Robert Lowery

Out with the old, in with the new.

rlowery.com has been updated for 2008 with a new “look and feel.” As with any technology change, there may be a few bugs to squash. If you experience any problems with the site, please let us know and we’ll work quickly to resolve it. Thanks for your continued support of Dr. Bob’s site.

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Late last year my son and I were talking about the Book of Revelation, and he made the comment that he believes that many people are growing weary of self-called prophecy experts who use Revelation to predict the future and are consistently wrong. I pray for that day to come, although certain well-know preachers, teachers, authors, and publishers certainly hope that is not the case because if this did happen retirement programs and profits would be reduced significantly!

On the weekend before Christmas day I was reading an article that focused on a return to tradition with regard to worship style among Christians and Jews (see "A Return to Tradition," US News and World Report, December 13, 2007, pp. 42ff.). I wrote in a margin a question about the tipping point: When did this trend start and who started it?

In his book, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, Malcolm Gladwell writes a fascinating study of human behavior patterns. He shows us where the smallest things can trigger an epidemic of change. He gives examples where one small change in behavior created a bigger change on a national level. He also studies the type of person or group that it takes to make that change. For example, he shows that word-of-mouth works (as does the way the internet can connect dots). He shows why and how people are pulled this way and that by trends.

Let me be more specific with regard to the book’s main idea. When small numbers of people start behaving differently, that behavior can ripple outward until a critical mass or "tipping point" is reached, changing the world. Gladwell believes (and shows convincingly, I believe) ideas, products, messages, and behaviors "spread just like viruses do" remains a metaphor as he follows the growth of "word-of-mouth epidemics." These epidemics are triggered with the help of three pivotal types. For example, there is the sociable person who brings people together, the person who likes to pass along knowledge, and the person who is adept at persuading the uninformed.

On a grand level, we should pray that this would be the case for the Christian faith and Christ’s call for us to make more and better disciples.

I pray that there will be a tipping point on a larger scale with regard to the desire of disciples of Jesus to study and apply the Word of God more accurately and more deeply. In light of the purpose of this site to discuss the Book of Revelation in particular and the prophetic literature in general, I pray that there will be a tipping point where people will reject on a mass basis those preachers, teachers, and authors who abuse God’s prophetic word given to the apostle John. May the recipients of their materials diminish so that we will honor God’s call to be obedient in light of a future that God only knows. And I guess I should pray that God will use this site and the reflections that I offer to create a small ripple.

On January 16 of this year I preached a sermon in seminary chapel as we kicked off a series on the Ten Commandments. The text assigned to me was Deuteronomy 5:7, “You shall have no other gods at my side.” Basing my sermon on this single verse, I was asked to develop the topic “Committed to Exclusive Allegiance.”

By my count, there are more than seventy allusions to Deuteronomy in the Book of Revelation. Even though this first of the Ten Commandments is not alluded to directly, it certainly is the backdrop for all that John wrote:

• It was God who gave the revelation.
• It is God alone whom we are to worship (Rev. 4:1ff.; 13:1ff.; 22:9).
• It is God Almighty who will bring about judgment on those who do not pledge their allegiance to him as well as on those who abandon their allegiance.

It is obvious that one of the key themes in both Deuteronomy and Revelation is the exclusive allegiance God expected from the people under the Old Covenant, expected from the Christians in the first century, and continues to expect from those of us today who live under the New Covenant. The people in Moses’ day succumbed to the worship of false gods in Egypt, and the three sermons by Moses in Deuteronomy were preached with the conviction that the second generation of Hebrews could well succumb to the unknown gods they were about to encounter as they crossed the Jordan and entered Canaan. And of course, Christians at the end of the first century were being tempted to worship the gods of the Roman Empire, including the worship of Caesar. I believe that America is one of the most idol-worshipping countries on the face of the earth. There is not a one of us who has not broken the other nine commandments because we first broke the one commanding us to have no God but Yahweh. The first commandment is timeless. We too must obey the first of the ten commandments, the one commandment that is the foundation for not only the remaining nine but for all commandments found in Scripture.

I invite you to listen to the sermon. Listen and ask: Are you and I willing to offer such radical allegiance while living in such a relativistic age?

Listen to the sermon on the LCCS Podcast site

Over the months that I have been posting reflections on Revelation, there are probably no other verses in Revelation that I cited more often than the first and third verses of the very first chapter. Allow me to make additional observations on these two foundational verses by contrasting translations:

Revelation 1:1

“The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John . . . ” (The New International Version)

“The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John” (King James Version

Revelation 1:3

“Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near” (The New International Version)

“Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand.” (King James Version)

There is irony on at least two levels when contrasting the translations, specifically the sections in italics. The KJV make it clear that the book is a book filled with symbols (“signify” is a word which means “to make known in symbols or signs”. I smiled as I wrote this sentence because I am reminded of one of the visitors to my site who believes that all prophecy is to be interpreted literally. Not so, says John!). Unfortunately, the NIV does not communicate whatsoever what the Greek verb meant (“made it known” is simply incorrect and does not convey the meaning of the word)! The modern translation does not get it right but the 1611 translation does!

On the other hand, the KJV translates a word in v. 3 that is not a symbol as “keep” (which means “obey”) whereas the NIV uses a symbol, “take to heart” to translate a word that is very straightforward. What in the world does “take to heart” mean? I don’t have a clue. (It is interesting that the NIV does get it right in its translation of the same word in 22:7 and 9!) Revelation is a prophetic work in the main sense of the word. Prophecy is not primarily about predicting but it is about presenting God’s Word and Will to people and it carries a call to be obedient.

So why do I yet again stress these two verses as we begin 2008? May we listen to God’s call to obedience in this marvelous symbol-filled book!

I was standing in line waiting to pay my bill at the Cracker Barrel restaurant when I noticed that the store had prominently displayed a Christmas gift, a 2008 desk calendar entitled “A Bible-Verse-A-Day.” I picked it up, flipped through it and thought: “What a dangerous gift to give a person!” “Why so dangerous?” you may be asking. Quite often I hear Scripture misinterpreted because of missed layers of context.

In an ever-increasing biblically illiterate church-culture, I cannot begin to tell you the number of times I have heard passages from Scripture quoted out of context. Again and again I have been reminded that quoting a piece of Scripture out of context means that a verse or two often becomes a proof-text for whatever pre-text we want to support. We can no longer assume that people know the context in which a passage is found. Let me illustrate. In Matthew 2:5-6 we are told that Christ being born in Bethlehem is a fulfillment of a predictive prophecy found in Micah 5:2. If you turn to that section of Micah and read the surrounding verses, you will note that even though it is not quoted, Micah 5:3 would have been recalled by the readers or hearers of Micah. This Messiah that was to be born in Bethlehem would also be a shepherd of God’s flock.

Or consider the book of James. How many times have you heard that James is like Proverbs because it is filled with one verse maxims. To the contrary, except for James 1:1, no verse in James stands by itself. Rather you must look at two or more verses to interpret properly.

Finally, consider an example from Rev. 2:10 where Jesus tells the members of the congregation dwelling in Smyrna that they would suffer persecution for “ten days.” That phrase comes right out of Daniel 1:12 where Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah ask to be tested for ten days. Where are they dwelling? Babylon. What temptation were they faced with? Well in knowing Daniel 1 and the following chapters we know that God’s people are being tempted to give into Babylonian culture. And so Jesus’ followers in Smyrna are living in another “Babylon” and they too will be tested like God’s servants of Old Testament times.

Context counts. And context means taking into account a variety of layers of literary context.

I know that as the new year begins church newsletters will be encouraging people to read a verse day, the editors of these letters even giving the verses (almost always out of context). And I fear that too many of the desk calendars will be sold and even more Scripture will be taken out of context.

I don’t know which is worse . . . for a person not to read the Bible at all or for a person to read a verse and then abuse it by not knowing what it is saying.

As we begin the New Year, may we do so with a renewed commitment to serving God so that at the end of 2008 (if the Lord has not returned, of course!) we will be found faithful, particularly in how we study and apply God’s Written Word. Accordingly, may we commit ourselves to the following:

• To interpret and apply Scripture wisely and sensitively;
• To enter into the world of the text, dwell there for a while, and wrestle with it before we try to bring the text to our world;
• To be open to surprise as we study Scripture, to be taken aback, to be disarranged by texts we thought we “controlled” or knew;
• To see ourselves as practical theologians, engaging analytically, constructively, and lovingly Scripture and the practice of ministry;
• To keep a conversation going between the text and tradition, not only looking at recently written commentaries and other resources from journal articles to websites but also in going back to the early centuries of the church;
• To ask the big questions, questions that excite the imagination, questions that may turn popular (and sometimes traditional!) readings on their head;
• To discover how to combine loyalty to Scripture and criticism (I use this word in its true sense, namely, explanation) as well as combining devotion (I use this word in the sense of devoting ourselves to using our minds when reading God’s Word) and creativity;
• To balance our personal study of Scripture with studying Scripture within the Christian community;
• To interact with others without becoming parrots of others;
• To remember that demonstrating good hermeneutics principles (e.g., interpreting the obscure by the clear, interpreting Scripture by Scripture) and exegesis (i.e., drawing out the authors’ original intended meanings through the study of grammar, the meaning of words, etc.) is both a science and an art;
• To comprehend the difference between interpretive pride and interpretive humility;
• To appreciate that the deeper we probe Scripture the more powerfully it speaks to our lives;
• To fathom that though we are able to discover the meaning of passages found in Scripture, may we always marvel at the mystery that remains;
• To be content to live with uncertainties with regard to what we perceive to be difficult texts in Scripture and the certainty of our beliefs;
• To grasp that a healthy tension will naturally and necessarily exist between interpretive status quo (May we rejoice in those moments when we become convinced, or at least more certain, that we know what a passage meant and what that passages means to us today!) and interpretive journey (There will always be more to learn about that same passage!); and
• To always remember that ultimately Scripture is the subject and we are the object.
• To pay attention to the sound counsel of Alexander Campbell’s words as recorded in Christianity Restored: