Whitney and I have been reading through the book of the Bible, The Revelation of Jesus Christ of recent and have been having a difficult time of trying to understand what is being conveyed. I decided to consult a commentary to aid me in my trying to flesh out some sense of what is being said. David Chilton's, "Days Of Venegence" came highly recommended by several friends of mine from church and work. I just finished all the forewords and prefaces which add up to about 30 to 35 pages (the entire work is 740 pages) and have just gotten into the first several chapters. Chilton starts by addressing what I think is many Christians (myself included) problematic presupposition of Revelation. Here is an excerpt from Chilton's book that I found very helpful in establishing a sound foundation from which to look at this widely overlooked and misunderstood book of the Bible.
The Book of Revelation is part of the Bible. At first glance
this may not seem to be a brilliant insight, but it is a point that is
both crucially important and almost universally neglected in the
actual practice of exposition. For as soon as we recognize that
Revelation is a Biblical document, we are forced to ask a central
question: What sort of book is the Bible? And the answer is
this: The Bible is a book (The Book) about the Covenant. The
Bible is not an Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge. Nor is it a
collection of Moral Tales, or a series of personal-psychology
studies of Great Heroes of Long Ago. The Bible is God’s written
revelation of Himself, the story of His coming to us in the Medi-
ator, the Lord Jesus Christ; and it is the story of the Church’s
relationship to Him through the Covenant He has established
with her.
The Covenant is the meaning of Biblical history (Biblical
history is not primarily adventure stories). The Covenant is the
meaning of Biblical law (the Bible is not primarily a political
treatise about how to set up a Christian Republic). And the
Covenant is the meaning of Biblical prophecy as well (thus,
REVELATION AND THE COVENANT
Biblical prophecy is not “prediction” in the occult sense of Nos-
tradamus, Edgar Cayce, and Jean Dixon). To a man, the proph-
ets were God’s legal emissaries to Israel and the nations, acting
as prosecuting attorneys bringing what has become known
among recent scholars as the “Covenant Lawsuit .“
That Biblical prophecy is not simply “prediction” is indi-
cated, for example, by God’s statement through Jeremiah:
At one moment I might speak concerning a nation or con-
cerning a kingdom to uproot, to pull down, or to destroy it; if
that nation against which I have spoken turns from its evil, I will
relent concerning the calamity I planned to bring on it.
Or at another moment I might speak concerning a nation or
concerning a kingdom to build up or to plant it; if it does evil in
My sight by not obeying My voice, then I will repent of the good
with which 1 had promised to bless it. (Jer. 18:7-10)
The purpose of prophecy is not “prediction,” but evaluation
of man’s ethical response to God’s Word of command and
promise. This is why Jonah’s prophecy about Nineveh did not
“come true”: Nineveh repented of its wickedness, and the
calamity was averted. Like the other Biblical writings, the Book
of Revelation is a prophecy, with a specific covenantal orienta-
tion and reference. When the covenantal context of the proph-
ecy is ignored, the message St. John sought to communicate is
lost, and Revelation becomes nothing more than a vehicle for
advancing the alleged expositor’s eschatological theories.
Let us consider a minor example: Revelation 9:16 tells us of a
great army of horsemen, numbering “myriads of myriads.” In
some Greek texts, this reads two myriads of myriads, and is
sometimes translated 200 million. All sorts of fanciful and con-
trived explanations have been proposed for this. Perhaps the
most well-known theory of recent times is Hal Lindsey’s opinion
that “these 200 million troops are Red Chinese soldiers accom-
panied by other Eastern allies. It’s possible that the industrial
might of Japan will be united with Red China. For the first time
in history there will be a full invasion of the West by the
Orient .“28
28. Hal Lindsey, There’s a New World Coming (Eugene, OR: Harvest
House Publishers, 1973), p. 140.
Such fortunetelling may or may not be accurate regarding a coming Chinese invasion, but it tells us absolutely
nothing about the Bible. To help put Lindsey’s view into histor-
ical perspective, we will compare it to that of J. L. Martin, a
19th-century preacher who, while sharing Lindsey’s basic pre-
suppositions about the nature and purpose of prophecy, reached
the different, and amusing, conclusion that St. John’s “200 mil-
lion” represented “the fighting force of the whole world” of
1870. Note Martin’s shrewdly scientific, Lindsey-like reasoning:
We have a few more than one billion inhabitants on the
earth. . . . But of that billion about five hundred millions (one-
half) are females, leaving an average population of male inhabit-
ants of about five hundred millions; and of that number about
one-half are minors, leaving about two hundred and fifty mil-
lions of adult males on the earth at a time. But of that number of
adult males about one-fifth are superannuated – too old to fight.
These are statistical facts. This leaves exactly John’s two hun-
dred millions of fighting men on earth. And when we prove a
matter mathematically, we think it is pretty well done. 29
But Martin is just hitting his stride. He continues with his ex-
position, taking up the terrifying description of the soldiers in
9:17-19: “The riders had breastplates of fire and of hyacinth and
of brimstone; and the heads of the horses are like the heads of
lions; and out of their mouths proceed fire and smoke and brim-
stone. A third of mankind was killed by these three plagues, by
the fire and the smoke and the brimstone, which proceeded out
of their mouths. For the power of the horses is in their mouths
and in their tails; for their tails are like serpents and have heads;
and with them they do harm.”Whereas modern apocalyptists
view this in terms of lasers and missile launchers, Martin had a
different explanation – one which was in keeping with the state
of military art in his day, when Buffalo Bill was fighting Sioux
Indians as chief of scouts for General Sheridan’s Fifth Cavalry:
John is pointing to the modern mode of fighting on horse-
back, with the rider leaning forward, which, to his sight, and to
the sight of one looking on at a distance, would appear as the
29. J. L. Martin, The Voice of the Seven Thunders: oc Lectures on the Apoc-
alypse (Bedford, IN: James M. Mathes, Publisher, sixth cd., 1873), pp. 149f.
great mane of the lion; the man leaning on his horse’s neck. He
would, in fighting with firearms, have to lean forward to dis-
charge his piece, lest he might shoot down his own horse that he
was riding. In John’s day the posture was very different. . . .
Now, I want to ask my friendly hearers if it is not as literally ful-
filled before our eyes as anything can be? Are not all nations en-
gaged in this mode of warfare? Do they not kill men with fire
and smoke and brimstone? . . . Do you not know that this is
just ignited gunpowder? . . .
Could an uninspired man, in the last of the first century, have
told of this matter? 30
Unless we see the Book of Revelation as a Covenant docu-
ment — i.e., if we insist on reading it primarily as either a predic-
tion of twentieth-century nuclear weapons or a polemic against
first-century Rome – its continuity with the rest of the Bible will
be lost. It becomes an eschatological appendix, a view of “last
things” that ultimately has little to do with the message, pur-
pose, and concerns of the Bible. Once we understand Revela-
tion’s character as a Covenant Lawsuit, however, it ceases to be
a “strange,“ “weird” book; it is no longer incomprehensible, or
decipherable only with the complete New York Times Index. In
its major themes at least, it becomes as accessible to us as Isaiah
and Amos. The Book of Revelation must be seen from the out-
set in its character as Biblical revelation. The grasp of this single
point can mean a “quantum leap” for interpretation; for, as
Geerhardus Vos made clear in his pathbreaking studies of Bib-
lical Theology, “revelation is connected throughout with the fate
of Israel.”31
30. Ibid., pp. 151f.
31. Richard B. Gaffin Jr., ed., Redemptive Histoty and Biblical Interpreta-
tion: The Shorter Writings of Geerhardus Vos (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian
and Reformed Publishing Co., 1980), p. 10.
I like the way Chilton starts off in this section of his book by reminding us that this is in fact a book of the Bible. I believe that many of us have looked at Revelation and shrugged our shoulders and moved on without really considering, meditating, and searching to understand what is being revealed as we would when looking at any other book in scripture. And since we feel insecure in our lack of understanding Revelation we allow people such as J.L. Martin, Hal Lindsey, and of late, Jerry B. Jenkins and Tim LaHaye, and friends and family to form our presuppositions for us. Oh...and about those J.L. Martin and Hal Lindsey quotes that I included in Chilton's excerpt; I didn't include them so as to make light and fun of some of my premillenial friends. I did include them as just two of many (did I mention many?) examples of what happens when we get off track and don't retain Revelation as part of scripture but submit its interpretation to the latest catastrophe reported on CNN and the New York Times and then try to draw parallels between what is happening and what "is to come." This is actually a problem. Why? Because it entices us away from our purpose and calling - to take dominion and further Christ's kingdom here on earth by the spreading and instillment of the gospel to the nations. May that aspiration be in the hearts of all of us.
Hope this provokes you to go and examine your hermeneutics, worldview, eschatology, and perspective on scripture as it has made me.
"Now go do the right thing."
"That is all I got to say about that"
BTW: From what I have read thus far of Chilton's Days of Venegeance I would recommend reading it.
No comments:
Post a Comment