BEMA 174: Revelation — A Book for Its Time
Transcription Status
17 Mar 24 — Initial public release
2 Jan 24 — Transcript approved for release
Revelation — A Book for Its Time
Brent Billings: This is the BEMA Podcast with Marty Solomon. I’m his co-host, Brent Billings. Today we prepare for a journey through the book of Revelation, remembering the function and method of apocalyptic literature, and trying to remove the crazy from our study.
Marty Solomon: That’s right. Getting rid of the cray cray from our study. That was bad. Lame jokes abound to start off this episode.
Brent: This episode, first in a series of—what did I say—16 episodes on Revelation?
Marty: Was that what it was? Yes, that feels right. Feels right. It’s going to be good. A good thorough study is what we’re going to do. We’re going to start verse-by-verse. I don’t think we’re going to stay that way, but we’re going to go through all the letters to the seven churches. We’re going to do every verse of chapter one today, is what we’re going to do here. Brace yourself. The time has come. For some, getting to the book of Revelation has been something you could not wait for. I can only imagine once we start publishing this how many people will just skip to this portion of Session 4.
Brent: We’ve had people doing that with Romans, as soon as we started releasing Romans episodes. “Hey, I’ve just started your podcast. Love that Romans stuff.”
Marty: [laughs] That’s horrible.
Brent: It’s not recommended.
Marty: Not recommended.
Brent: If this is your first episode, please go back to the beginning.
Marty: There’s a lot of material, but go back to the beginning.
Brent: I know it’s a lot of episodes, but yes, we’ve been building this entire time and we’ve ordered it very intentionally. This is the end of a very long narrative. It’s weird to start at the end of the book.
Marty: Yes, it is. You’re right, we have a lot of intention behind it. This isn’t a haphazard journey. We’ve had our way mapped out, first when we began all the way back in 2016—but there was a method, an intentional method to our madness—madness though it might be, Brent Billings—but there is a method, most definitely. For some, you have not been able to wait to get to the book of Revelation. The anticipation of studying this book can be stifling. For others, [chuckles] they avoid the conversation about Revelation like the plague. No pun intended. Who are we kidding? Pun intended. Alright.
They find the whole conversation far too tense, loaded with problems, confusing, discouraging. My mother, who likes to follow my material—“Hi, mom!”—is convinced that this isn’t a conversation she has to figure out. She’s just going to let this one be. On some level I can appreciate that. The world and the church could use a lot more of the humility that comes from being okay with not knowing. Alas, I think we often let ourselves off the hook far too easily, plugging our ears and not wanting to engage in a conversation which makes us uncomfortable.
The truth of the matter is that what we believe about where this is all headed—the field of eschatology, we’ll talk about that here in a moment—but what we believe about where this is headed or what’s going to happen at the end of the world, what we think about how the story ends, has more of an effect on what we do day to day than many of the other things we believe.
What we believe about the narrative of scripture shapes how we live within it, and nothing shapes a narrative more than the ending. Before we get started, let’s remind ourselves of the incredibly important aspects of the context surrounding the literature of Revelation. We have a lot of very destructive assumptions that need to be deconstructed. First of all, the book is called Revelation, not Revelations. John had one apocalypse, not many. Just one. Just to review, we’re going to say it a little louder for the people in the back. Brent Billings how many revelations did John have?
Brent: One singular revelation.
Marty: Excellent. The book ends with an N, not an S. Now that we have that really profound point out of the way, but man does it ever bug me? Holy smokes.
Brent: That and Psalms. I don’t know. It is a book of Psalms, many Psalms. Then when you’re referring to one it is just Psalm 13, Psalm 51, whatever.
Marty: Yes, absolutely. Anyway we digress. We have that out the way. It’s incredibly important to identify the genre of Revelation as, what do you suppose this is, Brent?
Brent: I said in the intro, apocalyptic literature.
Marty: Apocalyptic literature. Once we settle that in our consciousness, which is typically an easy leap to make, we need to go back to Zechariah. Revelation is apocalyptic literature, and we talked about that all the way back in Session 2 with the book of Zechariah. Maybe we can even link that in the show notes, Brent. We’re going to have a lot of links today. Let’s link our Zechariah episode.
Brent: That’s episode 68.
Marty: 68. If we had to go back to that episode 68 on Zechariah, it’s going to give us a primer on apocalyptic literature. This will be much more difficult to settle in our consciousness because we have so much working against us. It’s one thing to say Revelation is apocalyptic literature, repeat that a few times and be like, “Revelation is apocalyptic literature, not a big shocker,” but to go back and remind ourselves of what we learned in Zechariah, that’s going to be a little bit trickier to get ingrained and reconstructed in our mind.
First, Revelation, not revelations. Second, apocalyptic literature. Third, we’re going to need to go back to our study of Zechariah yet again, because this distinction is that important. Really literally, I’m actually suggesting that if people are into our study and enjoy engaging the material that much, my suggestion is actually to stop the podcast, go back to episode 68, and listen to Zechariah yet again.
It will be that helpful in my mind. Having said that, it’s essential to remind ourselves throughout the story about the hermeneutic we attempt to use when studying the Bible. We use the same hermeneutic in the BEMA Podcast throughout the whole thing. We always use the same hermeneutic. We seek to learn authorial intent, which means we want to know as much as we can.
Brent: We weren’t there when the book was written.
Marty: Absolutely.
Brent: But we want to know as much as we can about what the author was trying to do.
Marty: Yes. We’re learning more and more today about some of those details. We want to know what the author meant when he wrote it or she wrote it. We want to know what the audience understood when they read it or heard it. To know what the author meant when he wrote it, to know what the audience heard when they heard it. This is the inspired conversation. That’s the one that is God-breathed. That’s the one that’s authoritative. That’s not to take away from mystical hermeneutics, a belief that the Holy Spirit’s working and speaking to us today independently. I don’t want to take anything away from that, but the hermeneutic we use for our study is one that speaks of contextual awareness, authorial intent.
Again, this isn’t to say the Spirit doesn’t move as we read the text today. This isn’t to say that there aren’t many applications of a text throughout history, including today. This isn’t to say that Revelation doesn’t have anything to offer about the future or that God won’t do things in the future that line up with the things described in Revelation, but, and I want to read this slowly because it’s in bold on my notes here, Brent—how do I say things in bold with my voice?
Brent: I think you’re doing it right now.
Marty: Okay, excellent. I’m going to say this slowly. Revelation is not written primarily about the future. Revelation is not primarily about the end of the world. Revelation is written to a first century church being persecuted by the Roman Empire, and to a people who are running for their lives, literally, standing up to the narrative of the empire, watching the execution, the literal execution of their brothers and sisters, wondering if it’s all worth it.
I’m going to read that one more time. Revelation is not written primarily about the future. Revelation is not primarily about the end of the world. Revelation is written to a first century church being persecuted by the Roman Empire and to a people who are running for their lives, standing up to the narrative of the empire, watching the execution of their brothers and sisters and wondering if it’s all worth it to them. John uses apocalyptic literature to communicate a clear message. That message is this. “It is worth it. You have to overcome because we know how this story ends.” Throughout our study of Revelation, I am going to assume that Revelation is written during the reign—just to give you some context here—probably the later reign of Emperor Domitian. That’s debated. People are going to put Revelation all over the place, but I’m right.
I’m just kidding. Who knows if I’m right? I believe I’m right, and that’s where I’m going to put it. I think Revelation was written during the reign of Emperor Domitian who led one of the most brutal persecutions of church history. There are other theories about the date of authorship but this is mine. We probably ought to take a moment and just go through about halfway into our conversation here today. Let’s just go over a whole bunch of resources. We’re just going to give people a bunch of places to just read and to study, and to engage the world in the context of Revelation. We compiled a list here of excellent sources. I’m going to have Brent—
Brent: Not a little list.
Marty: Not a little list.
Brent: A fairly substantial—this will keep you busy for some time if you are interested in digging into it.
Marty: Yes, it will. It’ll also keep everybody from having to email me and say, “Hey, do you have any resources for Revelation?” Here they are, ladies and gentlemen. Here they are.
Brent: Don’t drop this stack of books on your foot. It will hurt.
Marty: Yes, absolutely.
Brent: We start with Christ and the Caesars by Ethelbert Stauffer.
Marty: Yes.
Brent: Stauffer?
Marty: Yes. Ethelbert Stauffer. Christ and the Caesars, definitely start there. That would be the staple work. We start our list there because you ought to start there. Remember that this whole list of authors, doesn’t mean I agree with everything they believe or say about Revelation or anything else. There’s going to be many of these authors, going to be very, very liberal, very high textual criticism. A lot of stuff that may make us uncomfortable, but they’re doing the contextual work of Revelation. That’s why we’re going to study them and think critically. Ethelbert Stauffer. Great work. Start there.
Brent: Somewhat difficult to find, but there’s a fair amount of availability from third party people.
Marty: Absolutely.
Brent: Next up, a 12-volume series called The Christians: Their First Two Thousand Years, specifically volume two, called A Pinch of Incense. This is by the Christian History Project.
Marty: Absolutely. All these are in your show notes by the way, all these links will be there. They did a 12-volume series. The first three volumes, if you want to actually get all three of the first volumes, they’re excellent. The one that’s going to be most relevant to our study in Revelation is going to be the second one titled, A Pinch of Incense. The Veil Is Torn is volume number one. What was number three? I can’t remember the title now.
By This Sign, that’s what it was, By This Sign, was volume three. All three of those were great. I’m relatively confident that if I were to follow their entire series through church history, I am not going to be as excited about it, but the first three volumes were really good and beautiful. They are not cheap, but they are these beautiful, visual, graphic—by graphic, what do I mean, Brent? Illustrated. Just excellent. Excellent works. A Pinch of Incense would be the one relevant to this.
Brent: Finding the entire set is potentially a little bit difficult. It seems like these earlier volumes are more easy to find. I don’t know.
Marty: Yes. I would imagine the whole set would be expensive.
Brent: Yes. I was looking at average prices of $60 to $80 per volume.
Marty: I think I found some of mine for $20 and $30 because I got it really used. They didn’t come in bad shape, but they were used.
Brent: Right. There are ways to find them. Next up, we have The Seven Cities of the Apocalypse and Roman Culture by Roland H Worth Jr, and another volume by him called The Seven Cities of the Apocalypse and Greco-Asian Culture.
Marty: Great resource. You’ll find a lot of stuff. The idea here is to expose yourself to enough contextual study that you keep seeing multiple sources reference the same ideas. You don’t want to just take one book, one source, pull some major ideas from it, start interpreting an entire book from just one singular source. The idea here is to give you a lot of different sources so you’re seeing the same things, running into the same culture, the same context, all throughout your study. This won’t be for-- I know everybody’s not going to be readers, but for those book readers that are out there and want to back up the source, we’re starting you on a journey.
Brent: The one on Roman culture was readily available. The Greco-Asian one was a little more difficult to find, but there’s availability out there.
Marty: Perfect.
Brent: Next up, Imperial Cult and Commerce in John’s Apocalypse by J Nelson Kraybill. This one is straight up out of print. As we record, there are no copies available, but the link is there because at any point somebody could put up a copy for sale. You have the link, you can at least find it and figure out what it looks like. Maybe you can find a local library or something.
Marty: Somebody wrote in and reminded me the other day, there were these things called libraries. It’s so wonderful. I have just replaced in my mind, “library” with Amazon, and forget that if a book’s not there or if I don’t want to spend the money, go find it the way that book exchanges work today, you can get a book from anywhere, almost anywhere, especially in the university setting. Great. What’s our next one?
Brent: Next up is The Letters to the Seven Churches by William M Ramsay.
Marty: Ramsay should be a great source. I’m not as familiar with this source, but I know it’s on the bibliography of places where you can find some of this context from my teachers. There you go.
Brent: Then we have The Days Of Vengeance by David Chilton.
Marty: Chilton. Great scholar. Meet some great stuff in there that’s going to sound like a broken record. What else we got?
Brent: The Greco-Roman World of the New Testament Era by James S Jeffers.
Marty: That’s another name that you’ll see referenced in a lot of these conversations in some bibliographies, is Jeffers. Excellent. Was that our list?
Brent: That’s it. That’s a stack.
Marty: That is a good stack. You’ll be busy for a while if you do that, and you’ll also be broke. Good luck.
Brent: [laughs] That’s true. If you bought everything that we just talked about, you’re probably looking at about $1,000.
Marty: Yes. They don’t make studying this stuff easy or cheap.
Brent: There was one, I can’t remember which one it was. I think it might have been The Letters to the Seven Churches, the Ramsay one, there was an $850 collector’s edition hardcover of that one. [chuckles]
Marty: Nice, wonderful. Sign me up. Alright. Once we keep our commitment to an appropriate hermeneutic, all those sources are going to help us. Once we commit ourselves to that hermeneutic to stay consistent to how we’ve looked at Romans, how we’ve looked at Paul’s letters, how we looked at the Gospels, how we looked at the prophets, how we studied everything, everything we’ve been doing, we’ve been using the same hermeneutics, so why would we change now? We wouldn’t.
We’re going to stay committed to that. Once we do, the writing of Revelation will begin to come alive. I can state this with confidence because I have watched this time and time again in people as I take part in study tours through Turkey. The ride through Revelation is a wild ride of deconstruction, but one that can change us in untold ways. Brent, how was Turkey?
Brent: It was fantastic.
Marty: Study Revelation in particular, excellent?
Brent: Yes, it was a little bit difficult. You’ve made it easier on future trip-goers, because I had to go through all of the Israel material. Then while that is overflowing in my brain, try to cram all the Turkey stuff in there on top of this. Now they are separate trips. It’ll be a little bit easier to process. I got a lot out of Turkey even so.
Marty: It’s my favorite. If I were to be honest, it is my favorite study. It’s my favorite tour. So much goodness in there. Let’s get into some text. That’s what we do here. Read us the first, I don’t know, handful of verses, whatever we got here, Brent. Go ahead and give us the book of Revelation.
Brent: The Revelation from Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants what must soon take place? He made it known by sending His angel to His servant John who testifies to everything he saw. That is the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. Blessed is the one who reads allowed the words of this prophecy and blessed are those— that’s nice for me.
Marty: Yes? I know, right?
Brent: Blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it because the time is near.
Marty: Good for us
Brent: Good for the listeners.
Marty: Yes. Excellent.
Brent: Good for everybody. John, to the Seven Churches in the province of Asia, grace and peace to you from Him who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits before His throne, and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the first born from the dead and the ruler of the kings of the earth.
Marty: Those are our opening thoughts, our opening verses to this whole Revelation, this whole apocalypse that John gets us opening. Good, poetic opening. There’s some good stuff in there. Let’s just keep on reading for a little bit. I’m going to have you just keep on going for just a little bit more.
Brent: To Him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by His blood, and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve His God and father, to Him be glory and power forever and ever. Amen. Look, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him, and even those who pierced Him. And all peoples on earth will mourn because of Him. So shall it be, amen. “I am the alpha and the omega,’ says the Lord, God, ‘who is, and who was, and who is to come, the almighty.”
Marty: John starts by making what seems to be an obvious allusion to the person of Jesus, the one who has freed us from our sins and made us to be a kingdom of priests. About Jesus, John makes two connections directly from the Old Testament. However, John doesn’t just pull the phrasing he wants from any book of the Tanakh, he pulls the references from other apocalyptic books. I want to let that sink in.
John could have just pulled any verse he wanted to out of the scripture, but he doesn’t. He chooses other literature that’s just like Revelation. In doing this, John not only makes it clear about the genre of literature he’s engaging and the ideas that he’s working with, but he also sets the stage by connecting the context of struggle and perseverance to the context of his audience, who is also struggling to persevere. The book of Zechariah was written to a people suffering what, Brent?
Brent: An exile.
Marty: An exile, particularly who?
Brent: Who was suffering?
Marty: Yes. Or no. Who was doing the oppressing?
Brent: The Babylonians.
Marty: Babylonian Empire. Do you think that they would’ve felt some kinship, some solidarity with these ancient Babylonian oppressed ones?
Brent: I think so.
Marty: Absolutely. It’s almost as if John is saying, “Remember, we have been here before. Let me quote to you from books that were written during similar struggles.”
Brent: This is a great case for listeners to crack open their Bible as we’re going through this material, because you can’t really tell from what I’m saying that I’m quoting, or that John, rather, is quoting old Testament scripture here, but it’s in your footnotes. It’s great to have that. The original listeners, probably at least some of them had this memorized and knew exactly what was happening. Whereas we don’t really have that advantage today.
Marty: Right. Which is a great point, Brent, because this letter is written to the churches in Asia, seven of them. Asia was where John was the pastor, pastor to Asia. We know scholars are estimating from—we know from history that one out of five, 20% of the population, in Asia was Jewish. Which is hard, that is hard to get your head around when you think about it. One out of every five people in Asia, would’ve been a Jew.
If that’s even somewhat reflected in the church that he writes to, and I do believe John’s audience Revelation is largely Gentile, I would even say mostly Gentile by this point, but there is definitely a very prominent and important, significant Jewish presence in this conversation. I love the fact you bring that up. In case you were curious about the exact quotations, “Coming from the clouds” is pulled from Daniel 7. We don’t give verses. Why don’t we do that, Brent? Let’s talk about that for just a little brief moment.
Brent: Because you got to go read it.
Marty: Because you got to get into the Text. Because we’re not going to make this super easy. We’re going to tell you where to go look, and you can go look and find it yourself.
Brent: Furthermore, oftentimes these references are not specifically the verses that they’re quoting. They’re pulling from the greater context of the chapter that they’re quoting. We need the whole chapter.
Marty: Exactly. We force you to do the work. To he who has ears to hear, let them hear. If you want to do that work, you will. If you don’t, that’s okay, but we’re not going to do the work for you. That would be a Western study, and we want to engage in some slightly Eastern methods. Daniel 7 “would be coming with the clouds” and, let’s see, the idea of “those who have pierced him will mourn”, pulled from Zechariah 12. Notice, Brent: Daniel, Zechariah, two different books that both are?
Brent: Apocalyptic literature.
Marty: Apocalyptic literature. Alright, give us the next little bit in Revelation.
Brent: I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering in kingdom and patient endurance that are ours in Jesus was on the island of Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. On the Lord’s day, I was in the spirit and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet, which said, “Write on a scroll what you see, and send it to the seven churches. To Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea.”
Marty: John connects himself to his audience by rooting this vision in his own suffering. John talks about how he received this vision while he was exiled on Patmos. By the way, side note, but like “revelations,” I always find this a little slightly annoying, many people think John was on Patmos when he wrote Revelation. In fact, if you ever go on one of those tourist trips over to Turkey, they’ll take you over to Patmos. They’ll give you a little tour. They’ll take you to a cave, and they’ll say, “This is the cave where John wrote the book of Revelation,” but if you read that paragraph quite carefully and pay attention to the tense, Brent, it says he…?
Brent: Was on the island.
Marty: Was on the island. That happens to be what tense, Brent?
Brent: Past tense.
Marty: Past tense, just for anybody who has fallen asleep there, not present, not “I am on the island of Patmos.” “I was on the island of Patmos.” You don’t get a whole lot of time to write letters when you’re in exile. John references his time on Patmos in the midst of his own suffering as the time when he received this vision of encouragement.
Brent: I’m picturing The Count of Monte Cristo, that prison stuff.
Marty: Actually it’s not that far from what the—actually I’ve seen pictures of the island, just off the coast of Turkey there. Yes, it actually doesn’t—it’s not far from the truth. This is very fitting that John would use his own suffering, and the encouragement he received there, to talk to others about their suffering and encouragement. Let’s keep hearing from John here.
Brent: I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. When I turned, I saw seven golden lampstands, and among the lampstands was someone like a son of a man, dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet, and with a golden sash around his chest. The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow and his eyes were like blazing fire. His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and His voice was like the sound of rushing waters. In His right hand He held seven stars, and coming out of His mouth was a sharp, double-edged sword. His face was the sun shining in all its brilliance.
Marty: Let’s pull this paragraph apart here. We need to quit reading these passages as Westerners and realize that John is very intentionally using apocalyptic literature to speak to his audience. If I feel like a broken record, it’s because I am, because you have to work at it this hard in order to get our brains to do this. What I’m trying to impress upon you is that John is using ancient apocalyptic books to get his material. He’s not merely accurately describing his visions, although I would assume he is, he’s doing something much bigger than that, and that’s very intentional.
Let’s see, the phrase, “the golden sash around His chest,” that’s going to come from the apocalyptic book of Daniel. “Eyes were like blazing fire.” More Daniel. “Feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace,” still Daniel. “Voice was like the sound of rushing waters.” It’s going to come from the apocalyptic vision given to Ezekiel. Then, how about the double-edged sword? A reference to God from Isaiah who has his own apocalyptic portions.
Also a note about the seven stars. This happens to be a reference from Greco-Roman culture and their pagan understanding of the Zodiac. In short, they understood the skies to be a swirling ocean, and the stars which moved to give the impression of floating on this ocean were those who had gone before. The astronomers of their day also noticed that there were seven stars that did not move according to this pattern. The constellations are always moving slowly like an ocean in the same way, but there were seven stars that moved differently.
They didn’t follow the same pattern, the sun, the moon, Mercury, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn. Obviously, the Greco-Romans connected these to their pagan gods and mythology. To say you hold the seven stars in your hand would be a very Roman way of saying that you control the universe. It was a Roman way of saying, “I know how to get you where you want to go.” There’s some pieces there that we found in that last paragraph. Go ahead and keep, go ahead and keep reading about this man. That’s walking among the lampstands, Brent.
Brent: When I saw Him, I fell at His feet as though dead. Then he placed His right hand on me and said, “Do not be afraid. I am the first and the last, I am the living one. I was dead and now look, I am alive forever and ever, and I hold the keys of death and Hades. Write therefore what you have seen, what is now, and what will take place later. The mystery of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand and of the seven golden lampstands is this. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.”
Marty: With another reference to the seven stars, John closes what will be the first chapter of Revelation. He also makes mention of seven lampstands, which he tells us to represent the seven churches. This was a common image for the community of God’s people. The lampstand or menorah often symbolizes the presence of God which lives and dwells in the community of his people. Especially after the destruction of the temple in AD 70, that image becomes even more prevalent in the Jewish world. What we often miss is the obvious connection to the book of Zechariah.
We told people to listen to Zechariah, right? Zechariah, one of the most apocalyptic books in Tanakh, begins with a vision of a man walking among not lampstands, but myrtle trees, which also symbolizes the people of God. John’s play here is another obvious nod towards the Old Testament, the apocalyptic genre, and his intent throughout the book of Revelation. We will want to keep our eyes open for these plays, this play on Old Testament passages as we go throughout John’s vision. I will often tell my students there is very little new material in the book of Revelation.
It’s all drawing off of what was recorded before in the Old Testament. If we will learn this valuable lesson, we will have a much easier time understanding what we typically think is an incredibly perplexing book. I can remember Ray once telling me, “If you go to a Bible study and they say, ‘We’re doing a Bible study on Revelation,’ ask them, ‘Do I need my Old Testament?’ If they say no, go play a round of golf instead.” [chuckles] It was one of my favorite quotes. There you go, Brent—first chapter of Revelation down the hatch.
Brent: A stack of books to keep you busy until we release the next episode.
Marty: You got it. We’re going to bounce our way through the seven letters here, taking one at a time. Some of them will be short. Some of them will be long, but we will go through the seven churches of Revelation.
Brent: If you are interested in Revelation, please get some of those other books and dig into the material. Do your own study. We’re going to present a lot of stuff over 16 episodes, but we’re not going to cover every detail. There’s just so much more to learn. There’s so much to dig into.
Marty: Absolutely.
Brent: We would encourage you to do that. In the meantime, you can go to bemadiscipleship.com. All the details about the show are there. We will talk to you again next week with more Revelation.