How I Understand and Interpret Revelation

There are dozens of books written to explain the Book of Revelation, but nobody has achieved an understanding that most readers accept. In fact, the interpretations are often so contradictory that scholars had to catalogue the various approaches.

The two most important approaches are the preterist, applying to the early church, and the futurist, applying to modern times. Many American readers have been influenced to believe one of the futurist interpretations. This Protestant interpretation holds that the rapture and a 1,000-year millennium are still in our future.

I do not believe in the rapture interpretation.  As a Catholic I believe that when Christ died, His death opened heaven’s gates and all the souls of the righteous are able to enter.

Intrigued with Revelation

I was always intrigued with Revelation.  But I also always wondered why the actual preaching of John the Baptist was not recorded in Scripture. John the Baptist was, after all, sent to proclaim to the Judeans that the Messiah was coming.

Finally, about fifty years ago I chanced upon a plausible answer to my John the Baptist question.  I found it in the book Revelation written By J. Massyngberde Ford, a famous Biblical scholar specializing in Greek.  The book also got me thinking about Revelation in a new way.

Dr. Ford felt John the Evangelist was heavily influenced by the testimony of John the Baptist, and that it showed up in his writings. John the Evangelist’s Gospels, epistles and the first three chapters of Revelation are written in a much different style of Greek than Chapters 4 through 11. Dr. Ford argued that those Chapters were the Evangelist’s remembering and repeating the preaching of John the Baptist.

I always felt that applying Revelations to future events was very strained.  I could not accept the interpretations put out in the 1980s. As such, I spent many years reading ancient histories to see if they fit the visions better than modern history.

During these years I studied Josephus, Suetonius and Tacitus. I found a much better fit with events those authors discussed than with modern events, particularly with Josephus. The following is how I tied in certain events in Judean History with scenes in Revelation.  Since I’m not a Bible scholar, my interpretation may be way off.  But, for what it’s worth, here it is.

My Interpretation

I see Chapter 4 as a theophany depicting some details about the nature of God and His creation. Chapter 5 describes a sealed scroll that nobody was able to open. I think the scroll is a hypothetical vision of a symbolic agreement God (in God’s thinking) made with those He created concerning the enormous debt humans and angels owe God for granting free will to those who will abuse it. Nobody could compensate God for the grief caused by the wicked except The Lamb of God, and the lamb was found worthy to open it.

The Four Horsemen – Revelation 6:1-8

This explains how and why God conferred free will to humans and angels, The Four horsemen show the horrors their release symbolizes. I interpret this in a symbolic way that show what it will cost God if He grants men and angels free will.

First comes the horror of human ambition that refuses to serve God and demands to be served by others.  It rides out of the human heart, like the white horse, in a spirit of conflict and envy, conquest and tyranny, exploitation and greed.

The second horror is the reaction of humans who, not willing to serve God, are hardly likely to accept servitude to other humans.  Their resentment will spread through the world, like the red horse, in a wave of rage calling for resistance and war.

The third horror is the result of such activities. The tasks God requires us to do remain undone, and what we have already accomplished is attacked and destroyed.  These spread behind the combatants like the black horse in a scourge that afflicts the innocent as well as the guilty and ruins everyone’s happi­ness.

In the wake of these three comes the fourth horror: sickness and death, the pale green horse.  This is the worst horror of all: humans seemingly abandoned by God, torn from the joys of this life and thrust into the unknown terror of death.

Punishment

Such are the immediate risks of granting humans freedom. But there are more.  Many will die and all will suffer if humans abuse their freedom.  And God will punish the abusers.

The lamb’s opening of the seals, unleashing each horseman, represents the Son’s divine nature.  The Son, as God, created all of us and keeps us in existence even as we disobey and spread havoc.  The ability, the power for anyone to do anything comes from God.

This power, in a way, makes God our accomplice.  It is our will that chooses to act but God’s power that keeps us in existence and functioning as we actually carry out our deeds.  This power comes through the Son, who unflinchingly carries out the Father’s will that we have genuine freedom.

The Four Woes

There is not enough room in a 2000-word article to make a match of every vision in Revelation, so I will cover what I think are the most important ones in this essay – the Four Woes. The first of the Four Woes occurs around A.D. 40.

There was a lot of friction building up between Rome, the early Christians and the Judeans who were becoming very sullen over their occupation. Josephus describes the onslaught of serious strife when, in A.D. 65: a pagan man built a pagan alter and sacrificed a bird in front of a synagogue. Outraged Judeans rushed upon him, and pagans came to his assistance.

The Roman procurator, Florus took advantage of this and robbed The Temple treasury. The Judeans revolted. Florus had his troops use military force to quell it and killed 3,600 Judeans. This was the beginning of armed conflict between the Judeans and Rome.

The strife escalated with many riots in various cities throughout the area and the organizing of various Judean fighting groups. In A.D. 65, the famous Eleazer ben Jairi along with his sicarii warriors captured Masada. In autumn A.D. 66, thousands of Judeans refugees fled into Jerusalem for protection from the fighting. Two more rebel leaders joined the opposition against Rome, Eleazer Son of Simon and Josephus, a former leader of Judean fighting men who was defeated by Nero’s troops. A new government was organized by The Judean middle class.

The Second Woe

Strife between the Judeans and Rome rapidly built up with the massacre of many Judeans and pagans until the Judeans eventually organized for war. The fighting escalated until, finally, Nero sent General Vespasian with an army to reconquer Judea. The army first destroyed Judean military posts outside of Jerusalem. The historian at that time was Josephus who was a captain in the Judean army.  He was defeated by Vespasian, but. Josephus begged for his life and Vespasian spared him. Josephus then assisted Vespasian by trying to encourage the Judeans to quit fighting because victory for them was hopeless.

The Judeans rejected all of Josephus’ pleas for surrender. The Romans won victory after victory until the Judean fighting men were all concentrated in Jerusalem. Finally, Titus stormed the walls of Jerusalem and was prepared to destroy The Temple when the fighting was interrupted due to the death of Nero. In A.D. 69, General Vitellius took control of The Roman Empire. He was the third successor of Nero within a year. He was unpopular, so Vespasian took over the empire with a stable government. In A.D. 69, he returned to Rome and left his son Titus to finish the war.

Titus then resumed the war. Titus had his men build a siege wall and waited for the Judeans to starve like Josephus warned. The Judeans finally ran out of food. Titus stormed the walls protecting Jerusalem and destroyed The Temple in A.D. 70. Everybody knows this event, but I seldom saw an interpretation that went beyond this date. However, the nation of Judea survived this disaster and continued in existence struggling against Rome until A.D. 131 when they stumbled into their final war with Rome.

The Third Woe – Revelation 16:8-11

It took a full generation after the defeat of A.D. 70 before the Judeans could exert any influence in their ancestral homeland. Conditions gradually built up in Judea until the year A.D. 128 when a very capable man with a lot of charisma began to control the fighting groups. His name was Kosiba, but he changed it to Bar Kochba which means rising from the star. He is known to history. Even church fathers mention him by name.

Bar Kochba was able to organize all the rebel groups into a single army, 400,000 strong. Rome tried to defeat him, but his men defeated four Roman armies, and he took control of all Judea, around A.D. 129-130. The unbelieving Judeans had been persecuting early Christians all along. There is evidence that Bar Kochba continued the persecutions.

Finally, Rome chose an outstanding Roman General, Severus who was successful in subduing the Germans. Severus marched against Judea destroying every fort and stronghold the Judeans held. Bar Kochba never engaged the army of Severus head on. He resorted to hit and run tactics hoping to defeat Severus that way,

As the war went bad for Bar Kochba, he retreated from Jerusalem to Ein Getty, and finally to Bethar where he and most of his army was slaughtered.

“It is done!” – Revelation 16:17

Severus is ready to destroy what is left of Bar Kochba’s army. Revelation describes this as loosening seven vials onto Palestine. The first vial falls on the Earth, the second onto the sea, the third onto rivers. The fourth onto the sun, the fifth onto the throne of the beast, the sixth onto the Euphrates River, drying the river, opening up the way for armies to attack. The seventh was poured into the sky. A loud voice calls out “It is done!’ Bar Kochba’s reconstructed kingdom of Judea is destroyed. This was the demise of the Jewish nation. The very verse that predicts this is Revelation16:17 “It Is Done.”

They were defeated on August 9, A.D. 135. Fifty Judean forts and 985 towns were destroyed, and 700,000 Judeans were killed – half of the Judean population before the war. Rome sold many survivors into slavery. Many others emigrated into other countries. Judean persecution of Christians stopped, and soon Rome accepted Christianity as the state religion. Those who opposed The Messiah lost heavily, but those who accepted the Messiah became the body of Christ’s Church. And the Church was no longer persecuted through the next millennium.

Rome encouraged other peoples to immigrate into Palestine. From then until the nineteenth century, Jewish people remained a minority in Palestine. In 1856, there were only 10,500 Jews in Palestine. The Jewish people began to return to Palestine in the late 1860s. In 1897, there were 50,000, and by1914 there were 90,000.

Very little of this final war has been recorded in history. I don’t think many interpretations of Revelation even mentions it, but there were some details of Bar Kochba retained in folk lore and legends.

Conclusions

Modern archeology has unearthed some information about Bar Kochba. Yigael Yadin, famous as a general in the Israeli War of Independence, made some archaeological digs after the war. He wrote a book about this (Kochba). Bar Kochba named his restored nation “The First Jewish Commonwealth. The present Israeli government ruling today is “The Second Jewish Commonwealth.”

No commentary that I have read brings out so clearly that what the Baptist warned about prior to the ministry of Jesus actually happened seventeen hundred years ago.

Jesus did predict that the Jewish nation would return before the end of the world. We have seen that come true in our lifetimes.