Apocalyptic
Apocalyptic writing opens heaven in visions and symbols to give suffering believers hope. We learn to read the symbols of Daniel and Revelation by what the text itself says they mean and by the Old Testament they echo, and to hold first the centre that every church confesses.
Writing that opens heaven
Revelation begins, "This is the revelation of Jesus Christ" (Revelation 1:1). The Greek word behind ‘revelation’ means an uncovering, and from it a whole kind of writing takes its name: apocalyptic. Apocalyptic shows the throne of heaven and the end of history in visions and symbols. Beasts and horns appear, stars and lampstands, numbers such as seven and twelve, and angels explain the visions. Daniel 7–12 and Revelation are the chief examples; there are passages like them in Ezekiel's visions and in the night visions of Zechariah 1–6.
These books were written to suffering people. Daniel was among the exiles in Babylon. John wrote as "your brother and partner in the tribulation" (Revelation 1:9), on the island of Patmos. To the church in Smyrna he sent the word, "Be faithful even unto death, and I will give you the crown of life" (Revelation 2:10). When the beast seems to be winning, apocalyptic opens a door in heaven and shows that the One on the throne reigns. It was written to give hope, not to frighten.
Revelation is three kinds of writing. It is a letter: "John, To the seven churches in the province of Asia" (Revelation 1:4), so chapters 2–3 spoke first to those churches. It is a prophecy, and it blesses "those who hear and obey what is written in it" (Revelation 1:3): it is to be kept, not only decoded. And it is an apocalypse, speaking in pictures. The Bible Overview course traces both books in Daniel and Revelation.
Hearing a Lion, seeing a Lamb
Revelation 5 shows how to read the symbols. The One on the throne holds a scroll sealed with seven seals, and John weeps because no one is worthy to open it.
Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep! Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed to open the scroll and its seven seals.” Then I saw a Lamb who appeared to have been slain, standing in the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. The Lamb had seven horns and seven eyes, which represent the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.
Revelation 5:5-6
First, observe. John hears of a Lion who has triumphed; what he sees is a slain Lamb. What he hears and what he sees explain each other: the Lion of Judah has conquered by being slain. The English minister Matthew Henry writes: "He is called a Lion, but he appears as a Lamb slain" Matthew Henry, Revelation 5:1-7.
Second, take the text's own explanations first. Verse 6 says what the seven eyes "represent" (the Greek ties the words to them); the end of chapter 1 says what the stars and lampstands are (Revelation 1:20). In Daniel, too, the vision's interpreter explains the beasts: "These four great beasts are four kings" (Daniel 7:17).
Third, find the Old Testament the symbol echoes. Tap verse 5 in the reader, open Study and its Cross-refs tab: under the Lion stands Jacob's blessing, "Judah is a young lion" (Genesis 49:9); under the Root, Isaiah's promise of "the Root of Jesse" (Isaiah 11:10). Under the Lamb of verse 6 is "He was led like a lamb to the slaughter" (Isaiah 53:7), the very passage the Ethiopian official was reading in his chariot. The seven eyes recall "these seven eyes of the LORD, which scan the whole earth" (Zechariah 4:10).
Fourth, read numbers as pictures. John Wesley, the Anglican priest who led the eighteenth-century Methodist revival, explains: "Having seven horns - As a king, the emblem of perfect strength. And seven eyes - The emblem of perfect knowledge and wisdom" Wesley, Revelation 5:6. Read this way, apocalyptic is no code-book for matching the news. Adding up numbers to fix a date, or hurrying to pin the beast on someone of our day, puts into the text what it does not say. No one knows the day or hour (Matthew 24:36).
What all hold, and where readings differ
The Westminster Confession of the Presbyterian churches teaches that a passage whose sense is unclear is to be searched out ‘by other places that speak more clearly’ ch. 1.9. So the visions are read within the plain teaching of Scripture: Christ will come again, the dead will rise, and there will be a judgment. Every church confesses the centre of the book: the Lamb reigns on the throne, he is coming, evil will come to an end, and God will dwell with his people.
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying: “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man, and He will dwell with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God. ‘He will wipe away every tear from their eyes,’ and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the former things have passed away.”
Revelation 21:3-4
And the One on the throne says, "Behold, I make all things new" (v. 5).
But Christians read the timing of the visions in different ways. Preterist readings see most of them as the trials of the churches under Rome in John's own day; historicist readings, as the course of church history told in order; futurist readings, as events still to come just before Christ returns; idealist readings, as pictures of the struggle between God and evil that the church meets in every age. Many interpreters combine them.
So with the thousand years of chapter 20. Amillennialism reads them as the present age between Christ's first coming and his return; the Catholic Church, the Orthodox church of the East, and many Lutheran and Reformed churches hold it. Postmillennialism, the hope of many Puritans and nineteenth-century evangelicals, sees Christ returning after a long age in which the gospel has spread through the world. Premillennialism expects Christ to come first and reign on earth for a thousand years; some Fathers of the second century taught it, and many evangelical churches hold it today, dispensationalists among them. The creeds do not settle the question, and this course picks no side: What are the rapture and the millennium? and the doctrine course's Christ’s return and the millennium set out each view fairly.
The Westminster Confession says that Christ keeps the day unknown so that we may ‘be always watchful’ ch. 33.3. Apocalyptic is given not for calculating but for keeping watch with our eyes on the Lamb.
Try it
Open Revelation 1 on the map. In the map under the Jesus tab, open Revelation and tap chapter 1: it has a ‘One-line summary’ and ‘Notes’. ‘Read Revelation 1’ in the same panel opens the text.
Read verses 9 to 20 and note each picture. Where is John, what does he hear and see, and does the text explain the picture itself? Write, for example, ‘v. 20: the text says what the stars and lampstands are’. Tap verse 13 and look in Cross-refs for the place in Daniel it echoes: ‘v. 13: Daniel 7:13’.
Write in one line what the vision gives a church in trouble. Hear what he says to John, fallen at his feet (vv. 17-18), and ask what it gives John and the seven churches; then write your one-line summary.
Practice
- Practice 1 of 7
What three kinds of writing does Revelation 1 show the book to be?
- Practice 2 of 7
In Revelation 5:5-6, John hears that the Lion of Judah has triumphed. What does he see?
- Practice 3 of 7
When you meet a symbol in apocalyptic, what do you do first?
- Practice 4 of 7
What does Revelation 5:6 say the Lamb's seven eyes represent?
- Practice 5 of 7
To whom, and to give what, were Daniel and Revelation first written?
- Practice 6 of 7
Which view reads the thousand years as the present age between Christ's first coming and his return, and who mainly holds it?
- Practice 7 of 7
However Revelation is read, what do all the churches confess together?
Reading to the end marks it read; tap to switch it.
Related topics
Lessons from the Bible, the church's creeds and the Fathers and classic commentary. They take the church's long rule of reading, that Scripture explains Scripture, as their standard, bring out the Reformed confessions' teaching, and present each tradition's way of reading fairly. Scripture quotations: BSB.