The Wedding of the Lamb

A Historical Approach to the Book of Revelation

Papandrea

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781498273428
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

The Wedding of the Lamb does not fit into any of the traditional categories of interpretation for the book of Revelation. The author uses historical sources to combine New Testament interpretation with the history of the Roman/early Christian period to present an interpretation that is meant to approximate the way the early Christians would have understood the text. Far from a doomsday message, the message of Revelation is one of hope for a Church in the midst of persecution. The result is an interpretation which, unlike the proliferation of fictionalized accounts of the end-times, recognizes that most of the images in the book of Revelation are references to events in the history of the Church.

1

Signs of the Times?

Introduction

Does the book of Revelation contain secrets that will help its readers survive the chaos of the end of the world? Is it an encrypted roadmap to the future? If one were to believe the popular media phenomenon of end-times fiction, such as the Left Behind series and its predecessors, A Thief in the Night and The Late Great Planet Earth, one might think so. But as this book will demonstrate, the setting of Revelation is more to be found in the past than in the future.

It has always been tempting to try to read the book of Revelation with the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other, as if the text will illuminate or even predict current and future events. However, as we will see, this exercise is misguided. The book of Revelation is better understood when one reads with the Bible in one hand and a text of Roman history in the other. Too often, the history of Christianity (and the theology that comes out of that history) is taught without enough attention paid to the history of the Roman Empire. Imagine trying to write a biography of Abraham Lincoln without mentioning the Civil War. One would get an incomplete picture of Lincoln’s presidency, to say the least. It is the same with the history of Christianity. One cannot study the early Church without seriously examining the role it played in the drama that was the Roman Empire. The two are interdependent, and documents like the book of Revelation would not exist without the conflict between Church and empire.

This present book is not a commentary on Revelation, nor is it an attempt to have the last word on the subject. This is a beginning, a new framework for future discussion and interpretation. In a sense, it is an attempt to free the book of Revelation from the need to find parallels in the modern world. This can be done by seeing it through the eyes of its original audience and by examining the connection between the Roman Empire and the early Church.

The Bible is not a code to be cracked or a puzzle to be solved. In fact, the very name of the book of Revelation refers to that which is revealed, not that which is hidden. If the meaning of Revelation were a hidden secret, it would by its very nature belong to the realm of the occult, not to sacred Scripture. To be sure, the book of Revelation is highly symbolic, and it requires careful interpretation to find the meaning for contemporary readers, but it is not as though God has intentionally made it difficult to understand. The truth is, for its original audience it was not difficult to understand, and if it is difficult for us, that is because we forget that it was not written for us. Those who try to interpret the book of Revelation as if it contains secret messages for Christians in our time are missing the point. The book was written in language that would be relatively clear to its original audience but obscure to readers outside the Church, should it fall into their hands. This is because the book is the product of a persecuted Church, and it predicts the end of the empire persecuting its readers.

I have seen a bumper sticker that exclaims, “The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it!” While I respect the sentiment behind this statement, it simply is not correct. The matter is not settled when one knows what the Bible says. What the Bible says is one thing—what it means is another thing. In this distinction between what the Bible says and what it means is the challenging, but very rewarding, task of interpretation. The book of Revelation is a perfect example to demonstrate the difference between what the Bible says and what it means. Revelation says that the unfaithful and oppressive government is Babylon (Revelation 18). That’s what it says. But what does it mean? Does it refer the ancient city of Babylon, capital of the nation that conquered Judea in the sixth century BCE and destroyed the Jewish temple? No, it refers Rome, capital of the current oppressive empire that destroyed the second temple in 70 CE.

Contemporary confusion over the book of Revelation derives from various sources. It comes from misunderstanding the nature of apocalyptic prophecy, from studying the text of Scripture without also studying the historical context of the Roman Empire, and from irresponsible interpretations in popular books and films about the “end times.” In fact, the current craze of end-times fiction, and the schools of interpretation that have fueled it, only overcomplicate the matter with a need to fit the square peg of current events into the round hole of early Christian apocalyptic literature.

When one reads the book of Revelation in light of the history of the Roman Empire, one finds that we are not headed for a renewal of the worldwide persecution of Christianity. Of course, we must acknowledge that even today there are still places in the world where Christians are discriminated against, and even persecuted. But the future systematic persecution of Christianity, in which a remnant of Christians must fight a war against the powers of the world, simply is not found in the text. While a correct reading of the book of Revelation rejects the popular attempt to interpret most of the text as a prediction of near future events, it does acknowledge an element of future prediction, as we will see. But we must not make the mistake of assuming that everything that was in the author’s future is also in our future. Over nineteen hundred years of history have elapsed between the time that Revelation was written and the present day. As we will see, many of the events that the author of Revelation saw in his future already came to pass in the early centuries of the Church.

An Old Testament Book in the New Testament

The first thing to remember when reading the book of Revelation is that the Bible read by Jesus and the apostles was (for the most part) what Christians today refer to as the Old Testament. And while the writer of the book of Revelation probably knew most of our New Testament, there was as yet no standardized collection of specifically Christian scripture. In addition, even though the message of Revelation was given as a vision, we cannot imagine the seer writing down exactly what he saw while he was seeing it. Therefore, when the author of Revelation needed images to describe visions of things that defied human language, he would naturally turn to his Bible, our Old Testament. When the author needed metaphors to speak of things other Christians would understand while keeping any potential non-Christian readers in the dark, again he drew from the Old Testament. Even the very genre of literature that the book of Revelation emulates, apocalyptic prophecy, originally comes from the Old Testament. When we keep this in mind, it will help us interpret the metaphors and images of Revelation. Even more important, it keeps us focused on the bigger picture, which is the very purpose of this type of literature.

The Old Testament, while it contains history, was not primarily written to record historical events. It was written to describe the relationship between God and humanity, encourage (or discourage) certain behavior in humans, and to show how God is a saving God in spite of human disobedience. The prime example of this is the Exodus, in which God’s people are released from slavery by divine intervention. The Exodus is first and foremost a lesson about salvation. So reading the Old Testament requires a certain amount of reading between the lines, to get behind the narrative to the moral or theological lesson that is being taught. An even better example of this is the binding of Isaac (Genesis 22). Abraham is tested when God commands him to sacrifice his son Isaac. Abraham is ready to obey, but God stops him at the last minute and provides a substitute sacrifice. The theological lesson in this passage is that Abraham’s God does not require human sacrifice (as practiced by Abraham’s neighbors). Also, Abraham sets an example as one who trusts God to the extreme. He has faith that God can keep his promises even without the child of promise, Isaac. And of course, for Christians the story foreshadows the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Therefore, the point of the passage is not in the narrative of the story but in its significance for understanding the nature and activity of God. This is important for the study of Revelation because the book of Revelation also was not written to record a sequence of historical events. It was written to show Christian believers a light at the end of the tunnel of oppression and persecution. Revelation is a book of theology, a book about salvation, not a history book written ahead of time.1

Another key to understanding Revelation is Jesus’ apocalyptic teaching. It is assumed that the writer of Revelation knew Jesus’ teaching well and would understand what was revealed to him in light of Jesus’ words in the Gospels. Therefore, any interpretation of Revelation must compliment the apocalyptic preaching of Jesus. The vision of Revelation is presented as a message that comes directly from Jesus, and placing it side by side with Jesus’ words in the Gospels can help us interpret it. As we look at Jesus’ teaching on the Kingdom of God (or Kingdom of Heaven), we will see that there are striking parallels with the book of Revelation. For now, it is enough to say that Jesus promised he would bring the full revelation of the Kingdom at his return, just as he brought the seed of the Kingdom with his first advent. Ultimately, that is what the book of Revelation is about: the revealing of the Kingdom of God.

During his ministry, Jesus said the Kingdom was already present among his followers (Luke 17:21).2 This could also be translated, “. . . for the Kingdom of God is within you.” With Jesus’ first advent, the Kingdom is within us, within individuals and within the Church, but hidden like the mustard seed buried in the earth (Luke 13:18–19). The return of Christ, which is the climax of the book of Revelation, is that event of divine intervention that brings the Kingdom in its fully revealed sense, like the full-grown mustard plant. Now, the Kingdom is within us; at that time we will be within the Kingdom. Now, the Kingdom is the reign of God on earth, planted like a seed; at that time the Kingdom will be the Realm of God, like a full-grown plant, in which the people of God will “nest”’ for eternity.

One additional point about Jesus’ apocalyptic teaching must be made at this time. When the disciples asked Jesus if his resurrection was the revelation of the Kingdom, his answer implied that it was not (Acts 1:6–7). Jesus said to them, “It is not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has established by his own authority.” Before his death, Jesus had said that even he didn’t know “. . . that day and hour” (Matthew 24:36). Therefore, we are misguided if we assume that we can use the book of Revelation to decode the signs of the times and see the future coming. Can we know something Jesus did not? If we want to understand the book of Revelation, we need to understand it for its intended purpose and in its historical context. We must also understand Revelation within its literary genre, apocalyptic prophecy.

The Genre of Apocalyptic Literature

The book of Revelation, as apocalyptic literature, is a subgenre of what we loosely call prophecy.3 Before we enter into the discussion of apocalyptic literature specifically, we must address prophecy in general and rescue it from some popular misconceptions. The primary purpose of prophecy is not the prediction of future events. While there is an element of prediction in biblical prophecy, the main purpose of prophecy is to be the voice of God in the world. For example, someone who predicts the scores of sporting events is not a prophet, even if the predictions come true, because they are not speaking for God. Their predictions are based on probability and chance. But Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. could be considered a modern prophet, because even though he did not predict the future, he had a dream of what the future could be, and he challenged everyone—from those in power to those who had not yet been empowered—to work to make that dream a reality. Therefore, the prophetic voice is one that places expectations on its hearers, presumably expectations that are in line with the will of God. It is interesting to notice that in the earliest recorded lists of spiritual gifts or “offices” in the Christian Church, that of “prophet” is among them (see, for example 1 Corinthians 12:10; 14:3–5; and Ephesians 4:11–12). In the second and third centuries, the apostles came to be seen as the prophets of the Church, and the office of prophet came to be part of the ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Midnight Light
• Preface: The Method of This Study
• Chapter 1: Signs of the Times?
• Chapter 2: The Historical Background of the Book of Revelation
• Chapter 3: The Biblical Background of the Book of Revelation
• Chapter 4: The Structure of the Book of Revelation
• Chapter 5: Visions outside of Time
• Chapter 6: Visions of John’s Past
• Chapter 7: Visions of John’s Present
• Chapter 8: Visions of John’s Future (Our Past)
• Chapter 9: Visions of John’s Future (and Ours)
• Chapter 10: Jesus Saw It Coming—The Gospels and Revelation
• Chapter 11: So What? The Practical Implications of This Interpretation of Revelation
• Appendix A: The Book of Revelation in Plain English
• Appendix B: Revelation Timeline
• Appendix C: The Emperors of Rome
• Chart 1: Scripture Key to The Book of Revelation in Plain English
• Chart 2: Structure of the Book of Revelation
• Map: The Roman Empire with Places Mentioned in the Book of Revelation
• Bibliography