The Deep Things of God

by Jon Paulien

Several interesting features of the book of Revelation may shed some light on the kind of person he was. For one thing, the book contains numerous grammatical flaws in the original language (Greek). The Greek of Revelation reminds scholars of the practice writing of first-century schoolchildren (Greek samples of schoolwork exist among the papyrus documents unearthed in Egypt). So John was probably not a Greek speaker by either birth or training. Further evidence suggests that the author probably grew up in Palestine in a Jewish environment. If he had spent most of his life in Palestine and then moved to the Greek-speaking province of Asia, it would explain some of the difficulties he seems to have had with the Greek language. As a second language it was “Greek to him.”

Lack of involvement in the civil religion also forfeited social opportunities. Just as today, the party crowd was also the “in crowd” and Christians had a hard time becoming “in.” As a result, those who refused to participate in Roman civil religion became poor, powerless, and social outcasts. These were very real issues to anyone who considered becoming a Christian in first-century Asia Minor.

The book of Revelation recommends social, political, and economic withdrawal from society, if necessary, in order to be faithful to the instructions of Jesus.

The only safe way to interpret unfulfilled prophecy is to understand how prophecy was fulfilled in the past.

When you look at the big picture of the Old Testament you discover that everything centers on four major acts of God: Creation, the Flood, the Exodus, and the return from Babylonian exile.

The original Hebrew of Genesis describes the Flood (Gen. 6-9) as an undoing of Creation (Gen. 1; 2). When you compare the two stories, you notice that the Flood is a piece by piece reversal of the creation.

The biblical evidence, however, tells us that “reading Revelation as if it were written to our time and place is not appropriate for the study of an ancient book in which God meets writers where they are. We should not approach the biblical book as if John was familiar with Ellen White. Nor should we read Revelation as if the author had studied The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary. The message God has placed for us in the book of Revelation will be found in the language and perspective of the original situation in which God met John.

But here Scripture does not employ the language of the past to describe the present, rather it uses that language to portray the future. God prophesies the Exile in the language of the Exodus. Or to put it more generally: Prophets use the language of the past to depict the future.

Do you remember the principle that God is consistent? What He did for His people in Egypt, He will do again when they return from the Exile. Isaiah uses the language of the past to depict the future. But that isn’t all that is going on here. While we can describe the Exile in terms of the Exodus God is not bound to the entire pattern. Did Israel actually return from Assyria? No. By the time of the Exile, Israel no longer existed. Only Judah remained. Assyria had also been destroyed and Babylon had become the new superpower. Not only that, did the remnant of God’s people actually pass through the Euphrates River in sandals? No, bridges spanned the Euphrates River right in the city of Babylon. How do you explain the anomalies in this prophecy? God meets people where they are. At the time Isaiah was written, Israel had not yet been destroyed and Assyria still ruled the territory of Babylon. So He gave the prophecy in the context of the -49- time, place, and circumstances of Isaiah’s day. When the fulfillment came circumstances had altered the case.

When you study a book such as Revelation, the content concerns the prophet’s future, but the vocabulary belongs to the prophet’s past. We should not expect a point by point correspondence between every detail of the prophecy and its fulfillment.

This leads us to a seventh important principle of Bible prophecy that Jesus stated a couple times: “I have told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe” (John 14:29, NIV; cf. 13:19). Did Jesus say, “I’ll tell you ahead of time so that you will know the future in advance? In fact, I’ll help you make a chart that lines up all the events so that you can spot your place in history at all times”?

God is not predictable. That means that prophetic fulfillments are best recognized after they happen, not before.

I think Christians in general and Adventists in particular tend to be a little too certain that we understand exactly what God plans to do before He does it.

The primary purpose of prophecy is not to satisfy our curiosity about the future, but to teach us how to live today.

To rightly handle the writings of a dead prophet such as John, you have to begin by taking seriously the time, place, and circumstances in which the biblical author produced the document under study. This is a bottom line for the understanding of any biblical prophecy. But we must also deal with some related questions: How does the Bible text become relevant for today? How can we apply a biblical prophecy to our day, when it was written to somebody else in a different time and place and reflecting a difference of culture, ideas, and language?

Exegesis has to do with finding out what a writer was attempting to communicate to that original situation, determining his or -64- her intention for the text. It asks the question “What was the writer trying to say?” Biblical theology, on the other hand, seeks to determine the big theological picture that lies between the lines and behind what the author wrote. It asks the question “What did the writer believe about . . . God, the end of the world, how to get right with God, etc?” By way of contrast, systematic theology tries to determine what truth is in the broadest sense. It asks such questions as “What should I believe?” and “What is God’s will for me (for us)?” All three approaches to the Bible are valid, but they each view the Bible in a slightly different way. Three Ways to Approach Scripture

Although Adventists try to bring all beliefs to the test of Scripture, we should not think of the 27 fundamental beliefs of the Seventh-day Adventist Church as biblical theology. We can more accurately understand them as systematic theology. They express what the church as a whole thinks God wants people to believe and practice in today’s world. The kinds of issues addressed in the fundamentals go far beyond those touched upon in the Bible. Perhaps 30 per cent of the Adventist fundamentals need support from science, history, experience, the writings of Ellen White, and other sources outside the Bible. Other fundamentals are based on texts as understood in terms of a wider contemporary meaning, not just the exegetical -71- significance of that text. And there is nothing wrong with that. We don’t want to limit ourselves just to exegetical understandings. Scripture needs to be applied in creative ways to the issues of today’s world.

“Exegesis is the art of learning how to read the Bible in such a way as to leave open the possibility that you might learn something.”

General reading of the Bible allows the interpreter to get the “big picture” view of Scripture. It safeguards the reader against bizarre interpretations of its isolated parts. Also, such general reading helps bring you into a teachable spirit and enables you to see the text as God and the biblical author intended it to be read. Hence the recommendation, “Spend the majority of your time reading the Bible instead of studying it.”

But John’s use of the Old Testament is a bit complicated. The book of -101- Revelation never quotes the Hebrew Scriptures. It only alludes to them with a hint here and there or a word here and a phrase there. Because of this we need to examine the use of the Old Testament in Revelation very carefully. It is important not to miss those places in the book where the author intends readers to make a connection with some Old Testament passage. On the other hand, it is crucial not to manufacture parallels where none exist. So any method we might develop for the study of Revelation must give serious attention to how one determines allusions to the Old Testament.

But in what way is it appropriate for Christians to apply heavenly sanctuary imagery to the church on earth? Matthew 18:20 hints at the answer: “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them” (NIV). This is a virtual quotation of a common saying among the rabbis. “Where two sit together to study the Torah, the Shekinah glory rests between them” (Mishnah, Pirke Aboth 3:2). Jesus was alluding to this first-century rabbinical tradition to communicate a powerful message about Himself. He replaces the Shekinah glory with Himself. In His person the glory of the sanctuary is present whenever two or three gather together in His name.

William Milligan, a leading commentator on the book of Revelation about 100 years ago, was so impressed with this point that he made the following statement: “The book of Revelation is absolutely steeped in the memories, the incidents, the thought, and the language of the church’s past. To such an extent is this the case that it may be doubted whether it contains a single figure not drawn from the Old Testament, or a single complete sentence not more or less built up of materials brought from the same source.”

Weighing the Evidence One of the chief tasks of the intrepreter of any passage in Revelation is weighing the level of probability that the author of Revelation had particular Old Testament passages in mind. If the interpreter considers it certain or probable that John had an Old Testament text in mind, that text and its Old Testament context should be considered in the interpretation of the passage in Revelation. If the allusion is only possible, that text and its context can be used as supporting evidence for a conclusion about the text in Revelation, but should not form the primary basis. If the potential allusion is judged uncertain or a nonallusion, it should be ignored for the purposes of interpretation. Definitions Certain Allusion Very strong verbal, thematic, and structural parallels; or virtual quotations (eight to 12 verbal parallels) Probable Allusion Strong verbal, thematic, and/or structural parallels; verbal parallels of four to seven words without a structural parallel Possible Allusion Some verbal (two or three words) and thematic parallels, but without structural support Uncertain Allusion Weak verbal or thematic parallel, without structural support Nonallusion No evidence of verbal or thematic parallels

If we are not careful, we might get the impression that the beasts, the vultures, the darkness, the earthquakes, and the hailstones are what the book of Revelation is all about. But they are more like the general landscape of the Illinois prairie. The true center piece of the book of Revelation is not war or catastrophe, oil or the Middle East—it is Jesus Christ and Him crucified. His presence permeates the book even when it does not name Him. To read this book -153- without gaining a clearer picture of Jesus is to miss the key point.

The book of Revelation is not “The Revelation of the Middle East,” nor is it “The Revelation of Modern-day Israel.” Rather, it is “The Revelation of Jesus Christ” (Rev. 1:1) and of His church (Rev. 22:16)—about Jesus and the people who are in relationship to Him (Rev. 17:14).

So where is Jesus Christ in the plagues of the fifth trumpet? Where is -172- Jesus in the Abyss or the darkness? And where is Jesus in the stings of the locust/scorpions? If you can find Him in this passage, He must be everywhere in the book!