Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
In this episode, Tyler and Dr. Stewart cover the Third Principle: Repetition, and explore the intricate visions and symbolism of Revelation, focusing on its hymns, judgment, and the seven trumpets. Discover how Revelation’s repeated visions provide varied perspectives on the final battle and divine justice. They also discuss strategies for preaching Revelation and interpreting its symbolic time frames, like the three and a half year period. Tune in to understand the layered messages of Revelation and get a preview of our next episode on interpreting its rich symbolism.
Creators & Guests
What is The Study Podcast?
The Study Podcast is an in-depth look at the Bible with Dr. Paul Wegner and Dr. Alex Stewart.
Tyler Sanders 0:00
You're listening to The Study Podcast with Dr. Alex Stewart on Revelation. I'm your host, Tyler Sanders. I'm here with Dr. Alex Stewart. And we're talking about interpretive principles for the book of Revelation. We're going over five, this is the third one. And it's all about repetition. So my first question for you, to get us into this, is what are some of the tensions that get resolved when we find repetition? We're looking for repetition in the text of Revelation?
Dr. Stewart 0:29
That's a great question. When we recognize repetition, all sorts of challenges get alleviated. And so already by the sixth seal; the sky is rolled up, the stars fall from the sky, the whole earth is shaken with a giant earthquake, the sun's gone black. But in later visions, they describe the trumpets, the stars partially going dark or falling, the sun partially going dark. Or later the bowl judgments, then sun increasing in intensity. And all those things already happened in chapter six. Other smaller examples all throughout; so in the first trumpet, all the green grass is burned up. And then in the fifth trumpet, the locusts are told not to eat, not to harm the green grass. Well, it's all been burned up. So there's lots of small things. The mountains and islands get moved in this cosmic upheaval, multiple times throughout the book. Well, does that happen multiple times or just once at the end? So recognizing the repetition frees us from trying to read the book chronologically. This happened, then this happened, then this happened, then this happened. And when you try to read it chronologically, there's all sorts of these inconsistencies, or these challenges. But when you recognize, the visions are not describing chronology in terms of human history, John's describing the visions in the order, more or less, he received them. So he received them in this order. And he describes them and most of the visions are connected with, "and I saw". Kaiadon in Greek. "And I saw and I saw and I saw" And that doesn't require chronological progression history. It's a description of "and I saw, and I saw, and I saw." And some visions explicitly go back in time. So chapter 12 brings us to-no chapter 11, ends with the seventh trumpet, and it's the time for the dead to be judged, it's the final judgment. "For the rewarding of the servants destroying the ones who destroyed the earth." So Chapter 11 ends with the final judgment. And chapter 12, brings us back in time to a pregnant woman who's going to give birth to a child who's going to rule the nations with a rod of iron. It's a messianic. It's even before the Messiah comes. And so that one's bringing us back in time. And so the visions are temporaly slippery. Some are harder to pin down than others, but they're not from beginning to end, the book is not a historical narrative, of this will happen and this will happen, then this will happen. And recognizing repetition is what frees us from trying to read it that way.
Tyler Sanders 2:45
Yeah. Would you say the visions are parallel? Is that a way to say it? Or is it something a little bit different than that?
Dr. Stewart 2:54
Yep. So what I argue for in the book, and I won't get into the weeds on this, we could talk about some examples probably, but most of the visions in Revelation, describe this period of time between Jesus's first and second coming. So I read them as generally parallel. I mean, chapters one through three, the inaugural appearance, and the message of seven churches, chapters four and five, John's taken to heaven, and has the Throne Room vision. Then chapter six through eight is the seven seals. And then we go right to the seven trumpets. Then there's this interlude of Chapter 12 through 15, where you have the Dragon, the two beasts sequence and ends with a final judgment, the harvest of the earth. And then we go into the seven bowl judgments, which are, I would say this as well, roughly parallel to these other ones. And then you get this final sequence of judgments, Babylon, then the beast, then the dragon, then death. And so that's sort of a brief overview of the whole book. But many of those sequences start with Jesus's first coming and end with a second coming. So another way that sometimes people argue is for telescoping. And I think that's possible. I think that the way they would argue there is the Seventh Seal Judgment at the beginning of chapter eight, contains the seven trumpets. And then the seventh trumpet judgment contains the seven bowl judgments. So they're sort of nested in each other.
Tyler Sanders 4:10
I see.
Dr. Stewart 4:11
One of those Russian nesting dolls, that they're contained within each other. And that approach recognizes at least that all of those series of sevens end at the same point. End at the end. There's cosmic upheaval, the eschatological earthquake, thunder, great hail, etc. So they're all ending at the same point. And they're recognizing that, but that approach is not viewing them all as entirely parallel. And I suggest for various reasons that they're more parallel than that.
Tyler Sanders 4:40
Now, this probably is true. Is it easy to find repetition in the English text? Is it a little bit easier to see it in Greek?
Dr. Stewart 4:50
I don't know, whether it's necessarily easier or not to see it in Greek. Because it's pretty obvious in the English too. So it's not hidden. It's not deep. The intertextuality, as we say, is pretty evident within the book Revelation itself. So I don't know if the Greek helps per se there. That raises the bigger question. I'm a big fan of exegesis and studying the Greek and Revelation is one of those books where the Greek doesn't answer most of the interpretive questions. So in Paul, the Greek is so intense in terms of a prepositional phrase.
Tyler Sanders 5:26
It's so specific.
Dr. Stewart 5:27
Yeah. What type of genitive is this? And in Revelation, those type of questions don't really solve much. Because it's not-those aren't the source of the disagreements the way they are in Paul. So that's just a rabbit trail on the Greek of Revelation, but it is still valuable to read it in Greek and you do catch a lot more...well, you catch a lot more of the vocabulary. And that is repeated throughout. Some of that could just be that it slows you down. So references to the altar. The theustiasthereon, as it were, it occurs first and the fifth seal in chapter six, and it's a [unknown] of the altar. They're praying to God for justice, for vengeance, ekktacasis there. And so they're asking for God to bring judgment, how long and it says, biblical lament. And they're told to wait a little while longer. Well, from then on, every reference to the altar...and then it's sprinkled throughout. Like it's drawing our attention as readers back to that prayer. The prayer for God to bring justice, for God to bring the judicial judgment and vindication of his people who have suffered unjustly through history. So every reference of the altar is drawing our minds back to that prayer and it's the answer to that prayer. And then the language itself picks it up, the language of judicial vengeance. So that occurs at key points. And it's bringing us back to that prayer. This framing all of God's judgments as a response to His people's prayer for justice. And so those are the kinds of things that you do notice a little bit more lexically when you're looking at the Greek. But you can pick it up some in English. And it's more also just a fact of slowing down, to notice. Now, the reference of the altar...well, there's a talking altar. That seems a little strange, but not so much in apocalyptic literature. But the talking alter could be the altar talking, or it could be the souls under it crying out for justice as well. So things like that.
Tyler Sanders 7:15
Yeah. So I think what we've kind of seen so far then is, one of the things repetition is doing is kind of cluing us into the nature of the visions. They're not necessarily chronological. What else is repetition helping bring out in this text? I think in a lot of like poetry, Old Testament poetry, like parallelism, these are things like for emphasis, sometimes. So what all is repetition doing for us here?
Dr. Stewart 7:41
It does a couple of things. I mean, the immediate one is it gives different perspectives on the same sequence of events that we're in. So each of these series of visions that bridge, are describing this time between Jesus's first coming and his second coming, they don't repeat themselves exactly. There's enough hints, there's enough clues, there's enough indications that they're describing this period of time, but they provide different perspectives and unique perspectives on each of these different periods of time. So that's the one thing that they do for sure. Other things...that's interesting, you could think more theologically and delay. And so each one brings us to the end. So we get to the end already in chapter six. You know, the sixth and seventh seals, there's a Great Day of the Wrath of God, [it] has come. We're there. In the cosmic upheaval, the stars falling, etc. The sky being rolled back, every mountain and island being moved. We're at the end already. But we're not at the end of the book. There's more and more visions that just sort of keep rolling over us. And in some ways, that could relate to the mystery of delay. That we keep-we're longing from Christ to return, we're longing for the end. And it keeps sort of getting delayed. So you experience that as a reader, as you're going through Revelation. You're wanting to get to chapter 21 and 22, and the new heavens and new earth and new Jerusalem, descending and God making everything new. And you get glimpses of it and hints of it and you get these short little preemptive or proleptic sort of experiences of that. But it's still delayed.
Tyler Sanders 9:11
Well...and that's a nice counterpoint to what you say is like a main motivational factor of the book of it. Being about overcoming, persevering, and you keep going. Keep going, keep going.
Dr. Stewart 9:23
Yeah, you keep going. And as a reader, you keep reading.
Tyler Sanders 9:26
Right. So maybe let's look at a couple of examples of spots of parallel...like we're gonna see the final battle from a couple different spots. I think you had the fall of Babylon in there. Why don't we pick one maybe that's like a good example. We can kind of look at it appearing in a couple of different visions and see how that kind of works out.
Dr. Stewart 9:47
Yeah, well, the main sort of examples I give in this chapter for recognizing repetition is, the one is just the question of when do we reach the end? When do you reach the end in Revelation? And I already mentioned, we're already at the end in the sixth and seventh seal judgments near the beginning of the book. We also reached the end in the seventh trumpet judgment. So there's a hymn there, that's celebrating that it's time for the dead to be judged and for the rewarding of God's people. And then this phrase that's used about God, for several times earlier in the book, "The one who is and who was and who is coming," well, in the seventh trumpet, it's "the one who is and who was". It drops the "who was coming," because at that point, he's come. And so this is the end. And leading up to the seventh trumpet judgment in chapter 10 of Revelation, this mighty angel takes an oath, "there'll be no more delay." When the seventh trumpet sounds, the mystery of God will be fulfilled. So the seven trumpet is the end. We reach it there. The vision of the two harvests in chapter 14, the second harvest has that metaphor drawn from Joel at the treading of the wine press of the wrath of God. And so it's one of the bloodiest visions in Revelation, where the blood is up to the height of the horse's bridle for miles flowing from the city. So very graphic, sort of gruesome, symbolic picture of judgment. And that's also picked up in chapter 19, when Jesus returns. So in that chapter 14, with that harvest vision, is a vision of the end, because that same metaphor, the treading the wine press is occurring again in chapter 19. And then the bowl judgments themselves, that says there'll be no more... let's see how he says it here, "it's done". That the wrath of God is finished with these bowl judgments, and the sixth and seventh bold judgments end with the dragon and the beast and the False Prophet all gathered together with the armies of the earth, to oppose God's people. And then it describes a judgment and Babylon the great is also remembered. So we sort of reached the end there in the seven bowl judgment of again, the dragon, the beast, and Babylon, all gathered together for judgment there. So each of these is bringing us right up to the end. Then, of course, Christ comes back. The main vision of his return is in chapter 19. The rider on the white horse returns. And so that's bringing us to the end again. So then you say, Well, each of these visions is bringing us, each of these visions sequences, the main vision blocks of Revelation, is bringing us to the end. So that's one of the things, when do we reach the end? Well, we reach it multiple times. And then of course, the final description of it.
Dr. Stewart 12:07
And then what you mentioned already about the final battles. And so the end is associated, in Revelation the visions, with the battle, the symbolism or the language of warfare, of conflict, of battle. And that's referenced several times in chapter 11. The beast comes up to make war on the two witnesses to overcome them. And chapter 12, the dragon becomes furious and goes off to make war with the rest of her offspring, those who keep the commandments of God and hold the testimony of Jesus. So it's God's people, it's Christians, those who are following Jesus. Chapter 16, though, which I already mentioned, that the dragon and the beast, the false prophet are all gathered there for battle on the great day of God, the Almighty. And they send out the deceiving spirits to gather the kings of the whole world to assemble them for this battle. And in chapter 17, is focusing on Babylon. "They will make war on the land, the land will conquer them, for He is Lord of lords and King of kings", in chapter 17:14. And chapter 19, of course, the beast and the kings of the earth are gathered to make war against the one sitting on the white horse. And then finally, in chapter 20 verse eight, Satan is there and then Gog and Magog to gather them for battle. And so we say, well, how many final battles are there? Well, if we're reading all these sequentially, we have probably six final battles. But we don't have six. I think most interpreters argue for either one or two, depending on their decision on the millennium. Is there a battle against the beast before the millennium, and then the battle instigated by Satan after the millennium? Then an amillennial interpretation views it as just sort of one battle at the end. But even then, it's not a literal battle. None of these visions have have swords or explosions or arrows flying through the air. They're over as soon as they begin by the coming of Christ, the coming of God. And so there is actually no final battle the way we think of it.
Tyler Sanders 13:54
That's pretty good. So this is maybe a little bit of a broad question here. Let's say you're going to preach through the book of Revelation. It's so much to cover, you're gonna have to break this up probably into several different sermons, right? How would you communicate this, like over a long period of time, that these things are kind of-
Dr. Stewart 14:18
Well, it's interesting. Very few pastors, I mean, sometimes there's a brave pastor who preaches through Revelation. Most will preach through one through five, and then 21 and 22. Like that's most sermon series. It'll be like here's the letters to the seven churches or here's the New Jerusalem. So the pastors who actually tried to go all the way through it-it's interesting, I actually generally discouraged people from that. From preaching through Revelation, because you can't do it all on a Sunday, so it takes multiple weeks and preaching context...you don't have the same listeners week by week. And so you have new believers, you have seekers, you have some people who are visiting, people that are just coming in and out, and it takes...to understand Revelation...well you need to study it. Study it well. It's not a book that gives up its secrets, as it were, without actually paying attention to it and studying carefully. And so it's hard for a pastor, see if you get in the middle of the trumpet judgments, or something, to be able to provide someone in that Sunday with the background from the prior weeks.
Dr. Stewart 15:17
So having said that, I think it is fine to preach it, when the book itself originally was circulated in its entirety and was read in its entirety to a gathering of Christians. So this first blessing in chapter one says, "Blessed is the one who reads, and those who hear and keep." So the idea is there's one reader. Not everyone's literate in the ancient world. They have this book, from John, from Jesus through John, and this reader reads it to the gathered Christians from start to finish. And that blessing is pronounced on the one who reads and those who hear and who keep the words of the book. So it was originally read in public worship. And so I think that's fine. I just finished up recently, the exegetical guide to the Greek New Testament on Revelation with B&H. And that's sort of a exegetical guide to the Greek texts of Revelation. So it just goes through verse by verse, and part of that series though, includes sermon outlines for the major vision sections. So I do that, I work through sermons. If you are to preach through it week by week, and the major vision sections, I work through sermon outlines for that. It can be done. But I encourage generally, like small group studies, or Sunday school, if you have a more stable group of people that are ready to dive into Revelation, then I think that's an easier way to do it. Because you're able to build understanding and knowledge week by week, with the same group of people. But again, it's not a hard and fast rule. And it's the word of God and the Word of God does not return void. So when it's proclaim faithfully, I'm all for that. But I would generally encourage; lead congregations through it in small groups, or Sunday schools. And if you really want to preach it, then go for it. But then you have a lot more of this week by week...you're trying to equip the people who are there that week to understand the passages who weren't there prior weeks.
Tyler Sanders 17:08
There's a different kind of building you would have to do than if you're preaching like a historical book. Which I think has a similar challenge in that you're depending on like...you know if you're halfway through- in my church we're going through Exodus right now, and at some point, you have to keep going back and say, here's where we are. Here's how far we've gotten, here's some of the important points that are going to illuminate kind of what's happening here.
Dr. Stewart 17:09
Yeah, there's an element of that with any book. But some, like the Gospels, are more episodic. They're structured that way in the genre itself of ancient historiography. It was built that way. Sort of these self contained stories of the great teacher or leader or great king. So the genre is more episodic, for that. And they're each are able to stand alone a bit more easily then Revelation.
Tyler Sanders 17:53
So I've got another question here. This is a pretty practical one. And this may be the last question, actually. For the kind of new reader into the Bible, maybe it's a new Christian, how can they find this repetition? Because the repetition is sometimes chapters apart. So is this like a thing that you need to like sit down and kind of like the original [readers], like you just said, read the whole book of Revelation and try to knock it out in a sitting or...?
Dr. Stewart 18:20
Well, yeah, when I teach this in a local church, in small group contexts, I've done that in various churches over the years, I always encourage at the very beginning to sit down and read Revelation start to finish in one sitting. That's the best thing. And then you get a picture of the whole. You get sort of the overview. And you'll see some of these connections. You see the forest, you know that saying, seeing the forest through the trees. And you see the forest all at once, which helps you then to see the connections between the trees. And so I think that's the encouragement there, is to read Revelation. And so reading it just once through will give you some of that, but reading it multiple times, you'll see more and more of the parallels the more you read it. And so let me actually mention a few more of these examples of repitition. And one of them actually gets us-it's perhaps more controversial than others-I talked about the seven year-
Tyler Sanders 19:08
I like it.
Dr. Stewart 19:08
You like it? I don't know if you're gonna like it in a few moments! The seven year Tribulation. And that's sort of a common, you know, it's a fixture of interpretations of Revelation. But when you read Revelation, there actually is no seven year period. There's five mentions of a three and a half year period. And it's not even always described that way. So it's 42 months, or 1,260 days, or time times and half of time. But it's all describing what we would think of as a three and a half year period. So there is no seven year tribulation in Revelation. If you add all that together chronologically, you'll have a 17 and a half year tribulation, and no one argues for that. So everyone's recognizing there is repetition in these five references to this time period. And so I think the real key for that actually comes in chapter 12 verses five through six. And that's the vision of the woman, she's pregnant. She's laboring with birth pains. There's a dragon there ready to devour the child as soon as he's born. And then it goes, "the child is given birth" in chapter 12 verse five, I believe, and then it's "snatched up to the throne". So he's rescued. It goes through Jesus's birth, to his resurrection and enthronment in one verse. The woman gives birth and the child is taken up to the throne of God. And then it goes right into the next verse, in verse six, where the woman then is taken to the wilderness and protected for this period of time. This three and a half years. And so that's a pretty clear indication for John, this visionary time period, is not a literal three and a half years, but it starts with Jesus enthronment. Like that starts the escatalogical clock. The End Times clock, as it were, starts with his enthronement, and that's very clear in chapter 12 five and six. And then it ends with his return, with a defeat of the beast. So the beast has authority to rule for this whole period of time, to overcome believers. They're deceiving the world, the kings of the earth are drawing worship towards themselves away from God and the lamb. And that's happening during the same period of time. And so that's sort of the the beginning and end of this three and a half year period, is the resurrection and enthronment of Jesus. That starts the clock ticking on this period of time. And then it ends with his return. And there's a lot more examples and argumentation I give for that in the book, which we don't necessarily need to walk through here. But I think for most people, they just assume, well, there's a seven year tribulation. And then you say, 'well actually there isn't in Revelation. There's five references to this three and a half year period, which in chapter 12 begins with Jesus's resurrection, that's the beginning of this period. And then it ends with his return. And so I think that helps them make a lot of sense of these visions. Particularly chapter 11 through through 15.
Tyler Sanders 21:38
And that may be another thing to kind of get into is, how do all these things kind of function together? Because there are some kind of differences between these visions. So like, the telescopic view kind of solves a little bit of that by saying, well, this one is inside this one. So if they're more parallel, how do you deal with those kind of distinctions?
Dr. Stewart 22:01
Well, the telescopic view, it recognizes that the three series of seven, the seven seals, trumpets and bowl judgment, they all end at the same place. But it also does justice to the way they intensify. And so if they're entirely parallel, there is intensification from a quarter of the earth, to a third of the earth, to all the earth. And so that's what they're doing justice to there. Saying that they all end at the same place, but there seems to be intensification. And so that's a little bit more about that view. But the idea of seeing them as all parallel, describing this period of time...they each give different perspectives. And so the seventh seal sequence of judgments; the first four horsemen of the apocalypse, largely parallel Jesus's warnings in the Olivet discourse about wars and rumors of war, and famines and earthquakes. The first horseman goes out with a sword, he's conquering. The second one is civil unrest where people are in civil disorder, chaos, people are slaying each other. Then that leads to famine. The third Horseman is proclaiming famine, and the fourth horseman is death with with plague with epidemic, and then death with Hades going on collecting that the dead bodies. So these first four horsemen of the apocalypse are very much describing this unfolding of human history as God sort of hands us over to our own judgment.
Dr. Stewart 23:13
That's sort of that perspective of that sequence and the seals judgments, is as human beings experiencing God's judgment as He hands us over to our own oppression, brutality, evil. As we conquer each other, we oppress each other. Then it leads to a famine and the collapse of society. And that happens throughout history all sorts of different ways. And so that's the unique perspective there. I mean, the seven trumpets give us his perspective of ecological warfare. In a lot of ways we're modeled after the 10 plagues in Egypt, but also modeled after various things in the Old Testament, when God engages in holy war, He uses nature itself. So that's one unique focus of those trumpets. But there's also a lot more focus in the seven trumpets on the demonic oppression. And so the falling stars that happen, the mountain that falls down burning with fire. Falling mountains are connected with fallen angels, and there are other Fallen Angels. The locusts are demonic beings in the fifth trumpet. The sixth trumpet is this huge, uncountable, more or less 200 million, myriads times myriads of demonic beings who are pressing-the locusts are pressing. They're not allowing people to die, they're torturing. And then the next demonic beings with a sixth trumpet are killing. So the focus of the trumpets is much more on the one hand, the ecological side of holy war, modeled after the Exodus plagues of judgment and of salvation, and also on the demonic oppression of those who don't, very explicitly, those who don't have God's seal. Where the locusts are prevented from harming anyone with God's seal, but only those who are not protected under that seal of ownership have His name on their foreheads. And so that's that sequence. And then the sequence of the the dragon and the beast from chapter 12 through 15, is giving this other perspective of the Dragon, trying to destroy the woman and her children. The woman's safe, she's protected for this period of time, but the children are vulnerable. So this idea of physical vulnerability of God's people through history, where we have supernatural protection by God from supernatural danger. So we're protected by God from demonic forces, but we're very vulnerable, physically to suffering, to persecution. And it's giving that perspective on things. And then that culminates again with the final judgment. And then the bowl judgments in chapter 15 and 16, draw quite a bit of attention to the justice of things. So there the big question is, are these just? And it connects them back, again, the altar gets brought in there. And the alter occurs in some of the other sequences earlier as well. But the focus of the judgments are just and true. And that the people, even as they're suffering God's judgment, they recognize sort of God, but they refuse to repent and they blaspheme Him more, they slander Him more. So they're just drawing more attention to the...sort of the appropriateness of the judgments, the justice of the judgments. And then even in the midst of them, the rebellion of humanity against God. So there's these different perspectives in all these. And each time as you go through history, from Christ's first come into His Second Coming in the visions, there's unique perspectives that are given to it.
Tyler Sanders 26:12
Now, how do you think these should be read together? Do they inform each other, like are we reading across these different visions kind of into each other? Or is it more their particular perspective on here is kind of giving us one more point, and those kind of come together at the end to kind of help us understand what all this means?
Dr. Stewart 26:35
Yeah, I think that's probably a good way to describe it. So each of these sequences of visions do give us different perspectives, unique perspectives. As we mentioned, I think in our last session, we're talking about how we see ourselves in the vision, how we identify our role, our place. So the visions make sense of what we're seeing around us, both our physical vulnerability, or perhaps it's economic poverty because of our faith, or the struggles that we're caught up in. You know, in the first four seal judgments, Christians and non-Christians are caught up in the chaos of history. So there's wars, and Christians are not immune from that. And then we respond by crying out to God for justice. For, how long? This lament. And so we see ourselves there. And then the other visions, in every single one of these sequences, there's this connection where we could identify sort of how it's informing our world and our experience of the world, and how it's guiding us and how to respond to it. Generally the call is to perseverance and faithfulness. The call is also to repentance. And so even when it describes how some people are experiencing God's judgment and they refuse to repent...well, that's not a deterministic assessment of what people do in the future. It's giving us the reality, that would rhetorically motivate us to not be those people, to actually repent. So it's not determinism, but it's ascribing that people refused to repent. As readers, we read that and say, I need to repent, I need to not be in that category of people. So almost every vision like that, there's some connections to us as readers, that would shape us. Shape our ideas about the world, about God, to interpret the present time. For every generation of readers through Christian history. And it all does come together in the end. So when Christ returns a chapter 19, well, that's the final description of the second coming. And then the final, the Great White Throne Judgment in chapter 20, that's the final and fullest description of this. Even as it's been hinted at and described in various ways earlier in the book.
Tyler Sanders 28:35
Yeah. Well, it's fantastic. It's a lot to chew on. I think the interesting thing we kind of got into a little bit, I guess we've kind of done it on the other episodes too, but a little bit of a hint on what we're talking about next, which is symbolism, right?
Dr. Stewart 28:52
Yes.
Tyler Sanders 28:52
And that's probably one of the things that I'll try to say as gracefully as I can, we all kind of get wrong maybe from time to time. There's probably a lot of space in there to misinterpret symbols in this book, because there's so much vivid imagery in it. It just can really capture your mind, I guess. So I'm excited about talking about symbolism.
Dr. Stewart 29:15
Let me make one last comment repetition on this. And John is not unique in this way. So he's modeling much of Revelation...you know, he saw visions...as he experienced visions, he's writing them down, that requires literary activity, it requires reflection. And many of the models that we have from Hebrew prophets also have visionary repetition. So Daniel, chapter two has that vision of the statue of the four different metals and the four different kingdoms. Chapter Seven has the same kingdoms. But now there are four different beasts that come in secession and they both culminate with the coming of the kingdom of God. The statue in chapter two, the stone made without hand comes and strikes the bottom of it, and expands the kingdom of God. In chapter seven, the Son of Man comes and receives the kingdom. And the secession of this conflict with these four beasts. And I think it's nn chapter eight, where it focuses on two of the beasts, so it narrows in the focus on two of them and gives that vision. Then [chapter] nine, described in different ways. It doesn't use beast language, but it describes sort of the same period of time that's bringing the reader to the same place. So Daniel's structured this way of sort of these parallel visions, they're not identical. They provide different perspectives, and different insights on this period of time that bridges the gap from the author's moment to the coming of the Kingdom of God. And so Daniel is structure that way, Ezekiel and Isaiah have lots of visionary repetition as well. It's not laid out the same way as Daniel and Revelation. But there's lots of times where they return to the similar themes over and over again. And so John, in this way...so again, it's not a historical narrative. It's not like the Gospels. Where you start with the baptism of John or with [Jesus's] birth, and you end with His crucifixion, His resurrection. [Revelation's] a different genre and it's modeled after these Hebrew prophets, where they receive visions, and many divisions are looping back around. So that's just the one observation about repetition, where John is not particularly unique, when he's compared with Hebrew prophets. You know, he is bizarre if he's compared with historical narrative. But when he's compared with the Hebrew prophets, then this fits right in. And that these visions would generally be parallel and be repeating themselves.
Tyler Sanders 31:14
I wonder if that maybe is easier for us to process a bit, because usually like our major prophets, in Old Testament, there's still some kind of historical...usually there's something like, "at this time Isaiah spoke to the king and said this..." We kind of have a little bit of a better idea built in, of like that sequencing in a way, that you maybe don't assume like he's telling one story over 60 years, or whatever.
Dr. Stewart 31:45
If the visions are broken up with historical comments about it. Yeah, that's true. In Revelation, we don't have that per se. So it starts, he's on Patmos, he receives the vision, and then he does move in the Spirit a couple of times. So in chapter four, he's moved in the spirit of the Divine Throne Room. In chapter 17, he's moved in the spirit of the desert, and he sees Babylon there and the Beast. Chapter 19, he's moved in the spirit to a great high mountain. He can see the bride, the wife of the Lamb. So there's these different sort of visionary movements, but they're not different historical moments, "10 years later, King Jehoiachim died" or whatnot.
Tyler Sanders 32:20
You can kind of place it a little bit better. That's good. I think that's really helpful. It's really good to think about that model, and how that helps us kind of interpret the rest of this.
Dr. Stewart 32:30
So symbolism we'll get to next time.
Tyler Sanders 32:32
Yeah, that's a good one, I'm excited about it.
Dr. Stewart 32:33
Great. Thank you.
Tyler Sanders 32:34
Perfect. Thank you so much.