Transcript

Jim Papandrea is a teacher, author, speaker, and musician.

After graduating from the University of Minnesota with a bachelor's degree in music and theater arts, Jim went on to receive his M.Div.

degree from Fuller Theological Seminary with a concentration in Jewish ministry.

He then spent several years in old-time ministry, focusing on youth and youth ministry, and serving as an consultant in youth ministry.

Jim went on to achieve a PhD in the history and theology of the early Christian church from Northwestern University, with a secondary concentration in New Testament interpretation and the history of the Roman Empire.

He has also studied Roman history and the American Academy of Rome, Italy.

Jim is currently Associate Professor of Church History at Gerich Evangelical Seminary at Northwestern University, as well as a consultant in the area of adult faith formation, and a regular speaker at Gerich and day formation programs in Chicago area.

Jim is a member of the Society of biblical literature, the North American Christian Society, and the Catholic Association of Fusions of Music.

When he's not teaching or performing music, he can be found crabbing with his wife Julie, taking photographs, and making some riches, placing them on drawers and thinking.

Please give a warm welcome to Dr. Jim Pappagret.

Thank you, Richard, and thank you, Fr. Chris, and Our Lady of Branson Parish.

It is a blessing and honor to be here.

As you heard, my name is Jim McIngrail, and I am going to be sharing with you tonight some of the thoughts and some of the research that went into the book I wrote on the book of Revelation.

And if you've ever tried to read the book of Revelation in the New Testament, you know that it can be kind of confusing.

So what I hope to do tonight is maybe clear up some of the confusion.

I do want to mention before I begin that the music you just heard is from a CD that I recently recorded called Still Quiet Voices.

And everything I'm here to say comes from my book, which is called The Wedding of the Lamb, A Historical Approach to the Book of Revelation.

And just to give you a sense of comfort with that, the book does have the imprimatur from the Church, and so it does have the endorsement of the Church.

So nothing that I'm going to say tonight is in contradiction to any of the Church's teachings, so you can rest assured of that.

Now, I won't claim that my interpretation of the book of Revelation is the only valid interpretation of the book of Revelation, but at least I can say that it is an acceptable one for the Church's concern.

So having said that, My talk tonight is called Looking Back on the Future, the Methods of the Book of Revelation.

And what I'm going to try to do in the next 45 minutes or so is give you the highlights of the Book of Revelation if you want to dig deeper than the book is available.

Rule number one.

Rule number one is don't believe anything Hollywood tells you about the Book of Revelation.

or fictional novels about the end times for that matter.

What we know about the so-called end times, or the apocalypse, comes from two sources primarily.

Number one, certain sections of the Gospels where Jesus teaches on future things.

And number two, the book of Revelation.

Now, the book of Revelation is also sometimes called the Apocalypse.

And the word Apocalypse is a Greek word, and in English it means Revelation.

The word Revelation is typically the English translation of the Greek word Apocalypse.

But the point is that it means that which is revealed.

That which is revealed.

Kind of like an unveiling.

And it's an interesting image because you can think of an unveiling of something, but also when we bring in the wedding imagery, you can think of the lifting of the veil of the bride as well.

So, what is it that is to be revealed in the book of Revelation?

Well, think again back to Jesus' teaching.

What was the core of Jesus' teaching in the Gospels?

It was all about the Kingdom.

The Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven.

They both mean the same thing.

And so, what is to be revealed is the Kingdom.

Jesus said the Kingdom is like the mustard seed.

It's hidden under the dirt, but one day it will grow to be a great tree.

Now it's a small seed.

Sometime in the future it will be revealed to be a tree.

And in the future, in Jesus' parable of mercy, in the future that tree becomes a nesting place for all birds of the air.

It's an allegory for the future of the kingdom of God, which will be the dwelling place of all God's people.

Jesus also said the kingdom is like peace.

It's hidden in the dough, folded into the dough.

But at some point in the future, it will show itself in the rising of the bread.

Right now it's concealed within the dough, but later it will be revealed.

And it will become the bread of life, food for eternal life.

So what is now concealed will be revealed.

What is now hidden will be unveiled.

And so the Kingdom of God has these two aspects to it.

Two aspects.

The present and the future.

Sometimes this is presented in Jesus' parables as the planting and the harvest.

And seeds are planted, and the harvest is yet to come at a future time.

In the meantime, we wait.

We wait for the growth of the seeds.

And so it's like that with the kingdom.

At present, the kingdom is here, but it's concealed, like the seed under the dirt, or the yeast in the dough.

In the future, the kingdom will be revealed, like the full-grown plant or the risen bread.

Now, another image that Jesus uses in the Gospels to talk about the kingdom is the wedding day.

This is one of my favorite parables, the parable of the wedding day.

And you probably remember the parable from Matthew.

The king is throwing a wedding reception for a prince's son who is getting married.

Behind this idea, though, behind this imagery of the kingdom is the assumption that every marriage has two parts.

And it still works like this to this day.

Every marriage has two parts.

The engagement, and then the wedding.

And Jesus uses this two-part idea to describe the kingdom.

You may remember other parables like the bridegroom, the wise and foolish bridegroom, right?

The engagement in that parable has already taken place.

But the wedding has not taken place yet.

They wait for the wedding.

They wait.

These are waiting parables.

Parables about knowing that something has happened, but it hasn't been fully revealed yet.

And so, Jesus uses this imagery to talk about the Kingdom of Heaven.

In its present aspect, the Kingdom is here because it was brought by the advent of Christ.

The Incarnation planted the Kingdom like a seed.

And Jesus came and He said, the Kingdom is at hand.

It's near.

It's within you.

It's among you.

The Kingdom is in us.

It's hidden in us, planted like a seed.

This is like the engagement period of a wedding.

The engagement is a done deal.

In fact, in the ancient world, the legal contract required a divorce to break it.

So the contract has been made, the promise has been made, but it's not yet been realized.

In its future aspects, the kingdom will be fully revealed, and the promise will be realized.

And the future aspects of the kingdom will be brought to us by the second advent of Christ, sometimes called the second coming of Christ.

This is like the wedding.

This is the unveiling.

And what happened at the wedding that didn't happen yet in the ages?

Well, the groom comes to claim the bride and take her to his home.

And didn't Jesus say in the Gospel of John that he would be coming back to us to take us to his home?

And so this is what we wait for.

This future aspect of the kingdom when it will no longer be the case that the kingdom is hidden in us.

We won't be in us.

We'll be in it.

We will be in the kingdom.

We will be in the presence of God.

And this is what we pray for in our Father when we say, Thy kingdom come.

We're praying for Jesus to return and reveal the kingdom to us and bring us into it.

That's the future as it continues.

But in the meantime, we also pray, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

We live in the meantime, in the in-between time, between the planting and the harvest, between the engagement and the wedding.

And you know that the imagery of the church as the bride of Christ is in the New Testament, right?

It comes up several times in the New Testament.

The church is the bride of Christ.

So we, the church, we wait for our groom to return for us and take us to his home.

Now the Church is engaged to Christ, but at some future time, the Church becomes the bride of Christ in the pool of sin, married to the Lamb God.

Okay, so, if that's what the book of Revelation is about to take picture, what is the book of Revelation trying to tell us then?

Now when you ask what the book of Revelation is trying to tell us, When I ask you that, it's kind of a trick question, because we have to begin by admitting that the book of Revelation was not written for us.

Now don't get me wrong, there is a message in it for us, but the book of Revelation was written for the people who lived back then, at the time it was written.

Now that doesn't mean that there's no prophecy in the book.

There is prophecy in the book, But prophecy is primarily a message from God for the people of the present time.

So if a prophet speaks a message from God, the message is for the people of the prophet's own time, not for some future people.

Now, prophecy does include warnings and promises for the future.

And so we can see those in the text of Revelation.

And there are things in the text of the book of Revelation that are relevant to us, but we have to begin by admitting that it wasn't written for us.

It was written for the people at the time.

What time?

Well, you know, there's some debate over this, but I'll tell you what I think.

I believe the author of the book of Revelation was John the Apostle, the beloved disciple.

And, in fact, Most of the Church Fathers, virtually all of the Church Fathers, believed that question, so I default to the witness of the early Church Fathers, that the author of this document was the Apostle John.

The setting, the context for the writing of the book of Revelation is persecution.

The Church is persecuted.

The year is 95 A.D. or C.E., almost to the end of the first century.

Persecution earlier in the first century was localized and limited only to Rome, but by the time we get to the 90s of the first century, the persecution spread to the provinces.

And our apostle, the Apostle John, was arrested and exiled to a prison island, the island of Patmos, which is an island off the coast of what is now Turkey.

And there he had a vision.

And he wrote this vision down.

And again, if you've ever read the book of Revelation, you know how confusing it can be to try and read through imagery of this vision.

And I believe that a couple of things are going on here.

I believe John did have a vision.

I don't think it's just a literary device.

I believe John had a prophetic vision.

But I believe he saw things that defied human language.

And so some of the things he tried to write down as best he could, and other things he tried to borrow imagery that he already knew from the Old Testament to try and describe the things that he saw.

And so when you read the book of Revelation, you'll find in it a lot of imagery from the Old Testament.

The good news, though, is that while we can use our knowledge of the Old Testament to understand the quality imagery in the book of Revelation, we don't have to try and incorporate Old Testament prophecy into the book of Revelation.

The book of Revelation stands on its own.

The key is Revelation chapter 1, verse 19. Where John is told that he is to write down, and these are the words of the messenger, the things which you have seen, the things which are, and the things which will take place after these things.

The things which you have seen, the things which are, and the things which will take place after the event.

In other words, he's going to write down symbolic images that describe events in his past, at his present time, and in his future.

Things which you have seen, things which are, and things which will take place after the event.

So the book of Revelation includes events that are already in John's past, The problem, though, is that last one has two parts.

Because, if you think about it, John's future includes about 1918 years in our text.

In other words, there's all that time that was future to John that is already in our past.

So the book of Revelation contains things that were already in John's past, that were happening at the time John was writing, that were in John's future but in our past, and a few things yet come for us.

The problem is, though, these things are not all presented in Knight's chronological order.

They're presented as something more like a downward spiral.

Like, imagine if you went on vacation and took a picture.

Remember slides?

Remember when we used to have slideshows and you had that carousel on top of the slide projector?

Imagine if you took slides for your vacation and you had them all in order, but on your way to the slide projector you tripped and they all fell on the floor, and you just put them back in the carousel forever, and then showed that slideshow.

It's a little bit like a bad dream, which, you know, you can kind of think that that's maybe how John saw his vision.

So, the slides are out of order, and what this means is that the chapter and verse numbers that you're given here in the New Testament are not going to help you sort this out, because those were put on much, much later.

John himself did not write the chapter and verse numbers in there.

Those were added later to try and help us refer to certain verses, but they aren't going to help you sort out what happens when.

And, of course, the events that are described in the book of Revelation are presented in symbolic language, not literal language.

So, you cannot read the book of Revelation with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, as if you're looking for the signs of the times in prophecy.

It doesn't work that way, because the book of Revelation is all about the signs of a different time.

So you need something more like a Roman history textbook if you want to read the book of Revelation than something else in the other hand.

You think about it this way.

What if, 2000 years from now, someone dug up a text and read this?

I saw in my vision a man riding a white Bronco.

Now, what's that about?

Anyone?

I saw it in my vision a man riding a white Bronco.

He rode near the seas in the shining city of England.

Following him were many men and women riding one man in collars, flashing black and white and red and blue.

And no one knew who could judge the man as they waited for the judgment.

Okay, now, you got it because you were there.

If you read that 2,000 years from now, you wouldn't get it, because the language is too poetic.

So, that's the problem when we read the book of Revelation.

You're reading this poetic, symbolic language that is often describing things that were happening or had already happened 2,000 years ago.

So to understand the book of Revelation, we have to first understand the symbols in their original context.

And as I said, many of the symbols come from the Old Testament, but they mean something different in the book of Revelation than they did in the Old Testament.

So they're kind of common symbols that John's audience might have understood, but he's using them in a new way.

Now, in my book, The Wedding of the Lamb, I go through all the symbols in the book of Revelation and explain what every single one means, including all the numbers.

We don't have time to do that now, but once you know what symbols mean, based on their use in the Old Testament and the culture of the time, and once you understand the historical context, in other words, once you put together Scripture and history, then you can begin to interpret the book of Revelation.

And it really wasn't until I did that that I started to understand it, because I've studied both New Testament interpretation, Scripture, and also early Church history, the history of the Roman Empire.

When you put those two things together, it kind of makes sense.

So let's start with the first section.

John's past, the things which you have seen, the message says to John.

Now, if you haven't read the book of Revelation, it's really bad, so pay attention to it if it's not.

But the things that are described in the book of Revelation, that they've already taken place in John's past, There are things like the fall of Satan described as a dragon with stars falling from the sky.

Satan falling with the angels that fell and became demons.

This is all part of the Jewish mythology that John apparently accepts.

The birth of Christ is described.

There's a woman crowned with stars who gives birth to a son.

Well, that should be too hard to figure out.

The woman is Mary.

The son she gives birth to is Jesus.

And the dragon tries to kill the son, a reference to the attempt on Jesus' life by Herod.

And then it says that when the dragon can't kill the child, He goes after the woman's other children.

That's interesting.

Who are the married other children?

Yeah, it's the persecution of the church.

The same demonic spirit that was energizing Herod to try and kill Jesus was also then later energizing the Roman Empire.

The Roman Empire and the Roman Emperors were persecuting the church.

The text also, of course, describes in symbolic terms the death and resurrection of Christ.

Jesus is the Lamb who was slain and the Lamb who is standing in praise.

So the death and the resurrection of Christ.

Now, there's also a lot of symbols here, seals, trumpets.

This describes great suffering.

Sometimes you hear the word tribulation.

Tribulation is simply a word that means great suffering.

And I would say that most of the time, whenever you see the word tribulation, you can translate that as persecution, persecution of the early church.

And so we have The emperors of the Roman Empire, the persecutors, described as seven heads and ten horns.

We have the earth-shattering events described that are remnants of the plagues of Egypt.

And this leads up to what would have been thought of as the most earth-shattering event in John's past, in the recent past, and that is the siege and fall of the city of Jerusalem that took place in the year 70. Now you may remember that one of the numbers that comes up frequently in the book of Revelation is three and a half.

Three and a half years is the time frame that's described several times.

And it's described in different ways, in years, in months, in days, but it's always three and a half years.

Guess how long the war lasted that led up to the fall of Jerusalem?

Three and a half years.

And then we read of the colored horses, usually referred to as the horsemen of the apocalypse.

But it's not really about the riding of the horses, it's about the horses themselves.

The red horse, and we're told that that's what it represents.

The red horse represents death by war.

The war leading up to the fall of Jerusalem.

And then we read about a swarm of locusts that come up out of the abyss.

And when you read the description, they're wearing breastplates and helmets and they look, they seem to look an awful lot like Roman soldiers.

And these locusts are given permission to torment people, but not kill them, but torment for five months.

Now that seems like a lot of time period, isn't it?

Five months.

Guess how long the siege of Jerusalem lasted before the walls were breached and the city fell?

Four months and three weeks.

Close enough.

Right.

Five months, the siege of Jerusalem.

People were tormented, but not killed, even when they were not in the city.

The city had fallen yet.

And then we read of the black horse, death by famine.

The pale horse, death by disease.

Two things that would absolutely happen during a long siege.

Famine and disease, lack of clean water.

And then the city of Jerusalem falls.

And if you'll allow the analogy, the fall of Jerusalem would have been there at 9-11. It would have been the thing that they thought would never happen.

The thing they thought God would never allow.

Jerusalem to fall and the temple to be destroyed.

And so it was an earth-shattering event, and for many people they thought it was the end of the world, that they knew it.

And so the book of Revelation looks back on this event, which now was 25 years before John wrote the book of Revelation.

It already has.

But the book of Revelation looks back on this event in these very symbolic, hematocalyptic terms, because it was a tragic event for the Jewish people.

But the good news is the white horse.

Here comes the white horse, and now the rider matters.

Now the rider matters.

And he comes, in the Greek it says this, he comes conquering and to conquer.

Conquering and to conquer.

In other words, he's already conquered, and he's going to conquer.

Meaning, he's conquered death once already in his resurrection, and he will do it again.

That's the good news.

So, this first section of the book comes with warning and promises.

A promise, as I just said, is that Jesus has defeated Satan once and he will do it again.

That's a promise.

The warning, though, is that during the time of persecution, The people of the church may be tempted to give in to the persecutions, to make pagan sacrifices, to deny the faith to save their lives.

The warning is, don't do it.

Don't do it.

Because didn't Jesus say, whoever denies me before others, I will deny before my Father in Heaven.

So to deny the faith is to risk loss of salvation.

So isn't it interesting, though, that all that stuff is already in John's past when he's writing this text?

Now we get to John's presence, and then he moves the letters to the seven churches.

The churches in these seven cities, and if you think about it, John is like their bishop.

And he's writing these, what you might consider, episcopal letters that are meant to encourage the people of these churches and strengthen them.

The gospel is spreading in spite of the persecution, and the church is growing.

And the church is described in the book of Revelation as two churches in one.

This is typical of the early church.

In fact, there are mosaics in the churches of Rome that depict this idea.

And the idea is this.

The church is two churches in one.

The Jewish church and the Gentile church.

In other words, the church of people who come from the people of Israel, who have accepted Christ as their Messiah, and the church of people who come from the pagan world, the Gentiles, who have converted to Christianity.

It's one church, so don't get me wrong, it's built one by one, right?

But it's made up of these two churches, the Jewish church and the Gentile church.

And you can see this in the Mosaic of Rome, where the two churches, Jewish and Gentile, are represented by two cities, Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

Now, you can imagine why Jerusalem represents the Jewish church, but why would Bethlehem represent the Gentile church?

Because Bethlehem were the first Gentiles to worship Jesus, the Magi.

So it's a beautiful image, and in the book of Revelation, you may remember at one point it talks about 144,000 who are sealed, baptized.

Sealed, baptized.

The 144,000, that number is new Bible.

It's 12 and 12 and thousands.

the twelve multiplied by multitudes.

But the point is that the twelve represents Israel, the twelve tribes of Israel.

And then the Gentile church is represented by what is then called countless multitudes and nobody even counts.

So, the church is growing.

But during this time of spreading the Gospel, to evangelize, to share the faith, is to risk your life.

And so John's words of encouragement here are, it's worth it.

Even if you risk your life, it is worth it.

And also in this context, John has a vision of worship in the heavenly realm.

You may remember the vision of John seeing the angels singing a new song.

They sing the song of the new covenant.

But at the same time, behind the scenes, there is spiritual warfare going on.

And this is where a lot of people get tricked up, because they assume that talk of warfare in the book of Revelation is literal warfare on the earth.

And most of the time, it's not.

Some of it is, but some of that is already in the past for John, in terms of the war over Jerusalem.

But a lot of the imagery around warfare in the Book of Revelation is not meant to be taken as literal warfare.

It's meant to be taken as spiritual warfare.

And the spiritual warfare is that the same dragon, the same Satan, the same demonic spirit that tried to kill Jesus and attacked the church is continuing the persecution.

And the Roman Empire, and the Roman Emperors specifically, the interior office of the Roman Emperors, is depicted as this great beast.

So the beast in Revelation is the Roman Emperor.

And the Roman emperors are aided by the false prophets, who are the priests of the Roman priesthood, who encourage people to worship the emperor.

I mean, it's got it right in the text.

The false prophets make people worship the beast.

The Roman priests encourage people to worship the emperor.

And emperor worship is complicated, and we won't go into that now.

But, you know, there's, of course, the very famous part of the book of Revelation Where John says, OK, I'm going to give you a number.

It's the number of a man's name.

Make no mistake.

You know who it is.

666. Right?

You know that one.

Well, in the ancient world, you could use letters as numbers.

They didn't have separate numbers like we do.

And so, you know, it would be like if A was 1 and B was 2 and C was 3, you know, you could use letters or numbers.

So any word or name, you could just add up the letters and get a number.

And truthfully, you could make almost anything out of 666 if you really want to, with bad or bad.

But, if you lived at the time John was writing in the year 95, and you had in your pocket coins, Then you took out that coin and you would see on that coin the image of the current member, named Domitian.

And around the end of that coin would be written in brief letters the abbreviations of all of Domitian's titles.

And if you added up those letters, guess what it adds up to?

666. That's right.

So look folks, we do not have to look for some 666 beast coming in our future.

It was the emperor of the time the document was written.

It's not any more superior than that.

Except that, of course, John didn't want to name names in the document, so he told people what they would know.

But the point here is this.

that the persecution brings to the forefront a choice.

The same choice that Jesus was confronted with, and the disciples were confronted with, the same choice that Christians have been confronted with forever in one form or another, and that choice is a choice of loyalty.

Christ or Caesar?

God or the culture?

Worship the one and only God, or worship the God of the culture?

And that's the choice that John knew his people would be facing if he wrote these letters to encourage them, and if he broke down these visions.

And in the book of Revelation, we see they're already martyrs.

And the martyrs in the book of Revelation are saying, how long has this been going on?

And they're given an answer.

It's not a great answer.

It's not a very identified answer for that, but they're actually given it.

Wait.

Because it's not over, and there are going to be more martyrs.

The interesting thing about this is that if you read carefully the text of Revelation, where does it say the martyrs are?

It talks about the martyrs under the altars.

And in the historic churches in Rome, where are the martyrs buried?

Under the altars, the churches.

So, within this section of the book of Revelation, then dealing with John's presence, There is, again, a warning in the promise.

The warning is, do not give in to the culture.

And really, this is the message of the book of Revelation for us.

This is where it becomes relevant for us.

Do not give in to the culture.

Do not sacrifice your loyalty to Christ for the God of the culture.

Do not substitute those gods of the culture for the one you are God of.

Now, the problem is, and notice this, John does not promise, hey, if you're faithful, you won't get killed or get into persecution.

He does not promise that.

But he does promise this.

Those who follow Jesus from death will follow him in resurrection.

That's the promise.

So, being faithful might lead to lost life, but those who follow Jesus from death will follow him in resurrection.

Alright, now let's talk about John's future, things that are in John's future.

But the first category is things that are in John's future, things that his vision predicts that are going to come, that are things that are yet to take place, but they've already taken place in our past.

And, you know, this is not all that mysterious because, lo and behold, John predicts the fall of the Roman Empire.

Well, guess what?

The Roman Empire is back.

And you don't need to imagine a new Roman Empire rising up so that it could fall sometime in the future.

It's already happened.

And so there's this good news, bad news thing going on here when John starts talking about what's to come.

The good news is those Roman persecutors are going to get what's coming.

Well, that was the good news if you were living at the time.

The bad news is, though, it's going to get worse before it gets better.

The persecution is going to get worse before it gets better.

And yes, it did.

Persecution did get worse before it got better.

In the middle of the third century, it got to the point where the emperor demanded that everyone in the empire had to make a pagan sacrifice to prove their loyalty to the state and the emperor.

And when you made your pagan sacrifice, you got a receipt.

So that you could prove you had made it.

And this receipt goes without saying.

We still have some of them.

You were meant to carry it around you because you could be asked to show your papers.

to prove that you were a good, loyal citizen.

And without the papers, you could be prevented from buying and selling in the marketplace.

And isn't that exactly what Revelations predicts about the Mark of the Beast?

The Mark of the Beast will be the example through-hole of the empire without which people will not be able to buy or sell.

So, The persecution continued to get worse until the early 4th century when it finally ended with the rise of the Emperor Constantine, the first Christian Emperor.

Now, we aren't going to talk about Constantine too much because that is a topic for all time to come.

But the point is that the book of Revelation predicts Not surprisingly, the book of Revelation predicts that some day the verses will be jubilated.

And when it does, the empire will be converted in the sense that the tables will be turned.

There will come a day when the church will win over the empire.

When Christ will influence the world through the church.

It certainly did.

And this is what the text refers to as the Millennium.

Now, the Millennium, you know, a lot of interpreters make too big a deal out of this.

The concept of the Millennium in the book of Revelation is only half a verse.

It's not a big deal.

And it's not meant to be taken in the literal 1,000 years.

It's meant to be taken in the long period of time in which Christ influences the world through the church.

And we've been enjoying that church age ever since the 4th century.

And so the millennium, well, we're in it.

When will it end?

I don't know.

But what John predicts in this part of the book of Revelation, again, it's not organized in 19 sections for us, but what John predicts is this imagery of bowls being poured out.

Bowls being poured out like you would pour out a wine offering on an altar.

These bowls being poured out are a punishment of the persecutors.

So again, he's predicting that the persecutors will get what's coming from them, that God will punish them, and that Rome will fall.

And Rome did fall.

And the point is this.

The empire of the Romans is temporary.

The kingdom of God is eternal.

And that's the contrast that John makes between the empire and the kingdom.

And by the way, those words empire and kingdom are two different words in English, but it'd be the same idea if you agreed.

It's like saying the kingdom of the Romans is temporary, the kingdom of God is eternal.

So that's the contrast between the empire and the kingdom.

And John makes this contrast Also using the idea of the unfaithful woman of Babylon, who is the empire, and the briar.

So there's this contrast between these two symbolic terms, the unfaithful woman and the briar.

And Babylon is wrong, because in the Old Testament, who sat in Jerusalem and destroyed the temple?

Babylon.

In the year 70, who sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple?

Rome.

So Rome is the new Babylon.

So there's a warning and a promise here, isn't there?

The warning is, don't take sides with the Romans, because their empire will fall.

And so that's also a promise.

The promise is, Rome will fall.

So, that brings us to the last part of it, and we have to ask, okay, well, what's left?

I mean, I've just described things in John's past, things going on in the present time for John, and the things that were predicted in John's future that are already in our past, like the fall of Rome.

What's left?

Actually, there isn't a lot that's left in the text of Revelation, but there are things predicted in the book of Revelation that have happened, that are still in our future.

But first of all, before I say what that is, I have to say this.

You're probably familiar with the term Armageddon, right?

You've heard that term.

And when you hear that term, you probably think, End of the world, world war, that kind of stuff, right?

Because that's what Hollywood has done to you.

But let me tell you something.

Again, this is not the literal word.

Armageddon is a place.

It's sort of the English version of the Greek version of the Hebrew word par megiddo, meaning Megiddo Hill.

Megiddo Hill is a place.

It's a place where battles took place in the Old Testament.

It's a place where the idolatrous Queen Jezebel died.

But the point is that, you know, if you were to say harmagino to a person who lived back in this time, they would think, oh yeah, I know what happened there.

God wins.

That's what happened there.

That's the place where evil is defeated.

So Armageddon is not an event, it's a promise.

Armageddon again, referring to spiritual warfare, is the promise that God will win and evil will be defeated in the end.

So, what is left to be revealed in our future?

Well, The Wedding of the Lamb.

The return of Christ to claim his bride, the Church.

The groom comes to take his bride to his home.

This is again what we sometimes refer to as the second coming.

Now, I should say that for many people, this happens on a personal level, simply when they pass away.

But there is going to be a time when it happens once and for all.

And there will be a judgment, and there will be a resurrection, and there will be a new heaven and a new earth.

And these are not two separate places.

A way of talking about redeemed creation.

But the important thing about the new heaven and the new earth and the new Jerusalem is that the way it's depicted in the book of Revelation is that it descends.

It descends from above.

Again, don't take this literally, but the point is that it is a gift from God.

It is not something we're going to create.

We don't usher in the things from heaven.

We don't create the secrets.

God gives it to us as a gift.

And then eternal life is the presence of God.

And all of this is the revelation.

All of this is that which is revealed, the revealing.

In the book of Revelation, the Kingdom of God is finally fully revealed in its future absence.

And then you begin to think back to Jesus' birth, images of the harvest, the image of the wedding banquet, my favorite image for heaven, a big harvest, right?

And so, this is what we have to look forward to.

But as we can see, Much, if not most, of the book of Revelation, or much of the book of Revelation, was already in the past when John even wrote it.

And so first, you know, he's thinking back and he's describing the coming of Christ and the fall of Jerusalem, which was a tragic event.

And then he writes these letters to the churches to encourage them during the persecution.

And here again we should hear the message for us.

This is where the book of Revelation is relevant for us.

Don't give in to the culture around you.

Don't give in to the temptation to worship the godless culture around you.

Because your home is the permanent home in the kingdom of heaven.

But then, even when John sees into the future, we are looking back on his future.

The fall of Rome and the conversion of the empire.

And so really, only the final revelation is left in our future.

We don't know when that will take place, and we're not deaf enough.

I mean, I'm sure I don't have to tell you this, but the point is to always be ready.

So even though the book of Revelation is not written for us, It is still relevant for us, in that even today we face a choice, Christ or Caesar.

Will you be sealed for God or marked for the gods of this world?

Will you choose the kingdom of God or the empire of our culture?

And if we choose the kingdom, there are ways in which the world still persecutes.

And I think this is going to be the case increasingly as time goes on.

We can be persecuted in more subtle ways in the early church space.

But we also have to acknowledge that there are places in the world right now where the persecution is known as dangerous if it wasn't early church.

But even for us, even in this country, we can be called backward, or unenlightened, or we can be marginalized.

And I think it's going to become more and more inconvenient to be a Catholic Christian.

At some point, the millennium will wind down, and as it does, the world becomes post-Christian.

The church will have less influence on the world.

And as that happens, the church will become more and more counter-cultured.

So I would say we have to run.

We influenced the culture for a long, long time.

Sometimes we weren't always faithful with that responsibility.

And I think that the days when being a real Christian was acceptable in society might be over.

So, just remember the message of the book of Revelation.

The empire of the culture is temporary.

The kingdom of God is eternal.

Thanks.