In part one we considered the historical setting of the book. The book must have meant something to the original recipients, and we must seek to know what it meant before we can know what it means. Part 2 focuses on the fact that the book must have been written in a style that would have been understood by those recipients.
II. CONSIDER THE STYLE OF THE BOOK
I am talking about genre. What kind of book is this? We have gospels, history, and letters, but what about this book? Where would Barnes and Noble shelve this book? It would have to create a new category. A genre mistake is made by many preachers. They read Revelation like a “Book of Acts” with a twist, a kind of “Book of Future Acts.” Revelation tells us in great detail what is going to happen, so we are told. And we can draw up our charts and we distribute our videos. But remember this: Every single person or school of thought or church group who has done this have been consistent…consistently wrong, from the Millerites in the 1840s to the LaHaye-ites in the twenty-first century.
A genre mistake is made because we ask the wrong questions and therefore we don’t get the right answers because we impose our agenda on this book. We don’t allow God to set the agenda with the literary form that he has chosen to reveal himself. The bottom line is this: A book must be interpreted naturally in light of its genre.
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“Critics are madder than poets…And even though St. John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creatures so wild as one of his own commentators.”
G.K. Chesterton
How in the world does one preach the Revelation responsibly?
When we read this book we may, at various points, think we have picked up a demented copy of the National Geographic Magazine filled with grotesque creatures—a slaughtered Lamb standing, a dragon with its tail sweeping stars out of the sky, or a beast with seven heads and ten horns. Or we may think that we have been surfing with our remote controls and we have come upon the weather channel revealing a world gone amuck with lightning and thunderstorms and hundred pound hailstones and raging seas and fierce tsunami-like conditions. Or perhaps we may think we have picked up a jigsaw puzzle with 5000 pieces and we have no picture of what it is we are trying to piece together or a puzzle book with crossword puzzles and page after page of scrambled letters where we are supposed to circle hidden words or phrases. Or perhaps we may think that we have picked up a college level higher mathematics book with incomprehensible numbers and equations, with threes, fours, twelves and multiples of twelve, and tens and multiples of tens and times, time and half a time. Or perhaps upon reading through the book in one sitting we conclude that it reads like a poorly directed film whose director and editor did not know when and how to end the movie. Or perhaps we think someone has typed in the words “The End” on some apocalyptic search engine and we have come up with web sites never dreamed of.
Indeed, when we open this last book of the Bible we experience a collision of sounds, smells, and sights. The book assaults our senses. We see a funeral procession, a wedding celebration, a brothel, a homecoming, a banquet, a dance; we smell incense and we see falling stars; we taste bitter waters; we see storms on the horizon and a childbirth; and we feel the winds of judgment; and we hear beautiful praise choruses or dire warnings too horrible to contemplate.
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Briefly, friends, two things:
- On Monday, Dr. Bob will kick off a five-part series entitled “Trying to Keep Your Balance: Preaching the Revelation.” It is intended to give preachers, students, and readers of Revelation some guidelines for understanding and communicating the message of the book responsibly. Lots of good ideas are forthcoming, to be sure.
- If you’re viewing rlowery.com on an iPhone or mobile device, we’ve activated a “theme” that enables you to read the blog more easily. If you haven’t accessed rlowery.com on your iPhone, now’s a great time to try it.
Thanks for being a part of this work. Feel free to leave a comment or question at any time.
In the thirty-four years I have served at the seminary in Lincoln, Illinois I have had what I describe as two and a half sabbaticals. The half-sabbatical was taken from May, 1982 through August, 1983 when I worked on my Ph.D. at the University of Aberdeen in Aberdeen, Scotland. It was a whirlwind of a sabbatical because I tried to squeeze in as much study as possible. The second was granted to me from June, 2005 through the end of that year and the result was my first book, Revelation’s Rhapsody: Listening to the Lyrics of the Lamb. I believe it was my first true sabbatical where I had time to recharge and write without feeling under pressure to produce. The third began in June of 2009 and ended on December 31.
What I did on my second full sabbatical can be answered in three short sentences: I prayed. I played. I planned. Read more…