Cwic Show- Book of Revelation Explained - Ian Paul

book of revelation cwic show ian paul Apr 21, 2021

In this episode, The Book of Revelation Explained, Dr. Ian Paul talks about interpreting the Book of Revelation. He calls the book "the most remarkable text you will ever read." We discuss the language that John uses to write the book, whether it was a vision, who John is writing to, numerology, the mark of the beast, the seven seals, and many more things about this misunderstood text.

Ian Paul's Book- Revelation, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries - https://amzn.to/3antiDR

Ian Paul's Website- https://www.Psephizo.com

Raw Transcript

all right welcome to the quick show i am

with

our guest here this is dr ian paul dr

paul is someone that i have

followed for a couple of years he is in

i'm going to say the the the u.s person

here you're in nottingham

i am in england and uh

uh so a little little uh discussion here

across the pond

you are an assistant minister with the

anglican church that's right

in nottingham let me go over this also

here on your

on your website say fizzo.com

i'll go over that a little bit more a

little bit later yeah you put yourself

down as a theologian

and author and i've read your books

speaker academic consultant

adjunct professor with a fuller

theological seminary that's interesting

yeah uh again associate minister at st

nix nottingham managing editor of grove

books yeah and a member of the general

synod

so and many other accolades i could

throw on here in fact i want to talk to

you a little bit about

uh eventually about your dissertation

even oh okay

that you did as well i think that wasn't

that on chapter 12 of

revelation yeah i was 12 and 13 yeah

marvelous marvelous okay

so what i'd like to do here is

being that you are an expert on the book

of revelation

is talk a little bit about first what is

this book what is it so many of us

we hear the stories about the book of

revelation we see the images the four

horsemen the throne of god

and it's so foreign to us that

oftentimes it's difficult to engage with

this text

and to dip in and try to understand it

because it's it's from a very different

time period from a very different

culture

and it's written unlike not unlike

all of scripture but unlike most of

scripture that we get in the bible

uh you wrote this in in your book

and you said revelation is the most

remarkable text you will ever read

many people are starting to think well

wait a minute what does that mean and

then you said elsewhere it is the most

extraordinary piece

of literature ever written by a human

being

well i think i'd stand by that greg yeah

no by the way i'm really impressed you

read the book you're quoting from it so

i'll just wave it for those watching

from there

this is a commentary in the ibp tyndale

yes and we will definitely be linking to

that

that's fantastic thank you as i

appreciate that yeah i think it's

amazing i mean i

it was interesting i i came to faith i

ca i was i had a church background the

roman catholic church

but i didn't find personal faith there i

came to faith uh through a church of

england and evangelical church of

england church

um and i actually i actually came across

the book of revelation very soon after

coming to faith so it was kind of my

kind of slightly weird introduction i

was actually attending the roman

catholic church and going to the

anglican church and then midweek i was

going to a baptist church bible study

group

wow and so i was i was a pretty mixed up

kid there but that's that's all very

good isn't it it's good good you know

ecumenical engagement

um and we were the leader of the group

said i think god's telling us to read

the book of revelation we sort of went

i mean you know i i hardly read the

scriptures at all myself i was beginning

to be inducted into this

so you know i've been i'm i'm nearly 60

now so i've been

i've been doing this for quite a few

years um and i still every every week

i discover something new about this book

i think it is it is extraordinary

i would say any university that has a

course on world literature it really

should have the book of revelation front

and center

and the reason for that is because it's

a combination of um really unusual

language it's extraordinarily carefully

structured

it's um uh it's extra

it makes a remarkable use of the old

testament i once spent a week in my life

counting all the examples of

psych illusions to the old testament and

turns out there are 676 and it's 404

verses now that's pretty saturated

and actually teasing those out is a

whole kind of discipline in itself

um but not only i mean it's not only

remarkable as a text it's also

remarkable in the influence that it's

had over

uh christian thinking about politics

about um

christian worship uh art if you i mean

you go into any

any any well i don't know you don't have

so many inner states that are not

on our side of the pond we've got a lot

of old church buildings with stained

glass in

and you you go and you look at historic

that history

of christian art represented in stained

glass i would reckon that about 50

of the images that you find there

actually come from the book of

revelation

you know in our worship if we ever use

the word alleluia where does that come

from it comes from the book of

revelation

now i know some of your listeners will

be saying no hallelujah is a hebrew word

from the old testament

that's true but english language

translations translate that as praise

the lord

the only place in english bibles we find

the word alleluia is in the book of

revelation because john

one of his quirks is that he actually

carries over hebrew language into greek

in his text so so i would say that that

in terms of worship in terms of

christian thinking about all sorts of

subjects in terms of

christian art this is this is a this is

a book of unparalleled influence so

it is extraordinary so i think i think

i'm going to stand by my claim there

okay very well you're substantiating

this what

is i mean if you were if you were to

encapsulate

this book this text yeah

what what what is the book of revelation

well i think i think greg what you said

at the beginning

is absolutely key that is it is strange

so you talked about the fact that it was

written at a different time

it's written in a way that we're not

used to uh it's using

language that we often struggle to make

sense of and i think that's that's

that's the one thing i would want people

to take away from this it is a

strange book in a technical sense now

the reason i say that is because

there are so many attempts in um the

english speaking world to domesticate

this

to systematize it so a lot of people

would say ah

okay what you need is my particular key

to reading it and when you read it it

fits into this system and for example to

take one reading

it predicts events on this time scale so

it's telling us about the end of the

world

now the problem with that is that when

you do it the book is no longer strange

and it and it needs to be strange we

need to recognize this

you know when we when we read a text

from a past culture we are traveling

into a foreign country

and unless you can really inhabit that

country and understand its customers

understand its language

so that you move from where you are into

the land the other country into that

world of this text

that's the way to understand it what we

try and what most reading strategies try

and do is they try and pull it

out of its context and pull it into the

modern world into our context

and in the end what we do is we silence

the book because when people give you

this sort of time scale or a scheme of

reading whatever

what they end up doing is they actually

end up telling you about their scheme

not about the book of revelation and i

think i find one thing i find it really

sobering is that

as you said you hesitated when you said

we don't have anything else in the bible

written like this well of course

actually as you know we do

we have the book of ezekiel we have the

book of daniel

we have sections of isaiah and uh isaiah

is the most influential old testament

book on on the

book of revelation ezekiel is up there

with him as well in terms of shaping

the text and then of course in the new

testament we have matthew

24 and mark 13 which often called the

the little apocalypse the little

revelation and jesus uses the same kind

of language we find he uses this cosmic

language of destruction and he talks

about you know the sun will be darkened

and the moon will turn to blood and the

star support and all that kind of thing

now what i find really really striking

is that you know we're very happy when

jesus teaches us parables about

sowers sowing seed and you know

different kinds of soils or

uh god being like a shepherd and all

that kind of stuff

what's really striking is that when

jesus teaches these parables in mark

chapter four for example

his disciples say jesus we have no idea

what you're talking about please explain

this is a mystery to us

when they sit down in the mount of

olives and jesus says ah the moon will

the sun will be dark and the moon will

turn to blood and the stars will fall

from heaven

the disciples go that's fine

we know exactly what you're talking

about

so that's a reminder that

revelation is strange to us because

we're at a cultural

distance from it not because it's

strange in itself it's different from us

and that's what makes it a challenge so

i say to people when

i'm wanting to read the book of

revelation it's

if i'm teaching this i'll just say look

let me take it let me take a bible and

look

the bible has a front cover and a back

cover and those are really important

because they tell you

what's in the bible and what's not in

the bible now obviously from an lds

perspective

you have another book too but for

mainstream christians we have the bible

now the question is is revelation inside

or outside the bible

and it's not a trick question it's

inside i say okay fine so in that case

why would we interpret it or treat it

any differently from any other part of

the bible

and that's a good question i mean you

think about it martin luther for example

in the early part of his life he wanted

to keep it out of the canon

absolutely well it wasn't until later on

that he started making references to it

and bringing it in a little bit more

but again this was by the time martin

luther writes so what what are we

talking uh 16th century 15th century

yeah 15 yeah yeah so he's

he's already distanced i would say right

from that culture and from that language

and maybe

too distance from too distanced from the

old testament

to to bring this in and say okay

i can understand this more but already i

mean you know 500 years ago or so

yeah there's already a distance it seems

from oh but it's it's even worse than

that greg because actually

by the second generation after after

john wrote it in the first century

they'd already forgotten it now there's

a really interesting illustration of

this and that's

um uh you know the most notorious verse

revelation which is revelation 13 18

which is

uh this calls for wisdom let him who's

understanding calculate the number of

the beast

it's a man it's the number of a man and

it is 666.

now we'll come we'll come back to this

but actually in terms of scholarship

there's a really clear

consensus since the 1840s

exactly what that number refers to and

there's been a huge amount of research

done in the last 20 30 years which

reinforces that understanding

now it's clear that by the second

century when you read patristic

commentators on this you already find

they've forgotten the meaning of it

but but actually i think we can be

really confident what this numerological

this this is a means now you mentioned

my blog is called sofidzo

that's the greek word for to calculate

to to add up

and and it comes from to measure right

to measure

even even maybe to judge a little bit

well it does because um it comes from

the greek web cephos which is a pebble

and you use a pebble for doing two

things in the ancient world use a pebble

for counting

uh so you know like little counters or

beans or whatever

you also use it for casting a vote so

in in modern greek sephiroth means to

vote uh for a political party

but in the ancient world it also meant

to count in other it is actually saying

well you know we either use it to count

or we use to use it to work out who

counts

as it were you know it's interesting so

this has a reference to uh

just just interjecting here this has a

reference to 217 then right

revelation 217 yeah absolutely okay so

revelation 217

it's interesting also because i've done

a little bit of research on this but

it's you know the greeks

anciently used to use in court

yeah they would use a as far as a a

verdict

yeah guilty or not guilty they would use

a white pebble

for innocence and a black pebble for

guilty you know kind of a vote right

exactly exactly and that's why it's so

significant to uh

uh to the the christians that john is

writing to because it you know it says

jesus is the one who has the

the correct verdict over them right um

but

but the fact that the fact that you know

this this the meaning of this verse was

actually forgotten

from the second century through to 1840

also tells us what a challenge this text

is so

uh but i think i think modern readers

most of us we're challenged on a number

of different fronts first of all we

don't know our old testament

so we're not going to rec we're not even

going to recognize this

illusions that john is using all the way

through this text

and therefore actually we're going to

misunderstand some of the things he's

saying so for example you know you

mentioned one of

one of the um compelling images in this

text is the four horsemen

yeah i mean you'll find that everywhere

when i was a teenager i remember

watching apocalypse now

uh you know about the vietnam war and if

you've noticed that the posters

are for the publicity posters for that

had four helicopters on them which is

signifying the four interesting

apocalypse you know it's a

it's a really you know huge cultural

meme that's people don't even know where

it comes from

but you get the four horsemen in chapter

six you get the four winds of heaven in

chapter seven

now what's the connection between the

two you only know that if you recognize

that these are illusions to the old

testament prophet zechariah

and zechariah zechariah actually talks

about four

horsemen who are the four winds or

spirits

so unless you can see those things and

most most ordinary readers do not know

their old testament so that's one

challenge to us the second challenge is

the kind of writing maybe we'll just

come back to that we just don't rec we

don't

you know unlike the the disciples who

are very happy for jesus to talk about

these things

uh on the mount of olives we we it's a

strange kind of writing to us although

actually i argue

in my thesis my research but also in the

commentary i argue that

actually some of the ways john uses

language is pretty familiar to us

through for example the kind of vivid

images you find in

uh political cartoons these days um

we've got a particular tradition in the

uh peter brooks in the times does really

sometimes quite off-putting visual

images of politicians and if you

describe them actually

you'd actually find yourself writing

something quite similar to apocalyptic

imagery or if you know if you go back to

second world war and

you talk about an eagle is fighting with

a bear

now we would know that the eagle is

america and the bear is russia and

you know you start you start writing

this down it's beginning to sound pretty

apocalyptic

that's another another difficulty and i

think a third one which is one of the

ones

i find most fascinating not least

because i i was a mathematician

before i was a theologian is that

revelation uses numerology in at least

four different ways

and again this is part of going into

this other culture of the ancient world

where

if you just realize again i think most

ordinary readers don't realize

in the ancient world they did not have a

separate number system

so the number system we use we call it

arabic well that

arose in the seventh or eighth century

so if you live in a world

where you use letters to designate

numerical values

then numbers suddenly become much more

important and also they become much more

connected with

written language and and that's where

for instance the 666 calculation comes

from

well we can see this in psalms right

typically if you see a header on the

psalms

you've got a number there which is a

letter it's a hebrew letter that you're

going to see

absolutely absolutely and it also means

that

uh in a world where there were very few

texts

compared with the world we live in we're

just saturated with words now

then you know you actually those who

write text

don't write very many of them uh and so

they think very very carefully and i

would i would say that

there isn't a single word in the book of

revelation that john hasn't you know

weighed very very carefully

so we we just that's again a very

different approach to language into

writing

and it just means we need to slow down

and ponder very carefully exactly

what john is saying why is he saying

that this why is he using the particular

words

um there are a whole heap of other stuff

as well there's a i just last week was

involved in

examining a phd which was very good but

it was on the grammatical irregularities

of revelation it's got some very odd

language in there and one of the

one of the fierce debates in the

academic the economic world is exactly

what's going on there

mind you just there is that one warning

i mean you mentioned luther and his

reluctance to engage with it

in the jewish tradition ezekiel chapter

one the rabbis always said that that

no one should study ezekiel chapter one

on their own

because it is too mysterious and too

lofty for them and you could only do

that if you've been a rabbi for many

many many years

interesting it comes with a health

warning maybe we should do the same with

the book

sure sure yeah here in the us we'd say

you need a surgeon general

uh uh exactly there so

what the name of the book

yeah right apocalypse yeah

we see you know means revelation

uh pulling out from under unveiling uh

is this a vision

right i i've read different scholars

that say yeah this is a vision he's

seeing it

some others will say it's a it's several

different visions

some will say no it's just the type of

of language that he's writing in in a

certain tradition

yeah and and therefore he's just

he's bringing different litter literary

elements into this

yeah are we are we getting a a

play-by-play of a vision that john had

well that's a really interesting

question and again one thing i find

fascinating is that's a question when

i'm

talking about revelation in a a regular

church context

if i can talk about engaging with

ordinary readers of the text

that's the kind of number one question

they have one things i found

strange though when i wrote my own

commentary is that as i look through the

commentaries i got on my shelf i've got

just over there 43 different

commentaries

and very few of them actually engage

with that question

now there's one simple answer which is

that no it's not a vision

visions are things that you experience

what we've got is a text so at the very

best what we've got

is a vision report and as you mentioned

you know the

the vision report so real quick sorry

what's the difference between him seeing

a vision and giving a vision report

what's the correlation there

well i don't think you can answer that

unless you've had a vision i mean i

don't know if you've ever had a vision

a vision a dream sure okay there's a

dream so here's the thing

when you have a dream and you try and

describe it to somebody

what's going on i mean do you do you

actually

very difficult interpretation yeah

exactly very it's very number one it's

very difficult number two

there isn't a really obvious correlation

between the words you use to describe

your dream and what your dream was

actually like because a dream is a

very different kind of experience than

than a description of it

thirdly you you use language and ideas

that you are familiar with and that the

people you're talking to are familiar

with as well so

you know people's people seem to assume

again ordinary readers will often assume

that john is describing something

literally so there was a literal throne

and literally someone's sitting on the

throne

as if it was a painting and john is just

describing the painting and therefore

very often people try and turn it back

into a picture

now there's several problems with that

one is that john is living in a

particular culture so

you can't avoid the fact that you know

even when we're describing a dream we

make

reference to things in our own culture

and our own language

so you can't divorce it from that number

two a lot of what jerome describes is

impossible

so for example very simply you know in

chapter 4 around the throne there was a

rainbow like an emerald

well believe you me rainbows are not

like emeralds

now rainbows are muddy colored and

arched in a bow emeralds are solid and

are green

so it's literally impossible um you can

and again all that language of the

the heavenly furniture and the

arrangements actually

that's why people really struggle to

draw pictures of it because it doesn't

literally make sense

just to take another well-known example

in chapter one jesus the vision of jesus

the the

new jesus at one moment he looks like

the ancient of days in daniel 7 because

he's got white hair

and another moment he looks like an

angel in daniel 12 because he's wearing

a gold

band around him in another moment he

looks like a high priest who's wearing a

linen

cloak robe that goes down to his feet

he's very specific about that

uh his voice sounds like the voice of

many waters well that's a that's

language

from ezekiel about the voice of god so

you've got actually got a composite

he actually here's a here's another

thing he actually has breasts like a

female god

the gold band is not around his chest

stephos it's actually around his

his breasts right uh so so so you have

here

jesus who represents god to us who is

also the messenger from god like an

angel but he was also a high priest

who is also displaces the function in

the ancient world of goddesses he makes

provision

uh for us in the way that the goddess

does so so

how how do you just how do you describe

that as a coherent picture it's not

it's not easy and i don't i don't know

we see it

yes we see oftentimes in the scriptures

where we have what i believe this is

this is

gospel by greg here several titles

of of the lord right of jesus of jehovah

right over and over again you know

isaiah everywhere else we get these

i believe their titles and i believe

they're similar to what you might have

there

in the uk you know you've got uh prince

philip just passed away

yeah right he was the duke of edinburgh

he was the prince consort exactly so you

have these titles

that are almost you know that that you

get a match of of

god as king and these are titles that

have a certain representation

and meaning that we don't really

understand as much today

uh on this and and so that's what it

seems like to me is what you're

describing here

there's there's different roles that

he's playing

uh different interpretations means

different things to different people

yeah and therefore what you've got is a

composite picture

and it doesn't really make very much

sense to to

literalize it on the one hand on the

other hand that's not the point

you know his feet are like burnished

bronze the point

is not that there's some glowing hot

metal in the furnace here the point is

that

this symbolizes trustworthiness his eyes

are blazing like fire what's the point

of that the point is that that is

traditional imagery for a divine figure

in the ancient world particularly in

pagan

understanding so in other words what

john describes

the purpose of it is for us to

understand

not for us to get fixated on the the

specifics but actually

it it they're bearers of meaning i think

the other thing that for me which over

the years has really

uh challenged the idea that that john is

simply reporting a vision

is that he uses his language so

carefully one of the errors i've been

doing research on is

is the way that his language i mentioned

the four different ways he uses numbers

one of the ways one of the ways is

really obvious he talks about you know

the seven

assemblies in asia minor and he talks

about the 24 elders so we've got

explicit numbers in the text

uh straightforward numbers and then

there's you know the seven seals and the

seven trumpets and seven balls and so on

um but one of the numbers which is often

hidden is the fact that

particular words come with certain

frequencies so for example

he talks about you know um blessed is

one who in verse three blessed are the

one who reads aloud the words of this

prophecy

well that word blessed uh which is

uh macarius um that comes seven times in

the book

in chapter 14 the scene of judgment

there's mention of a sickle which

symbolizes judgment there's a grain

harvest and a great harvest

the word sickle comes seven times the

word christ christos

comes seven times the name jesus comes

14 times

so when you begin to look at the

frequencies

now this is that this is not a usual way

of reading stuff i mean last time you

read a novel if anyone said to you

oh did you notice how many times the

word discovered came in this novel

you look at them slightly strangely it's

not the way that we we treat text

but again if you're living in an ancient

world where texts are very precious and

you only have a few of them you

you pore over them very carefully then

actually

and and where if you're going to copy a

text you've got to pay a scribe and you

pay them

quite likely for the number of words

that they write out for you so

you know you're in a world where you're

used to word counts and of course one of

the great ironies in our technological

age is that

now that we use computers we're very

conscious

of word counts and we specify word

counts for length of documents when i'm

in academic world and i'm marking

students essays they have to have a

certain word count

and what it means again is is that

technology is allowing us to discover

things

about the ancient world we wouldn't have

otherwise known if you take a greek text

of revelation you can

i can tell you straight away i just i

just noticed this morning by the way

that the mark

as in mark of the beast the word caragma

actually occurs seven times in a text

how do i know that

because i just sat here on my accordance

program and i typed in the word keragma

and says seven occurrences came up so

there's an interesting way in which

technology is connecting us back with

the first century in ways that we

haven't quite anticipated

what you bring up i think is interesting

because and i think it applies not just

the book of revelation but to the entire

bible and and that is these

authors you know we get in our minds

sometimes that that you know

again it's a play by play this is what

jesus said this is where he went this is

what he did

and we're writing this out as it happens

as it unfolds

because it was a documentary in reality

you know even the gospels you know are

you know ranging in in times of when

they were written but you're talking

decades

after likely that of of the life of

christ where these were actually written

and so there's there's a time period of

contemplation and how i'm going to write

this

what do i want what message do i want to

get across

and and you had said originally

revelation is the most remarkable text

you will ever read

of course i think understanding these

things that you're bringing up about

how it was composed yeah

is is certainly a part of that yeah now

the whole question i mean that's an

interesting question about the gospels

and certainly in the german tradition of

critical scholarship from

a couple of hundred years ago until

fairly recently that was the dominant

view the dominant view was that

the stories about jesus were circulated

and there was an oral tradition and then

the stories got fashioned

through that passing on what's quite

interesting is that there's been quite a

bit of pushback on that in the last few

years certainly there's a british

scholar called richard balkam who's

argued

actually that the gospels are very much

eyewitness accounts

in other words they're much closer to

the the time of jesus

and again one of the things we're

discovering more and more is the the

prevalence of writing in the ancient

world

so um for instance in the 1970s the

discovery of the vindalanda tablets

in the by hadrian's wall showed that you

know soldiers centurions would be

writing notes jotting things down on on

little bits of wood or card or whatever

um and so and particularly in religious

context as well that that

specialized as it were religious

literacy was probably much higher than

we have given

credit for um and then one or two hints

as well i mean luke talks at the

beginning of his gospel about those who

are guardians of the word from the

beginning which which some

scholars would argue okay these are

people who actually took notes of what

jesus was saying and these things were

preserved

but the point you're making that

interpretation is absolutely spot on

that

that the gospels aren't simply

played back documentary accounts of what

jesus said because if they were how come

there are so many differences

differences of emphasis how come

different things are included in the

different gospels

there are about interpretation what we

have is an interpreted

account of who jesus is and the the

gospel writers aren't just saying this

is what he did but this is

what the meaning is of what he did so i

absolutely agree with that and again the

same is true with revelation it's about

you know what's the what's the

significance what's the meaning of it

and

uh and there's no doubt that there's

lots of evidence that in the first

century that john's listeners would have

understood

um perfectly well but they were just

they would they wouldn't have had the

kind of problems understanding we're

saying

that we do and this comes back to you i

mean sorry we've got sidetracked you

asked me about the word apocalypse a

long time ago yes yes

ah and the reason why revelation is

called an apocalypse is because it's the

first word of the text the text begins

apocalypse says jesus christ and now to

joseos

this is the revelation of jesus christ

which god gave to show his servants

what must take place and what is

fascinating

is that that word apocalypse has now

been used to designate a whole

genre the whole kind of literature and

we realize now there's a huge amount of

uh jewish second to temple literature

in that kind of apocalyptic style these

kinds of vision reports

and of course you know you now get

apocalyptic films and

apocalypse which has really nothing to

do with what the idea of what

literature is i know exactly you got

sort of you know disaster movies and

that kind of thing

yeah um but there's a couple of things

really fascinating about the language of

apocalypse apocalypse is a kind of

writing

firstly when you look at all these other

jewish apocalyptic so-called apocalyptic

literature

none of them call themselves an

apocalypse it's only

the book of revelation so that needs to

kind of like flag something out the

second thing

is that uh they're actually often quite

different

from the book of revelation so they are

often very

focused on national restoration they've

got a very nationalistic edge to them

they almost always include commentary so

the the person is has a vision and then

there's an explanation of it

and often the interpretation is given by

an accompanying angel

which is a phenomenon mostly missing

from

um the book of revelation um so there's

some really significant

differences as well and of course most

of these jewish apocalypses were

written in the name of some patriarch

they're written pseudonymously so it's

the apocalypse of abraham or

enoch or ezra and so on sure and and one

of the striking differences here

is that john tells us his name and he

writes in a way which demonstrates that

he's a pastor who knows the context of

the people he's writing to

so he's writing to those in these seven

cities

nobody's actually found an explanation

convincing explanation why he's picked

those seven cities because of course

there are lots of other cities like

miletus and troias where we have

christian communities and they're not

mentioned

um but he knows them and he writes in a

way that demonstrates his familiarity

with them so

again this is another thing that

community that suggests that this isn't

some 2000 year old forecast of the

present day this is a text which

actually meant something

to its first readers and and communicate

it's the

revelation of jesus christ and you know

early commentators assume this is

talking to us about jesus and the gospel

not about some remote time and in fact

at the end at the end of daniel

the angel says to daniel seal up the

words of this prophecy because it

doesn't relate to events from

daniel's time in the eighth century bc

it relates to the second century bc and

the anti-king crisis

at the end of revelation john is told do

not seal up the words

of this prophecy in other words what

you're writing now in the first century

relevant to the followers of jesus in

the first century it's saying something

really important to them

to help them to be faithful witnesses to

jesus now

and again just reflecting the fact that

this is at a distance from us we are

overhearing

um we're listening in on someone else's

conversation here so

we're trying to hear what god is saying

to us through

what john was saying in the power of the

spirit two

christians in the third jesus followers

in the first century and so we need to

take that seriously so so that was one

of my questions here is

okay what is this then that as far as

john is writing is he because

you know is he writing just for

the christians of his day or is he

writing for those

of the you know our period you know

coming up to a second coming of christ

or is it both well i think i'd kind of

go back and reply to that first i'd ask

you a question now secondly make an

observation

here's my question when paul wrote his

letter to the romans was that just for

the romans was that for us too

well okay so sure okay

so but what is that on the other side i

would say

i would say that's for us too of course

in the sense that it's indirectly to us

absolutely it's for us but it's not to

okay so and i say even more even more is

true for one corinthians i mean some

people would say romans is a kind of a

bit of a setting out of doctrine i don't

think it is quite like that

paul was addressing some very key issues

particularly in the division between

jews and gentiles in the roman church

let's take one corinthians a good

example clearly paul is writing to the

corinthians and he's

addressing with them some really

specific

issues for them in their day now

some of those we know some of those we

don't and and for instance in one

corinthians 7

1 paul says now concerning the things

about which you wrote to me

we were thinking oh paul if only you'd

appended their letter to you and then

we'd know what was going on

but we don't so we do have to speculate

a bit but at least we need to recognize

paul is addressing specific problems for

them

but he's doing it hey number one those

are the kind of problems we have too

you know he talks about division sexual

immorality

conflict about communion you know i

think yeah well that's like today's

church okay

um so they're they're they're they are

persistent problems even if our problems

aren't quite the same as those we can

see the kinds of things that were going

on number one

number two he addresses their problems

reflecting on what god has done in jesus

so for example in chapter six there's a

question of immorality how does paul

address it in chapter five

he actually specifically appeals to the

bodily resurrection of jesus to say look

we've got we've got resources here to

address these questions

so we can learn from it too now the same

show of revelation john is writing to

particular people in a particular place

with particular challenge the challenge

there

was that the conflict for them in the

demand of loyalty to the emperor and

roman imperial power on the one hand

and what it meant to be a follower of

jesus on the other so they've got

they've got very specific challenges

there

and john is addressing those through

sharing the vision the vision report

that god has given him

but we can learn from him as well

because we also

have that same conflict what does it

mean to be

for me a faithful citizen uk for you a

faithful citizen of the us on the one

hand

but on the other to be a faithful

follower of jesus

at what point does do the powers that be

make demands of us where they cross the

line into either

claiming to give us the thing that only

god can give us demanding the loyalty

that belongs to god alone

or you know crossing the line and saying

that you can't actually be a faithful

christian on the one hand a faithful

citizen on the other

now there are places in the world where

that question is asked really sharply

but actually in western culture that you

know you and i share

are the question is asked perhaps more

subtly so for example

do i do i find my identity by the brands

of clothes that i buy

what what role does global capitalism

and free market economics have

can it satisfy all my needs or do i need

to ask some fundamental questions about

consumerist culture about our attitude

to wealth and our attitude to government

what about the what about the other

powers that be in our world what about

um so-called internet internet

influences

what about sports styles what about

people who shape our la our culture

uh do they demand things of us that

actually are in conflict with what it

means to be

a disciple of jesus so and i think we

can actually learn things from the book

of revelation which

help us because of paul because of john

sorry

helping his readers to engage with those

those questions about

are fundamental clashes of loyalty in

their culture

we also have some similar clashes of

loyalty

and therefore we can look to revelation

2 help us answer those questions

you talk about this a little bit you

talk about four main themes

in your book of revelation uh one is

power and greatness and i think that has

a little bit to do with

kind of what you're talking about where

we get the depiction of the throne of

god especially in the first few chapters

absolutely uh everything seems to change

in chapter four

as far as i can see right it goes from

there there's allusions to

heaven and and whatnot but it seems to

change

to a little bit more of a heavenly

view starting in chapter four and you

can

kind of see this this uh as you're

outlining here a

maybe a little bit about the conflict

between earth and heaven right about

between a a man-made civilization or or

or government and the government of god

so to speak

number two i really like chaos and

meaning three was economic exploitation

and materialism

and number four was environmental

destruction i wanted to ask you about

chaos and meaning

you say here a principle that you're

pulling from

from uh revelation you're saying chaos

comes not directly by the authority of

god

but not totally unconnected to his will

yeah the the contrast with the

contemporary narrative

of the game of thrones right yeah

where there is no meaning right as

compared to what the

meaning is that that john is trying to

give here i think that's kind of

you know game of thrones is the meaning

power i think if there's a meaning there

it's simply it's simply power and pride

yeah right what what how do you how are

you looking at that as a contrast to

what

john is talking about with with power or

or meaning in chaos yes

yeah well i think you're right and i i

like the way you sum up that movement

from heaven to work that says there

really is a clear change from

you know the kind of earthly reality of

the the assemblies in the seven cities

in chapters two and three and then you

have this

heavenly perspective in fact actually

the whole the whole of the text moves

from one to the other

i'm just writing some um bible study

notes on on chapters 13 and 14

and chapter 13 with the beast trampling

the saints that's a pretty

grim view of chaos on earth

and then suddenly you step into chapter

14. now remember

that the chapter divisions weren't part

of the original text so

we kind of think oh well this is a new

chapter this is something different but

the text actually just flows

continuously

by the way that the chapter divisions

were invented by the archbishop of

canterbury and uh

stephen langton in the 13th century so

that's another thing to give thanks for

for the british for the church

but then you you move from the

nitty-gritty earthly in the

chapter 13 to the heavenly vision of the

um saints followers of lamb on mount

zion and in fact in chapter 13 they've

been called

heaven dwellers just as paul says in

ephesians chapter 2

we are seated in the heavenly places

with christ jesus that's the picture the

new testament gives

when you are in christ you are you're

with him as it were

enjoying his reign in your life and and

in that sense you are

sitting in the heavenly places but i

think this whole question about k i

i'm not a great fan of game of thrones i

try to watch a few times i just find it

so depressing because

you know some good guy goes along it all

looks good then suddenly they get their

slip

their throats step yeah it really is

full of violence full of chaos

um but what's really interesting i find

i mean just again to take the image of

the four horsemen

you've got a really graphic image of

conquest the rider on the white horse of

warfare swinging a huge sword and death

and famine and disease

you know and the uh the fourth rider and

death

rode with him but death followed after

it hades followed after him i mean it's

really gruesome stuff

and again the the john's readers in the

first century they would have recognized

this

perfectly well their first response if

you live in the first century

this is my world you know they lived in

a world where life was brutish and short

they lived in a world where there was

constant warfare particularly in the

east of the empire there were constant

threats from the parthians coming from

from the east and and you know one of

the things rome said was you'll only be

protected from them by staying with us

saying lord to the emperor he's the one

who can provide you with security and

salvation

um it's an air at a time where life was

really brutish and short where

um women died in childbirth where life

expectancy was really short you know

if you were a roman army veteran you

managed to do your 20 years to get your

pension you were doing really well um

and

very little medicine a plagues came and

they just

ravaged through cities and just

destroyed whole

generations so this is a chaotic world

they lived in now

what does what does john do in the way

he does he gives his vision report

all this chaos and all these sort of

bizarre images and all these sort of

monsters and all these things

they're actually held in a seven-fold

structure

and again just to take that example john

does not depict

god inflicting this on the world what he

says

is when the lamb opened the next seal

i heard a voice of one of the creatures

on the throne say come

now what's he saying there he's saying

that

ultimately ultimately

god is on the throne and ultimately none

of this happens

without god's permission

this isn't about god vindictively

inflicting things on it but

be encouraged in the end in this chaos

god is still the one who

holds this in an orderly way god

still is on the throne and ultimately

the throne of god will come from heaven

to earth so that in chapter 21 where

we're heading to

in the new jerusalem god's dwelling

place is with humans

and in fact the cube of the new

jerusalem a cube in the old testament

stands for the holy of holies the

dwelling place of god

this enormous cube of the old testament

of god's presence

comes down and we his people

will be with him forever and will be

there intimately with him so

the chaos doesn't have the last word god

is still on his throne

even if you can't see the signs of that

so obviously now

but you live through the chaos in the

hope that god's orderly holy presence

will one day set all things right

does that i didn't answer your question

that does and it's going to lead me to

something else but i want to get

something

back go backtrack a little bit before i

get there because that's leading into

well how is that going to apply to us

today how does this how does this book

apply to us today but

i wanted to ask you just focus a little

bit more in on the old testament

yeah and how this how this is

drawn uh by john in in the text

you mentioned was it 676 references

what's the ones i counted yeah okay 676

references to the old testament

obviously i mean

there's no new testament that's compiled

at this time there's

you know they're living in an old

testament textual world

absolutely so to speak right this is

what they're drawing from they perhaps

the septuagint i don't know but

but they they're you you had mentioned

that uh

you know books such as daniel where you

get this visionary

language also and ezekiel

several times in ezekiel you see this

and isaiah especially maybe isaiah 6

you're drawing on this this language

yeah of of vision uh this is what you

had said about

uh the old testament here if i've got

this right

i pay careful attention to the way john

draws

on the old testament in the way that he

uses and

reuses such words and ideas i have

therefore

frequently commented on how the text

relates to other parts of scripture

which old testament text john appears to

be drawing on and the parallels we find

in other parts of the new testament

how does the old testament especially

these these visionary texts

how do they inform us of what john

is is trying to tell us

um i think i'd say it at every point now

one of the one of the debates

again in scholarship is heads in two

directions one is is this

john's doing something deliberately is

he actually using his subconsciously

or is it just the fact that his mind is

saturated in this in old testament

language and therefore that's just his

vocabulary

um i think there's some good arguments

to say this is deliberate it appears to

be conscious

and i'll give you an example to

illustrate that i think the other

question is

um that again has been debated is uh

some conservatives got to say

oh well john isn't changing the meaning

of the old testament he's keeping it

intact and just using this language but

again i don't think that's true

i think perhaps one of the most helpful

examples comes from

revelation 11 and 12. and again it's a

new it's a numerological one you can see

i love the numbers

and that is just i'm just going to get

uh revelation 11 up so we have

um in revelation 11 uh

he is um given a measuring world and

told to measure the temple although he

never actually he never actually doesn't

describe himself doing that

and then he has this vision of the two

witnesses now

again this is a really interesting thing

i'm circling back now you asked about is

this a vision report

one of the reasons why it isn't a vision

report or isn't a vision simply

is that i don't if you've noticed how

much what john writes isn't what he sees

it's what he hears now i was in a

conference a few years ago and i was a

bit bored

so i was sitting in the comments so i

thought well i wonder how much does he

actually hear so i actually took the

an english text of revelation and i

divided it up in a word document into

things he reports he's seeing and things

he reports hearing

the things he reports hearing worked out

at 45

of the text which i think again people

don't always realize

in fact this whole first half of chapter

11 isn't a description of something he

sees

it's written in a future tense and it's

actually in recording what the angel

says to him so this is something he

hears um

so again you can see it's it's much more

complicated than just being a better

camera

sure but you see he says that the 42

witnesses sorry the two witnesses

um the the temple has given over to the

nations they'll trample the holy city

for 42 months

and i'll grant authority to my two

witnesses and they will prophesy for

1260 days

and then in chapter 12 those numbers

that time period of 42 months 1260 days

is also described as

time times and half a time or in some

translations three and a half years

now these are actually all the same time

period and

you can do that but just by as it was as

you would say do the math okay so

three and a half years 12 months in each

year uh

36 plus 6 is 42. so 3 and a half years

is 42 months

now just bear with me if you if you have

a perfect religious calendar and all

your months have 30 days

then 42 times 12 times 30

is 3 4 12 2 3 6 is 1260 days

right so john seems to be talking about

this

time period half a week of years time

period 260 days 42 months it's a time

of suffering because the the the temple

is trampled and i think that's an image

for the people of god

for 42 months it's a time of

safety the woman in chapter 12 is taking

the desert protected by god for 1260

days

but it's also a time of testimony as

well now so

john is actually doing quite a lot of

work with this time period now i would

argue i'd agree actually

again richard balcom has said this and i

agree with him this is a symbolic

representation of the time between

jesus resurrection ascension on the one

hand and jesus return on the other in

other words

this is the time we are living in the

time we are living in

is a time of suffering whether people

got it trampled but it's also a time of

protection where we know that god

actually is looking after us

and it's a time for witness it's a time

we should testify

to what god has done in jesus and in

fact we can see that because right the

very beginning when john is writing this

not only an apocalypse but a letter to a

prophetic letter to the churches he says

john this is revelation one verse nine i

john and your brother

in the tribulation the kingdom

and the patient endurance that are ours

in jesus okay

tribulation flipsis is what we have in

jesus jesus said in the seven on the

mount

blessed are you when people persecute

and revile you because of me

in paul's missionary journey he preaches

in lister and derby in

in acts 14 22 and he says through many

tribulations we must enter the kingdom

of god

uh you know if you're going to follow

jesus jesus says everyone wants to

follow me he must come after me

and take up their cross a cross is about

suffering about tribulation

tribulation but also about kingdom

because we actually

when we're baptized into jesus were

baptized into his resurrection

life and the kingdom of god so if you're

living in a time where you have trouble

and tribulation in the world but you're

also

in the kingdom you need patient

endurance that's the quality you need

while you're waiting for this to be

realized

okay so there's a whole complex of

theological ideas there now where does

john get them from

where does john get three and a half

years 1260 days

and 42 months well the answer to the

first two is the book of daniel

because in daniel the tribulation is

going to last time times and half a time

so this is a short intense limited

period where it looks like the temple in

jerusalem is being desecrated

but the point about it being a defined

short time is that

god is still sovereign and god will

bring this period to an end so we just

need to be patient

and wait for god's deliverance now uh

um daniel actually calculates this time

as lasting 1290 days or 1335 days

so john changes that in order to fit

with his numerical scheme because

he then also identifies that with 42

months now

if i said to you 40

then you'd probably guess where it came

from

which is the world well i mean you've

got the accident you've got the 40 days

in sinai you've got the 40 days of of

fasting with christ absolutely and those

are already

40 years in the wilderness 40 years in

the wilderness exactly but in fact if

you read the book of numbers carefully

it's not

40 years it's actually 42 years because

they stay two years in kadesh barnier

before the 40 years of wandering

and in the end of numbers numbers 33

there's a list of all the places that

they stopped

and guess how many places there are 42.

so what i think john is doing is he's

saying look

how do we make sense of this we're

followers of jesus he's going to keep us

safe

how come we have so much trouble in the

world what's going on

and if we're going to get pressure in

the world but we're also

being protected by god what do we need

to do to get through this

and what john is doing with the old

testament is saying

yes you are having trouble like daniel

this is an intense period of tribulation

but you can endure because god is

faithful

but he's also saying this is like the

exodus wanderings

so the christian journey we've been set

free from slavery not to egypt but to

slavery to sin

and we are heading for a promised land

not the land of israel but

the new jerusalem that comes from heaven

to earth where god is renewing the whole

creation

so the christian life is a bit like

being in daniel but it's also a bit like

being an exodus now here's the question

have we heard those ideas before

in the new testament absolutely you know

in luke's gospel at the transfiguration

moses and elijah come and talk to jesus

about the

exodus that he will perform in jerusalem

so in other words jesus death and

resurrection

are enacting another exodus journey

why is jesus in the desert tempted 40

days because again it's an echo

precisely of

the the exodus wanderings of israel so

jesus is actually as it were reenacting

the life of israel and when we're

incorporated into jesus

then paul talks about being in christ

then we too

are on the excess journey and again you

find in for instance one corinthians 10

where paul goes back to you know

um he talks about people being baptized

into moses and saying look here

here's examples for us we need to learn

from these exercise wanderings because

you know being a follower of jesus is a

bit like

being on those on on that exodus journey

so so

on the one hand john is really clearly

it seems to be reworking these

biblical his old testament ideas

scriptural ideas he's doing it for a

particular purpose of explaining what it

means to be a follower of jesus

and the other writers in other parts of

the new testament are doing exactly the

same kind of thing

it's interesting yeah for for the lds

listeners here that's uh

of particular interest would be lehigh

leaving jerusalem and heading for the

promised land also because that's very

very closely tied to exactly what you're

saying

yeah on this um

isaiah specifically why so much from

isaiah isaiah's everywhere

right i mean jesus opens up in the

synagogue with a with a quote from

isaiah

we see isaiah all throughout the new

testament in the gospels that are that

it where it's

it's uh uh we talked about the suffering

servant and and

absolutely the the servant songs in

isaiah

why isaiah so much what what is what is

different about isaiah from

even daniel or or ezekiel or zechariah

why is that drawn so much in the new

testament

well i think because because isaiah's in

comes in two parts

and it comes in a part which has hope

but has been a situation of crisis and

then it's a second part which is

that the deliverance of god is at hand

so you have the dynamic of crisis and

hope

now i don't i don't know if you've

talked to your show before about the

this is numbers again i'm going to

understand it yeah i'm obsessed with

numbers

okay so how many chapters are there in

isaiah

uh 60 61 62 56

66 okay okay 66 chapters and i

how many books are there in the older

new testament together that i don't know

it's 66. okay okay so

now almost every scholar most

commentators divide isaiah into two

parts

so the first part do you know how many

chapters the first part has

no 39 you're talking about

one first one yeah first time's up first

size yeah

and what scholars commonly call

secondary i mean scumbles are divided

back with the secondary zero third as i

yeah some put it into the third idea as

well yeah okay

um so secondary starts with chapter 40.

okay so how many chapters are there in

the second half of isaiah well

27 27 okay fine

in the protestant canon of scripture how

many books are there in the old

testament

well let me get twenty-seven thirty-six

thirty-something okay 39 old testament

yeah okay and then the new testament

twenty-seven okay got it okay so

the structure of isaiah as it's divided

into chapters corresponds exactly with

the structure of the bible

divided into the old and new testament

so what you're arguing for there i mean

just just

on a tangent here you're what you're

arguing for is it is a meta-narrative

of isaiah then yeah but remember

remember the chapter divisions aren't

part of isaiah they were added by

stephen langton of 13th century but he

did that

because of the common christian

interpretation that we find the gospel

in isaiah because we find

in the first 39 chapters hints of

hope but the foreground is despair or

challenge or problems

but the hope shines through in the

second half you have the hope realized

and therefore christian readings of the

whole canon of scripture would say the

same thing we say in the first half in

the old testament

you do have glimpses of what is to come

but you're mostly presented with the

problem that you're facing

but in the new testament in jesus you

have

the deliverance that was promised and

therefore

that's why new testament writers look so

much to isaiah and they looked it for

two things as you say

for the obvious the chapter that stands

out as isaiah 53 but

um for instance for for those in

christian churches using the

the shared lectionary across different

churches the passage that we're looking

at is

luke chapter 24 where jesus meets the 11

disciples and says look

you know it's following the road to

emmaus incident and he says look um

uh it was this this has to happen as it

was written up to me in the scriptures

that the messiah

should suffer and should be raised

and that the gospel shall be preached to

all the nations well where does that

come from isaiah 53 talks about the

servant

who suffers and isaiah 49 says

iphone 6 says you know it is too light a

thing for me to deliver only

judea israel i will make you a light to

all the nations so that all the nations

will hear about my salvation

so you have both in isaiah the second

half of isaiah you have the fulfillment

of the promises of hope you have in the

first half but

it transcends a nationalistic vision

this isn't just hope for

judah this is hope for the whole world

and so actually all the way through

isaiah you have this image right from

very beginning chapter two you have the

fact that

all the nations will be drawn to our

design zion will become the highest

mountain in the world

and all the nations will come to it hey

what happens in revelation 21

the new jerusalem comes down on a great

high mountain it's the temple presence

of god

on a high mountain and all the nations

of the earth all the kings of the world

of the earth bring their riches in

and all the nations walk by the light so

revelation picks up particularly

this movement from despair or from

crisis to hope to the realization of

hope

and it moves as well from a

nationalistic thing to

a vision of cosmic of global salvation

and so therefore one of the key i'm

coming back to neurology one of the key

phrases in the book of revelation

is in chapter seven seven verse nine

where john has

heard because he hears half the stuff

heard

uh this the people counted out the

hundred forty four thousand from every

of each one of the twelve tribes and

having

heard them counted out he turns to look

at them and what does he see

he sees people from every tribe language

people and nation

who are all gathered around the throne

in other words the the numbered

disciplined israel of god is actually

drawn from

every tribe language people in nature

because in jesus

the hope of israel and the grace of god

in their redemption has now broken the

bounds of israel has become a hope for

the whole world

and and that's john is that's that's the

vision that occupies john that's why he

draws on his eyes so much because that's

where he finds it

and of course that four-fold phrase

actually occurs through revelation

seven times and and

four is kind of like a number of natural

where we have four wins that happen to

well the four points the compass

so four signifies everybody and seven

signifies completeness

so you have in revelation you have a you

have an international

global cosmic vision of the impact of

the redemption we find in jesus

very interesting real quick did does

does isaiah

1-39 yen then represent those three and

a half years those first three and a

half years and in 40 to 66

after that you're talking about the

three and a half years or the 42 months

is that kind of represented by those

first 39 uh yeah 39 chapters

no i would say it differently i said

rather than seeing them consecutively i

would say you see them together in the

sense

that we are this is where we're getting

into sort of

new testament eschatology whereas

whereas jewish eschatology said look

we're looking for a day of the lord

and the day of the lord we bought by a

messiah an anointed one and that messiah

will

liberate israel will purify worship or

drive out the gentle oppressors

and will raise the dead for judgment and

when jesus was raised in the dead

the disciples can't make sense of this

because they're sitting in that jewish

sense of hope they don't expect one dead

person to be raised in the dead if the

resurrection's coming it's going to be

everybody

and israel's going to be liberated and

the gentiles are going to be driven out

and you know it's all going to happen

and in fact what happens in new

testament eschatology we find with jesus

resurrection we see

the beginnings of that happening we see

god's anointed we see

that sin is forgiven we see that grace

is poured out on israel that worship is

purified

but we don't see the end of sin and

oppression so

we actually end up with an overlap so

the age to come

has broken into jesus but this evil age

continues

and we all through the new testament we

are living with one foot in each camp as

well we're living

in the age to come but we're also still

living in this age so it's not that

it's not that the bad past the pressure

has gone and we're now living in the new

age it's actually we're living in the

old

and that's why paul uses the language of

first fruits you get a language in

um in revelation 14 as well about that

those who live on zion are the first

fruits

in other words we are in jesus

resurrection life we're stepping into

the future god has for us

but we're living that future out in the

present world this age

great two things before we let you go

here i wanted to get to you did your

dissertation

on chapter 12 which is kind of the the

central

hub of the book right i i don't know if

you've looked at that as a chiastic

structure

at all and it looks like that's right at

the center of the chiasmus and

in the entire book but you brought in

uh uh

paul ricour yes i did you focus on

recore is that right

okay so recur brings in hermeneutics and

and mixes it with phenomenology yeah and

hermeneutics uh interpretation

phenomenology

what what you see and you use that as an

approach to

to the book of revelation yeah and just

a couple quick things here on this you

had said

in your book one of the most important

thinkers about metaphorical language was

the french philosopher

paul recur he observed several important

things about

metaphors the first is that they make

real claims about

reality so to me this is spiritual

language

yeah absolutely essential in the way

that we describe the world

metaphors cannot be reduced to

propositions but are necessary

in our engagement with reality

is this language this style of writing

is it somehow trying to bring earth and

heaven together in a way

yeah i i i would say yes so there's

something that's not particularly

recur's perspective

but um i just found it was really

valuable because

um his his

um the way he describes if i can talk

about the anatomy of

metaphor the way that he describes how

medical functions explains

both the power of metaphorical language

that we find in the book of revelation

but also explains a number of things

about for example why is it that

every generation of reader of the book

of revelation has always thought it's

about their world

not about the ancient world not just but

you know so going back to luther you

know one of luther's bibles

actually had a picture of the pope in a

tiara

as the prostitute riding the beast in

revelation 17. in other words he he was

very clear that revelation

was describing things in his world and

and why is it such a

powerful but why does it raise so many

emotions and and

create such conflict and that's because

of the way that metaphor functions

so what ricoh was saying is that first

of all metaphor

and then with it narrative which he sees

as closely related

the metaphors and narratives actually

configure the way we perceive the world

so when we for example just to take a

really simple one which is central to

christian theology

when we describe god as father

then that fundamentally changes our

conceptual our cognitive understanding

as well as our

effective relationship to who god is and

what god does

now god is not literally a father in the

sense that a father is someone who sighs

children through a woman

and and you know one of the early

disagreements between islam and

uh christianity is that you know islam

says far be it from god to have children

god is not literally a father but he is

really a father in the sense that

you you can you can reflect on what

fatherlineness means by god but in the

end you can't simply explain it away

so for christian theology identifying

god as father and as the father

jesus christ is an irreducible element

of christian language

um be because you cannot account for it

you can't simply reduce its properties

of statements now the same is true in

the book of revelation as a sense in

which actually

um this language when you start

describing political systems as beasts

from the sea or beasts arising from the

land it has a

very powerful emotional impact and it's

very motivational and that's why

revelation has been

such an important text in so many uh

generations of christians so many

political movements

and we can reflect on what that means

but we can't simply

reduce it to other language and we also

have to be really careful about what

that means john is doing in his world

one of the things that we do when we

describe when we use metaphors to

describe people or describe things

we are not transferring everything about

the vehicle of a metaphor

into the subject so not everything that

is true about a father is true of god

only certain things are and not

everything that's true about beast is

true of

of of in john's day roman imperial power

or the kind of human empires we've seen

in the world since then

so we do have to treat these metaphors

with discernment as well and that

that means that and again recurs very

strongly that means that metaphors

demand interpretation so he

he one of the reasons why rico moved

away from his existential

roots is that he wasn't satisfied with

the need to interpret

you know the fundamental thing we need

to do is to understand our world to

understand ourselves

is to interpret the world around us and

again i think one of the reasons why

revelation is so powerful is that

it helps us understand who we are as

followers of jesus by

interpreting the world we live in to us

and he does that

drawing on that biblical language so

much but also very explicitly drawing on

language and images

of its time so as i argue that

revelation 12 uses

biblical characters the woman um in the

sun and in the pains of childbirth

the dragon the serpent the satan and the

child who's to will the nation without

the rod of iron from psalm 2 verse 9.

and but but he then

he embeds that into a narrative from the

first century the

apollo lito myth which again his readers

would have known very well that's

another reason why we find it a

difficult book to interpret is because

we're not familiar with the

mythology and the language of of of

john's readers and we need to do both

those things so he blends them together

in order to create a a

biblical picture of the world in which

they lived so i've really liked what

i've read about record and

and and and studied a little bit on him

yeah

he he actually mentored

they did which is very odd to me because

i am not a fan of dairydoll

no no no very different now we're

getting you know and there there is a

little bit of crossover there as far as

thinking about metaphor and relativity

and

and things that are you know most in a

postmodern uh

view of of no core truth right i mean

you can see how you can in my mind

pervert things

and and move into something different is

is there do you see an association there

at all between yeah i do i mean i think

post-modernism that came about

shortly yeah and yeah in some ways

although i i think recur

himself i mean he died a few years ago

now i think he he himself would

um some of what ricker said

would suit that in the sense that he was

he was one of the weaknesses i think the

recurrence thought is is not paying

sufficient attention to history

and you know one of his early essays he

talks about he talks about plato and

says plato is

our topos he's unplaceable and there's a

sense which

has a agnosticism about whether we can

really understand the past because it is

so it is so different from us and i

i think that's a weakness what he does

and one of the things i do in my thesis

to say look that

that actually needs addressing um but i

think in terms of derridale's movement

to to

to deconstruct language and meaning i

think i think recur's

thought even if not ricardo himself

would actually stand against that in the

sense that you know paul uses

ricoh uses this language about um

criticism he he says that

again one of his slightly early works on

the symbolism of evil he says look

beyond the desert of criticism we want

to be called again

and ricker believed in a two-fold

hermeneutic on the one hand a hermetic

of suspicion where we ask

questions about text and textual meaning

but on the other hand he says we can't

just stay with that because that just

simply demolishes everything he has a he

uses a metaphor of demolishing idols

he says but we're off we've demolished

idols we actually need to recover

symbols because symbols are the symbols

the metaphors that they lead to in

language and the narratives that they're

embedded in

actually the things which give us

concrete meaning in life

so we can't simply go around demolishing

things and i think daradai and this

deconstruction language would actually

fall in that category of people who

who are masters of suspicion i mean

originally recur talks about

marx and freud as masters of suspicion

in the realms of psychology and of

politics

and i think he might have gone on to

describe deredo as a master of suspicion

in terms of

the meaning of language but but actually

ricardo was very clear that language

carried meaning and that recovering

meaning by going through a critical

process but then at the end he talks

about making a wager of faith

on what a text means uh that that

language of wagering

and committing ourselves is something i

think it's very hospitable to christian

theology but i think also it stands over

against

the the more skeptical approach to

language and meaning

that daredevil has been but i thought

that certainly recur would not reduce

language to

uh exercises and power plays in a way

that the deconstruction test yeah gary

dodd definitely took a different path

with all of that

no question lastly i don't want to keep

you from your dinner so

uh how how do we apply

the book of revelation to us today aside

from

dispensationalism right i mean it's like

how do we take this as a message

as a christian message and and apply it

into our lives today

well i think the fundamental reason why

i don't i'm not persuaded by

dispensationalism as i think it's

we need to pay attention to the way that

scripture configures time

and the primary way the new testament

configures time is in

this kind of this apocalyptic escalator

language of this

age and the age to come and that

because the resurrection of jesus marked

the end of history as it were

and the breaking of the age to come the

fundamental configuration for

for believers is that we live

in this age but we also live in the age

to come and all the questions about the

tensions of christian living

arise from the tensions of us sitting in

this time now

i actually argue in in my um i think i

mentioned my commentary that

that john does that very specifically he

does it again through a numerical device

where we have the seven trumpets

and we have the first uh four trumpets

and then for the fifth sixth and seventh

trumpet he introduces something

another numerical configuration he sees

an eagle high in the air in the middle

of the air

uh crying out saying whoa whoa whoa the

three woes are to come

and the fifth trumpet is the first woe

and the sixth trumpet is the

is the second woe and then when the

seventh trumpet blows

there's no third woe it's left hanging

and in fact we discover woe

in chapter the next world in chapter 12

where

michael and his angels expel satan

because of the victory of jesus

uh for death the lamb who was slain and

he then says

rejoice you heavens but woe to you who

are on earth

so as heaven dwellers who live on earth

we are rejoicing

in the victory of jesus but we're also

experiencing woe

as well and i think i think that's what

john is saying to his readers

you and i were in between the sixth and

seventh trumpet where

we are in the end times we've been in

the end times since jesus ascension

until jesus returns and that's exactly

what peter says at pentecost he says you

know this is that about which the

prophet joel wrote

in those end times i will in those last

days i will pour out my spirit the

the spirit of god i think in paul's

writing as well is the

end times gift where where um the spirit

goes poured out on us in order that we

might live

resurrection life in the present age so

i would say that's the big picture for

us in revelation and therefore

that's what we do we are we are it helps

us because we inhabit the narrative

that revelations offer us so we see

ourselves as

the seven gold lampstands amongst whom

jesus walks or the stars that we are

held firmly in his hand

we see ourselves as that 144 000 that

army that's disciplined and ready for

spiritual warfare but we also see

ourselves as

drawn from every tribe language people

and nation that's particularly pertinent

in the era of black lives matter is it

not you know the god's people are

multi-ethnic multicultural

together uh we see ourselves as

the ones who are are trampled by the

beast in chapter 13 but we also see

ourselves as the ones who are protected

in the desert place like the woman and

in the end we're on that journey and the

narrative

which ends with the vision of the new

jerusalem that's what we're setting our

hope on and i think there's just so much

material as we read revelation

theologians so much material there to

actually give us

very specific guidance on i mean in

revelation revelation 14 that the 144 on

mount zion

i've given a sevenfold description of

what they look like and that gives us

you know this is the picture of what it

is that that jesus is forming us to be

as his people uh that we are blameless

that we are honest that we are

we are dedicated devoted to him and and

and and pure

and preparing to be there's just a

multiplicity of images of who we are

and how we should live now wonderful by

the way i i liked your description of of

using 144 as a as a as a square

yeah you you parallel that to the square

altars which were different from the

rectangular

altars of the people absolutely in that

time and again you see this is a lovely

visual metaphor so so john uses the

the the dimensions of altars in the old

testament which is square to describe

who we are

paul says it in a much more mundane way

doesn't it in revelation 12 and in

romans chapter 12 he says therefore in

view of god's compassions

offer yourselves your bodies as a living

sacrifice holy and pleasing to him and

john is just saying that the same thing

but instead of saying it directly he's

saying it visually

numerically drawing from language in the

old testament which i think is what

makes revelation such a remarkable book

now the the real quick the the number

one thousand you see

i thought you said you put that in as a

square also it's actually a cube

it's a cube yeah 10 10 10. yeah and the

cube is the shape of the

number of the holy of holies yeah

absolutely in a sense okay

dr paul thank you so much for uh taking

this time with us and going over this

and i i know that uh

our followers are going to love this

conversation here the book you've

written is revelation it is a tyndale

new testament commentary there it is

green paul

and ian again i really appreciate your

your

enthusiasm and your motivation for all

of this and

and the work that you do and i hope

people

look a little bit look for him a little

bit more online whether it's social

media or

on your your website your blog yeah

yeah just search em i zeo yeah but you

can just search for em pull blog and

it'll come up and just

come up great all right thanks so much

appreciate it and uh

the technology worked great over the

pond here i'm very very happy about that

well thanks for the invitation greg it's

been really good to engage with you and

thanks for the questions and and

and for reading the book appreciate that

no problem

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