We have begun an 8-week study of the book of Revelation on Sunday mornings at King of Grace. Here’s a quick recap of the first week.
The most common perception of the final book of the Bible is that it’s about the catastrophic destruction of the world. When you hear the word ‘apocalypse,’ you might think about Hollywood movies of zombies, volcanoes, ice ages, alien invasions, or more. But do you realize that there is a cosmos that endures the final destruction at the end of the book of Revelation? The last two chapters are about what comes after that. There’s still a world, but it’s a renewed and restored one! “Post-apocalyptic” is a great place to be, not a terrible place.
In the Bible, the Greek word ‘apocalypse’ does not mean the catastrophic end of the world. The English language has completely misunderstood and mangled the word. The word ‘apocalypse’ means to reveal or to make something visible (as in Matthew 10:26—“There is nothing concealed that will not be apocalypsed, or hidden that will not be made known”)—hiding secret codes is exactly the opposite of the goal of Revelation! ‘Revelation’ in its plain, simple meaning is the perfect title for the book.
So what is the book revealing? It exposes and lays bare the true nature of the universe—that God is in control and will judge evil for what it is. Revelation is the clear lens that puts everything in the right perspective—it comforts victims of a world gone wrong and challenges those contributing in various ways to the wrongness of the world.
These two events are good handles to remember those two purposes of biblical apocalypses:
- The first is Jacob’s apocalypse at Bethel in Genesis 28:10–22, in which he sees a stairway connecting heaven and earth. Jacob had pretty royally screwed up his family life, so badly that he was on the run for his life from his brother. He was heading out alone into exile. In that circumstance, God revealed his divine plan and assured Jacob that he would be with Jacob and watch over him wherever he went and would bring him home again. The purpose of Jacob’s apocalypse was to reveal the end of his story in order to comfort him while in the middle of his story.
- The second purpose is illustrated in Acts 9:1–19, in which St. Paul (then called Saul) is confronted by an apocalypse of the risen Jesus while on his way to violently persecute Jesus’ followers. The revelation stopped him in his tracks as Jesus told Paul he wasn’t acting violently against only people, but was acting violently against Jesus himself. The purpose of Paul’s apocalypse was to reveal the nature of evil in order to challenge him to stop participating in it.
In both cases, an apocalypse is designed to help you go back to your life the next day, but with a bigger perspective that was hard to see but is really true. Jacob could wake up the next morning and go confidently on his way; Paul woke up to his need for change, and he certainly did! As standard biblical apocalyptic literature, the book of Revelation does both these things as well: it comforts us on troubled days with the knowledge that Jesus is in control. And it challenges us on comfortable days to live as if God’s kingdom is here on earth as it already is in heaven.
The book of Revelation is not a prophecy of cataclysmic events at the end of the world, but a prophecy of the Day when Jesus returns in triumph to set the world right and a revelation of the condition of believers in the meanwhile. But it was not written in such a way that we can work out any timetable, so that we can say, “This much took place in the past, here we are today, and this much is still future.” Instead, it is a spiral, describing things which happened in the past, are still happening today, and will keep on happening in the future. Every generation is meant to see its current events in the Revelation. Every generation is meant to expect the imminent return of Jesus.
Jesus said, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).