Teaching Tuesday: Revelation

Series: The Last Eyewitness
Sermon: Revelation (10.13.24)

Happy Tuesday, all.

One of the points I tried to communicate in my sermon overviewing Revelation this past Sunday was that we should read this majestic but mystifying book less as a predictive text than as a worshipful announcement of our God’s ultimate triumph over Satan and evil.

If you’re like me, this represents something of a shift from how we are used to engaging with Revelation.

In the 90s, like millions of other Christians, I was enamored with the Left Behind book series. I was young, though, so the versions for adults were a little beyond my reach. Instead, I read the series Left Behind for Kids, which had some new and some overlapping characters with the adult versions, and were much shorter. I think there are 40 books in the series, and I read them all. I’d stay up late into the night on weekends and read by booklight.

I also watched the Kirk Cameron-led movies. I couldn’t get enough of the post-rapture, fictionalized Christian warscape.

The Left Behind series may be good literature - I’m not sure, as it’s been years since I’ve read it - but now that I’m an adult I think it (and similar related books, movies, TV shows, sermons, and teachings) presents two problems Christians should be aware of:

The first is that I believe the premillennial dispensationalist interpretation of scripture it  represents is not the most likely or accurate understanding of the Bible’s teaching on the end times and Jesus’s second coming. But, that’s a topic for another day.

The second is that the type of biblical interpretation found in Left Behind and similar media presents much of the visions, imagery, and warning in Revelation as knowable prediction rather than symbolic prophecy. And I believe that is misleading and dangerous.

This is what I was getting at in my Sunday sermon: I think we need to adjust the lens through which we see Revelation and the other apocalyptic texts in scripture (including parts of Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and Zechariah) from a predictive lens or perspective to a missional lens or perspective.

If we wear the wrong glasses, we don’t see things as clearly as we could or should. We must adjust our lens.

When we read Revelation primarily as a forecast of future events, John’s visions serve as a kind of screenplay for end-times events, like the Battle of Armageddon or the rule of the Antichrist on earth. Reading through that lens, it’s more of a struggle to find Revelation’s good news for God’s people today.

But what if we committed to reading Revelation through a missional lens? New Testament professor Dean Fleming, in his book Foretaste of the Future: Reading Revelation in Light of God’s Mission, explains:

Reading Scripture through a missional lens isn’t fundamentally about locating individual passages that support the cross-cultural mission of the church. Rather, it concerns what God is doing in the world to bring about salvation and healing at every level and how God’s people participate in that sweeping purpose.

Applying this principle to Revelation means that, instead of trying to decipher a game plan for the end times, we need to discover how Revelation bears witness to God’s massive mission to redeem and restore the whole creation—including people—through Christ, the slain and risen Lamb. Revelation shows us the ultimate goal of God’s loving purpose for the world, which is “making everything new” (Rev. 21:5).

But that’s not all. Revelation also seeks to equip and energize God’s people to get caught up in what God is doing to bring about wholeness and redemption in the world. Instead of primarily foretelling the future, Revelation calls us to live as a foretaste of the future here and now. It enables Christian communities to embody God’s loving mission within our various life circumstances, even as we anticipate the time when God finally makes everything new.

As New Testament scholar Michael Gorman puts it, we need to read Revelation “not as a script for the future but as a script for the church.” 

I think this is good wisdom. A missional reading of Revelation is more faithful to the type of literary writing John is doing here, the church and historical context his writing addresses, the message it proclaims, and the hope it promises.

And it is a book of hope. Remember: God wins! And those of us with God through faith in Christ Jesus get to participate in that victory, forever.

We shouldn’t read Revelation as a book of predictions and then try and determine what signs point to their fulfilment, we should read it and even enjoy it as a promise of the glorious future in the new heaven and the new earth.

Mysterious, yes. But majestic and worshipful. I’m looking forward to it!

Study for this coming Sunday: 1st Peter 2:11-12

Know Him and make Him known!
- Pastor Brady