Chapter 1
What I Know.
For the first time in my seventy years of life on earth, I have recently been admitted to a hospital. I had to have surgery for prostate cancer. This has made me aware that my allotted time here has, for the most part, been used up.
This realization has led me to think of what particular things would be lost to humankind if I were to die tomorrow. This is, of course, a humbling exercise. I arrive at only two possibilities, and of the two, only one that I am fairly certain of.
The first is a small tract I wrote about twenty years ago entitled The Beginning of Wisdom (available in the Kindle store.) There are few, if any, original thoughts in this work. It's main value is in my ordering of those thoughts, which has been helpful to some in reaching insights of their own.
The second of these possibilities is an understanding of The Revelation to John which I have encountered nowhere else in fifty years of study on the subject. While I have no positive reason to think that my understanding is either new or unique, it is this that I will will now attempt to lay out here. My understanding of it. Right or wrong, agreed with or not, I will faithfully record it.
What I don’t know...
is how to proceed.
A chapter and verse commentary is a common way to present a view of scriptural meaning, but the scholarship and authority of the presenter must be commonly accepted, and that certainly isn’t the case with me. In order for my view of Revelation to be seriously considered, my premise and method must be either accepted as plausible, or at least interesting enough to merit the time required to follow and test it.
Being neither an acknowledged scholar nor a calendarizer, I am fully aware that the audience for this study will be very small. But this is the one thing which I would leave to humankind, and so I shall do the best I can to make it worth at least a few people’s time to review it.
Fifty years ago, when I was twenty, I felt that there was information in all of scripture that needed digging out. Revelation particularly drew me. It is full of hints of things that would happen at certain times in the history of the world and what they would mean in God’s scheme of creation and history. So that was where I began digging. I was, at that time, a calendarizer.
While in my early thirties I went to seminary and earned a master’s degree in divinity. It seemed to me that such a degree earned me the right to be called “master,” or at least be described as “divine.” Alas, neither proved to be the case. It did enable me to be appointed to a series of wonderful United Methodist churches, and I have known great joy and fulfillment over the years in being called “pastor.”
It may not be too surprising that while I was in seminary I took a course in Revelation. I was enrolled in Pacific School of Religion, an interdenominational theological seminary. PSR is a member of what is called the Graduate Theological Union, and I was allowed to take courses from any of fourteen accredited seminaries in the neighborhood. It was a real privilege to choose from Lutheran Episcopalian, American Baptist, Jewish, Unitarian and three Roman Catholic seminaries. I tried them all, to my great benefit. I took a course in Revelation from the Dominicans.
While much of what we studied in that course seemed irrelevant to me, I did manage to see the value of learning what certain ideas and images meant to he who wrote the account of the vision and to those who would first read his account. I figured that the historical “fitting in and figuring out” I could do on my own, and do it more accurately with what I learned in the course.
There is one thing the Dominican priest giving the course said that I took to heart right away. He said that none of us would really learn anything about the Revelation until we taught a class in it. Soon after I arrived at Colby United Methodist Church, my first pastorate, I assumed leadership of an adult Bible Study class, which was customarily taught by the pastor. We completed two units of the curriculum they had been using. I asked if, instead of going on to the next unit they would like to begin a study of Revelation. They said they would very much like it.
This group of very intelligent women would prove to me the truth of my seminary professor's words. We dug into Revelation and I began to learn.
We were short on resource materials and not too certain which ones to trust, so we decided to follow clues and definitions contained in Revelation itself, thinking we could dig them all out in a month or two. I'm still finding them.
But those we found right away began to open our eyes to a new understanding.
Now if I were to tell the truth, and I usually do so, I will have to admit here that all I have written so far is mostly just stalling. I’m still not certain how to proceed. The old standard, “Start at the beginning, continue until you come to the end, and then stop,” really doesn’t serve too well here. The beginning of our process of discovery is lost in time. The thousands of little truths that have since made themselves known to us, well, to me, anyway, have arranged themselves in a whole new scheme.
We may best be served by pointing out two assumptions which I did not begin with, but which have become apparent as I studied. You’ll notice that I have changed from “we” to “I.” After a few months our group moved on to other areas of study. I have continued with Revelation. Now to the two assumptions.
First, there are parts of Revelation which are best considered as literal truth. Chapter one is a good example. John was the pastor of a circuit of congregations, churches, and was writing while in prison on the Island of Patmos. He was telling of a vision he experienced while in meditation, and of specific messages contained in that vision for the seven churches which comprised his circuit. Chapters two and three should probably be included with Chapter one as literally true.
Second, there are other parts of Revelation which are best considered not to be literally true. Before you close the book in disgust, keep in mind that there are truths other than literal. If you would learn them, you must first decide what kind of truth you are looking for. The clearest example of this is found in Chapters twenty one and twenty two, the description of the Holy City, the New Jerusalem.
Let’s begin with a little self test.
Do you know the basic shape of the New Jerusalem? If you have read in Revelation at all, you would have at least have skipped to the end to see how everything wound up. If not, read it now. So, after reading or remembering, what is the shape?
Did you answer that the shape of the Holy City is a cube? If you did, you are either a student of Revelation or a very careful reader. Most people say that it is square, the term used in most translations is “foursquare,” and even though it goes on to explain that it is the same dimension in length, width and height, the part that sticks with most of us is the “square” part.
But a cube?
This requires some creative thought. We have no examples of cubical cities. Some day, in space or perhaps under water, a city might be built that is cubical. But for now, we have to see it in our mind’s eye. It would actually be very hard to see it any other way.
And that's one key to understanding Revelation: to understand it's message we must use our mind's eye.
So, you're not convinced? Let's look at the city some more closely. Forget the shape and consider the dimensions. The Holy City is big. It is 1,500 miles wide, 1,500 miles long and 1,500 miles high.
Let’s consider height first. 1,500 miles is 1/16th of the distance to the moon, so to get an idea of its scale, and what might be inferred from it, we have to locate our mind’s eye out in space somewhere. Place it on earth, looking at it from space, and it will cover approximately the area of the 48 contiguous United States, and our various satellites will bump right into it!
How is your mind-eye working? Do you see the new Jerusalem sitting upon the earth? Do you see the city gates? There are twelve of them, but you will only be able to see no more than six at a time, since there are three on each of the four sides.
But hold on. Our mind's eye is located at least three thousand miles away, looking at the holy city. From that distance, how large would a gate have to be to be seen? Let's just take a guess and say they would need to be a mile high. Sooo, what say we keep that in mind when we consider entering one of those gates.
Passing through those gates has been one of two most famous human preoccupations regarding Revelation. What is the other? Well, it is the four horsemen of the apocalypse, of course. But we'll consider them a little later.
How many jokes have you heard featuring St. Peter, guarding “the” gate to heaven, or at “the pearly gates?” This is a mixture of images from two different sources. One is from the gospel account of Jesus giving Peter the keys to the kingdom, and the other is from Revelation, where each gate is described as being a pearl. Would we think, then, that each of the twelve pearls is a mile in diameter? A number of questions come to mind.
How can a pearl, of any size, be a gate? I can imagine a round gate, and a pearl of the right size rolled up to block it, but John said that the pearl itself was the gate, and more importantly, that all of the gates were always open.
Then there is the matter of size itself. Any gateway large enough to be seen from space would tend to disappear as we approached it. Or if we could detect walls of some sort in the distant horizons on our right and left, disappearing into the sky, would we recognize it as a gate?
How about the questions themselves? Is it even right to question scripture this way? Well, here is my response to that: How are we to understand what scripture means if we don’t ask questions of it and about it? Shall we take our first guess at understanding it, and stick with that for all of our days? If that were the case we wouldn’t need to study the Bible at all. A good search program is all we would need to cover any question we might have. If that is what you think Bible study is, I’m sure I have lost you by now.
So, for those of us who are still on board, I hope it is becoming clear that to understand Revelation, if not all scripture, we need to know when to take something literally, when to understand something spiritually, and when to ignore it altogether.
Wait! "When to ignore it?" Well, I can make a case for that in many Old Testament places, but certainly not in Revelation. In verse 19 of chapter 20 we are warned not to take any words away from that prophecy. I have done my best over the years to heed that warning. It is great advice.
That warning, you see, is one of the parts of The Revelation to John that I take literally.
Now, since I have begun my attempt to explain my understanding of Revelation with a close look at the Holy City, let me quickly point out some details about it that are often ignored.
The most important statement about the gates into the Holy City, in my estimation, is that they are open by day, and that there is no night there. No one stands at any of the 12 gates, barring entry to some, and allowing entry to others.
The gates to the New Jerusalem are always open. All who want to enter may do so and drink of the water of life. All who want to, who are thirsty. The large majority of Christians with whom I have talked, or whose thoughts I have read seem not to agree with this very plain statement from the last part of the Revelation to John.
They have taken something very precious away from it.
And they have ignored the very serious warning it contains. It may be that by their own criteria they condemn themselves.
I won't give any more examples of the many ways that good Christian people take words away from the Revelation. There are hundreds of them, and we'll encounter them on our way.
But I have to admit that I have arrived at the point where I'm not certain how to proceed. So, I guess it's a good place for a pause.
What I Know.
For the first time in my seventy years of life on earth, I have recently been admitted to a hospital. I had to have surgery for prostate cancer. This has made me aware that my allotted time here has, for the most part, been used up.
This realization has led me to think of what particular things would be lost to humankind if I were to die tomorrow. This is, of course, a humbling exercise. I arrive at only two possibilities, and of the two, only one that I am fairly certain of.
The first is a small tract I wrote about twenty years ago entitled The Beginning of Wisdom (available in the Kindle store.) There are few, if any, original thoughts in this work. It's main value is in my ordering of those thoughts, which has been helpful to some in reaching insights of their own.
The second of these possibilities is an understanding of The Revelation to John which I have encountered nowhere else in fifty years of study on the subject. While I have no positive reason to think that my understanding is either new or unique, it is this that I will will now attempt to lay out here. My understanding of it. Right or wrong, agreed with or not, I will faithfully record it.
What I don’t know...
is how to proceed.
A chapter and verse commentary is a common way to present a view of scriptural meaning, but the scholarship and authority of the presenter must be commonly accepted, and that certainly isn’t the case with me. In order for my view of Revelation to be seriously considered, my premise and method must be either accepted as plausible, or at least interesting enough to merit the time required to follow and test it.
Being neither an acknowledged scholar nor a calendarizer, I am fully aware that the audience for this study will be very small. But this is the one thing which I would leave to humankind, and so I shall do the best I can to make it worth at least a few people’s time to review it.
Fifty years ago, when I was twenty, I felt that there was information in all of scripture that needed digging out. Revelation particularly drew me. It is full of hints of things that would happen at certain times in the history of the world and what they would mean in God’s scheme of creation and history. So that was where I began digging. I was, at that time, a calendarizer.
While in my early thirties I went to seminary and earned a master’s degree in divinity. It seemed to me that such a degree earned me the right to be called “master,” or at least be described as “divine.” Alas, neither proved to be the case. It did enable me to be appointed to a series of wonderful United Methodist churches, and I have known great joy and fulfillment over the years in being called “pastor.”
It may not be too surprising that while I was in seminary I took a course in Revelation. I was enrolled in Pacific School of Religion, an interdenominational theological seminary. PSR is a member of what is called the Graduate Theological Union, and I was allowed to take courses from any of fourteen accredited seminaries in the neighborhood. It was a real privilege to choose from Lutheran Episcopalian, American Baptist, Jewish, Unitarian and three Roman Catholic seminaries. I tried them all, to my great benefit. I took a course in Revelation from the Dominicans.
While much of what we studied in that course seemed irrelevant to me, I did manage to see the value of learning what certain ideas and images meant to he who wrote the account of the vision and to those who would first read his account. I figured that the historical “fitting in and figuring out” I could do on my own, and do it more accurately with what I learned in the course.
There is one thing the Dominican priest giving the course said that I took to heart right away. He said that none of us would really learn anything about the Revelation until we taught a class in it. Soon after I arrived at Colby United Methodist Church, my first pastorate, I assumed leadership of an adult Bible Study class, which was customarily taught by the pastor. We completed two units of the curriculum they had been using. I asked if, instead of going on to the next unit they would like to begin a study of Revelation. They said they would very much like it.
This group of very intelligent women would prove to me the truth of my seminary professor's words. We dug into Revelation and I began to learn.
We were short on resource materials and not too certain which ones to trust, so we decided to follow clues and definitions contained in Revelation itself, thinking we could dig them all out in a month or two. I'm still finding them.
But those we found right away began to open our eyes to a new understanding.
Now if I were to tell the truth, and I usually do so, I will have to admit here that all I have written so far is mostly just stalling. I’m still not certain how to proceed. The old standard, “Start at the beginning, continue until you come to the end, and then stop,” really doesn’t serve too well here. The beginning of our process of discovery is lost in time. The thousands of little truths that have since made themselves known to us, well, to me, anyway, have arranged themselves in a whole new scheme.
We may best be served by pointing out two assumptions which I did not begin with, but which have become apparent as I studied. You’ll notice that I have changed from “we” to “I.” After a few months our group moved on to other areas of study. I have continued with Revelation. Now to the two assumptions.
First, there are parts of Revelation which are best considered as literal truth. Chapter one is a good example. John was the pastor of a circuit of congregations, churches, and was writing while in prison on the Island of Patmos. He was telling of a vision he experienced while in meditation, and of specific messages contained in that vision for the seven churches which comprised his circuit. Chapters two and three should probably be included with Chapter one as literally true.
Second, there are other parts of Revelation which are best considered not to be literally true. Before you close the book in disgust, keep in mind that there are truths other than literal. If you would learn them, you must first decide what kind of truth you are looking for. The clearest example of this is found in Chapters twenty one and twenty two, the description of the Holy City, the New Jerusalem.
Let’s begin with a little self test.
Do you know the basic shape of the New Jerusalem? If you have read in Revelation at all, you would have at least have skipped to the end to see how everything wound up. If not, read it now. So, after reading or remembering, what is the shape?
Did you answer that the shape of the Holy City is a cube? If you did, you are either a student of Revelation or a very careful reader. Most people say that it is square, the term used in most translations is “foursquare,” and even though it goes on to explain that it is the same dimension in length, width and height, the part that sticks with most of us is the “square” part.
But a cube?
This requires some creative thought. We have no examples of cubical cities. Some day, in space or perhaps under water, a city might be built that is cubical. But for now, we have to see it in our mind’s eye. It would actually be very hard to see it any other way.
And that's one key to understanding Revelation: to understand it's message we must use our mind's eye.
So, you're not convinced? Let's look at the city some more closely. Forget the shape and consider the dimensions. The Holy City is big. It is 1,500 miles wide, 1,500 miles long and 1,500 miles high.
Let’s consider height first. 1,500 miles is 1/16th of the distance to the moon, so to get an idea of its scale, and what might be inferred from it, we have to locate our mind’s eye out in space somewhere. Place it on earth, looking at it from space, and it will cover approximately the area of the 48 contiguous United States, and our various satellites will bump right into it!
How is your mind-eye working? Do you see the new Jerusalem sitting upon the earth? Do you see the city gates? There are twelve of them, but you will only be able to see no more than six at a time, since there are three on each of the four sides.
But hold on. Our mind's eye is located at least three thousand miles away, looking at the holy city. From that distance, how large would a gate have to be to be seen? Let's just take a guess and say they would need to be a mile high. Sooo, what say we keep that in mind when we consider entering one of those gates.
Passing through those gates has been one of two most famous human preoccupations regarding Revelation. What is the other? Well, it is the four horsemen of the apocalypse, of course. But we'll consider them a little later.
How many jokes have you heard featuring St. Peter, guarding “the” gate to heaven, or at “the pearly gates?” This is a mixture of images from two different sources. One is from the gospel account of Jesus giving Peter the keys to the kingdom, and the other is from Revelation, where each gate is described as being a pearl. Would we think, then, that each of the twelve pearls is a mile in diameter? A number of questions come to mind.
How can a pearl, of any size, be a gate? I can imagine a round gate, and a pearl of the right size rolled up to block it, but John said that the pearl itself was the gate, and more importantly, that all of the gates were always open.
Then there is the matter of size itself. Any gateway large enough to be seen from space would tend to disappear as we approached it. Or if we could detect walls of some sort in the distant horizons on our right and left, disappearing into the sky, would we recognize it as a gate?
How about the questions themselves? Is it even right to question scripture this way? Well, here is my response to that: How are we to understand what scripture means if we don’t ask questions of it and about it? Shall we take our first guess at understanding it, and stick with that for all of our days? If that were the case we wouldn’t need to study the Bible at all. A good search program is all we would need to cover any question we might have. If that is what you think Bible study is, I’m sure I have lost you by now.
So, for those of us who are still on board, I hope it is becoming clear that to understand Revelation, if not all scripture, we need to know when to take something literally, when to understand something spiritually, and when to ignore it altogether.
Wait! "When to ignore it?" Well, I can make a case for that in many Old Testament places, but certainly not in Revelation. In verse 19 of chapter 20 we are warned not to take any words away from that prophecy. I have done my best over the years to heed that warning. It is great advice.
That warning, you see, is one of the parts of The Revelation to John that I take literally.
Now, since I have begun my attempt to explain my understanding of Revelation with a close look at the Holy City, let me quickly point out some details about it that are often ignored.
The most important statement about the gates into the Holy City, in my estimation, is that they are open by day, and that there is no night there. No one stands at any of the 12 gates, barring entry to some, and allowing entry to others.
The gates to the New Jerusalem are always open. All who want to enter may do so and drink of the water of life. All who want to, who are thirsty. The large majority of Christians with whom I have talked, or whose thoughts I have read seem not to agree with this very plain statement from the last part of the Revelation to John.
They have taken something very precious away from it.
And they have ignored the very serious warning it contains. It may be that by their own criteria they condemn themselves.
I won't give any more examples of the many ways that good Christian people take words away from the Revelation. There are hundreds of them, and we'll encounter them on our way.
But I have to admit that I have arrived at the point where I'm not certain how to proceed. So, I guess it's a good place for a pause.