Reading Revelation Responsibly: Uncivil Worship and Witness: Following the Lamb into the New Creation

by Michael J. Gorman

sustain the people of God, especially in times of crisis, particularly evil and oppression. Apocalyptic literature both expresses and creates hope by offering scathing critique of the oppressors, passionate exhortations to defiance (and sometimes even preparation for confrontation), and unfailing confidence in God’s ultimate defeat of the present evil. Usually articulated in symbolic, even cryptic, language, this hope means that apocalyptic is also the language and literature of resistance. Richard Horsley contends that “[f]ar from looking for the end of the world, they [Jewish apocalyptic writers] were looking for the end of empire. And far from living under the shadow of an anticipated cosmic dissolution, they looked for the renewal of the earth on which a humane societal life could be renewed.” 7 Apocalyptic literature enables such hope and resistance by revealing the truth about unseen present realities, such as God, heaven, and hell, and about unknown future realities, such as judgment and salvation. An apocalypse can therefore be a vertical, or spatial, revelation about the present, or it can be a horizontal, or temporal, revelation about the future. Sometimes, as in the case of Revelation, an apocalypse is both. In the last book of the Bible, visions of God, Christ, and believers and martyrs in heaven (spatial, vertical) are intermingled with visions of coming persecution, judgment, and salvation within a new heaven and earth (temporal, horizontal). Sometimes an apo...