Notes on the Book of Revelation
Sunday, May 16, 2004 Kendall's Notebook page 26
By Kendall H. Brown
In 1992 in Seoul Korea, Rev. Lee Jang Rim was the head of some 200 Protestant churches in that country. Rev. Rim created a national hysteria by announcing that the rapture would take place on October 28, 1992. Of course the book of Revelation played a pivotal role in his apocalyptic campaign as a supporting piece of documentary evidence.
His prophecy was prompted by a vision that came to a 16 year old boy and that had been reported to him. Twenty thousand Korean believers in South Korea, Los Angeles, and New York took the vision seriously.
Hundreds quit jobs, left families and even had abortions to prepare themselves for their trip to heaven. Rev. Rim paid for costly ads in California and in New York. The ads urged people to prepare for their trip through the skies, and to refuse to allow 666 to be imprinted in bar code on their forehead or right hand.
On October 28, riot police, plain clothes officers and reporters crowded outside Korean churches, flanked by fire engines and searchlights. Believers took the failure of the prophecy calmly, and there were no reported riots. Only sadness. In December of 1992, Rev Rim was arrested and sentenced two years in prison. In his end-of-the-world prophecy campaign he had bilked $4.4 million from his believers for himself. And what was the most condemning evidence? Most of the money he had invested in bonds and certificates that did not mature for another year or more!
International events taking place in Iraq and Afghanistan are fueling phenomenal sales of a series of books entitled the Left Behind series. One book in this series is entitled the Mark referring to the 666 mark of Satan, another book is simply named, Armageddon. Left Behind books have sold at a rate of 1.5 copies per month during the last few years. The Left Behind Prophecy Club Web Site has drawn 400,000 visitors a day since the beginning of the Iraq war.
Iraq plays a big role in the Left Behind world view or more to the point, the end of world view. The books tell the tales of those who miss the Rapture and must face the tribulation and the anti-Christ. The writers portray the anti-Christ as ruling the world from New Babylon in Iraq.
Stories from Homiletics, Vol 16 #3.
The book of Revelation manages to take a star or at least a key supporting actor role in almost all end-of-the-world movements. Consequently, many people, both those who believe in the end of the world scenarios and those who doubt such predictions, have come to think that John’s vision in the Bible’s last book, is to be read as a blueprint for the final days on earth. Furthermore, the book is often read with the idea that if one can only decipher the secret code in the symbolism of the book, then one will know more about the what, where, when and how of the final days, which will better prepare you for their arrival.
There is a big problem with the end-of-the world blueprint understanding of Revelation. If indeed, the book is such a blueprint, then clearly the only people who really need to bother to read it are those people in the one generation of human beings in all history who will be alive on that day when the trumpet sounds and the roll is called. The book really doesn’t much matter to every other generation of Christians who have lived and prayed for 200 years.
Perhaps Martin Luther, John Calvin and other Protestant reformers were right for their chastisement of the early church leaders for including Revelation in the New Testament canon, for refusing to preach from this text, and for treating the book as unworthy or inclusion in their own volumes and volumes of Biblical criticism. If the end time wasn’t to be in their time why bother giving it any time? Perhaps the Protestant Reformers were right – giving attention to Revelation is a waste of time. I don’t think that is true. The book was written around the year 96A.D.. It was written for people in the second generation of the Christian churches that had grown around the Mediterranean world. Obviously, the time when the book was written was not the end time. Nevertheless, the book had a powerful message of hope and encouragement for the church in the days of authorship. The book would have been powerful and inspiring to people in the generation of its authorship, not simply because everyone who was a Christian at that time thought the end was at hand, so, of course, the book would have spoken to them. No. The book would have been powerful because people in its day were familiar with and accustomed to the apocalyptical nature of the book and would have understood how to read such literature and interpret it in terms of their own times, not necessarily the end times.
Just as the book had a message for the second generation church in the first century, it has had a message for the church in every generation since.
That message for every generation is not focused on the end of the world but is about being a Christian in this world, just as it was a message about being a Christian in the world of the book’s very first readers.
The early Christians would have understood some things that we don’t understand today, which would have given them a whole different slant on reading or hearing in their church’s John’s vision. The book is a piece of apocalyptic literature. For us today the word “apocalypse” invokes all sorts of images. We hear the word and picture volcanic flames and mountain-moving earthquakes, solar disruptions and invading hordes, falling stars and cosmic chaos. In Biblical times the word had a different meaning which has been lost in translation and the passage of centuries. The literal meaning and the one known and understood by first century Biblical writers and their companions was “to lift the veil.” To lift the veil that is all. That is a far cry from the destructive and horrifying images we give to the word today.
Another name for the book of Revelation is simply Apocalypse – to lift the veil. In it, God is attempting to reveal something that is otherwise hidden. In the words of the character Morpheus in the movie “The Matrix” the veil is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.
Indeed, when John wrote Revelation there was a world that his fellow church members in his home town of Ephesus that was blinding early and new believers from seeing the new world of God’s own making and presence, which John calls the Ephesians and others to see. To lift the veil and behold.
In the year 89, the Roman emperor instituted a new cultural and religious cult. The imperial cult was dedicated to the Flavian family dynasty which produced the Roman emperors at that time. The imperial cult was instituted in Ephesus and was a way of showing loyalty and honor to the Emperor and was viewed as a public duty for all citizens. The rites and customs and traditions of this cult pervaded all life just as lapel pins, bumper stickers, www banners, music, slogans and cultural philosophy is in all our life today, influencing our thinking and our believing.
For John, the writer of Revelation, the political world in Ephesus and throughout the Roman was portrayed in the apocalyptic symbolism of his book. He writes about two beasts, the beast of the sea and the beast of the land. These beasts are given power by the devil himself. The beast from the sea has seven heads and people worshipped him. (Rev. 13:1-4) The beast from the land makes everyone worship the first beast. The beasts have images (Rev. 13:11-18) and the mysterious number 666 refers to statues, coins and inscriptions in public places with the emperor’s image and titles. John’s contemporaries, familiar with apocalyptic literature as a mode expression, would have understood instantly that the Beast from the Land who makes everyone worship the other Beast is the provincial governor of Asia or the high priest in the imperial cult.
The beast from the sea is the emperor himself ruling the realm from the city of Rome. This is spelled out in chapter 17. Pew Bibles Revelation 17: 9-14
9"This calls for a mind with wisdom. The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits. 10They are also seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come; but when he does come, he must remain for a little while. 11The beast who once was, and now is not, is an eighth king. He belongs to the seven and is going to his destruction. 12"The ten horns you saw are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom, but who for one hour will receive authority as kings along with the beast. 13They have one purpose and will give their power and authority to the beast. 14They will make war against the Lamb, but the Lamb will overcome them because he is Lord of lords and King of kings--and with him will be his called, chosen and faithful followers."
The woman is the city of Rome city on the seven heads or the seven hills of Rome. Here the city is depicted as the persecutor of Christians. The seven heads are also seven kings. People reading this passage in the first century would have been as familiar with the emperors of Rome as we are the Presidents in recent years: Bush, Clinton, Bush, Sr., Reagan, Carter, Ford and Nixon. The five fallen refer to the five recently deceased emperors. They are Augustus (29BCE to 14CE) Tiberius (14-37) Gaius (37-41) Claudius (41-54) and Nero (54-68). One has a wound refers to Nero who died in 68 but according to legend would return from the dead to continue persecuting the Christians. Thus the beast has a head that has recovered from a mortal wound. The head who is refers to Vespasian (69-79), and the one that is not yet refers to Titus(79-81). The head that was but is not refers to an eighth emperor, Domitian. From this we can see that Revelation is looking at history as if it were written during the reign of Vespasian and forecasting things the would occur under the reign of Domitian. This technique of picking a particular point in past history and writing as if one were at that point and looking ahead to things that the writer already know s have happened is a part of the literary technique of the apocalyptic writer.
By portraying the Emperor and his provincial authorities as beasts and henchmen of Satan, the author was calling on Christians to refuse to take part in the imperial cult, even at the risk of martyrdom.
When people read Revelation today, we often look far beyond our shores to find the beast in distant lands and enemies to our country. In recent years, Iraq and Iran have been easy targets for this imagining. The ancient citizens of Ephesus also had enemies threatening their realm from outside. Through our ancient history we have come to know these enemies as the Gauls and the Goths, the Visigoths, and other invading hordes. The powers to be at home were the ones that John was worried about. The Roman empire was powerful and in the power protective and comforting. Through the emperial cult its citizens were easily seduced into a false security offered by a false god – the mighty military and the long arm of the empire called Pax Romana. The Peace of Rome.
John in his vision was lifting the veil. This veil was not a shroud (loud) over some distant land that the prophet could lift a corner, peak under and show to others a glimpse of future things. The veil was a veil not a shroud. It was a veil over the eyes of new believers who were being seduced into the comfort and security of Roman nationalism and might.
The book of Revelation is not written for one and only one generation of Christians who will be the ones who live at the end of time. It is a book that is written for every generation of Christian that ever has been or ever will be. Revelations calls all Christians to lift the veil from their eyes and to see the God who lives in our midst and is presence with us even now here in our Babylon. To truly be church today and to truly respond to John’s apolyptic call, veil lifting call, is to be the New Jerusalem in the world, the place where God and God’s lamb reign in abundance for all, a place whose gates are always open and whose light always shines; a place of great joy – the joy of God’s spirit in our midst and God’s grace in our hearts, where the darkness of violence, exploitation and death is banished, where divisions between peoples are ended. Revelation is not a word of doom and gloom. But a vibrant exciting call to live now in God’s reign and love. Amen.