Reblog: He Threw the Dragon Down

I came across the following Lenten sermon on Revelation 12:7-12.

He Threw the Dragon Down

“Revelation is filled with bizarre, crazy images: dragons and horsemen named Death, lions that look like lambs, robes dipped in blood, pregnant women and numbers pregnant with meaning and above it all this image of a boot-stomping, butt-kicking Jesus Christ.

“And my assumption is that, like those evangelists on Washington and King, you assume Revelation is about the future. That it’s like a visual Morse code, warning us of what’s to come.

“But when we treat the Book of Revelation like a Ouija Board that predicts the future, we miss the fact that St John writes down this vision God gives him, sneaks it out of the prison Rome has locked him in, and he sends it out to his churches not not to warn them of what’s to come one day but to remind them of what has already come to pass, once and for all, in Jesus Christ.

“The Book of Revelation is not primarily about the future.

“It is instead in scene after scene, in image after image, in symbol after symbol, about the cross. It’s about the cross.”

Reblog: Fear, Flight, Fight, and Fancy--A Revelation

I saw this blog piece today. It echoes the method of study I’ve been using here, and unsurprisingly, the truths that are listed in the piece overlap quite a bit with what we’ve found in our study.

Fear, Flight, Fight, and Fancy--A Revelation

Two types of justice in film

As many know there is a new version of Les Miserables on film in the theaters. We, in Petersburg, will have to wait a while before we get to see it, but for the rest of you, based on what I’ve read, it sounds like a very worthwhile view.

I thought about writing something on the two types of justice portrayed in this story by Victor Hugo, but then came across one that articulates it better than I probably could have done.

Javert vs. Valjean: the two Christianities of Les Miserables

I include the link here because I think it illustrates what we have been discussing about Revelation and the kinds of justice and judgment that is described in that book.

“End of the World” Podcast

A good podcast in which a Baptist and a Presbyterian minister discuss the end of the world and apocalyptic thinking, influenced of course, by the Mayan 21-Dec-2012 thing.

It’s the Bourbon Talking Podcast – The End of the World
”Pull up a bar stool. And listen in. Join Zac and Mark as they take a progressive Christian look at what's happening in politics, spirituality and culture. Cheers!”

Why Interpretation Matters

I came across the following post, “Why Are Right Wing Extremists So Anti-Islamic?” It demonstrates how something as esoteric and niche as biblical prophecy can have profound real-life implications to a broad swath of the global populace.

The post describes why so many Christians seem like they are pro-Israel (but not necessarily pro-Jew). They are pro-Israel because their particular interpretation of biblical prophecy demands it. Without the State of Israel Jesus’ return cannot happen. So all effort – political, religious, and economic – must be expended to guarantee that the State of Israel remains until Jesus returns.

One particular brand of Christian theology has infected the entire world.

For the record, anyone following this blog should know that I don’t subscribe to that particular worldview. My interpretation is that:

• The term “Israel” in prophecy never refers to a literal region or a nation. It refers to God’s people, his servants. It refers to the universal (“catholic” with a little-“c”, if you like) church.
• Prophecy is not primarily about fore-telling, but forth-telling. Fore-telling is about the future. Forth-telling is about God.
• Prophecy is not given to provide us with a roadmap for the future. The purpose of prophecy is to assure God’s people that he can be trusted, whatever present circumstances might be.
• In those rare instances where prophecy appears to be describing something in the future, it is so that we can look back upon the event, after the event, and see God’s hand in it.
• To use prophecy and try to force a particular unfolding of it is idolatry; i.e., an attempt to control God and his actions.

Don’t Get Alarmed

Today (Nov. 14) a piece was published on Huffington Post, Mark 13:1-8: Signs That the End Is Near.

It begins,

No matter the tragedy these days, some religious leader or blogger will attempt to connect it to God's judgment… This instinct to interpret current times through the broader lens of God's judgment is not new.

The post goes on to speak to our desire to want to know precisely how the future will unfold, and how we have a tendency to take prophetic (as in future-telling) proclamations as blueprints and recipe books to interpret present times and project into the future.

The problem with this is that more often than not, it is wrong. Even in those cases where it turns out to be correct, is it because we got it right, or just coincidence?

Believers today take many different approaches to waiting (and interpreting) the end times. Some read into the Bible explanations that simply are not there, mislabeling storms like Sandy and causing more hurt in the process.

Prophecy is not given so we can figure out how the future will play out, but to provide us with assurance that whatever happens, God is with us. Because God is with us, we need not fear the present nor the future.

The article concludes,

We must break the cycle of interpreting these events in ways Jesus specifically warned against, and instead, follow the one who healed at every opportunity, who urged care for those without food and shelter, who loved beyond all love even in the most desperate of times.

Jesus gave a vague answer as to when God will renew the world in God's justice, but his instructions for caring for our neighbors were abundantly clear. When disasters hit, Jesus' followers should get to work and leave the end time prognostication to God alone.

As we study Revelation, we should keep this in mind.

Methods of Reading Scripture

The Patheos site, back in 2010, posted an interview with Karen Armstrong on her book The Bible: A Biography (Books That Changed the World), which is written as a “biography” of the Bible. In the posted interview, she describes how during much of the existence of the Bible, there was no single, “correct” method for reading and interpreting the Bible. She describes how throughout history, the text of the Bible was read and interpreted in attempts to describe things that are ineffable and inexplicable.

Among the ways the pre-modern peoples used to interpret the Bible, Ms. Armstrong says,

“People always took the literal sense of the Bible seriously, but a literal reading was only one of the senses in which they took the Bible.  Jewish and Christian traditions had sophisticated, metaphorical, mystical, and allegorical ways of thinking about the Bible.”

Where the interview touches this blog is found on page 3 where she talks about John Nelson Darby and his “new” way of reading and interpreting Revelation, a process that took place in the 19th century. The excerpt:

David [the interviewer]: We should make it clear to readers of our conversation that your book provides lots of examples of what we're talking about here. You've really written a fascinating history. We just talked about Catholics, so let me mention a Protestant example from your book: the evangelist John Nelson Darby, this 19th-century guy who came up with the concept of the Rapture.

Karen: Darby is interesting. He was a Brit who developed this entirely new reading of the book of Revelation. I don't need to go into the Rapture theory for people. People in this country know about that idea particularly well, don't they?  But, Darby had no takers in the UK, so he came to America where he was a resounding hit. In a sense, as bizarre as it may sound to say it: This was quite a modern way of reading the Bible. As strange as that may sound, Darby's whole idea about how the Bible was divided into eras was in line with scientific thought that was current in his day. Just as Darby based his ideas on great ages and great stages of history, this is what scientists were uncovering in that era in their studies of cliffs and rocks.  And, then, he took a very literal reading of the book of Revelation and, hence, he was modern in that respect, too. The traditional reading of Revelation was highly allegorical. Darby pointed to a literal reading. If there was going to be a Battle of Armageddon, then this would happen in a given place, a given time.  Until the modern period, people didn't see Revelation in this way as some kind of program outlining the last days. The book was seen as a highly obscure pattern of symbolism.

The point I want to make is found in the last part of Ms. Armstrong’s response, which I underlined. What I am doing in the journey through Revelation recorded on this blog is to set aside both types of reading that are described and attempt a third: what did it mean to the original audience? How did they understand it? The reading I take is symbolic but not allegorical. And unless there is an obvious case for literalism, it is rejected as a default method of interpretation.

Revelation and the Tony Awards

Last night (June 10, 2012) I watched the Tony Awards show. As part of the show, short segments from each of the four musicals nominated for Best Musical were performed.

Even though television/movie drama and live theater are both performance arts, it occurred to me that they are quite different. (And you, reader, probably just responded, “Duh.”) Let me explain.

What I mean is that in TV and movie dramas, in most cases one of the goals is to bring the viewer into the story and make it believable as reality. It may be fantasy or sci-fi, but it still could be fathomed as reality that exists somewhere. Screen dramas can take advantage of camera work to zoom into scenes, or zoom out to take in the big picture. It can quickly shift from one scene to another. Screen dramas are strictly one-way communication: the actors to a passive audience.

Not so with many forms of live theater. There is a stage with the sets and actors. There is the audience. There can be no zooming in, so sets, actions, words, and songs must be exaggerated to emphasize importance. The audience cannot move either, so exaggeration is necessary in order for those in the nosebleed seats to understand what is going on. Another element present in live theater is that the actors, even as they follow a script, can still engage with the audience and vice-versa. The audience is not passive.

That got me thinking (again) about the book of Revelation as drama. When I describe the book as drama, I am thinking about it as live theater. John alone is the very first audience. Throughout the book he interacts with the drama. The book contains activities attributed to John: “I saw”, “I heard”, “I wept”, “I asked”, etc.

The first recipients of Revelation were the next audience. Although they did not have the benefit of seeing the visions as John had, they could still imagine the visions through the words. They could imagine John sitting in the theater, interacting with the activity on stage.

As the newest audience for one of the oldest, continuously running drama of Revelation, we too have the privilege of entering the theater, interacting with the actors, and entering into the story that is unveiled through the words of Revelation.

A perspective on apocalyptic biblical literature

The current (March/April 2012) issue of Adventist Today (requires subscription for access) contains a review of a book, Finding My Way in Christianity: Recollections of a Journey, authored by Harold Weiss. The book is the author’s autobiographical journey within the Adventist brand of Christianity. Part of this brand includes fascination with apocalyptic end-time scenarios and the review spends a large portion of its text describing the book author’s change in perspective through his life.

I want to quote excerpts from the review article what I find most relevant to the subject matter of this blog.

For Seventh-day Adventists, Weiss says the books of the Bible that serve as a canon within a canon are “the apocalyptic books of Daniel and Revelation. All evangelistic meetings center on the interpretation of these apocalyptic books, which Adventists have always considered to be prescriptive biblical prophecy.”

Having been raised with this emphasis on prophecy, some of Weiss’s earliest
memories include depictions of dreadful beasts and the statue of Nebuchadnezzar, which faithful Daniel and his companions refused to worship. Just as others have expressed concerns about long-established Adventist evangelistic approaches, he too worried that there might be “something manipulative” about how Scripture was construed and conveyed to reap baptisms.

“In her interpretation of the last days,” Weiss chronicles, “Ellen White makes the point that Adventists, along with those who keep the commandments and in particular the Sabbath commandment, will be persecuted by both Catholics and what she designates as apostate Protestantism.” Having enshrined Daniel and Revelation in the Adventist canon within a canon, it is no wonder that Adventist theology speaks with an apocalyptic accent.

Weiss summarizes in three sentences the core take-away message of a typical Adventist evangelistic campaign: “According to the Adventist interpretation of the book of Revelation, a law by the United States Congress supporting observance of Sunday as the Christian day of worship is one day to be established as the Mark of the Beast. Thus, in the large scheme of things, the United States government is to be at that time on the wrong side of the divide between the forces of good and evil. The United States government would renounce the wall of separation between church and state and side with Catholics and Protestants who worship on Sunday, for all practical purposes establishing a state religion.”

These specific words are not among the 28 fundamental beliefs, leaving
progressives to interpret their exclusion to mean they are not fundamental, whereas conservatives insist that they are so fundamental as to render inclusion unnecessary, much like Adventist churches declining to post “No Smoking” signs in Sabbath school classrooms because everyone knows better.

Weiss recalls coming “to terms with the historical roots of apocalypticism,” realizing “that the Adventist approach to apocalyptic interpretation was based on a misunderstanding of the character of these books. As a testament of faith, apocalyptic literature makes perfect sense. As prophetic foretellings of what would happen in the future, at the end of time, the books have been a source of much confusion and hubris of the worst kind: spiritual pride.

Rather than provide frightening details for use in a provocative prophecy poster or PowerPoint slide, apocalyptic literature is “primarily concerned with the affirmation that God’s justice will triumph.” When correctly reading “apocalyptic literature as theology rather than as predictive of the sequence of tragic events preceding the coming of Christ,” eschatology becomes faith in Christ, not faith in chronology.

A new book about Revelation

Amazon link – Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelation

Elaine Pagels authors a new book on the Bible’s Revelation. Her religious views definitely place her outside traditional, orthodox Christianity. Thus this book is probably not everyone's cup of tea.

From the reviews, previews, and excerpts that I’ve seen, I think it can shed light on a different perspective, and offer historical and religious perspectives that traditionally have not been considered. That does not mean Ms. Pagels’ views should take precedence or assume that they are right. Rather, by challenging traditional interpretations, we can rethink our own interpretations and beliefs and arrive at conclusions that are better thought through and are built on a stronger foundation.

Here are links that discuss the book –

• Harvard Gazette: http://hvrd.me/64lTLb
• A blog: http://bit.ly/rTkVyL
• Edge.org (with Q&A with Ms. Pagels): http://bit.ly/mUdsSB
• PBS: http://to.pbs.org/x1P6ee