Ted Grimsrud—August 9, 2023

[This is the third in a series of four posts on the book of Revelation. The first is “Reading Revelation with an Anabaptist Sensibility.” The second is “The pattern of Jesus (Revelation, chapters 1–5).” The fourth is “Vindication (Revelation, chapters 17–22).”]

In this post, I will focus on three passages from the middle section of Revelation, starting with the seal plagues in chapter six. Then, I will talk about how chapters 10,11, and 12 provide a counter-testimony to the plagues, a picture of how God actually does gain repentance. And third, I want to spend a bit of time looking at the famous vision of the Beast in chapter 13 and point out that that vision also includes the first part of chapter 14 and ends up being another version of the story about the Lamb’s victory.

I want to take just a second first, though, for a word about an approach to Revelation that is quite different from my approach. When I first became a Christian, I was taught to read Revelation as a book of prophecies about the future. The term “dispensationalism” describes the view that human history has been divided, by God, into seven distinct era or dispensations. We are currently in the fifth of the seven and may look ahead to the sixth (the millennium—by seeing the millennium in the future, dispensationalism has also been called “premillennialism”). The seventh dispensation will be the new heaven and new earth. As I learned more about this approach, I decided that I could not affirm it. I came to see Revelation as not being concerned with future prophecy (“foretelling,” we could say) but rather speaking to its present (“forthtelling”) and, like the rest of the Bible, by speaking to its present speaking to our present. Mennonites have long debated about this. I won’t say more about this view except that, again, I think Revelation is about the present world we live in and is most of all concerned with encouraging the following of Jesus in this life, not with what will happen in the future.

The patterns of human history (6:1–7:17)

So, let’s turn to Revelation 6. We note right away the vision of the Lamb breaking the seals in the chapter—an act that leads directly to the riding forth of the fabled “four horsemen of the Apocalypse,” bringing with them plagues of war, famine, and sickness. This comes as a shock given what we see in Rev 1–5, the Lamb’s peace witness. Let’s think carefully here.

We need to keep Revelation’s master vision, chapters 4–5 in mind as we turn to the rest of the book. The final vision of the book, New Jerusalem in chapters 21 and 22 brings a vision of the final healing. That is where the entire book is heading. But in between these two visions, we have others that offer what appear to be quite mixed messages about healing and judgment. First, we have the Lamb breaking the seals of the scroll. This is the scroll the Lamb was given by the One on the throne in chapter 5 that only he is worthy to open—and we should all want the scroll opened So, what’s going on? Note, first, that all the Lamb does is break the seals. The events that follow are not the contents of the scroll. The plagues are not the contents of the scroll; they simply accompany the seals to the scroll being broken. It would seem that, in some sense, to move toward the final healing (which surely is the actual content of the scroll) will involve going through these plagues.

Continue reading “Healing amidst the chaos (Revelation 6–16)” →