The superscription and the opening verses of the Book of Revelation introduce the entire composition as a whole. It is introduced as “The revelation of Jesus Christ… to His servant John.” The Greek word used here for the word ‘revelation’ is ‘apokalypsis’ which means to ‘unveiling,’ ‘uncovering,’ ‘disclosure,’ or ‘revelation’. The word ‘apocalypse’ is derived from this particular verse. The word ‘apocalypse’ does not connote “catastrophe,” or “end-times”; it just means “unveiling.”
It is an unveiling because it opens up the vision of the readers to look at things differently, from a different perspective. It is fostering an alternative imagination that envisages beyond the closed walls of the dominant imperial consciousness, which suppresses any vision that does not appease the emperor. Such vision or imagination is impossible unless the seer stands in the shoes of a prophet, leaning on to the heart of God, and becoming a herald of a different sort of King, unlike Caesar. The prophetic and apocalyptic vision strikes out the “all-is-well” ideology, which hides the atrocities to narrate its own version of glory. While the rulers and their followers deny their injustice and oppression in order to legitimate their actions, the apocalyptic imagination exposes the shame of the empire by employing ciphers to uncover its true face. It is a counter-imagination against the imperial consciousness that thinks it can endure forever without any change – a change that replaces its power, wealth, and strongholds of dominion. This revelation has a purpose “to cut through the numbness, to penetrate the self-deception, so that the God of endings is confessed as Lord.”[1]
For the writers of the New Testament, the eschaton (the end) had already begun with the first advent of Jesus (Heb. 1:1ff). “Major elements of earliest Christianity understood and expressed their new faith in apocalyptic terms, thus supposing that they were the last generation. The resurrection of Jesus was interpreted as the beginning of the eschatological event of the resurrection of all.” [2] The beginning of the end has already begun in the life and work of Jesus the Messiah. Christian eschatology is not merely something that looks forward to the futuristic climax of the present evil age but something that is strongly founded upon the faith that the New Age has already inaugurated in Christ and will surely be brought to its consummation. (See Matt. 4:17; 10:23; Mark 1:15; 9:1; 13:28-30; Luke 9:27; 12:40; 18:8; 21:25-32; Rom. 13:11-12; 16:20; 1 Cor. 7:25-31; 15:52; Phil. 3:20-21; 4:5; I Thess. 1:9-10; 4:13-18; James 5:7-9; I Peter 4:7; I John 2:18.) By using the word soon John catches the attention of the audience by pointing out God’s immediate vindication of the faithful by defeating the evil. It is “about how God's people will soon be delivered.”[3]
The book does not claim to be a revelation of John, or of some ancient figure; rather, it is the revelation of Jesus Christ. The source of all the revelation is the Sovereign God. If God would not have taken initiative, the humans would have never understood the reality of the works of evil in the world. There would have been no answer to the questions of people. God is the source of all revelation. He discloses to His people the mysteries in order to make them understand what is going on and what would happen soon (Dan. 2:28, 29, 45). He is not the One who speaks in vain. His revelations are always contextual and encouraging in times of crisis (for instance, see Gen. 17:1; Exod. 3:14; Dan. 7). The angelic mediation of revelation is common in every apocalyptic literature (see Dan. 7, 9). But in this Christian Apocalypse, the Book of Revelation, the emphasis is on the role of Jesus Christ as the one who reveals. “He is not an angel who passed it on to John, but he is the revealer of and about himself. In short, Jesus’ revelation is both subjective and objective.”[4]
Eugene Boring adds:
John does not call his document “God's revelation through Jesus,” which would make Jesus only another member of the chain. Jesus is not merely one member among several; he is mentioned first as the constituting member of the revelatory chain. For John, God is not someone we already know on some other basis than his self-revelation in Jesus, about whom Jesus then gives further increments of information. What God has to say to the churches and through them to the world is mediated through Christ. For John, as for Christian faith generally, “God” is “the one definitively revealed through Jesus Christ.” The Christological affirmations of Revelation are not a response to the question “Who is Jesus?” but “Who is God?” As “God” is defined by “Christ,” so “Christ” is defined by “Jesus.”... As “Christ” is defined by “Jesus,” so “Jesus” is defined by “dying-for-us” (1:5b; 5:9). In Jesus, God has defined himself as the one who suffers for others, whose suffering love is the instrument of the creation's redemption.[5]
The opening verses of the book go on to state that it is about what must take place soon. The classical dispensationalists interpret the word soon in the light of 2 Peter 3:8, where it is said that “for the Lord, a day is like a thousand years,” and say that John was actually referring to the events of a distant future with an unspecified time gap. Such interpretation does not fit into the apocalyptic setting. God is not the one who simply reveals some events in the distant future in a coded language that presents no relevance for the immediate audience. When it is said soon, “it could express hope for God’s imminent vindication of his people and his defeat of evil (Luke 18:8; Rom 16:20). Where Dan 2:28 said that God revealed ‘what will happen at the end of days,’ Revelation speaks of what must take place ‘soon,’ bringing the message into the context of the readers.”[6]
The connective clause “for the time is near” signifies the fulfilment of the hope of the church, the kairotic moment when God establishes His Kingdom. In the New Testament, the word kairos[7] is used to refer to the arrival of the Kingdom of God. In the Book of Revelation, the kairos in the Book of Revelation “returns in the centre of the book as the time for judgement and rewarding. (11:18) Its coming means that there is little time left for the dragon (12:12).”[8] The audience of John was encouraged by the fact that the end of evil is to take place soon. “… [I]n the visionary world the time (kairos) for the final defeat of evil 11:8 has already begun with Satan’s expulsion from heaven at Christ’s exaltation and it continues until Christ’s parousia[9] (12:11), so the time (kairos) in which the faithful live is already characterized by this conflict (12:14… 22:6-7,10).”[10] God’s intervention is always a timely one. The suffering churches were shown that the kairos is at hand. Though they were asked to endure for few more moments (5:11), they were, again and again, led to the encouraging visions of God’s dealing with the evil in the world.
As seen earlier, for John and his audience, the end days have already begun. They began with Jesus’ announcement: “The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God has come near…” (Mark 1:15). The good news is that the God of endings has already intervened in history to bring a climax to the perpetual evil in the world. Though the present evil age does its worst to suppress and annihilate the work of God that has begun in and through Jesus Christ, it cannot be overcome. The imperial powers might work their best to fasten and secure their thrones. But they stand bare before the God of history. Despite their efforts to claim absolute power, they cannot escape from God who would overthrow the thrones to bring salvation to the victims of the oppressive imperial powers. The end has already been announced but waiting for its consummation. Meanwhile, in this period of tension between the imperial powers and the Kingdom of God, the Book of Revelation fosters an alternative consciousness. Despite the uncertainty of the future, Revelation shows how God is going to bring His liberative reign of justice, against all the odds.[11] Brueggemann writes about the prophetic task as “… to invite the king to experience, namely, that the end of the royal fantasy is very near. The end of the royal fantasy will permit a glimpse of the true king who is no fantasy, but we cannot see the real king until the fantasy is shown to be a fragile and perishing deception.”[12]
Such prophetic-apocalyptic imagination not only energizes the suffering community but also warns them not to fall away from their allegiance to Christ. By uncovering the true face of the dominant consciousness, the Christians are also called not to participate in its destiny by confusing their allegiance to Christ for entertaining with the evil oppressive powers. It is an alternative vision against the popular culture of running for power, wealth and pleasure, in order to settle down forever.
References:
[1] Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 55. [2] Eugene M. Boring, Interpretation: Revelation, 70. He identifies three different approaches to the expectation of near-end in apocalyptic literature: (a) Rejection – considering apocalyptic expectation as an error and simply rejecting it; (b) Reinterpretation – considering the apocalyptic expectation as referring to a distant future with indefinite time-lapse, and (c) Reaffirmation - In times of threat and persecution, Christians of the second and third generations revived the older apocalyptic expectations with the conviction that even though earlier predictions were wrong, now the End has indeed come near. In their situation, apocalyptic language once again made sense and supplied an urgently needed means of holding on to the faith, despite all the empirical evidence to the contrary. [3] Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament, 780. [4] Kistemaker, NTC: Exposition of the Book of Revelation, 76. [5] M. Eugene Boring, Interpretation: Revelation, edited by James Luther Mays (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1989), 65-66. [6] Koester, AYB: Revelation, 212. [7] There are two Greek words used to refer to time: kairos and chronos. The word kairos means opportunity, right time and the word chronos refers to a point of time. [8] Wielenga, Revelation to John, 3. [9] The word Parousia refers to the ‘coming of the Lord’ specifically to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. [10] Koester, AYB: Revelation, 214. [11] Wielenga, Revelation to John, 2. [12] Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, 56.
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