When I was growing up, all the Christians I knew who loved apocalyptic literature were, well, weird. At the very least they became weird when they were talking about it! In this article I’m going to try and give you some tools to help you read and understand the apocalyptic literature in the Bible by which we mean some of Daniel and all of Revelation, whilst trying not to sound weird.
I would guess that many of us have only read the first half of Daniel and may have dipped a toe into Revelation’s first few chapters, but maybe we gave up when it started to sound strange. However, these bits of the Bible are, like all of Scripture, here to help all of us.
What is the text getting at?
Apocalyptic literature literally means that it reveals something to us that we wouldn’t otherwise see. There is much in the Bible about how God has intervened in our world, how we should respond and what that will look like for how we live now. Think about the Psalms teaching us to pray, the Gospels showing us the incarnate God present in human flesh and the letters teaching us about the difficulties and joys of church life.
Apocalyptic literature gives us a brief look at things from another perspective: it reveals that what is happening here on earth looks like, and even affects, what is going on in heaven where God dwells.
The best picture I have found to illustrate it is this: we live on the front line of the battle and much of the Bible speaks about how God is acting in our world and how we join in. Apocalyptic literature reveals that there is a control room, a command centre, that is just as real as this creation but utterly different. If you are on the front line of the battle your experience is entirely different from the command centre but they are both real places.
Of course, much that goes on in heaven, where God’s throne is, is going to be pretty confusing for us. Imagine a foot soldier getting dropped into the control room: they would struggle to work out what was happening and how what was being said had anything to do with their mission.
What is the deeper truth?
In the same way, we need to look beyond the descriptive words and ask ourselves, ‘What deeper truth is this limited and earthly language showing us?’
In Revelation chapter 4 we get a glimpse into the throne room of heaven. There is a throne and someone sitting on it. Wow! We might imagine we’re about to get a description of God yet all we get is that ‘the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and ruby’.
Jasper is see-through and ruby is red so is God reddish and transparent? I don’t think so. It’s telling us that God is definitely present and ruling but he is beyond description in our language. The most I can tell you, says John, is that he shines. In fact we’ll see in chapter 5 that it’s only through the Lamb, Jesus, who is also on the throne that we can really ‘see’ God.
How does the text refer to the rest of the Bible?
We do need some more of a guide to work out how to find that deeper truth. How do we get a clue about what the words are getting at? We need to consider how the text refers to the rest of the Bible.
Let’s stay in Revelation chapter 4 just for a moment to consider this. Verse 3 says that a rainbow encircled the throne. That gives us a pretty picture but more than that, we know that rainbows have a significance in the Bible. God sealed his promise to Noah in Genesis chapter 9 with a rainbow. Looking beyond the descriptive words and referring to the rest of the Bible we can work out that God can’t be described but we can know the God of the throne through his promises.
Christians have often jumped from the descriptions of things and people in the apocalyptic parts of the Bible to the news. For example, Revelation describes a beast out of the sea that emerges and fights against God’s people. I have heard various Christians suggest that the beast out of the sea is Stalin, Hitler, the European Union and Tony Blair. However, we shouldn’t be looking first to the news to understand the Bible, but to the rest of the Bible. There’s a history, especially in Daniel, of all kingdoms that hate God being pictured as beasts, so the beast here in Revelation is probably a picture of any kingdom that persecutes the church.
There’s another beast who comes out of the earth and his number is 666. All sorts of people have worried about the number of the beast. I once attended a seminar about the book of Revelation where someone asked whether it would be sinful to have a car with 666 in the number plate, or a mobile number which has 666 in it. It isn’t! In the Bible seven is a number that reflects perfection and three is a number that speaks of God. The number of the beast is likely to be saying that the beast who comes out of the earth is trying to be God but doing in a sinful and idolatrous way.
How is this encouraging and useful to all Christians?
It really wouldn’t have been much help to the first recipients of John’s Revelation if the beast out of the sea was referring to Tony Blair. John was writing for the help and encouragement of the early church and as we believe that the Bible should help all churches since then, whatever is being revealed, it can’t just be for one group of Christians at one particular time thousands of years later.
Some of the things that John writes to the churches in Revelation seem to be about things in his world at his time. In Revelation chapters 17 and 18, Babylon is a society that hates God, crushes the poor, thrives on luxury and persecutes the church and is clearly about Rome, the empire in which the first Christians lived. Yet, even in that description you will realise it sounds familiar: all Christians at all times will have to function in societies like that and work out how to behave there.
What we don’t need to do is wait and wait for ‘The Babylon’ to come along. Apart from the return of Jesus to judge the world which will only happen once, if anyone tells you that something in Revelation is only about one specific historical event that is happening today or is yet to happen, ask yourself how that would have helped the early church, the medieval church or the church fifty years ago.
Learn from the wisdom of others
I’m all for Christians reading the Bible by ourselves, but maybe with Revelation more than any other book, it’s good to get some help from a church leader or a commentary. Don’t rely on the internet – all the weird people I mentioned earlier are very good at making their views known there. The first few chapters of Revelation make it clear that it’s a book written for churches and we can gather the wisdom of the church in history and the church we’re in to navigate these unusual bits of the Bible. The best way to get to grips with apocalyptic literature is to join a church of normal Christians who also want to understand it.
Here are some resources to help you dig deeper into Revelation. For a short read try Revelation Unwrapped by John Dickson, for Bible studies to do by yourself or with others try Revelation for you by Tim Chester and for a commentary try The Book of Revelation by Robert Mounce.