The Book of Revelation and Apocalyptic Literature⤒🔗

The Book of Revelation belongs to that genre known as apocalyptic literature. Such literature flourished during the last two centuries B.C. and the first century A.D.¹ As M. Tenney points out, apocalyptic literature was usually produced in times of persecution and oppression as a means of encouraging those who were suffering for their faith. Both the Jewish community and the early Christian church experienced such times during these centuries as they found themselves living in the midst of a monolithic pagan culture governed by the empire of Rome.²

Normally, an apocalyptic piece of literature purported to be a revelation made by some celestial personage (like an angel) to a great figure of the past (such as Abraham, Moses or Ezra). The message was usually expressed in vivid symbolism, sometimes of a very bizarre kind. Addressing its readers in the mist of the difficult times they were undergoing, this literature conveyed to them the author’s profound conviction that the troubles in which they presently found themselves were not the final word. On the contrary, in His own appointed time, God would intervene catastrophically and destroy evil. Not infrequently this deliverance was associated with God’s Messiah who would inaugurate the eternal kingdom of God.

Needless to say, Revelation displays similarities to the typical apocalyptic literature of the period: it abounds in apocalyptic-type symbols; it looks forward to God’s final vanquishing of evil and the creation of a new heavens and earth; and it features angels in the role of communicators of divine visions.³

This having been said, it must also be pointed out that the Book of Revelation has some striking differences from the typical apocalyptic literature: (1) the writer repeatedly identifies his book as a prophecy (1:3; 22:7,10,18,19), whereas the typical apocalyptics were usually distinguished from prophecy. (2) The book has a strong moral tone (note, for instance, the warnings and calls to repentance issued to the churches in chapters 2-3), this is characteristic of biblical prophecy, but not so of the apocalyptics. The apocalypticists pay little attention to righteous living on the part of God’s people; they despair of man’s efforts to overcome evil and look only to God’s mighty intervention at the end of history. (3) In contrast to the apocalypticists who see this present world as hopelessly controlled by evil, the Book of Revelation declares that the Messiah, in the form of the Lamb, has already conquered evil, and even in this present age evil beings, including the devil himself, are under the sovereign control of God who sits upon the throne. (4) Finally, whereas the apocalyptics are written by unknown authors in the name of some illustrious person from the past (such as Abraham, Moses, or Ezra), the writer of the Book of Revelation identifies himself at the very beginning of the book (1:4) as John.⁴

Four Modern-Day Approaches to the Interpretation of the Book of Revelation←⤒🔗

Before summarizing these modern-day schools of interpretation, we must briefly mention one other fairly recent view, namely, Dispensationalism, (a view that arose in the nineteenth century). Dispensationalism sees an outline of church history contained in the letters to the seven churches, with Ephesus representing the church in John’s day and Laodicea representing the church of today.

This view postulates a secret return of Christ for His church, which takes place sometime at the beginning of chapter four, usually designated as happening with the command issued to John in verse one, “Come up here.” Consequently, the church is exempt from everything that takes place from chapters four through nineteen, (which chapters describe the “great tribulation”). Following the “great tribulation,” Christ and His church return to destroy the Anti-Christ and set up a millennial (thousand-year) kingdom on earth. According to this interpretation, the Book of Revelation is not intended for the church per se, but can still be read with profit to see what God will do for the Jewish believers who are living during the time of the “great tribulation.” The church is to look for its “rapture,” that is, its removal from the earth, which may happen at any moment.⁵

We now turn to a brief consideration of the four main modern-day approaches to the interpretation of the Book of Revelation.

The first of which is the Preterist View. This view regards the prophecies of Revelation as being wholly concerned with the circumstances of John’s day and as having no reference whatever to any future ages or events. Preterists hold that the major prophecies of the book were fulfilled either in the fall of Jerusalem (70 A.D.) or the fall of Rome (476 A. D.) The great merit of the preterist approach is that it rightly sees the Revelation as being addressed to the first century church as it was imperiled by the great crisis of its time. But the major drawback of this view is that it renders the Revelation relatively meaningless for all succeeding generations of church history, since it confines itself to only addressing the first century church. Furthermore, based on the preterist approach, the decisive victory portrayed in the latter chapters of the Revelation were never achieved. It is difficult to believe that John envisioned anything less than the complete overthrow of Satan, the final destruction of evil, and the coming of the eternal kingdom of God.

A second approach to the interpretation of the Book of Revelation is the Historicist View. While the preterist confines the entire Book of Revelation to the first century period in which it was written, the historicist interprets it as a forecast of the course of history. The historicist sees the symbols in the book as setting out in broad outline the history of Western Europe, stretching down to the Second Coming of Christ. This view does, indeed, make the Revelation meaningful for the church in all generations, rather than limiting its relevance to only the first century church. However, it is curious that a book purporting to forecast human history should largely ignore the world beyond Western Europe. Furthermore, the subjectivity of this approach is underscored by the fact that no essential agreement can be found between its major proponents. If the Revelation is in fact foretelling the main events of subsequent history, it should be possible to identify those events with tolerable certainty; otherwise the prophecies lose their value.

Moving on to a third approach, we come to the Futurist View, (Pre-Millennial Dispensationalism would fall under this category). The futurist places the relevance of the book entirely in the future, more specifically, the end of world history. As mentioned above under our discussion of Pre-­Millennialism, this view tends to see chapters two and three as portraying the successive ages of church history, as opposed to addressing the actual needs of the seven churches located in Asia Minor in the closing decade of the first century. But such an interpretation is possible only at the expense of sound exegetical principles; by allegorizing the messages to the seven churches the interpreter divorces them from their historical setting and makes them subject to his own personal interpretation. Also, by seeking to interpret the visions in as literal a way as possible, the futurist fails to do justice to the literary genre in which the Revelation was written, that being the apocalyptic with all of its symbolism.

A fourth approach to the interpretation of the Revelation is the Poetic View. This view maintains that the visions are not intended to reveal any historical events or personages, either present or future. On the contrary, the Revelation is seen as a theological poem setting forth the ageless struggle between the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness. According to T.S. Kepler (quoted by R. Mounce),⁶ the Revelation is a “philosophy of history wherein Christian forces are continuously meeting and conquering the demonic forces of evil.” The poetic approach makes the Book of Revelation relevant to the church of all ages, but its weakness lies in the fact that it divorces the visions and prophecies from their historical setting. Consequently, it denies to the book any specific historical fulfillment. From the poetic point of view, the symbols found in the Revelation portray an ever-present, ongoing conflict without any final consummation. This certainly does not do justice to the message contained in the concluding chapters of the book.⁷

Some Basic Guidelines to Bear in Mind When Studying the Book of Revelation←⤒🔗

Before concluding this Introduction, we would do well to set forth some basic guidelines as we seek to fathom the message of the Book of Revelation. In seeking to rightly interpret the Revelation it is important to note that despite being written in the style of first century apocalypse literature, the Revelation claims to be a word of prophecy (Rev. 22:18-19). As such, it partakes of the character of biblical prophecy and must be interpreted in light of our understanding of Old Testament prophetic literature, namely, the manner in which that prophetic literature was received and the manner in which it was communicated to the covenant community.

The prophetic books of the Old Testament constitute by far the largest portions of revelation received in the ecstatic state, which state was the real source of the poetic/symbolic element in the prophetic writings. There is only one book in the New Testament that was given in that state, the Revelation given to John the Apostle. There can be no question that it is the most poetic book in the entire New Testament. Though it belongs to an age that is unlike that of the Old Testament prophets, namely, the age of the new covenant, which, to a great extent, was the age of the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, yet it consists chiefly of the narration of what the Apostle John saw and heard while in the ecstatic state (Rev. 1:10-11), and very evidently bears the mark of the prophetico-poetic style. The vast difference in style between the Revelation and the other writings of the Apostle John is to be accounted for by considering the different mode of revelation by which the Revelation was imparted to the apostle; that mode being via “visions,” similar to those presented to the Old Testament prophets.

We must acknowledge that the age in which the Revelation was received was, indeed, very different from that of the Old Testament prophets. The New Testament age differed primarily in its being to a large extent the age of fulfillment, an age of far greater light, light that illuminated the Old Testament prophecies by their very fulfillment. Things that in the previous dispensation had only been dimly discerned from “the lofty watch-tower of prophetic vision,” are now seen by the disciples of Jesus in the clear light of their fulfillment. In the words of Patrick Fairbairn, “Not in ecstatic visions, which veiled as much as revealed the truth, but in greatest plainness of speech, the apostles laid open to the church the mysteries of the kingdom.”⁸ We may well borrow the words the disciples addressed to Jesus in the upper room and apply them to this broader New Testament context: “Now you are speaking clearly and without figures of speech” (Jn. 16:29). Less of the prophetic means less use of the exceptional, ecstatic mode of revelation, which in turn, means less of the poetic/symbolic element is to be found in the New Testament revelation.

But one book alone was given in vision and written in the more obscure form of prophetic symbols. Why is this the case? First, by the very manner in which the Revelation is communicated it bears witness to the Church of her still imperfect condition as still existing in this present world and still having to carry on the spiritual warfare, spurred on by the assurance of the ultimate triumph of the transcendent kingdom of God, which very thing is communicated to her by the visions of the Revelation.

Herein also is to be found the second reason as to why these future realities are communicated in the form of visions and symbols, that being the fact that they pertain to the ultimate triumph of the transcendent kingdom of God. In seeking to communicate spiritual realities that are beyond the scope and experience of the Church as it still exists in its earthly state, things that “eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man,” the revelation of such things has no alternative other than being presented in the form of symbols and figurative representations. Since the unknown can only be described in terms of what is known, it is essential that biblical prophecy communicate those future eschatological and transcendent realities by means of symbols derived from this present world and experience of the covenant community. Thus, like the Old Testament prophetic Scriptures before it, the Revelation by necessity must communicate future eschatological realities by means of the symbolic use of the historical realities of this present age.

A second feature of biblical prophecy, and Old Testament revelation in general, is the use of typology. Typology may be defined as the understanding that the persons, institutions and events of Old Testament history are not only present realities in which the Old Testament community interacted with the LORD their God and His kingdom, but also served as living, historical models of future and eschatological events and experiences that are of the same kind as the Old Testament type, only of a far greater and more transcendent dimension.

Thus, for example, the Old Testament prophecies concerning Babylon pertain not only to the fall of that ancient empire at the hands of the Persians, but also foretell the fate of the final kingdom of man as it sets itself in opposition to God’s people and God’s kingdom. To the extent that the Revelation makes use of both Old Testament prophetic forms as well as Old Testament prophetic typology, it contains what we might call a double typology. This can be seen most readily in its references to the Roman Empire of the first century. The Revelation identifies Rome as “Babylon,” thereby revealing it to be a contemporary manifestation of all that was historically personified in the ancient empire of Babylon on the Euphrates. At the same time, in describing the future and final fall of this present “Babylon” (i.e. Rome), the Revelation is identifying the Roman “Babylon” of the first century as a type of the final manifestation of the kingdom of man and the fate that shall befall it with the coming of God’s eschatological kingdom in all of its fullness.

Thus, a truly biblical interpretation of the Revelation must recognize its prophetic character, namely, the fact that it was received in the same manner as were the prophecies of the Old Testament, and it is communicated to the New Testament covenant community in the same manner as were the former prophecies communicated to the Old Testament community: by means of symbols and with due regard for the typological significance of the persons, institutions and events it presents.