2.1. General Principles

Honour the title of the book: “The Revelation of Jesus Christ”

It is not “Revelations” – it is not about multiple visions
It is not merely “Revelation”
It is not even “the Revelation of St. John” even though some Bibles adopt this title to differentiate it from other non-canonical apocalyptic texts.
It is “The Revelation of Jesus Christ” (1:1)

- What John sees is revealed to him by Jesus, and is about Jesus.
- If we walk away without being challenged and comforted by the person of Jesus, then we are not reading the text well.

Read for the renewal of truth, and not new ‘truths’.

“I do not read The Revelation to get additional information about the life of faith in Christ.

I have read it all before in law and prophet, in gospel and epistle. Everything in the Revelation can be found in the previous sixty-five books of the Bible. The Revelation adds nothing of substance to what we already know. The truth of the gospel is already complete, revealed in Jesus Christ. There is nothing new to say on the subject.

But there is a new way to say it. I read the Revelation not to get more information but to revive my imagination. St. John uses words the way poets do, recombining them in fresh ways so that old truth is freshly perceived. He takes truth that has been eroded to platitude by endless usage and set is in motion before us in an ‘animated impassioned dance of ideas.’”

Eugene Peterson, Reversed Thunder

Rule of thumb – any ‘truth’ discovered in Revelation will have already been revealed elsewhere in Scripture; if it is not somewhere else, it is likely not the ‘truth’.

John’s choice of medium in renewing truth is imagery because it engages our intellect, emotion, and imagination.

In seeking to understand John’s images, attend to his own imagination first.

Once again, it is good to remember that we must try to understand the author’s intentions rather than imposing our modern perspectives onto the text. In the past, some have (wrongfully) identified the eagle in Revelation 8 as a plane, and the locusts in Revelation 9 as Apache helicopters. These are clearly not what John has in mind.

It is far more consistent to understand the images John sees from the perspective of the Biblical story, and Roman propaganda of the first century.

The Hebrew Bible (Old Testament)

There is a heavy density of connections to the Old Testament in Revelation.

The Bible Scholar, Steve Moyise identifies that there are:
82 references to the Torah
97 references to the Psalms
122 references to Isaiah
48 references to Jeremiah
83 references to Ezekiel
74 references to Daniel
73 references to the Minor Prophets

What this means is that we have to attend to the entire biblical story in our understanding of Revelation.

For example, in Revelation 12:1-6, we read about a woman, clothed with the sun, the moon under her feet, and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She is pregnant and crying out in pain, about to give birth. Then a great red dragon appears, with seven heads, ten horns, and seven crowns on his heads. His tail sweeps a third of the stars from the sky and hurls them to earth.

The dragon stands before the woman, ready to devour her child the moment it is born.
But she gives birth to a male child, who is destined to rule all nations with an iron rod
Before the dragon can harm him, the child is caught up to God and His throne.

The woman flees into the wilderness, to a place prepared by God, where she is nourished for 1,260 days.

- This entire section is a symbolic echo of Genesis 3:15.
- The image of humanity among the stars calls to mind Genesis 1, 12:1-3, Psalm 8, and Proverbs 8.
- The language of pain in childbirth comes from Genesis 3, which also foretells the snake-crushing saviour.
- Seven heads and crowns represent all human kingdoms, the seed of the serpent.
- “Ten horns” is language that comes from Daniel 7.
- The dragon is represented through the kingdoms of the earth, but he has also rallied the stars—the rebel divine council.
- The description of the son of the woman comes directly from Psalm 2.
- The promised son is exalted to heaven, as in Daniel 7.
- The woman becomes a stand-in for the child, and she goes into exile in the wilderness like Hagar and Lady Zion in Lamentations for half a sabbath cycle. (1,260 days is approximately 3.5 years – half of 7 years.)

Roman Propaganda

John’s intended audience lived in a world that was saturated with the promotion of the Roman empire and its ideals. The imagery in Revelation acts as a contrast to this, providing an alternative worldview.

“We have already noticed the unusual profusion of visual imagery in Revelation and its capacity to create a symbolic world which its readers can enter and thereby have their perception of the world in which they lived transformed. To appreciate the importance of this we should remember that Revelation’s readers in the great cities of the province of Asia were constantly confronted with powerful images of the Roman vision of the world. Civic and religious architecture, iconography, statues, rituals and festivals, even visual wonder of cleverly engineered ‘miracles’ (cf. Rev. 13:13-14) in the temples – all provided visual impressions of Roman imperial power and of the splendour of pagan religion. In this context, Revelation provides a set of Christian prophetic counter-images which impress on its readers a different vision of the world: how it looks from the heaven to which John is caught up in chapter 4. The visual power of the book effects a kind of purging of the Christian imagination, refurbishing it with alternative visions of who the world is and will be.”

“John’s images echo and play on the facts, the fears, the hopes, the imaginings and the myths of his contemporaries, in order to transmute them into elements of his own Christian prophetic meaning”.

Richard Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation

On this, Revelation 4 evokes the sense of a Roman triumphal parade. Just as the enthroned emperor is usually surrounded and praised by the Roman Senate (dressed in white robes and wreaths of victory around their heads), here John sees the heavenly court where the elders surrounding the throne are dressed in white and with golden crowns on their heads. They too sing the praises of the one seated on the throne.

Such a scene would evoke in the reader a sense of where true victory lies.

Ask the question, “what did John see next?” rather than “what happens next?”

The scenes are not given in chronological order; they are given in the order in which John saw them.

“[Revelation] does not unfold in a straightforward sequential way. Many times the action of the visions takes us back over territory we have already covered, introducing new information, changed perspectives and surprising twists of plot.”

Paul Spilsbury, The Throne, The Lamb & The Dragon

Using Revelation 12:1-6 as an example again, if we were to ask the question, ‘when did Satan first seek to kill Jesus?’, the answer would be ‘when Jesus was born’. In other words, this is not a future event, but something that has already taken place.

Unshakeable Hope