Revelation makes for some interesting conversations among believers. Sitting around the table there’s the:
- Pre-tribulational Premillenialists
- Mid-tribulational Premillenialists
- Post-tribulational Premillenialists
- Historical Premillenialists
- Postmillenialists
- Amillennialists
Say that list fast ten times.
With all the fascinating interpretive scholarship that goes into each of these views on Revelation and the end-times, the only scholarship that matters in the end is the kind that finds Jesus Christ at the absolute center of the apocalyptic landscape. The opening words of Revelation, “The revelation of Jesus Christ” (1:1) ought to signal to us the serious Christ-centeredness of the words, imagery, numbers and symbols about to be shared in the chapters ahead.
The downfall of much of the scholarship that can be found in much of today’s popular end-times theologizing is wherever people forget the final result that the Author intended in the first place: to make Jesus Christ known, loved and feared (and perseveringly so!). Revelation at every point is that strikingly simple in its interpretive focus.
All the believer must know as we live in these end-times is driven home time and again in Revelation: the need for single-hearted, persevering devotion to the Savior that views him as worth suffering, even dying for. Every symbol, number and scene set before us delivers to the Christian one reason after another to fear God and love Christ more, and in the wise words of Dory the forgetful fish (from the movie, “Finding Nemo”), to: “just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming, just keep swimming.“
[My extra 2 cents: as an Amillenialist, I don't believe I miss out on the meat of the Apostle John's vision and burden for the churches by neglecting to understand which world leaders are found on which head of whatever beast in Revelation. I also don't think I miss out by forgetting to nail down current events and world happenings with specific symbols found in the pages of the Bible's apocalyptic sections. Rather, I have found such freedom to rest in the plainer interpretations of what once terrified me as a young believer.]
January 24, 2012 at 12:40 pm
Thank you, Doug. As someone who doesn’t know what she is, your post frees me to be just that–unsure (I was going to say “stupid” but “unsure” makes me sound like I actually put thought into my position). I’ll wait until I get to heaven when my beloved will make it clear to me. Come, Lord Jesus!