1 00:00:00,208 --> 00:00:01,543 That's the thing I hate most about 2 00:00:02,293 --> 00:00:05,088 wondering about the mark of the beast being some piece of technology. 3 00:00:05,088 --> 00:00:08,800 Oops, I just got the wrong credit card and now I'm going to hell or something. 4 00:00:10,093 --> 00:00:11,970 That has nothing to do with one's heart. 5 00:00:11,970 --> 00:00:14,973 But what John is talking about is where is your allegiance? 6 00:00:15,265 --> 00:00:20,186 Are you living your life now marked by this, 7 00:00:20,478 --> 00:00:24,899 by God's name on your head or the world system, name on your head? 8 00:00:30,655 --> 00:00:32,407 Well, Paul Lamicela, 9 00:00:32,407 --> 00:00:35,827 Thanks for coming back on the Anabaptist Perspectives podcast. 10 00:00:36,327 --> 00:00:40,582 So we're both here at Faith Builders and over supper. 11 00:00:40,582 --> 00:00:41,541 A few days ago, 12 00:00:41,541 --> 00:00:44,753 we started an interesting conversation about a topic 13 00:00:44,753 --> 00:00:48,339 we've been wanting to do on this podcast for a very long time, and that is 14 00:00:48,715 --> 00:00:52,844 how to read the Book of Revelation and a lot of the surrounding stuff 15 00:00:52,844 --> 00:00:54,054 that comes with that. 16 00:00:54,054 --> 00:00:56,264 So we're going to dive right into that 17 00:00:56,264 --> 00:01:00,018 very large topic and I'm very curious what all you have to say about it. 18 00:01:00,018 --> 00:01:03,605 But yeah, maybe just a short introduction about yourself and, 19 00:01:03,855 --> 00:01:05,940 and then we'll get into it. 20 00:01:05,940 --> 00:01:06,357 Yeah. 21 00:01:06,357 --> 00:01:08,818 So I teach biblical studies. 22 00:01:08,818 --> 00:01:09,444 I have a Ph.D. 23 00:01:09,444 --> 00:01:15,033 in biblical theology and I've gotten increasingly interested in 24 00:01:15,533 --> 00:01:18,578 and really excited about the Book of Revelation in recent years 25 00:01:18,953 --> 00:01:24,292 as I've learned how to read it in light of the whole of the Bible 26 00:01:24,292 --> 00:01:27,670 and in light of its genre and some things we're talking about and realizing 27 00:01:27,670 --> 00:01:31,132 that it is a really powerful book that has so much to say to us 28 00:01:32,967 --> 00:01:33,343 today. 29 00:01:33,343 --> 00:01:36,930 So I'm excited about some of these things. 30 00:01:37,013 --> 00:01:40,850 Okay, So when I look at the Book of Revelation 31 00:01:40,850 --> 00:01:43,436 and I read it, I tend to get very confused. 32 00:01:43,436 --> 00:01:46,731 And you said something last night that was really helpful for me 33 00:01:46,731 --> 00:01:50,360 and that is that whole genre question of what is this book? 34 00:01:50,360 --> 00:01:53,571 How does it fit into the New Testament and so forth and the surrounding context? 35 00:01:53,571 --> 00:01:55,490 Yeah, explain that a bit. 36 00:01:55,490 --> 00:01:57,408 What are we talking about when we look at Revelation 37 00:01:57,408 --> 00:02:00,995 and what would I guess, broadly speaking, what genre is this book? 38 00:02:01,579 --> 00:02:04,582 Yeah, so, you know, the first thing to say 39 00:02:04,999 --> 00:02:08,336 probably is that when, whenever we read a text, 40 00:02:08,336 --> 00:02:11,339 we automatically 41 00:02:11,673 --> 00:02:14,801 get clues from the text about how to read it, right? 42 00:02:15,176 --> 00:02:18,513 So when I teach about genre in class, I put up a list of very, 43 00:02:18,513 --> 00:02:21,641 I put examples of various types of text. 44 00:02:21,641 --> 00:02:24,644 So I'll throw up something from a poem, right? 45 00:02:25,061 --> 00:02:27,981 And students automatically know just because 46 00:02:27,981 --> 00:02:32,152 they're familiar with this genre from our culture, they see the words 47 00:02:32,402 --> 00:02:35,488 the lines, you know, broken up into different lines. 48 00:02:36,030 --> 00:02:37,782 They just to get the feel of it. 49 00:02:37,782 --> 00:02:41,411 It's not always easy exactly to pin down why, but, you know, right. 50 00:02:41,411 --> 00:02:42,537 Because you're like, that's a poem. 51 00:02:42,537 --> 00:02:45,498 And then a whole bunch of assumptions go into how you're supposed to read that. 52 00:02:45,498 --> 00:02:46,624 And I put up another example 53 00:02:46,624 --> 00:02:50,587 from like an instruction manual or something, and instantly, again, 54 00:02:50,587 --> 00:02:54,632 you know how to read it or a fairy tale and, you know how to read it 55 00:02:55,175 --> 00:02:58,178 and the Book of Revelation is the same way. 56 00:02:58,386 --> 00:03:01,639 And it's meant to be read in a certain way. 57 00:03:02,223 --> 00:03:07,478 The reason I think, one of the main reasons we have in our 58 00:03:08,563 --> 00:03:08,855 sort of 59 00:03:08,855 --> 00:03:12,734 modern Western evangelical Christianity, including, 60 00:03:12,734 --> 00:03:16,321 and I include, you know, anabaptism in that for purposes of this, 61 00:03:18,198 --> 00:03:20,533 the reason we have trouble with it is that it's a genre 62 00:03:20,533 --> 00:03:23,578 that we don't have any other examples of in our own culture. 63 00:03:24,495 --> 00:03:25,997 So what I like to tell students 64 00:03:25,997 --> 00:03:29,083 is, that that's a problem with us, not with the text, 65 00:03:29,751 --> 00:03:32,462 but that if you would go back to first century 66 00:03:32,462 --> 00:03:36,591 Jerusalem and go to a Barnes and Noble’s in Jerusalem, you would 67 00:03:36,591 --> 00:03:39,552 actually, there would be a whole shelf with apocalyptic texts. 68 00:03:39,802 --> 00:03:44,098 And so you would, it wouldn't be like revelation is just this one weird thing. 69 00:03:44,390 --> 00:03:47,393 you would recognize as soon as you start reading. 70 00:03:47,518 --> 00:03:48,228 yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. 71 00:03:48,228 --> 00:03:52,190 I know what this, I know how to read this because I've read other texts like this, 72 00:03:54,025 --> 00:03:54,400 Okay. 73 00:03:54,400 --> 00:03:57,070 What? Like you're mentioning the apocalyptic genre. 74 00:03:57,070 --> 00:04:01,032 So that's where you're framing this book within the New Testament. 75 00:04:01,032 --> 00:04:02,492 Yes. 76 00:04:02,492 --> 00:04:04,619 So maybe elaborate on that. What is that? 77 00:04:04,619 --> 00:04:06,371 So why this is so important? 78 00:04:06,371 --> 00:04:07,872 Is that meaning? 79 00:04:07,872 --> 00:04:12,877 When I write something, like the genre I write it in determines 80 00:04:13,336 --> 00:04:16,381 how I expect the reader to get meaning out of it, Right? 81 00:04:16,714 --> 00:04:19,717 So if I write a 82 00:04:20,051 --> 00:04:22,595 children's story, I would be really mad at you 83 00:04:22,595 --> 00:04:25,807 if you came back to me with like a whole list of critiques 84 00:04:25,807 --> 00:04:28,059 because you were trying to take it literally, “literally”. 85 00:04:28,059 --> 00:04:30,937 And, you're like, It doesn't work or something, 86 00:04:30,937 --> 00:04:33,314 where you interpret it in ways I never intended. 87 00:04:33,314 --> 00:04:36,776 And like, what I would say to you is, no, this is a children's story. 88 00:04:36,776 --> 00:04:39,237 You have to read it like a children's story. Right? 89 00:04:39,237 --> 00:04:41,030 And if you said, well, but I want, 90 00:04:41,030 --> 00:04:43,533 I was trying to read you literally, I wouldn't be impressed. 91 00:04:43,533 --> 00:04:47,996 I'd be annoyed because I would say you're actually not taking me seriously. 92 00:04:48,955 --> 00:04:50,999 Like, you're playing games with me. 93 00:04:50,999 --> 00:04:54,043 Meaning comes when we read a text. 94 00:04:54,794 --> 00:04:57,797 The goal is not to impose our own 95 00:04:58,047 --> 00:05:01,134 sort of ideas on how we should read it, but 96 00:05:01,134 --> 00:05:05,805 to submit ourselves to the way the author has written it. 97 00:05:05,930 --> 00:05:08,933 And I think that's especially true when we're dealing with the Bible 98 00:05:09,392 --> 00:05:12,603 because there's not only a human author, John, but also a divine author. 99 00:05:12,687 --> 00:05:16,441 And if we take seriously the fact that Scripture is inspired by God, 100 00:05:16,774 --> 00:05:19,944 then our only choice is to submit to the 101 00:05:19,944 --> 00:05:23,239 the ways that God has chosen to reveal himself. 102 00:05:23,239 --> 00:05:26,534 And that means apocalyptic genre in this case. 103 00:05:26,576 --> 00:05:27,035 Right? 104 00:05:27,035 --> 00:05:29,996 And so if we come, I mean, I want to preface everything I’m going to say, 105 00:05:30,830 --> 00:05:32,665 because for some people this is new 106 00:05:33,750 --> 00:05:35,418 just due to 107 00:05:35,418 --> 00:05:38,504 trends in the last hundred years in our country basically, 108 00:05:40,048 --> 00:05:41,591 and dispensationalism and stuff. 109 00:05:41,591 --> 00:05:44,594 But to say that 110 00:05:45,511 --> 00:05:49,849 the goal is never to say I need to read something literally. 111 00:05:50,516 --> 00:05:53,478 The goal is to say how does God 112 00:05:53,895 --> 00:05:56,481 and the human author want me to read this? 113 00:05:56,481 --> 00:05:58,941 And that's a question that has to do with genre. 114 00:05:58,941 --> 00:06:01,944 So if I go to a parable of Jesus 115 00:06:01,944 --> 00:06:04,781 and I say, I need to take this literally, Jesus wouldn't be impressed, right? 116 00:06:04,781 --> 00:06:06,908 Because he's like, No, that's a parable. 117 00:06:06,908 --> 00:06:09,911 And so to submit to him in that 118 00:06:10,328 --> 00:06:15,124 area means I need to understand that he's chosen to speak in a parable, 119 00:06:15,124 --> 00:06:18,127 and I need to interpret parables the way parables are meant to be interpreted. 120 00:06:18,127 --> 00:06:18,961 If I go to a psalm, 121 00:06:19,962 --> 00:06:20,546 the same thing. 122 00:06:20,546 --> 00:06:21,714 It's a poem 123 00:06:21,714 --> 00:06:24,509 and I have to interpret it as a poem because that's how David wrote it 124 00:06:24,509 --> 00:06:27,720 and that's how the Holy Spirit wanted it written, right? 125 00:06:28,221 --> 00:06:30,848 And the same with Revelation. 126 00:06:30,848 --> 00:06:33,893 So I'm going to explain how apocalyptic works. 127 00:06:34,519 --> 00:06:36,979 But the reason why that's important 128 00:06:36,979 --> 00:06:40,191 is that, again, this is how John has chosen to communicate 129 00:06:40,525 --> 00:06:44,862 and this is how the spirit has inspired this, you know, intended this to be 130 00:06:44,862 --> 00:06:49,158 and to take this seriously and to submit to it as Scripture 131 00:06:49,867 --> 00:06:54,831 means to be sensitive to the way that God has chosen it to be written, i.e. 132 00:06:54,831 --> 00:06:57,792 apocalyptic literature. Okay, So. 133 00:06:57,792 --> 00:06:58,668 that makes a lot of sense. 134 00:06:58,668 --> 00:07:01,379 And I know and I can already see the comments 135 00:07:01,379 --> 00:07:04,340 that will be coming in where people like, but you're misidentifying the genre. 136 00:07:04,340 --> 00:07:06,342 You're, you know, this, that, whatever. 137 00:07:06,342 --> 00:07:08,803 I'm sure there'll be lots of, lots of ideas floating around there. 138 00:07:08,803 --> 00:07:10,471 But I think that 139 00:07:11,514 --> 00:07:14,058 a key question for some people will be, well, 140 00:07:14,058 --> 00:07:17,812 how how come you're defining it as apocalyptic, you know, genre? 141 00:07:17,895 --> 00:07:18,688 You know, You know what I mean? 142 00:07:18,688 --> 00:07:20,648 Like because honestly, when you're, 143 00:07:20,648 --> 00:07:22,984 we were kind of batting this around over the last couple of days 144 00:07:22,984 --> 00:07:24,902 before we recorded this, and you were saying some of that. 145 00:07:24,902 --> 00:07:27,488 And I'm like, okay, I guess I don't know. 146 00:07:27,488 --> 00:07:30,241 I've never I've never heard that before or I've never thought about it 147 00:07:30,241 --> 00:07:31,033 quite like that. 148 00:07:31,033 --> 00:07:32,243 I guess I kind of know that in my head 149 00:07:32,243 --> 00:07:35,246 but like, what even is the apocalyptic genre. 150 00:07:35,872 --> 00:07:36,873 So let's talk about apocalyptic. 151 00:07:36,873 --> 00:07:39,876 So apocalyptic as a genre 152 00:07:40,209 --> 00:07:45,256 is, we scholars talk about it as, as basically consisting of kind 153 00:07:45,256 --> 00:07:48,801 of a story, a narrative and written presentation 154 00:07:49,135 --> 00:07:53,306 where you have a God's eye perspective 155 00:07:53,306 --> 00:07:57,185 of history of the present and the future kind of together. 156 00:07:57,602 --> 00:08:01,564 That's revealed usually by an angel or some other 157 00:08:01,564 --> 00:08:05,276 kind of heavenly tour guide, I call them usually, right? So 158 00:08:06,360 --> 00:08:07,820 it's, 159 00:08:07,820 --> 00:08:10,323 usually a human who's having a vision 160 00:08:10,323 --> 00:08:14,368 of these realities that's mediated or explained by an angel 161 00:08:14,827 --> 00:08:17,663 and that uses very colorful, complex 162 00:08:17,663 --> 00:08:20,750 imagery and symbolism to do this. 163 00:08:20,750 --> 00:08:26,214 And the goal of such text is to give God's 164 00:08:26,214 --> 00:08:30,051 suffering people hope and challenge in time of difficulty. 165 00:08:30,593 --> 00:08:33,846 So that's kind of the basic features 166 00:08:34,972 --> 00:08:38,726 of how this, and central to that is these very, 167 00:08:39,185 --> 00:08:43,523 you know, very symbol laden 168 00:08:43,523 --> 00:08:46,526 usage of numbers, 169 00:08:47,401 --> 00:08:49,695 other kinds of symbols 170 00:08:49,695 --> 00:08:52,323 representing other of the things. 171 00:08:52,323 --> 00:08:56,702 So that, and now again, this revelation isn't the only text we have like this. 172 00:08:56,702 --> 00:09:00,414 So this way of writing and speaking kind of 173 00:09:00,623 --> 00:09:03,584 basically The Fountainhead seems to be the book of Daniel 174 00:09:03,584 --> 00:09:06,587 and he, where he has, again you can think of some of these visions 175 00:09:06,587 --> 00:09:09,590 that he has where there's an angel that kind of shows him stuff or he has 176 00:09:10,132 --> 00:09:13,135 these, visions of beasts and, 177 00:09:13,928 --> 00:09:17,139 representing kingdoms and all this sort of thing. 178 00:09:17,598 --> 00:09:20,142 And the angel kind of tells him so. 179 00:09:20,142 --> 00:09:21,811 So that kind of, that is the Fountainhead. 180 00:09:21,811 --> 00:09:25,940 But then what happens is in the next few centuries from, 181 00:09:26,816 --> 00:09:29,110 you know, three hundreds or so B.C all the way 182 00:09:29,110 --> 00:09:32,113 to 90 or around 100 A.D. 183 00:09:32,238 --> 00:09:37,368 we have a number, a decent number of texts like this being written in Jewish, 184 00:09:37,368 --> 00:09:41,038 non-Christian, Jewish circles, I mean many cases pre-Christian Jewish circles. 185 00:09:41,414 --> 00:09:43,666 So we have 186 00:09:44,750 --> 00:09:45,501 a good number of 187 00:09:45,501 --> 00:09:48,504 examples that follow the same pattern. 188 00:09:49,338 --> 00:09:52,842 And so the reason why people are maybe unsure, skeptical 189 00:09:52,842 --> 00:09:55,845 is, only that they have never read other apocalyptic texts. 190 00:09:56,053 --> 00:09:58,931 As soon as you start reading them, it's very obvious 191 00:09:58,931 --> 00:10:00,474 that that's what revelation is. Okay. 192 00:10:00,474 --> 00:10:06,355 So you mentioned Daniel as maybe The Fountainhead or a representing piece, 193 00:10:06,355 --> 00:10:07,940 which makes sense because when people go down 194 00:10:07,940 --> 00:10:09,442 this whole street of trying to figure out, well, 195 00:10:09,442 --> 00:10:12,028 what does it mean and all this stuff, they are always, it's like, 196 00:10:12,028 --> 00:10:13,946 always going back to Daniel, it seems like. Right. 197 00:10:13,946 --> 00:10:14,989 Like I've heard that a lot. 198 00:10:14,989 --> 00:10:17,992 Revelation is like full of Daniel imagery, too. 199 00:10:18,117 --> 00:10:19,201 So what are some of these other, 200 00:10:19,201 --> 00:10:23,080 like, apocalyptic texts that I'm assuming Most of us? 201 00:10:23,080 --> 00:10:26,208 I can't think of any that I've read personally. No. 202 00:10:26,208 --> 00:10:29,962 So I mean there's, a bunch, fourth Ezra 203 00:10:29,962 --> 00:10:35,968 The Enoch literature, so it's called First Enoch, 204 00:10:35,968 --> 00:10:39,805 but there's, it's a collection of a few different apocalypses. 205 00:10:40,890 --> 00:10:41,932 Those are big, 206 00:10:41,932 --> 00:10:45,561 very big in the era of the New Testament, very popular. 207 00:10:45,561 --> 00:10:49,523 I think they may have made the Jerusalem or the, I don't know, 208 00:10:49,649 --> 00:10:52,610 that wouldn’t be the Amazon, maybe be the Jordan, jordan.com, Jordan 209 00:10:52,652 --> 00:10:54,862 River 210 00:10:54,862 --> 00:10:57,198 or something bestseller list, I don't know. 211 00:10:57,198 --> 00:11:00,701 And then 212 00:11:00,701 --> 00:11:04,455 other texts like these. 213 00:11:04,455 --> 00:11:07,458 What I'm going to, I have a few examples from the Sibylline oracles. 214 00:11:09,251 --> 00:11:09,919 please, if you have examples. Yeah. 215 00:11:09,919 --> 00:11:14,423 So and what we'll see is that what's going on here. 216 00:11:15,132 --> 00:11:17,510 People like to describe 217 00:11:17,510 --> 00:11:20,513 apocalyptic literature in Revelation as functioning, 218 00:11:20,721 --> 00:11:25,309 similar in some ways to the way political cartoons operate in our culture 219 00:11:26,060 --> 00:11:29,480 where you can, and think about this, 220 00:11:29,522 --> 00:11:32,650 those people, we will say when you read, when you open the newspaper, 221 00:11:33,234 --> 00:11:36,112 I mean, I don't know if anyone does anymore, but if in theory, 222 00:11:36,112 --> 00:11:41,242 if someone would open the newspaper, you can have an article 223 00:11:41,367 --> 00:11:45,496 maybe on the front page that describes some political event. 224 00:11:45,538 --> 00:11:47,498 Right. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 225 00:11:47,498 --> 00:11:48,499 But then on the next page, 226 00:11:48,499 --> 00:11:52,712 you can have the, sort of the comics, and that same event might be spoken of, 227 00:11:53,754 --> 00:11:55,756 but in political cartoon form. 228 00:11:55,756 --> 00:11:56,257 Right? 229 00:11:56,257 --> 00:12:00,594 It’s the same thing, but two extremely different ways of coming about it. 230 00:12:00,594 --> 00:12:04,306 The one uses just prose and kind of explains stuff in everyday language, 231 00:12:04,557 --> 00:12:09,145 and then the other one uses imagery that you have to be really familiar with 232 00:12:09,562 --> 00:12:12,565 and you actually can't get anything out of it unless you already know 233 00:12:12,940 --> 00:12:16,444 most of what it's trying to say, because you have to know... 234 00:12:16,444 --> 00:12:19,071 so, for example, I mean, the two political parties 235 00:12:19,071 --> 00:12:21,824 in the United States are symbolized by the donkey and the elephant. 236 00:12:21,824 --> 00:12:22,366 Right. 237 00:12:22,366 --> 00:12:25,369 And so if I'm drawing a political cartoon, I just have to, like, 238 00:12:25,578 --> 00:12:27,830 dress up those characters in suits or something. 239 00:12:27,830 --> 00:12:31,876 And we know that when you see a donkey or an elephant. 240 00:12:32,084 --> 00:12:32,501 okay. 241 00:12:32,501 --> 00:12:35,880 So the Republicans are doing this and the Democrats are doing that. 242 00:12:35,880 --> 00:12:36,589 Right. 243 00:12:36,589 --> 00:12:39,592 But you only know that if you're steeped in that symbolism, that 244 00:12:40,134 --> 00:12:42,094 is part of our cultural encyclopedia. 245 00:12:42,094 --> 00:12:47,266 If you are from, I don't know, Asia and have never heard about, you don't know 246 00:12:47,266 --> 00:12:51,437 the symbolism, you read this cartoon, you're like, is this a children's cartoon? 247 00:12:51,437 --> 00:12:55,399 Are these, you know, some sort of ancient Hindu gods 248 00:12:55,399 --> 00:12:56,984 that are making a comeback in the United States? 249 00:12:56,984 --> 00:12:58,486 Like what's going on? Like, you know, 250 00:12:59,737 --> 00:13:01,197 so that we see 251 00:13:01,197 --> 00:13:04,784 all over Revelation, but we also see that in these other texts 252 00:13:05,367 --> 00:13:08,662 and some of the same symbol, the same sort of cartoon tropes 253 00:13:09,705 --> 00:13:12,291 we see here that we see used in Revelation. 254 00:13:12,291 --> 00:13:13,793 So I'm going to go through a few. 255 00:13:13,793 --> 00:13:17,546 And when you start reading them, you start thinking, especially if you 256 00:13:17,546 --> 00:13:21,884 I mean, if you know Revelation decently, you start going like, wait, I've read. 257 00:13:21,884 --> 00:13:23,677 I know what this is talking about. 258 00:13:23,677 --> 00:13:28,557 And again, just to reiterate, this is from, like you're saying, 300 B.C. 259 00:13:28,557 --> 00:13:30,267 on up through like, a hundred A.D. 260 00:13:30,267 --> 00:13:32,812 era. Yes. 261 00:13:32,812 --> 00:13:34,063 So this... 262 00:13:34,063 --> 00:13:36,774 So Sibylline Oracles is a collection of, 263 00:13:36,774 --> 00:13:40,110 texts that are written over a span of a long time. 264 00:13:40,110 --> 00:13:42,404 And some of them are Christian. 265 00:13:42,404 --> 00:13:46,283 These are not, this, from number Sibylline oracles five, is Jewish, 266 00:13:47,243 --> 00:13:48,994 which is important because if 267 00:13:48,994 --> 00:13:52,623 I give you examples from Christian texts, then that would probably be drawing 268 00:13:52,623 --> 00:13:53,749 on Revelation. 269 00:13:53,749 --> 00:13:56,418 So that would not be appropriate background, you know, 270 00:13:56,418 --> 00:13:59,088 But so these we believe are, this text 271 00:13:59,088 --> 00:14:02,341 we believe is written probably between 70 and 130 A.D. 272 00:14:02,675 --> 00:14:06,095 So we're talking right at the same time Jon's writing revelation, 273 00:14:06,095 --> 00:14:08,347 which makes it extra special, right? 274 00:14:08,347 --> 00:14:10,933 Because it shows what's in the air and what, you know, 275 00:14:10,933 --> 00:14:13,018 and what Jon's familiar with in the culture. 276 00:14:13,018 --> 00:14:14,854 cultural context Exactly. 277 00:14:14,854 --> 00:14:17,022 Yeah, the culture encyclopedia, as we call it. 278 00:14:17,022 --> 00:14:18,440 Right. Okay. 279 00:14:18,440 --> 00:14:21,694 So here's a few examples of features, 280 00:14:22,319 --> 00:14:26,156 tropes, images that we see here that I think are relevant to reading this. 281 00:14:26,156 --> 00:14:32,788 So we have, this text has this long section 282 00:14:32,788 --> 00:14:36,250 where it goes through the leader, 283 00:14:36,250 --> 00:14:39,253 the emperors and such of Rome, 284 00:14:39,628 --> 00:14:42,631 but it never refers to any of them by name. 285 00:14:43,090 --> 00:14:47,595 It just hints at what their first letters of their names are by using numbers. 286 00:14:48,637 --> 00:14:49,930 So here it says in 287 00:14:49,930 --> 00:14:51,181 Sibylline Articles five... 288 00:15:03,819 --> 00:15:06,780 Now, what are the infants children of the flock devouring beast? 289 00:15:07,364 --> 00:15:09,825 First of all, You know? No. Okay. 290 00:15:09,825 --> 00:15:11,660 I mean, you will know as soon as it. 291 00:15:11,660 --> 00:15:14,455 So this is a cartoon image just like. 292 00:15:14,455 --> 00:15:18,208 I mean, I'm using that just like if I would use the elephant 293 00:15:18,208 --> 00:15:23,005 to represent the Republicans, the infants, children of the flock devouring beast. 294 00:15:23,005 --> 00:15:25,758 So a flock devouring beast is a wolf. 295 00:15:25,758 --> 00:15:26,926 Right. 296 00:15:26,926 --> 00:15:29,929 And these are infants who are children of a wolf. 297 00:15:30,387 --> 00:15:30,846 Who's that? 298 00:15:30,846 --> 00:15:34,767 it's Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of Rome. 299 00:15:34,767 --> 00:15:35,935 Right. 300 00:15:35,935 --> 00:15:38,729 I mean, which you're familiar with that right? 301 00:15:38,729 --> 00:15:39,980 So. Right. 302 00:15:39,980 --> 00:15:40,856 But it's just using. 303 00:15:40,856 --> 00:15:43,859 So it doesn't, it's not saying Rome. 304 00:15:43,984 --> 00:15:46,987 It's just telling you the, 305 00:15:47,154 --> 00:15:51,450 it's using the little image, the icon almost, of the founding myth of Rome. 306 00:15:51,450 --> 00:15:52,576 Right. 307 00:15:52,576 --> 00:15:55,704 So it's basically after Rome begins, 308 00:15:55,704 --> 00:15:58,582 after these infants, Romulus and Remus, children of the flock devouring... 309 00:15:58,582 --> 00:16:01,085 So the myth for those who don't know. 310 00:16:01,085 --> 00:16:04,254 Is that Rome was founded by these twins, well, 311 00:16:04,713 --> 00:16:07,591 actually, it was by one of them after he killed his brother, I think. 312 00:16:07,591 --> 00:16:11,220 But there were these twins, Romulus and Remus, that were abandoned 313 00:16:11,220 --> 00:16:13,347 by their mother, apparently, and suckled by a she wolf. 314 00:16:13,347 --> 00:16:15,057 Kind of raised by a wolf. Right. 315 00:16:15,057 --> 00:16:16,684 And they then, you know, started... 316 00:16:16,684 --> 00:16:20,396 So after this happens, there will be the first prince of apparently Rome 317 00:16:20,729 --> 00:16:24,441 who will sum up twice ten with his initial letter. 318 00:16:24,942 --> 00:16:25,025 Okay. And 319 00:16:26,443 --> 00:16:26,902 then it says. 320 00:16:26,902 --> 00:16:28,153 So it keeps going, 321 00:16:34,827 --> 00:16:37,788 So what in the world is going on here? 322 00:16:38,414 --> 00:16:40,207 His number will sum up twice. 323 00:16:40,207 --> 00:16:41,709 He will sum up twice ten with... 324 00:16:41,709 --> 00:16:44,128 How do you sum up ten with a letter? 325 00:16:44,128 --> 00:16:49,967 So in the ancient world, we don't have numerals to represent numbers. 326 00:16:50,217 --> 00:16:50,759 Right. 327 00:16:50,759 --> 00:16:53,929 That's kind of a later Arabic kind of thing, 328 00:16:53,929 --> 00:16:56,348 which is one of the best inventions of all time, probably. 329 00:16:56,348 --> 00:16:57,266 I asked my students, 330 00:16:57,266 --> 00:17:01,020 How would you like doing long division with using letters instead of numbers. 331 00:17:01,186 --> 00:17:02,813 It's terrible. Right. 332 00:17:02,813 --> 00:17:05,816 But so what you do instead is you have a system whereby 333 00:17:05,816 --> 00:17:08,777 every letter stands for a number 334 00:17:08,902 --> 00:17:12,406 and so, you know, the first several letters might stand 335 00:17:12,406 --> 00:17:15,534 for the first several numbers, but then you'll have other later letters 336 00:17:15,534 --> 00:17:18,537 in the alphabet that stand for 20 or 30 or 100 or things like that. 337 00:17:19,329 --> 00:17:22,249 So if you live in a culture that that does that right, 338 00:17:22,249 --> 00:17:25,419 then you're you're going to start playing little games with this. 339 00:17:25,419 --> 00:17:27,755 Because when you see people's names, 340 00:17:27,755 --> 00:17:31,425 you're going to also now recognize those characters as numbers. 341 00:17:31,425 --> 00:17:33,886 And you can always do a little math calculations in your head. right? 342 00:17:35,095 --> 00:17:36,013 So and 343 00:17:36,013 --> 00:17:36,889 yeah, and there would always 344 00:17:36,889 --> 00:17:40,893 be this kind of you can imagine there being these kids, 345 00:17:40,893 --> 00:17:43,604 probably boys of a certain age that would just annoy everybody 346 00:17:43,604 --> 00:17:46,356 by referring to people by their numbers and stuff like that. 347 00:17:46,356 --> 00:17:47,858 Right. 348 00:17:47,858 --> 00:17:50,861 But, but anyway, this is why, this is called Gematria , 349 00:17:50,861 --> 00:17:53,739 the use of kind of studying 350 00:17:53,739 --> 00:17:56,742 or thinking about playing with 351 00:17:57,284 --> 00:18:00,662 words or names, especially with their numbers. 352 00:18:01,455 --> 00:18:03,540 So this happens, 353 00:18:03,540 --> 00:18:06,376 and this happens not just in literary texts, but 354 00:18:06,376 --> 00:18:10,631 there was a, we have evidence of this in graffiti from the ancient world. 355 00:18:10,631 --> 00:18:13,133 And I think this is awesome. 356 00:18:13,133 --> 00:18:16,095 But I think it was in Smyrna from the second century A.D. 357 00:18:16,095 --> 00:18:19,723 So this is one of the places that this, the Book of Revelation was sent to, right? 358 00:18:19,723 --> 00:18:22,309 Because one of the seven churches right. 359 00:18:22,309 --> 00:18:27,397 And archeologists uncovered a graffito where some, 360 00:18:27,397 --> 00:18:31,401 you know, second century young guy had spray painted or whatever they, 361 00:18:31,443 --> 00:18:35,906 I don't know how they did it back then, but they're spray painted on some wall. 362 00:18:36,198 --> 00:18:40,369 I love the girl whose number is 1085 or something like that, right. 363 00:18:40,369 --> 00:18:43,872 And he wasn't talking about her phone number, but he was talking about that. 364 00:18:44,081 --> 00:18:47,209 The letters of her name add up to this thing. 365 00:18:47,251 --> 00:18:50,295 And so he probably has like half the girls in Smyrna, like trying to calculate, 366 00:18:50,295 --> 00:18:52,798 is this me, you know, which is just fantastic. 367 00:18:52,798 --> 00:18:53,882 But all that goes... 368 00:18:55,050 --> 00:18:57,219 But it goes to show 369 00:18:57,219 --> 00:18:59,054 this type of thing is common. Right. 370 00:18:59,054 --> 00:19:03,392 And so in apocalyptic literature, this type of thing is big, 371 00:19:03,392 --> 00:19:06,812 because numbers, unlike in other types of literature, in apocalyptic, 372 00:19:06,812 --> 00:19:09,815 numbers are always symbolic of something. 373 00:19:09,815 --> 00:19:10,065 Right. 374 00:19:10,065 --> 00:19:12,609 You just have to know what the numbers stand for. Okay. 375 00:19:12,609 --> 00:19:15,154 So which makes a lot of sense because 376 00:19:15,154 --> 00:19:18,782 even just glance through revelation and there's numbers all over the place. 377 00:19:18,782 --> 00:19:21,535 Yeah, And they always, they're significant numbers. 378 00:19:21,535 --> 00:19:24,329 Yeah. They stand in for something. 379 00:19:24,329 --> 00:19:28,500 So in this case he goes, he speaks of Caesar 380 00:19:29,585 --> 00:19:33,130 as beginning with the number ten. 381 00:19:33,130 --> 00:19:34,131 Right. 382 00:19:34,131 --> 00:19:38,135 And then because Julius Caesar is. 383 00:19:38,385 --> 00:19:40,470 the I is, 384 00:19:40,470 --> 00:19:42,264 stands for the number ten. 385 00:19:42,264 --> 00:19:44,558 Right. 386 00:19:44,558 --> 00:19:47,561 And then he refers to the one after him 387 00:19:47,769 --> 00:19:52,107 as being Augustus, the person with the first letter of the alphabet. 388 00:19:52,107 --> 00:19:56,320 So that's just one example of how this, and this text goes on and on. 389 00:19:56,612 --> 00:19:59,615 They're talking about the next number of emperors, 390 00:19:59,823 --> 00:20:01,950 all with the number of their initial letter. 391 00:20:01,950 --> 00:20:04,786 Instead of ever saying their names. 392 00:20:04,786 --> 00:20:06,288 So we have Roman emperors 393 00:20:07,372 --> 00:20:07,831 who are 394 00:20:07,831 --> 00:20:11,752 children, or sorry, descendants of this beast, right. 395 00:20:11,752 --> 00:20:14,755 That are all referred to by the number of their name. 396 00:20:15,255 --> 00:20:16,840 Right. 397 00:20:16,840 --> 00:20:18,759 Well, that's interesting 398 00:20:18,759 --> 00:20:22,346 because this is starting to already sound like revelation, isn't it? 399 00:20:22,846 --> 00:20:23,555 Right. 400 00:20:23,555 --> 00:20:27,726 Where John says that the mark of the beast, 401 00:20:27,726 --> 00:20:30,729 which is the name of the beast or the number of its name, 402 00:20:31,980 --> 00:20:34,566 and you're like, wait, I read stuff like that here. 403 00:20:34,566 --> 00:20:37,110 Right? That's one example. 404 00:20:37,110 --> 00:20:39,154 Another example is how these texts 405 00:20:39,154 --> 00:20:42,115 will speak of Rome as Babylon. 406 00:20:42,658 --> 00:20:45,327 Why? Well, I think the reason is that 407 00:20:45,327 --> 00:20:49,665 there were only two nations 408 00:20:49,665 --> 00:20:52,918 that ever destroyed Jerusalem and destroyed the temple. 409 00:20:53,168 --> 00:20:56,046 And they were Babylon and Rome. Okay? 410 00:20:56,046 --> 00:20:57,130 Yes. Yeah. 411 00:20:57,130 --> 00:21:00,133 And so especially as you get to the, 412 00:21:00,968 --> 00:21:04,304 you know, texts that were written after the destruction of Jerusalem in 1870, 413 00:21:04,554 --> 00:21:08,016 it's going to be so natural to think of Rome as the new Babylon. 414 00:21:08,267 --> 00:21:10,602 Yeah, right. Okay. Yeah, 415 00:21:11,561 --> 00:21:11,812 Yeah. 416 00:21:11,812 --> 00:21:14,815 And so by again, by overlaying Babylon, 417 00:21:14,815 --> 00:21:17,943 by speaking of Rome as Babylon, almost like a cartoon image again, 418 00:21:18,568 --> 00:21:22,447 you pick up and invest what's going on in the present 419 00:21:22,447 --> 00:21:25,701 with all the meaning and symbolism of the story in the old Testament. 420 00:21:25,742 --> 00:21:28,745 And that's kind of tying in with what Daniel would be saying 421 00:21:28,954 --> 00:21:29,788 in some ways, Right? 422 00:21:29,788 --> 00:21:32,916 Because he was writing in Babylon, like he was a captive in Babylon as well. 423 00:21:33,000 --> 00:21:34,710 Okay. Interesting. Yeah. 424 00:21:34,710 --> 00:21:39,298 And if you’re a christian, like John, then Rome has even more significance 425 00:21:39,298 --> 00:21:44,094 as Babylon, because Rome also has this eschatological significance in that 426 00:21:44,094 --> 00:21:47,431 it was in part responsible for the crucifixion of the Messiah. 427 00:21:48,265 --> 00:21:49,016 Right. 428 00:21:49,016 --> 00:21:52,352 And so Rome, for you, isn’t only the city that 429 00:21:52,728 --> 00:21:55,731 the nation sort of the empire that just destroyed Jerusalem. 430 00:21:55,731 --> 00:21:58,108 But it also stands in for the ultimate 431 00:21:59,151 --> 00:21:59,860 adversary 432 00:21:59,860 --> 00:22:02,904 of God and God's people, because it is this nation 433 00:22:02,904 --> 00:22:06,700 that this people, these leaders that crucified Jesus. 434 00:22:07,242 --> 00:22:07,576 Right. 435 00:22:07,576 --> 00:22:11,371 And so whatever happens in the future, you can, any, 436 00:22:11,371 --> 00:22:14,374 all of God's enemies, the power, the forces, the powers, 437 00:22:14,666 --> 00:22:18,045 the political powers or whatever that oppose God can always be 438 00:22:18,045 --> 00:22:22,132 thought of as Rome in a sense, because Rome is the beginning 439 00:22:22,132 --> 00:22:26,345 of the powers that stood against and crucified, you know, persecuted Jesus. 440 00:22:26,970 --> 00:22:29,973 So it adds that layer of thing there. 441 00:22:29,973 --> 00:22:32,893 So in this text it says... 442 00:22:51,828 --> 00:22:55,874 Now Poseidon is a is a chaos monster, right? 443 00:22:55,874 --> 00:23:00,379 And here this great star is destroying 444 00:23:02,881 --> 00:23:05,634 the sea, the Sea Dragon sea monster, 445 00:23:05,634 --> 00:23:08,720 Which is actually the same thing that revelation is trying to say 446 00:23:08,720 --> 00:23:12,140 in Revelation 21 when he says in the new creation, the sea will be no more. 447 00:23:12,808 --> 00:23:13,558 Right. 448 00:23:13,558 --> 00:23:16,645 It's not that John has anything against seas. 449 00:23:16,853 --> 00:23:19,731 But that the sea in this context 450 00:23:19,731 --> 00:23:22,859 represents chaos and that sort of thing. 451 00:23:22,901 --> 00:23:23,151 Right. 452 00:23:23,151 --> 00:23:26,363 So here it’s spoken of as just a sea monster, Poseidon of the sea, 453 00:23:27,406 --> 00:23:29,074 and in revelation it’s just spoken of as a sea. 454 00:23:29,074 --> 00:23:32,327 So this great star comes which will destroy the earth... 455 00:23:47,509 --> 00:23:48,802 now, so 456 00:23:49,219 --> 00:23:52,556 this star, we'll talk about in a minute what stars represent. 457 00:23:52,556 --> 00:23:54,141 But the star will come. 458 00:23:54,141 --> 00:23:57,686 It's not a flaming ball of gas, in the apocalyptic. 459 00:23:57,978 --> 00:24:02,732 But a star which comes from heaven and burns the deep sea and Babylon itself 460 00:24:02,732 --> 00:24:05,735 and the land of Italy, it's clearly not talking about the Babylon that's over. 461 00:24:06,069 --> 00:24:07,737 You know, over here. 462 00:24:07,737 --> 00:24:09,448 It's speaking of Rome. 463 00:24:09,448 --> 00:24:12,033 Right. It's the Babylon in the land of Italy. 464 00:24:12,033 --> 00:24:13,827 But it's speaking of it as a Babylon. Right? 465 00:24:13,827 --> 00:24:19,666 And I mean, in Revelation, we have the same, there's a lot of Babylon 466 00:24:19,666 --> 00:24:23,044 imagery, but it's intertwined also with Rome imagery. 467 00:24:24,504 --> 00:24:27,090 You know, John does exactly the same thing. 468 00:24:27,090 --> 00:24:29,593 So have one more example of this here. 469 00:24:44,816 --> 00:24:46,234 This is Romulus and Remus again. 470 00:24:46,568 --> 00:24:49,863 So. Okay, so basically, this is it’s crazy way of saying 471 00:24:51,698 --> 00:24:53,742 when Rome starts, right? 472 00:25:09,424 --> 00:25:10,967 So when Romulus and Remus 473 00:25:10,967 --> 00:25:14,387 grow up, in other words, when Rome kind of reaches its power, 474 00:25:14,930 --> 00:25:18,475 they will cast down headlong many who have shameless spirit 475 00:25:18,892 --> 00:25:20,185 from seven strong hills. 476 00:25:20,185 --> 00:25:23,104 So they're going to do a lot of, wreak a lot of havoc 477 00:25:23,104 --> 00:25:25,607 from these or on these seven hills. 478 00:25:25,607 --> 00:25:26,983 And it says both. 479 00:25:26,983 --> 00:25:29,736 Both of these infants, number 100, 480 00:25:29,736 --> 00:25:32,989 which the letter R, Romulus and Remus stands for 100. 481 00:25:32,989 --> 00:25:35,492 okay. Okay. 482 00:25:35,492 --> 00:25:36,201 Yeah. Wow. 483 00:25:36,201 --> 00:25:39,204 I was getting yeah, I was like, what is this 100 thing? 484 00:25:39,496 --> 00:25:42,541 It's going back to the number, the number representing the first letter 485 00:25:42,541 --> 00:25:43,708 of their name. Yeah. 486 00:25:43,708 --> 00:25:45,794 So now you're like, wow, that's that's complicated. 487 00:25:45,794 --> 00:25:47,754 Well, maybe, but it would be. 488 00:25:47,754 --> 00:25:50,757 That's actually not any more complicated than a modern political cartoon. 489 00:25:50,924 --> 00:25:53,468 But wouldn’t this also, I'm just totally speculating here. 490 00:25:53,468 --> 00:25:56,888 But if they didn't have, you know, mass printing presses, for example, 491 00:25:56,972 --> 00:25:59,933 you had to encode this in ways to make it easy to remember. 492 00:25:59,933 --> 00:26:03,019 Is this just a way to make it easy to remember stuff like with 493 00:26:03,186 --> 00:26:07,190 extremely vivid imagery like that and encoding information into it? 494 00:26:07,190 --> 00:26:09,025 Or is this just, this is just a style? 495 00:26:09,025 --> 00:26:10,193 It's a style. 496 00:26:10,193 --> 00:26:13,738 It makes it, gives you a different 497 00:26:15,949 --> 00:26:17,284 feel right, 498 00:26:17,284 --> 00:26:22,205 because it's not pretending to provide information as much as it is to remind 499 00:26:22,455 --> 00:26:27,377 embattled people that despite the fact that things seem chaotic, 500 00:26:27,794 --> 00:26:30,714 that God is still sovereign over it, He has a plan for it. 501 00:26:30,714 --> 00:26:36,136 He's got things under control and the future is known to him 502 00:26:36,511 --> 00:26:41,016 and can be hinted at to us and that sort of thing. 503 00:26:41,266 --> 00:26:44,269 So it's meant that way. Yeah. 504 00:26:44,477 --> 00:26:45,186 That's just interesting, 505 00:26:45,186 --> 00:26:48,273 because, again, to our modern ears, all of this seems pretty bizarre. 506 00:26:48,273 --> 00:26:52,235 And maybe that's why there's so much fascination around Revelation now. 507 00:26:52,277 --> 00:26:54,654 You know, it's just like, what is this, you know. 508 00:26:54,654 --> 00:26:57,657 So, the seven strong Hills. What’s that? 509 00:26:58,283 --> 00:26:58,950 Isn't Rome built on 7 hills or something? 510 00:26:58,950 --> 00:27:00,410 Exactly right. 511 00:27:00,410 --> 00:27:03,955 And so it's just like if I say, you know, 512 00:27:04,956 --> 00:27:07,959 you talk about all the corruption in the Windy City. 513 00:27:08,376 --> 00:27:08,918 Right? 514 00:27:08,918 --> 00:27:12,672 Well, if you you know, we know the Windy City is a stand in for Chicago. 515 00:27:12,922 --> 00:27:14,257 Yeah, right. Which is terrible. 516 00:27:14,257 --> 00:27:15,884 Which is very corrupt. 517 00:27:15,884 --> 00:27:19,012 But if I say the Big Apple, it’s New York, 518 00:27:19,638 --> 00:27:22,641 if I say the city on Seven Hills, 519 00:27:23,516 --> 00:27:26,519 it is Rome, right? 520 00:27:26,603 --> 00:27:29,773 It's again, it's just another trope that you are supposed to know. 521 00:27:29,773 --> 00:27:33,943 Now what's again 522 00:27:33,943 --> 00:27:36,946 what's really interesting about this is 523 00:27:38,490 --> 00:27:41,868 if we go to Revelation, 524 00:27:42,160 --> 00:27:45,163 just really quick here, you have 525 00:27:45,664 --> 00:27:47,749 the same imagery used. 526 00:27:47,749 --> 00:27:49,751 Yeah, I was going to say that sounds familiar, right? 527 00:27:49,751 --> 00:27:50,585 I mean, it's. 528 00:27:50,585 --> 00:27:52,879 Yeah, it's used in here somewhere. 529 00:27:52,879 --> 00:27:54,506 It is. 530 00:27:54,506 --> 00:27:59,177 so in Revelation 17, verse five. 531 00:27:59,427 --> 00:28:04,349 On her forehead, this is the prostitute, which picks up Old Testament. 532 00:28:04,349 --> 00:28:06,810 So I, we're talking about all this genre stuff. 533 00:28:06,810 --> 00:28:10,230 What John is doing is, in this genre, 534 00:28:11,231 --> 00:28:13,942 he's pulling almost everything out of the Old Testament. 535 00:28:13,942 --> 00:28:16,945 Revelation is just absolutely full of Old Testament, 536 00:28:17,404 --> 00:28:19,447 the Old Testament stories, Old Testament imagery. 537 00:28:19,447 --> 00:28:21,700 It's all coming to its climax in this book. 538 00:28:21,700 --> 00:28:26,871 So the prostitute, on her forehead was written a name of mystery. 539 00:28:27,122 --> 00:28:28,707 And what is her name? Babylon. 540 00:28:28,707 --> 00:28:31,167 The great mother of prostitutes and earth's abominations. 541 00:28:31,167 --> 00:28:34,003 So she's this prostitute called Babylon. 542 00:28:34,003 --> 00:28:38,883 And already, if you're reading this text in this century 543 00:28:39,384 --> 00:28:43,179 and you're familiar with, you know, this probably refers to Rome, right? 544 00:28:44,681 --> 00:28:47,100 Drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. 545 00:28:47,100 --> 00:28:49,102 And remember, this is like after Nero. 546 00:28:49,102 --> 00:28:51,312 So, you know. 547 00:28:51,312 --> 00:28:52,313 Oh, that's a really good point. 548 00:28:52,313 --> 00:28:53,148 Stuff is happening. 549 00:28:53,148 --> 00:28:56,151 For context. When was Nero Emperor roughly. 550 00:28:56,443 --> 00:28:59,320 It was before Revelation was written. 551 00:28:59,320 --> 00:29:01,781 What are the exact years? 552 00:29:01,781 --> 00:29:03,074 I think the sixties. 553 00:29:03,074 --> 00:29:04,784 Yeah, the sixties sounds right. Yeah. 554 00:29:04,784 --> 00:29:08,496 Because I just remember, you know, knowing that when Paul was writing, like, 555 00:29:08,913 --> 00:29:11,166 the book of Romans, you know, Nero would have been the current 556 00:29:11,166 --> 00:29:12,167 emperor, for example. 557 00:29:13,209 --> 00:29:14,085 Yeah, exactly. 558 00:29:14,085 --> 00:29:14,294 Yeah. 559 00:29:14,294 --> 00:29:15,295 Nero had him executed. 560 00:29:15,295 --> 00:29:17,380 So a really bad person. 561 00:29:17,380 --> 00:29:19,257 Yeah, he did a lot of things against the church. 562 00:29:19,257 --> 00:29:20,216 Okay. Fascinating. 563 00:29:20,216 --> 00:29:20,842 Good context. 564 00:29:20,842 --> 00:29:23,845 Okay, so 565 00:29:25,680 --> 00:29:28,224 he kind of talks a little about this 566 00:29:28,224 --> 00:29:31,436 and then verse nine, This calls for a mind with wisdom. 567 00:29:32,270 --> 00:29:32,604 Okay. 568 00:29:32,604 --> 00:29:34,481 So it’s like, John’s like, think about this. 569 00:29:34,481 --> 00:29:37,400 Think about the imagery here. 570 00:29:37,400 --> 00:29:39,110 So she's sitting on a beast with seven heads. 571 00:29:39,110 --> 00:29:40,695 I think I should have said that. 572 00:29:40,695 --> 00:29:42,572 The angel said to me, Why are you marveling? 573 00:29:42,572 --> 00:29:46,409 I will tell you the mystery of the woman and of the beast with seven heads 574 00:29:46,409 --> 00:29:47,994 and ten horns that carries her. 575 00:29:47,994 --> 00:29:51,748 So this prostitute Babylon is sitting on this seven headed beast. 576 00:29:51,748 --> 00:29:55,835 The beast that, you know, I always tell people, don't ever make a, try 577 00:29:55,835 --> 00:29:59,589 to make a movie about Revelation because it's imagery that works in literature. 578 00:29:59,756 --> 00:30:03,927 But as soon as you start depicting it on a screen, it's really creepy, right? 579 00:30:04,385 --> 00:30:06,179 Very, very weird. 580 00:30:06,179 --> 00:30:09,432 The beast that you saw was and is not and is about to rise 581 00:30:09,432 --> 00:30:11,684 from the bottomless pit and go to destruction. 582 00:30:11,684 --> 00:30:13,686 The dwellers on earth, whose names have not been written 583 00:30:13,686 --> 00:30:15,396 in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world, 584 00:30:15,396 --> 00:30:18,399 will marvel to see the beast because it was and is not in its to come. 585 00:30:18,566 --> 00:30:20,401 This calls for a mind with wisdom. 586 00:30:20,401 --> 00:30:22,946 Okay, what are the seven heads of the beast? 587 00:30:22,946 --> 00:30:25,949 The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sat. 588 00:30:26,074 --> 00:30:27,033 You're like, Ding! 589 00:30:29,035 --> 00:30:29,285 right. 590 00:30:29,285 --> 00:30:30,370 Dead giveaway. 591 00:30:30,370 --> 00:30:32,288 wow. Right. So. 592 00:30:32,288 --> 00:30:34,249 And now that was Revelation 17. 593 00:30:34,249 --> 00:30:35,959 What verse was that? Verse nine. 594 00:30:35,959 --> 00:30:39,462 So you have the prostitute named Babylon sitting on the seven heads, 595 00:30:40,255 --> 00:30:42,090 which are seven mountains, Right. 596 00:30:42,090 --> 00:30:46,177 It's obviously this whole image is speaking of Rome, 597 00:30:46,344 --> 00:30:51,099 but Rome again not in a way that's limited to just the historical Rome. 598 00:30:51,641 --> 00:30:54,936 I think Rome is representative of the forces, 599 00:30:54,936 --> 00:30:57,939 the powers that stand against Jesus and his people. 600 00:30:58,648 --> 00:31:03,152 And then it says the seven heads are also seven kings, five of which have fallen. 601 00:31:03,152 --> 00:31:05,697 One is, the other has not yet come. 602 00:31:05,697 --> 00:31:08,700 So they also represent the 603 00:31:08,825 --> 00:31:11,703 kings, the emperors of Rome, a certain sequence of them. 604 00:31:11,703 --> 00:31:12,495 Right. 605 00:31:12,495 --> 00:31:15,123 So, I mean, this is the same thing, that’s the same thing that we have 606 00:31:15,123 --> 00:31:16,374 in this text, right? 607 00:31:16,374 --> 00:31:17,333 Yeah. 608 00:31:17,333 --> 00:31:19,127 I'm really seeing how the genre. 609 00:31:19,127 --> 00:31:20,962 Yeah, is a big deal here. 610 00:31:20,962 --> 00:31:22,839 I have one more example. Yes please. 611 00:31:22,839 --> 00:31:26,634 And this is about how stars, you know, you've heard a lot of weird, 612 00:31:26,676 --> 00:31:30,763 you hear a lot of weird stuff from the last 50 years of people 613 00:31:31,014 --> 00:31:34,809 reading revelation where stars falling from the sky. 614 00:31:35,184 --> 00:31:38,771 It's all about, it’s almost pictured 615 00:31:38,771 --> 00:31:42,400 as a literal, like astronomical stars 616 00:31:42,400 --> 00:31:45,862 like crashing down, which of course doesn't work, right? 617 00:31:45,862 --> 00:31:47,322 You can't have a third of the stars. 618 00:31:47,322 --> 00:31:49,365 Like each star is bigger than the earth, and it just doesn't work. 619 00:31:50,408 --> 00:31:51,993 But that's 620 00:31:51,993 --> 00:31:53,620 just not what Revelation is talking about. 621 00:31:53,620 --> 00:31:56,998 So here again, in Sibylline Oracles 622 00:31:56,998 --> 00:31:57,624 five... 623 00:32:20,188 --> 00:32:21,189 So it keeps going about these 624 00:32:21,189 --> 00:32:22,941 constellations and stuff fighting... 625 00:32:38,289 --> 00:32:39,832 So this pictures 626 00:32:39,832 --> 00:32:42,335 the cosmic, that the stars 627 00:32:42,335 --> 00:32:45,338 and such, not as balls of gas, 628 00:32:45,672 --> 00:32:48,591 but as sort of heavenly beings kind of angels, right? 629 00:32:48,591 --> 00:32:50,259 That fight in heaven, right? 630 00:32:50,259 --> 00:32:53,096 There's war in heaven 631 00:32:53,096 --> 00:32:56,099 and then heaven casts 632 00:32:56,557 --> 00:32:58,601 these fighting stars angels 633 00:32:58,601 --> 00:33:01,688 to the earth, right. Is like, well I've that 634 00:33:01,813 --> 00:33:04,983 I heard I know I've heard that right from Revelation. 635 00:33:05,900 --> 00:33:07,485 Yes. Okay. 636 00:33:07,485 --> 00:33:13,074 So in Revelation, and there's other examples of this that I, 637 00:33:13,157 --> 00:33:18,997 that unfortunately from other texts that we can't go through now. 638 00:33:19,372 --> 00:33:22,375 But in Revelation we have. 639 00:33:22,959 --> 00:33:24,544 We have this text. 640 00:33:24,544 --> 00:33:27,547 So actually we should have known this from Revelation chapter one, 641 00:33:28,006 --> 00:33:30,800 because Revelation one, verse 20, 642 00:33:30,800 --> 00:33:34,012 there is the seven stars 643 00:33:34,012 --> 00:33:37,015 and the seven Golden lamp stands right at the beginning of the book. 644 00:33:37,140 --> 00:33:39,017 And it actually says in Revelation one verse 20. 645 00:33:39,017 --> 00:33:41,853 As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in My Right hand 646 00:33:41,853 --> 00:33:42,770 and the seven golden lamp 647 00:33:42,770 --> 00:33:45,732 stands, the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, 648 00:33:45,940 --> 00:33:47,567 and the seven lamp stands are the seven churches. 649 00:33:47,567 --> 00:33:50,278 So it makes it explicit that stars are angels. 650 00:33:50,278 --> 00:33:54,699 But then Revelation nine, the fifth angel 651 00:33:54,699 --> 00:33:57,827 blew his trumpet and I saw a star fallen from heaven to earth. 652 00:33:57,827 --> 00:34:00,663 And he was given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit. Right? 653 00:34:00,663 --> 00:34:05,585 The star falling is not a star as we think of stars. 654 00:34:05,585 --> 00:34:07,837 But it is an angel, right? 655 00:34:07,837 --> 00:34:12,633 Just like these fighters in this text or in Revelation 12, The Beast, his tail 656 00:34:12,633 --> 00:34:15,636 sweeps down a third of the stars of heaven and casts them to the earth. 657 00:34:18,014 --> 00:34:20,391 And in Revelation six, 658 00:34:20,391 --> 00:34:24,145 we have stars and the sun kind of 659 00:34:24,145 --> 00:34:29,067 crashing down to earth and the sky sort of vanishing just like in this text. 660 00:34:29,067 --> 00:34:31,944 So stars represent, and there are other texts, 661 00:34:31,944 --> 00:34:34,655 not Sibylline oracles that talk about this a lot more, too. 662 00:34:34,655 --> 00:34:36,574 But stars are representative of angels. 663 00:34:36,574 --> 00:34:41,245 So when we see stars falling from the Sky, like the dragon's tail 664 00:34:41,245 --> 00:34:44,248 sweeping down stars that follow him, this is speaking of 665 00:34:45,124 --> 00:34:48,961 cosmic powers, evil powers or good powers in various cases. 666 00:34:49,754 --> 00:34:53,966 So again, another example of how there's so much overlap. 667 00:34:55,009 --> 00:34:56,719 Yeah. 668 00:34:56,719 --> 00:34:59,305 Whoa. Okay. So. 669 00:34:59,305 --> 00:35:01,224 So to 670 00:35:01,224 --> 00:35:04,227 back it out on the genre question a little bit, 671 00:35:04,352 --> 00:35:08,022 so which again, seems so foundational to all of this, 672 00:35:09,357 --> 00:35:11,484 I have always heard 673 00:35:11,484 --> 00:35:14,612 a very literalist interpretation of revelation, 674 00:35:15,029 --> 00:35:18,282 for lack of a better term, because I think it will make more sense to the audience. 675 00:35:18,282 --> 00:35:21,661 But basically what Tim LaHaye outlines in the whole Left Behind series, which are 676 00:35:22,954 --> 00:35:25,873 gargantuanly popular if that's the right way phrasing it. 677 00:35:25,873 --> 00:35:28,876 I mean, just absolutely massive runaway bestsellers. 678 00:35:29,168 --> 00:35:32,922 And then he kind of kicked off a whole genre, really. 679 00:35:33,214 --> 00:35:37,802 It's back to genres, of pop culture in Christian fiction 680 00:35:38,261 --> 00:35:42,431 around all its end times stuff in the tribulation and the rapture in the 681 00:35:42,431 --> 00:35:44,392 whatever you want it just about the whole works. 682 00:35:44,392 --> 00:35:47,812 So that would have been what was that like mid nineties? 683 00:35:48,020 --> 00:35:50,148 And then it's still very alive and well today. 684 00:35:50,148 --> 00:35:53,609 And that was been, that would have been what I was used 685 00:35:53,609 --> 00:35:56,612 to hearing quite a lot in different places I've been 686 00:35:56,612 --> 00:36:01,200 and it seems like that's very common throughout, throughout just pop culture, 687 00:36:01,200 --> 00:36:04,203 but also of course the Anabaptist world is not immune from it. 688 00:36:04,203 --> 00:36:07,123 You know, it feels like there's this fixation with following the news 689 00:36:07,123 --> 00:36:08,666 and is it happening? Is it happening? 690 00:36:08,666 --> 00:36:10,334 It's the end of the world, you know, all that stuff. 691 00:36:10,334 --> 00:36:14,714 I would love to hear you respond to that 692 00:36:14,714 --> 00:36:17,216 because I got kind of disillusioned with the whole thing. 693 00:36:17,216 --> 00:36:19,802 It felt so shallow or like it didn't feel like it fit. 694 00:36:19,802 --> 00:36:22,722 And I actually just simply stopped reading Revelation as a result, 695 00:36:22,722 --> 00:36:26,017 which is now, now that I think about it, I mean, that's kind of sad, you know? 696 00:36:26,017 --> 00:36:27,185 It’s very sad. 697 00:36:27,185 --> 00:36:30,938 No, I think that that's happened to a lot of people in our generation. 698 00:36:30,938 --> 00:36:33,441 I mean, I went through a phase like that, too, because you get so like, 699 00:36:35,234 --> 00:36:36,694 you just get so 700 00:36:36,694 --> 00:36:39,697 like, I don't know, a bad taste in your mouth from 701 00:36:40,698 --> 00:36:42,700 kind of all the sort of 702 00:36:42,700 --> 00:36:45,703 read the newspapers and try to 703 00:36:45,828 --> 00:36:46,996 figure out what all the stuff is. 704 00:36:46,996 --> 00:36:49,999 And they've been doing it for like 30 something years, you know, And then it's 705 00:36:49,999 --> 00:36:52,293 okay, you know, and then in time they're like, well, that wasn't quite right. 706 00:36:52,293 --> 00:36:53,294 And then. 707 00:36:53,294 --> 00:36:55,630 debate all these crazy terms that things whatever. 708 00:36:55,630 --> 00:36:57,256 So you just ignore it. 709 00:36:57,256 --> 00:36:59,675 But what I'm really passionate about, 710 00:36:59,675 --> 00:37:02,220 saying no revelation needs to be rehabilitated. 711 00:37:02,220 --> 00:37:05,556 Rehabilitated. It has so much to say. 712 00:37:05,556 --> 00:37:08,893 And this is why we spent so much time talking about genre, was that 713 00:37:09,977 --> 00:37:11,896 as soon as we realized, no, no, 714 00:37:11,896 --> 00:37:15,191 this is not as, it is a weird text, but it's weird 715 00:37:15,191 --> 00:37:18,319 for completely different reasons then maybe some of us grew up thinking 716 00:37:18,319 --> 00:37:18,945 it was weird for. 717 00:37:18,945 --> 00:37:23,282 It's not weird because it's talking about, you know, tanks and nuclear warfare. 718 00:37:23,282 --> 00:37:27,495 It's weird because it was written in this ancient, 719 00:37:27,703 --> 00:37:30,081 ancient genre, but that is good news for us 720 00:37:30,081 --> 00:37:35,962 because that means that what we need and, what it does for us, it's not a code, 721 00:37:36,170 --> 00:37:39,257 but it's a pair of glasses that we're supposed to view our lives in the world. 722 00:37:39,257 --> 00:37:41,509 John wrote it. 723 00:37:41,509 --> 00:37:44,762 John wrote it to people in the first century A.D., 724 00:37:45,513 --> 00:37:49,767 expecting them to understand it and to order their lives accordingly. 725 00:37:49,976 --> 00:37:52,395 And that's the goal of apocalyptic. It's not supposed to be. 726 00:37:52,395 --> 00:37:56,274 It's not some Nostradamus style sort of secret code into the future. 727 00:37:56,649 --> 00:38:00,278 It speaks of how God will climatically be victorious in the future. 728 00:38:01,696 --> 00:38:02,530 But it's meant as 729 00:38:02,530 --> 00:38:05,658 John himself says, the point of this is to overcome. 730 00:38:05,741 --> 00:38:09,370 Like he says, it's in all of the letters to the churches, to the one who overcomes. 731 00:38:10,162 --> 00:38:12,873 And then when he says that he he usually 732 00:38:12,873 --> 00:38:16,043 pairs it with some other piece of imagery that shows up in the rest of the book. 733 00:38:16,043 --> 00:38:18,045 Right. I'll make him a pillar in the Temple of God. 734 00:38:18,045 --> 00:38:22,883 I will stamp on his forehead the name, you know, that sort of thing. 735 00:38:22,883 --> 00:38:25,553 So he will not be part of the judgment, things like that. 736 00:38:25,553 --> 00:38:28,222 So these embattled churches, 737 00:38:28,222 --> 00:38:29,223 these churches who are faced... 738 00:38:29,223 --> 00:38:34,687 with I think there are two dangers in Revelation that John wants us to avoid. 739 00:38:35,104 --> 00:38:41,444 And that is the fear of persecution that the beast kind of represents. 740 00:38:42,528 --> 00:38:42,903 Right. 741 00:38:42,903 --> 00:38:47,575 That's the scary threat of persecution of various levels. 742 00:38:47,950 --> 00:38:49,952 And then the allure of the prostitute. 743 00:38:49,952 --> 00:38:50,202 Right. 744 00:38:50,202 --> 00:38:55,249 And both of those are one and the same, right. 745 00:38:55,249 --> 00:38:57,126 The prostitute sits on the beast. 746 00:38:57,126 --> 00:39:00,087 Right. It's they're both Rome but two aspects, right? 747 00:39:00,087 --> 00:39:02,256 One is 748 00:39:02,256 --> 00:39:05,176 the way that the political forces or whatever 749 00:39:05,176 --> 00:39:08,179 can come against Christians and 750 00:39:08,971 --> 00:39:12,308 kill them persecute them, take away their businesses, whatever 751 00:39:13,434 --> 00:39:16,729 the other is the way that economic wealth, 752 00:39:17,188 --> 00:39:20,691 the allure of social approval, 753 00:39:21,942 --> 00:39:25,071 things like that can kind of allure us 754 00:39:25,071 --> 00:39:29,116 to get into bed in a sense with the prostitute. 755 00:39:29,158 --> 00:39:30,076 Right. 756 00:39:30,076 --> 00:39:34,622 And those are the two dangers that revelation is warning us 757 00:39:35,122 --> 00:39:38,709 that John is saying you need to be people who conquer, 758 00:39:39,168 --> 00:39:42,213 who stay faithful to the true... 759 00:39:42,213 --> 00:39:45,341 wait for the, you know, as the true bride is waiting for the you know, 760 00:39:45,716 --> 00:39:48,719 the Marriage supper of the lambs to stay away from the allure of the world, 761 00:39:49,053 --> 00:39:51,764 which is nothing other than the lust of the flesh, 762 00:39:51,764 --> 00:39:53,808 the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. 763 00:39:53,808 --> 00:39:57,311 And don't be terrorized by the threat of persecution. 764 00:39:57,311 --> 00:39:58,896 Don't let that cause you to 765 00:40:00,106 --> 00:40:02,149 stop following Jesus. 766 00:40:02,149 --> 00:40:05,444 And so in this all this imagery, 767 00:40:05,444 --> 00:40:09,907 that revelation is using is meant to, that's what it's meant to get us to do. 768 00:40:10,116 --> 00:40:10,699 Right. 769 00:40:10,699 --> 00:40:14,412 And I think a lot of the looking at newspapers and trying to figure out 770 00:40:14,412 --> 00:40:15,579 like what piece of technology... 771 00:40:15,579 --> 00:40:18,582 that's actually a distraction from, 772 00:40:18,666 --> 00:40:21,669 and it actually can keep us from 773 00:40:22,753 --> 00:40:27,133 evaluating our hearts against what this imagery is telling us. 774 00:40:27,341 --> 00:40:28,134 Right. 775 00:40:28,134 --> 00:40:31,137 It can almost result in. 776 00:40:31,137 --> 00:40:32,638 Yeah. 777 00:40:32,638 --> 00:40:35,474 Like you're saying a distraction and then totally missed the point 778 00:40:35,474 --> 00:40:38,394 and almost let ourselves off the hook of what this is actually telling us. 779 00:40:38,394 --> 00:40:39,728 absolutely It can be a copout. 780 00:40:39,728 --> 00:40:42,731 Because it’s like, well as long as you know, 781 00:40:43,190 --> 00:40:45,067 it puts the beast, it turns the beast 782 00:40:45,067 --> 00:40:48,112 into sort of Russia or something like that. 783 00:40:48,195 --> 00:40:48,446 Right. 784 00:40:48,446 --> 00:40:49,989 Which is, it's something we, 785 00:40:49,989 --> 00:40:50,865 I think we've all heard, 786 00:40:50,865 --> 00:40:53,951 you know, a bunch of times and you know, or certain events that 787 00:40:53,951 --> 00:40:56,203 well that's, that's going to happen at some point in the future. 788 00:40:56,203 --> 00:40:57,955 So then that tends to, 789 00:40:57,955 --> 00:41:00,541 I think you'd mentioned this last night as well when we were chatting about this, 790 00:41:00,541 --> 00:41:04,420 but it tends to turn revelation into this future thing 791 00:41:04,420 --> 00:41:07,506 that doesn't really apply like right here and now, because, 792 00:41:07,506 --> 00:41:09,258 oh well, it’s talking about something in the future. 793 00:41:09,258 --> 00:41:13,387 And so maybe that's some of the fixation with so many people trying to figure out, 794 00:41:13,387 --> 00:41:14,555 what's happening in our lifetime, 795 00:41:14,555 --> 00:41:17,266 which we've been hearing that for 60 years or whatever, 796 00:41:17,266 --> 00:41:20,436 and it hasn't happened yet, And Revelation speaks. 797 00:41:20,436 --> 00:41:21,645 And this is way apocalyptic works. 798 00:41:21,645 --> 00:41:24,690 It speaks of the present and the future kind of together. 799 00:41:25,274 --> 00:41:26,525 So Revelation is speaking. 800 00:41:26,525 --> 00:41:32,448 I think all this stuff about tribulation, about the beast, about the prostitute, 801 00:41:32,907 --> 00:41:37,119 this is all stuff that's happening in John's day and continuing to happen now. 802 00:41:37,578 --> 00:41:40,873 And I think Revelation does have a climax in the future. 803 00:41:41,332 --> 00:41:44,793 When Jesus returns, judges his enemies, sets out, you know, brings about 804 00:41:44,793 --> 00:41:45,586 the new heavens, new Earth. 805 00:41:46,587 --> 00:41:47,880 And so they're sure. 806 00:41:47,880 --> 00:41:50,382 I'm not saying there's no future implications. 807 00:41:50,382 --> 00:41:54,261 I'm not saying that there will not be another iteration of the beast 808 00:41:54,261 --> 00:41:56,555 and the prostitute and whatever in the future. 809 00:41:56,555 --> 00:41:58,891 But it's going to be, it'll be precisely that. 810 00:41:58,891 --> 00:42:00,392 It'll be the last in a series. 811 00:42:00,392 --> 00:42:02,061 It won't be something categorically different 812 00:42:02,061 --> 00:42:03,562 from what we're experiencing now. 813 00:42:03,562 --> 00:42:06,565 And John himself says this outside of revelation, where he says 814 00:42:07,066 --> 00:42:09,818 Many Antichrists have already come into the world. 815 00:42:09,818 --> 00:42:10,152 Right? 816 00:42:10,152 --> 00:42:14,114 And so whatever the final iteration is, it's just a final iteration 817 00:42:14,114 --> 00:42:15,699 in the pattern. 818 00:42:15,699 --> 00:42:17,785 That's interesting because, 819 00:42:17,785 --> 00:42:18,911 when you talk about the Antichrist, 820 00:42:18,911 --> 00:42:22,456 I mean, so many people too, entering into a categorically different event, 821 00:42:22,706 --> 00:42:25,125 you know, like this is going to be like a really bad person 822 00:42:25,125 --> 00:42:27,253 like this going to be completely different than before, you know? 823 00:42:27,253 --> 00:42:29,838 And so then there's always yeah. John's thinking of 824 00:42:31,090 --> 00:42:32,299 things like 825 00:42:32,299 --> 00:42:35,261 in some cases maybe even false teachers in the church 826 00:42:35,261 --> 00:42:38,264 and in other cases he's thinking of Emperor Nero. 827 00:42:38,681 --> 00:42:40,975 Right. So he's, 828 00:42:40,975 --> 00:42:42,434 it's an anti messiah. 829 00:42:42,434 --> 00:42:45,437 It's any powerful figure or influential figure 830 00:42:45,938 --> 00:42:48,941 that opposes the reign of Jesus. 831 00:42:49,441 --> 00:42:53,445 So So again, I'm kind of anticipating some of the comments we'll get 832 00:42:53,445 --> 00:42:54,196 where people will be like, 833 00:42:54,196 --> 00:42:57,366 yeah, but you’re not taking the Bible literally for what it's saying. 834 00:42:57,658 --> 00:42:59,118 This is, you know, 835 00:42:59,118 --> 00:43:02,621 and again, you kind of touched on this with the genre question, but people 836 00:43:02,621 --> 00:43:04,873 kind of get bent out of shape about that and like, well, 837 00:43:04,873 --> 00:43:07,001 but if you can just start reading the Bible symbolically, then 838 00:43:07,001 --> 00:43:11,088 so many things go out the window, like how do you how do you respond to that? 839 00:43:11,088 --> 00:43:15,259 Again, it's about, it’s a question of reading the way 840 00:43:15,259 --> 00:43:18,971 John and then God intends us to read, not about literalness or otherwise. 841 00:43:19,013 --> 00:43:20,723 That's just the wrong question to ask. 842 00:43:20,723 --> 00:43:24,685 But I'll also say that the people who read Revelation 843 00:43:24,685 --> 00:43:28,397 sort of this more dispensation way are being 844 00:43:29,231 --> 00:43:31,483 extremely symbolic in their reading as well. 845 00:43:32,651 --> 00:43:34,278 That's a good point. 846 00:43:34,278 --> 00:43:35,446 Yeah, that's a really good point. 847 00:43:35,446 --> 00:43:39,783 There are no tanks or 848 00:43:39,783 --> 00:43:43,037 nuclear warfare or modern technology in the Book of Revelation period. 849 00:43:43,621 --> 00:43:44,955 It's not there. 850 00:43:44,955 --> 00:43:48,500 So if you say that things represent that you're just using, 851 00:43:48,709 --> 00:43:50,127 you're just saying it's symbolic. 852 00:43:50,127 --> 00:43:52,338 It's more a question of what is it symbolizing 853 00:43:52,338 --> 00:43:55,466 and some people are choosing to read it into a present day 854 00:43:55,716 --> 00:43:58,719 environment and you're suggesting that that's not really the case? 855 00:43:58,719 --> 00:44:00,179 No, it's not Right. 856 00:44:00,179 --> 00:44:02,014 Yeah. So you can't, nobody reads this. 857 00:44:02,014 --> 00:44:03,390 You can't read it literally. 858 00:44:03,390 --> 00:44:04,808 It's clearly full of symbolism. 859 00:44:04,808 --> 00:44:08,562 And everybody, no matter how you slice it... 860 00:44:08,854 --> 00:44:10,314 people who say, the mark of the beast. 861 00:44:10,314 --> 00:44:12,191 Maybe it's this latest piece of technology. 862 00:44:12,191 --> 00:44:14,401 There's nothing literal about that reading Like, way nothing literal. 863 00:44:14,401 --> 00:44:15,069 There's nothing literal about that reading Like, way nothing literal. 864 00:44:15,069 --> 00:44:18,864 Okay, okay, I feel like we have to I mean, you know, Mark of the Beast, right? 865 00:44:18,864 --> 00:44:20,366 Like we have to talk about that briefly, right? 866 00:44:20,366 --> 00:44:21,825 Yeah, because I think that could be, 867 00:44:21,825 --> 00:44:26,038 let's use that as a case study of a particular passage in Revelation. 868 00:44:26,038 --> 00:44:28,749 And for a little bit of context. 869 00:44:28,749 --> 00:44:33,379 And I think this is slowly going out of favor, I guess. 870 00:44:33,587 --> 00:44:36,548 But this whole fixation with it's a microchip 871 00:44:36,590 --> 00:44:39,426 or it's a whatever, it's a chip in your credit card. 872 00:44:39,426 --> 00:44:42,262 It's, you know, all the, it's a vaccine. Yes. 873 00:44:42,262 --> 00:44:45,683 Whatever gets poked into you, it's like that's what it is, you know, 874 00:44:45,683 --> 00:44:47,935 And that again, I've heard this 875 00:44:47,935 --> 00:44:51,772 in so many different forms for years and years and years of my life 876 00:44:52,106 --> 00:44:53,816 and to the point where I was just like, you know what? 877 00:44:53,816 --> 00:44:57,861 I don't even care anymore because it's just like this is just I don't know. 878 00:44:57,861 --> 00:44:58,362 I don't know. 879 00:44:58,362 --> 00:45:01,240 It's just it's so confusing And people are telling me all these different things, 880 00:45:01,240 --> 00:45:04,201 but all of the interpretations that I was hearing were 881 00:45:04,201 --> 00:45:07,246 it will be some kind of a literal thing at the end of time 882 00:45:07,538 --> 00:45:10,374 where Christians will have to choose, you know, will they get this mark 883 00:45:10,374 --> 00:45:12,042 or this microchip, this whatever? 884 00:45:13,877 --> 00:45:15,546 I'd love to hear your opinion on this. 885 00:45:15,546 --> 00:45:17,840 So this is important because it is a. 886 00:45:17,840 --> 00:45:20,426 and to our to a younger crowd. 887 00:45:20,426 --> 00:45:21,802 I think it's important to say 888 00:45:21,802 --> 00:45:24,596 the mark of the beast is actually a really important thing to think about. 889 00:45:24,596 --> 00:45:27,099 It is very high stakes, Right. 890 00:45:27,099 --> 00:45:28,475 You don't. 891 00:45:28,475 --> 00:45:31,645 You don't want to get the mark of the beast like it's bad news. 892 00:45:32,563 --> 00:45:35,691 So to the older or to the... 893 00:45:36,191 --> 00:45:37,276 Maybe I shouldn’t divide it that way. 894 00:45:37,276 --> 00:45:40,279 But with 895 00:45:40,404 --> 00:45:43,449 to the dispensational style reading of the text, 896 00:45:43,449 --> 00:45:47,119 it's hugely important, but it's not important 897 00:45:48,620 --> 00:45:50,372 in the way that it was thought 898 00:45:50,372 --> 00:45:53,417 to be with, am I going to get tripped up by a chip or something? 899 00:45:53,709 --> 00:45:54,960 But it is very high stakes. 900 00:45:54,960 --> 00:45:56,962 And I think, again, I think that 901 00:45:56,962 --> 00:46:00,841 speculation on pieces of technology actually can be a cop out 902 00:46:00,841 --> 00:46:04,720 and can cause us to stop wondering whether or not we have been marked by the Beast. 903 00:46:04,720 --> 00:46:07,097 So let's look at it really quick. Yeah. 904 00:46:07,097 --> 00:46:08,265 So what's fascinating is that 905 00:46:08,265 --> 00:46:11,560 the mark of the beast has come side by side with another mark. 906 00:46:12,269 --> 00:46:16,774 So it's in Revelation 13 is where we have 907 00:46:17,357 --> 00:46:19,985 sort of verses 11 to 18 908 00:46:21,153 --> 00:46:22,571 the mark of the beast. 909 00:46:22,571 --> 00:46:27,034 So this second beast causes all both small and great 910 00:46:27,659 --> 00:46:30,037 to be marked on the right hand or the forehead 911 00:46:30,037 --> 00:46:32,498 so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark. 912 00:46:32,498 --> 00:46:33,332 What is the mark? 913 00:46:33,332 --> 00:46:36,335 Well, he says it's the name of the beast 914 00:46:37,836 --> 00:46:40,839 or the number of its name. 915 00:46:41,048 --> 00:46:44,009 Now, what do you think when you think of the name or the number of its name? 916 00:46:44,218 --> 00:46:45,761 let's say you were John's first readers. 917 00:46:45,761 --> 00:46:46,678 Yeah. yeah. 918 00:46:46,678 --> 00:46:48,388 Well in that case, it’d be like start finding... 919 00:46:48,388 --> 00:46:49,973 Gematria! 920 00:46:49,973 --> 00:46:51,058 Yeah, yeah. 921 00:46:51,058 --> 00:46:52,851 I was trying to remember the term. 922 00:46:52,851 --> 00:46:53,727 It says it’s the name of the beast. 923 00:46:53,727 --> 00:46:54,603 Or the number. 924 00:46:54,603 --> 00:46:57,481 Right? It's something's name and then it's. 925 00:46:57,481 --> 00:46:59,483 And then John says, This calls for wisdom. 926 00:46:59,483 --> 00:47:02,486 Let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the beast for it's 927 00:47:03,362 --> 00:47:06,240 a person's number and his number is 666. 928 00:47:06,240 --> 00:47:09,243 But then the very next thing that John does, 929 00:47:09,535 --> 00:47:12,913 chapter 14, verse one, then I looked and behold on Mount Zion 930 00:47:12,913 --> 00:47:17,751 stood the lamb, and with him, 144,000, representing the fullness of God's people 931 00:47:17,960 --> 00:47:21,046 who had his name and his father's name written on their foreheads. 932 00:47:22,631 --> 00:47:23,924 And I heard a voice from heaven, 933 00:47:23,924 --> 00:47:27,386 like the voice of of many waters sounding and whatever. 934 00:47:27,970 --> 00:47:30,639 And then verse nine, another, an angel shows up saying, 935 00:47:30,639 --> 00:47:32,391 If anyone worships the beast and its image 936 00:47:32,391 --> 00:47:35,978 and receives a mark on his forehead or his hand, he will receive wrath. 937 00:47:35,978 --> 00:47:41,441 So it's the mark of, the name of the beast is side 938 00:47:41,441 --> 00:47:46,238 by side with the mark of the name of God on your forehead. 939 00:47:46,780 --> 00:47:47,364 Right. 940 00:47:47,364 --> 00:47:50,617 Nobody ever interprets that as though it were a piece of, 941 00:47:51,493 --> 00:47:54,204 godly technology or something, right? 942 00:47:54,204 --> 00:47:56,707 yeah. Okay. Okay. I see what you're doing. 943 00:47:56,707 --> 00:47:57,958 You cannot separate them. right? 944 00:47:57,958 --> 00:48:01,920 You cannot ever talk about the mark of the beast as though it's a standalone thing. 945 00:48:02,504 --> 00:48:03,130 It's not. 946 00:48:03,130 --> 00:48:06,592 Revelation is full of these dichotomies. 947 00:48:06,842 --> 00:48:07,301 Right. 948 00:48:07,301 --> 00:48:11,930 There's the lamb, there's the beast, there's the prostitute and the bride. 949 00:48:12,306 --> 00:48:16,184 There's, you know, there's judgment, new creation. 950 00:48:16,184 --> 00:48:18,520 There's the seven hills of Rome and there's Mt. 951 00:48:18,520 --> 00:48:20,981 Zion. Right? It's all of that. 952 00:48:20,981 --> 00:48:22,566 And there's a stamp 953 00:48:23,775 --> 00:48:24,484 on humans 954 00:48:24,484 --> 00:48:27,487 of the name of the beast or the name of the Lamb. 955 00:48:27,821 --> 00:48:31,283 Like, would it be appropriate to think of this almost like a branding, 956 00:48:31,575 --> 00:48:34,995 like, like old style, like burned into cattle brand. 957 00:48:34,995 --> 00:48:36,663 Or a slave brand. 958 00:48:36,663 --> 00:48:36,914 Yeah. 959 00:48:36,914 --> 00:48:38,916 Which would happen in the ancient world. 960 00:48:38,916 --> 00:48:43,253 And he's basically putting, he's contrasting these two off of each other. 961 00:48:43,253 --> 00:48:43,545 Okay. 962 00:48:43,545 --> 00:48:48,342 Well, now, So, if you're stamped with the name of Jesus or God, 963 00:48:49,343 --> 00:48:54,097 this means, for one thing, that you will be exempt from the final judgment. 964 00:48:54,431 --> 00:48:57,184 Right. And this actually comes from Ezekiel. 965 00:48:57,184 --> 00:49:00,896 There's this mark of God that God's people are stamped with to avoid judgment. 966 00:49:00,896 --> 00:49:02,272 So he’s pulling that straight from Ezekiel. 967 00:49:02,272 --> 00:49:03,565 Do you know where that is in Ezekiel? 968 00:49:03,565 --> 00:49:06,151 Just if anybody wants to look that up Ezekiel nine. 969 00:49:06,151 --> 00:49:07,986 Okay, I'm going to want to read that afterwards. 970 00:49:07,986 --> 00:49:08,362 That's a great. 971 00:49:08,362 --> 00:49:10,989 I hadn't thought of that. That. Okay. Okay. 972 00:49:10,989 --> 00:49:11,323 So what it means though, is that yes, you're stamped. 973 00:49:11,323 --> 00:49:14,618 So what it means though, is that yes, you're stamped. 974 00:49:14,910 --> 00:49:18,163 That means you belong to, it means you belong to Jesus, Right? 975 00:49:18,163 --> 00:49:20,040 That's what it means. It's a branding. 976 00:49:20,040 --> 00:49:23,126 It's saying I, belong to Jesus. 977 00:49:23,418 --> 00:49:24,795 I'm a Jesus person. 978 00:49:24,795 --> 00:49:26,838 I'm, I bear his name. 979 00:49:26,838 --> 00:49:26,922 I'm, I bear his name. 980 00:49:26,922 --> 00:49:30,133 So just like Israel was supposed to bear God's name in the Old Testament 981 00:49:30,133 --> 00:49:33,762 or like the high priest had on his forehead holy to Yahweh. 982 00:49:35,055 --> 00:49:36,932 All of God's people are those 983 00:49:36,932 --> 00:49:40,686 who are stamped with allegiance to the lamb. 984 00:49:41,979 --> 00:49:44,022 Okay, So. So I'm really curious here. 985 00:49:44,022 --> 00:49:48,110 Why did John put a number with this beast 986 00:49:48,610 --> 00:49:51,363 mark, and say 666, 987 00:49:51,363 --> 00:49:56,326 not six, six, six, but 666? So 988 00:49:57,411 --> 00:50:00,664 that has tripped up people a lot, especially, again, I'm 989 00:50:00,664 --> 00:50:04,167 thinking more here in America in the last few decades. 990 00:50:04,167 --> 00:50:06,294 But so walk me through that. 991 00:50:06,294 --> 00:50:09,464 Most important thing to say is whatever this is, is the antithesis 992 00:50:09,548 --> 00:50:12,551 of being sealed with God's name. 993 00:50:12,926 --> 00:50:17,806 Being somebody who says I belong, my allegiance is not to the beast. 994 00:50:18,140 --> 00:50:19,558 My allegiance is to Jesus. 995 00:50:19,558 --> 00:50:22,185 And that might mean I suffer a lot in this life, 996 00:50:22,185 --> 00:50:24,521 but it means I'm going to be saved from final judgment. 997 00:50:24,521 --> 00:50:28,483 Means I live as somebody who like a priest, who bears God's name. 998 00:50:28,692 --> 00:50:30,068 So this is the opposite. 999 00:50:30,068 --> 00:50:32,738 So this, one would think, implies 1000 00:50:34,114 --> 00:50:37,117 being stamped by allegiance to 1001 00:50:37,284 --> 00:50:39,369 the world, Right. 1002 00:50:39,369 --> 00:50:42,372 As represented in the Beast. 1003 00:50:42,789 --> 00:50:45,375 And specifically, John doesn't 1004 00:50:45,375 --> 00:50:49,087 mention any specific name, but he mentions this number. 1005 00:50:49,588 --> 00:50:53,925 And the common, the most common interpretation of this 1006 00:50:53,925 --> 00:50:58,513 is that it represents, it stands for the words Nero Caesar. 1007 00:50:59,890 --> 00:51:01,933 Okay, 1008 00:51:01,933 --> 00:51:06,021 not all scholars think that, but that's the majority take. 1009 00:51:06,021 --> 00:51:10,233 So again, if you write out the name Nero Caesar using Hebrew characters, 1010 00:51:10,233 --> 00:51:15,697 it comes out to 666 right now. Why? 1011 00:51:15,739 --> 00:51:16,823 Why does he say this? 1012 00:51:16,823 --> 00:51:19,117 Why doesn't he just say Nero? 1013 00:51:19,117 --> 00:51:21,286 Yeah. Well, I think a couple of reasons. 1014 00:51:21,286 --> 00:51:23,080 One, again, this is how this type of literature 1015 00:51:23,080 --> 00:51:26,083 tends to work, think of the Sibylline oracles, 1016 00:51:26,083 --> 00:51:29,127 where for some reason, even though it's describing 1017 00:51:29,127 --> 00:51:32,714 a whole list of emperors, Roman emperors that were known to the people, 1018 00:51:33,006 --> 00:51:36,176 it does it in a more cryptic fashion rather than just come out and say it. 1019 00:51:36,384 --> 00:51:42,432 It seems to imbue more symbolic meaning, a more theological significance, more 1020 00:51:42,432 --> 00:51:43,475 a sense of 1021 00:51:43,475 --> 00:51:48,105 this is kind of scary, but God knows what's going on, type of thing, right? 1022 00:51:48,563 --> 00:51:52,025 So I think that's one of the reasons, this is an enemy figure. 1023 00:51:52,025 --> 00:51:54,611 And so it's described more cryptically. 1024 00:51:54,611 --> 00:51:56,113 But I think also it's that 1025 00:51:57,155 --> 00:51:59,699 Nero himself is 1026 00:51:59,699 --> 00:52:03,036 simply a stand in for the head of the beast. 1027 00:52:03,036 --> 00:52:03,703 Right. 1028 00:52:03,703 --> 00:52:07,666 That this isn't supposed to be just the historical Nero and that's it. 1029 00:52:07,999 --> 00:52:10,669 Well that was my very next question was like, 1030 00:52:10,669 --> 00:52:13,880 well then that means this is locked to this specific piece of history. 1031 00:52:14,840 --> 00:52:18,677 And is this because there's so much going on about Rome? 1032 00:52:18,677 --> 00:52:22,139 But Rome as an archetype against God’s people say, 1033 00:52:22,430 --> 00:52:26,351 and Nero is a great example of that actually, like a really, really 1034 00:52:26,351 --> 00:52:30,772 horrible person who persecuted Christians, you know, like at an incredible level. 1035 00:52:30,897 --> 00:52:31,439 Right. 1036 00:52:31,439 --> 00:52:34,442 And he also, 1037 00:52:34,693 --> 00:52:37,362 some of the imagery that is spoken of here, 1038 00:52:37,362 --> 00:52:40,407 Nero had these weird legends associated with him. 1039 00:52:40,448 --> 00:52:44,661 Like he died, but some people claim that, no, he actually wasn't dead 1040 00:52:44,661 --> 00:52:47,706 or maybe he was dead, but he's going to come back someday, Right? 1041 00:52:47,998 --> 00:52:50,834 So he's like a great stand in for like the anti Messiah 1042 00:52:50,834 --> 00:52:54,129 because a lot of similar stuff that’s spoken of Jesus. 1043 00:52:54,129 --> 00:52:57,132 Right. He died. But will return or whatever. 1044 00:52:57,132 --> 00:53:00,343 There's various legends about Nero expectations 1045 00:53:00,343 --> 00:53:03,013 around this time that kind of like Elvis or something. 1046 00:53:03,013 --> 00:53:05,473 Maybe he's not dead or maybe he'll come back right. 1047 00:53:05,473 --> 00:53:07,809 And so he's perfect for this kind of thing, right? 1048 00:53:07,809 --> 00:53:10,562 Again, as an archetype. Yeah. 1049 00:53:10,562 --> 00:53:13,523 So because he was already gone by the time Revelation was written, 1050 00:53:13,523 --> 00:53:15,734 I was going to say he would have been dead by then. 1051 00:53:15,734 --> 00:53:18,695 So it’s not like the people were like, oh good Nero's, this stands for Nero. 1052 00:53:18,695 --> 00:53:19,196 Nero has gone. 1053 00:53:19,196 --> 00:53:20,822 That means I don't have to worry about getting marked by the beast. 1054 00:53:20,822 --> 00:53:21,781 No, no, no. 1055 00:53:21,781 --> 00:53:25,285 It's saying that the beast, Rome, 1056 00:53:25,744 --> 00:53:29,414 as a stand in for God’s, the power of Gods enemy, right? 1057 00:53:29,414 --> 00:53:32,500 And its head, its 1058 00:53:33,043 --> 00:53:35,587 human leader as symbolized by 1059 00:53:36,671 --> 00:53:37,505 Nero. 1060 00:53:37,505 --> 00:53:39,216 Right. 1061 00:53:39,216 --> 00:53:41,551 That is the beast, Right. 1062 00:53:41,551 --> 00:53:46,264 And then being marked by the beast means to be branded 1063 00:53:46,598 --> 00:53:50,352 with allegiance to that figure or that pattern of figures. 1064 00:53:51,102 --> 00:53:53,146 Right. 1065 00:53:53,146 --> 00:53:57,275 And this, the reason this is so powerful and important, I think, is that 1066 00:53:58,485 --> 00:54:01,655 it's again, it speaks to, just like the rest 1067 00:54:01,655 --> 00:54:03,114 the New Testament, revelation is not saying 1068 00:54:03,114 --> 00:54:06,076 something different from the rest of New Testament. It’s the same thing. 1069 00:54:06,076 --> 00:54:07,535 This speaks to our heart, That's the thing I hate most about 1070 00:54:07,535 --> 00:54:09,079 This speaks to our heart, That's the thing I hate most about 1071 00:54:09,829 --> 00:54:12,624 wondering about the mark of the beast being some piece of technology. 1072 00:54:12,624 --> 00:54:16,336 Oops, I just got the wrong credit card and now I'm going to hell or something. 1073 00:54:17,629 --> 00:54:19,506 That has nothing to do with one's heart. 1074 00:54:19,506 --> 00:54:22,509 But what John is talking about is where is your allegiance? 1075 00:54:22,801 --> 00:54:27,722 Are you living your life now marked by this, 1076 00:54:28,014 --> 00:54:32,435 by God's name on your head or the world system, name on your head? 1077 00:54:33,019 --> 00:54:37,774 And that's a really convicting thing because it's 1078 00:54:38,942 --> 00:54:41,945 those pressures from society. 1079 00:54:41,987 --> 00:54:43,196 I can make more money. 1080 00:54:43,196 --> 00:54:46,574 I can be successful if I give myself to 1081 00:54:47,701 --> 00:54:50,203 the power and pleasure of the markets, or 1082 00:54:50,203 --> 00:54:52,789 I can get my, sort of, 1083 00:54:52,789 --> 00:54:56,543 my tribe's policies in place if I give myself 1084 00:54:56,543 --> 00:54:59,546 to a certain political party as some of our people are doing. 1085 00:55:00,213 --> 00:55:02,090 Well, that is so ironic 1086 00:55:02,090 --> 00:55:05,093 because we were talking about that last night where 1087 00:55:05,302 --> 00:55:08,972 some of the political activism that we're seeing within the Anabaptist world 1088 00:55:08,972 --> 00:55:13,601 right now is coming from kind of this conspiratorial style of reading, 1089 00:55:13,935 --> 00:55:16,730 say, revelation, like, these are events that are happening right now. 1090 00:55:16,730 --> 00:55:19,316 And so we have to get involved in worldly politics 1091 00:55:19,316 --> 00:55:22,402 to help stop these horrible things that are happening... 1092 00:55:22,819 --> 00:55:23,236 whatever. 1093 00:55:23,236 --> 00:55:26,031 I mean, there's all kinds of ideas out there. 1094 00:55:26,031 --> 00:55:31,077 What you're outlining here is actually 180 difference of that. 1095 00:55:31,703 --> 00:55:34,039 So it's like people are actually reading this. 1096 00:55:34,039 --> 00:55:35,874 In your opinion, the reading is so wrong. 1097 00:55:35,874 --> 00:55:39,377 They're actually going totally the wrong direction of what John is saying here. 1098 00:55:39,627 --> 00:55:43,214 John is saying here what he says in his letters, don't love the world. 1099 00:55:44,049 --> 00:55:46,092 If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him. 1100 00:55:46,092 --> 00:55:48,303 I think he could have easily, just as easily said, 1101 00:55:48,303 --> 00:55:52,265 if anyone loves the world, you know, don't be stamped by the world. 1102 00:55:52,390 --> 00:55:55,518 If anyone is stamped by the world, the seal of the father is not on him. 1103 00:55:56,019 --> 00:55:57,604 It's that right. 1104 00:55:57,604 --> 00:56:00,607 But John is saying things like, 1105 00:56:00,607 --> 00:56:05,070 Without the stamp of the beast, you may be excluded from society. 1106 00:56:05,236 --> 00:56:07,781 You might be excluded from the marketplace. 1107 00:56:07,781 --> 00:56:08,406 Right. 1108 00:56:08,406 --> 00:56:11,326 And this takes different forms in different times. 1109 00:56:11,326 --> 00:56:14,454 But there were Christians a couple of centuries after this who literally 1110 00:56:15,163 --> 00:56:18,792 were commanded to burn a little pinch of incense to Caesar. 1111 00:56:19,167 --> 00:56:21,711 And then they would get a little certificate and they'd be fine. 1112 00:56:21,711 --> 00:56:22,170 Right. 1113 00:56:22,170 --> 00:56:24,881 And if they didn't, if they refused to do that, they'd be killed. 1114 00:56:24,881 --> 00:56:25,423 Right. 1115 00:56:25,423 --> 00:56:28,927 And for them, that is what it meant to be stamped by the beast. 1116 00:56:29,135 --> 00:56:32,055 Like, will I, just do this tiny little thing 1117 00:56:32,055 --> 00:56:35,016 that allows me to stay and buy and sell and do all this stuff. 1118 00:56:35,225 --> 00:56:37,560 But they read this text and they're saying, 1119 00:56:37,560 --> 00:56:40,688 they would say, no, like that would be, to be 1120 00:56:41,106 --> 00:56:44,651 placing my allegiance to the beast instead of the lamb. 1121 00:56:45,026 --> 00:56:45,652 Right. 1122 00:56:45,902 --> 00:56:49,656 And for us today, I think the pressures maybe are more subtle. 1123 00:56:50,323 --> 00:56:50,824 Right. 1124 00:56:50,824 --> 00:56:56,204 And that's part of the power of revelation is to imbue our everyday subtle 1125 00:56:56,287 --> 00:57:00,708 sort of life with this cosmic imagery that says what we think is just 1126 00:57:01,626 --> 00:57:05,255 politics or the markets or the pleasures of, 1127 00:57:05,797 --> 00:57:08,466 or temptations towards anything pornography, 1128 00:57:08,466 --> 00:57:11,594 sexual immorality, whatever it is, things are just like everyday things. 1129 00:57:12,011 --> 00:57:12,762 But revelation 1130 00:57:12,762 --> 00:57:15,849 with this powerful imagery says, No, no, no, that's the beast and the prostitute. 1131 00:57:16,724 --> 00:57:17,809 Where's your allegiance going to be? 1132 00:57:17,809 --> 00:57:20,270 Whose mark are you going to be stamped by? Because 1133 00:57:21,229 --> 00:57:23,398 you know where the story's ending, right? 1134 00:57:23,398 --> 00:57:26,151 With the judgment or a new creation and whose name you're stamped 1135 00:57:26,151 --> 00:57:29,154 with determines kind of where you end up? 1136 00:57:29,195 --> 00:57:32,198 Yeah, that makes it very relevant. 1137 00:57:32,699 --> 00:57:34,784 And so you're not taking. 1138 00:57:34,784 --> 00:57:38,413 So I've actually heard different ones where it's like, yeah, this is all future 1139 00:57:38,413 --> 00:57:39,706 stuff, future technology, whatever. 1140 00:57:39,706 --> 00:57:42,584 But then you also have other opinions where it's like, this is all historical. 1141 00:57:42,584 --> 00:57:45,670 He's only writing about this era of history that's way back there. 1142 00:57:45,670 --> 00:57:48,465 And it's not, you know, not for today, I guess, or whatever. 1143 00:57:48,465 --> 00:57:50,967 I haven't heard that one as much, but I've heard some people 1144 00:57:50,967 --> 00:57:51,843 kind of hint at that. 1145 00:57:51,843 --> 00:57:53,845 And you're saying, whoa, neither of those. 1146 00:57:53,845 --> 00:57:59,684 No, it's both Because this was written to all of God's people, right? 1147 00:57:59,684 --> 00:58:02,353 From the first Century to the 21st to the 31st 1148 00:58:02,353 --> 00:58:05,315 or however many centuries until Jesus returns. 1149 00:58:05,523 --> 00:58:07,650 Right. It's so that we conquer. 1150 00:58:07,650 --> 00:58:10,028 And this book is written in this 1151 00:58:10,028 --> 00:58:13,239 way, rooted in first century 1152 00:58:13,740 --> 00:58:17,619 Roman imagery and even way more than that, rooted in the Old Testament. 1153 00:58:17,744 --> 00:58:18,661 Right. 1154 00:58:18,661 --> 00:58:22,582 But speaking archetypally to the present 1155 00:58:22,790 --> 00:58:26,669 and then speaking prophetically to the future when Jesus returns. 1156 00:58:27,420 --> 00:58:29,422 So let's pivot on that a little. 1157 00:58:29,422 --> 00:58:32,592 You're saying it's so steeped in the Old Testament imagery 1158 00:58:32,967 --> 00:58:35,595 and then looking forward to the return of Jesus? 1159 00:58:35,595 --> 00:58:39,557 yeah, give us some examples there, because I'm guessing some people 1160 00:58:39,682 --> 00:58:42,393 listen to this, like, Whoa, okay, this is interesting, but like, now what? 1161 00:58:42,393 --> 00:58:45,146 Like, how do, how do I get into this text and actually, like, 1162 00:58:45,146 --> 00:58:47,023 what's some Old Testament stuff? What? 1163 00:58:47,023 --> 00:58:47,440 I don't know. 1164 00:58:47,440 --> 00:58:51,611 I mean, that's a huge, huge question, but give us maybe some examples of 1165 00:58:51,861 --> 00:58:54,656 what are some Old Testament pieces that will help us understand this. 1166 00:58:54,656 --> 00:58:56,699 Okay. So I can give you. 1167 00:58:56,699 --> 00:58:57,033 Yeah. 1168 00:58:57,033 --> 00:59:01,788 What's fascinating about revelation is that there are none or almost none, 1169 00:59:02,163 --> 00:59:04,874 no direct quotations of the Old Testament. 1170 00:59:04,874 --> 00:59:06,793 Which is surprising. 1171 00:59:06,793 --> 00:59:10,672 But what it has instead is just it's absolutely infused, 1172 00:59:11,214 --> 00:59:13,341 infused by the symbolism of the Old Testament. 1173 00:59:13,341 --> 00:59:17,136 And it would I mean, it takes it would take forever to kind of go through it. But 1174 00:59:18,137 --> 00:59:19,889 I think, that's an encouraging thing. 1175 00:59:19,889 --> 00:59:22,058 So like, some people might be like, my goodness, 1176 00:59:22,058 --> 00:59:24,852 revelation is in this alien genre now what do I do? 1177 00:59:24,852 --> 00:59:27,355 Actually, really 1178 00:59:27,355 --> 00:59:31,150 all you need to do is kind of study your Old Testament really well. 1179 00:59:31,609 --> 00:59:34,612 So it doesn't you don't necessarily have to have a, 1180 00:59:35,154 --> 00:59:38,616 you know, deep knowledge of Greek and Hebrew and things like that 1181 00:59:38,950 --> 00:59:42,453 so much as you just you need to read Isaiah, read Ezekiel, read Daniel, 1182 00:59:42,453 --> 00:59:46,791 read Exodus and start recognizing that John's picking up all this stuff. 1183 00:59:46,833 --> 00:59:49,877 So it has you can understand it pretty well if you have, if you just 1184 00:59:50,336 --> 00:59:52,714 sort of change, not everything about it. It's complicated. 1185 00:59:52,714 --> 00:59:55,800 We can see a lot of it if you come at it that way. 1186 00:59:57,427 --> 00:59:58,344 I guess one 1187 00:59:58,344 --> 01:00:01,347 thing I will, I mean, it's going to take a while, but 1188 01:00:02,432 --> 01:00:05,435 Revelation 21 and 22, 1189 01:00:05,560 --> 01:00:10,815 what we have is this amalgamation of Garden of Eden imagery 1190 01:00:11,316 --> 01:00:15,069 and temple imagery and the bride imagery. 1191 01:00:15,570 --> 01:00:15,820 Right? 1192 01:00:15,820 --> 01:00:18,865 All of those are themes from the Old Testament, the bride, as 1193 01:00:20,325 --> 01:00:21,576 the people of God, right? 1194 01:00:21,576 --> 01:00:25,538 Because God and Israel get married and then that's fulfilled in Messiah's 1195 01:00:25,538 --> 01:00:30,501 marriage to his renewed people the church and that's carried into here. 1196 01:00:30,918 --> 01:00:34,714 We have the temple imagery which is straight up, 1197 01:00:34,839 --> 01:00:37,800 you know, from Exodus but goes through Ezekiel because 1198 01:00:37,800 --> 01:00:42,055 Ezekiel 40:48 has this vision of a renewed, a new temple 1199 01:00:42,722 --> 01:00:45,642 that has the river of life flowing out from the middle of it 1200 01:00:45,642 --> 01:00:49,062 and trees of life on the side and God's presence flowing from it. 1201 01:00:49,312 --> 01:00:52,482 And that's what revelation is drawing a lot on here 1202 01:00:52,482 --> 01:00:54,484 when he speaks of the measurements of the city 1203 01:00:54,484 --> 01:00:58,404 and he speaks of the river of life flowing out of the middle of it and stuff, 1204 01:00:58,446 --> 01:01:00,156 he’s picking up Ezekiel. 1205 01:01:00,156 --> 01:01:03,451 But then things like when he describes the new Jerusalem, new creation 1206 01:01:03,451 --> 01:01:05,411 as a temple. 1207 01:01:05,411 --> 01:01:08,206 So I'll just give one example here. 1208 01:01:08,206 --> 01:01:10,708 He speaks of the city 1209 01:01:10,708 --> 01:01:13,711 being a cube shape, right? 1210 01:01:13,961 --> 01:01:16,881 And people kind of have drawn weird pictures of that and stuff. 1211 01:01:16,881 --> 01:01:19,258 But again, this is just Old Testament imagery. 1212 01:01:19,258 --> 01:01:20,593 There's only one other 1213 01:01:22,178 --> 01:01:22,929 cube shaped 1214 01:01:22,929 --> 01:01:25,973 structure in the Bible, and it's the holy of holies. 1215 01:01:26,808 --> 01:01:27,141 Right. 1216 01:01:27,141 --> 01:01:30,395 And so what John is, John is not telling you sort of 1217 01:01:30,395 --> 01:01:33,398 how much wallpaper they need or anything like that. 1218 01:01:33,398 --> 01:01:36,192 He's telling you that finally, 1219 01:01:36,192 --> 01:01:39,195 as the story of redemptive history 1220 01:01:39,529 --> 01:01:42,281 comes to its conclusion 1221 01:01:42,281 --> 01:01:45,284 because of Jesus death for his people 1222 01:01:46,035 --> 01:01:49,330 and because He’s finally removing wickedness from the world, 1223 01:01:49,956 --> 01:01:53,167 that finally he'll be able to live with his people 1224 01:01:53,918 --> 01:01:56,921 so fully and so completely that that one space 1225 01:01:57,588 --> 01:02:01,384 that was this contained space, where God most fully 1226 01:02:02,260 --> 01:02:05,471 dwelt among his people, The holy of holies, will now, 1227 01:02:05,722 --> 01:02:08,474 the whole of creation will be the holy of Holies, that God 1228 01:02:08,474 --> 01:02:13,479 and humanity will dwell fully without barriers again. 1229 01:02:13,730 --> 01:02:15,231 Right? Wow. 1230 01:02:15,231 --> 01:02:18,234 Yeah, that's interesting, because I've heard that interpreted as, 1231 01:02:18,568 --> 01:02:20,027 you know, it's a literal city. 1232 01:02:20,027 --> 01:02:22,447 It'll be such and such size, be this, that, whatever. 1233 01:02:22,447 --> 01:02:24,198 Okay, sure. But that doesn’t tell us anything helpful. 1234 01:02:24,198 --> 01:02:26,117 Well, that was always kind of my. 1235 01:02:26,117 --> 01:02:27,535 Yeah, I was like, okay. 1236 01:02:27,535 --> 01:02:30,204 I guess, I mean, that's kind of intellectually interesting, 1237 01:02:30,204 --> 01:02:32,457 I guess, but what you're outlining there is like, whoa, 1238 01:02:32,457 --> 01:02:34,709 the meaning there, it's a lot deeper, 1239 01:02:34,709 --> 01:02:37,545 And it's the fulfillment of the whole story of the Bible, right? 1240 01:02:37,545 --> 01:02:39,547 Because that's been the question, right? 1241 01:02:39,547 --> 01:02:43,718 When Adam and Eve fell, they get banished from the place, 1242 01:02:44,093 --> 01:02:46,929 the garden, the place where God and humans walked with each other. 1243 01:02:46,929 --> 01:02:47,555 Right. 1244 01:02:47,555 --> 01:02:50,433 The whole history of redemption, all of redemptive history is this. 1245 01:02:50,433 --> 01:02:54,479 There's this question of how do we get God to live with us again. 1246 01:02:54,854 --> 01:02:55,104 Right. 1247 01:02:55,104 --> 01:02:58,983 And that was, that happened with temples where God could dwell in their midst, 1248 01:02:58,983 --> 01:03:01,068 but not quite with them. Right. 1249 01:03:01,068 --> 01:03:04,697 And then Jesus claims to be the new temple presence of God 1250 01:03:05,615 --> 01:03:08,534 that enables eventually, through his death and resurrection, 1251 01:03:08,534 --> 01:03:11,537 all of us to become little temples through the spirit. 1252 01:03:12,330 --> 01:03:15,291 And then this is the end right? 1253 01:03:15,291 --> 01:03:16,125 There'll be no, 1254 01:03:17,251 --> 01:03:17,585 I saw 1255 01:03:17,585 --> 01:03:20,630 no temple in the city because its temple is the Lord 1256 01:03:20,630 --> 01:03:22,298 and the lamb like it's the direct presence of God. 1257 01:03:22,298 --> 01:03:25,301 The whole entire place is the holy of holies. 1258 01:03:25,301 --> 01:03:28,137 And so that's. 1259 01:03:28,137 --> 01:03:31,140 You know, John is saying to all of us 1260 01:03:32,141 --> 01:03:35,144 at the end, and through the spirit, 1261 01:03:35,311 --> 01:03:37,855 and look right after that, he says 1262 01:03:37,855 --> 01:03:40,191 they, the people who dwell in the city, 1263 01:03:40,191 --> 01:03:44,320 will be the ones they will see his face and his name will be on their foreheads. 1264 01:03:44,862 --> 01:03:48,157 So the issue here is persevere to the end, 1265 01:03:48,616 --> 01:03:51,828 live your life bearing the stamp of God's name on you. 1266 01:03:52,537 --> 01:03:55,665 And despite the pressure of persecution 1267 01:03:55,915 --> 01:03:58,918 or the allure of the world, 1268 01:03:59,710 --> 01:04:03,548 because a day is coming when God and humanity will dwell together 1269 01:04:05,550 --> 01:04:08,177 fully, you know. So 1270 01:04:09,720 --> 01:04:12,390 that's one example of Old Testament imagery in the text. 1271 01:04:12,390 --> 01:04:14,684 Yeah, that's so powerful. 1272 01:04:14,684 --> 01:04:17,687 It's almost feels like that's a nice conclusion. 1273 01:04:17,895 --> 01:04:21,399 Like, you know, to like, as you're saying, to tell the whole scripture, like it's 1274 01:04:21,399 --> 01:04:26,112 tying that theme together the whole way through, like the cube thing. 1275 01:04:26,112 --> 01:04:28,906 And, that imagery, you know, from the Holy of Holies, 1276 01:04:28,906 --> 01:04:30,116 I've never heard that before. 1277 01:04:30,116 --> 01:04:32,034 I've never seen that before. 1278 01:04:32,034 --> 01:04:33,953 Like, that's fascinating to me. 1279 01:04:33,953 --> 01:04:36,080 And it's beautiful. It's a beautiful book. 1280 01:04:36,080 --> 01:04:37,415 Right. So. 1281 01:04:37,415 --> 01:04:41,836 So out of this, as we kind of start bringing this to a close here, 1282 01:04:42,378 --> 01:04:43,421 what would be one thing 1283 01:04:43,421 --> 01:04:46,424 you would like our audience to take away from this interview? 1284 01:04:47,008 --> 01:04:51,220 That revelation teaches the same message as the rest of New Testament. 1285 01:04:51,220 --> 01:04:56,142 It tells the story of the Bible, the story of, it's centered in Jesus’ 1286 01:04:56,142 --> 01:04:57,143 death and resurrection. 1287 01:04:58,269 --> 01:04:59,812 It does it a different way. 1288 01:04:59,812 --> 01:05:04,358 But it's a call for all of us to see the present 1289 01:05:04,358 --> 01:05:08,446 and the future in light of God's, in God's perspective. 1290 01:05:10,072 --> 01:05:13,034 And yeah, dig into it. 1291 01:05:13,576 --> 01:05:16,203 There's great resources out there, there's great helps, 1292 01:05:16,203 --> 01:05:19,498 but dig in to the Old Testament, dig into it, expect it to 1293 01:05:20,958 --> 01:05:23,085 be full of, again 1294 01:05:23,085 --> 01:05:27,381 weaving the threads of redemptive history to its conclusion, and then live. 1295 01:05:27,590 --> 01:05:30,593 Again, It's a pair of glasses, not a code. 1296 01:05:31,969 --> 01:05:32,470 Yeah. Okay. 1297 01:05:32,470 --> 01:05:37,350 So that's a key, remembering that it's glasses, a way of like... 1298 01:05:37,558 --> 01:05:40,561 What you would, define that a bit like, instead of this, this code 1299 01:05:40,561 --> 01:05:43,814 of some crazy prophecies or whatever you're looking at is glasses. 1300 01:05:43,940 --> 01:05:45,816 Yeah. It's a way 1301 01:05:45,816 --> 01:05:49,862 of seeing the world, through a different lens. 1302 01:05:50,905 --> 01:05:53,991 So again, the things that I think are just everyday life 1303 01:05:54,533 --> 01:05:59,121 or the things I'm tempted to, the things I'm tempted towards, 1304 01:05:59,121 --> 01:06:01,582 I'm supposed to see the cosmic significance of, 1305 01:06:01,582 --> 01:06:06,087 supposed to see them from God's perspective and recognize that, again, 1306 01:06:06,087 --> 01:06:08,839 to use the mark of the beast versus the mark of God imagery 1307 01:06:08,839 --> 01:06:12,301 that I'm faced throughout my whole life with the temptation 1308 01:06:12,301 --> 01:06:14,261 to be marked by the beast instead of being marked by God. 1309 01:06:14,261 --> 01:06:18,808 These are not just little, if I choose to wed myself to a certain political party 1310 01:06:18,808 --> 01:06:22,812 because I think it will advance the cause of the Kingdom of God or something. 1311 01:06:24,689 --> 01:06:26,899 Revelation never pictures God's people doing that. 1312 01:06:26,899 --> 01:06:29,902 It pictures God's people bearing witness and suffering. 1313 01:06:30,236 --> 01:06:32,029 That's pretty much it, right? 1314 01:06:32,029 --> 01:06:35,866 And so, you know, you start asking yourself, am I actually risking 1315 01:06:36,534 --> 01:06:39,745 kind of being marked more by the likeness, 1316 01:06:39,745 --> 01:06:43,874 the image of the beast than by the image and likeness of the Lamb? 1317 01:06:44,875 --> 01:06:45,876 Right. 1318 01:06:45,876 --> 01:06:48,838 That's what I mean by glasses. Right. 1319 01:06:48,838 --> 01:06:52,717 So. I think that's a pretty profound, 1320 01:06:52,758 --> 01:06:55,761 that's a good one to end on And it's convicting to me. 1321 01:06:56,762 --> 01:07:00,057 So revelation otherwise is never really kind of that convicting. 1322 01:07:00,683 --> 01:07:02,685 Right. But this actually has a punch. 1323 01:07:02,685 --> 01:07:04,145 It's like, ooh, okay, 1324 01:07:04,145 --> 01:07:07,940 I see things in my life, the ways that I don't live this way, right? 1325 01:07:07,940 --> 01:07:09,942 So I think that's what John would want. 1326 01:07:09,942 --> 01:07:11,235 Wow. That's fantastic. 1327 01:07:11,235 --> 01:07:13,571 Well, hopefully out of this episode, 1328 01:07:13,571 --> 01:07:16,532 people have gotten some more tools and ways of thinking about these things, 1329 01:07:16,532 --> 01:07:20,703 but also just a real encouragement to get back into the Book of Revelation. 1330 01:07:20,745 --> 01:07:24,331 And as you're saying, those Old Testament pieces, too, you know, 1331 01:07:24,665 --> 01:07:28,294 that was the part that was really encouraging to me is, 1332 01:07:28,294 --> 01:07:29,670 you know, you don't have to go 1333 01:07:29,670 --> 01:07:31,505 take all these courses and read all these other books, like 1334 01:07:31,505 --> 01:07:35,092 just start reading the Old Testament again and see how it ties in with Revelation. 1335 01:07:35,134 --> 01:07:36,844 That's really powerful! Wow. 1336 01:07:36,844 --> 01:07:38,763 Thank you so much for sharing, Paul. This has been excellent. Thanks! 1337 01:07:40,139 --> 01:07:40,973 Thanks for listening 1338 01:07:40,973 --> 01:07:44,477 to this episode with Paul Lamicela on the Book of Revelation. 1339 01:07:44,560 --> 01:07:47,938 If you found this interesting, we've done several other interviews with him on 1340 01:07:47,980 --> 01:07:52,026 how to study the Bible and read it well, so you can find those links down below. 1341 01:07:52,193 --> 01:07:54,028 And of course, you can find all our content 1342 01:07:54,028 --> 01:07:57,573 over on our website at anabaptistperspectives.org 1343 01:07:57,782 --> 01:08:00,785 Thanks again for your support and for listening to this podcast. 1344 01:11:33,455 --> 01:11:37,042 And for us today, I think the pressures maybe are more subtle. 1345 01:11:37,710 --> 01:11:38,210 Right. 1346 01:11:38,210 --> 01:11:43,590 And that's part of the power of revelation is to imbue our everyday subtle 1347 01:11:43,674 --> 01:11:48,095 sort of life with this cosmic imagery that says what we think is just 1348 01:11:49,013 --> 01:11:52,641 politics or the markets or the pleasures of, 1349 01:11:53,183 --> 01:11:55,853 or temptations towards anything pornography, 1350 01:11:55,853 --> 01:11:58,981 sexual immorality, whatever it is, things are just like everyday things. 1351 01:11:59,398 --> 01:12:00,149 But revelation 1352 01:12:00,149 --> 01:12:03,235 with this powerful imagery says, No, no, no, that's the beast and the prostitute. 1353 01:12:39,021 --> 01:12:43,359 the goal is never to say I need to read something literally. 1354 01:12:44,026 --> 01:12:46,987 The goal is to say how does God 1355 01:12:47,404 --> 01:12:50,407 and the human author want me to read this? 1356 01:12:52,326 --> 01:12:54,787 the most important thing to say is whatever this is, 1357 01:12:54,787 --> 01:12:58,832 is the antithesis of being sealed with God's name. 1358 01:12:59,208 --> 01:13:04,088 Being somebody who says I belong, my allegiance is not to the beast. 1359 01:13:04,421 --> 01:13:05,839 My allegiance is to Jesus. 1360 01:13:05,839 --> 01:13:08,467 And that might mean I suffer a lot in this life, 1361 01:13:08,467 --> 01:13:10,427 but it means I'm going to be saved from final judgment. 1362 01:13:12,679 --> 01:13:14,890 That's the thing I hate most about 1363 01:13:14,890 --> 01:13:17,684 wondering about the mark of the beast being some piece of technology. 1364 01:13:17,684 --> 01:13:21,397 Oops, I just got the wrong credit card and now I'm going to hell or something. 1365 01:13:22,689 --> 01:13:24,566 That has nothing to do with one's heart. 1366 01:13:24,566 --> 01:13:27,569 But what John is talking about is where is your allegiance? 1367 01:13:27,861 --> 01:13:30,572 Are you living your life now 1368 01:13:30,572 --> 01:13:34,660 marked by this, by God's name on your head 1369 01:13:34,993 --> 01:13:37,996 or the world system, name on your head? 1370 01:13:39,873 --> 01:13:43,627 And for us today, I think the pressures maybe are more subtle. 1371 01:13:44,294 --> 01:13:44,795 Right. 1372 01:13:44,795 --> 01:13:50,175 And that's part of the power of revelation is to imbue our everyday subtle 1373 01:13:50,259 --> 01:13:54,680 sort of life with this cosmic imagery that says what we think is just 1374 01:13:55,597 --> 01:13:59,226 politics or the markets or the pleasures of, 1375 01:13:59,768 --> 01:14:02,438 or temptations towards anything pornography, 1376 01:14:02,438 --> 01:14:05,566 sexual immorality, whatever it is, things are just like everyday things. 1377 01:14:05,983 --> 01:14:08,735 But revelation with this powerful imagery says, No, no, no, that's 1378 01:14:08,735 --> 01:14:09,778 the beast and the prostitute.