What's Next?

Bishop Mark Dyer has said that "every 500 years, the church has a rummage sale." Phyllis Tickle expands on his thesis in her book, The Great Emergence.

I have not read the book, but do find Dyer's thesis intriguing: 500 years ago the church experienced the Reformation and the beginning of the Protestant Church.

500 years before that was The Great Schism, which split the state church of the Roman Empire into Eastern (Greek) and Western (Latin) branches. Later they would be known as the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church, respectively.

500 years prior was the Council of Chalcedon and the Fall of Rome. And 500 years earlier than that, was the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.

It should be noted that this is a Judeo-Christian phenomenon, as the Fall of Jerusalem and the Babylonian captivity came 500 years before Christ, ending the 1st Temple era and ushering in the 2nd. And 500 years prior to that was the United Monarchy of Israel.

I certainly see the pattern, and notice that major events have occurred regularly for the past 2500 years, but I'm not sure I would call them all "rummage sales." So what do you think? Are we on the cusp of another radical shift in the Church?

The Unveiling Part II

The Greek title for Revelation is Apokalupsis, Apocalypse, which literally means "the unveiling." The idea being that the readers of Revelation would have the "veil" pulled off their eyes and be presented with the actual picture of reality.

The letter, with all of its amazing imagery, showed the reader that things were not as they seemed and although it may not look like it, God, not Caesar, was actually the one in control of history. That "Jesus Christ was the ruler of the kings of the earth" (Rev 1.5).

A Christian Dirce by Siemiradzki - a Christian woman martyred under Nero.

At the heart of Revelation is a message aimed at bolstering perseverance in the face of adversity and as I wrote yesterday, the original readers were experiencing adversity.

Here's how the text conveys that message:

Revelation 1.3 reads "Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of the prophecy, and blessed are those who hear and keep what is written in it; for the time is near."

When a letter reached a community in the ancient world, the community would gather and listen to the letter read out loud.

So it's Brando and he's not reading, but you get the idea!

This is how the letter of Revelation was received by its original communities - a fact that dramatically affects how the book is to be understood. The first readers, the majority of which were actually "hearers", wouldn't have had the opportunity to sit and investigate every line of the letter.

Instead, the hearer-reader would have listened to the letter from start to finish and allowed the vivid imagery to overwhelm him/her. In this way the hearer-reader could not help but be immersed in the powerful message that God was in control and would one day make all things right (Rev 21.3-5).

And although the images are quite unfamiliar to the modern reader, they weren't to the original audience. Of the 404 verses in the letter of Revelation, 278 of them contain either an allusion to or a quotation from the Hebrew Scriptures.

The original hearer-readers had no problem understanding the powerfully symbolic language, nor any problem knowing what to do with it.

In this way, Revelation functions much like the modern day movie trailer:

The trailer, through its powerful images, intense music, and emotional subject matter, serves only one purpose: to convince the audience to see the movie.

Revelation's powerful images, intense scenarios, and incredible picture of hope for those who trust God, serve only one purpose as well: to infuse life into the most desperate of circumstances.

Keep this in mind the next time you crack open the letter of Revelation. Read it letting the images overwhelm you and use its message of hope and its challenge to live as if God is really in control, to guide you through your life.

For an excellent resource for your journey through the letter, see Eugene Boring's commentary that is the farthest from his namesake.

The Unveiling Part I

The letter of Revelation, written during the reign of the brutal Roman emperor Domitian (ruled AD 81-96), addressed an audience who wondered if being a Christian was worth the cost. General resentment towards Christians had started about 30 years earlier when Nero blamed them for the Great Fire of Rome.

The Great Fire of Rome, AD 64

The Roman historian Tacitus (AD 56-117) tells us:

In accordance, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not as much of the crime of firing the city as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired. (Annals, 15.44)

The Torches of Nero by Siemiradski, 1876. Look closely as Christians are the torches.

It was unclear whether the Christians "pleaded guilty" to arson or simply to being Christian. None-the-less they were severely punished and as Tacitus notes, not so much for the crime, but for "hatred against mankind." Christians objected to many elements of Roman culture and this caused them to be viewed in this way. 

In AD 70 the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans. This was the second destruction of the Temple, the first being in 586 BC by the Babylonians. This event forever changed the face of Judaism and its relationship to the sacrificial system.

The Arch of Titus - carrying away the spoils from the Temple.

Then in AD 79 Mount Vesuvius erupted, blacking out the sky for hundreds of miles and burying Pompeii. 

Mt Vesuvius as seen from the ruins of Pompeii

Times were turbulent and to make matters worse, Domitian, who thought of himself as divine, began enforcing emperor worship. When he appeared in public he would urge the crowds to shout:

All hail to our Lord (kurios, which is the same word used for Jesus in the NT) and to his Lady!

Domitian

Domitian put police in place to enforce his veneration and those who did not comply were banished or even executed.

This is the context for Revelation. The recipients of the letter were feeling pressure to assimilate with the Roman culture, as being a Christian was beginning to cost them convenience, social status, and even their lives. 

They needed to hear that God was in control and proclaim that Kurios Christos, Christ is Lord, and not Kurios Kaisaros, Caesar is Lord, even in the face of death.

Revelation is one of the most misinterpreted texts in the Bible -  which is a shame because such interpretations miss out on how incredibly practical the letter is. 

Check back tomorrow for more on Revelation.

For The Masses

Johannes Gutenberg revolutionized the world by inventing the printing press in 1440 A.D.  Up until then, books were extremely expensive and were of limited availability, mainly only to the wealthy. 

Gutenberg Printing Press

The ability to inexpensively mass-produce information, ushered the western world from the pre-modern era to the modern era. This allowed the common people access to information once reserved only for the elite ruling class. Literacy rates dramatically increased.

Gutenberg's most famous work is his highly aesthetic printing of the Vulgate, Jerome's Latin translation of the Bible from 405 A.D.:

Gutenberg Bible

The problem with the Vulgate is that it was written in Latin, which limited its access mainly to the religious elite who could read it. But the masses desperately needed access to the Bible, as they were being forced by the church to do a number of things contrary to the spirit of the Bible. 

One such practice was the selling of indulgences, where people gave money to the church to gain forgiveness of sins. 

A priest selling indulgences to the townspeople.

This practice enraged a German monk named, Martin Luther, who in 1517, nailed his 95 Thesis, a list of complaints detailing such abuses, to the door of his local church.  These complaints, written in Latin, were quickly translated into German, mass printed, and spread throughout Germany and greater Europe.

Castle Church, Wittenberg, Germany, where Luther posted his 95 Thesis.

The message of liberation contained in the Thesis spread like wildfire and this event became the major catalyst for the Protestant Reformation, a movement dominated by the idea that a person has access to God without going through the institution of the church.

But the 95 Thesis wasn't enough for the people, they needed the Bible. There were versions of the Bible translated into German at this time, but it wasn't until Luther completed his version, in 1534, that the Bible became available to a widespread audience. Luther's Bible owed its popularity to both his celebrity status and the translation's excellent grasp of the common vernacular.

Die Bibel, Luther's German Translation of the Bible

The common person now had access to the Bible and was able to study on his/her own. The individual, apart from the religious institution, was now able to decide what he/she thought about matters of faith. 

There are incredible advantages to this, as the religious institutions no longer monopolized information and a whole new era of individual rights, education, and liberation was born.

But there are disadvantages as well. The Bible is an ancient document, written by people whose culture, language, and world view are very different from our own. It takes a collaboration of effort to be able to read the original text, written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, and even more to understand what it means.

We should be thankful that we have access to the Bible, a document like no other, that contains God's narrative for redeeming, renewing, and reclaiming all of creation. But we must understand that we stand on the shoulders of the people who provide us such access.