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CHAPTER  11

REVELATION and its REVELATORY PLACE

OVERVIEW

The book of Revelation is said to have 4 main interpretations: the symbolic or idealist view, the historicist, the preterist, the futurist. It is largely portraying the essences in cosmic conflict, or the contemporary in certain themes when the book was written, the forthcoming, substantially  that which is to be over time,  an "allegorical panorama" with some emphasis on the end, or a specialist work in the main, dealing with the immediate prelude to Christ's return .

When considered, it is too large and multi-partite, fluid and inventive to fit to any of these descriptions, as a glove might fit a hand. To be sure, there are aspects of the  ultimate conflict between God and the devil, of elemental clashes, devilish contrivances and answering overthrows; there are parts specifically dealing either with current times or things impending; there are tracings of developments, as it often breaches even this, or rather transcend it, moving swiftly from a given series of sequence to a depiction of the end of the matter, as if by lifting the eyes. There are turmoils of clouds, in which the allegorical is seen rising sharply like a cliff, and there are sometimes shapes and occurrences so vested in imaginative and symbolic language that their message seems to signify at times, rather than simply to instruct. While then some things are like clouds moving, there is no doubt when there is a storm! its basic ground and its results profound, and mere are these.

There are also overall coverages, areas where the nature of the case, the type of situation in view, its structure, as when one stares at the distant horizons from the top of a small mount, its summary even, comes into view, as if it were to become a view or review of the grounds of a great estate, lest one should become lost, and this as a basis for a more particular look at the buildings upon it.

It thus has more than four aspects, no one aspect exhausts it and its evangelical appeal is vast, awakening both to judgment and to glory, alternatives  like a river journey or a violent flood. It appears that despite the many phases, some presented as following each other by which it is not meant that they do not do so, whatever their nature, the warning is that the return of Christ is TAXU, that is, swift or unimpeded, readily executable or to be executed. It is freely as His will governs. It is not, in other words, something to be developed with difficulty, slow and heavy, but to occur with a free divine hand, not turgidly, but decisively. (The Greek term opposite to TAXU, bradus, signifies the heavy, slow, unlively, lacking in force and energy). God may in pity delay (and will,  as in II Peter 3:9), but this is not a necessary item,  rather a gracious temperance of concern. Nevertheless, the completion is without a work of creation, but rather a divestment, within the ready application of His will.

When the symbolic is not the very essence of a passage, as when the temple and its trampling down are mentioned in Ch. 11, there is no need or warrant for making it mean something else than that declared, but the mode of representation has to be watched, in that it is even characteristic of much of the Book to bring in a mercurial motion or a fantasy strip to enliven the reception, in ways so extraordinary in specific form or specifically visionary as to create the feeling and the impact of the scene, or  even scenario, in a way not intended to be  prosaically limiting, except for the clarity of its major thrust and overview.

To reject relatively prosaic summaries, statements, logical elements proceeding to the end, or that there is an end, would be contrary to the entire emphasis of the Book, from which fantasy is by no means purged, nor fact excluded, but a lively coverage of vital  elements and overall considerations of the old and the new to come, including Gospel graces and revival in reality, clad in wonder, are by no means to be discounted because of the liveliness of the imagination or the gruesomeness of the judgments, and the reality of their provocations.

As the book announces at the first, the purpose is to tell us things readily to take place. That is, they are in train, their generic time has come.  We are, as it were, in the theatre, and shortly the program indicated, will begin. There is the identification of the speaker, the inspiring sources.

Soon arrive the ecclesiastical litany, assessments and exhortations; there are the devotions to divinity, and in particular exalting the Lamb, the second Person  of the trinitarian majesty; there are events and judgments, vistas of deliverance, vignettes of comfort for those who have completed their trials; summaries of events over a vast period, their divine assessments and human results; there is scope for address to the finales, where rampant spiritual paranoia is paraded in its oppressive world-wide and dark-light rule, confronted with the explosive force of divine wrath leading on to the torrid times of the false prophet, the second beast, the religious one, and the exposure of the symbolic base of the harlot, and her dispossession. This deals with the specialised religion of Rome appearing still intact almost to the end, abruptly leading to her divorce from the beast, the political power houses she has used for her own glory, for the beast will no more endure her false catholicism (cf. SMR pp. 946ff.).

With this comes the destruction in one hour of this unfaithful religious monarchy, even of its physical base, and the coming of Christ and the association in the process with His saints, 'married' in heaven, before this unfolding into the millenium, which follows the day of judgment, and what a wonder of relief, release and restoration, indeed culmination is  reached! It includes a new heavens and a new earth as in Isaiah 51 and II Peter, for the present one will have no place left for it (Revelation 20).

EXPLORATION

See for example the account found in Regal Rays from Revelation, Ch. 10, Ch. 7 and indeed this entire volume.  See also Possess Your Possessions Volume 3, Ch. 4.

	The Book of Revelation itself is instructive enough. It is wise not to rush off with some  into radical nostrums, not doing justice to the actual scope of the book in all its particularities both in essence and detail, but skewing in their derring-do almost as imaginative as, though without the discipline, of the book itself.
	One is interested in examining what is in the book, not in the psyche of the expositor. In this way, effort is made as in a Shakespeare play, not to re-write it in the exuberance of some theory, largely alternative to the drama, but not possessing its fame or coherence.
	In this sense, here being conservative is serviceable, being weighed down with the reality of the text and its own internal forces. At the same time, it helps here also to be  conservationist, not chopping out this or that, or stretching beyond the limits of reasonable elasticity, or inserting ideas that are frankly intrusive from an imagination like an undisciplined dog, sniffing at every irrelevant post.
	As in science, the empirical realities require attention, lest we talk of artful excrescences, these seizing place by storming the borders, while totally foreign to what lies within.