The Revleation: Part One

The Revelation: Part One
© 01.15.07 By D. Eric Williams

The book begins with an introduction that was written by John and tacked onto the rest of the book after the fact. It is important to recognize this because the prophecy itself is given in a highly symbolic form. That's why John says that Jesus sent an angel to signify the Revelation. In other words, the things that the angel said - the Revelation itself - are said in symbolic language. On the other hand, the things that John wrote by way of introduction and epilogue are written in a commonplace way. Since the Revelation is in the form of signs and symbols it should not be taken literally. That isn't to say that it's fiction. No indeed. The Revelation is about real concrete events involving real flesh and blood people. Nonetheless, the real events engulfing the real people are displayed in typical outlandish prophetic language and unless we recognize that fact, we will never be able to understand what it is that the Revelation is actually saying. In a nut shell, the words used to convey the Revelation should not be taken literally; the events described in symbolic fashion must be understood as literal history.

Now then, in his introductory remarks, John tells us that the book contains information which God gave to Jesus with the intention that Jesus would in turn disclose it to His people. Immediately following that declaration is one of the most significant details of the book. We are told that the Revelation concerns things which "must shortly take place."

For some reason there are plenty of folks who read the Revelation today and forget that it was originally written to people living nearly two thousand years ago. When those original readers read the phrase, "must shortly take place," they did not think to themselves - "ah, this is a prophecy about the distant future." Of course not. They weren't stupid. They understood the phrase in the same way that any reasonable person would understand it. Even so, John wanted to insure that no one would miss the point. Hence he says again in verse three that the "time" (for the events described in the prophecy to take place), "is near" It's as plain as the nose on your face. The Revelation of Jesus Christ is about things that were of particular interest to the first century Christians because it is about things that they were about to personally experience.

Some people try to get around the obvious by saying that the Greek terms translated as shortly¹ and near² should be understood to mean that the events described in the book will take place quickly once they begin. In other words they say that John's intent was not to warn his readers that they were on the edge of a catastrophe but that the catastrophe would play out quickly once it arrived. The argument usually goes something like this; the Greek in verse one can be translated as "happen with swiftness" as in these things will "happen with swiftness." Therefore it must mean that when they start to happen, they will happen with swiftness and John did not intend to imply that the book was about things that would happen in the near future of his original readers. In a word, pshaw. The only reason anyone would try to force an unnatural interpretation of that sort upon the first three verses of the book is because they have an agenda. You have to have a previously determined direction you want the book to go in order to get that kind of twisted meaning out of the text.

Moreover, the Greek in verse three literally says; "blessed is the one who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy and who keep the things having been written in it for the time is near." There is no way that you can bend that to mean that the predicted catastrophe would play out quickly once it arrived. It means what it says. I really cannot understand why some people insist on making something so simple so difficult.

What is more, the epilogue to The Revelation repeatedly states that the prophecy was about to unfold for the original (first century), readers. At the end of the book we read that Jesus "is coming quickly"³ and that the "time is at hand."⁴ Not content to say it once, Christ is quoted a second time as saying, "I am coming quickly"⁵ two more times in the closing section of The Revelation.

As we discussed in the introduction, this poses no problem to those who understand what Jesus meant when he said that He was planning to return to the earth within a generation of His death and resurrection. Wooden literalism places one in a pickle. However, when we read the Revelation as it was meant to be read, it solves all sorts of problems that the Left Behind crowd absolutely cannot deal with. That's why they resort to bad science fiction in an effort to explain the plain words of Scripture. The bottom line is that we must let the Christian Bible speak for itself.

So, the first thing we see is that the Revelation was written in symbolic language and secondly it was given in order to warn first century Christians about events that were on their horizon.

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1. The Greek is tacei from tacus (taxus), and means very simply, "quick, swift, prompt, speedily, without delay" and so on. Joseph Henry Thayer, The New Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon Of The New Testament, (n.d. Peabody: Hendrickson, 1979), 616.

2. Here the Greek is eggus (engus), meaning, "near, close at hand, imminent" and so on. Thayers, 164.

3. Revelation 22:7

4. Revelation 22:10

5. Revelation 22:12,20