September 27, 2019 • 29 mins
- A huge thanks to Joseph McDade for his generous permission to use his music: https://josephmcdade.com/
- Discord Discussion Board: https://disboard.org/server/474580298630430751
- Revelation Word Study (blood, lion, and sword): https://drive.google.com/open?id=16bft8PtcyLns1JCrO-QUbBR8QEHOO413
- The Bible Project Revelation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nvVVcYD-0w
- John Nelson Darby and the Rapture: https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/people/pastorsandpreachers/john-nelson-darby.html
- Mark of the Beast and Revelation's Relevance to the Immediate Hearers: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/#inbox/FMfcgxwJXLdhxrpQdBlnPwvrkQxgRBKl
- “Fight” by Preston Sprinkle: https://www.amazon.com/Fight-Christian-Non-Violence-Preston-Sprinkle-ebook/dp/B00DHHDUY6/ref=sr_1_1?crid=83DIP45SS3UI&keywords=fight+by+preston+sprinkle&qid=1566499312&s=gateway&sprefix=fight+by+preston+%2Caps%2C310&sr=8-1
- Tim Mackie on Revelation (search his podcasts and Youtube for much more on this topic): https://thebibleproject.simplecast.com/episodes/8d9e7863-8d9e7863
- Greg Boyd’s “Rescuing Revelation” Series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ST9BWOSxWtw&list=PL4eShdMjziOvCFCrCCOWSheH7kqQNsUAZ
- Phillip Mast
- Laverne Miller
- Jesse Killion
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Derek (00:05):
Welcome back to the Fourth Way podcast. The last two
episodes, we took a look atviolence in the bible and how
those who adhere to nonviolencecan deal with violence in the
bible. We took a look at theauthoritative model, which said
that since God is the author andsustainer of life, if he chooses
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to take life, that's kind of inhis domain. He's able to do
that. It's in his jurisdiction,and it is not immoral for him to
take life or to permit others orcommand others to take life.
We also took a look at theprogressive revelation model,
and that model says that nowsome of the authors, especially
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of the old testament, were a bitmistaken about some of the
attributions of violence to God.They might have been right about
some things, but it wasn'treally until Jesus Christ that
he revealed some of the flawsthat those individuals had. The
God of the Old Testament wasn'treally violent. That's just what
individuals in the ancient NearEast thought that God would like
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attributed to him. In thisepisode, we're moving on to take
a look at the book ofRevelation.
Now, why would we do that if wealready have 2 models which
cover pretty much all of theideas of nonviolence? Why would
we look at the book ofRevelation? Well, one of the
main reasons we would do that isbecause it's post resurrection.
(01:29):
And that is going to bespecifically a problem if you
adhere to the second model, toexplain away violence in the
Bible. And if you adhere toprogressive revelation, and you
believe that Jesus Christ wasthe pure revelation of God, and
then all of a sudden, postresurrection, you have John
writing a book of revelationthat just seems utterly violent,
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just filled with violence, thenthat's gonna be a problem for
you.
Because you're gonna think thatif God was never violent and
then he truly revealed himselfin Jesus Christ as nonviolent,
then the book of Revelation,written the the last book of the
bible, that really shouldn't befilled with with this, with this
violence or this seemingapproval from God for all the
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violence that is done there. Asecond reason I wanna take a
look at the book of Revelationis because I think it's going to
be a a good case study thathelps us to see how there is
often there are often manythings that we're missing when
we read a book of the Bible. AndI think, in particular, the book
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of Revelation will help you tosee how you probably, most
people, eisegete rather thanexegete. And what does that
mean? So eisegesis is takingyour presuppositions, taking
your culture, taking, yourtradition, and imposing those on
the bible and pulling things outthat that you that make sense to
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you.
For example, the the, like, leftbehind series or or this common
understanding of Revelation.When you have, like, these
flying locusts really represent,you know, hind attack
helicopters and all that kind ofstuff, it gets kinda crazy. And
the the New Testament churchwould not have thought anything
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about that. But we kinda putthat into the text because it
makes sense to us, and andthat's a metaphor that we
understand. We we wouldunderstand that analogy or that
connection.
Exegesis, on the other hand, istaking out of the text, and
that's trying to understand whatthe author intended, who the
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audience was, and just reallydoing a lot of homework to to
figure out, what the text says,not what your culture says about
the text. And Revelation, as youunpack it, is going to, I think,
really really show you a lotabout how much we isogete into
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the text. And finally, I, youknow, I the Old Testament is
still very hard for me in termsof in terms of nonviolence. If
you take the authoritativemodel, it's it's kind of easy to
brush under the rug more so, butthat's not the case with
Revelation. The amazing thingabout the book of Revelation is
that not only do does thenonviolent position have good
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answers, but once you take a adeep look at Revelation and
exegete instead of eisegete, allof a sudden you have this
beautiful, beautiful book thatmeans pretty much the opposite
of what everybody is trying totell you it means today.
And I never got that. For me,revelation was just never on my
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radar. It wasn't something thatinterested me one bit, and
that's that's for a lot ofreasons. The first reason is
that everyone interpreted itdifferently. Even in my own
community, you just had peopleinterpreting the book of
Revelation, the symbolism, in a1,000 different ways.
And that said to me right therethat nobody knows what the heck
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they're talking about. Maybemaybe somebody's a better
guesser than somebody else, butnobody knows what they're
talking about when they'retalking about Revelation. And
maybe maybe the locusts arehelicopters, and maybe they're
not. But all of these thesecrazy, crazy things just, I
mean, you could look at thespectrum of of all of the
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symbolism and revelation andfind countless examples of of
interpretations. But why would Iwant to listen to anybody who
thinks they have any clue aboutwhat Revelation says, since so
many respectable people not onlydisagree, but are are just
vastly, vastly different ideasand symbols.
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Secondly, I never really caredabout Revelation because it was
so future oriented, and and itwasn't applicable at all. The
book of Revelation, nobody'sgonna understand it until it's
either happening at this verymoment or it's already happened.
So, really, the book ofRevelation is something that
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that is only useful pretty muchin retrospect. And right now, it
seems pretty clear we're not inin, you know, that that crazy
end time tribulation, postrapture, whatever. And, so, to
me, it was it was very clear.
Like, it it wasn't applicable.Book of Revelation might be
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interesting to people who wholike to guess, but it's not
applicable. So what's the point?And that's something that you
really don't see in other books,not even the prophetic books.
Take Isaiah, for example.
Isaiah has a a very famouspassage on the the Messiah, the
suffering servant, Isaiah 53.And, in that prophecy, we we get
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a glimpse of Jesus. And, okay,that's future oriented for the
readers of Isaiah's time. But,the whole book of Isaiah, by and
large, is applicable to thoseindividuals in the day. There
might be some future orientedthings, but the scope and and
the the tone and the generalmessage of Isaiah is not just
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all this ambiguous propheticstuff, even though there might
be some of that.
It's it's a book that's writtento a specific people for a
specific purpose, and and itmeans that they're largely going
to understand. And, that justdidn't seem to be the case for
Revelation, at least growing upin the groups that I did, the
the dispensational groups. Itjust didn't really matter. As I
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got older, I recognized thatthere were some other major
issues to the book of Revelationtoo. Most of the Revelation
interpretations that I heardwere based on very new ideas,
like John Darby's idea of therapture.
That only came around in the1800. There wasn't this notion,
particularly of a of a pre tribrapture where Jesus has a second
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coming, he comes back, he takesall of us back up to heaven, and
then he has a third coming andhe comes back down. You just you
don't see that until somebodylike Darby comes along and
popularizes or creates it andpopularizes it. And so, the a
lot of revelation just seemedlike this modern interpretation
and not something that that maywould have made sense to the
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church historical. My communityin particular, another reason
that I I really didn't like thebook of Revelation, was because
it led my community to beescapist in nature.
And so we kind of we would havenever said this, but we took the
idea of being a city on a hill,not as we are this, like, beacon
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that shines out light into thedarkness and and pushes the
darkness back. No. It was morelike, we're this compound up on
a hill that kinda has this thislight there, and, you know,
hopefully other people make itto this compound before the
world goes to hell in ahandbasket. Sort of, I guess,
the, Noah's Ark philosophy. Youknow, the world's being
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destroyed, and we're trying toget as many people to come in
and be safe as possible.
It's taking Christ's words that,you know, the the gates of hell,
where Jesus says says this. It'sreally the gates of hell will
not withstand the church. Butthe way we viewed it as
escapists, and the way we usedRevelation was really meant as
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like, well, the gates of hellwon't beat down the church. So
we took the church as being onthe defensive, and we're just
trying to get in this lifeboat,trying to get out of here.
Hopefully Jesus comes back andtakes me out of here before
something too bad happens,before the tribulation.
And that's our philosophy.That's that's what Revelation
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kind of helped us out with. Ithelped us to see how bad it was
gonna be for the people whoweren't in the compound when
Jesus came back to rescue us.That's what it did for us. It
gave us this this comfort to bein our community, knowing that
we were gonna get out of here,and we saw what the rest of the
world was gonna deal with.
It was kind of a pre consolationfor us. Finally, I I really had
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a huge issue. I began to have ahuge issue as I I understood the
kingdom more and more, that thisI this idea of revelation that I
grew up on did not lead at allto living as though Christ
actually brought his kingdom.Christ actually reigns in power.
It dismissed this kingdom ideathat you see in the gospels.
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Dismissed this idea that you seewhere Jesus says, hey, the son
of man, you're gonna see himlifted up and sitting at the
right hand of the throne of God.Just a little bit, you're gonna
see it. You watch. It itdismisses it when Stephen says,
hey, look. I see the Son of Mansitting at the right hand of the
throne of God.
It's dismissive of Ephesiansthat says we have all heavenly
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gifts given to us, and that thatJesus Christ is making the
nations His footstool, that thatwe're His ambassadors, that are
not just in some compoundawaiting, escape, but that we
are ambassadors, and we aresoldiers who fight against not
flesh and blood, but againstprincipalities and powers, and
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we are going into the world toreclaim the nations for Christ.
The book of Revelation didn'tgive me those chill bumps that I
just got talking about thekingdom of God. It didn't do
that for me. It was just thispassive, escapist book that
nobody knew anything aboutbecause everybody had just as
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good of a guess as anybody else.Because everybody eisegeted
rather than exegeted.
What changed for me then? Well,a a lot of things. Understanding
the kingdom more was wascertainly one big component. But
but one of hearing more from alot of biblically, biblically
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minded scholars who are verygood at exegeting scripture,
that was helpful. Like, takeMichael Heizer, for example.
One of of the individuals who Irespect the most in terms of
trusting that he's gonna tellme, accurate information, he's
gonna tell me where he'sguessing, he's gonna give me
percentages, and he's reallygoing to lay out the evidence
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for what it is. And, Heizer saidsomething in particular that I
think is extremely applicablefor the book of Revelation.
Heizer has has this saying, andit goes something like, Bible
was written for me, but it wasnot written to me. And what he
means by that is take the bookof Revelation. When John wrote
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that, it was written to aparticular group of people.
It was written to the church in,you know, 70 to 90 AD. That's
who it was written to. Those arethe individuals who are going to
be the basis for the context ofwhat was written. What was going
on in their lives, what wasgoing on in Rome, the
persecution, the struggle, thedifficulty, that's the context
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for the book of Revelation. Mycontext is not the context for
the book of Revelation.
And so while God wrote His word,so that 2000 years later, I
could access it, and I could geta glimpse at how He worked with
individuals in the past, and Icould hear what He says, and I
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could apply that to my life,That is is written for me, but
it was not written to me. Andfor me to understand what it
means for me, I need tounderstand what it meant and
what it said to the originalaudience. Revelation was written
when the early church was inturmoil and persecution. They
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didn't know what was going tohappen to the church. John's
book, as we're gonna see, is allabout Jesus.
It is the revelation of JesusChrist, and it talks a lot about
how He wages war and howbelievers should wage war as
well. It's a book thatencourages, especially, this
faithful obedience to the way ofChrist against the powers of the
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world that Babylon represents,particularly governments. And we
we will take a look at that, andit it's just it's just powerful
because we might not beexperiencing the same
persecution today. But whenyou're seeing John talk to
people who are in the midst ofextreme hardship, and on top of
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that, at a time when theChristian church is not very
large, and they don't know whattheir future holds, when you see
what He tells them to do, thatis encouraging for us today, who
are in a church that is is in amuch better position in many
ways. And it encourages us to befaithful and to fight the good
fight the way that John and theother authors intended for us to
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fight.
Let's then just jump into thebook of Revelation. So, at the
beginning, John tells us thatwhat he's writing is the
revelation of Jesus Christ toHis servants, to show them what
must soon take place. And thosepeople are blessed who hear and
keep what is written. So, thatright there tells us a couple
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very important things. It waswritten to the church.
It was a revelation, notparticularly just of the of of
the end times, though it doessay, these things that were soon
to take place. And if we takethe Bible at its word, then that
means that it it probablyapplied to the early Christians,
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and not specifically written tous 2000 years later, unless you
consider that soon. And it it isprimarily about Jesus Christ,
and the people who are blessedwho hear and keep what is
written. Now, what strikes meabout this this hear and keep
what is written is thatRevelation was never presented
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to me as this this book that issomething that we can hear and
keep. What is there to hear andkeep if everything is future
prophecy?
There's nothing to hear andkeep. But, John tells us that we
are blessed if we hear and keepwhat is written. So, what is he
writing? What is he trying totell us? And that's what we
wanna look at at today.
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Is is John really telling usthat we have this vindictive
savior who was peaceful just sohe could die on a cross, and
that would, that was, his MO,just, just so he could do this
messianic thing, and then he'sgonna come back and he's ticked,
and he's just gonna starthacking people to pieces. That,
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that's the revelation of JesusChrist? Well, let's take a look.
When John first sees Jesus,Jesus is revealed as a lion, as
the Lion of Judah. Now, a lionis a is a vicious creature.
He's something that is going tobe extremely, somebody who's as
in a creature who strikes fearinto the hearts of individuals.
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And we see a 4 headed creaturewith the the face or head of a
lion, and we also see a coupleother examples of lion. Other
than Jesus being the Lion ofJudah here, and the creature
with 4 heads having the head ofa lion, the there's one other
reference to Jesus, but all ofthe other references references
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of a lion are going to bereferring to the beast. So the
beast's, his his, like, teethare likened to or or, are
likened to the the teeth of alion, or his head is like the
head of a lion. So all of theseexamples are going to be of of
judgments, and of the beast, andof of these bad things, are
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likened to lions, these vicious,powerful things.
What's interesting, twointeresting things, is that
first of all, the only othertime lion is mentioned for
Jesus, The way in which Jesus islikened to a lion is not his
teeth or his head or the otherscary things for which the beast
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is likened to a lion, but ratherhis voice, the power that comes
in his voice, is likened to alion. The second interesting
thing is that while Jesus isseen as the Lion of Judah
initially by John, all of asudden, when John kind of does a
double take and he looks again,the Lion of Judah is no longer a
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lion, but he is the slain lamb.And from that point on,
references to Jesus are not theLion of Judah, but Lamb. So,
it's almost as if John says, Ohyeah, we've got this really
powerful lion. I see Jesuscoming on the scene.
You know, He's He's strong, He'spowerful, and He looks again,
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and it's a slain lamb. Well,that's not really what you're
expecting about a book of JesusChrist, the one who conquers and
trying to learn how to wage warlike our Savior. But, there it
is. Jesus becomes a slain lamb.And, there are tons and tons of
lamb references from here on outin the book.
As a slain lamb, anotherinteresting aspect is that Jesus
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Christ, the slain lamb, shed Hisblood. And, Revelation seems
like it's a a very bloody book.If you ask anybody, like, what's
the bloodiest book in in theBible? And they're gonna they're
gonna tell you that it'sprobably the the book of
Revelation, because Jesus goesto town on His enemies. And,
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what's interesting about this isthat that Mackie, Tim Mackie,
when he was talking about thewrath of God, and he was talking
about the the book ofRevelation, he said that there's
there's far less violence thanyou think there is in the book
of Revelation.
And when you look at it, themajority of the violence done by
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somebody to somebody else, thethe individuals who take the
brunt of the violence tend notto be the enemies. And that
sounds really weird, but if youdo a word study on the Book of
Revelation, and I did, so I willI will link just a a really
simple document for you here.But, if you look at the word
blood in Revelation, I believeit occurs 19 times. And, of
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those 19 times, I believe 6 arelike, you know, the blood the
moon turns to blood, the thewater turns to blood. These
metaphorical things that youfind in the in the Old Testament
of just signs of judgment.
Nobody does it to anybody else.It's just kind of a a sign or an
omen or whatever you wanna callit. When we do see somebody's
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blood, the 12 remaining times ofthe 12 remaining times, 11 of
them are clearly, absolutely,undeniably the blood of Jesus or
the blood of the martyrs or hisservants. There's one remaining
time, I believe it's inRevelation 19, where there's
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blood, and it's not completelyclear who it whose it is. But it
seems there's a very strong casethat the blood is either Jesus's
or the blood of the martyrs,just because for a number of
reasons.
And and I think Mackie explainsthat, in one of his his
podcasts, and I'll try to sharethat in a link below as well.
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So, definitely, of of the 19times, that blood is blood is
seen in the Book of Revelation,12 of those times we have
somebody's blood. And,undeniably, 11 of those 12
times, the blood is either theblood of martyrs or the blood of
Jesus. And one of those times,it's somewhat ambiguous. So,
when we talk about the blood ofRevelation and and how bloody
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the book is, it is bloody, butthe blood is from the slain
lamb, and from those who do war,who do battle in like fashion.
And how did the Lion of Judah dobattle? He laid down his life as
the slain lamb. And, over andover and over again, the way
that you see Jesus conquer inthe Book of Revelation is, in
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reference to His being slainlike a a lamb, but also when we
do see him doing battle, it'snot done with a sword in his
hand. It's done with a sword inhis mouth. And, time and time
again, if you look at the wordsword, or you look up the word
mouth, or you, look up the wordtestimony, in the book of
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Revelation, you're gonna seethat the way that Jesus Christ
over and over and over and overagain wages war is with His
words.
And that goes back to this thisidea of the the lion. The only
other time we see Jesusreferenced in in some respects
to a lion, is later in the Bookof Revelation, when his voice is
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likened to that of a lion. Nothis figure, not not the way he
does things, but the way that hespeaks. His power is in His
voice. And that makes a lot ofsense, especially coming from a
guy like John, who talks so muchabout the Word in John 1.
And it makes a lot of sense forJesus, who through His spoken
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Word brought into existence allthings. And, it makes sense that
God's Word would be likened to asword, because we also see in
Hebrews 4 that the Word of Godis sharper than a 2 edged sword,
and it and it divides truth, andit, it is powerful. And in
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Revelation, we see this over andover and over again, that the
way Christ wages war is with Hiswords and with the laying down
of His life. And in Revelation12, unless there's any doubt, if
we want to say, well, that's theway that Jesus does things, it
says in Revelation 12 that wewill conquer in like fashion.
And what do we mean in likefashion?
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Well, John says that his book ofRevelation is the revelation of
Jesus Christ. And if we hear andkeep what John is writing right
here, then we are blessed. Andwhat John is doing is he's
saying, this Lion of Judah is alamb. He laid down his life. And
through the word of truth, thatis our power, and that is how we
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fight Babylon or the governmentor the powers or whatever you
want to, to call that.
But that is how we wage war, andthat's who we wage war against.
We are not greater than ourmaster, and as Jesus Christ has
laid down His life, and throughthe Word of Truth and His
example, has conquered, so weconquer. When you when you read
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the book of Revelation with withthese themes, with this
understanding of it being aboutChrist, that it's written to for
us, right, but but to a specificset of servants and a specific
set of circumstances. And thatwe are blessed if we hear and
keep what John is writing, thatit is applicable for us now,
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it's not just some futureprophecy. And if you are are
willing to do the studies and goback and, cross reference Old
Testament references and seewhat John means as he's pulling
things out.
And, if you see the slain lamb,and if you see whose blood is
being shed, and if you see howwar is being waged, the book of
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Revelation becomes an absolutelytransformative book for our
lives today. And, and perhapsone of the most transformative
books, to know that that John iswriting to a group of people who
are experiencing the greatesthardship that that most of us
could possibly imagine,especially in the West. This
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this horrendous persecution,and, the pessimism that they
must have had seeing just smallnumbers of Christians in house
churches and and people gettingtaken away. I mean, the book of
Revelation is just amazing ifyou, if you understand what John
is saying. It's an encouragementfor us to persist, to to hear
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and keep what is written.
And that is a a far, far, fardifferent picture than the book
of Revelation that I got whenwhen I was growing up, and even
into my adult years. That's onething that I do like about, my
reformed faith, after I I leftmore of the dispensational
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background. You know, beingreformed, it we tend to be more
amillennial, or orpostmillennial. And so, we do
have somewhat of a notion of ofChrist's kingdom and how it's,
it it's coming in the world andhow we're advancing that. But,
nevertheless, even though it'snot not nearly as bad as I feel
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most dispensational theologiesare when coming to the book of
Revelation, there's still a lotof a lot of reformed
individuals, most, who are notnonviolent and so really can't
do justice to what the book ofRevelation is is, bringing
about, what it's trying to say.
Preston Sprinkle is is oneauthor author of the book Fight,
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who is Reformed and nonviolentas well. And so, I've found that
encouraging, because you don'tsee too many nonviolent Reformed
individuals. But nevertheless,there there are certainly
degrees of how badly peoplemisunderstand Revelation. And
it's so unfortunate becauseRevelation is such a powerful
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book. So, in conclusion, I guessthere's there's not much else to
say, but do do the legwork tofigure out what Revelation is
really saying.
Do do the legwork to to put yourpresuppositions, your
traditions, all of those thingsto the side, and kind of start
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from scratch. And take a lookand see what is the purpose of
the book? Who is it written to?Does it make sense that it
wouldn't be applicable to thepeople of of that day? Does it
make sense, some of the thingsthat that we we read in the
text?
Are we putting things into thetext, or are we taking out of?
What about what I said with thethe word blood? Like, what what
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does that mean when all of theblood that we see shed is either
the martyrs or Jesus? What doeswhat does all of that mean? What
makes the most sense of the bookof Revelation, and what makes
the most sense of of God, havinga purpose for for that book?
Is it just for people inretrospect to survive the
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Tribulation who knows how manyyears from now? Or is it
something that His church couldhave used and been encouraged by
for all time? So, take a look,let me know what you think. For
the moment, that's all, sopeace, and because I'm a
pacifist, and I say it, I meanit.
Welcome back to the Fourth Way podcast. The last two
episodes, we took a look atviolence in the bible and how
those who adhere to nonviolencecan deal with violence in the
bible. We took a look at theauthoritative model, which said
that since God is the author andsustainer of life, if he chooses
(00:26):
to take life, that's kind of inhis domain. He's able to do
that. It's in his jurisdiction,and it is not immoral for him to
take life or to permit others orcommand others to take life.
We also took a look at theprogressive revelation model,
and that model says that nowsome of the authors, especially
(00:46):
of the old testament, were a bitmistaken about some of the
attributions of violence to God.They might have been right about
some things, but it wasn'treally until Jesus Christ that
he revealed some of the flawsthat those individuals had. The
God of the Old Testament wasn'treally violent. That's just what
individuals in the ancient NearEast thought that God would like
(01:09):
attributed to him. In thisepisode, we're moving on to take
a look at the book ofRevelation.
Now, why would we do that if wealready have 2 models which
cover pretty much all of theideas of nonviolence? Why would
we look at the book ofRevelation? Well, one of the
main reasons we would do that isbecause it's post resurrection.
(01:29):
And that is going to bespecifically a problem if you
adhere to the second model, toexplain away violence in the
Bible. And if you adhere toprogressive revelation, and you
believe that Jesus Christ wasthe pure revelation of God, and
then all of a sudden, postresurrection, you have John
writing a book of revelationthat just seems utterly violent,
(01:53):
just filled with violence, thenthat's gonna be a problem for
you.
Because you're gonna think thatif God was never violent and
then he truly revealed himselfin Jesus Christ as nonviolent,
then the book of Revelation,written the the last book of the
bible, that really shouldn't befilled with with this, with this
violence or this seemingapproval from God for all the
(02:17):
violence that is done there. Asecond reason I wanna take a
look at the book of Revelationis because I think it's going to
be a a good case study thathelps us to see how there is
often there are often manythings that we're missing when
we read a book of the Bible. AndI think, in particular, the book
(02:37):
of Revelation will help you tosee how you probably, most
people, eisegete rather thanexegete. And what does that
mean? So eisegesis is takingyour presuppositions, taking
your culture, taking, yourtradition, and imposing those on
the bible and pulling things outthat that you that make sense to
(03:01):
you.
For example, the the, like, leftbehind series or or this common
understanding of Revelation.When you have, like, these
flying locusts really represent,you know, hind attack
helicopters and all that kind ofstuff, it gets kinda crazy. And
the the New Testament churchwould not have thought anything
(03:23):
about that. But we kinda putthat into the text because it
makes sense to us, and andthat's a metaphor that we
understand. We we wouldunderstand that analogy or that
connection.
Exegesis, on the other hand, istaking out of the text, and
that's trying to understand whatthe author intended, who the
(03:43):
audience was, and just reallydoing a lot of homework to to
figure out, what the text says,not what your culture says about
the text. And Revelation, as youunpack it, is going to, I think,
really really show you a lotabout how much we isogete into
(04:04):
the text. And finally, I, youknow, I the Old Testament is
still very hard for me in termsof in terms of nonviolence. If
you take the authoritativemodel, it's it's kind of easy to
brush under the rug more so, butthat's not the case with
Revelation. The amazing thingabout the book of Revelation is
that not only do does thenonviolent position have good
(04:29):
answers, but once you take a adeep look at Revelation and
exegete instead of eisegete, allof a sudden you have this
beautiful, beautiful book thatmeans pretty much the opposite
of what everybody is trying totell you it means today.
And I never got that. For me,revelation was just never on my
(04:51):
radar. It wasn't something thatinterested me one bit, and
that's that's for a lot ofreasons. The first reason is
that everyone interpreted itdifferently. Even in my own
community, you just had peopleinterpreting the book of
Revelation, the symbolism, in a1,000 different ways.
And that said to me right therethat nobody knows what the heck
(05:11):
they're talking about. Maybemaybe somebody's a better
guesser than somebody else, butnobody knows what they're
talking about when they'retalking about Revelation. And
maybe maybe the locusts arehelicopters, and maybe they're
not. But all of these thesecrazy, crazy things just, I
mean, you could look at thespectrum of of all of the
(05:32):
symbolism and revelation andfind countless examples of of
interpretations. But why would Iwant to listen to anybody who
thinks they have any clue aboutwhat Revelation says, since so
many respectable people not onlydisagree, but are are just
vastly, vastly different ideasand symbols.
(05:55):
Secondly, I never really caredabout Revelation because it was
so future oriented, and and itwasn't applicable at all. The
book of Revelation, nobody'sgonna understand it until it's
either happening at this verymoment or it's already happened.
So, really, the book ofRevelation is something that
(06:16):
that is only useful pretty muchin retrospect. And right now, it
seems pretty clear we're not inin, you know, that that crazy
end time tribulation, postrapture, whatever. And, so, to
me, it was it was very clear.
Like, it it wasn't applicable.Book of Revelation might be
(06:36):
interesting to people who wholike to guess, but it's not
applicable. So what's the point?And that's something that you
really don't see in other books,not even the prophetic books.
Take Isaiah, for example.
Isaiah has a a very famouspassage on the the Messiah, the
suffering servant, Isaiah 53.And, in that prophecy, we we get
(07:01):
a glimpse of Jesus. And, okay,that's future oriented for the
readers of Isaiah's time. But,the whole book of Isaiah, by and
large, is applicable to thoseindividuals in the day. There
might be some future orientedthings, but the scope and and
the the tone and the generalmessage of Isaiah is not just
(07:24):
all this ambiguous propheticstuff, even though there might
be some of that.
It's it's a book that's writtento a specific people for a
specific purpose, and and itmeans that they're largely going
to understand. And, that justdidn't seem to be the case for
Revelation, at least growing upin the groups that I did, the
the dispensational groups. Itjust didn't really matter. As I
(07:49):
got older, I recognized thatthere were some other major
issues to the book of Revelationtoo. Most of the Revelation
interpretations that I heardwere based on very new ideas,
like John Darby's idea of therapture.
That only came around in the1800. There wasn't this notion,
particularly of a of a pre tribrapture where Jesus has a second
(08:13):
coming, he comes back, he takesall of us back up to heaven, and
then he has a third coming andhe comes back down. You just you
don't see that until somebodylike Darby comes along and
popularizes or creates it andpopularizes it. And so, the a
lot of revelation just seemedlike this modern interpretation
and not something that that maywould have made sense to the
(08:37):
church historical. My communityin particular, another reason
that I I really didn't like thebook of Revelation, was because
it led my community to beescapist in nature.
And so we kind of we would havenever said this, but we took the
idea of being a city on a hill,not as we are this, like, beacon
(08:58):
that shines out light into thedarkness and and pushes the
darkness back. No. It was morelike, we're this compound up on
a hill that kinda has this thislight there, and, you know,
hopefully other people make itto this compound before the
world goes to hell in ahandbasket. Sort of, I guess,
the, Noah's Ark philosophy. Youknow, the world's being
(09:20):
destroyed, and we're trying toget as many people to come in
and be safe as possible.
It's taking Christ's words that,you know, the the gates of hell,
where Jesus says says this. It'sreally the gates of hell will
not withstand the church. Butthe way we viewed it as
escapists, and the way we usedRevelation was really meant as
(09:45):
like, well, the gates of hellwon't beat down the church. So
we took the church as being onthe defensive, and we're just
trying to get in this lifeboat,trying to get out of here.
Hopefully Jesus comes back andtakes me out of here before
something too bad happens,before the tribulation.
And that's our philosophy.That's that's what Revelation
(10:06):
kind of helped us out with. Ithelped us to see how bad it was
gonna be for the people whoweren't in the compound when
Jesus came back to rescue us.That's what it did for us. It
gave us this this comfort to bein our community, knowing that
we were gonna get out of here,and we saw what the rest of the
world was gonna deal with.
It was kind of a pre consolationfor us. Finally, I I really had
(10:32):
a huge issue. I began to have ahuge issue as I I understood the
kingdom more and more, that thisI this idea of revelation that I
grew up on did not lead at allto living as though Christ
actually brought his kingdom.Christ actually reigns in power.
It dismissed this kingdom ideathat you see in the gospels.
(10:53):
Dismissed this idea that you seewhere Jesus says, hey, the son
of man, you're gonna see himlifted up and sitting at the
right hand of the throne of God.Just a little bit, you're gonna
see it. You watch. It itdismisses it when Stephen says,
hey, look. I see the Son of Mansitting at the right hand of the
throne of God.
It's dismissive of Ephesiansthat says we have all heavenly
(11:13):
gifts given to us, and that thatJesus Christ is making the
nations His footstool, that thatwe're His ambassadors, that are
not just in some compoundawaiting, escape, but that we
are ambassadors, and we aresoldiers who fight against not
flesh and blood, but againstprincipalities and powers, and
(11:33):
we are going into the world toreclaim the nations for Christ.
The book of Revelation didn'tgive me those chill bumps that I
just got talking about thekingdom of God. It didn't do
that for me. It was just thispassive, escapist book that
nobody knew anything aboutbecause everybody had just as
(11:54):
good of a guess as anybody else.Because everybody eisegeted
rather than exegeted.
What changed for me then? Well,a a lot of things. Understanding
the kingdom more was wascertainly one big component. But
but one of hearing more from alot of biblically, biblically
(12:15):
minded scholars who are verygood at exegeting scripture,
that was helpful. Like, takeMichael Heizer, for example.
One of of the individuals who Irespect the most in terms of
trusting that he's gonna tellme, accurate information, he's
gonna tell me where he'sguessing, he's gonna give me
percentages, and he's reallygoing to lay out the evidence
(12:38):
for what it is. And, Heizer saidsomething in particular that I
think is extremely applicablefor the book of Revelation.
Heizer has has this saying, andit goes something like, Bible
was written for me, but it wasnot written to me. And what he
means by that is take the bookof Revelation. When John wrote
(12:59):
that, it was written to aparticular group of people.
It was written to the church in,you know, 70 to 90 AD. That's
who it was written to. Those arethe individuals who are going to
be the basis for the context ofwhat was written. What was going
on in their lives, what wasgoing on in Rome, the
persecution, the struggle, thedifficulty, that's the context
(13:23):
for the book of Revelation. Mycontext is not the context for
the book of Revelation.
And so while God wrote His word,so that 2000 years later, I
could access it, and I could geta glimpse at how He worked with
individuals in the past, and Icould hear what He says, and I
(13:44):
could apply that to my life,That is is written for me, but
it was not written to me. Andfor me to understand what it
means for me, I need tounderstand what it meant and
what it said to the originalaudience. Revelation was written
when the early church was inturmoil and persecution. They
(14:05):
didn't know what was going tohappen to the church. John's
book, as we're gonna see, is allabout Jesus.
It is the revelation of JesusChrist, and it talks a lot about
how He wages war and howbelievers should wage war as
well. It's a book thatencourages, especially, this
faithful obedience to the way ofChrist against the powers of the
(14:27):
world that Babylon represents,particularly governments. And we
we will take a look at that, andit it's just it's just powerful
because we might not beexperiencing the same
persecution today. But whenyou're seeing John talk to
people who are in the midst ofextreme hardship, and on top of
(14:49):
that, at a time when theChristian church is not very
large, and they don't know whattheir future holds, when you see
what He tells them to do, thatis encouraging for us today, who
are in a church that is is in amuch better position in many
ways. And it encourages us to befaithful and to fight the good
fight the way that John and theother authors intended for us to
(15:13):
fight.
Let's then just jump into thebook of Revelation. So, at the
beginning, John tells us thatwhat he's writing is the
revelation of Jesus Christ toHis servants, to show them what
must soon take place. And thosepeople are blessed who hear and
keep what is written. So, thatright there tells us a couple
(15:36):
very important things. It waswritten to the church.
It was a revelation, notparticularly just of the of of
the end times, though it doessay, these things that were soon
to take place. And if we takethe Bible at its word, then that
means that it it probablyapplied to the early Christians,
(15:57):
and not specifically written tous 2000 years later, unless you
consider that soon. And it it isprimarily about Jesus Christ,
and the people who are blessedwho hear and keep what is
written. Now, what strikes meabout this this hear and keep
what is written is thatRevelation was never presented
(16:18):
to me as this this book that issomething that we can hear and
keep. What is there to hear andkeep if everything is future
prophecy?
There's nothing to hear andkeep. But, John tells us that we
are blessed if we hear and keepwhat is written. So, what is he
writing? What is he trying totell us? And that's what we
wanna look at at today.
(16:39):
Is is John really telling usthat we have this vindictive
savior who was peaceful just sohe could die on a cross, and
that would, that was, his MO,just, just so he could do this
messianic thing, and then he'sgonna come back and he's ticked,
and he's just gonna starthacking people to pieces. That,
(16:59):
that's the revelation of JesusChrist? Well, let's take a look.
When John first sees Jesus,Jesus is revealed as a lion, as
the Lion of Judah. Now, a lionis a is a vicious creature.
He's something that is going tobe extremely, somebody who's as
in a creature who strikes fearinto the hearts of individuals.
(17:22):
And we see a 4 headed creaturewith the the face or head of a
lion, and we also see a coupleother examples of lion. Other
than Jesus being the Lion ofJudah here, and the creature
with 4 heads having the head ofa lion, the there's one other
reference to Jesus, but all ofthe other references references
(17:44):
of a lion are going to bereferring to the beast. So the
beast's, his his, like, teethare likened to or or, are
likened to the the teeth of alion, or his head is like the
head of a lion. So all of theseexamples are going to be of of
judgments, and of the beast, andof of these bad things, are
(18:06):
likened to lions, these vicious,powerful things.
What's interesting, twointeresting things, is that
first of all, the only othertime lion is mentioned for
Jesus, The way in which Jesus islikened to a lion is not his
teeth or his head or the otherscary things for which the beast
(18:27):
is likened to a lion, but ratherhis voice, the power that comes
in his voice, is likened to alion. The second interesting
thing is that while Jesus isseen as the Lion of Judah
initially by John, all of asudden, when John kind of does a
double take and he looks again,the Lion of Judah is no longer a
(18:49):
lion, but he is the slain lamb.And from that point on,
references to Jesus are not theLion of Judah, but Lamb. So,
it's almost as if John says, Ohyeah, we've got this really
powerful lion. I see Jesuscoming on the scene.
You know, He's He's strong, He'spowerful, and He looks again,
(19:10):
and it's a slain lamb. Well,that's not really what you're
expecting about a book of JesusChrist, the one who conquers and
trying to learn how to wage warlike our Savior. But, there it
is. Jesus becomes a slain lamb.And, there are tons and tons of
lamb references from here on outin the book.
As a slain lamb, anotherinteresting aspect is that Jesus
(19:33):
Christ, the slain lamb, shed Hisblood. And, Revelation seems
like it's a a very bloody book.If you ask anybody, like, what's
the bloodiest book in in theBible? And they're gonna they're
gonna tell you that it'sprobably the the book of
Revelation, because Jesus goesto town on His enemies. And,
(19:54):
what's interesting about this isthat that Mackie, Tim Mackie,
when he was talking about thewrath of God, and he was talking
about the the book ofRevelation, he said that there's
there's far less violence thanyou think there is in the book
of Revelation.
And when you look at it, themajority of the violence done by
(20:14):
somebody to somebody else, thethe individuals who take the
brunt of the violence tend notto be the enemies. And that
sounds really weird, but if youdo a word study on the Book of
Revelation, and I did, so I willI will link just a a really
simple document for you here.But, if you look at the word
blood in Revelation, I believeit occurs 19 times. And, of
(20:38):
those 19 times, I believe 6 arelike, you know, the blood the
moon turns to blood, the thewater turns to blood. These
metaphorical things that youfind in the in the Old Testament
of just signs of judgment.
Nobody does it to anybody else.It's just kind of a a sign or an
omen or whatever you wanna callit. When we do see somebody's
(21:00):
blood, the 12 remaining times ofthe 12 remaining times, 11 of
them are clearly, absolutely,undeniably the blood of Jesus or
the blood of the martyrs or hisservants. There's one remaining
time, I believe it's inRevelation 19, where there's
(21:20):
blood, and it's not completelyclear who it whose it is. But it
seems there's a very strong casethat the blood is either Jesus's
or the blood of the martyrs,just because for a number of
reasons.
And and I think Mackie explainsthat, in one of his his
podcasts, and I'll try to sharethat in a link below as well.
(21:41):
So, definitely, of of the 19times, that blood is blood is
seen in the Book of Revelation,12 of those times we have
somebody's blood. And,undeniably, 11 of those 12
times, the blood is either theblood of martyrs or the blood of
Jesus. And one of those times,it's somewhat ambiguous. So,
when we talk about the blood ofRevelation and and how bloody
(22:04):
the book is, it is bloody, butthe blood is from the slain
lamb, and from those who do war,who do battle in like fashion.
And how did the Lion of Judah dobattle? He laid down his life as
the slain lamb. And, over andover and over again, the way
that you see Jesus conquer inthe Book of Revelation is, in
(22:29):
reference to His being slainlike a a lamb, but also when we
do see him doing battle, it'snot done with a sword in his
hand. It's done with a sword inhis mouth. And, time and time
again, if you look at the wordsword, or you look up the word
mouth, or you, look up the wordtestimony, in the book of
(22:51):
Revelation, you're gonna seethat the way that Jesus Christ
over and over and over and overagain wages war is with His
words.
And that goes back to this thisidea of the the lion. The only
other time we see Jesusreferenced in in some respects
to a lion, is later in the Bookof Revelation, when his voice is
(23:14):
likened to that of a lion. Nothis figure, not not the way he
does things, but the way that hespeaks. His power is in His
voice. And that makes a lot ofsense, especially coming from a
guy like John, who talks so muchabout the Word in John 1.
And it makes a lot of sense forJesus, who through His spoken
(23:36):
Word brought into existence allthings. And, it makes sense that
God's Word would be likened to asword, because we also see in
Hebrews 4 that the Word of Godis sharper than a 2 edged sword,
and it and it divides truth, andit, it is powerful. And in
(23:56):
Revelation, we see this over andover and over again, that the
way Christ wages war is with Hiswords and with the laying down
of His life. And in Revelation12, unless there's any doubt, if
we want to say, well, that's theway that Jesus does things, it
says in Revelation 12 that wewill conquer in like fashion.
And what do we mean in likefashion?
(24:17):
Well, John says that his book ofRevelation is the revelation of
Jesus Christ. And if we hear andkeep what John is writing right
here, then we are blessed. Andwhat John is doing is he's
saying, this Lion of Judah is alamb. He laid down his life. And
through the word of truth, thatis our power, and that is how we
(24:40):
fight Babylon or the governmentor the powers or whatever you
want to, to call that.
But that is how we wage war, andthat's who we wage war against.
We are not greater than ourmaster, and as Jesus Christ has
laid down His life, and throughthe Word of Truth and His
example, has conquered, so weconquer. When you when you read
(25:04):
the book of Revelation with withthese themes, with this
understanding of it being aboutChrist, that it's written to for
us, right, but but to a specificset of servants and a specific
set of circumstances. And thatwe are blessed if we hear and
keep what John is writing, thatit is applicable for us now,
(25:27):
it's not just some futureprophecy. And if you are are
willing to do the studies and goback and, cross reference Old
Testament references and seewhat John means as he's pulling
things out.
And, if you see the slain lamb,and if you see whose blood is
being shed, and if you see howwar is being waged, the book of
(25:50):
Revelation becomes an absolutelytransformative book for our
lives today. And, and perhapsone of the most transformative
books, to know that that John iswriting to a group of people who
are experiencing the greatesthardship that that most of us
could possibly imagine,especially in the West. This
(26:12):
this horrendous persecution,and, the pessimism that they
must have had seeing just smallnumbers of Christians in house
churches and and people gettingtaken away. I mean, the book of
Revelation is just amazing ifyou, if you understand what John
is saying. It's an encouragementfor us to persist, to to hear
(26:35):
and keep what is written.
And that is a a far, far, fardifferent picture than the book
of Revelation that I got whenwhen I was growing up, and even
into my adult years. That's onething that I do like about, my
reformed faith, after I I leftmore of the dispensational
(26:56):
background. You know, beingreformed, it we tend to be more
amillennial, or orpostmillennial. And so, we do
have somewhat of a notion of ofChrist's kingdom and how it's,
it it's coming in the world andhow we're advancing that. But,
nevertheless, even though it'snot not nearly as bad as I feel
(27:18):
most dispensational theologiesare when coming to the book of
Revelation, there's still a lotof a lot of reformed
individuals, most, who are notnonviolent and so really can't
do justice to what the book ofRevelation is is, bringing
about, what it's trying to say.
Preston Sprinkle is is oneauthor author of the book Fight,
(27:42):
who is Reformed and nonviolentas well. And so, I've found that
encouraging, because you don'tsee too many nonviolent Reformed
individuals. But nevertheless,there there are certainly
degrees of how badly peoplemisunderstand Revelation. And
it's so unfortunate becauseRevelation is such a powerful
(28:03):
book. So, in conclusion, I guessthere's there's not much else to
say, but do do the legwork tofigure out what Revelation is
really saying.
Do do the legwork to to put yourpresuppositions, your
traditions, all of those thingsto the side, and kind of start
(28:24):
from scratch. And take a lookand see what is the purpose of
the book? Who is it written to?Does it make sense that it
wouldn't be applicable to thepeople of of that day? Does it
make sense, some of the thingsthat that we we read in the
text?
Are we putting things into thetext, or are we taking out of?
What about what I said with thethe word blood? Like, what what
(28:48):
does that mean when all of theblood that we see shed is either
the martyrs or Jesus? What doeswhat does all of that mean? What
makes the most sense of the bookof Revelation, and what makes
the most sense of of God, havinga purpose for for that book?
Is it just for people inretrospect to survive the
(29:10):
Tribulation who knows how manyyears from now? Or is it
something that His church couldhave used and been encouraged by
for all time? So, take a look,let me know what you think. For
the moment, that's all, sopeace, and because I'm a
pacifist, and I say it, I meanit.
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