Revelation Obsessed
Having an appropriate love for the book of Revelation
As a pastor, there is one book of the Bible that I get more questions about than any other; one book that I get asked to preach on more than any other. It isn’t Romans, it isn’t one of the Gospels, it’s Revelation (note: not RevelationS). The questions about this book reached a fever pitch when the Israel/Hamas war broke out in October of 2023 and have remained steady as we trudged through a seemingly end-of-the-world-feeling election cycle here in the States.
Regardless of the church where I have been pastoring or spent any length of time in, there was at least one group studying through Revelation during my time there. We Christians seem to LOVE this book, even though we’re simultaneously scared to death of it. It’s like a horror movie – we’re scared but we can’t look away.
The natural reaction to fear of this kind is to try to gain control over that which we fear. We want to know the “why” and “how” and what the meaning of everything is. It’s when Scooby-Doo and his friends are scared of a ghost but there’s always an unmasking, a revealing that makes it all make sense at the end. That’s what we crave when we look at Revelation. We want to somehow make sense of it all, find analogies, understand the metaphors, and through this new understanding gain some sense of control to handle our fear and confusion.
For a long time, I have felt that many Christians had an unhealthy obsession with Revelation. As if they’re spending entirely too much time in this book when there are 65 other books in the Bible that probably have more practical import on your life. And when the obsession is unhealthy and misinformed, I do think it can be destructive and harmful. But as I have been spending more and more time in Revelation lately myself, I have grown to love it as well.
Revelation is unique in its style and genre in the New Testament and only has comparisons in certain sections of the Old Testament. So we cannot approach it as we would any other book. I will spare you all of the ways that we should and shouldn’t engage with Revelation – this post is not meant to be a class or book on it. But what has been so wonderfully impactful for me lately has been to bear in mind its primary purposes for its writing.
The point of Revelation was not to give us some cosmic calendar, some eschatological timeline that will tell us when all of the images and visions will take place. Rather, it’s to be a source of hope for a beleaguered and persecuted Church, and an encouragement to stay faithful in the midst of Babylon (metaphorical – their Bablyon was the Roman Empire at the time of the writing of Revelation).
Rather than instilling us with fear, this book was meant to instill hope – hope that Jesus will have the victory, he will make all things right, justice will in fact be done, and we will live in restored relationship with him in a creation uncorrupted by sin. It may not happen during our lifetime. In fact, our lives may be a constant struggle. But the message of Revelation is that we can have a different worldview, a different set of eyes that sees beyond our earthly circumstances to the spiritual reality of the victorious Christ and the momentary nature of our earthly existence.
And rather than being threatening in nature, the book instead encourages us toward faithfulness to Christ; fidelity to him in the face of the influence of whatever Babylon is facing us. We are living in uncertain times right now where we see the influence of Satan and the brokenness of sin everywhere. But guess what? That could be said about any given time in history. Our job is faithfulness: faithfulness to Jesus, to His Kingdom way, to the life that He lived, and being obedient to Him.
To be sure, there are details and images that are strange and frightening in Revelation. There are questions that I cannot answer. But when I bear in mind these two themes, hope and faithfulness, instead of finding a fearful vision of The End, I am comforted and given a mission. I am filled with peace and purpose. And when there is a purposeful people filled with the peace of God, we get a movement that cannot be shaken, intimidated, or interrupted. We become a people who engage in this world with a peace that says that we don’t have to engage in the methods of this world, we don’t have to pursue power and wealth and political influence to move society closer to Jesus, we don’t have to be ruled by fear every four years when the candidate of our choice either wins or loses, and we don’t have to fear The End anytime conflict arises in the Middle East. In fact, we don’t have to be ruled by fear at all! We can live in peaceful purpose, living the kingdom of God in the here and now in the face of Babylon.
Hope and faithfulness. I’m living in those messages of Revelation today.
Love this. We need the reminder these days.