Over the coming weeks we’ll be exploring the book of Revelation in some depth. Our SLE blog will also be used to help fill in some details that may have been glossed over, or unpack more detail in hopefully helpful way.

Since we’re at the start of the series it might be helpful to begin with some preliminary reflections on the book as a whole and its genre.

We’re all pretty familiar with genre. It’s the word to describe different categories of literature. Take the newspaper for example. When we open up a newspaper we can instantly recognise the various genres involved. The front page cover story is usually a straight forward telling of events. We don’t tend to read these stories, and the events within, symbolically. The editorial or opinion page will also be read differently as we consider the thoughts (and biases) of the opinion piece before us. Finally we turn to the comic pages and we can instantly recognise the jokes, sarcasm and humour. We don’t tend to read these literally – as though there are actual talking animals in outback Australia (like the ‘Beyond the Black Stump’ series).

Revelation also has a particular genre. One that we are not familiar with nor do we have a modern day equivalent. The genre is known as Apocalyptic.

When we think of the genre ‘Apocalyptic’ our mind fills with events and signs of the final days of earth. While in some ways this is true, Apocalyptic literature – as we’ll see in the book of Revelation – contains so much more than just things to do with the end times.

Here is a short list of features that make Revelation apocalyptic in genre (as summarised, condensed, and with some extra commentary from me, from Fee and Stuart’s – How to Read the Bible for All It’s Worth):

1. The root for a lot of the imagery is the Old Testament prophetic literature – especially that of Ezekiel, Daniel, Zechariah and parts of Isaiah. (Steven – Therefore much of the meaning of the original imagery will be imported into the current imagery in Revelation).
2. The images of apocalyptic are often forms of fantasy rather than of reality – for example, a beast with seven heads and ten horns (Rev 13:1), a woman clothed with the sun (12:1)), locusts with scorpion’s tails and human heads (9:10), etc. The fantasy may not necessarily appear in the items themselves (we understand beasts, heads and horns) but in their unearthly combination.
3. The writing is very stylized, dividing time and events into neat packages. There is also a fondness for using symbolic numbers. As a consequence the final product has visions carefully arranged in numbered sets. (Steven – In Revelation there are eight sets of seven parallel narratives).

What does this mean? Well, in short, the first hearers and readers of this book understood the vast majority of the imagery. This is important to note because some interpretations of Revelation can become so fanciful and so connected to our 21st Century world that it would be hard to conceive of the original hearers understanding the book in the same way.

So where to from here?

Well, it’s quite providential that as we start our sermon series in Revelation that our Daily Bible Reading schedule should have us well into Ezekiel. If you haven’t picked up (or have dropped!) the reading program then now is another great time to pick it up again and some of the imagery in Revelation will make sense as we should have just read it in Ezekiel!

Next, though we’ll be reading through Ezekiel it will help to read through the other prophets listed – Zechariah, Daniel and Isaiah – to see how their imagery is picked up and used in Revelation.

Finally please pray for your pastors – Ben and myself – as we prepare the sermons for this week. Pray that we’ll understand the imagery and explain them clearly for us all to be impacted by God’s plans, sovereignty and power. Pray also that each week the Gospel will be clearly proclaimed even from within these strange images.