Revelation and “The End of the World”

So when I was a teenager growing up in Arkansas, we had a guy from India, Simran Gujral (a Sikh) come live at our house for many months. Sikhs, as your might know, never cut there hair, and are known for wearing a turban. Simran was close to my age, and we fought and loved each other like brothers. In fact, I see him every couple of years, and I still consider him family. He is my Indian brother.

One day, we were having one of our many conversations about faith, and Simran told me that he knew when the world was going to end. He told me stories about Nostradamus, and Mayans, and predictions that only had a few short years before they came true. And I believed him about all of it. He was, after all, wearing a turban.

Since then I’ve changed my mind on what I think happens when the world (as we know it) ends.

But I don’t read Revelation like that any more. It’s ironic that Revelation is a book that is used by so many to incite fear, when that’s really not what John is trying to do. The book of Revelation is actually all about hope. It’s the book where God makes some of the most deep promises to His people in the whole Bible. It’s where we find out that no matter what life looks like around us, God is always with us, and watching.

And Revelation is not actually about the end of the world, but the transformation and renewal of it.

And since so many people these days are talking about the end of the world, I thought it might be nice to blog through the book of Revelation for the next few weeks. Because what blog couldn’t use some dragons from time to time? But first a couple of things you should know about Revelation.

1. Apocalyptic Literature is a specific kind of genre. What would you do if you had a friend come over and pick up one of your cookbooks, and start pouring through them trying to break the code? They saw references to add margarine, or a tablespoon of vanilla, as references to socio-economic realities around them. You’d probably recognize that they were reading the cookbook wrong. You might also assume that they were projecting some of their own concerns and fear onto what they were reading. Martin Luther once said, “Some have brewed Revelation into many stupid things, that were just in their own heads.”

Apocalyptic literature is a short lived form of writing that people used to describe specific present events in ways that helped people see them from a new perspective. So that means that….

2. Revelation was written first to someone else. You are reading someone else’s mail, as it is. John wasn’t thinking primarily of the 21st century Westerner when he wrote this book. He was thinking about the group of Christians that were struggling to be faithful in the middle of persecution by an Empire that seemed unstoppable. Almost the entire book is a critique of the Roman Empire. The apocalyptic way of talking was Revelation peeling back the curtain of reality and letting them see another reality. John was writing this book to help them be a faithful witness to that reality.

3. The words Anti-Christ and rapture are nowhere in this book. That’s not what this book is about. All theologies that try to force that into this book should be left behind.

4. The center of the story is about a lamb. Which is really ridiculous when you think about it. There are dragons and beasts and promiscuous ninja women with swords, and at the center of it all there is a lamb, in a war, and the lamb appears to be winning. The implications for this are huge. But just for now, know the heart of this book is not about all the villains, but about the Lamb.

5. This book is about the New Heavens and the New Earth. Contrary to every other  ancient text about Heaven and earth, we do not go up to Heaven, instead Heaven comes down to us. Here’s what that means. If the world was to end today, then it wouldn’t be destroyed, it would be transformed. To a place where there was no more war, or death, or poverty. It would be strangely like this world, yet different…better. In the words of Richard Horsley:

“Far from looking for the end of the world, Revelation is looking toward the end of the empire. And far from living under the shadow of anticipated cosmic [destruction] they looked for the renewal of earth on which a humane societal life could be renewed.”

George Benard Shaw once said that Revelation sounds like the curious record of the visions of a drug addict. And maybe you’ve felt that way about it before as well. But it’s really a Scripture that, in it’s own language, inspires worship, mission, and hope.

It’s time to learn that language.