Revelation, suffering, God's faithfulness, attending a good play (Michael Pahl)

I am reading Michael Pahl's The Beginning and the End (2011). In the following I will quote a few things he says about Revelation. What I like about what Pahl says is that he talks about the suffering of the followers of Jesus and God's faithfulness to them. We fail to read Revelation probably if we miss these. The other great suggestion Pahl has is that we can read Revelation as if we are attending a play. (I will highlight some sentences in blue in the quotes below.)

"Revelation is not so much concerned with the precise when and how questions of the future as much as the who and what and why sorts of questions of human - and especially Christian - existence in this present age: Why do we suffer in this world, especially as God's people? Is God faithful to his people and his creation? What is our role as God's people in this oppressive world? What is wrong with the world? How will things be made right?"

"[I]n a real sense, reading Revelation is a lot like attending a good play - which brings us back to the importance of stories in shaping our collective identity and purpose and values. We have narrators (John and his angelic interpreter) guiding us through the story. We have a series of scenes (apocalyptic visions) unfolding before us, which are visually and verbally stimulating, even provocative, critiquing the world in which we live even as they present for us the world as it could be, as it will be. And, just like a good play, if we fully engage the strange world of this dramatic story we call Revelation, we will come out of the theater changed, seeing the real world - and our place in it - in a radically new way."

Interpreting Revelation - Two of Michael Gorman's suggestions

In his book, Reading Revelation Responsibly, Dr Michael Gorman suggests five concrete strategies to approach the Book of Revelation. Here I would like to mention two of them.

"Recognize that the central and centering image of Revelation is the Lamb that was slaughtered. In Revelation, Christ dies for our sins, but he dies also, even primarily, as the incarnation and paradigm of faithfulness to God in the face of anti-God powers. Christ is Lord, Christ is victorious, and Christ conquers by cruciform faithful resistance..." (page 78)

"Focus on the book's call to public worship and discipleship. Revelation calls Christians to a difficult discipleship of discernment - a non-conformist cruciform faithfulness - that may lead to marginalization or even persecution now, but ultimately to a place in God's new heaven and new earth. Revelation calls believers to nonretaliation and nonviolence, and not to a literal war of any sort, present or future. By its very nature as resistance, faithful nonconformity is not absolute withdrawal but rather critical engagement on very different terms from those of the status quo. This is all birthed and nurtured in worship." (page 79)

The reign of God and the Lamb (Michael Gorman)

I am reading Michael Gorman's Reading Revelation Responsibly. There is so much in this book. I will try to cite a few quotes of the book in the future. Here is the first installment.

The Throne: The Reign of God and the Lamb [as a theological theme in Revelation]. God the creator reigns! Jesus the redeemer, the slaughtered Lamb, is Lord! The reign of the eternal God, the beginning and the end, is not merely future or past but present, and it is manifested in - of all things - the slaughtered Lamb. God is inseparable from the Lamb, and vice versa. Each can be called the Alpha and Omega, and they rule together on one throne. This is a cruciform (cross-centred and cross-shaped) understanding of divine power.

(See Nijay Gupta's review of the book here.)

Gordon Fee on Revelation 20:1-6 - "the thousand years"

Every now and then people would ask me about what the "thousand years" mean in Revelation 20:1-6. Here I will cite a few comments from Gordon Fee's commentary (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2011) to help us answer that. But first, here the NIV2011 version of the passage:

"And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key to the Abyss and holding in his hand a great chain. He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. He threw him into the Abyss, and locked and sealed it over him, to keep him from deceiving the nations anymore until the thousand years were ended. After that, he must be set free for a short time. I saw thrones on which were seated those who had been given authority to judge. And 

I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of their testimony about Jesus and because of the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years.  (The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended.) This is the first resurrection.  Blessed and holy are those who share in the first resurrection. The second death has no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with him for a thousand years."

Here are excerpts from Gordon Fee's commentary on Revelation.

"[T]he two paragraphs, both of which begin yet again with the verb 'I saw,' are best understood together as an interlude between the divine overthrow of the unholy triumvirate (Satan, the Empire, the cult of the emperor) delineated in the preceding section (19:11-21), and the final judgement of all evil, both demonic and human, in 20:7-15. Again, as throughout, judgment itself is not the last word. So the book concludes in turn with 'a new heaven and a new earth' (21:1-8), and a 'new Jerusalem' (21:2, 9-26), which evolves into a restored Eden (22:1-5)!" (page 280)

As to the question of what is the role of this passage to the narrative as a whole, Fee says,

"[S]ince Jewish apocalypses (after Daniel) regularly have such a moment in them, although this is the only instance of 'a thousand years' as such. Millennial ideas, for example, can be found in 2 Baruch 29-30 and the Psalms of Solomon 17; but neither of these specify a thousand-year time period, rather they look forward to a time of messianic bliss on earth. However, in neither of these cases is there also a final 'heavenly' existence as well. Thus, whatever millennial ideas may have preceded John, the present passage is remarkably his own, and has specifically to do with the special place Christian martyrs have in the divine economy." (page 282)

What then is the meaning of "after that, he must be set free for a short time" in Rev 20:3?

"[It] is mostly likely related to ... that John's major concern here is not with time as such, but with the special place God has reserved for those who have been killed by the state simply because they were followers of the once slain, now risen Lamb. In any case, John's obvious concern lies with the second paragraph (vv. 4-6), and thus not with the time period as such. The picture itself is ultimately about the role of the martyrs during the thousand-year period. And even though there is no specific geographical location given, John seems clearly to have planet earth still in view. This is made certain by the language about 'the nations' in verse 3 and the picture of the resurrected martyrs 'reigning' with Christ, plus the reality that it is literally sandwiched between the Last Battle in 19:11-21 and the release of Satan to 'deceive the nations' in 20:7-10." (page 282)

Here are some Fee's conclusion remarks on Rev 20:1-6.

"So John's apparent intent here is not to say something about them [ie. the martyrs], but to make sure that the reader recognizes that what is true for all believers is true for them in particular. That is, since all of God's redeemed people will experience the first resurrection, it is therefore also true that all of God's people are thereby 'blessed and holy' and will not experience the 'second death.' This, however, is especially true of the martyrs, about whom John then concludes, they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with him for a thousand years. Here again the reader can hardly miss the high Christology, in which the Father and Son are once more brought together at the Eschaton. What is noteworthy in this case is that the final pronoun 'him' is singular, therefore referring to Christ alone. Thus believers will serve as a kind of eternal priesthood before God and Christ, but the special privilege of the martyrs is that they 'reign' with Christ (alone) for the thousand-year period allotted especially to them. After all, according to the preceding sentence this privilege does not include 'the rest of the dead.'" (page 284)