The Story of God: Revelation

Listen along as we wrap up our series through the Bible.

Notes/Quotes:

Revelation 1:1-20

 

Transcendence

Tribulation

Tears (no more)

 

“somewhere between the two extremes of preoccupation with and the avoidance of eschatology, we must take our stance. For eschatology is neither an unimportant and optional topic nor the sole subject of significance and interest to the Christian.” - Millard Erikson

 

4 popular perspectives on Revelation:

Futuristic

Preterist

Historical

Symbolic or idealist.

 

"‘Apocalypse’ is a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial, insofar as it involves another, supernatural world.” JJ Collins

 

“It is generally recognized that Revelation contains more OT references than does any other NT book, although past attempts to tally the total amount have varied. The variation in statistics is due to the different criteria employed to determine the validity of an OT reference and the fact that some authors include echoes and parallels of a very general nature together with allusions and citations.” - GK Beale

 

“John has his favorite books of scripture: Ezekiel, Daniel, Zephaniah, Zechariah, Isaiah, Exodus. But there is probably not a single canonical Old Testament book to which he doesn’t make at least some allusion The statistics post a warning: no one has any business reading the last book who has not read the previous sixty-five. John does not merely repeat [scripture]–it is recreated in him. He does not quote scripture in order to prove something; rather, he assimilates scripture so that he becomes someone.” Eugene Peterson

 

An approach to eschatology:

Emphasizing the Savior and salvation, minimize speculation

Eschatology must be connected to the entirety of the story

Eschatology is meant to provide clarity and eliminate confusion. 

Any vision of the future is meant to root and reorient in the present.

 

“The effect of John’s visions, one might say, is to expand his readers’ world, both spatially (into heaven) and temporally (into the eschatological future), or, to put it another way, to open their world to divine transcendence. The bounds which Roman power and ideology set to the readers’ world are broken open and that world is seen as open to the greater purpose of its transcendent Creator and Lord. It is not that the here-and-now are left behind in an escape into heaven or the eschatological future, but that the here-and-now look quite different when they are opened to transcendence. The world seen from this transcendent perspective, in apocalyptic vision, is a kind of new symbolic world into which John’s readers are taken as his artistry creates it for them. But really it is not another world. It is John’s readers’ concrete, day-to-day world seen in heavenly and eschatological perspective.” - Richard Bauckham

 


“The end result of the act of worship is that our lives are turned around…The self is no longer the hub of reality, as sin seduces us into supposing.” - Eugene Peterson

 

Paul says, “Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted…” 2 Timothy 3:12 and Peter says, “don’t be surprised at the fiery trial that has come upon you…” 1 Peter 4:12.

 

 

“The church universal is called to maintain a faithful witness in the midst of persecution, following in the footsteps of the Lamb, who died to free them from their sins. Having conquered through faith, they are promised the blessing of eternal life in the presence of God in the new heaven and new earth, all with the purpose that they worship him and that he receive the glory forever.” —G.K. Beale 

 

We choose: we follow the dragon and his beasts along their parade route… taking on whatever role is necessary to make a good show and get the applause of the crowds in order to get access to power and become self-important. Or we follow the Lamb along a farmyard route… in order to become, simply, our eternal selves in an eternal city.” – Eugene Peterson

 

“Every exodus in scripture is incomplete, except the last one. The patriarchs leave the land and come back wealthy, but their descendants are enslaved. Moses leads the people out out of Egypt, but they die in the wilderness. Joshua takes them into the Land, but the Canaanites remain. David and Solomon secure the Land and build the temple, but Israel divides. Exile is followed by return, but idolatry continues. Jesus goes into the depths and emerges victorious, but leaves when the conquest of the Land has hardly started. The church marches out in the power of the Holy Spirit, but as the Epistles clearly show, the church is still in the wilderness, awaiting its final rest, looking to the day when “death of death, and hell’s destruction, land me safe on Canaan’s side.” Every time we think the melody is complete, there is a final complication, another discordant note. Exodus, but. Exodus, but.”

—Alastair J. Roberts & Andrew Wilson

 

“Many people want to go to heaven the way they want to go to Florida—they think the weather will be an improvement and the people decent. But the biblical heaven is not a nice environment far removed from the stress of hard city life. It is the invasion of the city by the City. We enter heaven not by escaping what we don’t like, but by the sanctification of the place in which God has placed us. There is not so much as a hint of escapism in St. John’s heaven. This is not a long (eternal) weekend away from the responsibilities of employment and citizenship, but the intensification and healing of them. Heaven is formed out of dirty streets and murderous alleys, adulterous bedrooms and corrupt courts, hypocritical synagogues and commercialized churches, thieving tax-collectors and traitorous disciples: a city, but now a holy city.” - Eugene Peterson

 

“ The Bible is a redemption story. It is a cosmic exodus, stretching from Eden to the new Jerusalem. All the exodus narratives we have seen in this book—political, geographical, spiritual, liturgical—are contained within a global one that only comes to completion at the return of Christ. So if, at times, it has seemed like we were going round in circles, making bricks without straw, trapped in slavery to sin and death for century upon painful century, and crying out for someone to help us, that is because we have been. When Adam sinned, we left our homeland, fell into captivity, and have been hoping to get back ever since.

So have the oceans. So have the forests. Paul's teaching in Romans 8 is remarkable here: it is not just human beings who are awaiting redemption, but "creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (v.21). We are looking forward to the exodus of everything. When we left Eden and headed into Egypt, we took the Cedars and the sword fish and the puffins with us. The physical world, over which we were given dominion, suffered the consequences of exile and ruptured shalom. Like a woman in labor, creation as a whole is crying out in anguish, straining toward the day when her labor pains will be over and the new creation will break out from inside the old.

And when our true and better Joshua returns to lead us across the Jordan, creation will come too. We will rise up from the riverbed followed by a multicolored menagerie of flora and fauna, like a latter-day Noah emerging from the depths and blinking at the brightness, to find that the waters have receded and there is no longer any sea. There is a new heaven and a new earth, not just a new Jerusalem. The labor pains were worth it. Paul was right: the weight of glory makes our light and momentary afflictions seem trivial. Tolkien was right: everything sad has become untrue. Lewis was right: the dream has ended, and this is the morning. Dostoyevsky was right: in the worlds finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they've shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened.” —Alastair J. Roberts & Andrew Wilson

 

“He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev. 22:20)