It
is amazing to consider that so many have misinterpreted the book of
Revelation (of John the Disciple of Christ). Tim LaHaye, Hal Lindsey,
Pat Robertson of Virginia Beach, Muhammad of Mecca and innumerable
lunatics tattooed with the mark of the beast (666) as well as
innumerable congregations full of saved evangelicals evidently got it
wrong. The analysis and interpretation of literature-historical;
prophetic literature, was probably not their strong suit. The first
resurrection was that of being spiritually born again in the faith;
most of the prophecies in the Revelation were fulfilled during the
violent, troubling times experienced by first century Christians
going through tribulation and persecution of the Roman Emperor Nero.
The
Bible is a beautiful book in the sense of a beautiful mathematics or
physics theory that has a wonderful structure. With the Revelation of
John correctly interpreted the New Testament gospel of the Lord
becomes more beautiful to in its marvelous fulfillment of prophecy
and reshaping foundation for the course of mankind. With the spirit
of the Acts of the Apostles John's Revelation provides and overview
and binding foundation for understanding the continuing work of the
Lord and Holy Spirit in human history beyond the sufferings,
persecutions, tribulation and destruction of the temple in the first
century. An age of the gentiles that would be fulfilled with the
evangelization of the peoples of the world. The good news of the Lord
could be carried to the people of the future-even unto the farthest
reaches of humanity down the road and even into space I would think.
Humanity and Christians in particular are not to cower under
toadstools waiting for the sky to fall and rapture to remove them
from impending Armageddon and the draconian power of the beast (that
in a sense inevitably coheres residually within any human collective
or government I suppose original sin being what it is).
Life
in the temporal realm isn't eternal. There are fundamentally three
ways of interpreting the Disciple John's book of the Revelation
regarding when the Lord Jesus Christ will return to conclude human
affairs and to judge the living quick and the dead that are popular
today. This field of Christian theology is incidentally named
eschatology.
Pre-mill,post-mill
or amill; regardless of your stand I believe a Christian is saved if
the Lord is their personal Savior. One should always be ready for
the return of the Lord in the Second Coming.
Catholics
are I believe generally amillenialists. They regard people that die
as going to heaven directly (or hell or purgatory perhaps). Not being
Roman Catholic I stipulate that I am not very well informed on the
issue. Evangelicals Protestants tend to be premillennialists
believing that the Revelation is a prophecy of events to come
preponderantly. Post-millennialism is another point of view with the
view that the Revelation largely described near term events that
occurred in the first century A.D.
It
does seem reasonable that John foresaw the future of the Jewish and
Roman world and how it would effect Christians within the decade he
was living in rather than just events about 2000 years distant. Nero
began his persecutions of Christians in 64 a.d. and Christians
(saints) went through a tribulation. Gentry goes over the evidence
for a first century interpretative paradigm for the Revelation in
detail.
If
post-millennialism is correct it doesn't mean Christianity is
obsolete-instead it confirms it's truth and prophetic accuracy. We
are living in the age of the Gentiles. Instead of expect a sudden
anti-Christ and Armageddon Christianity should grow and increase
human peace, prosperity and knowledge of the Lord (perhaps with a
priesthood of believers replacing the hierarchical priesthood). The
second coming and final judgment could take an indefinite time even
occurring after human settlement of Mars and distant galaxies, its
hard to say for sure.
Kenneth
Gentry's book 'The Beast of
Revelation' identifies the
Roman Emperor Nero as the particular beast referred to in John's book
of the Revelation. Besides Nero as the particular person of the beast
the Roman Empire is said to be the general actualization of the
beast. I think that Gentry's analysis is quite convincing.
This
is an informal commentary interacting with the ideas of Gentry's book
written for my course on eschatology. The commentary is supposed to
run to thirty pages and that seems quite a lot to write for a a
non-expert in the field. Rather than providing a back-seat driving
analysis of Gentry's ideas I'll try to adumbrate points of view that
are relevant to the issue of Biblical eschatology and end times
inspired by Gentry's analysis of the Revelation.
The
Revelation may be viewed as a history book as well as a book of
prophecy. That fact has implications for how one interprets its
content. History books generally are written after the fact while
prophecies are written before. If one is a secularist it might be a
priori challenging to accept a date for the composition of the
revelation before the events described within it as prophecy. Instead
of an early date at or before the first year of Nero's reign e.g. 63
a.d. the option of accepting the credibility of the later date of 95
a.d. might be preferred with a certain neo-realistic bias.
It
is difficult to say what reason John could have had for composing the
events of the book of Revelation after the events described within
it, although one might offer the point of view such as
premillenialists have that the events described do not pertain to the
first century events at all, or perhaps have a dual-purpose meaning
of events then and in the future.
Some
have pointed out that the churches and Christians of the time might
have found John's prophecy somewhat superfluous if they did not
relate to the pressing issues of the time such as the Neronic
persecutions and martyrdoms of Christians by Nero or immanent dangers
to Jerusalem by the Roman Army. John might have found events of the
first century a kind of coincidental template for describing future
events-yet if so he would have needed to view the near-term events
prophetically as well as the distant future events in order to note
their similarities and congruence of format. Yet it might have been
the angels that provided the right coincidental data in order to make
John's Revelation insights of prophecy useful to Christians then and
now. Historians with an entirely secular viewpoint would dismiss that
possibility as irrelevant. I would imagine that it is easier for
Christian theologians to accept a Revelation prophetic paradigm that
was immediately relevant to first century Christians rather than a
later date that requires a more convoluted explanation. If John's
Revelation was written before the events that were rather near-term
with such accuracy it would be difficult not to accept the fact that
it was genuine prophecy rather than coincidence or dead-reckoning
political analysis of the highest quality and accuracy.
Political
predictions of future events of from one to 17 years distant
generally involving the highest levels of an imperial government and
the existence of the Jewish nation were just not easy in the first
century. Few think tanks had such access to the highest levels of the
Roman Government, or would have if such had existed. There were
additional accurate predictions regarding the success and growth rate
of the Christian faith would have been unlikely in the first century.
The Delphic Oracle did not provide such accuracy.
I
have looked ahead to Gentry's other book 'He Shall Have Dominion'
and learned a More of Gentry's agenda. The present work seems to
be the opening Movement of a grand post-Millennial symphony of
eschatology. After checking out that post-Millennial symphony I
must say that I like its sound. The interpretation has the
beauty of the General Theory of Relativity or Wegener's Theory
of Plate Tectonics and continental drift to explain why the
shoreline littorals of West Africa and Eastern South America seem to
match up with a yin-yang aspect.
Natural
philosophies such as continental drift, Buddhism,Taoism and evolution
are in some respects compatible with Christianity yet are
fundamentally irrelevant. Christianity is More like supernatural
philosophy revealed by God. I ought to note that the 6th
heresy of Buddhism is belief in God. I believe that is an historical
anachronism originating in an era when all of the nations of the
world besides Israel were pagan. The Buddha hadn't a supernatural
revelation and instead adumbrated a Natural philosophy somewhat like
the Universe is a holograph produced by higher dimensions and hence
illusory. Keeping his focus on the natural belief in God was
proscribed. A Modern scientific Buddhist Might be able to acknowledge
that if a superior civilization of the future or from higher
dimensions could create particle entanglement or an Event horizon
with an apparent Universe sheltering sentient beings in it, why not
God?
Alternatively
the evidence Gentry presents though convincing reminds me of the
televised O.J. Simpson trial were using basically the same evidence
two different camps presented two different versions of what
occurred. That is a routine occurrence in criminal and civil trials
in a democratic society with an adversarial legal system. A juror
would need to examine each point of view and decide for themselves
what if anything is true.
In
the case of cosmology theories there are numerous conflicting as well
as complementary points of view about given physical phenomena used
as evidence to support a given trendy hypothesis. These days theories
of everything that were popular in the 70s and 80s seem to have
fallen out of fashion as the frontiers of cosmology through
astrophysics and theory roll back the frontiers of the observable and
the possible. In some respects like Socrates who decided that he knew
that he knew nothing-a kind of precursor antipode of Descartes'
cogito ergo sum-cosmological
theorists realize that they likely will never have absolute certainty
about physical reality that may be embedded in higher dimensions and
just one of an infinite number of Universes or how it could be
sustained by superior civilizations or God. A certain measure of
faith is required to select a given theory as the best of all
available models knowing that it is incomplete and something of a
process philosophy or process cosmology of a temporary nature likely
to be surpassed. Christians too must select the better interpretation
of the Revelation available knowing that it may be only partly
accurate hopefully to a large extent.
The
Apostle John was a prisoner for a time on an island near Ephesus. It
is believed that he wrote the Revelation while at that island. At
least he received the Revelation while at the isle of Patmos although
perhaps he had scribes write it down after release or possible before
release via intermediaries. That is rather difficult to say at this
point in time. Julius Caesar had a lieutenant write the second half
of his book on the Roman Civil war and the Spanish war yet the exact
details of the composition for even such a famous figure are rather
or entirely vague today and so it may be for John and his school of
followers at Ephesus.
When
John wrote the Revelation is a subject of more contention among
scholars. There are early and late dates two of which seem possible.
There are other dates speculating that John did not actually write
the book at all but followers did later in the second century that I
will dismiss. Irenaeus and others commented on the Revelation as
early as the early second century at that supports the idea of an
earlier writing construction. Of course there are more scholarly
points available to support the first century construction of the
Revelation. I will not cite those points in this paper presently.
Berkhof's 'Introduction to the New Testament' has a chapter on John
that points out elements of the time and place of composition fir
example.
Personally
I prefer the early construction date that Gentry advocates too rather
than the later circa 95 a.d. composition paradigm. I would think that
Peter and John would have been young men-perhaps 20 or so when Jesus
introduced himself around 30 a.d. for the momentous three year
mission, and John in the year 60 a.d. would have been 50 years
old-quite a ripe time for writing a creative, challenging, prophetic
book like the revelation. Thirty-five years later in 95 a.d. John
would have been 85 more or less and found the production of such a
work more challenging I would think. His intellectual energy might
not have been as great as at age 50 either.
A
baptist minister once told me that John's Revelation was like a
newspaper in its day. Gentry believes the messages are coded
necessarily because of the element of actual persecution by the
Imperial Roman authorities. Like today in the U.S.A. there can be
immediate repercussions for calling a state governor or the President
the anti-Christ in print-though for Jews and other first-century
Christians the act of seeming to rebel against Nero brought more
severe retribution.
The
Apostle John must have known the ecclesiastical state of affairs of
the church in relation to the Roman imperial opinion rather well. The
Apostle Paul had been imprisoned and released before a second arrest
and Peter had moved to Rome and experienced the problems encountered
by Christians from Jewish and Roman persecution first-hand. John
moved to Ephesus from Judea at some point before the destruction of
Jerusalem in 70 a.d. and may have encountered immediate difficulties
from Jewish and pagan authorities. Nero and preceding Roman emperors
of the Julian line were worshiped as god's by state decree. The Lord
Jesus Christ's appearance as the actual Son of God contravened that
silly, superfluous and vain direction emulated today a little by the
very rich and broadcast media and select performance artists that
would like to erase the presence of the real God from the minds of
humanity with atheist propaganda and elevate themselves to a position
of practical socially empowered deification. The Roman state and Jews
seeking to suppress Christian church increase may have sought to
imprison or execute John immediately upon his arrival in Ephesus.
Thus it is reasonable to suppose that
John reaching Ephesus and starting the process of edification of his
fellow Christians and recoding his ideas with scribal help along with
missiological activity perhaps with additional letters to churches
and meetings with Christians may have simultaneously experienced an
increasing effort to repress his ministry of the word of God and the
evangelization of Eurasia with the good new of Jesus Christ.
Eventually that surge to repress the word of God provided through the
ministry of the Apostle John enhanced with the three and a half year
Neronic persecuction of Christians in the 7th
decade of the first century would have developed to such a point as
to send the Apostle into prison exile at Patmos.
Gentry's
thesis on the Revelation is basically partial preterism. Many of the
events written of in the Revelation have already occurred. I am
taking much time reading Gentry's book because it cold in an unheated
Alaskan hut and there aren't power lines or a road in to town with a
difficult trail through forest and slippery logging slash and a four
mile walk on a non-maintained sometimes snow-covered access road to a
town and a library where I can recharge batteries for reading and
writing (the alpha smart works well to conserve battery power for
writing in sub-freezing temperatures).
I
believe that John may have left Judea as early as the 50s and become
well established in Ephesus before the 60s. One might wonder when or
why Peter left Jerusalem where he led the church. He journeyed to
Rome eventually. The Lord's brother James was thrown from the Temple
Mount and martyred. Though not fleeing martyrdom at some point peter
may have found Rome a better place to organize and increase the
development of the mission of spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Like John Peter may have sensed the coming destruction of Jerusalem
by Roman authority. Caiaphas the head of the Jewish religious
authority that sought the execution of Jesus mentioned the sacrifice
of the Lord as being better than sacrificing the entire nation to the
imperial authority. A rival king-even with a kingdom not of this
world was too much of a vulnerability as a potential avenue Rome
might rubblize Jerusalem for the religious high command to tolerate.
Gentry
considers in some detail the issue of the role and presence of
Christians that were Jews attending synagogue in Jerusalem in order
to date the composition of the Revelation that has a certain Hebraic
tone to it that seemed to disappear after the destruction of
Jerusalem. It is important to Gentry's position that the Revelation
was written prior to the destruction of the temple in a.d. 70. It is
notable that many today still wonder about the role of Jews in the
present and future or who the real Jews are. The Revelation and the
epistles of Paul each address that point at least in a context that
is appropriate for the more specific character of a post-mill
paradigm for the writing of the Revelation.
Jesus
of course said that he would have gathered the Jews and tended them
as well as a mother hen tends her chicks yet realized that they were
not to be saved by the Lord and would instead be destroyed eventually
by the Roman authority. Well, it would have been nice to take the
Jewish Mosaic established temple priesthood into the era of the New
Covenant with the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Lord was spiritually
willing than none be lost yet it was not meant to be.
God
doesn't like divorce and wouldn't do that Himself. I prefer the
better presentation that God has evolved the relationship to include
Jews and Christians of faith as the bride of Christ. The Jews were
the necessary ground for growth or emergence of the Christian church
in a secondary kind of way after Christ of course. They would not
just be jettisoned as soon as they gave birth to Christianity like a
spent baby mama so the new chick could hop in the sack.
Paul
(Romans 2:17-29) and John (i.e. Revelation 7:4-8) speak of Christians
as the spiritually true Jews. Instead of a purely material, racial
Jewish identity were Christians. The Lord once replied to a statement
that his mother and brothers were waiting outside to him asked 'who
are my mother and brothers' rhetorically. He explained that those who
new him as savior and followed him are his mother and brothers.
Jesus
wanted to save Jerusalem yet as they were a religious-led national
Israel failing to adapt to the presence of the Lord and straying too
far from the heart of God with formalism and legalism the correction
given was to evolve beyond legalism to personalism and personal
relationship to God as The Son of Man whom everyone could know
personally. That wasn't a divorce; it was a consummation spiritually
speaking of the relationship between mankind and God. It was always
probably necessary for God to include all of humanity in the realm of
His personal acquaintance through the Lord Jesus Christ-not simply
via the introductory period of Jews in a nation following His laws
amidst a planet full of pagan lunatics and killers in hot pursuit of
capital.
As
one of the reasons given in support of a first century context for
interpreting the Revelation Gentry gives the information that the
futurist, dispensationalist way of interpreting the Revelation
creates a persistent Christian despair about the present accompanied
by a rationalization that this world is doomed and given over to the
deus a machina of wickedness under the dark powers of Evil and that
Christians can look forward to the rapture taking them out of the
society of despond.. Of course one does not require a Christian
eschatology that interprets the Revelation within a
dispensationalist, futurist paradigm in order to have a pessimistic
outlook on world events and life in general. In fact atheists
continuously cite the evil and wickedness in the world as reasons
against the existence of God. For many atheists any possible Universe
created by God must be as Sugar Mountain with barkers and colored
balloons but no sort of accidens (not to misuse that Aristotelian
term but the error works rather well in this context).
R.A.
Torrey was a dispensationalist and well-meaning Christian writer.
Gentry is another and thus it seems evident that it is possible to
have different ideas about what the book of Revelation means and when
it was written. I believe that the fact that there are consequences
to taking one of the two positions mentioned here are significant
though.
Gentry
thinks that Christians with a gloomy dispensationalist viewpoint
awaiting a skyhook from Jesus to extract them out of the turmoils and
persecutions of the world become socially indolent or disengaged from
social constructive actions to a certain extent. That is they fail to
live up to their potential and responsibilities as citizens of a
democracy making improvements to the world. One wonders what the
position of the Puritans was on dispensationalism and futurism versus
convenantalism and preterism?
Apparently
the realistic immanentalism of John's prophecies written to the
churches of the day (the seven churches and other Christians in the
Revelation was lost to those living past the time of the destruction
of the Temple at Jerusalem and slaughter by a Roman legion of as many
as half a million Jewish inhabitants of Jerusalem circa 70 a.d..
That is by the second century the real context for interpretation of
the Revelation was lost preponderantly. Maybe Martin Luther's
observation that the Revelation 'had a lot of straw' (as in too much
for making good bricks) was a sort of accurate insight in regard to
making the Revelation a futurist book out of a prophecy largely
intended, or immediately purposed to warn and correct, exhort,
comfort and explain to very challenging Christians soon to undergo
extreme persecutions what their status was and what the outcome would
be. Even so the Revelation does not implicitly exclude within
Gentry's paradigm a dual-purpose futurist paradigm of inaugurated
eschatology. There is difficulty in making certain uncertain terms
with uncertain contexts of initial use.
Mohammedan
eschatology seems founded in a futurist sort of misunderstanding of
the Revelation. Mohammad's father had been keeper of the Spirit
House-Kaaba-at Mecca with its vast assembly representing pagan
religions. When he was made an orphan and cast out of the good graces
of the pagan shrine in time he developed a revolutionary syncretistic
monotheism to take back his heritage and of course make the Kaaba a
shrine for one God with Mohammad as his exclusive prophet. Mohammad
must have surveyed the available religious material as best as he
could from Jewish and Christian sources and with the help of his
older wife hashed out a revolutionary personal monotheism different
enough that it could not be construed as representing the oppressive
Byzantine Orthodox variety of Christianity that had dominated much of
the ancient world in the day as a theocratic device. For Mohammad the
Revelation was futurist and the Jews were Christ killers as they were
to many of those of the dark and middle ages in Europe. Thus in
Mohammedan eschatology Jesus will return to wreak vengeance upon the
Jews and Muslims will help in a Holy Jihad against Jews comprising
Armageddon. It is interesting how wrong interpretation of literature
can have lasting consequences.
Jesus
didn't hold a grudge against the Jews not only because he was himself
Jewish-although Bobby Fischer seemed to hate the Jews though his
mother was evidently a full bloodied tribal Jew. Jesus advocated
forgiveness-even seven times seventy times forgiveness and is an
improbable choice to portray as returning to wreak vengeance on the
Jews. At the last judgment in fact all that one needs to do to be
saved is to have had faith in Jesus as Lord and to accept his grace
and atonement for one's sin. Then a kind of default choice lets a de
facto self-judgment by the lost correct the lost with eternal
punishment. Since Jesus is the only way-the soul bridge to God and
eternal life with the Lord, any other course leaves one in the
wilderness of perdition and doom in any possible Universe-a tough
choice to make.
Gentry's
book seems to focus very much on the identity of the beast and
providing support for a first century interpretation of the
Revelation. That's fine yet it is a little limiting on vision for
what the Revelation is an means to post-temple era Christians.
Some
Christians have a natural antipathy toward a partial preterist
interpretation of the Revelation inasmuch as accepting its veracity
would tend to indicate that even though the prophecy was 100%
accurate more or less, its fulfillment means that a greater error
occurred in Christian teleology/prophecy such that though everything
else happened Jesus Christ didn't return and thus the prophecy of the
Lord were falsified. Such a logically unnecessary proposition depends
on interpreting John's writing in such a way that the meaning of the
return and 'coming in the clouds' have particular meaning-values too.
On the latter point Gentry provides evidence for supporting a meaning
of 'coming in the clouds' within a Biblical context as meaning a time
of social uncertainty when God intervenes to change things. I think
it likely that the use of modern definitions for ancient ideas have
sometimes made inaccuracy in understanding by Biblical interpreters
occur. Gentry points out there are five meanings of the Greek word
he or 'ge' used in the Revelation 80 times and two used prevalently
means 'land' interchangeably with 'Earth'. That has implications for
the interpretation of certain cosmological inferences and
construction of interpretive paradigms for cosmology by modern
expositors.
Even
so it is incumbent upon interpreters of the Revelation to sort
through and determine what elements of the book might have futurist
relevance post-Temple destruction and to the present and/or future.
Seemingly
the seven hills of Rome representing the generic rather than
particularization of the beast could represent worldly government in
general in a sort of City of God versus City of Man context. Humanity
seems to pursue a developed social abstraction of a generalized human
being as a kind of social goal. In the U.S.A. under the corrupting
sway of an anti-democracy elitist broadcast media owned by a
corporate plutocratic invisible empire the pragmatic ideal of a
brainwashed mass-man without anti-corporatist or individual private
interests seems to be the actualization in reduced form of the
political goal of Thomas Hobbes philosophical treatise on the ideal
(British) government of the absolute dictator personifying the will
of the people. I suppose the idea of Nero and Rome as the beast of
Revelation might be the first formal expression of that ideal evil
empire in writing, although some might regard Plato's Republic and
its triumvirate of philosopher-kings as a fascist precursor of the
Great Satan mirroring the condition of the abstract will of the
people that the people are in return conditioned to be (at the will
of the dictator. The late dictator Saddam Hussein was a more recent
example of the form as are/is the string of post-second world war
North Korean Communist dictators).
Karl
Barth in his 'History of Christian Thought' noted what the
philosopher Ortega y Gasset later described as 'the revolt of the
masses' against elite rule in Europe. Barth was applying the concept
to an earlier period of transition leading to the French Revolution
wherein the ordinary became rulers inverting the concept of elite
rule. Karl Marx of course envisioned the concept of the dictatorship
of the proletariat. In fact in modern America within the paradigm of
atheist led scientism with anti-Christian values and even creeping
purges of Christianity from the U.S.A. along with national economic
sovereignty the modern media is a mooning colony conditioner of mass
social identity toward the revolutionary transition of Hobbes' all in
one absolute dictator to one Satanic presence in all subjects rather
than citizens). It is believed I would think that off-market economic
interests have antipathetic potential toward the collective financial
networks of globalism in which all must play or be marginalized. The
house always wins in Las Vegas and the same situation prevails with
preferred networks of concentrated wealth and power.
If
John's Revelation was fulfilled entirely in it's day of the first
century with the Neronic persecutions and the following destruction
of the Temple it is important not to dismiss the book capriciously
from future meaning or lasting examples of human conduct and ways of
being that can be learned and avoided or corrected.
Just
as one ought to learn the ethics of the Lord it is worth drawing
additional inferences from the life and times of the Lord and
Apostles about things not to do such as stoning adulterers or
crucifying persons critical of government incompetence and the
corruption of politicians and other officials of interest.
It
could be that I should have taken an aphoristic structural approach
in this paper being rather inexpert on the primary subject.
