The Revelation Problem: (St. John's Revelation as History)

By John T. Spivey

John T. Spivey breaks Revelation free from the confusing futurist interpretations and shows that St. John wrote to the Early Church to build its faith during persecution by the Roman Empire. He further shows that St. John predicted the fall of the Roman Empire. Mr. Spivey calls on many ancient historians and Early Church fathers to present their testimonies to show that Revelations predictions are subject to analysis and proof. He shows that St. John described the desolation of Judea and the deliverance of the Christian community from the destruction of Jerusalem in the Roman-Jewish War of AD 66-70 as completed events to build confidence in what would happen in the time of Roman persecution. Mr. Spivey also explains the millennium and the end of time in fresh, new ways that are scientifically sound and that affirm the Bible at every point.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Mar 7, 2013
• ISBN: 9781449787080

John T. Spivey

John T. Spivey is a retired aerospace engineer. One of his military aircraft assignments led to a three-year stay in Australia as chief engineer. A lay preacher and Bible teacher, he is a lifelong student of history. He lives near Greenville, Texas, with his wife, Anna.

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Copyright © 2013 John T. Spivey.

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ISBN: 978-1-4497-8709-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-8710-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-8708-0 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013904031

WestBow Press rev. date: 3/5/2013

Contents

Preface

Chapter 1 The Revelation Problem

Chapter 2 A Framework of Understanding

Chapter 3 The Outline of Revelation

Chapter 4 Vengeance on the Jewish Nation

Chapter 5 Transitions

Chapter 6 Vengeance on the Roman Empire

Chapter 7 Christ Is Triumphant!

Chapter 8 The Millennium and the End of Time

Chapter 9 The Little Revelation

Chapter 10 Implications

Chapter 11 Sources

Appendix The Correspondence of Pliny the Younger and Trajan

Bibliography

For my parents,

Tom and Vesta Spivey, who gave me books.

For my wife,

Anna, who gave me the idea to write this book.

Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new things do I declare: before they spring forth I tell you of them.

—Isaiah 42:9 KJV

Preface

This book began as a series of lectures to my Sunday school class. From time to time, I had referred to interpretations of various prophetic passages of the Bible in which the prophecies are seen as having been realized in history and not as prophecies of the end of time. The people in the class repeatedly asked for a deeper study, but it took quite a while for me to stir the ambition required for such an undertaking. My first attempt, an analysis of Mark 13, was the basis for chapter 9 of this book. Still, the class wanted to hear an analysis of the mother lode of all biblical prophecy—the book of Revelation. Finally, my energy equaled my ambition, and I produced the first outline and presentation materials. Shortly thereafter, my pastor heard about what was going on and invited me to present the same material to his Pastor’s Class; mine was to be the dissenting view in his own study of Revelation. It was fun to speak while he sat still for three Sunday mornings. Most people responded to the material positively, many with enthusiasm, but one lady of a contrary view concluded that I was Satan. I was so pleased with the overall reception, even the one lady’s, that I decided to formalize the material in a book.

Herein, I present the view that John, in Revelation, addressed Christians in a certain area and era in a time of great danger of persecution by the Roman Empire. He showed them how God had delivered His people in the past and encouraged them to be faithful to Christ even to death. He promised that God knew of their circumstances, that He was in control of the future, and that he would avenge all cruelties they experienced. He predicted the fall of the Roman Empire.

The reader will quickly observe that I present an understanding of Revelation that completely excludes many of the conspicuous aspects of popular futurist views.

The view I present is solidly based on the foundation of writings from early church and secular historians and the early church writings found in the Ante-Nicene Fathers, which is a collection of all surviving Christian writings outside the Bible from before the Council of Nicaea in AD 325. All of these sources support what is found in the Bible, showing that the Bible’s predictive prophecies are subject to analysis and proof and that history is not the Bible’s enemy. It seems that a lack of knowledge about history is an enemy of the Bible.

Bible quotations herein are from the popular Holy Bible, the New King James Version (NKJV), from Thomas Nelson Publishers, unless otherwise stated. I make occasional references to the New International Version from Zondervan, and they are noted with the letters NIV. The Bible quotations are frequently integrated into the flow of the narrative. In many places, I have added italics to the Bible quotations to emphasize certain points.

In my citations, I use the abbreviations ANF for Ante-Nicene Fathers, BBC for Broadman Bible Commentary, and EB for Encyclopaedia Britannica. In addition to the bibliography at the end, I have included a discussion of my sources in the last chapter with some important points about John, the author of Revelation. This is intended to encourage the general reader to explore history as I have. I urge the reader not to ignore the last chapter, because it is much more than a boring bibliography.

I want to acknowledge the generosity of AugsburgFortress in granting permission to use excerpts from their book The History Of The Church, a modern English translation of Eusebius’ fourth-century AD Ecclesiastical History. This translation was produced by G. A. Williamson, who copyrighted the book in 1965. The first Augsburg edition was in 1975. The importance of this book in starting me down the trail to my present book cannot be overstated.

Other ancient sources are in the public domain, either in published or online form or both.

Chapter 1

The Revelation Problem

T he population of vultures in Israel is increasing—getting ready for the great battle of Armageddon when the birds gather to eat the flesh of millions slain in the battle. So said the daughter of a noted clergyman who visited our church one Sunday morning to bring us a musical solo. Her song was about the end of time and was quite good. To introduce the song, she said there were a number of things going on in the world that, to her mind, signaled the approaching end of time. The item that caught my attention then and remains in my memory now was her statement about the vultures in Israel.

There is a problem here. Why? The language in Revelation 19:17–21 seems plain enough (an angel … saying to all the birds … gather for the supper … of … the flesh of kings, … captains, … mighty men, … horses, … all people, … And all the birds were filled with their flesh). Well, in two business trips I made to Israel over the next ten years, I saw no vultures, discounting aggressive souvenir salesmen. This alone is not compelling, but in a 2011 trip to Israel as a tourist, I found a book about birds of Israel and the Near East, and read that vultures are rare in Israel. I also found that the Israeli army and a university have teamed up to operate a vulture-feeding station in the northern Negev because there is not enough natural carrion to sustain even the small population of vultures. The obvious problem is that the woman’s statement was contrary to actual facts. A further underlying problem is that many people are quick to accept without critical analysis any statement that appears to support their end-time views of Revelation and then to uncritically embellish it. I discuss this vulture story in more detail in chapter 7.

Here’s another one. Quite a few years ago, I was headed down the highway in my old Dodge truck one evening just at dusk when the sky was suddenly and brilliantly lit by a series of progressively brighter lights. After an initial start, I concluded that this was the sign that Jesus was coming, so I grabbed the steering wheel and prepared to drive right up to the Pearly Gates, not stopping to analyze the theological merit of a Dodge truck in heaven. As it turned out, the flashes were caused by a blazing meteor as it passed through cloud layers on its way to an impact west of Fort Worth. Later, as I told the story to a group to point out my disappointment when nothing happened after the sky was lit from horizon to horizon, my pastor’s wife broke in and said, Oh, so the church was raptured and you were left behind! This comical anecdote reveals one of the most common views about biblical prophecy held by many evangelical Christians: that there will be a time when Christians are suddenly taken to heaven, leaving behind a world that is about to experience great tribulations predicted in the book of Revelation. The rapture underlies a larger body of beliefs about end times that also includes some manner of a thousand-year reign by Christ in a restored political Israel.

The anecdote reveals another problem with Revelation. There are indeed New Testament passages that describe a sudden end of the world along with a sudden departure of the faithful. The key passage telling of deliverance before a time of tribulation, though, can easily be shown to refer to the time of the destruction of Jerusalem in the Roman-Jewish war of AD 66–70. The rapture/tribulation connection appears to be a combination of thoughts from Revelation 7:3, 14b, and Mark 13:14. It is a fact of history that the Jewish Christian community in Jerusalem escaped the horrors of total destruction just before the war’s final deadly throes and that the escape was based on information similar to the Markan passage and the further advice to heed the signs of the times. I discuss this in detail in chapters 4 and 9. The popular view of a rapture followed by tribulation results from an unwarranted combination of the preceding passages plus misunderstandings about other passages. The clear descriptions of the end of time in various biblical passages show that it will occur in the ordinariness of life with no warning, coming as a thief in the night (1 Thessalonians 5:2; 2 Peter 3:10).

A very popular belief is that the rapture will be presaged by an outbreak of war in the Middle East. This comes from Mark 13:7 and its parallels in Matthew 24 and Luke 21, where Jesus said, But when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be troubled; for such things must happen, but the end is not yet.

Here’s another problem with Revelation. Even a casual reading of Jesus’ words reveals them to mean just the opposite of popular usage. The very thing that many take to mean a sign of the end is rather a statement of the opposite. Wars and rumors of wars will happen, but the end shall not be yet in the familiar King James rendering. This reveals yet another problem, for this idea comes entirely from Mark 13 (and parallels in Matthew and Luke), not Revelation. The Mark, Matthew, and Luke passages are popularly thought to be about the end of time, but it is very easy to show that they deal primarily with the dreadful time of Jerusalem’s destruction in AD 70. The further underlying problem is one of profound lack of knowledge of history. As above, I discuss the import of this passage in great detail in chapters 4 and 9.

The rapture, the tribulation, and Armageddon are part of a larger body of beliefs about end times. These end-time views have several variations, but all the variations are based on what their adherents believe are literal interpretations of Revelation and other prominent Bible passages. An outcome of such beliefs about Revelation is the idea that scenarios can be put together of end-time events so detailed that the events can be anticipated and recognized.

Is there a problem here also? I heard these beliefs when I was growing up, but it always gave me pause when I came across Bible passages that indicated Christ’s second coming would appear suddenly, as a thief in the night, with no warning, as I said above. These passages in the Bible did not seem to fit with the idea of detailed scenarios that could be anticipated, for if there were many things that had to happen before Christ’s return, then His return could not be imminent: it always had to come after many other things had happened.

Revelation has captured the interest of many generations of Christians as evidenced by many of its words and images having become part of our standard language. Over the years, I have noted that the book fascinates people to the point that their efforts to understand it take on the same urgency as solving a challenging puzzle. For instance, I have seen advertisements in religious magazines for prophecy conferences: multiday events during which people go to seminars and listen to discussions of Bible prophecies and how they relate to current events. Now and then, I find a flyer on my windshield announcing an upcoming meeting in which the secrets of the end times will be revealed through the books of Revelation and Daniel.

Here’s another problem. These experiences show that Revelation suffers from having attracted too much attention from both religious eccentrics and the orthodox who are not burdened by knowing what happened in history.

Our book of Revelation even started off with problems! Eusebius, in the early fourth century AD, had this to say about all of John’s writings in The History of the Church (Book 3, section 24):

Of John’s writings, besides the gospel, the first of the epistles has been accepted as unquestionably his by both scholars of the present and of a much earlier period: the other two are disputed. As to the Revelation, the views of most people to this day are evenly divided.

Eusebius also quoted the earlier Dionysius (AD 200–265), the bishop of Alexandria, in Book 7, section 25 as follows:

Some of our predecessors rejected the book [Revelation] and pulled it entirely to pieces, criticizing it chapter by chapter, pronouncing it unintelligible and illogical and the title false. They say it is not John’s and is not a revelation at all, since it is heavily veiled by its thick curtain of incomprehensibility: So far from being one of the apostles, the author of the book was not even one of the saints, or a member of the Church, but Cerinthus, the founder of the sect called Cerinthian after him, who wished to attach a name commanding respect to his own creation … But I myself would never dare to reject the book, of which many good Christians have a very high opinion, but realizing that my mental powers are inadequate to