In all of my reading of articles and books and listening to different lectures on Revelation there stands out at least two—let’s call them tips—toward a better reading and understanding of that most ominous book of the Bible.
These two guides again, and again, have helped me, not to understand everything in Revelation—far from it—but to do what I can to allow the book to be what it is. The reason Revelation is often misunderstood and then, ultimately, caricatured is because we don’t allow Revelation to be what is is. Instead, we make it into the book we’d like it to be, which—as is always the case—does little else than pull us further away from what Revelation has to say for itself.
So, in an effort to let Revelation be Revelation, allow me to offer to you two tips for the next time you turn the page to this most exciting book of the Bible.
Tip #1: It is called Revelation, not The Destruction of All Things at the End of the World.
The first three words of Revelation—in Greek—are Apokalupsis Iesou Christou. In English, “The revelation of Jesus Christ.”
It’s that first word—apokalupsis—where we get our first bit of help in understanding the story Revelation is telling. The Greek word, apokalupsis, is rightly translated as revelation, but it could be translated as apocalypse—provided apocalypse still meant what it used to mean. The reason most, if not all, major English Bible translations have revelation over apocalypse is because apocalypse has come to mean something different in English than apokalupsis meant in ancient Koine Greek. Contrary to the meaning of apocalypse today, apokalupsis does not mean the destruction of all things at the end of the world. Instead, it means to make something known that was not yet made fully known (i.e., a revelation).
So, before anyone turns the page to the first words of Revelation, we must get rid the assumed idea that this book is going to tell us about how the world is going to end. This is difficult because, if we come to the book with this specific understanding of the main theme, a lot of the events in Revelation end up fitting into that theme quite nicely (plagues, riders on horses, one with a sword, blood, a beast, a dragon, etc.). It’s the same self-fulfilling prophecy we see with those going to the dentist or getting their blood drawn. Fortunately, a trip to the dentist rarely—if ever—turns out as bad as we sometimes think it will.
I suggest we allow the first three words of this amazing book to shine a light forward through its pages. Let’s read Revelation as if it is actually telling the story of how Jesus is going to reveal and be revealed to the world because, of course, that’s what Apokalupsis Iesou Christou means.
Tip #2: Before Revelation can have any meaning and application for us, today, it must have a meaning and application to those to whom it was immediately written, back then.
How many times have you heard someone—perhaps even yourself—use Revelation as a key to interpret “end-times events” in our present day?
I submit it’s nearly the constant drumbeat of popular-level interpretations of this book. This is a problem, though—a huge problem—because if Revelation didn’t really start to make sense and find meaning until our day, what in the world were people doing with it for nearly 2,000-years before us?
In the same way we ought not make Revelation tell the story we want it to tell, we ought not read it as though it was written primarily to us, now. When John penned these words, while exiled on Patmos, he was surely writing them for the people of his day—for the church of his day. It would be amazing to me to think of John finishing the final words of Revelation—“The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people. Amen.”—and thinking to himself, “Wow. I don’t understand anything of what I’ve written, but I hope someone, a long time from now, will be able to figure it out!”
No. When John finished Revelation he knew that what he had been shown (an apokalupsis) was something important for his believing brothers and sisters of his day. This is, of course, what is mentioned at at the very beginning of the book: “…which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place” (Rev. 1:1b).
Now, we can debate what the word soon means in the mind of God (and John), and how it ought to be interpreted in the context of the book as a whole, but what we can’t say is that the book had no immediate relevance to the readers—and the early Christian church—of the first-century. Revelation was a book for its time—then—and, by the grace of God, remains a book for our time—now—just as it will remain a book for those after us.
In order to remain on the right track for understanding what is contained in Revelation, we must do our best to remember that whatever meaning we think we’ve found within its pages, must be compatible with what the readers of John’s day found, too.