Are These Really The End Times? – Exploring The Book of Revelation Artistically – Part 15

Opening Prayer

You have taught us, O Christ, to love the world. You have shown us the light that is within us and within all things. May we learn to love you more and in loving you more learn to love the earth and all its people more, for you are the light of all life.

• J. Philip Newell, Celtic Treasure – The Good News of Jesus, p. 178.

Are These Really The End Times? – Exploring The Book of Revelation Artistically:

The Book of Revelation is the strangest book in the Bible – and the most controversial. Instead of stories and moral teaching, it offers only visions – dreams and nightmares. These sessions are for all who seek to move beyond the quest to decode this book with plain answers and find an alternate way to navigate the Book of Revelation.

Concluding Thoughts

“Two reasons why Revelation can and should speak to people today can be summed up around the poles of Christ and culture. First, readers often find that their cultural situations are analogous to those of the seven churches. Although Christians in the West may not be preoccupied with questions about eating meat offered to idols, many are aware of contemporary pressures to relinquish one’s faith commitments because of the appeal of assimilating into the wider culture, the complacency that arises from prosperity, or the threat of violence. As modern readers confront such issues, Revelation continues to challenge and encourage them. Second, Revelation speaks not only of relationships to culture, but of relationships to God ‘who was and is and is to come’ (4:8). Because God and the Lamb are not confined to one period of time, Revelation’s call to fear and hope in God and the Lamb are not confined to one period either. Whether readers live in the first century or the twenty-first century, God and the risen Christ are there.”

“Reading Revelation nearly two millennia after it was composed does leave us with questions about what it means to say that Jesus is coming ‘soon’ (22:6, 7, 12, 20). This question is not unique to Revelation, since Paul, for example, could write as if he expected Christ to return within his lifetime (1 Thess. 4:17). The New Testament leaves its readers to live with tension. Some passages announce that Christ will soon return, and that Christians must remain awake and watch for him (Matt. 24:34; Mark 13:30, 37). Other passages declare that God alone knows when Christ will return, and that it is not for others to know ‘the times or periods that the Father has set’ (Acts 1:7; Matt. 24:36; Mark 13:32). In the same way, Revelation declares that ‘the time is near’ (Rev. 22:10), only to confound the readers’ sense of timing with a kaleidoscopic spiral of visions that periodically repeats similar messages through different images and interrupts its forward movement with suspended judgments and heavenly interludes. Revelation can tell readers that the marriage feast of the Lamb ‘has come’ and that the bride is ‘ready,’ yet it does not allow readers to see the bride until more than a thousand years have passed in its visionary world (19:7-8; 21:2, 9). Readers are left with the assurance that the End will come, but without knowing when it will come.”

“Before John put down the pen, he wrote a warning to any who would tamper with the message of his book: those who add to what he has written will have plagues added to them, and those who take anything will have their share in the tree of life and holy city taken away (22:18-19). Similar exhortations appear in Israel’s Law (Deut. 4:2; 12:32) and in other sacred and official writings from antiquity. Although we might be tempted to speculate as to whether any of the alterations that have occurred in Revelation’s wording as it has been copied and recopied over the years would warrant such harsh condemnation, a more helpful question would be to ask why John – like Paul (Gal. 1:6-9) – shows such urgency about maintaining the integrity of the message, and to reflect on what maintaining its integrity means.”

“Revelation confronts readers with an astonishing range of visions that both threaten and encourage them. Those who recognize the integrity of the book must come to terms with both. Christians in the so-called mainline churches have often had difficulty with the threatening side of the book. Repulsed by those who intimidate people with Revelation’s warnings of fiery judgment or who turn its visions of conflict into a script of World War III, many Christians relegate Revelation to the margins of their lives. They might occasionally read a passage about heavenly glory during one of their worship services, but otherwise find it best to keep Revelation out of public view. [See Part 1.] For such readers, the challenge is to hear Revelation’s summons to see and resist the forces of sin and evil that are afoot in the world, especially as these manifest themselves in preoccupations with wealth, callousness toward violence, and the notion that it does not really matter what one calls ‘god.’ Revelation’s visions are designed to disturb readers in order to bring them to renewed lives of faith and faithfulness.”

“Other readers have difficulty coming to terms with the expansive hope that Revelation offers. Preoccupied with the secrets of the seven seals, the ghoulish armies massing for battle, and the prospect of cosmic destruction, they pass quickly by the scenes of heavenly glory and cosmic praise that culminate in the eternal city of God. By reading Revelation as a script for a future drama that will be played out in lockstep fashion, they follow a course in which faith becomes fatalism. For them, the challenge is to take the ominous visions not as simple predictions, but as warnings that are designed to move readers to repentance and endurance. Moreover, the book’s repeated spirals may move downward into visions of threat, but they return each time to scenes of glory in the presence of God. To hear the book in its integrity means hearing the promises that God and the Lamb extend to those of every tribe and language and people and nation.”

“In light of such invitations and promises, the book calls each of its readers to respond ‘Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!’ (22:20), and to embrace the benediction that occurs in its final verse: ‘The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints. Amen.’ (22:21).”

(Koester)

(Source: Craig R. Koester, Revelation and the End of All Things.)

For this week: For reflection:

Read the entire book of Revelation this summer. “A blessing is called down upon those who read and heed the words in this book (1:3) What do you think it means to be blessed or favored upon reading and heeding the words of this prophecy?”

(Source: The CEB [Common English Bible] Lectio Divina Prayer Bible.)

An invitation to our virtual participants: Discussion and comments are very much encouraged and welcomed. Online discussions can be held in the comments section in the upcoming post on Social Media for this week’s Deacon’s Reflection which is part of adult formation at St. Francis Episcopal Church.

Closing Prayer – Prayer of Blessing

The blessings of heaven, the blessings of earth, the blessings of sea and of sky. On those we love this day and on every human family, the gifts of heaven, the gifts of earth, the gifts of sea and of sky.

May the light of God illumine the heart of my soul.

May the flame of Christ kindle me to love.

May the fire of the Spirit free me to live this day, tonight, and forever. Amen.

• J. Philip Newell, Celtic Treasure – Songs of the Soul, p. 179.

“Are These Really The End Times? – Exploring The Book Of Revelation Artistically,” Deacon Joe Dzugan, St. Francis
Episcopal Church, 2025.