We Have to Stop Misreading Revelation

It's not as hard as you think...

Revelation is one of the most difficult, detailed books in the entire Bible. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know there.

However, I do believe the main theme is easier to interpret than you’d think. And I believe getting it right is of critical importance.

There are two major misreadings which drive disastrous application.

The first is Dispensational Premillennialism.

Dispensational premillennialists believe God operates in different dispensations of history, and we are currently in the church’s dispensation. However, they believe this is merely a temporary, stop-gap dispensation before God returns to prioritizing the people of Israel as His chosen family near the end of the world.

Some even teach the church was a hastily constructed plan B developed when Jesus came to earth and found His people weren’t ready to receive Him as King.

So, they read Revelation almost entirely as depicting things yet to come, and all of the vivid imagery as potentially having to do with the latest major attention-grabbing headlines. For this reason, every major war, economic downturn, solar event, and viral illness is cause for speculation as to whether it’s what Revelation was talking about.

And, most pressingly at this moment, it keeps all eyes on Israel as their restoration is the final plan that sees its fulfillment at the end of the book of Revelation. The claim is that God’s plan will culminate in the rebuilding of the temple and the restoration of its priestly service, and God is keeping score of which nations support Israel and which ones don’t as an extension of the promise to Abraham (Genesis 12:3). So, the US can help set the stage for Christ’s return by involving itself in Israel’s military conflicts.

The second is Historicism (the Roman reading).

The historicist views Rome as the main antagonist of Revelation. David Lipscomb and many others have extrapolated from this perceived conflict that Rome is a symbol of empire and government that extends to today’s empires and governments, such as America.

For this reason, the church should never and will never have power. The church is to remain the perpetual underdog and must always eschew societal or political influence, for that would be allying ourselves with Babylon. Because of this, Christians should not be involved in politics and should have no expectation that governments will be obedient to Christ. In fact, if they do it is a bad thing as earthly power and the Gospel are never to be mixed.

The Partial Preterist (Jerusalem) reading clears up these misunderstandings.

This view sees Jerusalem and especially the scribes, pharisees, and chief priests as the antagonist defeated in Revelation, an event that occurred with the destruction of Jerusalem and her temple at 70 A.D.

With this view in mind, most of the events of Revelation are in the past, Christ is definitively not concerned with restoring the temple as He is the one who destroyed it, and the kingdoms of this world are not His sworn enemies but rather His subjects.

Why choose this reading? I’m not going to break down all the complex details of the book here, obviously. (Though if you’re interested in further study, audio from the class my brother and I are teaching on Revelation is up for Focus+ subscribers.)

Instead, I’m going to hit a few quick high notes to give a glimpse of the preterist position.

Coming on the Clouds

Like the Gospels, Revelation points to Daniel 7:13-14 in which the Son of Man is depicted as coming on the clouds. Jesus quoted that verse in Matthew 24:30 and said that generation wouldn’t pass away until it took place. Jesus also told the High Priest he would behold the same thing. And, Revelation 1:7 says Jesus would be seen on the clouds by “even those who pierced Him.

“But He hasn’t come on the clouds yet,” you might point out. That’s only true if Daniel wrote of Christs’s final return. In Daniel 7, the Son of Man’s coming on the clouds is His ascension to the throne of the Ancient of Days to receive a kingdom. In those verses He goes up, not down. Revelation goes on to detail all that occurred in heaven starting with the ascension on to the final confirmation of His rule at the temple’s destruction.

The great city

Revelation 11:7-8 speaks of those slain by the beast in the great city which is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt. But the great city is not Rome or some future place. Rather, it’s the city “where also their Lord was crucified.” That’s Jerusalem.

Prophets slain

Revelation speaks frequently of the martyrs and their blood which was shed by the book’s villain.

Though Rome persecuted Christians, John’s descriptions perfectly align with what Jesus said of Jerusalem. For one crystal clear example, read Matthew 23:34-39 and then flip to Revelation 18:24.

Harlotry

In Revelation, the church’s persecutor “Babylon” is depicted as an evil woman, a harlot (17:3-6). Not only are this woman and Babylon the same as the city which killed the prophets, as we just saw. They are also a continuation of the OT description of Israel as an unfaithful wife for their repeated affairs with pagan gods. Jeremiah 3, Ezekiel 16, and Hosea all point to this harlotry.

Rome was not a harlot, because they did not have that kind of covenant with God. Israel did. And their death paved the way for the marriage of Christ with His bride, which Revelation depicts at its culmination after Babylon is fallen (19:7ff).

This means the point of Revelation is not “Jesus wins in the end.”

No, Jesus won at His ascension. We don’t even win in the end. He’s already been exalted, and He has brought His saints to reign with Him. The saints go from under the altar (6:9-11) to enthroned with Him (20:4). That doesn’t mean life here is perfect, but it does mean He is reigning over the kingdoms of the world and will hold them to account for how they treat His bride. We already won, and we await the full realization of that current reality.

I know this is a hotly debated issue with plenty of intelligent people on all sides, but I challenge you to read through Matthew 23-25 and then straight into Revelation from the preterist viewpoint. I believe that once you’ve seen it that way, it’s nearly impossible to unsee it. And the more you read the New Testament backward from Revelation, you see it everywhere. The Gospels, Acts, Romans, Galatians, Hebrews… it all comes together when you see God’s plan (“mystery,” per Paul) for His new covenant people.

In the event I’m wrong in my interpretation, I do believe there is still sufficient Scriptural backing to oppose the two wrong ideologies and applications discussed here. But as Revelation is the main battleground for these issues, that’s where I’ve chosen to push back against these interpretations.

Reading the book as Israel’s future or the church’s struggle against the world powers does not fit with the idea of Jesus ruling the world with His bride at His side.