Getting the Message from Revelation 1-3

A Manifesto for Textual Literacy in a Foggy World

Looking Back

In the past few months, we have addressed the need for a fresh, grassroots approach to the study of God's Word. Not only is such an approach inherently rewarding; it ensures both the authenticity of firsthand experience and the opportunity for the Holy Spirit to speak directly to our hearts. When personal study is defined ultimately by secondhand opinions from even the best of Bible scholars, we miss not only the productive struggle that honors God in seeking His Face; we confront the very real possibility that the commentary we are reading is doctrinally skewed in ways not warranted by the text. Undeniably, a celebrity mindset prevails today, even--or especially--in the religious world, holding hostage those long-forgotten truths that we need most to hear in these strange times.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the study of eschatology. It seems that everyone, even non-believers, is fascinated with a dramatic interpretation of what is going on in our world. Not only do End Times micro-videos abound; an overabundance of panic-button opinions on apocalyptic events clashes in our minds until, if we do not know what God's Word actually says, we become overwhelmed and confused rather than armed and ready. Are all of them right? Not possibly, or the world would have ended multiple times by now. Are none of them right? No, because anybody can look around and know that some kind of countdown is seconds away from starting. We run into two extremes in the midst of all of this: those who have everything--even the Antichrist--figured out, and those who don't give a care because they think they're "flying" soon.

I believe the Lord wants us to know what's going on in the world, and this isn't something we can afford to get wrong. Not only did Jesus give us End Times prophecies; He commanded us to watch. We are commanded not merely to watch but to watch and pray. In fact, the last recorded prayer in the Bible breathes John's words, "Even so, come, Lord Jesus" (Revelation 22:20). Maranatha! What an amazing thought that we can pray for the Lord's return! Are we praying? And are we watching? I think we have some deeply embedded assumptions and misconceptions about what it means to watch. If you read the comments about the Last Days, many people mistake watching for waiting. They are sick and tired of this world and are looking up daily for the Lord to whisk them away from all the mess.

Looking Ahead

It will take upcoming weeks to address this mindset adequately, but the short answer is that waiting isn't what Jesus commanded. He said to occupy until He comes. To wait is not only to waste time--"Work, for the night is coming"; it is to toy with temptation. Christ's Kingdom parables repeatedly feature the misdeeds His "servants" commit while He delays His coming. There is a certain odd psychology to waiting: we have all waited for something, only to be taken off guard in the very act of our waiting. The only way to "wait" is to watch. And I don't think that means watching hours and hours of breaking news to see what shakes down globally. Not only is that practice unhealthy; it still leaves us strangely unprepared.

I think to watch means to take care of the task the Lord has placed in our trust: to be faithful to the little row we are plowing for Jesus every single day when no one else is watching--because He always is. That quiet conversation with our nosy neighbor; that word of encouragement we thought we were too busy to give but stopped to give anyway; that sum of money we released unexpectedly for someone in genuine need--all those things mean we are not just sitting around in the doctor's office waiting to be cured. We are watching for opportunities to touch other lives so that they can be cured. The one thing the Master always rewards in His parables is that quiet faithfulness that added up seed by seed into an entire harvest of sanctified service.

But if we think ourselves entitled for a getaway, we might be doing more waiting than watching. And if so, we are arguably being disobedient rather than faithful. I don't know about you, but I want to take as many people with me as I can when I leave this earth. And right now, there's still a lot of work to be done.

Looking Around

All that to say, I think religious pop culture has it wrong about the End Times. When we turn off the podcasts with the dogmatic yelling or the spine-chilling whispering, we find nothing left but to open God's Word. In preparing for this series, my own thoughts have undergone a significant sifting process. Things I had heard batted around for years with little to no Biblical evidence melted away in the glory of what came to light instead.

I felt the Lord prompting me to write about the Book of Revelation for several weeks, maybe months, before the United States took on Iran. I didn't begin this series as a reaction to the news; I began it out of hunger for the truth. But I stalled in sharing my search with others because I felt so tiny, so pretentious, before this task. It felt like jumping in the ocean when I can't swim. I knew how massive this study would be because I had studied the Book of Revelation as thoroughly as possible about 18 years ago, when the Sunday school class I was teaching featured this in the quarterly.

At that time, I became aware that the quarterly's approach to Revelation was all wrong. Rather than seeing this wonderful book for the prophecy that it is, featured writers used the Book of Revelation primarily for devotional and allegorical purposes, which I later found out was the vintage Idealist view. Some of the teacher-quarterly comments were downright ridiculous--that we all have our "beasts" to face and so on. And popular interpretations of End Times prophecies had only gotten worse in a generation, not better, it seemed to me. This meant that a new and intensive study would mean taking on not merely the Book of Revelation but the nonsense that has camouflaged its urgency for our times.

Having taught literature since before I turned twenty-two, I believed a generation ago--as I still do--that reading the Bible is no different from reading any classic of literature in the sense that all the same reading strategies apply because God's Word has the greatest textual unity and artistry of any book in the world. Period. My profound respect for the text demands that I invest time far beyond what I think I have available. If a detective cannot solve a cold case unless he devotes every waking moment to it, neither can we expect God's Word to yield up its treasures if all we expect is to find a few collectible seashells in our stroll along the beach. On the contrary, we must go down deep into the mine to find the gold. And without exception, it is there. I have never, not even one time, been disappointed in my findings.

A generation ago, it was only after I had pored over a text--any text, not just Revelation--that I would haul out the trusty commentaries. Now I rarely consult them at all. But when I found giants like Matthew Henry, Adam Clarke, J. Sidlow Baxter, and Jamieson, Faussett, and Brown finding the same truths that I had found, I realized what Tozer meant when he said he learned to read Shakespeare on his knees. The Lord Himself will indeed show us how to rightly divide His Word when we study it to show ourselves approved unto God. All those years ago, my love for Revelation exploded, even as it seemed that the world was about to disintegrate under our feet. But something else has become much more clear after all those years: if we are only studying Revelation to figure out the timing of our escape, we are missing the central message of Christ to His Church as grounded in Revelation 1-3 and as expounded in Chapters 4-22.

Looking for Jesus

My desire is to address what God's Word plainly says for the sake of the text's integrity. I am old-fashioned enough to believe that there is an objectivity to truth that can be found by anyone who seeks the Pearl of great price. All this crazy whataboutism--that that's only "my" opinion--denies the objective truth that the text conveys to anyone who can read. Reading is the most down-to-earth activity we can do: we look first for word meanings; then grammar and sentence structure; then context; then culture. Who is the speaker? Who is the audience? And how do both of those shape the message? What is the text doing? What is the speaker saying? What is the author's purpose, and why did God choose this particular genre? These aren't emotionally driven components but are non-negotiables in reading anything.

We remember that Jesus Himself gave us a ruggedly simple method of study: "Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me" (John 5:39). If we will commit to this simple three-part process of Bible study while applying reading strategies that are actually the brainmap of our own metacognition, we will not only be protected with the helmet of salvation; we will put on our spiritual hardhats against the false doctrines and dizzying sensationalism that have clouded the sheer beauty of this remarkable apocalyptic text far too long.