The Revelation Mandate: The Foundations of the Priesthood of Every Believer

By Todd Lewis

The Book of Revelation is the summation and capstone of Scripture, showing Jesus Christ in all of his ascended glory. Intimately interwoven is the presentation of the Church as His beloved bride. Revelation clarifies the mandate and plan of action of this everlasting union and priesthood of Christ and his Church. If the Church today seems weak, in retreat, and culturally irrelevant, Revelation gives us the cure. The command to overcome is the same for the Church today as it was in Johns day. She is called, in all generations, to reject doctrines of defeat, literalist fantasy, and vain speculation about the future and to embrace Her commission to rule. Reconciling all things in heaven and on earth in Christ Jesus is the Churchs historical task and the basis of Her heavenly reward. The Revelation Mandate is a fully accessible and completely biblical study that demystifies the message of Revelation so that we all may fulfill our high calling in Christ.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Feb 23, 2012
• ISBN: 9781449740115

Todd Lewis

Todd Lewis (Ph.D., Louisiana State) is professor of communication studies at Biola University, where he teaches courses in history and practice of oral interpretation and has coached intercollegiate forensics.

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Copyright © 2012 Todd Lewis

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All scripture is taken from the American Standard Version of the Holy Bible.

Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 Biblica. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

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ISBN: 978-1-4497-4012-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-4013-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-4011-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012902237

Printed in the United States of America

WestBow Press rev. date: 02/06/2012

CONTENTS

Introduction

Preface

The Importance of Figurative Language

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Conclusion

I would like to heartily thank my wife, Langley, for her great help in bringing this book to fruition. She did the first draft copyediting and, more importantly, patiently listened and questioned me as I held forth for years hammering out the theological positions of this book. We had many a heated discussion but remain happily married.

Introduction

The book of Revelation should be foundational to every Christian’s understanding of the biblical message. Yet, contrary to its own name, it remains a book regarded as mysterious and foreboding, rarely used as a substantive subject of preaching and teaching. Revelation gives us the Bible’s last word on the work and identity of Jesus Christ but remains to many an entirely enigmatic writing. This book attempts to show that, in reality, Revelation is completely accessible to any Christian once a sound interpretive foundation is laid. John’s readers were in urgent, if not desperate, need of its prophetic and heavenly message. Every generation of Christians since then has also been deeply in need of it, probably without even realizing how profoundly so.

The form of this book is designed for the purpose of showing Revelation’s ready intelligibility. This book is not presented as a vast, academic tome with 187 pages of endnotes and bibliography. The book is not absorbed with page after page of aesthetic rhapsodizing over John’s numerous literary devices. This book is not intended to present the reader with any pretense or image that only scholars need enter here. The book is constructed primarily on the simple but profound insight that Scripture interprets Scripture. This insight could, nonetheless, allow for a voluminous commentary that sought to exhaustively show how Revelation ties all of Scripture together. It could also digress into many lengthy discussions of how Revelation illuminates all sorts of subjects of biblical import. It seemed most important, though, to keep the book concise and focused on the primary considerations. The entire text of Revelation is commented on. Passages are not overlooked or ignored as if they might not be reconcilable with the whole, throwing doubt on the book’s interpretation. The goal was a readable, coherent, and reasonably trenchant discussion of the entire prophecy. Revelation is so critically important to the life and self-understanding of the Church that I feared to risk any obfuscation of its message for the sake of a deluge of words.

In the years following my conversion, I began to notice and be bothered more and more by, what seemed to me, inconsistencies, contradictions, and just plain lack of substance in popular teaching and theology. The problem seemed mainly to revolve around a lack of a coherent and concrete eschatological understanding. I began over twenty-five years ago to try to unravel this conundrum in my own thinking. The preaching of the late, great Ern Baxter convinced me that a complete and solid answer was available if only I could find where it had been hidden. After a while, though, I began to feel that maybe the answer wasn’t available except in the form of scattered fragments of teaching and commentary. Then, in the mid-1980s, two illuminating books were published. The author had apparently been on a spiritual odyssey similar to my own. David Chilton published Paradise Restored and then followed it with The Days of Vengeance. These books were seminal in enabling me to connect the dots in my personal search for a sturdy, sober, and reliable eschatological doctrine.

This book owes a great deal to The Days of Vengeance for its general commentary but also for its insight on the proper means of interpreting prophetic writing. The idea expressed in the book of Scripture interpreting Scripture had, at first, seemed pretty self-evident to me. However, the more I considered the application of this truth the more I came to realize my appreciation of it had not been complete. Consequently, as I reread and pondered The Days of Vengeance, I came more and more to feel it was in need of some improvement and pruning. It seemed to me that Chilton had not developed some concepts adequately or followed through fully on the logic of his own explanations in places. I believed the power of the book had been lessened by including too many ancillary discussions and criticisms and by being an overly self-conscious advertisement for the theonomist school of theology. Again, I have attempted to keep this book clear and focused on the essentials of the biblical text and free of secondary discussions.

This book is not full of references and footnotes because, I believe, it simply teaches what the Scriptures actually teach. The reader will have to, and absolutely should, ask the Holy Spirit to verify to his or her own heart and mind the truth of the discussion. A book constructed as an anthology of commentary and opinions of others did not seem a fitting approach. I have relied on Josephus’s The Wars of the Jews and Philip Schaff’s History of the Christian Church for historical background. Also, every serious student of the Bible should have a dog-eared, exhaustive concordance of the Bible. The labors of Dr. Strong and those who followed in his steps to provide the Church with this kind of reference work have been invaluable.

This book is full of Scripture cross-references and it is recommended that the reader keep a Bible handy while reading and actually look them up. This will be necessary to fully grasp the scriptural coherence of the interpretation. The cross-referencing is far from exhaustive though, and the discussion will be successful if it begins to illuminate and bring to mind many other Scriptures. It is fondly hoped that this book will delight the reader by making evident how wonderfully Revelation elucidates and weaves all of Scripture together.

Todd Lewis

Preface

The Importance of Figurative Language

In our time, we frequently read and hear people’s opinions that we are living amid an accelerating cultural and social meltdown. The love and appreciation of a valued common culture are anxiously felt to be fading. The corrosive, debilitating consequences of numerous idolatries pile up ever higher about us. The events and images of the Bible and what they mean are no longer the common currency of thought and language. The biblical view of man and his purpose are of little interest to the purveyors of culture as language and cultural expression become continually more banal and base. All of this cultural defacement lies to us about the real and intended nature of things. Christians, regrettably, do not seem immune to the effects of this relentless muddying of culture and language. The debasement of language and the loss of a broad grasp of biblical imagery have, to some degree, undermined our ability to read God’s Word with depth and clarity. We find it difficult to interpret the world around us with a thoroughly biblical frame of reference and doctrinal coherence. Men do not readily distinguish between good and evil without minds formed on a sound template of biblical imagery. It is hard to reason with men about matters of truth when the waters of culture are polluted and poisonous. Regaining a well-developed grasp of the biblical meaning of things should be of keen interest to us all.

The Bible speaks to us in what should be understood as a prophetic idiom. This manner of speaking is something in which every student of the Bible must become reasonably fluent. The images and symbols Scripture uses are always consistent regardless of the time period or the human instrument of the writing. We need to know that the whole creation has been carefully crafted by God to accurately reveal Himself and His purposes to His rational creatures (e.g., Psalm 19:1–4 and Romans 1:18–20). God has not only made all things but has also endowed all things with significance and purpose beyond the simple fact of their existence. Purpose and meaning are real, concrete attributes of the creation. This disposition of things is itself a great wonder. Understanding this delivers us from a nihilist view of the world. We are thus enabled to see ourselves as living sewn into a vast and wonderful fabric of figures and symbols. We can draw meaning confidently from these things though we must be honest and accurate in doing so. The Bible uses such words as heaven, earth, sun, moon, stars, fire, water, clouds, lightning, trees, rivers, deserts, seas, bricks, stone, linen, beasts and many more to convey theological concepts. Some of these words are used hundreds of times so that we can develop a full-orbed conception of biblical terms and usage.

We also must recognize that the egocentric, sin-debased mind of man needs renewal at all points in its understanding. Constant, thoughtful, and prayerful, that is, relational, exposure to the eternal Word will steadily effect these changes. We need to be able to set aside interpretive ideas and habits of thought that appeal to man’s rationalistic assumptions but which are misleading in terms of understanding God’s Word and world. This will require of us the development of a full set of completely God-centered interpretive assumptions. Men may attempt to assign meaning to the biblical account of things in terms of politics, sociology, literary criticism, religious folklore, mysticism, or some other criteria, but we must understand that, when all is said and done, the essential significance of all things is theological.

At this point I would like to suggest that, for many Christians, an overemphasis on literalism in biblical interpretation is often a stumbling block. I would daresay that almost all of Scripture is figurative on some level, teaching us about God rather than providing merely physical description. Consequently, a commitment to literal interpretation can be a continual and fruitless exercise in trying to fit square pegs in round holes, at times becoming a reductio ad absurdum, especially if we use it as a default position when trying to interpret a passage we do not understand. It will limit the many facets of meaning a word or expression may have and not allow them to be connected with other expressions for further clarification and expansion. This makes it more difficult to understand created things as representative of theological concepts. I might even go so far as to say that literalism could be an inadvertent expression of our sinful nature in that we seek to reduce and interpret the meaning of something not in terms of God’s intent, but in terms of something we think most immediate, plausible, and easy to grasp. A good example of this in Scripture is in Acts 2:1–13. Some witnessing the events on the day of Pentecost ask the all-important question, What does this mean? Others simplistically and tragically dismiss it with, They have had too much wine. Sometimes literalism seems to be paraded about as if it were a badge of faith. I really believe my nutty, sci-fi Apocalypse interpretation so you can see how great my faith is. Literalism too often becomes a sort of materialistic reductionism that completely misses the point of what is being said or witnessed. Literalism may not necessarily be evidence of faith but rather the inability to comprehend meaning instead of just see stuff.

Americans also seem to have a kind of cultural aversion to figurative and symbolic language and expression. This sort of thing is only for eggheads, artistes, and academic types. We tend to pride ourselves on being radically pragmatic and utilitarian in our appreciation of things. Developing and savoring a culture that represents a finely honed expression of eternal verities is probably a waste of time and resources. We would rather our Bible read like a set of manufacturer’s instructions than an inexhaustible compendium of eternal truth explained to us in divinely crafted images.

The importance and usage of figurative language has been a constant theme in our weekly church Bible study. When we first tackled the subject directly, the immediate and proper response was that it seemed to pose a danger of undermining the authority of Scripture by introducing fanciful and arbitrary speculations. It was feared that Scripture, as a record of historical facts, could be explained away. The accounts of divine intervention and acts of power could be seen as only imaginative mythology. Maybe it would cause such confusion as to lead us to a blind alley left with only a Jeffersonian Bible stripped of anything deemed uncomfortable to the rationalistic mind.

I don’t think these fears need trouble us if we approach Scripture honestly and humbly. There have always been people who will deliberately misuse Scripture and we can’t allow them to trouble us and assault our faith. Scripture plainly presents itself as a record of facts and actual events. Verification by witnesses is an important biblical concept. We certainly cannot deny that Christ is the real, eternally begotten Son of God, that He actually was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary, and that He literally died and was literally resurrected. We also cannot deny that Scripture came by the genuine inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Our faith would be meaningless if these things were not literally true, but does the literalism of these facts exhaust the import of any of them? We could, likewise, truthfully and blandly discuss Christ’s death on the cross merely in terms of physical suffering or the atonement in sterile legal terms, but the profundity and power presented to us by the image of the cross remains forever incalculable. The point of this discussion is that God assigns all things their depth and breadth of significance and purpose. All things have theological connotations. They do not exist in a materialist vacuum. Romans 1:20 states that, Since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so men are without excuse. It may seem a paradox, but understanding the Bible’s figurative use of language does not obfuscate the meaning of things but clarifies and deepens it by revealing divine purpose in material things. God’s use of figurative expression is not intended to bind us in a dark prison of Nostradamus-like mysticism.

It should also be pointed out that a dishonest figure does not work. The theological signification of marriage is a good example. Marriage was instituted by God as a figure for the relationship between Christ and the Church (Ephesians 5:22–33). Maintaining an accurate representation of the figure is extremely important to God. This is one reason why sexual immorality is so strongly and consistently condemned in Scripture. Homosexual marriage can never be regarded as genuine marriage no matter how much it is dressed up with ceremonies or legal rulings. God’s figures and symbols are not to be tampered with. God’s moral instructions to us are not primarily about our physical, psychological, or financial well-being or our personal happiness but about whether we accurately display his image in our lives. To misrepresent what any of these kinds of things tell us about God is an egregious affront to his glory. It is always of the utmost importance that the imagery be understood and expressed in spirit and truth.

As was mentioned earlier, understanding God’s Word and its application are relational matters as well. The unaided, independent mind of man is no guide. We should, as a matter of habit, personally seek God for all that we wish to know and understand. The Holy Spirit was given, among other things, to illumine the Word of God for us. To earnestly and humbly ask him to do so is a spiritual responsibility. It is hard to lie and play games in the presence of God. All the assertions of men must be checked against the Word of God as witnessed to by his Spirit. This is one of the tasks of priesthood.

All of the things we have been discussing are crucial to our ability to firmly grasp the message of Revelation. First of all, we need to clearly understand that Revelation is God’s concluding statement of the meaning, progression, and objectives of His work in history summed up in the person of Jesus Christ. As such, it necessarily draws on all of the figures and symbols of Scripture from beginning to end to make all of this comprehensible to us. It is no coincidence that John opens his gospel with this: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The Revelation of Jesus Christ involves realizing that all things were made and governed by Him to make Himself and His purpose known to us. To grasp the meaning of Revelation will require us to coherently bring together the themes of God’s Word as they are typically expressed using the figurative and symbolic theological significance of created things.

Secondly, Revelation is intended to be our complete worldview template. No cultural and social meltdown is permitted for Christians. We are here given to see the world from a heavenly perspective and to, henceforth, assess and define all things in terms of it. This is one of Christ’s great gifts to us. John’s first readers would have been overwhelmed had they interpreted the world around them only in terms of the superficial rationales of men. It is crucial that we also learn the heavenly language of God who creates and sustains all things. The appearance of things will otherwise deceive and discourage us.

Thirdly, Revelation is intended to show us who we are. Being Christ’s body means it is profoundly about us as well. Our personhood is clearly defined for us, again in theological terms. This definition establishes our disposition and responsibility toward God and all of his creation. We have been elevated to a priestly, prophetic, and kingly calling. Many symbolic images