On Sunday we completed our summer preaching series ‘Se7en Letters’ in the book of Revelation. Ryan Hawthorne, Stephanie Wilson and David Armstrong took part in a wrap-up conversation which you can listen to here.

David Armstrong also wrote and shared a ‘Letter to the Church in Belfast’ to finish our series. These are perhaps words that Jesus might have for us in Redeemer as we look to faithfully follow him in Belfast. You can read that letter here.

We’ve completed the first 3 chapters of the book but for those who would like to study further we thought we would share below a summary of Revelation plus some recommended resources that will help you if you are interested to dig into Revelation further.

The Summary

The book of Revelation is an amazingly weird and wonderful book. I grew up in church and found myself utterly fascinated with all it’s strange imagery of monsters, beasts, battles, and dragons amid these dreamlike portraits of heaven with angels and martyrs and a Lamb on a throne. I had not a clue what any of it meant… but I was fascinated.

It turns out that Revelation is one of the most misunderstood and misused books in the bible. It was the book that had the hardest time being accepted into the canon of scripture. Interestingly Martin Luther thought Revelation had no place in the bible or the church until — that is — he used it to preach that the pope was the anti-christ. I guess that sums up the confusion around Revelation — a book so confusing that people could make it say what they wanted it to say. The book was said to foretell the end of the world and contained in codified form the precise details of geo-political events right up to 21st century. Turns out Revelation needs a second hearing.

“The intent of Revelation is to put us on our knees before God in worship and to set the salvific shaping words of God in motion in our lives”
— Eugene Peterson

Deconstructing the Magic Eight Ball Myths

Growing up I always wanted a Magic Eight Ball… remember those? When a friend got a magic eight ball for Christmas one year I was so eager to try it out. It promised to give you answers to any question you could fathom. Just ask the question, give the magic eight ball a shake, and a small window on the side would slowly reveal an answer to your question. But here was the thing with the magic eight ball… if you didn’t get the answer to the question you wanted you then you just shook it again and again until you got the answer you wanted. I quickly realised having played with the magic eight ball at my friends house that — although it was a bit of fun —it was all a sham. But how we used the magic eight ball is exactly how I think people have used the book of revelation over the years. Not understanding what it is they have simply shook it and shook and until it gave them the answers they wanted to hear and sadly, completely missed the point of what this book is doing. So if we’ve heard Revelation taught before we need to approach it carefully and be prepared to unlearn and deconstruct the bad theology esposed often by well intentioned people.

The Big Idea of Revelation

Revelation is indeed a strange book if we fail to grasp both the genre of writing and the context into which it was written. The basic idea is this: Revelation is written in the language of symbol and gives a stunning, creative portrayal and vision of Jesus Christ and the nature of His Kingdom. The nature of the Kingdom runs parallel to the nature of Christs reign. And it’s all held in contrast to the nature of worldly systems and Kingdoms. Two words that help sum this up: pattern and promise. Revelation prophetically critiques the ’pattern of empire with the ‘promise of God’. The whole of the scriptures reveal an age old pattern of humanity being ruled and organised by empire. Empire is the idolatry of powerful, economic and military superpowers that rule by power and by force often oppressing and manipulating people in their wake for their own gain and prosperity.

"If the enemy be rich, they are rapacious; if he be poor, they lust for dominion; neither the east nor the west has been able to satisfy them. Alone among men they covet with equal eagerness poverty and riches. To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a desert and call it peace."
— Calgacus, Caledonian warlord on the Roman Empire

The Book of Revelation was written around the end of the first century by a man called John who had been exiled to the Island of Patmos for speaking out against the Roman Empire. Specifically at that time the critique was on the Roman Empire but the pattern has always been the same whether it be the Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek or Roman Empires.

Empires oppress.

Empires dominate.

Empires exclude.

Empires demand allegiance.

Empires are violent.

Empires are consumeristic.

Empires pervert and suppress truth.

Empires cling to power.

Empires exploit the weak and the vulnerable.

Empires rule with fear.

Empires tell lies.

Empires take.

The Kingdom of Christ stands against this in stark contrast. It does not follow the pattern of Empire but alternatively the way of self-sacrifice, non-violent love led by a King who gave himself up for his people. A King who’s mode of rule is peace. A king who comes with a sword in his mouth — not to cause violence upon his enemies — but a sword symbolising words of truth that Christ fights with… setting people free from the manipulation of beastly empire and the lies that hold them captive. Jesus comes to set people free and overcomes his enemies not by taking their blood through his own blood. That’s the story of the Gospel, it’s the storyline of the whole scriptures and it’s the story told dramatically and magnificently in the book of Revelation.

“Revelation is therefore a theopolitical text. It makes claims about who is truly God and about right and wrong connections between God and the socio-political order; it challenges the political theology of empire and the religious ideology that underwrites it; and it reveals God and the Lamb alone as the true Sovereign One, source of all blessings, and proper object of worship. Moreover, Revelation tells us not only who is really sovereign but also what kind of sovereignty the true God exercises, namely what many have called nonviolent and non-coercive “Lamb power.”
— Michael Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly

And so the main purpose of Revelation is not a blow by blow account of the end of the world but instead a prophetic critique of this idea of Empire and the heralding of the promise of God that in the end through the reign of King Jesus the world will be remade and all will be well. This powerful, poetic portrayal of the conflict between beastly empire and the peaceable reign of the Lamb of God shows that the way of self-sacrifice, non-violent love led by King Jesus wins in the end. The first will be last and the last will be first. There will be justice and peace and restoration. That the end of the story is God putting this world back togetherIn Rev 21 it says “Behold I am making all things new”.

Empire is an old idea that perpetuates chaos and brokenness. Jesus is doing a new thing… He’s been doing a new thing this whole time showing his followers by example that the way is not by force or power but by self-sacrificial, non-violent love. The 7 letters at the beginning of Revelation are letters written by Jesus to 7 different churches in Asia Minor (modern day turkey) who were living under the Roman Empire. The letters are Jesus words to Christians living as citizens in a superpower and are required reading for us today. How do we live the way of Jesus faithfully in this world in light of the worlds old ideas of power and rule? The book of Revelation gives us a vision of a better world and how we might live that way in the here and now today as citizens in the 21st Century.

“Just as Jesus began his ministry at the wedding in Cana, now the ascended Christ presides over the wedding of heaven and earth. The tragic divorce between heaven and earth is now reconciled by the Lamb. Today every local church is to be a suburb of New Jerusalem. Revelation does not depict New Jerusalem as belonging purely to the future, but as a present reality in the process of becoming. And the baptised are called to participate right now in the newness from above”
— Brian Zahnd