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

by Michael J. Gorman

even Christian systems and values, not some putative one-world government, for evidences of that which is antichrist. Focus on the book’s call to public worship and discipleship. Revelation calls Christians to a difficult discipleship of discernment—a nonconformist cruciform faithfulness—that may lead to marginalization or even persecution now, but ultimately to a place in God’s new heaven and new earth. Revelation calls believers to nonretaliation and nonviolence, and not to a literal war of any sort, present or future. By its very nature as resistance, faithful nonconformity is not absolute withdrawal but rather critical engagement on very different terms from those of the status quo. This is all birthed and nurtured in worship. But we need to be diligent, because, as Harry Maier contends, we in the West are now largely like the Laodiceans, and many of us need to read Revelation as such.30 If he is correct, we are in very bad shape but do not know it, so conversion to true worship and discipleship will be a difficult journey. Place the images of death and destruction in Revelation within the larger framework of hope. The death and destruction in Revelation are symbolic of the judgment and cleansing of God that is necessary for the realization of the hope offered in Christ for a new heaven and new earth in which God and the Lamb alone reign forever among a redeemed, reconciled humanity from all tribes, peoples, and nations. The church bears witness in word and deed to thi...