Along the Way: A Better Interpretation of the Book of Revelation

by

Perspectives

Oboedire | July 24, 2025

In my PhD studies in Wesley Studies, one focus was to assess John Wesley's spirituality in relation to the Book of Common Prayer. To my surprise, the lectionary readings in the 1662 edition of the Book of Common Prayer gave scant attention to the Book of Revelation compared to other biblical books, and that only with respect to the opening and closing chapters. John Wesley himself noted the difficulties surrounding the “intermediate parts” of the book, saying that the wisest and most devout scholars he knew approached the book with caution.

Contrast that with the cocksure certainties that have attended the study of the Book of Revelation, complete with current countries attached to countries named in the book, and with our calendars correlated with the book’s time frames. The difference in spirit (hubris instead of humility) has given rise to the botched interpretations of the Book of Revelation that I referred to in the previous post. And that against Jesus’ own words that no one, including himself, could know the times and seasons of the end of the age. That, he said, is the sole prerogative of God (Mark 13:32-36). Rather than accept his teaching, some in my lifetime have made “knowing all things apocalyptic” a multi-billion dollar industry that includes gurus, movies, books, conferences, and related merch. Their botched interpretations have not only confused many and frightened others, it has caused harm in the process. It is fanning the flames of faux Christianity parading in our politics.

There is a better way to interpret the Book of Revelation, beginning with the spirit of humility that’s necessary for reading it at all. Added to this are insights from the book itself and twenty centuries of credible scholarship related to it. I begin with two overarching elements.

First, the context of Mystery. Apocalyptic literature majors on metaphors and similes. We do not take the Book of Revelation literally because the book itself does not take itself literally. The Book of Revelation is full of uninterpreted symbols, the meanings of which were known to the original readers but not to us. There is no glossary of terms to define and explain things.

Second, the reality of blended times. The first place we see this is in Jesus’ answer to the disciples’ question, “When will these things be?” (Matthew 24:3-31). Woven into his response are both imminent and farther-off occurrences, all without a calculation that ties them down to a particular time.  The Book of Revelation is even more so–a blended book complete with its own now-and-later passages arranged in ways that sometimes makes it impossible to know which is which. All we have to do to see this is to read varying commentaries about things the scholars themselves cannot agree.

With these overarching points in place, I will add two key hermeneutical dynamics that yield a better interpretation of the Book of Revelation.

First, the opening and closing message:  the revelation is about things that “must soon take place” (1:1, 22:6). This phrase frames the Book of Revelation. That these words are often not mentioned by interpreters of the book is astonishing. They do not limit everything in the book to a 1st-century CE message, but they do put the brakes on the end-times prophecies falsely alleged to arise from the book. The fact is, nearly all of the messages in the book can be read in the context of the Roman empire. Even “the new heaven and new earth” can be read as the early Christian vision for the world liberated from the shackles of imperialism. But even if we read some passages with a farther-out timeline than that, it is likely that most of the symbols apply to the current realities in play in the Roman empire when the book was written.

Ironically, from a textual standpoint, this makes the passages more difficult to interpret because the signs and symbols were “coded” or at least connected to the culture. Identifying the readers in seven cities/churches ties the text to the time even more. For what may well have been safety concerns, John communicated an important message to the Christians of his day using concepts largely unknown to us.

Second, the book is powerfully Christological. The book is John’s recording of “the revelation of Jesus Christ.”  At the time this book was written, messianic theology was steeped in Jewish and Aramaic content more than has come to be the case in some circles today. Our lens has become Euro-centric; in John’s day, the lens was Middle Eastern. Lynn Huber sums it up, “Revelation emerges within the context of first-century Judaism.” [1] All that this expresses and implies is beyond my training. [2] But it must not be omitted. A better interpretation of the Book of Revelation requires it. Woven into the book are the threads of language and imagery drawn from the Hebrew scriptures and Jesus’ own Jewish and Aramaic contexts.

This second point plays out in the text in a very clear way. Jesus Christ wins. The mightiest empire and wiliest emperors do not. The Book of Revelation is a theology of hope for the Christians then, not an eschatological handbook for Christians later. In the ensuing two thousand years, with its principalities and potentates, the Book of Revelation lands in our day with the Risen Christ offering the same hope to us.

When all is said and done, we do not need to understand all the signs and symbols, and we must not make the book an end-times calendar that it was never meant to be. Instead, we can read John’s letter as an inspired writing that gives us hope in our day just as it did in his. [3] That is a better interpretation of the Book of Revelation.

[1] Lynn Huber, “The Revelation to John” in The SBL Study Bible (HarperOne, 2023), 2166.

[2] Amy Jill-Levine’s books shine necessary Jewish light on Christology as does Neil Douglas Klotz’ writing about his Aramaic context.

[3] Michael Gilbertson, God and History in the Book of Revelation (Cambridge University Press, 2003) interfaces the theologies of Wolfhart Pannenberg and Jürgen Moltmann with the Book of Revelation, showing (among many other things) that apocalyptic literature is intended to be a genre of hope.