In 1843,
the Prophet Joseph made a remark that probably came across as somewhat strange,
when he declared that “the book of Revelation is one of the plainest books God
ever In 1843, the Prophet Joseph made a remark that probably came across as
somewhat strange, when he declared that “the book of Revelation is one of the
plainest books God ever caused to be written.” As on so many other matters,
what Joseph Smith said does not match the prevailing opinion, either in the
wider world, or within modern Mormonism.
But you
don’t need to worry that studying Revelation will be too difficult. The Prophet
Joseph said that it is plain, and easy to understand. And even when I was a
small child, I grasped the basic message of the book: The wicked have no hope
of victory, and although the faithful Saints will suffer great tribulations, in
the end, Jesus wins.
In my
experience, most Latter-day Saints, like Christians in general, shy away from
the Apocalypse of John, confessing that it is too hard for them to understand.
The book is seldom read or studied. If confronted with Joseph’s statement,
these Mormons might say that, even though Revelation is a very difficult book,
Joseph was able to understand it because he was a prophet.
Except
that Joseph Smith didn’t say that Revelation was a confusing book which he
himself, on account of his unusual spiritual enlightenment, was able to make
sense of. He said that it was one of the plainest books God ever caused to be
written.
I happen
to believe Joseph Smith on this point.
The first
time I read Revelation was when I was eight or nine years old. I had received
my own Bible at the time of my baptism, after which I slowly worked my way
through Genesis. I wasn’t very good at understanding what I read – I could
follow the creation and flood narratives, but KJV dialogue is a bit tough when
you think that ‘nay’ is nothing more than the sound a horse makes, and
circumcision went completely over my head. After finishing Genesis, I became impatient
and wanted to see the end of the story – so the next thing I read was
Revelation.
As with
Genesis, I didn’t really follow most of it. But I remembered the otherworldly
throne-room scenes with many-eyed beasts singing praises to God; I remembered the
end of the world, with the wicked being destroyed by ghastly and unbeatable
plagues, and I remembered how, even in the midst of these plagues, the
survivors “yet repented not of the works of their hands.”
That last
notion scared me – I was afraid that, if these events happened in my lifetime,
then even though I would know the end was near, I would be incapable of
repenting.
And all
these years later, I still believe that what I got out of the book as a
nine-year-old was the plain and simply truth. God is enthroned in the heavens,
surrounded by glory that doesn’t make sense to man. Sooner or later, the world
will end amid splendiferous calamities.
And
throughout all this, the wicked would refuse to repent, although I no longer
see this last point as a matter of spellbound men who can’t repent even though
they desperately want to, but of men who, through long experience rejecting
their God, have lost the ability to desire anything better.
I have
read the book of Revelation many more times since then, each time understanding
a little more of it. And I still believe that it is the plainest book in the
Bible.
But what
about all those beasts? You might ask. And the signs of the end times? Which of
the catastrophes are occurring in the world today? Which have yet to come?
Except
that I haven’t tried to answer those questions. Matching up the seals and
plagues to the current news cycle is usually done by the same sort of people
who predict the world will end in their own lifetime. Every generation of
Christians has had people who thought like this, and so far, they’ve all been
wrong – which shouldn’t surprise any of us, since Jesus told us that we don’t
get to know the timing of the his return.
And the
same sort of Christians that go about tying the seven last plagues to events
they saw on the nightly news will also pile on evidence that the beasts are
representations of their favorite political enemies. This science seems to have
been perfected by the late Robert W. Faid, a nuclear engineer from South
Carolina who won the Ignoble Prize in Mathematics for publishing a book in
which he calculated the exact odds (710,609,175,188,282,000 to 1) that Mikhail
Gorbechev is the Antichrist.
I would
argue that the descriptions of the Dragon, the Beast, and the False Prophet
which John provides are a bit too vague to support such firm conclusions. These
things are symbols to be understood, not codes to be deciphered.
What we
do know is that the Beast will persecute Christians, and many will suffer
martyrdom for not worshiping him. So we can either look at all the centuries of
Christians who have endured such things and say, ‘you were persecuted by
ordinary enemies, but in my time, we will be persecuted by the Beast of
Revelation himself,’ or else we can conclude that the Beast is a symbol of all
earthly powers that war against the Saints, and that one generation of Christians
has as good a claim at being up against the Beast as the next. The message of
Revelation is aimed at Christian men, women, and children throughout the
centuries whose hearts are pointed toward God; it was not written for the
benefit of a handful of mathematicians.
What of
the number of the beast, six hundred and threescore and six? Well, on my second
reading of Revelation (I didn’t know what a ‘score’ was the first time around)
I simply understood it to mean that 666 is a symbol of the Devil and ought to
be avoided. I suppose that at some point in the future, some tyrant will demand
that his subjects be branded with the number 666, and a few of them will refuse
and lose their lives over it.
Also, at
the present time there are thousands of milquetoast American Christians driving
around with that number on the backs of their cars, even though there is still
enough religious freedom left in this country that they could easily go to the
DMV and demand new license plates.
But
leaving aside the favorite topics of debate, I will say that every time I study
Revelation I see more plain and precious truths. I can’t go over them all in a
single blog post, but I’ll talk about a few.
One thing
I remember is how, when the Two Prophets are slain in Jerusalem, the wicked
celebrate by giving gifts to one other. The idea of present-giving to celebrate
a death seemed very bizarre to me at the time; then Margaret Thatcher died, and
it was in the news that a lot of Brits who had hated her were taking advantage
of the occasion to give presents to each other. Not exactly a fulfillment of
prophecy, but it does show the level of depravity to which our world has sunk.
When
Babylon the Great falls, and the plumes of her smoke are seen from afar off on
the oceans, there will be a lot of mourning for her. But it isn’t lamentation
on account of all the death and human misery that such an event entails; it is,
rather, a pathetic spectacle wherein “the merchants of the earth shall weep and
mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more.”
Nearly
half of Chapter 18, which describes Babylon’s fall, is about the merchants and
all their fine goods that Babylon will no longer purchase. The whole mood fits
in quite well with modern American politics, where the magnitude of human death
inflicted through abortion and undeclared wars takes second place to the ups
and downs of the stock market as the driver of national emotion.
And then
there is my favorite Bible verse, Revelation 3:17, part of Christ’s rebuke to
the lukewarm Church at Laodicea: “Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased
with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched,
and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.”
Why would
I choose that as my favorite verse? Because I have experience with thinking
that my conduct is pleasing to God, and then realizing that I am wretched, and
miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.
What I
have time to write here only scratches the surface of my insights from studying
Revelation – and I won’t even go into some of the connections I made when I
began looking at the text in the original Greek. Suffice it to say that there
is a lot to be learned from what John wrote, and like any book of scripture,
you will get more out of it the more you study it.
No comments:
Post a Comment