Out at the prison we are about to begin a study of the book of Revelation. Over the last few years we've been working our way through the entire Bible. We started in Genesis and now, at long last, we reach Revelation.
This is going to be an interesting study. The men out at the unit have been thoroughly marinated in dispensational theology. Many of them are convinced that we are in, or approaching, the end times. I have my work cut out for me.
In preparing for the study, I've been looking at various commentaries. One recommended to me by my friend Mark is Brian K. Blount's commentary. Blount's commentary is rare among Biblical commentaries because he's a really great writer, with a flair for vivid, bracing prose. I wanted to use this series to share some of Blount's material from his Introduction, how he approaches the book of Revelation.
Blount opens the Introduction by commenting on John's emotional state in writing the book: "In the literary storm that is the book of Revelation, John writes in anger." In the next paragraph, Blount continues:
Revelation is a mean book; it is not, however, mean-spirited. The line between those two points on the human emotional scale is admittedly razor thin. John's meanness is the effect of a sure cause. It derives from the anger he feels about the injustices that have been imposed upon him and his people, and the even greater injustices that he is sure will soon rise if his people live out their faith in the way that he hopes they will.
You might not like these descriptions, that John "writes in anger" or that Revelation is "a mean book," but Blount sure does grab your attention right out of the gate! And Blount does have a point. Revelation has some pretty grisly passages about the plight of the wicked and rebellious. Are these passages, in their imaginative excessiveness, "mean"? Feel free to debate that word, but the visions in Revelation are very violent and off-putting to many. Just spend time with graphic novel depictions of Revelation and the point is made. Consequently, it's critical when approaching Revelation to know how to handle the violence, pain, and blood. For example, as Blount continues, John has repentance on his mind, not retribution. Blount writes:
John not only allows for repentance; he also encourages it, begs for it, and pleads with those who have joined forces hostile to God's world-transforming intent to come back to God's way of being and doing in the world...
The point is that Revelation is rhetorically excessive because it's polemical. Revelation is trying to accomplish something in the lives of its listeners. Revelation is a jolt. A thunder clap. A five alarm fire. Stated simply, the violence is rhetorical. John's words are trying to kidnap your attention and galvanize your immediate energetic response. Focusing on those rhetorical goals is the proper way to approach the verbal onslaught that is the book of Revelation.
Thank you for sharing Blount's understanding of Revelation as a polemical work with the goal of inviting repentance, rather than a dispensational prediction of some "end-time" retribution.
The book speaks to the present moment of anyone who reads it. The present moment of John's own time was the suffering of the Mediterranean world under Rome's military domination and its globalized economic exploitation of all its colonies. Our present moment mirrors this with the colonialist domination and exploitation of the world by the so-called "great powers."
In 2016, Quaker pastor and scholar Douglas Gwyn published a powerful work reclaiming Revelation for the 21st century in his book "The Anti-War" https://quakerbooks.org/products/the-anti-war. As the Friends General Conference Quaker Books page writes:
The first part, Peace Finds the Purpose of a Peculiar People, "begins with a close reading of 1 Peter 2:4-17. It then describes how the peace testimony developed among early Friends in the 17th century. The essay concludes by applying the framework of peculiar peoplehood, derived from 1 Peter and early Friends, to the current state of the Religious Society of Friends."
The second part, Militant Peacemaking in the Manner of Friends, "examines the issues inversely. It begins with the Book of Revelation, seen as an apocalyptic unmasking of the Roman Empire’s demonic structure and a call for Christian resistance.
"Then it examines the early Quaker Lamb’s War as a nonviolent social revolution inspired in part by a socially engaged reading of Revelation. The essay concludes with fresh perspective on the Quaker social testimonies as an 'anti-war' that inverts and subverts today’s imperial militarism."
Blessings, Mike
A whore of Babylon mounted on her dragon and drinking the blood of the saints. That's NOT metaphor. It's literal truth that was happening then when The Revelation of Jesus Christ was first written, has happened throughout the millennia since then, is still happening, and will happen right up to Christ Jesus' soon Return. And "WOE" to the souls who will not repent, because their fate is eternally worse, and their own blood is on their own heads. Revelation is not angry or mean . . . just true.
How do we live with such true Truth? We can only look to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb and to the Groom who shed His own Blood for His Bride to bring It and Her into being and trust in His Love.