The Dissidents Guide to Revelation (Rev 1:1-3)

A semi-regular commentary on Revelation

Along with a series on Revelation that I’m teaching at Watermark Church, I’m starting this series, The Dissidents Guide to Revelation (TDGR) in order to help those who want to read the book with perhaps a different mindset than what they were raised with; a way of reading that inspires hope and faithfulness to Jesus instead of fear and confusion. Follow along if you need a new lens to look through. Hopefully we can have some great discussion and imagine anew what the apocalypse of John has to say to us today.

---

“Things Will Not Always be Like This”

We open up with a word of hope: Things aren’t always going to be the way that they are.

And how are things?

For the Christians in 95AD who gathered to listen to Johns letter, things were grim. Life, in the simplest of terms, was hard. They’ve known nothing but pain and subjugation for generations. They have endured persecution and humiliation as a conquered people. Romans in full military regalia march through the lands established by their ancestors, public displays of force that desecrated their lands and mocked their people.

Most of Johns audience could not only name a martyr but could, with their eyes closed, see their face and hear their voice. Each likely knew someone who had been killed by their Roman oppressors; Emperor Nero before, now Domitian. The latest attempt to curb the spread of Christianity was to exile the pastors of the churches to faraway Islands; cutting off the head so that the body might flounder and slowly die.

The Offense of Christianity

To identify with Christ, a wandering Jewish teacher-turned-revolutionary, meant offending Rome in multiple ways. First, there was the communal proclamation that “Jesus is Lord.” In their world, Rome was the victor because Caesar was Lord. And if Jesus is Lord, then Caesar is not, a tiny detail which left Christians open to charges of treason, punishable by death.

Then there were the agape feasts which symbolized the table of Jesus which made space for the upper class to attend, but which centered the poor, slaves, women, and outsiders. Decentering the rich and powerful, especially in Rome, is a dangerous game. The Christian commitment to “not be conformed to the pattern of this world” (Romans 12e) threatens the order of things in the empire. It had to stopped, and the most effective tool they could come up with was persecution.

And so the christians gather from all walks of life, rich and poor, young and old, slave and free, each familiar with the suffering and hardships of trying to live with the boot of the empire on their necks. They have come together to hear a word from their pastor, delivered by courier from the Island of Patmos where John is being held under threat of violence. Their pastor, worried about the people he loves, starts with a simple message: Things will not always be this way.

John has never lost his hope, it has filled him to overflowing and he wants it to flow to his people. He believed that there was reason to rejoice, reason to lean deeper into the way of Christ instead of letting off the gas. Conflict arises when God is at work, and John believed that God was at work.

“Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near.” (Revelation 1:3)

There is a blessing for the broken, there is a path for the oppressed, and there is a plan for setting things right again. The Christians felt this way once, but it has been a long time since then and the malaise of decades of daily oppression have chiseled away at the foundations of hope they once had.

John has some words to stir up that hope once again.