Reading Revelation through a Different Lens (Dean Flemming)

Last updated on: October 3, 2022 at 4:53 am by Nijay Gupta

Reading Revelation through a Different Lens (Dean Flemming) 2022-10-03T04:53:05-08:00 Nijay Gupta

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We have a guest article today, by Dr. Dean Flemming, a good friend and a great scholar. He wrote an excellent new book on Revelation called Foretaste of the Future: Reading Revelation in Light of God’s Mission (IVP Academic). Read his thoughts below and check out his book if you are interested.

Reading Revelation through a Different Lens

by Dean Flemming, Ph.D.

The Book of Revelation and I have had a love/hate relationship over the years. Largely, that stems from the way I was taught to read the Apocalypse. As a teenager, I watched a movie that graphically imagined what it would be like to be left behind on earth after true Christians were “raptured” to heaven. Later I waded through prophecy books that took Revelation’s violent judgment scenes as actual descriptions of the horrors that would unfold before Christ returned. As a result, I learned to read Revelation through a prediction lens. It was a book of prophecies that, if correctly deciphered, could deliver a play-by-play script for end-times events. That lens left me scared and confused. So, I abandoned trying to understand Revelation. Even after doing theological study, I largely avoided teaching or preaching from this mystifying book. As one of my students put it, Revelation became the “elephant in the room” of the biblical canon. I knew it was there, but I’d rather ignore it.

Changing Lenses

My problem? I was reading Revelation through the wrong lens. My prediction lens led me to view Revelation primarily as a set of forecasts about the future. Like many Christians, I wondered what Revelation had to say to the church today. But what if we change lenses? What if we trade in the prediction lens for a missional lens? Here’s what I mean. Reading Revelation missionally isn’t just about discovering individual mission texts, like a miner whose looking for nuggets of gold. Rather, it sees all of Revelation as a mission text.

A missional reading of the Bible, and Revelation in particular, asks two big, vital questions. First, how does the Apocalypse bear witness to God’s sweeping purpose for the world, as well as the church’s role in what God is doing? As clearly as anywhere in Scripture, Revelation shows us that God’s massive mission is about redeeming and restoring the entire creation, including people, through Jesus the slain and risen Lamb.

But there’s a second key question that a missional reading of Revelation addresses. How does this book equip and energize Christian communities to get caught up in God’s purpose to bring about healing and salvation at every level? Rather than simply foretelling the future, the Apocalypse invites God’s people to live as a foretaste of the future in the present. And we do that within our various contexts, cultures, and life circumstances.

Reimagining the World

This lens for reading Revelation better fits the form in which the book comes to us. Although Revelation shares traits of biblical prophecy and letters, it primarily belongs to a type of ancient writing called apocalyptic literature. It’s a highly visionary kind of writing that draws on a feast of symbols and images from John’s world. To get apocalyptic literature, you need to use your imagination—something that’s not easy for many Western Christians (myself included) to do.

This means that Revelation’s symbols and images are not intended to be read as descriptions of literal events. A prediction lens, for example, might insist that the infamous battle of Armageddon signifies an actual conflict that will take place on a plain in Northern Israel, or that the “mark of the beast” must mean a literal physical implant or tattoo that lets someone buy milk or motor oil. Instead, John’s visions invite his readers to reimagine their world. John uses familiar apocalyptic symbols from his world in order to give Christian communities a transformed vision of their world. This alternative way of perceiving things enables followers of the Lamb to truly see what God is up to in the world (God’s mission) and how they can get caught up in what God is doing (the church’s mission). John allows us to envision God’s ultimate purpose for creation so that we can imagine anew our present situation from that vantage point.

For example, Revelation 7 gives us a magnificent picture of a vast multinational multitude from every people, tribe, and nation worshipping God day and night (vv 9-17). This is more than simply a screenshot of our heavenly future. It shows us the church’s identity and calling now—to be a community that embraces those of all cultures, races, languages, and nations, despite the polarizing tides that churn around us. John’s vision also gives us a mission of inviting people from every tribe and tongue to join the chorus of Lamb-worshippers, even as we anticipate what God’s people will be in the new creation. We live as a trailer of God’s future here and now.

Embodying the New Creation

Reading Revelation through a missional lens frees us from having to decode how all of John’s visions fit into some end-times script. Instead, it lets us see the goal of God’s loving purpose in the world, one that shapes the life and mission of Christian communities today. Above all, John’s pictures the fulfillment of God’s sweeping purpose in his vision of the New Jerusalem in chapters 21-22. New Jerusalem represents the flourishing of humanity and all of creation, as God’s presence saturates the earth.

Two phrases particularly seem to sum up God’s ultimate purpose for the world. First, a new creation mission brings about “the healing of the nations” (Rev 22:2). That healing is comprehensive, touching all the wounds inflicted on humanity by sin and evil. And if the church is to live as a sneak preview of the new creation now, God’s people, must become communities of healing and hope within our concrete circumstances. I’ve witnessed a former student help begin a network of such healing communities in his home region in Germany. They embody the future in multiple ways, for the homeless, refugees, the elderly, at risk teenagers, sex workers, the unreligious. And as they do, new creation breaks into the city streets.

Second, God himself announces the goal of his loving mission in the world—“I am making everything new” (Rev 21:5 NIV). Here the everything includes creation itself. Twice in Revelation 21, New Jerusalem comes down to merge with a renewed earth (Rev 21:2, 10). In the Apocalypse, God’s future doesn’t mean the obliteration of the planet or Christians escaping this world by their being secretly transported to heaven. New Jerusalem represents the flourishing and restoration of all creation. God has a future for the earth, not just for people. If that’s the case, then we can’t simply ignore the giant threats to God’s creation through climate change and loss of biodiversity, as well as their effects on our world’s most vulnerable citizens. We must recognize that creation care constitutes a legitimate missional calling, deserving our support and prayer.

There’s much more I could talk about, things I explore in A Foretaste of the Future. It makes a massive difference when we read Revelation through a missional lens instead of settling for a prediction lens. Reading the Apocalypse in light of God’s healing, restoring purpose helps us to hear Revelation’s challenge to God’s people in our own time and circumstances. It calls us to live as communities of witness and worship, shaped in the pattern of the slain Lamb. It invites us to become a foretaste of the future, participating in God’s project of making everything new.

If Dr. Flemming’s article piqued your interest, check out FORETASTE OF THE FUTURE

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