Revelation

I have been watching Chuck Missler on God TV commenting on the book of Revelation. He obviously takes the futurist line of interpretation when dealing with this difficult book, a book that has puzzled even the most learned of men. Even such a good classical and biblical scholar as John Wesley admitted that he had little understanding of Revelation before he came across the works of Bengel(1742), the renowned Lutheran exegete.

What is futurism? It assumes that the book of revelation deals almost exclusively with the End Times and is a manual of instruction for the saints as they see the Rapture and the Tribulation approaching. Surprisingly enough, this mode of interpretation, though extremely popular in charismatic and evangelical circles today, has not got an ancient lineage. It came to prominence in the 1830s and 1840s. Before that time it had only been seriously considered in Catholic circles. This came about in an interesting way. During the Reformation the reformers used passages in Revelation very effectively when combating the Papacy. The monstrous persecuting city that was drunk with the blood of the martyrs is described as the city that sits on seven hills (Rev. 17:9) It did not need great scholarship to realise that this was Rome. Thus Luther strongly stated that the Antichrist was the Pope. This was extremely embarrassing for the Catholic Church and a number of scholars strove to move the nexus of the book either into the remote apostolic past (the preterist position) or to the extreme future (the futurist position). A Jesuit scholar, Francisco Ribera, wrote a very learned 500-page-commentary, in 1590, on Revelation advocating the futurist mode of interpretation. According to Ribera, the 1260 days and 42 months and 3 1/2 times of prophecy were not 1260 years, but a literal 3 1/2 years, and therefore none of the book of Revelation had any application to the Middle Ages or the papacy, but to the future, to a period immediately prior to the second coming, hence the name Futurism. His book was not well received for some reason.

But the major influence on the futurist cause was the publication in 1811 by another Jesuit, Francesco Lacunza, of a fresh and important commentary on the Apocalypse. Like Ribera's book this was not popular with the church authorities and was banned in 1819. This was probably because he ignored the writings of the apostolic fathers when interpreting the text. This book gained a major influence among those interested in the End Times when Edward Irving, one of the most charismatic and eloquent of the preachers of his day, taught himself Spanish and translated and published Lacunza's work in 1827.

That year was a seminal year; the Powerscourt conferences on eschatological matters started in Ireland and among those who attended was the most influential advocate of pre-millenarianism in the nineteenth century, John Nelson Darby. Most of the ideas of Chuck Missler and Hal Lindsay originate in the powerful and fertile brain of this enormously influential man. His ideas gained enormous influence when the Schofield Reference Bible was published exactly one hundred years ago. What sort of man was Darby? And what are the other schools of interpretation when dealing with the book of Revelation? Those questions require another post.