Revelation: 22 Studies for Individuals and Groups (N. T. Wright for Everyone Bible Study Guides)

by Tom Wright

book in fact offers one of the clearest and sharpest visions of God’s ultimate purpose for the whole creation, and of the way in which the powerful forces of evil, at work in a thousand ways but not least in idolatrous and tyrannous political systems, can be and are being overthrown through the victory

we owe it to ourselves to get our heads and our hearts around Revelation’s glorious pictures as we attempt to be faithful witnesses to God’s love in a world of violence, hatred and

They meet and merge and meld into one another in all kinds of ways. For ancient Jews, the place where this happened supremely was the temple in Jerusalem; this is not unimportant as the action proceeds. Most humans seem blind to this, only seeing the earthly side of the story. Some are aware that there is more to life, but are not quite sure what it’s all about. Ancient Jews struggled to see both sides of the story, though it was often too much of an effort. There are several things

First, this book is a four-stage revelation. It is about something God has revealed to Jesus

framework remains basic.

Second, the book takes the form of an extended letter.

telling them what he has seen (Revelation 1:4).

1:3). Like many prophets in ancient Israel, John draws freely

book functions as witness (Revelation 1:2). Here we meet a familiar problem. The Greek words for “witness” and “testimony”

They regularly carry a sense that God is ultimately conducting a great heavenly lawcourt. In that lawcourt, the “witness” borne by Jesus and his followers

everything that is to come flows from the central figure, Jesus himself, and ultimately from God the Father, “He Who Is and Who Was and Who Is to Come” (Revelation 1:4, 8). Even in this short opening John manages to unveil a good deal of what he believes about God and Jesus, and about the divine plan. God is the Almighty, the beginning and the end (Revelation 1:8); Alpha and Omega are the first and last

What would Jesus himself say about this? Did it mean that, after all, the Christians were wasting their time, following a crucified Jew rather

12-16)? 8. This

First, I said that Christianity isn’t exactly a “religion” in the sense

people mean today; it’s much bigger than that, much more all-embracing. Then I pointed out that hardly anyone actually “chooses” a faith, like someone in a supermarket picking out a particular brand of soup. Then I began to say why, granted all that, I would argue for the truth of the Christian faith and for the positive, healing, life-giving effect it has. I was only a few words into that third section, which was after all answering the question, when I was interrupted by the chair. “Oh, Tom,” she said, “we can’t say that sort of thing on air. That’s proselytizing.”

THE CREATOR Revelation 4 Scientists and anthropologists have often asked themselves, “What is it that humans can do that computers can’t do?” The writer David Lodge wrote a powerful novel on this theme, entitled Thinks . . . The heroine eventually discovers the answer: humans can weep; and humans can forgive. Those are two very powerful and central human activities. They take place in quite a different dimension from anything a computer can do. A similar question is often posed: “What can humans do that animals can’t do?” Again, some scientists have tried to insist that we humans are simply “naked apes,” a more sophisticated version, perhaps, but still within the same continuum. This is a trickier question than the one about computers, but to get straight to the point: the main difference, as twenty-four elders in Revelation 4 demonstrate, is that humans can say the word because. In particular, they can say it about God himself. Open

Genesis 9:8-13. Why is it significant

John is facing a similar problem with the little communities to whom he is sending this book. They are about to face a nightmare. Persecution is on the way, and they must be ready for it.

This, we remind ourselves, is God’s good creation, the natural order of which he said “very good” in Genesis 1 and from which, as we have seen, ceaseless praise arises before God’s throne. Why, then, has the authority to harm God’s creation been given to these angels?

Jerusalem has the names of the twelve tribes of Israel inscribed on its gates, while the foundations have the names of the twelve apostles (Revelation 21:12-14), so here the twelve tribes do not indicate ethnic Jews over against a large crowd of Gentile