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| The W.O.B astride the Beast |
Some times reading John's fantastical coda to the Bible, I wondered if the name Revelation was meant to be ironic. Because without a doubt, it has to be one of the most confusing books of the Bible. The beasts, the creatures, the numerology (from 666 to the reoccurrence of the number seven), the whore and the woman in white. It's a lot, folks. The Revelation of Jesus Christ seems raise more questions than it does reveal answers.
Yet many believers claim to have unlocked the mysteries of Revelation, not least among them the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Revelation has always been deeply important to our church. The Three Angels message of Revelation 14 is baked into our identity, not least because Adventist theology teaches that the messages of the three angels are our unique task to deliver (see this summary written by the current president of the Seventh-day Adventist Church). Essentially, the three angels are the Seventh-day Adventist church. Our reason for being is tied up neatly in those three clarion calls from heaven: First, fear God and give Him glory, for the hour of His judgement has come. Worship Him who made heaven and earth. That's the investigative judgement (which unbeknownst to most people including many Adventists is understood to be ongoing right now. . .and could end at any moment. There's a whole blog post to be written on this hoary old doctrine) and the seventh-day Sabbath--both distinctive Adventist doctrines. Babylon is fallen, the second message is a reminder that the rest of Christianity has been corrupted by doctrines rooted in Catholicism. And the third and final message, a warning that anyone who worships the beast and his image will experience the full force of God's wrath and eternal punishment. Everything fits perfectly and it's kind of amazing to be essential to Bible prophecy.
Of course, Adventists don't have a monopoly on interpretations of Revelation. Other denominations have their own reads on the Apocalypse--their own ideas of who are the 144,000, when will/did the seven last plagues occur, who is/was the beast, the woman, the dragon. There are four major approaches to interpreting Revelation (click here for an excellent summary of these different interpretations. Adventist theology falls squarely in the historicist camp).
I don't feel qualified to vindicate or critique the Adventist teachings on Revelation. I tend to be a bit arrogant, I fear when it comes to spiritual things. Not so much in being certain of what the Bible says, but more in being certain that other people--people who have spent years in careful study--don't really know what they're talking about. Before I can truly dismiss any Revelation teaching, I'd have to, at the very least, do the work of diving in deep myself. Yet, I also don't know that it's wise to just take the word of the nearest Bible scholar, assuming surely they must have gotten it right.
So where does that leave me? Probably not anywhere that would please the hard-liners in my church since it's going to sound rather Idealist. But it's the only place I can, in good conscience, be right now.
As I read through the book I found bits and pieces that I thought I kind of got, but nothing really came together in a cohesive whole until the final chapter or so. For me Revelation works when I take a step back from trying parse out the exact meaning of all those symbols and look at the big picture.
Much is obscured to me in Revelation, but this is clear: Hope of death's destruction, the triumph of love, and the end of evil. The how is not as important as the promise that it will happen.
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| We have this hope, and long for this day. Even, so come Lord Jesus. (Interesting side note: As I was looking for an image to close out this entry, representing the Second Coming, I came upon this picture on a Catholic website. The article is talking about the End Times, and what's fascinating is how familiar much of it sounds! I'm embarrassed to admit that I didn't know Catholics even believed in a literal second coming.) |
