Andrew Meredith’s Reviews > Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Followingthe Lamb into the New Creation > Status Update

Chapter 4 Questions:

"1.Which approach(es) to Revelation discussed in this chapter is (are) most attractive to you? Why?"

I am among the ranks of the Preterists, and I'm glad our existence is at least acknowledged in the book, even if in a muddled and half-understood way. For the record, just because the predicted event is behind us does not negate the ongoing importance of the text today. Is Jeremiah less relevant because the Israelites have already gone into exile and returned? Is 1 Corinthians 5 less relevant because the many divisions that plagued the church are (probably) no longer an issue?

As Romans 11 makes clear, the breaking off of Israel plays an important function in redemptive history. It means life for the Gentile world. It also signals the exclusivity of the Church as the Kingdom of Priests, the chosen ones of God, the New Israel in this New Covenant. Someday, ethnic Israel will join the rest of the nations in being grafted back in again, a relative few of their number already have.

"2. Why do you think the predictive approach to Revelation, seen in the “Left Behind” series and elsewhere, is so popular and persistent?"

Narcissism. We like to believe that we are at the climax of history, and are seeing things fulfilled that the faithful before us did not.

Ignorance. A lack of responsible teaching and preaching on the book. People are going to read it, and those who are spiritually mature should guide them in how to think about it.

Intrigue. It's the same reason conspiracy theories are so popular. You feel like you are getting a special, behind the scenes look at "how things are really going down." That insider feeling is addictive.

Bad Hermeneutics. Every single symbol and type utilized in the book (whether object, sight, sound, food, color, clothing, word, number, animal, etc.) shows up somewhere earlier in the Bible, often multiple times before. The reader should use the earlier associative meanings to interpret the book.

(Let's take "sea" for a rough and quick example. At the very beginning of Genesis, the Spirit of God is like a dove hovering over the surface of the deep (a kind of primordial disorder and chaos), and then God soon separates the land from the sea as He brings order to creation.

Moving forward in the text, the sea is once more brought up over the land during Noah's flood in an act of de-creation, returning the world to temporary disorder and chaos that results in judgment and death upon those who did not find grace. God once more sends out His Spirit and the waters recede. Noah is a new Adam, a gardner tasked with filling the earth and subduing it.

A smaller scale recapitulation of the event takes place at the crossing of the Red Sea (judgment superintended by hovering Spirit) and then again at the Jordan, marking out Israel as a new corporate Adam.

From this point, the prophets use the sea more and more as an indicator of the Gentile world. The Gentiles are "fish" even sea monsters that dwell in the "disorder and chaos." Egypt is Tannin (Eze 32:2), a great sea dragon, or Rahab (Ps 87:4, 89:10, and Isa 30:7) a serpent like sea monster. Nebuchadnezzar is also described as a sea monster (Jer 51:34) and Babylon as Leviathon, a great sea monster (Isa 27:1) (note also the satanic serpent-imagery that has it's own thread). The beasts in Daniel 7 (representative of various Gentile superpowers) all emerge from the Sea.

So when we get to Revelation, one should carry all of these ideas of "sea" whenever encountering the concept. For instance: Revelation 17:15-18 directly equates "the waters" with "the peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and languages." These peoples and the Beast (Rome) then turn, strip Babylon (Jerusalem) naked, burn her up, and devour her.

On a more happy/eschatological note, you can now probably appreciate the full significance of Revelation 21:1 "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more."

This is just one of the many, many symbols found in Revelation.

"3. What is your reaction to the list of weaknesses in the “Left Behind” series and to the alternative approach advocated in this chapter and throughout the book thus far?"

I agree with most of them. Though I do think "the last days" are "the last days" of the Old Covenant. The time between Christ's First Advent and The Tribulation/Destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, where the Old Covenant overlapped with the New for one generation (40 years) as Jesus said that it would.

I strongly agree with #5, "Dispensationalism is escapist." No single theology has done more damage to the ongoing institutional witness of Christianity in the world today than Dispensationalism, which has abandoned building and maintaining hospitals, academies, orphanages, charities, and the like because "it's all going to burn soon anyway."

I also agree that "it privileges the modern state of Israel in an uncritical way." Dispensationalism's jacked up eschatology has directly protected and financed the nationstate of Israel and the neverending wars over there. Excusing all sorts of bad behavior on Israel's part in the process because their very existence is necessary for some convoluted end time scheme.

"4. How does the summary of Revelation’s theology presented in this chapter compare to the understanding(s) of its message you have heard and/or held?"

A mixed bag. Some I agree with, some I strongly disagree with.

1.) "Jesus reigning now." Absolutely agree. This IS the Gospel.
2.) "The reality of... empire." Disagree. I don't believe Revelation is about the evils of "empire" by itself in the abstract at all. I've belabored this point already.
3.) "The Christian Church is tempted by empire, which is idolatry and immorality." Disagree. Constantine was not a mistake. Christendom 1.0, despite it's (often exaggerated) shortcomings, was a good thing. We'll have to work out some of it's flaws as we build Christendom 2.0, but as we're still in the early church, we've got time. (I imagine future little Christian school-children trying to recall if Augustine of Hippo or C.S. Lewis came first.)
4.) "The Church is called to Covenant faithfulness and resistance to empire." Mixed. Covenant faithfulness? Absolutely. Resistance to "empire" abstractly? Perhaps? Not in and of itself, no.
5.) "Worship and an alternative vision." Agree.
6.) "The immenient judgement and salvation/New Creation of God." I agree, but not how he means it. The "immenient"-ness was only so for the first readers. As post-Tribulation Christians who have been delivered from the elements of the world, we are now living in the New Creation (the Regeneration) that is being progressively realized throughout the world by the faithful activities of Christ's Body, the Church (already but not yet, before the consummation).

Finally, I agree that we conquer the gates of hell by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony. That Christ has given us Spirit, Water, Bread, Wine, and Word and has commissioned us to go overcome the world, so we should not take up the literal sword for the sake of Christ. However, I do believe Psalm 2 makes clear that Christ will temporally and eternally punish all nations who will not swear fealty to Him or obey Him.