7/23/2025
The book of Revelation has been interpreted at cross purposes with the writer’s original intent more than any other book of the Bible. John’s purpose in writing revelation was to bring hope to the persecuted people of God. The opening verses state that the book’s purpose is not to cause fear, but to be a source of blessing: “Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of the prophecy, and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it . . .” What’s the repeated word? Terrified? Intimidated? No. Blessed.
Too many modern writers, however, use Revelation to strike fear into the hearts of those who read it. If you ask most people they’ll say the Greek title of the book, apocalypse, means something akin to disaster or “end of the world,” when it simply means “to reveal.”
Modern culture has embraced a “pop-apocalyptic” view of Revelation. Movies such as “Armageddon,” “The Omen,” and “End of Days,” and books from authors as diverse as Stephen King (The Stand) and Tim LaHaye (the popular Left Behind series) have made a lot of money off the misrepresentation of Revelation. Furthermore, Revelation has been embraced by nuts like Charles Manson and David Koresh, with disastrous results.
It is no wonder that G.K. Chesterton wrote, “though St. John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators.” As a result of the confusion around Revelation, many choose to ignore the book, passing it over as being incomprehensible mysteries or incoherent ramblings.
Which is how many churches handle Revelation – they ignore it completely! And if they don’t ignore it, churches often talk about it TOO much.
Most of us probably think it easier to just ignore it . . . but there’s a problem: it’s part of the Word of God. It’s in the Book. It’s part of the “all scripture is inspired by God” bit.
So we have to do something with it. But what?
There are a variety of ways people have read Revelation throughout the centuries. Some people try to decode the symbols in Revelation, which is a lot of fun, and I’ve spent a lot of my life doing just that. But Church history is littered with failed attempts to decode Revelation. So, is that the best way?
Here are three ways the decoders read Revelation:
First, is the Historical view. This looks at the book of Revelation as a consecutive series of visions that prophesy all of Church history from the time the book was written all the way to Jesus’ second coming. This is one of the ways I was taught in my church growing up.
Second, is the Futurist view. This view sees the entirety of Revelation dealing with events yet to come and is associated with names like J.N. Darby, C.I. Scofield, and Hal Lindsey. This was the way I was taught in school and in my friends’ churches growing up.
Third, is the Preterist view, a fancy word that means “Past.” This view looks at Revelation solely as a document written for the first century church, dealing with first century issues and has little to nothing to say to the church of today and even less about the future. I was taught this view in seminary.
Those three are the “decoding” views and all three of them share a common problem: where’s the message for today? What is God saying to the Church of today through the last book in the Bible?
I believe that problem is solved through a fourth way of reading Revelation, the Pastor-Prophetic view. This approach sees a universal and timeless message in Revelation calling the church to faithfulness in the face of conflict. It’s a book for making disciples. Charles Talbert writes that Revelation, “functions in the interest of Spiritual purity, single-minded devotion to God or first commandment faithfulness. Babylon, for example, wouldn’t be just a symbol for the Roman empire, as the Preterists would argue, nor is it some future reconfigured Roman Empire in modern Europe as some futurists would say. [Instead] its seductive and oppressive power can be felt and must be both named and resisted in the political realities of our own day.”
So what view do I hold on Revelation? Well, I look for the value in all four, but especially the last. Without ignoring the past or (in a general sense) the future, the Pastor-Prophetic view seems to me to be the most helpful and appropriate way for believers to read Revelation at any time.
And so, my focus is on Revelation as a word to the church in the present. But to understand the word for today, we have to remember Revelation is a letter to the first century church. We have to begin there and ground whatever understanding we have of the book there.
The Bible can never mean what it never meant.
Once we understand it as the first readers understood it, then we can look for modern parallels to those first century realities. As I said Sunday, once the devil gets a technique that works, he’ll use it over and over again. Revelation teaches us how to discern those ways the devil works. At the same time we do want to keep an eye toward the future promises of God for his people – especially when we get to chs. 21-22 and discover what God has been up to all along!
Preaching through Revelation this summer has been a lot harder than I expected. THERE ARE SO MANY DETAILS! In a Bible study, we could take the time to examine everything, but on Sunday mornings, I’m trying to focus on the big picture. If you want to get into the details, I’ll be more than happy to do that in a Bible study or over dinner (probably several). Or if you want to do more reading, I can suggest several good commentaries.
But my hope (and prayer) is that we’re beginning to see Revelation as being more relevant for our times than maybe we’ve seen it in the past. Its warnings about Beasts and Babylon and its encouragement to patient and faithful endurance speak to the church now as it did in the past and as it will in the future.
Blessings,
Pastor Terry