One of the cool things I learned at our Johannine Literature class this weekend is that the Book of Revelation is a letter. That’s right – a plan old letter written to seven Asian Minor Churches. This may not sound that big, but it really is.
Think about it – almost every time the book of Revelation is brought up it is dealing with the End Times. If the seven churches are mentioned, it is only concerning chapters 3 and 4 (ie. the little paragraphs when Jesus to talking directly to them).
Yet, at the very beginning of Revelation, John writes, “John, to the seven churches in the province of Asia”. This shows right up front that Revelation is a letter to the seven churches… shoot, if the imagery and visions didn’t make sense for them, then the whole letter would be worthless! It’s like – “ok, I read my paragraph in chapter 3, time to pass it along to the other church. I guess John was off his rocker when he wrote the other 95% of this letter. I wonder what it says?!”
Our teacher said it like this – during the first century (and before), Rome was forcing its subjects to worship itself. It was showering everyone with images of their gods, heroes and cities. When one became a Christian, your mind would need to be purged of all the imagery and visions of the pagans. Revelation is a covert letter written to help purge the minds of the believers. John uses the imagery to help ‘sneak’ it passed Rome at a time when Nero was killing all Christians. In other words – the first century church in the Asian Minor knew exactly what John was talking about when he starts writing about various beasts! We have just lost the culture background to fully understand Revelations.
Of course, and please don’t get me wrong on this; Revelations is still an end times letter. Biblical prophecy typically deals with a situation during the time of the writer as well as with a time in the future. God used John to address the churches in Asia during their time of need – and our time as well. That is the cool part of the Bible – it reaches countless generations in countless situations. =)[@more@]
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