Revelation Intro
In the beginning: my thoughts on N.T. Wright's intro to Revelation
Note: I’m following N.T. Wright’s Revelation: 22 Studies for Individuals and Groups. I’m also reading the original Revelation for Everyone on which the study guide is based. See my post Prepare for Revelation for suggested materials.
Let’s dig in! N.T. Wright’s introduction in his Revelation study guide is an edited-down version from his book Revelation for Everyone.
Read Revelation, chapter 1, verses 1 to 8.
Verse 3 says, “blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy.” Rarely do we hear the Bible read out loud. Church services include readings of verses from the Gospels and Epistles (letters), but it lacks the intimacy, the shared experience of listening and learning together, of being read to. I wonder what it would’ve been like to have been in Nazareth when Jesus read out loud from Isaiah? Do you remember what it’s like to have a trusted adult — like a parent or spouse — read out loud to you? When was the last time that happened?
For me, it was before 2018. As part of my attempt to recover my reading, I read out loud, and was read out loud to, passages from a novel I was reading together with another. There was something comforting about it. A shared experience; a seed for conversation. I think this was what the writer meant about being blessed if you read this prophecy out loud. When you’re reading out loud to another, you’re sharing, connecting, planting a seed for continuing conversation.
Have a taste of being read to.
Revelation 1: 1-8, King James Version. I chose this Bible version because it isn’t subject to copyright laws, which I don’t feel like tangling with.
How did that feel? Did hearing it read out loud to you stir you to want to read Revelation; or was it only the beautiful language that did so? Is reading out loud — and being read out loud to — something you’d like to share with a loved one in your life?
Perhaps consider sharing this newsletter with others you’d like to read out loud to or be read aloud to. Then when a new post drops into your inbox, set up a time to read that week/month’s passage aloud to them (and/or vice versa), using my discussion to converse with them and me about Wright’s ideas and your own.
When a child reads out loud to you, you get to participate in their growth. And when you read out loud to a child, you’re growing them up in the beauty of words. John the Seer, the author of Revelation, writes in verse 2 that he’s witness to the word of God — as are we now.
Words empower people and create (or destroy) relationships. They are the outward expression of an inward mind.
Wright wrote that the early Christian church had several questions. I think we have these questions, too:
What’s God doing now?
What were the plans for the churches around the Mediterranean — and today, the multiplicity of denominations and stand-alone churches?
Why does God allow persecution?
Do Christians resist current trends? Back then, the religion of the time was worshipping Caesar, the Roman emperor. Today, it’s money, status, youth, the popular crowd in your area, the no-suffering creed.
Are Christians wasting their time following a crucified man who lived thousands of years ago instead of being in with the current popular movement or following the current lauded leader?
According to Wright, Revelation answers these questions and more.
Revelation is:
A 4-stage revelation.
A letter.
A prophecy.
A witness or testimony, in which our and Jesus’s testimonies are key to God’s ultimate judgement and we are called to suffer and/or die in service to what we’ve said. Witnessing carries consequences, just like it does in any court.
Everything flows from God through Jesus to us into the future, with time existing at many moments not flowing forward only.
Study Time
I’m now going to start going through Wright’s questions in his study guide. I may sometimes skip a few…or not. Today, I’ll simply start with his questions on verses 1 to 8 in chapter 1. The first question is like an ice-breaker. It’s designed to get your brainwaves into thinking mode. The question seems to come out of left field, but it’s based on his second chapter that cover chatper 1, verses 9-20. It works for the first 8 verses, too.
Question 1: Have you ever stared at the sun for just a moment too long? What effect did it have on you?
“Some years ago there was an eclipse of the sun….Eventually one person, who obviously had very little understanding of natural phenomena, got cross about all [the warnings of not looking directly at the sun]. Surely, they thought, this was a ‘health and safety’ issue. A letter was sent to the London Times: if this event was so dangerous, why was the government allowing it in the first place?
…the danger of full-power sunlight is worth contemplating as we hear John speaking about his vision of Jesus.” Revelation for Everyone, chapter 2.
Long ago, on a rooftop in a distant land, my father held me in his arms as we joined the others in our flat to witness the solar eclipse. My parents warned me not to stare at the sun as the land became dark, darker than night. Awe struck me as familiar day became inexplicable night. I listened carefully to my parents’ explanations and avoided staring at the sun with my unprotected eyes. Since I have a memory of red bursting in flames around a black disc, they must’ve given me protective glasses to put on and not remove until the eclipse was over.
I wanted to see it again. It was unlike anything I’d experienced in my short life. It was a family and community event, where we were all together, witnessing the same thing from a concrete rooftop, being in awe of the same darkening sky. No strife; no separation; just intriguing magnificence. I wanted to see more, understand more. The eclipse lit up my curiosity.
I felt the same way a few years later halfway across the world from that eclipsing moment when Jesus visited me. Perhaps that’s why I’ve had an almost lifelong curiosity about Jesus, God, heaven and earth, and life after life after death, as Wright puts it in his book Surprised by Hope. (You can read more about my experience with Jesus in Brain Injury, Trauma, and Grief: How to Heal When You Are Alone, shortlisted for the 2023 Word Awards in the categories General Non-Fiction Culture and Writer of Colour.)
How did you answer Wright’s opening question? What did you think of my answer? Do you feel ready to open the pages of Revelation?
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Study Question 3: What other “lords” in our own day make competing claims to the Almighty status that — as John testifies here — in reality belongs to God alone?
Off the top of my head: one’s favourite politician; a party you pay membership to; a particular physician or surgeon; a celebrity; a way of thought that lets you belong to a certain group whose praise you seek; guns; brands; denying needing to change and sacrifice for the climate or following only certain kinds of climate action; medications; psychiatric labels; active euthanasia is dignified dying (oh, puh-lease; being murdered isn’t dignified); individualism as if we’re all siloes and don’t influence each other and each other’s brains in ways we cannot comprehend; status reflected in where you send your kids for schooling and trips, who you socialize with, where you live, how you spend your money and who you spend your money on; youth with rigid ideas of progressiveness; elders who look and sound like your old days; country; pandemic-created schisms from “thou shalt mask always” or “mask never” to “living normally” to how it started (lab leak versus market).
When I focus on the question, “What is mind?” and start by contemplating God, my perspective shifts. Human flaws and rationalizing the indefensible come into sharp focus, exposing the deceptions in what people today deem acceptable, even good and to be defended at all costs. Politicians come and go as do trends and popular groups. The idea that suffering is always bad, coupled with fear of losing control over one’s life and body and with the idea that the only time death is dignified is when we choose it, and all of that undergirded by the falseness that we make choices completely independent of others and our environment — lead to Canadians embracing euthanasia as progressive. Nothing like showing how little attention people paid to their high school history classes!
Unfortunately, for the euthanasia-is-about-choice crowd, or euthanasia isn’t murder but dignified death religion, stories began to trickle out about people who didn’t want to die aka are not suicidal but were seeking it due to intolerable living conditions and quality of life.
If we put our focus on God and walking hand in hand with them, then we don’t focus on our tax burden — that is, supporting tax cuts and calling the disabled, immigrants, and out-of-work lazy and needing to be impoverished in order to force them to get on with life. Instead, we see every human being as God’s, loved by God. And we can then follow that thought to what that actually means.
Who we vote for, what we support, reflects who or what we really worship.
What “lords” do you see in your life that supersede God? What one idea that used to be unacceptable after WWII has now ascended to worship status? Is there any idea, concept, or standard operating procedure in your work life or home life that can never be challenged — essentially is a “lord”?