That's the thing I hate most about wondering about the mark of the beast being some piece of technology. Oops, I just got the wrong credit card and now I'm going to hell or something. That has nothing to do with one's heart. But what John is talking about is where is your allegiance? Are you living your life now marked by this, by God's name on your head or the world system, name on your head? Well, Paul Lamicela, Thanks for coming back on the Anabaptist Perspectives podcast.
So we're both here at Faith Builders and over supper. A few days ago, we started an interesting conversation about a topic we've been wanting to do on this podcast for a very long time, and that is how to read the Book of Revelation and a lot of the surrounding stuff that comes with that. So we're going to dive right into that very large topic and I'm very curious what all you have to say about it. But yeah, maybe just a short introduction about yourself and, and then we'll get into it.
Yeah. So I teach biblical studies. I have a Ph.D. in biblical theology and I've gotten increasingly interested in and really excited about the Book of Revelation in recent years as I've learned how to read it in light of the whole of the Bible and in light of its genre and some things we're talking about and realizing that it is a really powerful book that has so much to say to us today. So I'm excited about some of these things.
Okay, So when I look at the Book of Revelation and I read it, I tend to get very confused. And you said something last night that was really helpful for me and that is that whole genre question of what is this book? How does it fit into the New Testament and so forth and the surrounding context? Yeah, explain that a bit. What are we talking about when we look at Revelation and what would I guess, broadly speaking, what genre is this book?
Yeah, so, you know, the first thing to say probably is that when, whenever we read a text, we automatically get clues from the text about how to read it, right? So when I teach about genre in class, I put up a list of very, I put examples of various types of text. So I'll throw up something from a poem, right? And students automatically know just because they're familiar with this genre from our culture, they see the words the lines, you know, broken up into different lines.
They just to get the feel of it. It's not always easy exactly to pin down why, but, you know, right. Because you're like, that's a poem. And then a whole bunch of assumptions go into how you're supposed to read that. And I put up another example from like an instruction manual or something, and instantly, again, you know how to read it or a fairy tale and, you know how to read it and the Book of Revelation is the same way. And it's meant to be read in a certain way.
The reason I think, one of the main reasons we have in our sort of modern Western evangelical Christianity, including, and I include, you know, anabaptism in that for purposes of this, the reason we have trouble with it is that it's a genre that we don't have any other examples of in our own culture.
So what I like to tell students is, that that's a problem with us, not with the text, but that if you would go back to first century Jerusalem and go to a Barnes and Noble’s in Jerusalem, you would actually, there would be a whole shelf with apocalyptic texts. And so you would, it wouldn't be like revelation is just this one weird thing. you would recognize as soon as you start reading.
yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I know what this, I know how to read this because I've read other texts like this, Okay. What? Like you're mentioning the apocalyptic genre. So that's where you're framing this book within the New Testament. Yes. So maybe elaborate on that. What is that? So why this is so important? Is that meaning? When I write something, like the genre I write it in determines how I expect the reader to get meaning out of it, Right?
So if I write a children's story, I would be really mad at you if you came back to me with like a whole list of critiques because you were trying to take it literally, “literally”. And, you're like, It doesn't work or something, where you interpret it in ways I never intended. And like, what I would say to you is, no, this is a children's story. You have to read it like a children's story. Right? And if you said, well, but I want, I was trying to read you literally, I wouldn't be impressed.
I'd be annoyed because I would say you're actually not taking me seriously. Like, you're playing games with me. Meaning comes when we read a text. The goal is not to impose our own sort of ideas on how we should read it, but to submit ourselves to the way the author has written it. And I think that's especially true when we're dealing with the Bible because there's not only a human author, John, but also a divine author.
And if we take seriously the fact that Scripture is inspired by God, then our only choice is to submit to the the ways that God has chosen to reveal himself. And that means apocalyptic genre in this case. Right? And so if we come, I mean, I want to preface everything I’m going to say, because for some people this is new just due to trends in the last hundred years in our country basically, and dispensationalism and stuff.
But to say that the goal is never to say I need to read something literally. The goal is to say how does God and the human author want me to read this? And that's a question that has to do with genre. So if I go to a parable of Jesus and I say, I need to take this literally, Jesus wouldn't be impressed, right? Because he's like, No, that's a parable.
And so to submit to him in that area means I need to understand that he's chosen to speak in a parable, and I need to interpret parables the way parables are meant to be interpreted. If I go to a psalm, the same thing. It's a poem and I have to interpret it as a poem because that's how David wrote it and that's how the Holy Spirit wanted it written, right? And the same with Revelation. So I'm going to explain how apocalyptic works.
But the reason why that's important is that, again, this is how John has chosen to communicate and this is how the spirit has inspired this, you know, intended this to be and to take this seriously and to submit to it as Scripture means to be sensitive to the way that God has chosen it to be written, i.e. apocalyptic literature. Okay, So. that makes a lot of sense. And I know and I can already see the comments that will be coming in where people like, but you're misidentifying the genre.
You're, you know, this, that, whatever. I'm sure there'll be lots of, lots of ideas floating around there. But I think that a key question for some people will be, well, how how come you're defining it as apocalyptic, you know, genre? You know, You know what I mean? Like because honestly, when you're, we were kind of batting this around over the last couple of days before we recorded this, and you were saying some of that. And I'm like, okay, I guess I don't know.
I've never I've never heard that before or I've never thought about it quite like that. I guess I kind of know that in my head but like, what even is the apocalyptic genre. So let's talk about apocalyptic. So apocalyptic as a genre is, we scholars talk about it as, as basically consisting of kind of a story, a narrative and written presentation where you have a God's eye perspective of history of the present and the future kind of together. That's revealed usually by an angel or some other
kind of heavenly tour guide, I call them usually, right? So it's, usually a human who's having a vision of these realities that's mediated or explained by an angel and that uses very colorful, complex imagery and symbolism to do this. And the goal of such text is to give God's suffering people hope and challenge in time of difficulty.
So that's kind of the basic features of how this, and central to that is these very, you know, very symbol laden usage of numbers, other kinds of symbols representing other of the things. So that, and now again, this revelation isn't the only text we have like this.
So this way of writing and speaking kind of basically The Fountainhead seems to be the book of Daniel and he, where he has, again you can think of some of these visions that he has where there's an angel that kind of shows him stuff or he has these, visions of beasts and, representing kingdoms and all this sort of thing. And the angel kind of tells him so. So that kind of, that is the Fountainhead.
But then what happens is in the next few centuries from, you know, three hundreds or so B.C all the way to 90 or around 100 A.D. we have a number, a decent number of texts like this being written in Jewish, non-Christian, Jewish circles, I mean many cases pre-Christian Jewish circles. So we have a good number of examples that follow the same pattern. And so the reason why people are maybe unsure, skeptical is, only that they have never read other apocalyptic texts.
As soon as you start reading them, it's very obvious that that's what revelation is. Okay. So you mentioned Daniel as maybe The Fountainhead or a representing piece, which makes sense because when people go down this whole street of trying to figure out, well, what does it mean and all this stuff, they are always, it's like, always going back to Daniel, it seems like. Right. Like I've heard that a lot. Revelation is like full of Daniel imagery, too.
So what are some of these other, like, apocalyptic texts that I'm assuming Most of us? I can't think of any that I've read personally. No. So I mean there's, a bunch, fourth Ezra The Enoch literature, so it's called First Enoch, but there's, it's a collection of a few different apocalypses. Those are big, very big in the era of the New Testament, very popular.
I think they may have made the Jerusalem or the, I don't know, that wouldn’t be the Amazon, maybe be the Jordan, jordan.com, Jordan River or something bestseller list, I don't know. And then other texts like these. What I'm going to, I have a few examples from the Sibylline oracles. please, if you have examples. Yeah. So and what we'll see is that what's going on here.
People like to describe apocalyptic literature in Revelation as functioning, similar in some ways to the way political cartoons operate in our culture where you can, and think about this, those people, we will say when you read, when you open the newspaper, I mean, I don't know if anyone does anymore, but if in theory, if someone would open the newspaper, you can have an article maybe on the front page that describes some political event. Right. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But then on the next page, you can have the, sort of the comics, and that same event might be spoken of, but in political cartoon form. Right? It’s the same thing, but two extremely different ways of coming about it.
The one uses just prose and kind of explains stuff in everyday language, and then the other one uses imagery that you have to be really familiar with and you actually can't get anything out of it unless you already know most of what it's trying to say, because you have to know... so, for example, I mean, the two political parties in the United States are symbolized by the donkey and the elephant.
Right. And so if I'm drawing a political cartoon, I just have to, like, dress up those characters in suits or something. And we know that when you see a donkey or an elephant. okay. So the Republicans are doing this and the Democrats are doing that. Right. But you only know that if you're steeped in that symbolism, that is part of our cultural encyclopedia.
If you are from, I don't know, Asia and have never heard about, you don't know the symbolism, you read this cartoon, you're like, is this a children's cartoon? Are these, you know, some sort of ancient Hindu gods that are making a comeback in the United States? Like what's going on? Like, you know, so that we see all over Revelation, but we also see that in these other texts and some of the same symbol, the same sort of cartoon tropes we see here that we see used in Revelation.
So I'm going to go through a few. And when you start reading them, you start thinking, especially if you I mean, if you know Revelation decently, you start going like, wait, I've read. I know what this is talking about. And again, just to reiterate, this is from, like you're saying, 300 B.C. on up through like, a hundred A.D. era. Yes. So this... So Sibylline Oracles is a collection of, texts that are written over a span of a long time. And some of them are Christian.
These are not, this, from number Sibylline oracles five, is Jewish, which is important because if I give you examples from Christian texts, then that would probably be drawing on Revelation. So that would not be appropriate background, you know, But so these we believe are, this text we believe is written probably between 70 and 130 A.D. So we're talking right at the same time Jon's writing revelation, which makes it extra special, right?
Because it shows what's in the air and what, you know, and what Jon's familiar with in the culture. cultural context Exactly. Yeah, the culture encyclopedia, as we call it. Right. Okay. So here's a few examples of features, tropes, images that we see here that I think are relevant to reading this. So we have, this text has this long section where it goes through the leader, the emperors and such of Rome, but it never refers to any of them by name.
It just hints at what their first letters of their names are by using numbers. So here it says in Sibylline Articles five... Now, what are the infants children of the flock devouring beast? First of all, You know? No. Okay. I mean, you will know as soon as it. So this is a cartoon image just like. I mean, I'm using that just like if I would use the elephant to represent the Republicans, the infants, children of the flock devouring beast. So a flock devouring beast is a wolf. Right.
And these are infants who are children of a wolf. Who's that? it's Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of Rome. Right. I mean, which you're familiar with that right? So. Right. But it's just using. So it doesn't, it's not saying Rome. It's just telling you the, it's using the little image, the icon almost, of the founding myth of Rome. Right. So it's basically after Rome begins, after these infants, Romulus and Remus, children of the flock devouring... So the myth for those who don't know.
Is that Rome was founded by these twins, well, actually, it was by one of them after he killed his brother, I think. But there were these twins, Romulus and Remus, that were abandoned by their mother, apparently, and suckled by a she wolf. Kind of raised by a wolf. Right. And they then, you know, started... So after this happens, there will be the first prince of apparently Rome who will sum up twice ten with his initial letter. Okay. And then it says.
So it keeps going, So what in the world is going on here? His number will sum up twice. He will sum up twice ten with... How do you sum up ten with a letter? So in the ancient world, we don't have numerals to represent numbers. Right. That's kind of a later Arabic kind of thing, which is one of the best inventions of all time, probably. I asked my students, How would you like doing long division with using letters instead of numbers. It's terrible. Right.
But so what you do instead is you have a system whereby every letter stands for a number and so, you know, the first several letters might stand for the first several numbers, but then you'll have other later letters in the alphabet that stand for 20 or 30 or 100 or things like that. So if you live in a culture that that does that right, then you're you're going to start playing little games with this.
Because when you see people's names, you're going to also now recognize those characters as numbers. And you can always do a little math calculations in your head. right? So and yeah, and there would always be this kind of you can imagine there being these kids, probably boys of a certain age that would just annoy everybody by referring to people by their numbers and stuff like that. Right.
But, but anyway, this is why, this is called Gematria , the use of kind of studying or thinking about playing with words or names, especially with their numbers. So this happens, and this happens not just in literary texts, but there was a, we have evidence of this in graffiti from the ancient world. And I think this is awesome. But I think it was in Smyrna from the second century A.D. So this is one of the places that this, the Book of Revelation was sent to, right?
Because one of the seven churches right. And archeologists uncovered a graffito where some, you know, second century young guy had spray painted or whatever they, I don't know how they did it back then, but they're spray painted on some wall. I love the girl whose number is 1085 or something like that, right. And he wasn't talking about her phone number, but he was talking about that. The letters of her name add up to this thing.
And so he probably has like half the girls in Smyrna, like trying to calculate, is this me, you know, which is just fantastic. But all that goes... But it goes to show this type of thing is common. Right. And so in apocalyptic literature, this type of thing is big, because numbers, unlike in other types of literature, in apocalyptic, numbers are always symbolic of something. Right. You just have to know what the numbers stand for. Okay.
So which makes a lot of sense because even just glance through revelation and there's numbers all over the place. Yeah, And they always, they're significant numbers. Yeah. They stand in for something. So in this case he goes, he speaks of Caesar as beginning with the number ten. Right. And then because Julius Caesar is. the I is, stands for the number ten. Right. And then he refers to the one after him as being Augustus, the person with the first letter of the alphabet.
So that's just one example of how this, and this text goes on and on. They're talking about the next number of emperors, all with the number of their initial letter. Instead of ever saying their names. So we have Roman emperors who are children, or sorry, descendants of this beast, right. That are all referred to by the number of their name. Right. Well, that's interesting because this is starting to already sound like revelation, isn't it?
Right. Where John says that the mark of the beast, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name, and you're like, wait, I read stuff like that here. Right? That's one example. Another example is how these texts will speak of Rome as Babylon. Why? Well, I think the reason is that there were only two nations that ever destroyed Jerusalem and destroyed the temple. And they were Babylon and Rome. Okay?
Yes. Yeah. And so especially as you get to the, you know, texts that were written after the destruction of Jerusalem in 1870, it's going to be so natural to think of Rome as the new Babylon. Yeah, right. Okay. Yeah, Yeah. And so by again, by overlaying Babylon, by speaking of Rome as Babylon, almost like a cartoon image again, you pick up and invest what's going on in the present with all the meaning and symbolism of the story in the old Testament.
And that's kind of tying in with what Daniel would be saying in some ways, Right? Because he was writing in Babylon, like he was a captive in Babylon as well. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. And if you’re a christian, like John, then Rome has even more significance as Babylon, because Rome also has this eschatological significance in that it was in part responsible for the crucifixion of the Messiah.
Right. And so Rome, for you, isn’t only the city that the nation sort of the empire that just destroyed Jerusalem. But it also stands in for the ultimate adversary of God and God's people, because it is this nation that this people, these leaders that crucified Jesus. Right.
And so whatever happens in the future, you can, any, all of God's enemies, the power, the forces, the powers, the political powers or whatever that oppose God can always be thought of as Rome in a sense, because Rome is the beginning of the powers that stood against and crucified, you know, persecuted Jesus. So it adds that layer of thing there. So in this text it says... Now Poseidon is a is a chaos monster, right?
And here this great star is destroying the sea, the Sea Dragon sea monster, Which is actually the same thing that revelation is trying to say in Revelation 21 when he says in the new creation, the sea will be no more. Right. It's not that John has anything against seas. But that the sea in this context represents chaos and that sort of thing. Right. So here it’s spoken of as just a sea monster, Poseidon of the sea, and in revelation it’s just spoken of as a sea.
So this great star comes which will destroy the earth... now, so this star, we'll talk about in a minute what stars represent. But the star will come. It's not a flaming ball of gas, in the apocalyptic. But a star which comes from heaven and burns the deep sea and Babylon itself and the land of Italy, it's clearly not talking about the Babylon that's over. You know, over here. It's speaking of Rome. Right. It's the Babylon in the land of Italy. But it's speaking of it as a Babylon. Right?
And I mean, in Revelation, we have the same, there's a lot of Babylon imagery, but it's intertwined also with Rome imagery. You know, John does exactly the same thing. So have one more example of this here. This is Romulus and Remus again. So. Okay, so basically, this is it’s crazy way of saying when Rome starts, right? So when Romulus and Remus grow up, in other words, when Rome kind of reaches its power, they will cast down headlong many who have shameless spirit from seven strong hills.
So they're going to do a lot of, wreak a lot of havoc from these or on these seven hills. And it says both. Both of these infants, number 100, which the letter R, Romulus and Remus stands for 100. okay. Okay. Yeah. Wow. I was getting yeah, I was like, what is this 100 thing? It's going back to the number, the number representing the first letter of their name. Yeah. So now you're like, wow, that's that's complicated. Well, maybe, but it would be.
That's actually not any more complicated than a modern political cartoon. But wouldn’t this also, I'm just totally speculating here. But if they didn't have, you know, mass printing presses, for example, you had to encode this in ways to make it easy to remember. Is this just a way to make it easy to remember stuff like with extremely vivid imagery like that and encoding information into it? Or is this just, this is just a style? It's a style.
It makes it, gives you a different feel right, because it's not pretending to provide information as much as it is to remind embattled people that despite the fact that things seem chaotic, that God is still sovereign over it, He has a plan for it. He's got things under control and the future is known to him and can be hinted at to us and that sort of thing. So it's meant that way. Yeah. That's just interesting, because, again, to our modern ears, all of this seems pretty bizarre.
And maybe that's why there's so much fascination around Revelation now. You know, it's just like, what is this, you know. So, the seven strong Hills. What’s that? Isn't Rome built on 7 hills or something? Exactly right. And so it's just like if I say, you know, you talk about all the corruption in the Windy City. Right? Well, if you you know, we know the Windy City is a stand in for Chicago. Yeah, right. Which is terrible. Which is very corrupt.
But if I say the Big Apple, it’s New York, if I say the city on Seven Hills, it is Rome, right? It's again, it's just another trope that you are supposed to know. Now what's again what's really interesting about this is if we go to Revelation, just really quick here, you have the same imagery used. Yeah, I was going to say that sounds familiar, right? I mean, it's. Yeah, it's used in here somewhere. It is. so in Revelation 17, verse five.
On her forehead, this is the prostitute, which picks up Old Testament. So I, we're talking about all this genre stuff. What John is doing is, in this genre, he's pulling almost everything out of the Old Testament. Revelation is just absolutely full of Old Testament, the Old Testament stories, Old Testament imagery. It's all coming to its climax in this book. So the prostitute, on her forehead was written a name of mystery. And what is her name? Babylon.
The great mother of prostitutes and earth's abominations. So she's this prostitute called Babylon. And already, if you're reading this text in this century and you're familiar with, you know, this probably refers to Rome, right? Drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And remember, this is like after Nero. So, you know. Oh, that's a really good point. Stuff is happening. For context. When was Nero Emperor roughly. It was before Revelation was written.
What are the exact years? I think the sixties. Yeah, the sixties sounds right. Yeah. Because I just remember, you know, knowing that when Paul was writing, like, the book of Romans, you know, Nero would have been the current emperor, for example. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Nero had him executed. So a really bad person. Yeah, he did a lot of things against the church. Okay. Fascinating. Good context. Okay, so he kind of talks a little about this and then verse nine, This calls for a mind with wisdom.
Okay. So it’s like, John’s like, think about this. Think about the imagery here. So she's sitting on a beast with seven heads. I think I should have said that. The angel said to me, Why are you marveling? I will tell you the mystery of the woman and of the beast with seven heads and ten horns that carries her. So this prostitute Babylon is sitting on this seven headed beast.
The beast that, you know, I always tell people, don't ever make a, try to make a movie about Revelation because it's imagery that works in literature. But as soon as you start depicting it on a screen, it's really creepy, right? Very, very weird. The beast that you saw was and is not and is about to rise from the bottomless pit and go to destruction.
The dwellers on earth, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world, will marvel to see the beast because it was and is not in its to come. This calls for a mind with wisdom. Okay, what are the seven heads of the beast? The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sat. You're like, Ding! right. Dead giveaway. wow. Right. So. And now that was Revelation 17. What verse was that? Verse nine.
So you have the prostitute named Babylon sitting on the seven heads, which are seven mountains, Right. It's obviously this whole image is speaking of Rome, but Rome again not in a way that's limited to just the historical Rome. I think Rome is representative of the forces, the powers that stand against Jesus and his people. And then it says the seven heads are also seven kings, five of which have fallen. One is, the other has not yet come.
So they also represent the kings, the emperors of Rome, a certain sequence of them. Right. So, I mean, this is the same thing, that’s the same thing that we have in this text, right? Yeah. I'm really seeing how the genre. Yeah, is a big deal here. I have one more example. Yes please. And this is about how stars, you know, you've heard a lot of weird, you hear a lot of weird stuff from the last 50 years of people reading revelation where stars falling from the sky.
It's all about, it’s almost pictured as a literal, like astronomical stars like crashing down, which of course doesn't work, right? You can't have a third of the stars. Like each star is bigger than the earth, and it just doesn't work. But that's just not what Revelation is talking about. So here again, in Sibylline Oracles five... So it keeps going about these constellations and stuff fighting...
So this pictures the cosmic, that the stars and such, not as balls of gas, but as sort of heavenly beings kind of angels, right? That fight in heaven, right? There's war in heaven and then heaven casts these fighting stars angels to the earth, right. Is like, well I've that I heard I know I've heard that right from Revelation. Yes. Okay. So in Revelation, and there's other examples of this that I, that unfortunately from other texts that we can't go through now. But in Revelation we have.
We have this text. So actually we should have known this from Revelation chapter one, because Revelation one, verse 20, there is the seven stars and the seven Golden lamp stands right at the beginning of the book. And it actually says in Revelation one verse 20. As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in My Right hand and the seven golden lamp stands, the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lamp stands are the seven churches.
So it makes it explicit that stars are angels. But then Revelation nine, the fifth angel blew his trumpet and I saw a star fallen from heaven to earth. And he was given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit. Right? The star falling is not a star as we think of stars. But it is an angel, right? Just like these fighters in this text or in Revelation 12, The Beast, his tail sweeps down a third of the stars of heaven and casts them to the earth.
And in Revelation six, we have stars and the sun kind of crashing down to earth and the sky sort of vanishing just like in this text. So stars represent, and there are other texts, not Sibylline oracles that talk about this a lot more, too. But stars are representative of angels. So when we see stars falling from the Sky, like the dragon's tail sweeping down stars that follow him, this is speaking of cosmic powers, evil powers or good powers in various cases.
So again, another example of how there's so much overlap. Yeah. Whoa. Okay. So. So to back it out on the genre question a little bit, so which again, seems so foundational to all of this, I have always heard a very literalist interpretation of revelation, for lack of a better term, because I think it will make more sense to the audience. But basically what Tim LaHaye outlines in the whole Left Behind series, which are gargantuanly popular if that's the right way phrasing it.
I mean, just absolutely massive runaway bestsellers. And then he kind of kicked off a whole genre, really. It's back to genres, of pop culture in Christian fiction around all its end times stuff in the tribulation and the rapture in the whatever you want it just about the whole works. So that would have been what was that like mid nineties? And then it's still very alive and well today.
And that was been, that would have been what I was used to hearing quite a lot in different places I've been and it seems like that's very common throughout, throughout just pop culture, but also of course the Anabaptist world is not immune from it. You know, it feels like there's this fixation with following the news and is it happening? Is it happening? It's the end of the world, you know, all that stuff.
I would love to hear you respond to that because I got kind of disillusioned with the whole thing. It felt so shallow or like it didn't feel like it fit. And I actually just simply stopped reading Revelation as a result, which is now, now that I think about it, I mean, that's kind of sad, you know? It’s very sad. No, I think that that's happened to a lot of people in our generation.
I mean, I went through a phase like that, too, because you get so like, you just get so like, I don't know, a bad taste in your mouth from kind of all the sort of read the newspapers and try to figure out what all the stuff is. And they've been doing it for like 30 something years, you know, And then it's okay, you know, and then in time they're like, well, that wasn't quite right. And then. debate all these crazy terms that things whatever. So you just ignore it.
But what I'm really passionate about, saying no revelation needs to be rehabilitated. Rehabilitated. It has so much to say. And this is why we spent so much time talking about genre, was that as soon as we realized, no, no, this is not as, it is a weird text, but it's weird for completely different reasons then maybe some of us grew up thinking it was weird for. It's not weird because it's talking about, you know, tanks and nuclear warfare.
It's weird because it was written in this ancient, ancient genre, but that is good news for us because that means that what we need and, what it does for us, it's not a code, but it's a pair of glasses that we're supposed to view our lives in the world. John wrote it. John wrote it to people in the first century A.D., expecting them to understand it and to order their lives accordingly. And that's the goal of apocalyptic. It's not supposed to be.
It's not some Nostradamus style sort of secret code into the future. It speaks of how God will climatically be victorious in the future. But it's meant as John himself says, the point of this is to overcome. Like he says, it's in all of the letters to the churches, to the one who overcomes. And then when he says that he he usually pairs it with some other piece of imagery that shows up in the rest of the book. Right. I'll make him a pillar in the Temple of God.
I will stamp on his forehead the name, you know, that sort of thing. So he will not be part of the judgment, things like that. So these embattled churches, these churches who are faced... with I think there are two dangers in Revelation that John wants us to avoid. And that is the fear of persecution that the beast kind of represents. Right. That's the scary threat of persecution of various levels. And then the allure of the prostitute. Right. And both of those are one and the same, right.
The prostitute sits on the beast. Right. It's they're both Rome but two aspects, right? One is the way that the political forces or whatever can come against Christians and kill them persecute them, take away their businesses, whatever the other is the way that economic wealth, the allure of social approval, things like that can kind of allure us to get into bed in a sense with the prostitute. Right.
And those are the two dangers that revelation is warning us that John is saying you need to be people who conquer, who stay faithful to the true... wait for the, you know, as the true bride is waiting for the you know, the Marriage supper of the lambs to stay away from the allure of the world, which is nothing other than the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. And don't be terrorized by the threat of persecution. Don't let that cause you to stop following Jesus.
And so in this all this imagery, that revelation is using is meant to, that's what it's meant to get us to do. Right. And I think a lot of the looking at newspapers and trying to figure out like what piece of technology... that's actually a distraction from, and it actually can keep us from evaluating our hearts against what this imagery is telling us. Right. It can almost result in.
Yeah. Like you're saying a distraction and then totally missed the point and almost let ourselves off the hook of what this is actually telling us. absolutely It can be a copout. Because it’s like, well as long as you know, it puts the beast, it turns the beast into sort of Russia or something like that. Right. Which is, it's something we, I think we've all heard, you know, a bunch of times and you know, or certain events that well that's, that's going to happen at some point in the future.
So then that tends to, I think you'd mentioned this last night as well when we were chatting about this, but it tends to turn revelation into this future thing that doesn't really apply like right here and now, because, oh well, it’s talking about something in the future. And so maybe that's some of the fixation with so many people trying to figure out, what's happening in our lifetime, which we've been hearing that for 60 years or whatever, and it hasn't happened yet, And Revelation speaks.
And this is way apocalyptic works. It speaks of the present and the future kind of together. So Revelation is speaking. I think all this stuff about tribulation, about the beast, about the prostitute, this is all stuff that's happening in John's day and continuing to happen now. And I think Revelation does have a climax in the future. When Jesus returns, judges his enemies, sets out, you know, brings about the new heavens, new Earth. And so they're sure.
I'm not saying there's no future implications. I'm not saying that there will not be another iteration of the beast and the prostitute and whatever in the future. But it's going to be, it'll be precisely that. It'll be the last in a series. It won't be something categorically different from what we're experiencing now. And John himself says this outside of revelation, where he says Many Antichrists have already come into the world. Right?
And so whatever the final iteration is, it's just a final iteration in the pattern. That's interesting because, when you talk about the Antichrist, I mean, so many people too, entering into a categorically different event, you know, like this is going to be like a really bad person like this going to be completely different than before, you know?
And so then there's always yeah. John's thinking of things like in some cases maybe even false teachers in the church and in other cases he's thinking of Emperor Nero. Right. So he's, it's an anti messiah. It's any powerful figure or influential figure that opposes the reign of Jesus. So So again, I'm kind of anticipating some of the comments we'll get where people will be like, yeah, but you’re not taking the Bible literally for what it's saying.
This is, you know, and again, you kind of touched on this with the genre question, but people kind of get bent out of shape about that and like, well, but if you can just start reading the Bible symbolically, then so many things go out the window, like how do you how do you respond to that? Again, it's about, it’s a question of reading the way John and then God intends us to read, not about literalness or otherwise. That's just the wrong question to ask.
But I'll also say that the people who read Revelation sort of this more dispensation way are being extremely symbolic in their reading as well. That's a good point. Yeah, that's a really good point. There are no tanks or nuclear warfare or modern technology in the Book of Revelation period. It's not there. So if you say that things represent that you're just using, you're just saying it's symbolic.
It's more a question of what is it symbolizing and some people are choosing to read it into a present day environment and you're suggesting that that's not really the case? No, it's not Right. Yeah. So you can't, nobody reads this. You can't read it literally. It's clearly full of symbolism. And everybody, no matter how you slice it... people who say, the mark of the beast. Maybe it's this latest piece of technology. There's nothing literal about that reading Like, way nothing literal.
There's nothing literal about that reading Like, way nothing literal. Okay, okay, I feel like we have to I mean, you know, Mark of the Beast, right? Like we have to talk about that briefly, right? Yeah, because I think that could be, let's use that as a case study of a particular passage in Revelation. And for a little bit of context. And I think this is slowly going out of favor, I guess. But this whole fixation with it's a microchip or it's a whatever, it's a chip in your credit card.
It's, you know, all the, it's a vaccine. Yes. Whatever gets poked into you, it's like that's what it is, you know, And that again, I've heard this in so many different forms for years and years and years of my life and to the point where I was just like, you know what? I don't even care anymore because it's just like this is just I don't know. I don't know.
It's just it's so confusing And people are telling me all these different things, but all of the interpretations that I was hearing were it will be some kind of a literal thing at the end of time where Christians will have to choose, you know, will they get this mark or this microchip, this whatever? I'd love to hear your opinion on this. So this is important because it is a. and to our to a younger crowd.
I think it's important to say the mark of the beast is actually a really important thing to think about. It is very high stakes, Right. You don't. You don't want to get the mark of the beast like it's bad news. So to the older or to the... Maybe I shouldn’t divide it that way. But with to the dispensational style reading of the text, it's hugely important, but it's not important in the way that it was thought to be with, am I going to get tripped up by a chip or something?
But it is very high stakes. And I think, again, I think that speculation on pieces of technology actually can be a cop out and can cause us to stop wondering whether or not we have been marked by the Beast. So let's look at it really quick. Yeah. So what's fascinating is that the mark of the beast has come side by side with another mark. So it's in Revelation 13 is where we have sort of verses 11 to 18 the mark of the beast.
So this second beast causes all both small and great to be marked on the right hand or the forehead so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark. What is the mark? Well, he says it's the name of the beast or the number of its name. Now, what do you think when you think of the name or the number of its name? let's say you were John's first readers. Yeah. yeah. Well in that case, it’d be like start finding... Gematria! Yeah, yeah. I was trying to remember the term.
It says it’s the name of the beast. Or the number. Right? It's something's name and then it's. And then John says, This calls for wisdom. Let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast for it's a person's number and his number is 666.
But then the very next thing that John does, chapter 14, verse one, then I looked and behold on Mount Zion stood the lamb, and with him, 144,000, representing the fullness of God's people who had his name and his father's name written on their foreheads. And I heard a voice from heaven, like the voice of of many waters sounding and whatever.
And then verse nine, another, an angel shows up saying, If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or his hand, he will receive wrath. So it's the mark of, the name of the beast is side by side with the mark of the name of God on your forehead. Right. Nobody ever interprets that as though it were a piece of, godly technology or something, right? yeah. Okay. Okay. I see what you're doing. You cannot separate them. right?
You cannot ever talk about the mark of the beast as though it's a standalone thing. It's not. Revelation is full of these dichotomies. Right. There's the lamb, there's the beast, there's the prostitute and the bride. There's, you know, there's judgment, new creation. There's the seven hills of Rome and there's Mt. Zion. Right? It's all of that. And there's a stamp on humans of the name of the beast or the name of the Lamb.
Like, would it be appropriate to think of this almost like a branding, like, like old style, like burned into cattle brand. Or a slave brand. Yeah. Which would happen in the ancient world. And he's basically putting, he's contrasting these two off of each other. Okay. Well, now, So, if you're stamped with the name of Jesus or God, this means, for one thing, that you will be exempt from the final judgment. Right. And this actually comes from Ezekiel.
There's this mark of God that God's people are stamped with to avoid judgment. So he’s pulling that straight from Ezekiel. Do you know where that is in Ezekiel? Just if anybody wants to look that up Ezekiel nine. Okay, I'm going to want to read that afterwards. That's a great. I hadn't thought of that. That. Okay. Okay. So what it means though, is that yes, you're stamped. So what it means though, is that yes, you're stamped. That means you belong to, it means you belong to Jesus, Right?
That's what it means. It's a branding. It's saying I, belong to Jesus. I'm a Jesus person. I'm, I bear his name. I'm, I bear his name. So just like Israel was supposed to bear God's name in the Old Testament or like the high priest had on his forehead holy to Yahweh. All of God's people are those who are stamped with allegiance to the lamb. Okay, So. So I'm really curious here. Why did John put a number with this beast mark, and say 666,
not six, six, six, but 666? So that has tripped up people a lot, especially, again, I'm thinking more here in America in the last few decades. But so walk me through that. Most important thing to say is whatever this is, is the antithesis of being sealed with God's name. Being somebody who says I belong, my allegiance is not to the beast. My allegiance is to Jesus. And that might mean I suffer a lot in this life, but it means I'm going to be saved from final judgment.
Means I live as somebody who like a priest, who bears God's name. So this is the opposite. So this, one would think, implies being stamped by allegiance to the world, Right. As represented in the Beast. And specifically, John doesn't mention any specific name, but he mentions this number. And the common, the most common interpretation of this is that it represents, it stands for the words Nero Caesar. Okay, not all scholars think that, but that's the majority take.
So again, if you write out the name Nero Caesar using Hebrew characters, it comes out to 666 right now. Why? Why does he say this? Why doesn't he just say Nero? Yeah. Well, I think a couple of reasons. One, again, this is how this type of literature tends to work, think of the Sibylline oracles, where for some reason, even though it's describing a whole list of emperors, Roman emperors that were known to the people, it does it in a more cryptic fashion rather than just come out and say it.
It seems to imbue more symbolic meaning, a more theological significance, more a sense of this is kind of scary, but God knows what's going on, type of thing, right? So I think that's one of the reasons, this is an enemy figure. And so it's described more cryptically. But I think also it's that Nero himself is simply a stand in for the head of the beast. Right. That this isn't supposed to be just the historical Nero and that's it.
Well that was my very next question was like, well then that means this is locked to this specific piece of history. And is this because there's so much going on about Rome? But Rome as an archetype against God’s people say, and Nero is a great example of that actually, like a really, really horrible person who persecuted Christians, you know, like at an incredible level. Right. And he also, some of the imagery that is spoken of here, Nero had these weird legends associated with him.
Like he died, but some people claim that, no, he actually wasn't dead or maybe he was dead, but he's going to come back someday, Right? So he's like a great stand in for like the anti Messiah because a lot of similar stuff that’s spoken of Jesus. Right. He died. But will return or whatever. There's various legends about Nero expectations around this time that kind of like Elvis or something. Maybe he's not dead or maybe he'll come back right. And so he's perfect for this kind of thing, right?
Again, as an archetype. Yeah. So because he was already gone by the time Revelation was written, I was going to say he would have been dead by then. So it’s not like the people were like, oh good Nero's, this stands for Nero. Nero has gone. That means I don't have to worry about getting marked by the beast. No, no, no. It's saying that the beast, Rome, as a stand in for God’s, the power of Gods enemy, right? And its head, its human leader as symbolized by Nero. Right. That is the beast, Right.
And then being marked by the beast means to be branded with allegiance to that figure or that pattern of figures. Right. And this, the reason this is so powerful and important, I think, is that it's again, it speaks to, just like the rest the New Testament, revelation is not saying something different from the rest of New Testament. It’s the same thing.
This speaks to our heart, That's the thing I hate most about This speaks to our heart, That's the thing I hate most about wondering about the mark of the beast being some piece of technology. Oops, I just got the wrong credit card and now I'm going to hell or something. That has nothing to do with one's heart. But what John is talking about is where is your allegiance? Are you living your life now marked by this, by God's name on your head or the world system, name on your head?
And that's a really convicting thing because it's those pressures from society. I can make more money. I can be successful if I give myself to the power and pleasure of the markets, or I can get my, sort of, my tribe's policies in place if I give myself to a certain political party as some of our people are doing.
Well, that is so ironic because we were talking about that last night where some of the political activism that we're seeing within the Anabaptist world right now is coming from kind of this conspiratorial style of reading, say, revelation, like, these are events that are happening right now. And so we have to get involved in worldly politics to help stop these horrible things that are happening... whatever. I mean, there's all kinds of ideas out there.
What you're outlining here is actually 180 difference of that. So it's like people are actually reading this. In your opinion, the reading is so wrong. They're actually going totally the wrong direction of what John is saying here. John is saying here what he says in his letters, don't love the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him. I think he could have easily, just as easily said, if anyone loves the world, you know, don't be stamped by the world.
If anyone is stamped by the world, the seal of the father is not on him. It's that right. But John is saying things like, Without the stamp of the beast, you may be excluded from society. You might be excluded from the marketplace. Right. And this takes different forms in different times. But there were Christians a couple of centuries after this who literally were commanded to burn a little pinch of incense to Caesar. And then they would get a little certificate and they'd be fine. Right.
And if they didn't, if they refused to do that, they'd be killed. Right. And for them, that is what it meant to be stamped by the beast. Like, will I, just do this tiny little thing that allows me to stay and buy and sell and do all this stuff. But they read this text and they're saying, they would say, no, like that would be, to be placing my allegiance to the beast instead of the lamb. Right. And for us today, I think the pressures maybe are more subtle. Right.
And that's part of the power of revelation is to imbue our everyday subtle sort of life with this cosmic imagery that says what we think is just politics or the markets or the pleasures of, or temptations towards anything pornography, sexual immorality, whatever it is, things are just like everyday things. But revelation with this powerful imagery says, No, no, no, that's the beast and the prostitute. Where's your allegiance going to be?
Whose mark are you going to be stamped by? Because you know where the story's ending, right? With the judgment or a new creation and whose name you're stamped with determines kind of where you end up? Yeah, that makes it very relevant. And so you're not taking. So I've actually heard different ones where it's like, yeah, this is all future stuff, future technology, whatever. But then you also have other opinions where it's like, this is all historical.
He's only writing about this era of history that's way back there. And it's not, you know, not for today, I guess, or whatever. I haven't heard that one as much, but I've heard some people kind of hint at that. And you're saying, whoa, neither of those. No, it's both Because this was written to all of God's people, right? From the first Century to the 21st to the 31st or however many centuries until Jesus returns. Right. It's so that we conquer.
And this book is written in this way, rooted in first century Roman imagery and even way more than that, rooted in the Old Testament. Right. But speaking archetypally to the present and then speaking prophetically to the future when Jesus returns. So let's pivot on that a little. You're saying it's so steeped in the Old Testament imagery and then looking forward to the return of Jesus?
yeah, give us some examples there, because I'm guessing some people listen to this, like, Whoa, okay, this is interesting, but like, now what? Like, how do, how do I get into this text and actually, like, what's some Old Testament stuff? What? I don't know. I mean, that's a huge, huge question, but give us maybe some examples of what are some Old Testament pieces that will help us understand this. Okay. So I can give you.
Yeah. What's fascinating about revelation is that there are none or almost none, no direct quotations of the Old Testament. Which is surprising. But what it has instead is just it's absolutely infused, infused by the symbolism of the Old Testament. And it would I mean, it takes it would take forever to kind of go through it. But I think, that's an encouraging thing. So like, some people might be like, my goodness, revelation is in this alien genre now what do I do?
Actually, really all you need to do is kind of study your Old Testament really well. So it doesn't you don't necessarily have to have a, you know, deep knowledge of Greek and Hebrew and things like that so much as you just you need to read Isaiah, read Ezekiel, read Daniel, read Exodus and start recognizing that John's picking up all this stuff. So it has you can understand it pretty well if you have, if you just sort of change, not everything about it. It's complicated.
We can see a lot of it if you come at it that way. I guess one thing I will, I mean, it's going to take a while, but Revelation 21 and 22, what we have is this amalgamation of Garden of Eden imagery and temple imagery and the bride imagery. Right? All of those are themes from the Old Testament, the bride, as the people of God, right? Because God and Israel get married and then that's fulfilled in Messiah's marriage to his renewed people the church and that's carried into here.
We have the temple imagery which is straight up, you know, from Exodus but goes through Ezekiel because Ezekiel 40:48 has this vision of a renewed, a new temple that has the river of life flowing out from the middle of it and trees of life on the side and God's presence flowing from it. And that's what revelation is drawing a lot on here when he speaks of the measurements of the city and he speaks of the river of life flowing out of the middle of it and stuff, he’s picking up Ezekiel.
But then things like when he describes the new Jerusalem, new creation as a temple. So I'll just give one example here. He speaks of the city being a cube shape, right? And people kind of have drawn weird pictures of that and stuff. But again, this is just Old Testament imagery. There's only one other cube shaped structure in the Bible, and it's the holy of holies. Right. And so what John is, John is not telling you sort of how much wallpaper they need or anything like that.
He's telling you that finally, as the story of redemptive history comes to its conclusion because of Jesus death for his people and because He’s finally removing wickedness from the world, that finally he'll be able to live with his people so fully and so completely that that one space that was this contained space, where God most fully dwelt among his people, The holy of holies, will now, the whole of creation will be the holy of Holies, that God
and humanity will dwell fully without barriers again. Right? Wow. Yeah, that's interesting, because I've heard that interpreted as, you know, it's a literal city. It'll be such and such size, be this, that, whatever. Okay, sure. But that doesn’t tell us anything helpful. Well, that was always kind of my. Yeah, I was like, okay.
I guess, I mean, that's kind of intellectually interesting, I guess, but what you're outlining there is like, whoa, the meaning there, it's a lot deeper, And it's the fulfillment of the whole story of the Bible, right? Because that's been the question, right? When Adam and Eve fell, they get banished from the place, the garden, the place where God and humans walked with each other. Right. The whole history of redemption, all of redemptive history is this.
There's this question of how do we get God to live with us again. Right. And that was, that happened with temples where God could dwell in their midst, but not quite with them. Right. And then Jesus claims to be the new temple presence of God that enables eventually, through his death and resurrection, all of us to become little temples through the spirit. And then this is the end right?
There'll be no, I saw no temple in the city because its temple is the Lord and the lamb like it's the direct presence of God. The whole entire place is the holy of holies. And so that's. You know, John is saying to all of us at the end, and through the spirit, and look right after that, he says they, the people who dwell in the city, will be the ones they will see his face and his name will be on their foreheads.
So the issue here is persevere to the end, live your life bearing the stamp of God's name on you. And despite the pressure of persecution or the allure of the world, because a day is coming when God and humanity will dwell together fully, you know. So that's one example of Old Testament imagery in the text. Yeah, that's so powerful. It's almost feels like that's a nice conclusion.
Like, you know, to like, as you're saying, to tell the whole scripture, like it's tying that theme together the whole way through, like the cube thing. And, that imagery, you know, from the Holy of Holies, I've never heard that before. I've never seen that before. Like, that's fascinating to me. And it's beautiful. It's a beautiful book.
Right. So. So out of this, as we kind of start bringing this to a close here, what would be one thing you would like our audience to take away from this interview? That revelation teaches the same message as the rest of New Testament. It tells the story of the Bible, the story of, it's centered in Jesus’ death and resurrection. It does it a different way. But it's a call for all of us to see the present and the future in light of God's, in God's perspective. And yeah, dig into it.
There's great resources out there, there's great helps, but dig in to the Old Testament, dig into it, expect it to be full of, again weaving the threads of redemptive history to its conclusion, and then live. Again, It's a pair of glasses, not a code. Yeah. Okay. So that's a key, remembering that it's glasses, a way of like... What you would, define that a bit like, instead of this, this code of some crazy prophecies or whatever you're looking at is glasses.
Yeah. It's a way of seeing the world, through a different lens. So again, the things that I think are just everyday life or the things I'm tempted to, the things I'm tempted towards, I'm supposed to see the cosmic significance of, supposed to see them from God's perspective and recognize that, again, to use the mark of the beast versus the mark of God imagery that I'm faced throughout my whole life with the temptation to be marked by the beast instead of being marked by God.
These are not just little, if I choose to wed myself to a certain political party because I think it will advance the cause of the Kingdom of God or something. Revelation never pictures God's people doing that. It pictures God's people bearing witness and suffering. That's pretty much it, right? And so, you know, you start asking yourself, am I actually risking kind of being marked more by the likeness, the image of the beast than by the image and likeness of the Lamb? Right.
That's what I mean by glasses. Right. So. I think that's a pretty profound, that's a good one to end on And it's convicting to me. So revelation otherwise is never really kind of that convicting. Right. But this actually has a punch. It's like, ooh, okay, I see things in my life, the ways that I don't live this way, right? So I think that's what John would want. Wow. That's fantastic.
Well, hopefully out of this episode, people have gotten some more tools and ways of thinking about these things, but also just a real encouragement to get back into the Book of Revelation. And as you're saying, those Old Testament pieces, too, you know, that was the part that was really encouraging to me is, you know, you don't have to go take all these courses and read all these other books, like just start reading the Old Testament again and see how it ties in with Revelation.
That's really powerful! Wow. Thank you so much for sharing, Paul. This has been excellent. Thanks! Thanks for listening to this episode with Paul Lamicela on the Book of Revelation. If you found this interesting, we've done several other interviews with him on how to study the Bible and read it well, so you can find those links down below. And of course, you can find all our content over on our website at anabaptistperspectives.org Thanks again for your support and for listening to this podcast.
And for us today, I think the pressures maybe are more subtle. Right. And that's part of the power of revelation is to imbue our everyday subtle sort of life with this cosmic imagery that says what we think is just politics or the markets or the pleasures of, or temptations towards anything pornography, sexual immorality, whatever it is, things are just like everyday things. But revelation with this powerful imagery says, No, no, no, that's the beast and the prostitute.
the goal is never to say I need to read something literally. The goal is to say how does God and the human author want me to read this? the most important thing to say is whatever this is, is the antithesis of being sealed with God's name. Being somebody who says I belong, my allegiance is not to the beast. My allegiance is to Jesus. And that might mean I suffer a lot in this life, but it means I'm going to be saved from final judgment.
That's the thing I hate most about wondering about the mark of the beast being some piece of technology. Oops, I just got the wrong credit card and now I'm going to hell or something. That has nothing to do with one's heart. But what John is talking about is where is your allegiance? Are you living your life now marked by this, by God's name on your head or the world system, name on your head? And for us today, I think the pressures maybe are more subtle. Right.
And that's part of the power of revelation is to imbue our everyday subtle sort of life with this cosmic imagery that says what we think is just politics or the markets or the pleasures of, or temptations towards anything pornography, sexual immorality, whatever it is, things are just like everyday things. But revelation with this powerful imagery says, No, no, no, that's the beast and the prostitute.