37
Q.
Was the book of Revelation written in code?
is one of the fi rst things lost by those who long for the end of the world. St.
John subverts Empire, the church, discipleship, and even our image of God
with “the revelation”: the nonviolent Messiah, Jesus.
We don’t serve a God who is a Lion and a Lamb. The Lion is the Lamb!
(Rev. 5:5, 6). Yes, there is a battle going on and we long for the Lion to be victo-
rious! How? The Good Shepherd becomes a sheep and sacrifi ces himself like a
slain lamb so that we can see clearly there is no more need to shed blood and,
in the resurrection, opens to us a new world.
Unlike the radio preacher, we win not from world annihilation but from
faithful nonviolent imitation (Rev. 12:11). We enlist in the “War of the Lamb”
by dropping our weapons and taking up the cross of militant, nonviolent
love. We are not saved from creation but from all domination. We don’t go to
heaven; by grace, heaven’s coming here (Rev. 21–22).
Read Revelation through the person of Jesus, at the risk of ending this
world of injustice and witnessing to the new world of peace.
Jason Boyett
A.
Most of the book of Revelation consists of a vision received by
John, the author, while he was in exile on Patmos. The bizarre
imagery of this vision does seem a bit like a crazy dream sequence,
but it’s worth approaching Revelation in light of its genre.
Just as 1 Chronicles is history and 1 Corinthians is an epistle or letter,
the book of Revelation is apocalyptic literature. This type of writing—which
includes parts of Ezekiel and Daniel and many nonbiblical texts—fl ourished
from a few centuries before Christ until a couple of centuries after his death.
To explain Revelation as a weird hallucination—or for that matter, as a
secret, end-of-the-world timeline for future events—is to ignore that apocalyp-
tic literature had a very specifi c purpose. It was written to encourage believers
to stand fi rm as they waited for God to restore the nation of Israel and defeat
their enemies (i.e., Rome).
The symbols in Revelation, including the harlot, the beast, and the
apocalyptic violence, probably refer to the Roman oppression under which its
original audience lived. Though incomprehensible to us, the symbolism would
have been clear to those fi rst-century readers.
Craig Detweiler
A.
The book of Revelation represents an extreme style of writ-
ing known as apocalyptic literature. It is full of overstatements,
hyperbole, and fl ights of fancy. It was written in a veiled way as
a subversive form of communication. Apocalyptic literature was designed to