Transcript

I'm not going to review their bios, which you have in your folders.

I mean, it's obvious they are distinguished scholars, and we are really honored to have them with us today.

I think I'll just add a little personal note.

I was privileged to get to know Professor Papandrea as we prepared for this class.

My experience, and I do know a lot of wonderful scholars, and they're gifted and smart people, but they're not always the best teachers.

Jim is a scholar and a teacher, and it is really delightful to have gotten to know him and to have been taught by him so far up to this point, and I'm really looking forward to his presentation.

I know you're going to be very pleased.

I saw in my vision a man.

Riding a white bronco, he rode near the sea in a shining city of angels.

Following him was a great multitude, riding mustangs and pallets, flashing black and white, red and blue.

And no one knew who would be worthy to open the paper and read the verdict.

Anyone want to interpret that for me?

What am I talking about?

Yes, the OJ trial, right?

If you heard that 2,000 years from now, would you know that was about the OJ Simpson trial and that same low speed chase?

No, you probably wouldn't. And that's a point.

Uh, as you heard, I'm Jim Patterson.

Thanks for having me here.

It's a great honor to be here and I'm really happy to be a part of this.

And those of you who know me know that I'm serious when I say it because I put on a tie today and I almost never do that.

And so this is my honor to be a part of this day.

I'm here to do three things this morning.

First, I'm going to put the book of Revelation in its historical context for you.

Then I'm going to dispel some of the myths about what the book of Revelation is really about.

And then finally, I want to point out the core message of Revelation and why it's still relevant today.

So let's start with the historical context for the book of Revelation.

Now, there is some scholarly debate over the authorship and date of any biblical text, And you can look those things up in any commentary.

But speaking as a Church historian, I'm convinced that this document was, in fact, written by John the Apostle on the Isle of Pass.

It was written during the reign of the Emperor Domitian, who briefly persecuted the Church.

And because this persecution was brief, we can date the Book of Revelation to the year 95 CE. And, in fact, it really is one of the few books in the New Testament that we can date that precisely.

In fact, if you lived in the eastern part of the Empire, in 95 CE, and if you had a coin in your pocket, they didn't have a coin in their pocket, okay, so you had a coin in your pocket, you took that coin out of your pocket, you took that coin out and you looked at it, whose image would you see on it?

Well, of course, the Emperor, Domitian.

And around the image you could read the names and imperial titles of the emperor Domitian.

They would be there in Greek characters, and they'd be abbreviated because the coins were small and you can't fit all that in a coin.

But if you took those Greek letters in those abbreviations for Domitian's name and title, and if you converted the Greek letters into numbers, which anyone could have done, and if you added them all up, anyone would want to guess what it would add up to?

That's correct, 666. What a surprise.

So, when you read in the book of Revelation about a number that corresponds to a man's name, It was the man himself, the emperor at the time, not some prediction of future man.

Of course, you've probably read all the different theories about the 566, and I've seen everything from Ronald Reagan to Adolf Hitler and everybody in between, but it's really omitted.

The truth is, if you work hard enough, you can make almost any name at 566. You can make almost anybody fit, depending on who your engine is.

It was the emperor at the time, Domitian.

And Domitian was in some way sort of the seat of the imperial claims to divine titles.

Because in the Roman Empire, after a great man, someone who was considered a great man, after he died, the Senate would proclaim him a god.

And if you're the successor, if you're the son by adoption of the last emperor, who is now in the kingdom of God, does that make you a son of a God?

And so, when we read in the New Testament that Jesus is the Son of God, Catholic theology, It means, among other things, Jesus and not that dying Rome.

And when we read about the Kingdom of God, which could easily be translated the Empire of God, it means God and not that dying Rome.

And when Thomas met the risen Christ and says, My Lord and my God, in Latin, Domus et Deus, That's exactly the title that the Emperor Domitius demanded everyone call him, Domus Aetatus.

So, the book of Revelation was written in the context of a persecuted church.

Now, the persecution of Christianity by the Roman Emperor, going back to the year 64 CE, when the Emperor Nero, looking for a scapegoat, Needed someone to blame for the fire in Rome.

It was a big fire in the city.

Rome leveled a major chunk of the city.

It's been to Rome.

It's a part of the Colosseum now.

And the rumors started that Nero himself had set the fire.

I mean, coincidentally or not, he had planned on his death to build a new palace, which was going to go right in the spot that was leveled by the fire.

So, you can imagine how people started to talk that he had set the fire to clear the land.

He needed someone else to blame, and so he chose what he saw as a new and suspect and suspicious and possibly dangerous sect called Christianity.

It wasn't even called Christianity yet.

That's how new it was.

But that set a precedent so that by the year 95, there's enough precedent in the Roman Empire that a Christian leader like John could be arrested simply for spreading the Jews.

And he could be exiled to an island prison off the coast of what is now a church called Patmos.

The point here is that this document is the product of a persecuted church.

And John functions as a kind of bishop, writing a letter to his districtal areas.

And his primary reason for writing this letter is to tell them not to give up the faith.

Don't give in to the persecution and deny the faith, even to save your own life.

And so, the book of Revelation is basically an extended sermon on Jesus' own word in the Gospel, Whoever endures to the end will be saved.

That's Matthew.

Jesus said that in chapter 10 and chapter 24. Whoever endures to the end will be saved.

Now, there's a double meaning there, because on one level it means whoever endures to the end of the persecution, but another level means whoever endures to the end of their life.

Now, I'm not saying that the book of Revelation is not the product of an ecstatic vision that John the Apostle had, perfectly willing to believe that John really did have a vision.

But whether the text of Revelation and the symbolism in the book of Revelation is the product of a person who's had an exact vision, trying to describe the indescribable, or whether it's simply a carefully crafted recycling and reusing of symbols from the Old Testament, or some combination of the two, the end result is the same.

The symbols are familiar to John and to his audience, and his audience wouldn't know how to interpret them.

Now, just because the symbols come from the Old Testament does not mean that they mean the same thing in the book of Revelation that they do in the Old Testament.

These symbols come from the books of Ezekiel, Daniel, and Zechariah primarily, and it is not necessary to first interpret those books in order to interpret Revelation.

The symbols, the images, come from the Old Testament, but they're used in a different way, and they mean something different.

The obvious example of this is that when you read about Babylon in the book of Revelation, you're not really reading about Babylon, are you?

You're reading about Rome.

The oppressive, colonizing empire of John's time was Rome.

And the numbers, of course, are simple, too.

And so even the numbers are translated.

As I always say, numbers in the Bible almost always have a significance beyond their numerical value.

There are a few cases in Revelation where the numbers actually mean, literally, the numerical value of something.

But most of the time, the numbers are also combined.

Now, okay, I don't have time this morning to go through all the symbols and terms before you.

I do add in my quote the wedding of the Lamb.

But the good news is that we don't need to interpret the Old Testament first in order to understand the Revelation.

What we do need to do is sort of understand that the symbols and the images come from the Old Testament, And we need to understand also that the genre of the book of Revelation is something that comes from the world of the Old Testament.

We call it Revelations.

By the way, it's Revelations, not Revelations.

I just want to clear that up, right?

It's Revelations.

That's simply our English word for Greek word Apocalypse.

In Greek, the original title would be the Apocalypse.

We use the word Apocalypse in our popular thinking to mean something about the end of the world, but it really doesn't mean that.

The word Apocalypse simply means that which is being revealed.

And so the book of Revelation is that which is being revealed, right?

And what is being revealed is the Kingdom of God, or, if you will, the Empire of God, over against the one that comes out of Rome.

But the book is written in a style or a genre that comes to be named after apocalyptic.

And apocalyptic is a kind of variation of prophecy that does include images of cataclysmic events.

Though they are not always about the so-called end of the world.

They're not always eschatological.

You know that, right?

Eschatology about the end, the end time, the ultimate goal of things.

Sometimes apocalyptic is also eschatological, sometimes it's not.

Sometimes it's just warnings that, you know, Stuff is going to happen, and it's going to be earth-shattering stuff, but it isn't necessarily about the end of the world.

In fact, I would say that the prophecy itself isn't really about telling the future anyway, like some sort of brief order.

Prophecy is primarily bringing a message from God.

And by the way, in the history of the Church, the office of prophet in the Church evolves into the preacher.

Right?

And so the prophet is the one who brings the message from God.

Now again, sometimes that message, especially in apocalyptic literature, sometimes that message contains warnings or promises about the future.

But the message is not for people in the future.

The message is for the people of that time.

And so even apocalyptic prophecy, even when it contains warnings of cataclysmic events in the future, the message is not for people in the future to decode something to figure out what's going on.

There's not.

It's about giving warnings and promises for the benefits of the people at the time the document was written.

And so I can't say this emphatically enough, the book of Revelation was not written for Jews.

It wasn't written for me, it wasn't written for us.

It was written for the people in the late first century, whoever had the years to hear.

Now, that doesn't mean it doesn't have a message for us, because I believe it does have a message for us, and I believe it is still relevant, but it wasn't originally written for us.

So what I want to do now is start with a clean slate, And get rid of some of the misconceptions about the book of Revelation.

And, you know, you've probably already known that this is perhaps the book of the Bible that has more varying interpretations and is more hotly debated than any other.

So, you know, you go ahead and assume that by giving me my interpretation.

But, Revelation is not about future worldwide government persecuting Christianity.

It is about a worldwide government persecuting Christianity, but in the past.

And that worldwide government is called the Roman Empire.

And okay, yes, it wasn't really worldwide by our understanding, but back in the day, for the great people involved, it was the world.

And it was us against the world from the perspective of the Christian church.

But the point is that Revelation is not a doomsday document about the future.

It's not a code to be deciphered at some later date, when the people who were alive at the time of the rite were no longer here.

It's not a puzzle to be figured out.

Revelation was a message of hope for a persecuted church at the time it was written.

The message was for the people at that time.

Now, there are predictive elements in the book of Revelation.

For example, John predicts the fall of the Roman Empire.

So, in that sense, it's perfect.

It contains a warning.

Hey, Romans!

Not that they would have read it, but you're going to get what's coming to you.

But you're going to get what's coming to you from God, not from us.

We're not going to do it.

And that's going to be the point.

So, yeah, there are some predictive elements in the book of Revelation, but it's really not a doomsday document for people of the future.

The fall of the Roman Empire is not going to come by God's people taking up arms against the enemy.

I mean, Jesus had that chance during his earthly life of ministry, right?

And he chose to be a Catholicist instead.

And in fact, some people were very disappointed in Jesus that he wasn't a military messiah, that he didn't become a general and raise an army and try to fight for independence from Rome.

That wasn't his calling.

So, the fall of the Roman Empire in the time of John It wasn't going to come that way either.

It wasn't going to come by God's people taking up arms, but only by divine intervention.

Because vengeance belongs to God alone.

And when we take vengeance upon ourselves, we are playing God.

So, the book of Revelation, not a code to be cracked by people 2,000 years later.

It's written in symbols that the people of that time would have understood.

And it's also not primarily about events in our time.

In fact, a large portion of the book of Revelation is actually about something that happened 25 years before it was written, the fall of Jerusalem.

You probably know that in the year 70 CE, the Romans laid siege to the city of Jerusalem.

This was at the end of a war that lasted three and a half years.

And this war between the Jews and the Romans, the Jews had rebelled, and the Romans finally came in to put the rebellion down, and when they finally came to Jerusalem, They lay feast to the city of Jerusalem.

And you know what it means to lay feast to a city.

You surround the city, forcing everybody in.

They close up, lock the doors, and then you wake up.

And they starve, and run out of clean water.

And what happens?

There is famine, disease, and plague.

And this event is depicted in the book of Revelation as the swarm of locusts from hell.

And if you read the text, you read the description of the locusts, they are wearing armor.

And if you think about the broken soldiers and what they would have looked like, that's what's being described.

And the locusts are said to be able to torment, but not kill, for five months.

Guess how long the siege of Jerusalem lasted?

So that's what that's about, about the seizure through Jerusalem.

And so after that five months, the city fell, the temple was destroyed.

The temple in Jerusalem was leveled up.

The parts of it that could burn were burned to the ground, the rest were knocked over.

And this was content that was so earth-shatteringly cataclysmic in the minds of the people who lived there that to them it was the end of the world if they knew it.

This was, if you allow the analogy, their 9-11. This was the thing they thought could never happen.

The invasion that rocked them at their very core because it came to the center of their life.

And it shook the very foundation of their faith and robbed them of any feeling of security that they had come to enjoy from the Pax Romana.

And it was the end of the world, as they knew.

So that event is still fresh in the collective mind of John's audience when he writes Revelation.

He knows 25 years, and it's gone by.

And when John writes the book of Revelation, the persecution is escalating.

It's getting worse.

And so, thinking back to this event in their mind causes fear, anxiety, anger, despair, and the very real possibility of giving up the faith to save their lives.

And in fact, John is saying in the book of Revelation, folks, it's going to get worse before it gets better.

And historically, he was right.

He did.

The persecution got progressively worse through the second and especially the third century, into the beginning of the fourth century, when we see the so-called Great Persecution.

But then the persecution ended.

And as I interpret the so-called millennium in the book of Revelation, which, by the way, there are so much data that I hate in the millennium, it's like half a verse in the whole book of Revelation.

But as I interpret the concept of the millennium, it's simply John looking ahead to a time when persecution is over.

Someday the persecution will end.

And in fact, again, historically, you know, not to glorify Constantine or anything, but historically, the persecution ended, and the Church converted the Empire, didn't it?

And so, whether you think that's a good thing or a bad thing is a debate for another day, but the point is that this future time of glory, a time when Christ will reign on the earth, might live in it.

For better or for worse.

So the millennium begins when the persecution ends.

It's that simple.

And the point for us is that we need not to look for the events of Revelation to be fulfilled in our time.

We must not read the book of Revelation with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.

It is not the signs of the times.

It is the signs of an entirely different time.

And here's another misconception.

As I mentioned, Revelation is not about humans fighting in the name of God.

Now don't get me wrong, there is a battle in the book of Revelation.

It's a battle between good and evil, between God and evil.

It's a spiritual battle.

It's not about people fighting for God.

It's about God fighting for evil.

God fights for us.

We don't fight for God.

God fights against the forces of evil.

And God is on our side, but only as long as we remain on the side of God.

Remember, this is based on the Old Testament, and there is an ongoing message in the Old Testament, even with all the violence in the Old Testament, and even when the violence is justified as being somehow the will of God in the Old Testament, the message is still, look people, if you walk away from God, don't blame God when He's not with you anymore.

There are times when God doesn't fight on the side of people because they are no longer on the side of God.

God is on our side only if we remain on the side of God.

It's not for us to fight for God.

God fights for us.

It's a spiritual battle, not a literal battle.

Every time you see warfare in the book of Revelation, John is looking into the spiritual realm.

These wars are not happening on planet Earth.

Now again, if you want more of the interpretation, I'll just read my quote.

Shame it was commercial.

But that's the point here.

The point is that we don't fight for God, God fights for us.

Okay, so what is, then, the message of Revelation?

And how is it relevant today?

Because I'm convinced that Revelation is neither a doomsday document, nor is it irrelevant.

It's also not irrelevant.

It is ultimately a timeless message, a message of hope.

It's a message of hope, but one that advises patience.

To whatever extent the millennium is the reign of Christ, to whatever extent the Church more or less successfully brings the reign of Christ to the earth or participates in the reign of Christ on the earth, it is that the love and compassion and mercy and forgiveness of Christ are being made to reign in the world through the people of Christ, the Church.

What did the angels say when Jesus was born?

Peace on earth.

That is God's will.

So, to put it in John's terms, evil is weakest where the church is strongest.

This is what he means by the restriction of the devil, the binding of the devil.

And we see this in Jesus' own preaching, the binding of the strong man.

To put it another way, evil is strongest where the people of God are complacent.

But to stand up to evil does not mean to use the force, and it does not mean So, I would argue that we are God's hands, but we are not God's fists.

Now, to be fair, the book of Revelation does have that promise of retribution in it, right?

The first years are going to get what's coming to them, and Rome will fall.

The author never wavers from the basic message that judgment belongs to God alone.

Vengeance belongs to God alone.

And so the scenes of warfare, where evil is defeated, again, are part of John's vision into the spiritual realm, and are not about actual warfare on earth.

So it's a battle that God fights on our behalf, not a battle that people fight on behalf of God, or in the name of God.

And even when the martyrs cry out to God in the text, how long, O Lord, quoting the Psalms, how long until you avenge our deaths?

What is the answer?

Patience.

Wait.

So I think that part of the message of Revelation is that people have to let go of the need to take it upon themselves to right wrongs or to defeat evil, especially by violence, of course.

When the martyrs are told to wait, you know, it's not only that You're not going to take revenge for yourself, but you're not going to ask when this will be done.

You're not going to know whether it will be done.

It's not for you to know or even care.

So, standing up to evil means taking up the weapons of God, which are patience, forgiveness, and reconciliation.

There's that interesting image in the text where John eats the scroll, and it tastes good, but then it gives him stomachache.

So the scroll represents God's judgment, and the message there is that God's judgment is bittersweet.

And this, I think, is a warning not to ever get joy from another's downfall, not to be triumphalistic about the misfortune even of one's enemy.

Because God's judgment is bittersweet.

Ultimately, the method of the book of Revelation is to keep the faith and not give up hope.

Remember, it's written to a persecuted church.

Keep the faith.

Don't abandon your faith, even to save your life.

Don't give up hope.

It looks forward to a peaceful future, but this is a peaceful future that will be brought about by divine intervention, by God's activity.

And we can participate in God's activity as long as we are actually participating in God's activity and not taking our own activity and calling it God's. God fights for us.

We don't fight for God.

In the meantime, Our world still presents us with false gods demanding worship.

I see them every day.

They're called commercials on television.

You know, they want you to buy more and they want you to believe the lie that you're feeling love if you buy their product and all that stuff.

And so every day we're faced with false gods And we're faced with temptations to remove our focus from the things that matter and from our Creator and focus on the things of creation.

But being a person of God, no less today than in 95 CE, being a person of God means being counter-cultural and choosing not to worship those false gods.

And that's what Revelation calls John's audience to, and that's what Revelation calls us to.

Reject the false doubt.

Focus on the real one.

Don't trade the Creator for creation.

Keep the faith, and don't lose hope.

Thank you.

Well, one of my questions is not really a historical question, I guess it's a spiritual discipline question, which is the question of this repeated admonishment to patience, and to not taking matters of vengeance, or even sometimes in well-meaning ways what we would call justice, In to our own hands, particularly to our fists, as you've noted.

And so, because I know that you work both in historical scholarship and also pastoral and spiritual work, what are some spiritual practices that you might assign to us as we try to keep that patience Well, you know, I think that there are as many different callings and spirits of discipline as there are people.

You know, we're everybody unique, and there's no two personalities alike, and so there are no two relationships with God that are alike.

And different things work for different people.

But I will say this, that I think what we ought to be, what we all ought to be striving for is a balance.

A balance between what we might call good works or social responsibility and, on the other hand, personal devotion.

And so I think we all have personalities that Make us tend to lean one way or the other.

Some people are more comfortable with getting out into the world and doing good in the name of God.

But that very tendency might make that same person tend to ignore personal devotion or even worship.

On the other hand, some people are much more comfortable with going to a quiet place and praying But they do that so much that they never get out and speak under you, or for fatigue.

And so it's all about this balance.

I mean, I call it spiritual triumph, actually.

I think there are three things you need, which would be corporate worship, Personal emotion and social responsibility.

And I think, like a tripod, without any of those three-legged things passing over.

Now, if you're asking me, I think that some of the ancient disciplines, like the Jesus Prayer and things like that, that allow for time of quiet reflection, Subtitles by the Amara.org

community Are there other questions?

Evelyn?

You've got me up short with, not confusing the Creator with the creation.

I'm a fan of Earth and all such things that we know about, and I tend to like the definition of God as ground of being, and I don't think those are confusable.

Well, ground of being, I think, you know, comes from a Historical-traditional perspective.

Ground of being is fine as long as you recognize the distinction between creator and creation, so that you don't run into a kind of pantheistic or panentheistic understanding of God.

No, that's just me.

But I would prefer source of being.

I think that would make the distinction a little bit better.

Certainly not to denigrate creation because God's creation is good.

And that is, I think, an essential aspect of understanding the goodness of God.

How else can we know God except from God's creation?

So I appreciate that you bring that up.

Other questions?

Jim, I don't know if you're going to touch on this, but you talked a little bit about the seven churches that the book of Revelation was originally written to, and I think there were two that were faithful.

Well, you know, the seven churches in the beginning chapters of Revelation, there are seven churches that are addressed directly.

And in almost every case, there's a pattern to that address, where it's basically a very sort of, there's an encouraging part, and then there's, here's where there's room, room, room, and so it's like, I'm proud of you that you're doing this, that, the other thing, but here's what I have against you.

I see that really as, and this is why I talk about Revelation as kind of an Episcopal letter from John functioning as a sort of bishop.

Now, the office of bishop, as it exists today, didn't exist yet back then.

We don't really know that, but, okay.

I think it's fair to see some kind of an analogy as though John is the apostle who is the overseer, because that's the word bishop, he's the overseer, who is the overseer, or who is in some sense the apostolic authority over the churches of Asia Minor.

So these are the churches that were seeing him Music will be omitted.

There's quite a movement from the very beginning of the book to the end, in terms of what the final, you know, all these, you get to chapters 20, 21, 22, and they talk about the new city and the new Jerusalem, and this almost like a beatific vision of this marvelous sense of what eternity would look like or something like that, or what we might interpret today as being eternal.

How would that fit in within the context of the book?

Well, I think that ultimately what's happening here is that the book of Revelation is the culmination of the New Testament shift In the Old Testament, you have the concept of the day of the Lord, that there would be a time when God would intervene, and all wrongs would be righted, and oppressors would be punished, and victims would be vindicated, and they would be rewarded for their faithfulness.

But in the Old Testament, this idea is It's still in this world.

Salvation, even in the Old Testament, is in many ways an earthly concept.

If you read in the Psalms, there are a lot of salvation psalms, but it's all about God saving from my enemies.

Get me out of this foxhole, right?

The shift from that to the New Testament is that in the New Testament, the day of the Lord is put off, not until sometime in the future, but in this world, but it's put off into the actual afterlife, the next world, the spiritual realm.

And the book of Revelation is the pinnacle of that, so that, you know, even the coming of Jesus only partially brings the day of the Lord, but the real Fulfillment of that, wait until, as it's understood in the text, a return, a second coming.

And so what we're seeing here is almost, not quite, almost an admission that there's something irredeemable about this world.

Again, not that earth and creation is bad, but that there's something about the world that Humans aren't going to be omitted, it's going to take divine intervention, and it's going to take, you know, more than just divine intervention, it's going to take a re-creation, and a restoration of the whole creation.

So I think that's what you get here, that this is the revelation.

At the end of our assessment, reverend, this is the ultimate You hinted at it a number of times through your talk about God's role in punishing the evildoers and getting our vengeance and whatnot.

And I guess I wonder, How much do you think, what kind of God-worthy worship is this picture painting?

Does it seem too wrapped up in our notions of what justice is?

And what appeal does this have, even if the violence is not for us to do?

But it's God's to take care of, as he's intimated a number of times.

Right, right.

Well, again, you know, I think the point, part of the point is that when God takes care of it, it will, it ultimately won't be taken care of through violence.

Now, that doesn't mean that there isn't judgment that's held out there as either a promise or a warning.