Maria🥀’s Reviews > Revelation for the Rest of Us: A Prophetic Call to Follow Jesus as a Dissident Disciple > Status Update

Absolute power on earth is satanic in inspiration, destructive in its effects, idolatrous in its claims to ultimate loyalty.
In one word: domination.

😦🤔Babylon accompanies the church as it moves through church history.

“The moral pretenses of
Imperial Rome, the millennial claims of Nazism, the arrogance of Marxist dogma, the anxious insistence that America be ‘number one’ among the nations are all versions of Babylon’s idolatry.” - William Stringfellow

Babylon is a timeless trope. Jews knew of the original city of Babylon as a specific event from their own story. But from that time onward they had their eyes open for the presence of the
next Babylon and other Babylons to follow. Whenever they saw an oppressing nation or an enslaving power, they saw Babylon all over again.

3 principles for reading Revelation:
1. It’s not written for speculators—for those looking for a decoder ring to interpret newspaper headlines.
2. It is written for dissidents—for followers of Christ ready to challenge the powers of world and empire.
3. And it requires imagination—engaging our senses and minds with the performance thatis Revelation, with all of its rich images and intriguing characters.

Imagination empowers dissidents.
🤔

Michael Gorman is right:
Revelation “is not about a rapture out of this world but about faithful discipleship in this world.”
💘🤔💘

translated “beast” with “wild thing.”
Beast evokes something big, but the Greek term thērion evokes something wild. As a wild thing, it represents chaos and destruction and uncivilized behaviors.
💡💡💡🤔😦💡💡💡

you don’t have to be a cynic to track the
correlation of Revelation’s popularity with American political parties.

Preterists read Revelation as written to first-century churches about first-century topics.
Historicists read R. as a sketch of the history of the church from the first
century until the end.
Futurists think R. is totally, or nearly entirely, about the future. by the speculators.
Idealists read Revelation as timeless images and truths about God, the church, the state, and God’s plan for this world.