Last updated on December 22, 2024
Yesterday I shared how the book of Revelation went from being the main book I wanted to study while a senior in high school to becoming something I totally neglected because I no longer lined up with the theology I had when I first came to it.
Since yesterday I’ve read the entire book of Revelation. I’ve also listened to this interview with Scot McKnight. I first came across Scot McKnight close to twenty years ago when his book (and blog of the same name) Jesus Creed came out. Since that time I’ve turned to him often. In 2023 his book Revelation for the Rest of Us came out. I have not read it, but I’ve read some reviews since yesterday’s post, and I’ve also listed to the interview referenced above.
In an excerpt from the book on McKnight’s site, he quotes from Phillip Gorski’s book American Covenant and says that when we take a speculative, dispensational approach to this book, we are reading the Bible…
- Predictively, as an encoded message about future events that can be decoded by modern-day prophets
- Literally, such that the mythical creatures of the text are understood as material realities
- Premillennially, with the Second Coming of Christ understood to precede the earthly ‘millennium’ of God’s thousand-year reign on earth; and
- Vindictively, with the punishment of the godless occurring in the most gruesome and violent forms imaginable
I SO resonate with all of this. This is how I once read the book of Revelation, and it’s now the reasons I’ve dismissed it. So after reading this I was anxious to know more of his conclusions so that I could then read the book through a different lens. Revelation for the Rest of Us is less of a commentary and more of a hermeneutic (a way of reading) of Revelation.
So here are some closing reflections…
John is writing to seven churches throughout Asia Minor. These churches are experiencing an extreme amount of persecution. He wants to both encourage and challenge them. But he also wants to tell them a story. It’s a story about how we interact with powers. Whether it was the Jews in exile in Babylon or those churches facing persecution in Rome or even us today, we are all under the authority of powers, and it’s our job to go along with things until it attempts to silence the Lamb. Then we must speak up.
This book teaches us to be dissident disciples who resist Babylon in the public sector and who resist Babylon creep into the local church.
This book also teaches us that the Lamb is the victor, but the way of victory is the cross. What this does is to flip everything upside down.
Finally, because the Lamb is the victor, justice too wins. All of the powers that work against justice will be defeated.
McKnight says that we need to be people of wisdom so that we can recognize Babylon and discern it’s presence. We need to be witnesses of Jesus who know him and tell our story. And we need to be worshipers of the Lamb. The book of Revelation continues to come back to worship. Worship is how we see Babylon for what it truly is. This is how we prevent blindness.
Finally, as much as I have ignored the book of Revelation, I have often been returned to its last two beautiful and hopeful chapters. In this last part of the story we see heaven coming down to earth. We see God wiping away every tear. We see the redemption and restoration of everything that had been lost and broken. And we see the good, loving and just King reigning over everything.
That’s a great ending to our story!
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