Reading Revelation Differently and It’s Impact on Missiology— Part 1.

I went to a Christian college back in the 1980s. At that school, Hal Lindsay was all the rage. He promoted a certain type of understanding of the future, and particularly a way of reading he Book of Revelation in the Bible. I knew this understanding as “PreTrib PreMill” but the more formal encapsulating term is “Dispensational Premillennialism.” I really don’t recall whether this understanding of Eschatology (study of future events) was taught as  “The Truth.” It was definitely presented favorably in contrast to other schemas.

And I was hooked. I read a lot of books and watched videos and listened to speakers on the topic. I became, if not an expert, at least a well-read aficionado on that perspective.

I don’t truly remember when that changed. However, I know back in 1992 or 1993 I was still excited when Dr. John Walvoord (a Dispensational theologian) came to speak at our church. I also know that by 1995 when LaHaye and Jenkins published the first volume of the Left Behind series, I could not muster up enough interest to buy a copy. So something was changing during that time.

Dispensational Premillennialism is based on an (allegedly) literalist interpretation of Scripture, particularly Revelation. It also seems to maintain Israel and the Church as independent activities of God with separate fulfillments of blessing. It was commonly tied to the Pretribulation removal (“Rapture”) of the church.

I think my first problem with this schema was trivial enough. Many of the DP scholars (Dispensational Premillenialist) believed the 7 churches in chapters 2-3 of Revelation were descriptive of different eras of church history. I found that interesting for awhile but I pretty quickly started having qualms. The DP scholars like to say that they are more literalist in their interpretation of Scripture than others. But here in chapters 2 and 3, it became evident how untrue that was. That section is a series of seven literal letters that were being sent to seven literal churches that literally existed in seven literal cities in the same literal region at the same literal time in history. I felt that if they really did value literal interpretation they certainly would not be reading those chapters as they did. But, on the other hand, suppose they were right. What if their listing corresponded with consecutive ages of the church? Why would we think we know how to line things up? I mean, what if Christ is coming 5000 years from now? Maybe our present situation corresponds to only the first or second church. Correlating the present era with the seventh church seemed to be self-serving rather than scholarly. It sells more books if we place the Second Coming in the next few years.

That being said, one can completely reject the futurist interpretation of chapters 2 and 3 without rejecting the DP perspective.

The second problem actually seemed to solve a different problem. In college, I was taught the telescopic interpretation of Revelation. Between the trumpets, the bowls, and the seals, the population of the world appeared to attenuate too much for the Second of Christ to have much of anyone to oppose it or even witness it. The telescopic interpretation draws from the old mariner’s telescope (spyglass). The spyglass that can fit in one’s pocket and can be pulled out and stretched (telescoped) to several times its length and then utilized.  The bowls, seals, and trumpets then are taking the same curses or tragedies and “stretching them out,” magnifying them in succeeding groups.

While that solves a problem, it opens up another one. DP assumes that Revelation starting in Chapter 4 and continuing to the end is a narrative—essentially a historical record of the future. Unless specific words point to things being figurative, one is to take what is described as literally true and in chronological order. The telescopic view of these chapters, if true, undermine it as purely a chronological narrative.

The third problem was the most serious to me. Revelation Chapter 12. Reading the passage, it is pretty clear that it is an allegory of salvific history. As such, it does not fit into the chronological narrative that people assume for the majority of the book. In fact the chapter would not even really by futurist.

But here is the end result. If the chapter in the middle of the main section of the book is not futurist, and much of the rest of the middle section does not appear to be chronological, and attempts at being literalist seems not to be used consistently by those who think it is such an important aspect of interpretation, maybe the problems with DP are much bigger than seen at first glance. Add to this the fact that the Bible does not consistently separate the Church and Israel. Add to this questions as to whether there is ANY clear passage supporting a two-part Second Coming of Christ. Add to this the fact that much of the early church had no problem with holding to a high view of Scripture while at the same time seeing the 1000 year reign of Christ as figurative language. There is a lot of reason to doubt Dispensational Premillennialism.

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But so what? Well there seems to be an awful lot of bad missiology built in a DP foundation.

I will save that for Part 2.