Decoding the Book of Revelation: Overcoming Fear and Misunderstanding with Ian Paul

In this episode of Exploring the Language of Scripture, Daniel Mikkelsen and New Testament scholar Ian Paul tackle the complexities of the Book of Revelation, addressing common fears and misunderstandings about this often daunting text.

They explore how understanding biblical Greek and Hebrew, alongside the cultural context of scripture, can transform the way we read the Bible—especially Revelation. Ian sheds light on how Greek grammar reveals new dimensions of familiar passages, such as the Lord's Prayer and John 3:16. He also explains why Revelation is so saturated with Old Testament references, and how its apocalyptic imagery—dragons, beasts, and more—should be understood.

Throughout the conversation, they emphasise the importance of reading scripture in community and explore how Revelation offers both challenge and comfort to Christians today. If you've ever wondered how to approach Revelation with confidence, or how biblical languages deepen your understanding of scripture, this episode is for you.

#RevelationExplained #BiblicalLanguages #ChristianTheology

Don’t miss the next episode: In the next episode, we’ll discuss Temples in the New Testament with Nick Moore.

Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction
02:03 - Meet Today's Guest: Ian Paul
04:10 - Ian Paul's Journey into Greek and Hebrew
07:10 - Why Original Languages Are Like 3D, Not 2D
09:36 - The Role of Translation in Biblical Interpretation
13:08 - The Complexity of Biblical Texts and Their Interpretations
16:17 - Why Bother Learning Greek?
19:47 - Are We Misunderstanding the Lord's Prayer?
24:25 - Greek Grammar and New Insight into John 3:16
26:20 - When Translations Go Wrong
28:28 - Why Study the Book of Revelation?
34:07 - Why Is Revelation a Feared Book?
36:53 - Why Is Revelation So Strange?
39:44 - What Is Apocalyptic Literature?
45:49 - How Revelation Contains the Full Story of Scripture
49:30 - Revelation Tells Us How It Should Be Received
51:57 - The Most Quoted Old Testament Book in Revelation
53:43 - Revelation: A Book of Challenge and Comfort
55:14 - The Culture Promises What Only God Can Give

Music Credits: 
Music from #Uppbeat
https://uppbeat.io/t/all-good-folks/aspire

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Podcast Keywords:
biblical languages, New Testament, Old Testament, Christ, bible study,  Relationship with God, learn biblical languages, Biblical Theology, Christianity, Covenants, New covenant, old covenant, language acquisition, Biblical Greek, Biblical Hebrew.

Transcript

0:00

So how do we get over that fear of studying Revelation? I think first of all simply... Every commentator agree that chapter 12 is the central pivotal chapter and you've got dragons eating babies from pregnant women you kind of if you don't think that's weird you need to read the text again you know but but for anyone in the first century they would immediately say I know that story that's... Which book of the Old Testament does Revelation allude to more than any other? This is a good one. This is a test, it is... There's other things around structure as well. One of my little bug bears is I think in English we pray the Lord's Prayer wrong, we pray it incorrectly. Because the traditional English version says... If you read [Revelation] as a sort of a plan, a schedule for our day, what you're claiming is that this text can have meant nothing to Christians for 2,000 years. All it could have meant is, well, this isn't relevant to you because it's about the distant future. you're not in, which is not plausible at all... You've done a lot of research on Revelation as I've already said. Why Revelation? That's a good question. Well, it was very interesting that I came to personal faith from the back Hey there and welcome back to another episode of Exploring the Language of Scripture. My name is Daniel Mikkelsen. I'm the host of the podcast. If you don't know who I am, I am the founder of NT Greek Tutoring, an online Greek tutoring company teaching people how to read the New Testament in Greek. And that is also the company that hosts this podcast. Apart from that, I'm a New Testament PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh. I've also studied the New Testament at University of Cambridge, as well as theology at the University of Copenhagen and Fjellhaug International University College. And this podcast exists to make gems from biblical studies accessible to everyday Christians, as well as showing how the biblical languages can open up scripture for us so that we can see more nuances in some of these gems. And then invigorate and... explore our love and increase our love for God and His Word and His ministry and His mission. And today I'm joined by Ian Paul who has a PhD in New Testament from... metaphors in... where he studied metaphors and... book of Revelation, that's right. Which you did in Nottingham? That's right, yeah. And then you studied Math in Oxford? I had before that, yes. And then you're an ordained Anglican minister? That's right. And then you are the editor of Grove Books? I am. Which is a book company that's... Yes, a small publishing company, publishing booklets for Christian life and ministry. which is very much in the spirit of this podcast. Yes. We're trying to make really good, the best scholarship accessible to people in a digestible way. Yeah. So we are very much on the same page. Yeah. And then you have your blog, which is psephizo Yes, right. ψηφίζω (psephizo). Yeah. It's quite hard to search for the name of the blog, but just search for Ian Paul blog and people can find it. Yeah. Because how do you translate that Greek word? Well, it is, but it's also very interesting. because it ties in maths and theology, course, psephizo (ψηφίζω) is the Greek word for to calculate or to write. on that block you discuss all the contemporary issues and the relationship with the Christian faith. And then you have published many books, academic, but also non -academic books on New Testament, particularly on Revelation. Yeah, that's right. You've already said a little bit, but anything else you want to add about yourself? I have a dog called Barney. I shouldn't really mention him first because I'm also married to Maggie, who's a doctor. We've got three kids, great old children. And one of my other great loves is gardening as well. If you're friends with me on Facebook, you'll often see pictures of my garden as well as videos of me and my dog. And your family? Yeah. Although I don't post pictures of the family too much. It makes sense. Everything there is online, never going to get away. So let's dive into the first question. So how did you get into learning Greek? Well, that's quite an interesting question actually Daniel, because I first got into learning Hebrew. And the reason was that in my gap year between school, high school, something we call in university or college, I had a year outside, I lived in Israel. And while I was there, I was concerned to start learning Hebrew because I knew that, you know, the Old Testament is written mostly written in Hebrew. So it was good to start learning some conversation there. And that meant that when a few years later, I then went to study theology, it meant that I already had a kind of a head start in saying the Hebrew alphabet and be able to read the words and so on. So when I was studying theology I actually then studied New Testament Greek which was a... a mandatory part of the course for anyone who was under 30 doing three -year training course, but I also studied Hebrew at the same time. In fact, later on I taught both Greek and introductory Hebrew as well. Although my Hebrew is quite rusty these days. But that was sort of the natural way really into biblical languages because of course the interesting thing about Hebrew, whereas modern Greek has actually evolved over the years and so actually it's quite a big gap between New Testament Greek and modern Greek as it's spoken. Hebrew actually died out as a spoken language and was revived at end of 19th century from biblical Hebrew. So in fact, actually spoken modern Hebrew now and biblical Hebrew are actually much closer together. Yeah, that's right. I think. Seth Postell, is a Messianic Jew, teaching at One Seminary in Israel, he says that when they get new people down, what they do is that they send them on a Hebrew course, because the first thousand years, not thousand years, but thousand words they will know, is actual biblical Hebrew. Yes, exactly. So for them, it's like you can just do both and then you're fine. Yeah, you can. That's right. Then there's obviously some grammar things, which you need to get into later on. It's not quite the same with Greek. No, it's not. really isn't. I've started learning a little bit of modern spoken Greek, but it is quite difficult. It's changed. As any living language, changes and evolves over time. Yeah. evolves or devolves, that depends on how you look at it, guess. Because usually languages go from being more complex to being less complicated. Yes, there are. think one of the things with modern Greek language is that all the vowel sounds have all collapsed into a single vowel sound, whereas the usual pronunciation in Biblical Greek, New Testament Greek is that you differentiate between all the different vowel sounds. But in modern Greek, all of them kind of collapse into an E sound. Yeah. Also in reconstructed koine? Sorry? What about reconstructed koine? So the reconstructed koine seems to me to sound a little bit more modern Greek. Yeah, I mean that's part of the debate around how you should pronounce the Greek. Maybe we shouldn't get too long into No, no, no. That's probably too boring. So, but what do you have like of experiences when you've been reading Greek or Hebrew for that matter? How has that opened up the word of God for you? Well, yeah, that's a really interesting question. And it be good to go on specific examples. But I remember very much when I was learning New Testament Greek, my Greek tutor, the picture he used was, he used to watch the film when he was a child, The Wizard of Oz. And in the film version, in the scene in the Emerald City where Dorothy and her friends end up, there are horses which come on and off. And he used to watch the film in black and white. And then the first time he watched it in color, he couldn't believe it because the horses actually changed color through the film. So there was a detail there. There was a kind of an interesting part of the narrative, which he simply didn't appreciate because he was watching in black and white. analogy is that if you're reading the New Testament in English you're kind of like watching a film or a TV program in black and white which of course nowadays nobody does but when you start reading Greek then it's like turning on the color so you see things in a more much more vivid range of colors. I think that's an interesting metaphor. As I was reflecting on that I would actually change it. I would say it's more like seeing things in two dimensions rather than seeing things in three dimensions. So if you see a painting or you see a photograph of a scene, then you see it in two dimensions. So you can see how things are related to one another in the picture. But actually, if you go to the real scene in real life yourself, you actually see it in three dimensions and you can explore. You notice, okay, this character is standing. further in front and you can see behind, can see the arrangement of things, the relationship of things much more clearly. So I think for me that's maybe a better analogy. It's from reading in two dimensions to reading in three dimensions. Because when you start reading in Greek, a number of things happen, but you actually begin to make connections between different ideas, different sections. You see the structure and the texture of the text. More clearly it sort of highlights things stand out for you from the background in a way which they don't if you're just reading in English or in whatever your native language is. Yeah, that's I think that's a powerful way of like reframing that metaphor. actually. Yeah, it is that going from from actually just observing at more distance. Yes than actually being in the scene. Exactly. think there's a couple of important reminders as well. actually, when you start reading the Old and New Testaments in the biblical languages, it reminds you of a couple of other things as well. The first is that there's a tendency for many of us as ordinary readers of scripture, to think that the text of Scripture is written to us. And the reason for that is we expect God to speak to us through it. Augustine describes Scripture as God's love letter from home. And we want to hear what God is saying. But when you read another language, it's a reminder to you that Scripture wasn't written to us. It was written for us. But that we are secondary readers of it. So we're wanting to hear what God says to us. through what Paul said to the Corinthians. We're wanting to hear what God says to us through what John wrote to the Christians in the seven cities. We're wanting to hear what God says to us through what Luke writing his gospel was writing to his first audience. we need to remind ourselves that... biblical writers in the first instance are writing to their own contemporary audience and that we are then secondary heroes of that and therefore that's an important part of the task of interpretation. I think it's also reminded to us as well that in reading and translation we are having the text of scripture mediated to us because And I guess it's easier, mean, in Britain, most people speak one language, which isn't a very good habit. In most places of the world, people usually speak two or three languages. You know, it's pretty common globally and historically for people to speak three languages. They might speak their local language, they might speak a national language, they might speak an international language. And you're immediately aware then that... you know, words and meanings don't translate immediately. You have to make you have to make interpretive decisions because words, individual words in different languages don't match up. don't have that. I the technical terms, they don't have the same semantic range. So, I mean, a simple example, I learned French at school and the verb avoir means to have. So I have a mobile phone, I have a glass of water. But you also say I have so many years from my age. In English, we wouldn't use the word have, we'd say I am. So you can see that there is a when you when you come across the word avroir in French, you have to make an interpretive decision about which English word you then translate that with. So it means that when we're reading in English, we're dependent on our translators and our editors for making interpretive decisions for us. most of the time we're going to be very happy with that, but sometimes there's a debate about which is the right way to interpret. getting back to the Greek actually helps to say, okay, well, we can see the different judgments people have made here and which one's going to be most helpful for us. Yeah. And sometimes even there is a plurality, or there's a plurality in the actual, or even that particular context can open up, depending on how you understand the context, can open up for for two different and that's why we sometimes see because different translations especially in English language where there's so many different ones you can see that sometimes that these different interpretations comes up and then why that's why you see like sometimes you read in the Psalms and this word is saying completely different than it did in another translation and that is usually the reason. I think people, ordinary readers, will experience this you know if you're in a Bible study group in your local church unless you're reading the same English version, you'll come up with this issue all the time. Say, well my translation doesn't say it like that, it says it like this. And that can be discouraging for people saying, well we don't really know what the text says, but actually it's not true. mean going back to even a basic understanding of Greek and being able to read the text and be able to then use dictionaries and helps and so on. And of course, so much is online now. So that even an even an ordinary reader can access without any, you know, complex text, you can you can look online, you can say, okay, I can see why that word has this possible range of meanings. And therefore why translators have gone one way or another, because some translators want to want to communicate the the semantic content of a word, others want to draw out the structure, others, mean for instance paraphrases or paraphrases like The Message, want to bring out the emotional impact of a text and you do all those different things in different ways. Yeah, exactly. English is not my mother tongue. And in Danish we actually only have like, we don't have like that many different interpretations or translations. That's interesting. Because people mostly have followed the authorised version. Then there's been some changes recently, but also most Danish people these days, they all speak English. They can go and read English as well. And read different English translations. But then sometimes you feel like, but what is the right one? But I also don't think that this would be one to take the Bible away from people and say they cannot know. No, no, But because I think we have very good translations. But I think the point is, I think what you're trying to say and what I'm trying to say is that we wanted to say that there are these nuances. Yes. And we get to... see things in a different way. Yeah, we do. I think there's also that one of the virtues of reading in another language, even if it's not Greek, even if it's just not your mother tongue. One of the things I try and do when I'm learning another language is I also read the scriptures. So I've got currently in my computer here, I've got the Greek text, I've got Spanish, I've got French, I've got Italian, because I've been trying to learn those, German and English as well. And actually, when you're reading in your not your native tongue, It also makes you slow down. a good principle to slow down. remember an experience a few years ago where I was reading Acts chapter one in French. I've read Acts chapter one many, many times, but I noticed something in French where Jesus spends 40 days teaching the disciples about the kingdom of God by the Holy Spirit. And I've never noticed that in English before, because I was reading in French, I read more slowly, and I was paying attention to the individual words. And I thought, wow, I've never noticed the fact that Jesus, even the resurrection Jesus, the raised Jesus, teaching his disciples, needed the Spirit. Because of one of Luke's emphases is the role of the Holy Spirit. So Jesus was dependent on the ministry of the Spirit to teach the disciples about the kingdom of God. Amazing. Wonderful, it? If we have all these translations, why should I then go learn Greek? It's because language does lots of different things at different levels. And therefore, when you translate from one language to another, some of those different things will be lost and some will be gained. And I think, you know, just there are lots and lots of examples. find I do a podcast every week on YouTube, a video podcast, and when we talk through the lecture you're reading for that week, we're always making observations about language. And there are just so many examples. One of my favorite ones is the beginning of Mark's gospel, where Mark quotes Isaiah and says that, well, Isaiah and Malachi, and he says, I will send my messenger ahead of you to make a straight way for me. Now, it's actually, most English translations say make a way straight in the desert. And then in English it says, and immediately Jesus came from Nazareth and Galilee. Now what we miss is that in Greek, Mark uses the same word or cognate word. So, Euthus (εὐθύς) means straight, then Euthus (εὐθύς) means straight way, immediately. So, he's actually using the same word. In fact, in the authorised version, you can see the pun because you see the word straight and the word straight way. But the word straight way is not a normal word we use in English. We now say immediately. And then you miss that connection. And one of the marks of the first couple of chapters of Mark's Gospel is that he constantly talks about Jesus doing things immediately, immediately, immediately. Immediately he goes there. Immediately the spirit drives him out in the desert. Immediately he heals someone. Immediately he goes in our Sabbath. So Mark is telling us something here that there is a straight way being made for Jesus by John and Jesus comes and straight way he does all these things. He's very direct and making the connections to the actual action of Jesus is kind of in Mark's terms a fulfillment of that prophecy. And it's those kind of word connections which are really helpful to see. Another example that we've been talking about here at our Tyndale Conference is that in the beginning of Luke Gospel, Luke talks about the fact that Luke 1 verse 2 in his introduction, just as those who are from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and most English translations say ministers of the word or servants of the word. And there's some debate about what does he mean by that? Is this one group of people described two ways? Is there two different groups of people? But one of the things that struck me about this is that the term for ministers, huperetai(ὑπηρέται), is used just a couple of chapters later. where Jesus is in the synagogue and he is handed a scroll, he unrolls it, he reads from Isaiah 61 and then he hands the scroll back to the who? The assistant, most translations, English translations say, but actually it's the same word, huperetai (ὑπηρέται). So this word huperetai (ὑπηρέται) is kind of a technical term for the person in the synagogue who's responsible for the written documents, the written scrolls. So a friend of mine, Tom McLaughlin, has argued that this term huppalatai (ὑπηρέται) means it's people who, you when Jesus was teaching, we know that there was lots of everyday literacy, that people made notes and wrote them down. I think it's perfectly plausible to see that as Jesus was teaching, people would write things down that he said, they'd guard this. So here is a term perhaps for people who gathered together the written evidence of what Jesus said and Luke in doing research for his gospels, not only talk to eyewitnesses who heard Jesus, but he's also read the notes that people wrote down from very beginning and he's drawn on those written as well as oral sources and that makes a huge difference to how you think the gospels came into being. But there's other things around structure as well and one of my little bugbears is I think we pray the Lord in English, I don't know how we pray in Danish, I think in English we pray the Lord's prayer wrong, we pray it incorrectly because the traditional English version says... Our Father in heaven, hallowed your name. And we treat all of that as a kind of an introduction to addressing God. And then we say, may your kingdom come, may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. But actually in Greek, that's not what Jesus teaches. In Greek he says, Our Father in heaven, Then he says three things. May your name be honored. May your kingdom come. May your will be done. In fact, in Greek, in the New Testament, in Matthew 6, each of those three phrases is exactly four words. And then the second half of the prayer, each of the phrases is exactly six words. So when you look at it in Greek, first of all, you can see how incredibly carefully Structured and constructed this is yeah, so, you know, some people say Jesus didn't give us the Lord's Prayer to memorize It's just a pattern of prayer and I would say no he gave it to us to memorize It's got a rhythm and a structure to it in Greek, which makes it very very memorable but also from a theological point of view I've got a sense sometimes that Christians say well as long as we're doing what God says and long as we see sort of justice That's what he wants. You know, you can do that without necessarily preaching the gospel or inviting people to faith Actually, I think Jesus doesn't allow us to get away with that because the fact that may your name be honored, may your kingdom come, may your will be done, I think shows us that you see this all through the gospels that actually acknowledging who God is, welcoming him as king in our lives, which seeing your kingdom come and enacting his will in the world. Actually, those three belong together. You can't separate them. You can't say, well, I'm just going to serve people and not talk about my faith or not in the church or not talk about God. That's not possible. And I think this is just one little example where you see those three ideas integrated very closely together. Thank you. I think that's very helpful, even though I've read it in Greek. It is the same. basically the same form. it's the same grammatical structure with the same number of words. It's an imperative. Yeah, it is. Your name be honoured, your kingdom come, your will be done. So it's command to do these things. It's asking God, do this in our life, do this around us, do it through me. Which really changes the thing that we think about. It's not just saying... Yeah, God is our Father. Would you please do this for us instead of thinking, this is what it is. But it's a command, we're asking God to do that as a command through our life. And I think that's very, very helpful. means that we need to model honoring God's name and we need to model, you know, seeing His kingdom come and His will done. And this is what we're out and about in the world doing. So you can't separate. I mean, the World Council of Churches talks about the five marks of mission. The first one is proclamation. and then at the end you have tackling injustice and so on. sometimes folks say, well I'm not very good with proclamation bits, so I'll just do the justice bit. You say, well actually, they all belong together. The term that's been very popular in missionary studies, like with holistic mission, and that is exactly what we were just talking about, is that you cannot do either. It will be some kind of strange ministry if you don't do all of them together. So if you proclaim, but you don't serve, that's only incomplete. also if you serve but don't proclaim, that's also only part of the job. And again it's just that reading the text in Greek, you just can't avoid that, you can't fail to see that. Whereas in English it's easy to misunderstand or separate these things out. Yeah, I think that's quite a helpful way of looking at it and a very poignant illustration of how the Greek can make us understand what... was the intent that may not have, is not like maybe so carefully translated into language. think this, I guess it's maybe the same in Danish because I've not thought of it in the same way. But it's also interesting, I've just done a bit of work on this and looked at other languages as well. And it's interesting that in, when I've looked at the Lord's Prayer in Spanish, French, and German, and Italian, then they do vary. So some of them are faithful to the Greek word order and some of them, like the traditional English version, move away from it. So in each different language, people have taken a different approach to translation. Yeah. And also the thing is that we cannot always translate word for word. No. Semantic structures. Exactly. Exactly. There's no... And that's another, I think, reason why we should learn Greek. we cannot... a language... anyone who knows a second language, no matter which language it is, will know that if you read anything or you say anything in that language, you cannot necessarily say the exact same thing. you can't. Another example is the best known verse in the New Testament, which I think in English most people misread, which is... Well, God so loved the world that he gave his only son. Okay. Now in English, most people say, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son. Now, most people understand that as being it's about degree. God loved the world so much. But in fact, that's a hangover again, from the authorized version, which is also a demonstration of how powerful traditions are informing people that it's very hard to question traditions. But of course, in 1611, when the authorized version was translated, the phrase, for so God loved the world didn't mean so much. It meant in this way, God loved the world thusly. And in fact, when you look at the Greek, Hutos (οὕτως,) that is the primary meaning of that word. In this way, God loved the world. So, yes, God loved the world a lot, but that's not the point of that verse. The point of the verse is This is how God did it. He did it not just from a distance, not just by saying things, but actually by coming. to us in the person of his son. So again, I would always, when I quote that verse, always say, for in this way, God loved the world that he gave his only son. And in fact, again, some modern translations are beginning to do that. think the net Bible translated in that way. translators are very, translators into English are very reluctant to challenge the tradition of translation on very well -known verses, even though they know that the Greek actually says something different. They don't want to upset their audience. It happens in Danish as well, every time there's a new translation coming out, it will be criticized for good or for bad. Sometimes it's a valid critique. An example is that when they made a new sort of like modern language, Danish translation, they translated the word for blessed in the Beatitudes, they translated it lucky. That's very unhelpful. It is very unhelpful. Because that's not the point. Lucky are those who are persecuted. Yeah, no, no. That's not the point. In English, versions translated as happy. Again, and it loses that dimension. mean, Makarios (μακάριος) is a difficult word to translate into English. But the reason why blessed is significant is because it's contrary to circumstances. But also, it's saying that, you know, it's that God has done something for you. This is the key thing. It's not that, you you become happy by doing something yourself, which is the normal. Exactly. Yeah. And in the North Germanic, even in German and English, actually have a word called salig which indicates a state rather than... It's it's a state of being, to be a μακάριος (makarios) It's not something that happens to you, it's not an act, something that God has done to you, that is within you, it's something that you dwell within. Unfortunately the English language does not communicate. No, doesn't. It cannot communicate in that way because that's not how the linguistics of the language work. But then that's why we have a ministry of preaching which is to help people to engage with the text as it is by explaining these things and talking about the background and the theological context and so on. Yeah, that's fascinating, isn't it? Sorry for interrupting the episode. you're enjoying it and want to keep it at free, please consider supporting us by joining our supporter program. This helps us grow and get more guests on and also gives you some great benefits in return. Do check it out in the description below. Thank you and now back to the episode So let's transition into the topic of the day. So you've done a lot of research on Revelation as I've already said. Why Revelation? That's a good question. Well, it was very interesting that I came to personal faith from a background in the Roman Catholic Church... but I found that I was raised up because my mother is an Irish Catholic. She came over from Ireland after the Second World War to England and met my father in London. And I went through catechism and went through all that. You know, I had my first communion and confirmation and so on. But I never found that in that particular discipline, I, in that particular context, that I was introduced to personal faith. And I came to faith through an evangelical Anglican church. And I continued for a while. It was quite interesting. was a server on the communion of the mass in the Roman Catholic Church. Then I would whiz over to the youth group in the Anglican Church. And then I went to a Baptist Church Bible study with a friend from school midweek. And the one thing I remember of studying was the book of Revelation. And we all found it very puzzling. And the leader said, don't worry. I've got a book that tells us what it means. So thought, that's kind of good. I always felt as though probably we went away. Have you studied the book about Revelation more than actual the book of Revelation itself. But it was interesting to have met the book of Revelation, you know, very early on in my sort of faith journey. And I, as you mentioned, I studied maths at university, I then worked in business for a while, but I a long time felt God was calling me to full time ordained Christian ministry. I studied theology in Nottingham and did a degree through the university and got a first there. And then there was a scheme at the time just beginning to encourage people to go straight from ordination training into doing research. And I felt God was calling me into that, to do that. And then thinking about what would be most helpful to serve the church. And I went back to the book of Revelation and I kind of thought, well, If I can say something useful about how to read the book of Revelation, then maybe I've got something useful to say more broadly about how we read the Bible. And in fact, I've found that to be the case because Revelation is a really, it's kind of stress tests our ability to read scripture well. And again, when I'm just talking to ordinary readers of scripture, say, well, hang on, if you are reading Paul's letter to the Corinthians, you know, what sort of questions would you ask? And they say, well, we sort of wonder what kind of writing this is. Yes, this is a letter. we need pay attention to that. We want to know a bit about who Paul is. We want to know who he's writing to, what kind of world they live in, what are the issues? Because, of course, in 1 Corinthians, he keeps saying things like, now, concerning the matters about which you wrote, 1 Corinthians 7 .1. So what did they write? about what was the world they were living in? Why is meat offered to idols a big deal for them? know, we don't go into our supermarkets and find, you know, here's ordinary meat and here's meat offered to idols. So what's going on there? And they recognize that we have to ask certain questions in order to read well. So my question is, well, why don't we just simply ask those questions when we read the book of Revelation? Why don't we treat it the same way? There's a strange thing where people come to the book of Revelation and they kind of switch off all their... ordinary thinking go, ooh, this is weird. This is different. you know, it's got its own rules for interpretation. So I asked why? Why? Why not ask questions about about where who are the people that John was writing to? We don't actually know who John was, but we can know about what the world was like, what those cities were like, what were the questions they had, particularly what was it like for them living in the east of the empire, living under under Roman rule, living under the threats that coming to the empire from the East particularly, and you see features of that in the text of Revelation, but also what the culture was like. So here's a basic thing in Revelation. It actually applies to the rest of the New Testament, but people don't notice it so much. we're living in a world, for example, where they don't have a separate number system. we in the West, we use a Latin alphabet in most parts of Europe, but we use an Arabic number system. So those are two different things. Before your Arabic number system in the eighth century, what number system do you have? Well, people are familiar with the Roman number system. I, I, I, I, I, look, they're using letters as numbers. So what happens when you live in a world where you use letters as numbers? Well, it means that every word is going to have a value. OK, well, actually, again, you can see the evidence in Revelation for that happening. You can actually see it in the rest of New Testament, but it's not so obvious. But John draws our attention to it. So why don't we ask questions like that? The fact that numbers in our world are kind of abstract ideas, but in the ancient world, numbers are something tangible. So numbers can have a shape to them. They can be square or they can be rectangle, can be triangular, because you don't talk about the number 16 in abstract, you talk about what can you do with 16 things, 16 pebbles or 16 apples or whatever you have. What about the cultural context? What about the mythology that people knew? What are the stories that people knew in the region? How does John draw on that? So for me, in many ways, reading the book of Revelation is kind of a test case, a hard test case for do we read scripture well? Do we ask those kinds of interpretive questions well? And I think because we don't, that's why we tended to neglect Revelation. rather, mean, the fact that we neglect Revelation also means, I think, as a church in the West, we've often failed to work out how the gospel has an impact in our culture when some of our cultural values now are increasingly distant from traditional Christian values. and that sort of like falls into my next question. Like, relation has, for many particularly in our western part of the church, there's been a book that many fear to investigate because of the genre. and all the things that people are little bit scared of that. Yeah, they are. Maybe myself included. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So why do you think that there's the case? I think it's the case because we've had a vacuum of understanding, of thinking about how to do these things. And you know what vacuums do? They hoover up rubbish. So in fact, because people have sort of stop thinking when they've read the book of Revelation, they don't have a way of approaching it. It means that when people other people come along with a crazy idea or a crazy scheme, they go, well, okay, having something is better than having nothing. So they don't have the ability critically to resist those things. I think we end up with revelation has got more bizarre and strange interpretations. In fact, the the dominant interpretational scheme in the Western, certainly in English language in North America, for example, is that of dispensationism which arose from J .N. Darby and... the early 19th century and a kind of a futurist reading. the book of Revelation is taking to be a kind of map of the end times. And of course, when you say, well, where are we? Christians always say, we're just in the end times now. Jesus is about to come back any minute. Well, that's what Christians have always thought. No Christians in the past have ever thought, we're sort of in the middle of history. Don't worry. Jesus isn't coming back for a long time. don't worry about it. Christians have always thought that in the end times. But of course, the problem is that that's what Peter says in Pentecost. in Acts 2, he says, this is that about what Joel wrote in the end times, God will pour out his spirit upon us. actually that claim that we're at the end of history is very questionable. mean, in one sense, we're always at the end of history because we know the past and we don't know the future. So it always looks to us as though we're at the end of things. But when you just pause for a minute and ask some sensible questions and say, okay, so. For that way of reading Revelation, if you read [Revelation] as a sort of a plan, a schedule for our day, what you're claiming is that this text can have meant nothing to Christians for 2 ,000 years. All it could have meant is, well, this isn't relevant to you because it's about the distant future which you're not in, which is not plausible at all... when you think about it. And I think what's happened with this text is that people have just been afraid to ask some of the basic straight -forward questions. There are some technical reasons why Revelation is difficult and why people don't struggle to read it. One of them is that it's absolutely saturated in the Old Testament. So it's got 404 verses in the book of Revelation. Do you know how many times it alludes to the Old Testament? At least... the same amount of times. Well, least the same amount. It's actually... well, by one reckoning, it's 676 times. I spent a week of my life counting them. That is a week I'm not going to get back. That's quite a lot actually. But it means that every verse of the book of Revelation, you're stumbling across one or two Old Testament ideas or phrases or language. And most of us in the West, just don't know our Old Testament well, so we don't recognize that. So in one sense, we find that as a disabling aspect of the text. mean, the second one is that we also find a lot of first century mythological ideas embedded in it. So for example, Revelation 12, you've got a woman who's pregnant and a dragon is crouched in front of her waiting to eat the baby that she gives birth to. kind of think, yeah, that's a bit weird. I mean, I'm half Irish, so you know, keep my grandfather was in the IRA fighting against the British colonial oppressors. And, so I've got an interest in the whole Northern Ireland situation. I remember there was a BBC program, TV program a few years ago, and they interviewed a woman and she said, I have be sure if you're not confused, you don't really know what's going on. And I think that's true of Revelation. If you're not confused, you know, you haven't really understood the text because, you know, that everyone agrees, every commentator agrees that chapter 12 is the central pivotal chapter. And you've got dragons eating babies from pregnant women. kind of think if you don't think that's weird, you need to read the text again, you know. But for anyone in the first century, they would immediately say, I know that story. That's... the Leto Apollo Python myth. This is a story we tell to our kids. This is just in the air we breathe. They would not have thought it strange at all. In fact, it's really interesting. A couple of months ago, I was just teaching a group of church folk. We were having a couple of days study on the Book of Revelation. And when I told this story, there was a woman who traveled from Cyprus. She said, I know that story. Because in Cyprus, in the Greek culture, they still tell the story. Interesting. So she recognized it straight away. Very interesting. Yeah. It's the first time it's ever happened to me a teaching revelation of the last 30 years. It's the first time I've ever had anyone in the class who says, yeah, I know that story. That makes sense to me. But you see, that's another thing where we are actually culturally at a distance from the text. And therefore the text is strange to us in a technical sense. And I think the other major factor people say, well, What kind of writing is this? And we're just not familiar with apocalyptic styles of writing. I think it's fascinating that when Jesus in Mark four, in the boat, he pushes out on the boat and the crowd around on the lakeside, and he starts teaching and he says, a sower went out to sow, he scattered the seed on the ground and it landed in four different kinds of places and so on. And then they go back to the house and they decide, we say, we read that and we go, that's a great story, isn't it? Hey, we can do that with our kids in Sunday school. We can sow a sunflower seed and watch it grow. And we think that's great. What do the disciples say to Jesus? They say, Jesus, what are you talking about? We've got no idea. We don't understand. So for them, it was strange for us as familiar. And then you get to chapter 13 in Mark. Jesus is sitting on the Mount of Olives overlooking Jerusalem and he says, sun will be turned dark and the moon will be turned to blood and the stars will fall from heaven. And the disciples say, thanks, we understand that. And we go, Jesus, what are you talking about? And this is an illustration there for the disciples because they're immersed in that culture. and they were immersed in their scriptures in the Old Testament, they didn't find that language strange, but we do. So again, we're just not familiar with the way that that language works as a genre, as a kind of writing. I think the one about the seed was that they were surprised by the things that he wanted to say with it. Yeah. Not necessarily the story in itself, because they were familiar with the concept. They were, but what they weren't familiar with is how was this... about teaching the kingdom. The crowds, you offer no explanation. the crowds are going, what's that teaching us? We get the inside track, we go into the house. But the reason why I'm saying that is because in the same chapter he says that Jesus told things in parables so that they could understand it. So it seems like he is using these parables to make people understand. Well, to the outsiders they're puzzled and it's the insiders who get the explanation. But yeah, I know this is also an interpretation thing, but I think that it's important that in verse 33 he actually says that to the outsiders he only told them this, but so that they could understand. Well, so that they're intrigued and say, well, do you want to find out more? But it's not making it clear to them. He makes it clear to the insiders. But it's just an interesting contrast without any experience. he goes to show me, you know, I say to folk, you you are actually genre recognition experts. Ordinary people are. So, know, if you go in England, if you get a letter through your door, and it's a third A4 envelope, and it's got a window in it, and your address is left aligned, you immediately know what kind of writing this is. You know it's bank manager kind of writing. say, well, how do you know that? You know through experience. Or the taxman. Or the taxman, exactly. But if you get a card which is square, and it's red, and it's handwritten, again, you know what kind of writing that's going to be straight away. So we learn about kinds of writing through experience. You know, and if we're not immersed in apocalyptic texts, there are a of them, are huge number of them, but we're not immersed in them. again, it's another thing that makes the book Revelation strange to us. I think I find in teaching this text, there are some good technical reasons why Revelation is a strange book. But once you recognize those things, and once you realize what you need to do to read well, then actually those things you can overcome. And again, for example, one of the one of those issues is numerology. people don't realize how much numerical composition there is in the New Testament. And when you're reading out to when you read the Gospels, you can get away with not recognizing that. But when you when you're reading Revelation, you can't because John uses numerical composition in so many sophisticated ways. He used at least four different techniques of numerical composition in Revelation. And they are significant in sort of carrying the message as well. So obviously the most obvious one is 666 in Revelation 13.18. But you get the numbers 1260 and you get the port, which is the same as 42 months and three and half years. You get 144 ,000 in Revelation 7. And you get again, again, you get 144 carrying in the vision of Jerusalem and and if you're not used to inhabiting a world where those kinds of numbers have a symbolic and a theological significance so that you know for example that the fact that a square and a excuse me right a square and a cube Again, for someone immersed in scriptures, they take you back to 1 Kings 6 and the description of the building of the temple and the Holy of Holies, which is a cube, 20 cubits by 20 cubits by 20 cubits. OK. So then cube numbers are related to the Holy Temple presence of God. So the 144 ,000 as being a square times a cube. Okay, that sense, somebody reading that symbolically and theologically, this is talking about the people of God as his temple place of dwelling. Okay, well, actually, that's what Jesus says. He talks about himself as the temple in John two. This is what Paul says in one Corinthians, he talks about us being the temple of God. So it's translating those theological ideas into this kind of tangible numerical composition. I mean, I find when you you explain that, they go. Right, yeah, I can see that. I can see how that makes sense. And then the text becomes, you know, comprehensible to them. Yeah, and also, in 1 Peter, we had the living stones. Yeah, exactly. Exactly so. Being built into a spiritual house. is a similar language. Temple metaphor as well. Yeah, exactly so. Yeah, so, but then, how do you think, now we've already touched a little bit upon it already, but I wanted to like, just ask that question directly as well. So how do we get over that fear of studying Revelation? I think first of all simply... by recognising that it's another book in the New Testament. It isn't part separate to itself somewhere else. is part of the New Testament. It's part of the canon of scripture. Again, it's just worth reflecting and saying, well, hang on, if it's part of the canon of scripture, why wouldn't I just approach it in the same way that I'd approach other texts in scripture, asking the same kind of questions? I think the other dimension to that as well is to say, if it's part of the canon of scripture, don't we expect you to tell the same story as the rest of scripture? So what is the story of scripture? It's that humanity were made in the image of God, we turn from him. But in his grace, he continued to reach out to us. He formed a people for himself through Abraham and through his descendants. When his people went into slavery, he liberated them from slavery, led them through the desert into the promised land. When they didn't obey what he called them to do, they went into exile, but God didn't give up on them and he called them back. And his people never quite returned from exile. And he sent his son. And at each stage of that story, God's people sometimes accepted, sometimes rejected what God's call was. But in the rejection, God turned that round in his grace to be a redemption. And in Jesus, when his people refused to follow him and he was crucified, God turned that moment of greatest rejection into the moment of greatest redemption, so that his grace actually flooded out beyond ethnic Jews to the whole world, which was his intention from the very beginning, that his people should be alike to the Gentiles, that in Isaiah 2, all nations should be drawn to Zion and the worship of the God of Israel. one day he will return and we await in hope, patient hope for him to come. Now, that's the story. scripture why wouldn't you expect Revelation to tell the same story and in fact you find it does because one of the repeated themes in Revelation is the one on the throne is the one who's created the world The repeated theme is that lamb who was slain and it's fantastic in chapter five you just get these three words, lamb, slain, standing, which kind of encapsulates the story of the New Testament, which is that lamb, Jesus was our Passover lamb, as Paul says, at a celebrated feast. He was sacrificed for us. Mark 10 45 the son of man came not to be served but to serve to give his life as ransom for many but he's slain and now standing he's been raised up again he's died and was raised on the third day and he's on the throne with the father he has sent it to the father is at the right hand so in those three words lamb slain standing you actually and this is why I think Revelation is such a powerful text you have the whole story of the new testament encapsulated just in three words which is amazing that's wonderful Yeah. then you again you have the language of redemption in chapter seven, you know, the Israel of God, the hundred forty four thousand. He hears them counted out. John does. And he turns to see who they are and he finds they are an uncountable number from every tribe, language, people, and nation. Well, an uncountable number. That's the promise to Abraham. Your offspring will be as many as the sand on the sea. Sure, you count them from every tribe, language, people, and nation. This is fulfilling the cosmic vision that God always had for his people. And then of course you look forward to Revelation 21 and the New Jerusalem comes from heaven to earth and that which is separated the beginning is now joined again once more. So I think if you remember that Revelation is telling the same story as the rest of scripture, that's going to really help you read it well. I think the last thing I'd say, this is where I get self promotion in, is that Revelation is the only text in scripture which gives us clear instructions about how it is to be received So in Revelation 1 verse 3 we read this blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy and blessed are those plural who hear and keep the words of this prophecy now That explicitly tells us what we actually know in other things, but it's the only place where it tells us this is how this text is to be received. One is reading it out. Now, that's the lector. So in the first century, you wouldn't have all had your own Bibles. You'd have had probably a scroll. Eventually, it turned into the Codex format. you had a lector and that was their post. We know that was a position in the church communities. And then you all listen together. Now, in other words, This is a text like the whole of scripture to be received not primarily on your own but primarily in community. You're reading with others. So that means we read together and we we hear from one another about how to read this well. What does it what sense does it make. know we need people to explain. You know one the things we know about for instance letter carriers like. Phoebe in Romans 16 is that the role of letter carriers was having sat with the person who wrote the letter dictates the letter they would then be able to explain it. So we do need people to help us not to mediate the text to us but to help us understand and explain. And from the whole people of God. Now, amazingly, it's not just those who are with at the moment, but also those in the past who read before us or those who are in the distance or those who are scholars who spent time with it and written commentaries. Now, it just so happens I've written a commentary on the book of Revelation in the Tyndale series. So my aim in that is not to stand between the reader and the text and say, well, let me tell you what it says, but to stand next to you and with you and say, look, let's read the text together. And let's draw on some research that I've done, which I hope will help you to make sense of the text as you read it. So we're not to read it in isolation. If we read it in isolation, we are going to struggle because we just don't have that equipment. Might get up with come up with a few strange ideas. would say exactly so. When people read Revelation on its own, they come up with some very odd ideas. to read with one another and to share our insights. And with those things you just mentioned in mind that it is a book very saturated with Old Testament reference as well. Absolutely. And we might not spot those under aim, but somebody else would have seen that. I recognize that. is from Daniel, this is from Ezekiel. Although here's an interesting question. Which book of the Old Testament does Revelation allude to more than any other? Just give me a second. This is a good one. This is a test, it is. When you tell me I'll remember because someone told me before. It is... Either the Psalms or the Torah, I think. Isaiah. 128 times. The second most common book it alludes to is the Psalms. And then you get Ezekiel and Daniel. And then the fifth most common is Exodus. But this also really helps us to understand what Revelation is about. Isaiah is a book in two halves. It's about conflict and then about hope and deliverance. So maybe that's what Revelation is about. We live in a world of conflict, but we anticipate God's deliverance. There's a lot of Isaiah language in there. And what about the Psalms? So often the Psalms are about how do we continue to praise God when we're being oppressed by our enemy? Or how do we praise God when we're in a strange land? How do we sing the Lord's song in Exile? Babylon. And again, that's a key theme. you know, in Revelation, there's so much hymnic material. You know, the episodes were punctuated or the key episodes were always concluded by a hymn of praise, because it's in praising God that we find solidarity with others who have hope and we anticipate the world that is to come as well. Yeah. And that's maybe why the persecuted church, hopefully, Bible says, Paul says that every Christian is persecuted in some way or another. Yeah, sure. But, but The actual prosecuted, where they actually have a fear of life, they actually find Revelation more helpful. They do. Although what is really fascinating is when you read through the messages in chapters 2 and 3 to the churches, to the assemblies, not churches, churches is a better, non -helpful word. actually, there's as much challenge as there is comfort. You know, out of the seven messages, five of them have really serious rebukes, saying, come on, wake up. You know, you've fallen asleep. You've forgotten your first love. You're compromised. If you carry on like this, I'm to take away your lampstand. That is not comfort to a persecuted church. That is challenge to a church which is complacent. Actually, Revelation is a text in the West. That's what we need to hear. You're dying and you haven't realized it. Exactly. Yeah. need to wake up. Don't be comfortable, Christians. comfortable, don't be compromised, don't simply fit in. know, I think what John is doing is saying he's upping the stakes, he's upping the ante, he's saying if you think you can be a good Roman citizen and you can worship Jesus, you can't. You have to choose which one you're going to be. You can either conform to your culture or you can be a faithful witness after the example of Christ. But you can't be both. And that's a challenge, I think, in the West, we really need to hear. Yeah. Maybe that on the backdrop, if you normally it's a tradition here at the podcast to ask for what is. an application of the topic we've been discussing. There it is. And I think for me, as I reflected, it's more than a coincidence that on the one hand, the Church in the West has neglected the Book of Revelation, and on the other hand, the Church in the West by and large has failed to be distinctive from its culture. It's sort of been drawn into its cultural pressures. Because for me, the Book of Revelation is kind of the best case study we have in the New Testament. of how does the gospel work out when you're living in an alien and hostile culture. And that's what John works out with his readers and says, look, these are things going on because the examples of language and practice from the imperial cult is really, really evident there. So you get both the vision of the worship of God in chapters four and five is a fusion of Old Testament language with language from the imperial cult. didn't always recognize that. But that's why there are elders, not priests, around the That's why they wear white not red or purple. That's all gold That's why they cast their golden crowns down these and that's why they seem repetitive choruses not songs This is all the language of emperor worship. And what John is doing is saying, you know that stuff that people give to the emperor? It doesn't belong to him. It belongs to God alone. And again, that crucial chapter in chapter 12, again, that that Leto -Python mythology, was mythology that was used as imperial propaganda. But the emperor said, I am the Apollo figure and I slay the chaos monster. And John turns it around and says, no, not at all. It's Jesus who's the Apollo figure, who's born of the woman. the Roman power is the beast that's in league with the dragon. So he actually turns it right round and says, you know, it's the other way around. So it's a case study in living distinctively in hostile culture. And therefore for me, it's one where... You know, the Church in the West has got to grasp this and has got to look at this example and say, OK, how does that work for us? Where do we see this sort of beastly activity around us? And, know, when when John says, when he calls the voice saying, come out of her, be separate. Where are the key points in our culture where the Western Church, Christians in the West need to say, no, we're not going to swim with the time. We're to turn around and we're going to be distinctive. And, you know, even if it's going to be costly, we're actually going to be distinctive in swimming against the tide of our culture and standing up and opposing key elements of our cultural values. Well, what would you say a concrete example of that would be? Well, I think you've got to ask the question. In Chapter 13, the beast is obsessed with image, is concerned about economic control. is concerned with conformity. And you've got to ask where do you see this going on? Now, I think if you were a Christian living under in the Soviet Union and the 70 years of communism, you might you might see that kind of dynamic in communist power. If you lived in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, you might see that dynamic going on here. The question is, what about us in the West? And, you know, a number of commentators have said, actually, as it were, the thing that's acting as the beast in our culture is consumerism. that you find happiness by what you buy. It's individualism, or it's defining your identity by sexual identity politics. So here you find forces which say you must conform. If you conform to this ideology, then we will deliver happiness to you as long as you don't ask questions. We'll provide you with security. And the key thing that John is saying is, look, whatever, whoever or whatever says, You must give your allegiance to me and I will give you the things you want, your security, your identity, who you are. He says, Actually, there's only one who can do that for you. That's God. It's only God who can redeem you. It's only God who can give you peace. It's only God who can give you the fundamental things you're looking for. Who can answer your fundamental questions. Therefore, it's only to the God of Israel, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you can give your undivided loyalty to. And anyone who calls you away from that is calling you away from life. very helpful. That's a very good place to end. Thank you Ian for joining me the podcast. Great, it's great to be with you. Thank you and to you. See you next time. But before you go, if you enjoyed this podcast and you want more people to see it, please subscribe and leave a like. It really helps us create more episodes like this one. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Have a great day and I'll see you in the next one