet (Ps. 110; 1 Cor. 15), it is also true that in a definitive sense, as Handel's Messiah famously quotes, "The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever" (Rev. 11:15). That profound encouragement is why John's revelation matters today.
1:1a "The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show to His servants the things that must soon take place."
The name of the book comes from the second word of this introductory verse (actually the first word in the Greek), "apocalypse" or "revelation." It is said to be the "revelation of Jesus Christ." The temptation of a devotionally oriented commentary or sermon at this point is to declare that understanding the complex timelines and symbolism of the rest of the book isn't nearly so important as understanding that the book's main end is to reveal the person of Jesus Christ. Inasmuch as all Scripture as the inscripturated Word of God reveals God's character and points to the culmination of His redemptive work in Jesus Christ, there is nothing wrong with this idea in itself, but it's not the point of the verse here. For it goes on to read, "which God gave Him to show to His servants the things that must soon take place." It is therefore far better to read the construction as saying simply that the revelation belongs to or comes from Jesus (and more ultimately from God the Father). According to this opening verse, the content of the revelation is not Jesus per se (although He is of course the hero of the book and of all redemptive history), but rather "the things that must soon take place." The revelation is the gift of God, through the hands of Jesus Christ, to God's servants, revealing events "soon to take place."
Already two key points from this opening verse must be kept in mind going forward through the book. First, the "revelation" is just that: a revelation. An unveiling. A document intended to give insight. As we struggle to read, interpret, understand, and apply this book, comparing and contrasting different end-times schemes and doctrinal systems that attempt to deal with it consistently, we are often tempted to think that the revelation is actually a closed book that will never allow itself to be subject to successful interpretation, and that we ought therefore to give up on the task. Perhaps we should content ourselves with drawing only very broad, vague spiritual principles from the book, or simply take note of the nice things it says about Jesus and His ultimate victory over evil. There's nothing wrong with those approaches as a part of a holistic approach, but the very title of the book does not let us remain at that level. The revelation is intended to reveal specific things to the servants of God, things which we will discuss in detail.
Why do we have such difficulty, then? Has God failed to reveal His purposes with clarity? Certainly not! A couple of considerations help us here. While the Holy Spirit in a sense intends the book to speak to servants of Christ throughout the ages, John's intention in writing is to communicate certain things to specific servants of Christ in his own time. We will read more about this later on in the chapter. But we must realize that modern readers are a secondary, and not primary, audience for John. Therefore we already have one degree of distance from the text--a historical one. Another category of difficulty we face is the way the book is steeped in ancient Jewish language and symbolism. While written in Greek, it is an awkwardly Hebraic Greek, and it is employed to make vastly numerous allusions to various events, themes, and symbols in the Hebrew Scriptures, mixing the metaphors and using the ideas in new ways to express the events John saw in his visions. If we struggle to immediately understand the meaning of the symbols and metaphors, it is not because John or the Holy Spirit intended to obscure the truth from our minds' eyes, but rather because we have been poor students of the Old Testament, and particularly of the writings of the ancient Prophets. The antidote would be, therefore, more meticulous study of the Old Testament, in addition to more study of the historical context and events involving the first century churches in Asia Minor.
Second, and on a related note, the events revealed in the book are said to be events that will "soon take place." On the face of it, this would seem to indicate that the content of the book is prophetic material speaking of events which were about to happen shortly from the perspective of John's original audience. If this verse were the only time or manner in which John said something like this, it would perhaps leave room for a broader array of interpretations or implications of the word "soon," involving notions other than true temporal imminence in the normal, human sense of "soon." As we will see, though, John belabors the point of temporal imminence using several different terms and at the strategic points of the beginning and end of the book. If we see much of the revelation's content as being parallel with material in Jesus' Olivet Discourse in the latter portions of each of the three synoptic gospel accounts (as interpreters from many different schools do), this point is strengthened by Jesus' repeated insistence that the events of which He spoke would happen within a generation of His hearers, so that some who stood in His presence during His ministry would "not taste death" until they saw Him coming in His kingdom, the temple in Jerusalem destroyed by armies, etc. (cf. Matt. 24:34; Matt. 16: 20; Lk. 21:20).
This would seem to rule out approaches to the material in the rest of the book of revelation that say its contents prophesy mainly or only about events which are supposed to take place in our modern day future, near the end of world history before Christ's personal return. It simply stretches credulity to say that terms like "near," "soon," and "at hand" could connote, to John's original readers, anything other than their normal sense in other contexts (misguided appeals to 2nd Peter 3's 1000-years-as-a-day-to-the-Lord idea notwithstanding). This will become more forcefully clear in later verses of the first chapter when John introduces himself warmly to his audience as a "brother" and "partner" with them in tribulation, which tribulation he describes as intensifying but then gloriously ending in a short while, in the rest of the book. It would be insensitive, inappropriate, and indeed foolish for John to comfort his readers with assurances of nothing but far-distant future victories of Christ over the evil characters of the vision (even if final chapters do momentarily glance at far-distant future events). 2000 years is a mockery of the hope of a "short" while, no matter what one thinks "short" might mean, when the intense suffering of persecuted first century Christians is in view.
Moreover, as we continue through the book, and keep an eye both on Old Testament apocalyptic language and symbolism, and another eye on first century events of which we have great record, it should be relatively obvious that at least the interpretation offered here has strong enough biblical and historical warrant that it should be seriously considered, and comports with the idea that events in John's visions were truly soon to come to pass when he wrote. This idea, by the way--internal evidence--convinces me personally of the early date (c. 65 AD) for the revelation's authorship, as opposed to the more popular c. 95 AD date. If John insists he is prophesying of events in the near future, and then if as we study we see strong possible correlations between his visions and known events of the first century, especially events leading up to and including the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, we as Bible believers are constrained to posit an early date of authorship. The primary sources of external evidence related to this question severely lack multiple independent attestation, and the primary source is linguistically ambiguous at best at the key point of contention (viz. a cryptic reference in Irenaeus' Against Heresies to either the apostle John, or to his vision itself being seen in the reign of Domitian).
So "futuristic" approaches to interpreting the rest of the book have a lot to overcome textually and historically in order to gain credibility, apart from demands in the rest of the constructs of their systematic theology which all too often are eisegetically read into every chapter of the revelation. "Historicist" approaches, which see the events described in the bulk of the book as prophetically laying out major events in the entire progression of church history, have a similar problem here. Even though, as we will see, Jesus commands John to write not only the things he "has seen" and "those that are," in addition to "those that are to take place after this," it is precisely this latter category of future events that John says to be imminent. It is not as though only the early stages of John's visions reveal imminent events. Therefore, while the historicist rightly recognizes the progressive nature of history referred to in the revelation, he or she fails to see that the overwhelming focus of the entire book (small exceptions as there may be) is events of the imminent future, not thousands of years of progressive church history.
What of "idealists," those who read the contents of revelation either as mere highly allegorical symbolism describing general spiritual truths in the world or inside believers' hearts and minds, or else as describing truly historical events (even perhaps in John's day) which nevertheless are repeated cyclically throughout church history, intensifying until a cataclysmic end at the return of Christ? Many idealist amillennial scholars have contributed significantly to the church's understanding of the book of revelation--at least as much as those from other positions if not more--especially in their ability to perceive and point out repetition and recapitulation between certain chapters of the book, where events are not intended to be read chronologically but rather in almost a spiral fashion, where camera angles are changing in John's visions yet the text is still describing identical events.
There is legitimacy to aspects of this approach in a couple of respects. First, there is indeed recapitulation to be found in the revelation. The judgment sequences of seals, trumpets, and bowls is one widely-recognized instance of this. The later chapters are more difficult and heavily disputed with regard to the question of recapitulation; still it is clearly present in many places and very important for understanding the book as a whole. Second, it is important that even with the concretely historical referents of the book in mind, in the course of a proper interpretation, the interpreter never forgets that the book ultimately reveals God Himself and something of the way He tends to interact with the world. Therefore there are principles we can learn from the tribulation of first century Christians and their perseverance and faithfulness through it all, all of which still powerfully affects and applies to us as we continue to challenge "beastly" evils in our world today, bearing witness to King Jesus in life and word even at the cost of our lives if necessary.
At the end of the day, however, two main problems arise with idealism as a total approach to interpreting the revelation. General patterns do recur in certain ways, and at different levels, throughout history, because of the way God interacts with the world out of His consistent, unchanging, divine character. But the comprehensive level of detail in New Testament prophecy regarding events of the "last days" is so great that--while God certainly has the ability to do this--it is an awkward thought that history would repeat itself so precisely, and so many times, as to fulfill every detail of the apocalyptic prophecies of the New Testament every time a new intensity of fulfillment occurs. This is particularly clear when one realizes that so much of New Testament eschatology deals specifically with the end of Israel's old covenantal economy, and the destruction of first century Jerusalem at the hands of the Roman armies. The more fundamental problem with idealism, though, is that it fails to appreciate the enormous implications of the events described in revelation, with respect to the progress of redemptive history and the consequences of first century events for the rest of the world. When the "soon," "at hand," and "near" events of the revelation finally transpired in the first century, it was not in order that similar but more and more cataclysmic apocalyptic events would transpire throughout the rest of history, but rather--as we will discuss at more length in later sections--that a new age of a completely different character would dawn and bring unprecedented blessings to the nations of the earth.
An idealist interpreter may respond at this point by saying that since the bringing of new blessings to the world through the progress of the gospel can be understood as a gradual, progressive process (and I agree it should be), it is possible to conceive of the prophesied judgments that allow for these blessings as coming in a cyclical, repeated, gradually increasing way as well. He or she might also point to Old Testament texts which seem to have had initial fulfillment in Old Covenant Israel's kingdom experiences but are also later fulfilled more perfectly by Christ (e.g. the promises of the Davidic Covenant concerning David's "son," which in a way refer to Solomon but ultimately point to Christ). At this point, I would want to observe that Old Testament near-and-far "typological" prophecy patterns are not quite the same as what most idealist interpreters do with New Testament prophecies, and I would also appeal again to the astounding level of detail and specificity in the New Testament end-time prophecies that make cyclical or progressive fulfillment unlikely at best. Consider that with the coming of Christ in the virgin birth, no one today expects an even "fuller" fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy in Isaiah 7:14. There is an important difference between typology and cyclical/idealistic thematic fulfillment patterns. Typology involves fulfillments at categorically different levels during different stages of redemptive history (i.e. between covenant administrations), whereas idealist interpreters of New Testament eschatology posit multiple, ongoing fulfillments of identical prophecies within a single era of redemptive history (viz. the church age), at only gradually increasing levels. While events at the very end of church history as we know it, which I believe are only explicitly in view in one passage in the revelation (although other passages are organically related to it), will involve very, very broad thematic similarities to cataclysmic first century events, I hope to show that the details of the actual prophetic texts related to each time frame are too disparate to identify with each other, or to see fulfillment patterns of the "idealist" type happening with them.
As is probably clear by now, I take a historic "preterist" approach to interpreting John's apocalypse, meaning that I see most (but not all) of the prophecies in the book as having been fulfilled in the first century. This means that I do not see the revelation as prophesying mainly about events in our future today. What, then, is the book's relevance to us today, if not to warn us of "soon" coming tribulation? I believe the answer is threefold.
First, as we see the events prophesied in revelation fulfilled in the first century, we stand in awe at the faithfulness of God in keeping His promises, and His great justice and grace in executing His redemptive purposes in the world through judgment and salvation, and bringing to pass the beginning of the New Covenant kingdom era known also as the "church age." Our faith is bolstered by the fact that Jesus' own apocalyptic predictions concerning the doom of the temple in Jerusalem were one hundred percent correct.
Second, although the book does not prophesy specifically of tribulation we are to undergo, the rest of the New Testament makes it clear that throughout the church age, suffering is normal for Christians, and that "through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom" (Acts 14:22). Therefore, we can learn from and be encouraged by the faithfulness of early Christians who did undergo persecutions and hardships spoken about specifically in the revelation, as we seek to sacrificially serve our neighbors and witness to the kingship of Christ before a hostile world, even today. We must see from the revelation how the first century martyrs were vindicated in an initial kind of way by God's doing, and that their deaths were not in vain. Neither would ours be, if we remain faithful.
Finally, with the bulk of the events of the revelation having been fulfilled in the first century, three great obstacles to the worldwide spread of the gospel have been taken out of the way: a centralized aristocracy of officials of apostate Judaism, the intense persecutions of a powerful, united, universal empire, and Satan's decisive power to continue deceiving the nations of the earth. Though there are and will be many challenges remaining until Christ's Second Advent at the end of this world's history as we know it, God did some important things in the first century to allow for the beginning of the process of making disciples throughout the whole earth. Those events are relevant today even as pastors preach the Word week by week, as missionaries cross cultures for the sake of bringing Christ to more peoples, and as laymen go to work six days to continue bringing the whole of creation under submission to Christ's benevolent rule and stewardship, to the glory of God the Father.
Even though it is true that Christ has many more enemies still today, and must rule from the right hand of God in heaven until all the rest of His enemies are made a footstool for His feet (Ps. 110; 1 Cor. 15), it is also true that in a definitive sense, as Handel's Messiah famously quotes, "The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever" (Rev. 11:15). That profound encouragement is why John's revelation matters today.
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