wayneholland.org

 

THE BOOK OF REVELATION

October 20, 2008

 

I'm sure you've noticed in this day and age of terror the renewed fascination with the Book of Revelation. As much as I hate to, I suppose I should devote some attention to this nonsense.

I will begin (and end) with a brief study of the opening words to the book. The remaining content doesn't much matter if the opening line says that the work is merely an allegory or a fable. The Book of Revelation's introductory words do not say that it is an allegory or fable, to be sure, but they do say something that is just as unraveling as if it had.

I employed this technique with my book Jesus, A Likely Story, a hard look at the Gospel of Matthew. The opening line of that gospel is "The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham."

What does this opening statement suggest? Well, if you can get past your preconceived ideas about the New Testament, or Christianity in general, the words clearly state that the book is essentially a genealogy of some Jewish guy. (Could anything be more Jewish than the son of David, or the son of Abraham?)

If you persist with this approach, you soon find that the writer who expressed it did not exactly stay on course. The Gospel of Matthew, in other words, is a hell of a lot more than a genealogy. It is filled with a virtual assortment of stories, vignettes, sermons and parables, most of which have nothing whatsoever to do with anything geneological. What does this mean? If nothing else, it means that we have the right to conclude that either the person who started writing the book isn't the same person who finished it (or at least filled it up with all that other stuff), or that (if it is the same person) he pretty much changed his mind about writing a genealogy, which was unquestionably his original intention.

Neither of these choices feels very satisfying. How can you have any respect for a writer who begins a book with a particular direction in mind but ends up taking it every which way? Or how can you truly consider that such a book might be the word of God? I don't know about you, but I just can't make that work.

I'm taking the same approach with Revelation. Here are its opening words:

The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John: Who bare record of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw. Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand.

The purpose of the book is clearly stated (and if there is any book in the world that we would like to know the purpose of it is surely this one):

to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass

The book is offered as a sort of heads-up about what is soon (shortly) to take place. That is why those who read it are blessed, because being so warned they might be able to do something about all the bad stuff it foretells.

The biggest problem with all this (an insurmountable problem as far as I am concerned) is that it was written about 2,000 years ago. Doesn't that put us significantly beyond soon, or shortly?

Couple this with Jesus' words in the Gospel of Matthew (also dealing with so-called end-time events) and the party is pretty much over:

I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.

The generation that Jesus refers to in this verse is his own, the one he is addressing (He did use the word this in his statement, not that.). Since that was also about 2,000 years ago, it means that approximately 50 generations have since passed. End of story.