Musings on the Book of Revelation

I am currently presenting the Book of Revelation to an adult Sunday School class. I am basing the presentation on William Hendriksen's More Than Conquerors, which was the first book on Revelation that made any sense to me, and which approach has informed my understanding of this wonderful book ever since. In college, in the early 70's, I had read Hal Lindsay's Late Great Planet Earth, and was initially very intrigued, but after taking some ancient history courses I realized that much of his interpretation of "heads and horns" amounted to arbitrary selection of various ancient kings and kingdoms, and was not, ultimately, convincing. As the years went by and regimes changed, it became increasingly evident that the "future history" approach was useless, as the interpretations changed from year to year. Hendriksen's book pointed out that the foretelling of specific historical events was never the purpose of Revelation, but rather its work is to comfort the Church and help us to understand the world around us during the entire church age. We cannot predict the specifics of the future on the basis of reading Revelation, but we can understand current events as they unfold, and know what to expect, in general, in the future.

It has been great fun teaching this class, but the timeframe has not allowed very deep excursions into the text. We have mostly covered the large sweep of John's vision, its overview and dominant themes, but have not had enough time to really reflect on Revelation's teaching on how we should live now, in this world, today. Therefore, I thought it might be fun to start blogging on Revelation, considering each section and simply enumerating thoughts and reflections on the text. I know myself well enough not to commit to a well-organized essay on each section. If that were the goal, I would probably never start.

So, look here for further posts in which I muse upon themes and lessons and ways of seeing suggested by my understanding of this book.