Pastor Ryan Gaffney

Alright, enough of the videos for a minute, let’s do another one in my ongoing series where I make oft maligned books of the Bible palatable without watering them down or covering them in cheese.

This week: Revelation!

Revelation actually isn’t so much unloved (it’s actually quite well loved by a certain contingent) instead it’s avoided and derided by… well… reasonable people.

Kooky people (who are made in the image of god and are beloved neighbors to us all) have spent way too much time treating Revelation as a crossword puzzle and cross reverencing it with out of context quotes from Daniel, Ezekiel and Thessalonians, that they have constructed a Gordian knot of their own misinterpretations. Something that is admittedly well and truly complicated.

Everyone else, sees that knot that the kooks keep talking about, realizes they don’t understand it, and slowly backs away from revelation.

The ignorance about this book of scripture has gotten so mad that many people don’t even know the first thing about it. Literally, people commonly get the title wrong, which comes from the first word in the book. It’s “Revelation” singular not “Revelations” the latter implies that it’s a collection of spooky visions while the former is about revealing something, If you get to the back half of Revelation 1 verse 1you will learn what it is that is being revealed: Jesus Christ.

So the first step then to loving this book is to forget everything you thought someone else knew about it. Get out of your mind all the pre-trib, post-mil, preterist, Zionist nonsense! And let the book tell you what it is

”To the seven Churches In Asia”

Ahh! so what we have then, is an epistle. Comparable to the Epistles of Paul except this one is from John, to 2 different churches which are located in Asia Minor (modern day Turkey). I should mention that I have had the privilege of traveling to Turkey and visiting the ruins of many of thee churches that are quite well preserved, so if anyone was going to try to claim that these churches are some kind of symbolic representation of something else, they’re gonna have to explain where all these literal churches came from. Obviously people around the time this was written, thought it was for them. And crucially, they thought they should read it!

It this is a book that is meant to be read aloud and understood by people in late first century Turkey, then we can be sure the return of the Jews to Israel, and the fall of the soviet union are not important keys to unlocking it’s true meaning. And we can safely assume that the main force of the content here is not portends of things to come, but theological assurance of things that are. In this case: Christ is coming; terrible things that happen between now and then are not proof that Christ has abandoned us; everything we go through is going to end, and it is going to be worth it.

Ephesus, onw of these aforementioned 7 churches, seems really to have taken this message to heart, and rather than predicting the day or the hour of the fall of Rome, went ahead and loved the poor and served the sick and shook off persecution that would have had them take a mark before they could enter the agora to buy and sell to become an absolute capitol of the Christian world in the second century.

It is a complicated book. Absolutely. It is difficult to understand. Yes. But it can be understood without needing a masters degree in things that were made up about it in the 1980s. Many of the images and metaphors turn out to be very familiar concepts to a first century audience. The four horsemen for instance, are a enrapturing puzzle (no pun intended) if we take them to be characters that will arrive in some Religious SciFi scenario. But are considerably less baffling as regular old metaphorical horsemen.

What do you think is going to save you? You have those Parthenian with their mounted horsemen on the literal horizon. Do you think the war will fix it? All they’ll do is bring war. And that will burned crops, famine, disease, and finally death. You knew what you need to save you? Literally Jesus.

By the time all the unlearning is done, Revelation becomes literally the clearest impression we get in scripture of Christ in Glory. Christ on his Throne, Christ Victorious over all that troubles us. And that’s not me only focusing on the silver lining, it’s just me not taking a silver cloud and making it dark by trying to use paint-by-numbers on it and getting all confused.