How to Read Revelation & Avoid the Mark of the Beast — Paul Lamicela — Ep. 211

that's the thing I hate most about wondering about the mark of the beast being some piece of technology getting oops I just got the wrong credit card and now I'm now I'm going to hell or something um that has nothing to do with one's heart but what John is talking about is where is your Allegiance are you living your life now marked by this by God's name on your head or the world system the name on your head well Paul lella thanks for coming back on the G of Baptist perspectives podcast so uh we

're both here at at Faith Builders and over supper a few days ago we started an interesting conversation uh about a topic we've been wanting to do on this podcast for a very long time and that is how to read the book of Revelation and a lot of the surrounding stuff that comes with that so we're going to dive right into that very large topic and I'm very curious what all you have to say about um but yeah maybe just a short introduction about yourself and um and then we'll get into it yeah so I te

ach biblical studies I have a PhD in biblical Theology and I've gotten increasingly interested in and really excited about the Book of Revelation in recent years as I've um learned how to read it in light of the whole of the Bible and in light of its genre and stuff things we'll be talking about and realizing that it is a really powerful book that has so much much to say to us uh us today so I'm excited about I'm excited about some of some of these things okay so so when when I look at the The B

ook of Revelation and I read it I I tend to get very confused and you said something last night that that was really helpful for me and that is the the whole genre question of what is this book how does it fit into the New Testament and so forth and and the surrounding context uh yeah explain that a bit what what are we talking about when we look at Revelation what I guess broadly speaking what genre is this book yeah so you know the first thing to say probably is that when whenever we read a te

xt we automatically um we automatically get Clues from the text about how to read it right so when I teach about genre in class I I put up a list of VAR I put up examples of various types of text so I'll throw up something from a poem right and students automatically know just because they're familiar with this genre from our culture they see the words the line you know broken up into different lines they get get the feel of it it's not always easy exactly to pin down why but you know right beca

use you're like oh that's a poem and then a whole bunch of assumptions go into how you're supposed to read that then I put up another example from like an instruction manual or something and and instantly again you know how to read it or a fairy tale and and you know how to read it and the Book of Revelation is the same is the same way and it's it's meant to be read in a certain way the reason I think one of one of the main reasons we have in in our in our sort of modern Western Evangelical Chri

stianity including and I include you know anabaptism in that for purposes of this um the reason we have trouble with it is that it's a genre that we don't have any other examples of in our own culture so what I like to tell students is is that that's a that's a problem with us not with the text but that if you would go back to first century Jerusalem and go to a Barnes & Nobles in Jerusalem you would actually there would be a whole Shelf with apocalyptic texts and so you would it wouldn't be lik

e Revelation is just his own weird thing you would recognize as soon as you start reading oh oh yeah yeah yeah okay I know what this I know how to read this because I've read other texts like this um okay what like you're mentioning the apocalyptic genre so like that's that's where you're you're framing this book within the New Testament um yeah so maybe elaborate on that is that why this is so why this is so important is that meaning when I when I write something like the the genre I write it i

n determines how I expect the reader to get meaning out of it right so if I write a a children's story I would be really mad at you if you came back to me with like a whole list of critiques because you were trying to take it liter quote literally and and you're like it doesn't work work or something or you interpret it in ways I never intended and my what I would say to you is no this is a children's story you have to read it like a children's story right and and if you say well but I want I wa

s trying to read you literally I wouldn't be impressed I'd be I'd be annoyed because I would I would say you're actually not you're not taking me seriously like you're you're you're playing games with me meaning comes when when we when we read a text the goal is not to impose our own sort of ideas on how we should read it but to to submit ourselves to the way the author has has written it and and I think that's especially true when we're dealing with the Bible because there's not only a human au

thor John but also a Divine author and if we take seriously the fact that scripture is inspired by God then our only choice is to submit to the the ways that God has chosen to reveal himself and that means apocalyptic genre in this case right and so if we if we come I mean I want to preface everything when say mhm because for some people this is new uh just due to due due to Trends in the last 100 years in our country basically um and and dispensationalism and stuff but um to say that the goal i

s never to to say I need to read something literally the goal is to say how does God and the human author want me to read this and that's a question that has to do with genre so if I go to a parable of Jesus and I say I need to take this literally Jesus wouldn't be impressed right because he's like no that's a parable and so to submit to him in that in that area means I need to understand that he's chosen to re to speak in a parable and I need to interpret Parables the way parables are meant to

be interpreted if I go to a Psalm the same thing it's a poem and I have to interpret it as a poem because that's how David wrote it and that's how the Holy Spirit wanted it written right and the same with and the same with Revelation so I'm going to explain what how apocalyptic Works MH and but the reason why that's important is that again this is how John has chosen to communicate and this is how the spirit has inspired this you know intended this to be and to take this seriously and to submit

to it as scripture means to be sensitive to the way that God has chosen it to be written I.E apocalyptic literature okay so oh that makes a lot of sense and I know I'm I'm I can already see the comments that'll be coming in where people are like but but you're misidentifying the genre you're you know this that whatever I'm sure there'll be lots of lots of ideas floating around there but um I I think that a key question for some people would be what well how how come you're defining as apocalypti

c you know genre you know you know what I mean like because honestly when you were we were kind of batting this around over the last couple of days before we recorded this and you were saying some of that and I'm like okay I I guess I don't know I've never I've never heard that before or I've never thought about it quite like that I guess I kind of know that in my head but like what even is apocalyptic genre yeah let's start okay so let's talk about apocalyptic so apocalyptic um as a genre is we

we scholar talk about it as as basically consisting of kind of a a story a narrative in presentation where you have um a God's eye perspective of history of of the present and the future kind of together that's revealed usually by a by an Angel or some other kind of heavenly tour guide I call them usually right so it's somebody has so so it's it's this it's usually human who's having a vision of these realities that's mediated or explained by an Angel and that uses very colorful complex imagery

and symbolism to to do this um and the goal of such text is to give God's suffering people hope and and challenge in time of of difficulty so that's kind of the that's kind of the basic features um of how this and Central to that is these very you know very symbol Laden um usage of numbers um other kinds of symbols um representing other other things so that and now again Revelation isn't the only text we have like this so this this this way of writing and speaking kind of basically the Fountain

Head seems to be the Book of Daniel and he where he has again you can think of of some of these visions that he has where there's an angel that kind of shows him stuff or he has these these uh visions of beasts and representing kingdoms and um and all this sort of thing and the angel kind of tells him tell so that kind of is the Fountain Head but then what happens is in the next few centuries from from you know 300s or so BC all the way to 90 or around 180 we have a number a decent number of te

xts like this being written in Jewish non-Christian Jewish circles I mean many cases pre-christian Jewish circles so um we have we have we have a good number of examples uh that follow the same pattern and so the reason why people are maybe unsure or skeptical is is only that they have never read other apocalyptic texts as soon as you start reading them it's very obvious that that's what Revelation is okay so so you mentioned Daniel as as maybe the fountain header or a represent uh representing

piece which makes sense because when people go down this whole street of trying to figure out well what does it mean and all this stuff they are always it's like always going back to Daniel it seems like right like I've heard and Revelation is like full of Daniel imagery too so what are some of these other like apocalyptic texts yeah um that I'm assuming most of us I I I can't think of any that I've read personally no so um I mean there's there's a bunch four Ezra um the Enoch the enochic litera

ture oh so it's called first Enoch but there's it's a collection of a few of a few different apocalypses um those were big very big in the in the era of the New Testament U very popular I think they may have made the Jerusalem or the I don't know that wouldn't be the Amazon maybe it' be the Jordan jordan.com Jordan River or something bestseller list I don't know um and uh and then um and then other texts like these what I'm going to I have a few examples from the cilene oracles oh yeah please if

you have examples yeah so and what we'll see is that um what's going on here people like to Des people like to describe apocalyptic literature and Revelation as functioning similar in some ways to the way political cartoons operate in our culture where um you can and and think about this as people people say when you read when you open the newspaper I mean they don't I don't know if anyone does anymore but if in theory if someone would open the newspaper um there you can actually you can have a

n article maybe on the front page that describes some political event right blah blah blah blah blah then on the next page you can have the sort of the comics and that same event might be spoken of but in in political cartoon form right it's the same thing but two extremely different ways ways of coming about it the one uses just pros and kind of explains stuff in everyday language and then the other one uses imagery that you have to be really familiar with and you actually can't get anything ou

t of it unless you already know most of what it's trying to say because you have to know so for example I mean the two political parties in the United States are are symbolized by the Dunkey and the Elephant right and so if I'm drawing a political cartoon I just have to like dress up those characters in suits or something uh and and we know when you see a donkey or an elephant oh okay so the the Republicans are doing this and the Democrats are doing that right but you only know that if you're st

eeped in that symbolism that that is part of our cultural encyclopedia if you are from I don't know Asia and I've never heard about you don't know the symbolism you you read this cartoon and you're like is this a children's cartoon um is are these you know some sort of ancient Hindu gods that are making a comeback in the United States like what's going on like you know um so that we see all over Revelation but we also see that in these other texts and some of the same symb the same sort of carto

on tropes uh we see here that we see used in Revelation so I'm going to go through a few yes and when you start reading them you start you start thinking if especially if you I mean if you know Revelation decently you start going like wait I've read I I know what this is talking about so and again just to just to just to reiterate this is from um like you're saying 300 BC on up through like 100 AD era yes so so this so siine oracles is a collection of of texts that are written over a span of a a

long time and some of them are Christian uh these are not the this from number siine oracles 5 is Jewish um which is important because I if you if I gave you examples from Christian texts then that would probably be drawing on Revelation so that would not be appropriate background L you know but the so these we believe are this this we believe is written probably between 70 and 130 ad so we're talking right at the same time John's writing Revelation which makes it extra special right because it

shows what's in the air and what you know and what John's familiar with in the culture the cultural context the yeah the cultural encyclopedia as we call it right okay yeah okay so here's a few here's a few examples of features tropes images that we see here that I think are relevant to reading this so um we have um what this text has this long section where it goes through um the leader the the the Emperors and and such of Rome but it never refers to any of them by name it just hints at what t

heir first letters of their names are by using numbers so here it says in C noral 5 after many there's another yeah after many princes after warlike peoples and after infants Children of the flock Dev deving Beast they will be the first prince who will sum up twice 10 with his initial letter now what are the infants Children of the flock devouring Beast first of all do you know no okay I mean you you will know as soon as so this is this is a cartoon image just like I mean I'm using that just lik

e um if I would use the elephant to represent the Republicans the infants Children of the flock devouring Beast so a flock devouring Beast is a is a is a wolf right okay and these are infants who are children of wolf mhm who's that oh it's ramulus and Remis the mythical founders of Rome oh wow I mean which you're familiar with that yeah oh wow okay I see that right but it's just using so it doesn't it's not saying Rome it's it's just it's just telling you the it's using the the little image the

icon almost of the founding myth of Rome right yo okay so so basically after after Rome begins after these infants ramulus and Remis Children of the flock devouring so myth for those who don't know is that Rome was founded by these twins R well actually it was by one of them after he killed his brother I think but um there were these twins ramulus and Remis that were abandoned by their mother apparently and suckled by a She Wolf and kind of raised by a wolf right and they then you know start Rom

e so after this happens there will be the first prince of apparently Rome who will sum up twice 10 with his initial letter he's like okay and then it said so it keeps going explains he will have his first letter of 10 so that after him and then after him will reign whoever obtained as initial the first of the alphabet so what in the world is going on here whose number will sum up twice who will sum up twice 10 with how do you sum up 10 with a letter yeah so in the ancient world we don't have num

erals to represent uh numbers right the that's kind of a later Arabic kind of thing which was one of the best inventions of all time probably I asked my students how would you like doing long division with with using letters instead of numbers it's terrible right but so what you do instead is you have a system whereby every letter stands for a number uh and so you know the first several letters might stand for the first several numbers but then you'll have other later letters in the alphabet tha

t stand for 20 or 30 or 100 or things like that okay so if you live in a culture that that does that right then you're you're GNA start playing little games with this because when you see people's names you're gonna also know recognize those characters as numbers and you can always do little math calculations in your head oh man yeah okay I see that yeah and there would always be these kind of I'm you can imagine there being these kids probably boys of a certain age that would just annoy Everybo

dy by referring to people by their numbers and stuff like that right um but but anyway this this is what this is called gatria the use of um kind of studying or thinking about playing with words or names especially um with their numbers so this happens um and this happens not just in literary texts but there was a we we have evidence of this in graffiti from the ancient world and I think this is this is awesome um but I think it was in Smyrna from the 2 Century ad so this is one of the places th

at this The Book of Revelation was sent to right because one of the seven churches oh right right yeah and archaeologists uncovered a a grao where some you know second century young guy had spray painted or whatever they I don't know how they spray did it back then but they spray painted on on some wall I love the girl whose number is 1,085 or something like that right and he wasn't talking about her phone number but but he was talking about that her the the letters of her name add up to this th

ing and so he probably has like half the girls in Smyrna like trying to calculate is this me you know which is just fantastic but all that goes that is amazing but it goes to show this type of thing is is common right and so in apocalyptic literature yeah this type of thing is is is Big because numbers unlike in other types of literature in apocalyptic numbers are always symbolic of something right you just have to know what the numbers stand for okay so which makes a lot of sense because you ev

en just glance through Revelation and there's numbers all over the place there are and they always they're they're significant numbers yeah they they stand in for something yeah so in this case he go he he speaks of uh Caesar as uh beginning with the number the number 10 right and then because Julius Julius Caesar is the I is uh stands for the number 10 right um and then and then he refers to the one after him as initi being Augustus the person uh with the first letter of the alphabet so that's

just one example of how this and this text goes on and on like talking about the next number of Emperors all with the number of their initial letter instead of ever saying their their names interesting so we have Roman emperors who are children or S descendants of this Beast right that are all referred to by the number of their name right well that's interesting because this is starting to already sound like Revelation isn't it yeah right yeah where where John says that the there a mark of the b

east which is the name of the Beast or the number of its name and you're like wait I've read stuff like that here right so that's one example another example is how these texts will speak of Rome as Babylon why well I think the reason is that um there there were only two Nations that ever destroyed Jerusalem and destroyed the temple and they were Babylon and Rome okay that makes yes that makes a lot of sense and so when and so especially as you get to the you know texts that were written after t

he destruction of Jerusalem in ad70 it's going to be so natural to think of Rome as the new Babylon yeah oh absolutely that okay that makes that makes so much sense yeah and so by again by overlaying Babylon by speaking of Rome as Babylon almost like a cartoon image again yeah you you pick up and invest what's going on in the present with all the meaning and symbolism of the story in the Old Testament and that's kind of tying in with what Daniel would be saying in some ways right he was writing

in Babylon like he was a captive in Babylon as well okay and if you're a Christian like John then Rome has even more significance as Babylon because Rome also has this eschatological significance in that it was in part responsible for the crucifixion of the Messiah right oh right and so Rome for you isn't only the city that the the nation sort of the Empire that just destroyed Jerusalem but it's also stands in for the ultimate the ultimate adversary of God and God's people because it is this nat

ion that this people these leaders that crucified Jesus right and so whatever happens in the future you can any all of God's enemies the power the forces the powers the political powers or whatever that oppose God can always be thought of as Rome yeah in a sense because Rome is the the beginning of the powers that stood against and crucified you know persecuted Jesus so it adds that layer of mhm of uh thing there so in this text um it says when after the fourth year and interesting the fourth ye

ar here is equivalent to Daniel's three and a half times um so it's thinking of that okay so after the fourth year a great star shines which alone will destroy the whole earth because of the honor uh which they gave to the posidon of the sea now posidon is a is a chaos Monster right and and here um this great star is destroying um this this sea the Sea Dragon the sea monster which is actually the same thing that Revelation is trying to say in Revelation 21 when he says in the New Creation The Se

a will be no more right it's not that PA is anything it's not that John has anything against C's but that the C in in this context represents chaos and and that sort of thing right so here it's spoken of as a as a sea monster Poseidon of the sea um and in Revelations just spoken of is a sea so uh this great star comes which will destroy the Earth a great star will come from Heaven to the wondrous sea Mediterranean presumably and will burn the deep sea and Babylon itself and the land of Italy bec

ause of which many holy faithful Hebrews and a true people perish now we'll burn so this the star we'll talk about in a minute what stars represent but the star will come it's not a flaming ball of gas in this in the apocalyptic but a star St comes from heaven and burns the deep sea and Babylon itself and the land of Italy it's clearly not talking about the Babylon that's over you know over over here it's speaking of Rome right it's the Babylon in the land of Italy but it's speaking of it as a B

abylon right um and and I mean in Revelation we have the same there's a lot of Babylon imagery but it's it's intertwined also with Rome imagery you know he John does exactly the same thing so one more example of this here um when Italy produces a great Marvel for men what is this great Marvel that Italy is producing it's not pizza yet um a murmuring of infants by an unpolluted spring in a shady cave Children Of A Flock devouring Beast this is Romulus and Remis again okay so okay so basically it'

s this is this crazy way of saying um when Rome starts right who when they have become men in other words when Rome has reached maturity they will cast down headlong many who have Shameless Spirit on seven strong Hills both number 100 so when Romulus and Remis grow up in other words when Rome kind of reaches its power they will cast down headlong many who have Shameless Spirit on from Seven strong Hills so they're going to do a lot of wreak a lot of Havoc from these or on these Seven Hills and i

t says both both of these infants number 100 which the letter R Romulus and Remis stands for 100 oh okay okay I was getting yeah I was like what is the 100 thing yeah exactly but it's going back to the number of the the the number representing the first letter of their name yeah so now you're like wow that's that's complicated well maybe but it would be that's actually not any more complicated than a modern political cartoon but wouldn't this also I'm just totally speculating here but if if they

didn't have you know Mass printing presses for example you had to encode this in ways to make it easy to remember is this just a way to make it easy to remember stuff like with extremely vivid imagery like that and encoding information into it or is this just this is just a style that it's it's it makes it it gives you a different a different feel right because it's not it's not pretending to provide information as much as it is to remind embattled people that despite the fact that things seem

chaotic that God is still Sovereign over it he has a plan for it um he's got things under control and the future can is known to him and can be hinted at to us and um and that sort of thing so it's it's it's meant that way yeah that's just interesting because again to our modern ears all of this seems pretty bizarre and maybe that's why there's so much Fascination around Revelation now you know it's just like what is this so the seven strong Hills okay what's that what is isn't Rome built on Sev

en Hills or something okay and so and so it's just like if I say you know talk about all the corruption in the windy city right well if you you know we know the windy city is a stand in for Chicago yeah right which is terribly which is very corrupt but um if I say the Big Apple it's New York right if I say the city on Seven Hills it is Rome yeah right it's again it's just another it's another Trope that you are supposed to know um now what's again what's really interesting about this is if we go

to Revelation just really quick here you have have the same imagery used yeah I was going to say that sounds familiar right yeah it's it's used in here somewhere it is so in Revelation 17 uh verse five on her forehead this is this the prostitute which which picks up Old Testament so I I we're talking about all this genre stuff what what John is doing is is in this genre he's pulling almost everything out of the Old Testament Revelation just absolutely full of Old Testament okay okay the Old Tes

tament stories Old Testament imagery it's all coming to its climax in this book so the prostitute um on her forehead was written a name of mystery and what is her name Babylon the great mother of prostitutes and Earth's Abominations so she's this prostitute is called Babylon and and already if you're reading this text in this century and you're familiar with you you know this probably refers to Rome right uh drunk with the blood of the Saints the blood of the martyrs of Jesus remember this is li

ke after Nero so you know oh that's a really good point stuff is happening just for context when was neero Emperor roughly uh he was it was before Revelation was written what are the exact years like in the0 the yeah the 60s sounds right y because I just remember read you know knowing that when Paul was writing like the book of Romans you know NRA would have been the current Emperor for ex he and he was executed under him yeah exactly yeah Nero had him executed so a really bad person yeah he he

did a lot of things against the TR okay FAS good context okay so then um when I saw her oh okay so he so he kind of talks a littleit about this and then verse 9 this calls for a mind with wisdom okay so it's like John's like think about this think about the imagery here MH the seven head oh so so she's sitting on a beast with seven heads I think I I I should have said that the angel said to me why are you marveling I will tell you the mystery of the woman and and of the Beast with seven heads an

d 10 horns that carries her so this prostitute Babylon is sitting on this this seven-headed Beast uh the Beast that and I always tell people don't ever make a try to make a movie about Revelation cuz it's imagery that works in literature but as soon as you start just depicting it on a screen it's really creepy right very weird yeah very weird uh the Beast that you saw was and is not and is about to rise from the bottomless pit and go to destruction the Dwellers on Earth whose names have not been

written in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world will Marvel to see the Beast because it was and is not and is to come this calls for a mind with wisdom okay what are the seven heads of the Beast the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sat you're like ding oh oh right dead giveway oh wow okay so and now that was Revelation 17 what verse is that verse n so you have the you have the prostitute named Babylon sitting on the seven heads which are seven mountains Rome right

it's it's obviously this whole whole image is speaking of Rome but but Rome again not in in a limit in a way that's limited to just the historical Rome I think Rome is representative of the forces the powers that stand against Jesus and his people and then it says uh the seven heads are also seven Kings five of which have fallen one is the other uh has not yet come so they also represent the the kings of the Emperors of Rome certain sequence of them right so I mean that that's just the same thi

ng that's the same thing that we have in this text right yeah I I'm I'm really seeing how genre yeah is is a big deal here I have one more example and this is about how Stars you know we you've heard a lot of weird you hear a lot of weird stuff from the last 50 years of people think reading Revelation Where Stars falling from the sky it's all about um almost pictured as the literal as like astronomical stars like crashing down which of course doesn't work right you can't have a third of the star

like each star is bigger than the and it just doesn't work um but that's not that's that's just not what Revelation is talking about um so here again in siine oracles 5 I saw the threat of the burning Sun Among the Stars and the terrible Wrath of the Moon among the lightning flashes the stars travailed in battle God bade them fought for over against the sun long Flames were in strife and the two-horned rush of the moon was changed Lucifer fought mounted on the back of Leo Capricorn smoked the a

nkle of the young Taurus Taurus deprived Capricorn of his day of return so it keeps going about these constellations and stuff fighting the strength of the mighty Day star burned up Aquarius Heaven itself was roused until it shook the fighters in Anger Heaven cast them headlong to the Earth accordingly stricken into the BS of ocean they quickly kindled the whole earth and the sky remains starless so this pictures the cosmic the the stars and and such not not as balls of gas but as sort of heaven

ly beings kind of angels right that fight in heaven right there's war in heaven um and and then Heaven casts cast these fighting Stars angels to to the Earth right he like wow that I heard I know I've heard that right from Revelation yeah okay so huh um in Revelation and there's other examples of this that I that unfortunately uh from other texts that we can't um go through now but in Revelation we have we have this text so actually we should have known this from Revelation chapter 1 M because R

evelation 1: 20 um there there is the the Seven Stars and the Seven golden lampstands right the beginning of the book and it actually says in Revelation 1:20 as for the mystery of the Seven Stars that you saw in my right hand and the Seven golden lampstands the Seven Stars are the Angels of the seven churches and the Seven lampstands are the seven churches so it makes it explicit that stars are angels but then Revelation nine um the fifth angel blew his trumpet and I saw a star falling from Heav

en to Earth and he was given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit right the star falling is not a star as we think of stars but it is an angel right just like these fighters in in this text or in Revelation 12 the Beast his tail sweeps down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the Earth um and in Revelation 6 we have stars and uh and and the sun kind of crashing down to earth and the and the sky sort of Vanishing just like like uh just like in this text so stars represent and th

ere's other texts not sub oracles that that talk about this a lot more too but stars are representative of angels so when we we see stars falling from the sky star like the the Dragon's Tail sweeping down stars that follow him this is speaking of and Cosmic for Powers evil powers or or good powers in various cases um so again another example of of how there's so much overlap yeah whoa okay so so to so to back it out on the genre question a little bit Yeah so which again seems so foundational to

to all of this I have always heard a very literalist interpretation of Revelation for lack of a better term because I think it will make more sense to the audience but basically what Tim Le outlines in the whole Left Behind series which are gargantuan popular if that's the right way of phrasing it I mean just absolutely massive runaway bestsellers and that kind of kicked off a whole genre really back to genr of po pop culture um in Christian um fiction around all this end time stuff and the trib

ulation and the Rapture and the whatever you want to just the whole works so that would have been what was that like mid 90s and that is still very alive and well today and that was been that would have been what I was used to hearing quite a lot in in different places I've been um it seems like that's very common it's common yeah in pop culture just pop culture but also of course the anti Baptist world is is not immune from it you know it feels like there's this fixation with following the news

and is it happening is it happening it's the end of the world you know all that stuff um I would love to hear you respond to that because I I got kind of disillusioned with the whole thing it felt so shallow or like it didn't feel like it fit and and I actually just simply stopped reading Revelation as a result which is now now that I think about I mean that's kind of sad you know it's very sad it's very sad no think that that's happened to a lot of people in our generation I mean I went throug

h a phase like that too because you get so like you just get so like I don't know a bad taste in your mouth from um kind of the whole the sort of read the newspapers and try to figure out what all the stuff is oh yeah and they've been doing it for like 30 something years you know and then it's always you know and then time they like oh wasn't quite right and then and people debate all these crazy terms and you're like whatever so you just ignore it um but what I I'm really passionate about sayin

g no Revelation needs to be rehabilitated rehabilitated um it it has so much to say and this is why we spent so much time talking about genre was that as soon as we realized no no no this is not as it is a weird text but it's weird for completely different reasons than maybe some of us grew up thinking it was weird for it's not weird because it's talking about you know tanks and nuclear warfare it's weird because um it was written in in in a this ancient ancient genre but that is good news for u

s because that means that um what we need in what it does for us it's it's not a code but it's a pair of glasses that we're supposed to view our lives in the world um John wrote it John wrote it to people in the first century ad expecting them to understand it and to order their lives accordingly and that's the goal of apocalyptic it's not supposed to it's not try it's not some nostradam style sort of secret code into the future it speaks of how God will climactically be victorious in the future

but it's meant as John himself says the point of this is to overcome like he says this in all of the letters to the churches to the one who overcomes and then and then when he says that he he usually pairs it with some other piece of imagery that that shows up in the rest of the book right I'll make him a pillar in the temple of God I will stamp on his forehead the new the name uh you know that sort of thing he will not be part of the Judgment things like that so these embattled churches these

churches who are faced with I I think there are two dangers in Revelation that that John wants us to to avoid and that is the the fear of of persecution that that the Beast kind of represents right the the the the scary threat of of um of persecution on various levels and then the Allure of the prostitute right and both both of those both of those are are are one of the same one and the same right it's the The Prostitute sits on the Beast right it's they're both Rome but two aspects right one is

one is the way that that the political forces or whatever can come against Christians and and kill them persecute them take away their businesses whatever uh the other is the way that economic wealth the this a lore of social um approval um things like that can can kind of Allure us to get into bed in a sense with the prostitute right and those are the two those are the two dangers that that Revelation is is warning us that John is saying you need to be people who conquer in other words who who

stay faithful to the true wait for the you know as as the true bride who's waiting for the you know for the marriage supper of the Lamb so stay away from the Allure of the world which is nothing other than the lust of the flesh the lust of the eyes and the pride of life and don't be terrorized by the threat of persecution don't let that cause you to um stop following Jesus mhm and so in in this all this imagery that Revelation is is using is meant to that's what it's meant to get us to do right

and I think a lot of the looking at newspapers and trying to figure out like what piece of technology this very that's actually a distraction from and it it actually can keep us from what from evaluating our hearts against what this what this imagery is telling us right it could almost could could it it could it result in um yeah like you're saying a distraction and then totally miss the point and and almost let ourselves off the hook of what this is actually us absolutely it can be a cop out b

ecause it could be like well as long as you know it puts the Beast it turns the Beast into sort of Russia or something like that right which is which is far away we I think we've all heard you know a bunch of times and you know or or certain events that oh well that's that's going to happen at some point in the future so then that tends I think you'd mentioned this last night as well when we were chatting about this but um it it tends to turn Revelation into this future thing that doesn't really

apply like right here and now because oh well it's talking about something in the future and so maybe that's some of the fixation with so many people trying to figure out oh what's happening in our lifetime which we've been hearing that for 60 years whatever it hasn't happened and Revelation Revelation speaks and this is way apocalyptic works it speaks of the present and the future kind of together okay so Revelation is speaking I think all the stuff about tribulation about the Beast about the

prostitute this is all stuff that's happening in John's day and continuing to happen now and I think Revelation does have a climax in the future when Jesus returns judges his enemies sets up you know brings about the new heavens and new earth and so there sure I'm not saying there's no future implications I'm not saying that there will not be another iteration of the Beast and the prostitute and whatever in the future but it's going to be PR it'll be precisely that it'll be the last in a series

it won't be something categorically different from what we're experiencing now and John himself says this outside of Revelation where he says many Antichrist have already come into the world right and so whatever the final iteration is it's a it's just a final iteration in the pattern that's interesting because you might even talk about the Antichrist I mean so many people turn into a categorically different event you know like this is going to be like a really bad person like this is going to b

e completely different than before you know and so then there's always right but John's thinking of things like in some cases maybe even false teachers in the church and in other cases he's thinking of Emperor Nero right so he's it's it's an anti- Messiah it's it's any powerful figure or influential figure that opposes the reign of Jesus so so again I'm kind of anticipating some of the comments we'll get where people will be like yeah but that not you're not taking the Bible literally for what i

t said this is you know and again you kind of touched on this with the genre question but people kind of get get bent out of shape about that like well but if you just start reading the Bible symbolically then so many things go out the window like how do you how do you resp me in I I again it's about it's a question of reading the way John and and God intends us to read not about literalness or otherwise that's just the wrong question to ask but I'll also say that the people who read Revelation

sort of this more dispensational way are being extremely symbolic in their reading as well that's that that's a good point yeah there is there are no there are no tanks or um nuclear warfare or modern technology in the Book of Revelation period it's is not there MH so if you say that things represent that you're just using you're just saying it's symbolic it's more a question of what is the symbolizing and some people are choosing to to read it into a present day right environment and you're sug

gesting that that's not really the case no it's not right yeah so so you can't nobody reads this you can't read it literally it's clearly full of symbolism and everybody no matter how you slice it everyone's people who say oh the mark of the beast maybe it's this latest piece of technology there there's nothing literal about that reading like way nothing okay so I feel like we have to I mean you know Mark of the Beast right like we have to talk about that briefly right because I think that could

be let's use that as a case study of a particular passage in Revelation and for a little bit of context and I think this is slowly um going out of favor I guess but this whole fixation with it's a microchip or it's a whatever it's a chip in your credit card it's you know all it's a vaccine whatever it is people don't like gets poked into you it's like that's what it is you know um and again I've heard this in so many different forms for years and years and years of my life and to the point wher

e I was just like you know what I don't even care anymore because it's just like this is just I don't know I don't know it's just it's so confusing and people are telling me all these different things but all of the interpretations that I was hearing were it will be some kind of literal thing at the end of time where Christians will have to choose you know will they get this Mark with this microchip this whatever um I love to hear your opinion on this so this is important because it is and and t

o our to our younger crowd I think it's important to say the mark of the beast is actually really important thing to think about it is very high stakes right you it you don't you don't want to get the mark of the beast like it's bad news so um to the older or to the to maybe I shouldn't divide it that way but um with to the dispensational style reading of the text um it's hugely important but it's not important in the way it's not in important in the way that it was thought to be with oh am I go

ing to get tripped up by a chip or something but it is very high stakes and I think again I think that speculation on pieces of Technology actually can be a copout and can cause us to stop wondering whether or not we have been marked by the Beast so let's look at it really quick yeah yeah so what's fascinating is that the mark of the beast happen comes side by side with another Mark um so it's in Revelation 13 is where we have um verses 11 to 18 the mark of the beast so um this second beast caus

es all both small and great to be marked on the right hand or the forehead so that no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark what is the mark what he says it's the name of the Beast okay or the number of its name now what do you think of when you think of the name or the number of its name let's say you were John's first readers yeah oh yeah well in that case it be like start finding it's gria yeah yeah remember the it says it's the name of the Beast or the number right it's like it's someth

ing's name okay and then and then Paul John says this calls for wisdom let the one who has understanding calculate the number of the Beast for it's it's somebody's it's a number a person's number and his number is 666 but then the very next thing that that John does chapter 14 ver1 then I looked and behold on Mount Zion stood the lamb and with him 144,000 representing the fullness of God's people who had his name and his father's name written on their foreheads and I Heard a Voice from heaven li

ke the voice of of many Waters sounding and whatever and then verse 9 another an angel shows up saying if anyone worships the Beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or his hand he will receive wrath so it's it's the the mark of the name of the Beast is side by side with the mark of the name of God on your forehead right nobody ever interprets that as though it were a piece of I don't know Godly technology or something right oh yeah okay okay I I see what you're doing you cannot

separate them right you cannot se you cannot ever talk about the mark of the beast as though it's a standalone thing it's not it's Revelation is full of these these dichotomies right there's um there's the lamb there's the Beast there's the prostitute and the bride there's you know there's the Judgment New Creation there's there's the Seven Hills of Rome and there's Mount Zion right it's it's all of that and there's a stamp on humans of the name of the Beast or the name of the Lamb like would it

be appropriate to think of this almost like a branding like like like a old style like or a slave brand which would happen in the ancient world and he's basically putting he's he's contrasting these two off of each other okay well now so if you're if you're stamped with the name of of Jesus or God this means for one thing that you will you will be exempt from Judge the final judgment right and this actually comes from Ezekiel there's this Mark of God that God's people are stamped with to avoid

judgment so he's pulling that straight from E do you know where that is in Ezekiel just if anybody want Ezekiel it's Ezekiel 9 okay I'm going to want to read that afterwards that's agree I hadn't thought of that it's fascinating um okay okay so what so what it means though is that yes you're you're stamped that means you belong to it believes you belong to Jesus right that's what it means it's a branding it's it's saying I I belong to Jesus I'm a Jesus person I'm I bear his name so just like Isr

ael was supposed to Bear God's name in the Old Testament or like the high priest had on his forehead holy to Yahweh um all of God's people are those who are stamped with allegiance to the lamb okay so so I'm really curious here why did John put a number with this Beast Mark and say 666 not 666 but 666 it's 666 so that has dripped up people a lot especially again I'm thinking more here in America in the last in the last few decades but um but so again the first the most important thing to say is

whatever this is It's the antithesis of being sealed with God's name being somebody who is says I belong my allegiance is not to the Beast my allegiance is to Jesus and that might mean I I suffer a lot in this life but it means I'm going to be saved from final judgment means I I live as somebody who like a priest who Bears God's name so this is the opposite so this one would think implies um being stamped by allegiance to the the world right as represented in the Beast and specifically um John d

oesn't mention any specific name but he mentions this number and the the common the most common interpretation of this is that it represent it stands for the words Nero Caesar okay um not all Scholars think that but that's the majority the majority take um so again if you write out the name Nero Caesar using Hebrew characters um it comes out to 666 right now why why does he say this why doesn't he just say it's Nero yeah um well I think couple reasons one again this is how this type of literatur

e tends to work think of the siine oracles where for some reason even though it's describing a whole list of king of Emperors Roman emperors that were known to the people it does it in a more in a cryptic fashion rather than just come out and say it it seems to imbue more symbolic meaning um more theological significance more a sense of this is kind of scary but God knows what's going on type of thing um right so I think that's one of the that's one of the reasons this is an enemy figure and so

it it's described more cryptically but I think also it's that Nero Nero himself is is simply a standin for the the head of the Beast right that this isn't supposed to be just okay the historical Nero and that's it well that was my NE very next question was like oh well then that means this is locked to this specific piece of history but no you're is this because there's so much going on about Rome but Rome as an archetype against God's people say and Nero is a great example of that actually like

a really really horrible person who persecuted Christians like at an incredible level right and he also so he also some of the imagery that that is spoken of here Nero had some these weird Legends associated with him like he he died but some people thought claimed that no he actually wasn't dead or maybe he was dead but he was going to come back someday oh so he's like a great standing for like the anti- Messiah because oh wow a lot of similar stuff that's spoken of Jesus right he died but will

return or whatever there's there various legends about Nero expectations around this time that kind of like Elvis or something maybe he's not dead or maybe he'll come maybe come back yeah and so he's perfect for this kind of thing right again as an archetype yeah so okay because he was already gone by the time Revelation was written I was going to say he would have been dead by so it's not like the people were like oh good Nero's this stands for Nero Nero's gone that means I don't have to worry

about getting marked by the Beast no no no it's saying that the Beast Rome as as standing for God's the power of God's enemy right um and its head it's it's human leader as as symbolized by Nero right that's that is that is the Beast right and then being marked by the Beast means to be branded with allegiance to that figure or that pattern of figures mhm right mm and this the reason this is so powerful and important I think think is that um it said it's again it speaks to just like the rest of

the New Testament Revelation is not saying something different from the rest of the New Testament it's the same thing this speaks to our heart that's the thing I hate most about wondering about the mark of the beast being some piece of technology getting oops I just got the wrong credit card and now I'm now I'm going to hell or something um that has nothing to do with one's heart but what John is talking about is where is your Allegiance are you living your life now marked by by this by God's na

me on your head or the world system name on your head and that that that's that's a really convicting thing because it's it's the those the pressures from society um I can make more money I can be successful if I give myself to um the power and pleasure of the markets or I can get my sort of my trib's um policies in place if I give self to a certain political party as some of our people are doing well that is so ironic because we were talking about that last night where some of the political act

ivism that we're seeing within the anti Baptist world right now is coming from kind of this conspiratorial style of reading say Revelation like oh these are events that are happening right now and so we have to get involved in worldly politics to help stop these horrible things that are happening at whatever I mean there's all kinds of ideas out there what you're what you're outlining here is actually the the 180 difference of that right so it's like people are actually reading this in your opin

ion they're reading this so wrong they're actually going totally the wrong direction of what John is saying here right and John is saying here what he says in his letters don't love the world if anyone loves the world the love of the father is not him I think he could have easily just as easily said if anyone loves the world you know don't be stamped by the by the world if anyone's stamped by the world the Seal of the father is not on him it's that right but John is saying things like um without

this stamp of the Beast you may be excluded from society you might be excluded from the marketplace right and and this takes different forms in different times but there were Christians a couple centuries after this who literally were commanded to burn a little pinch of incense to Caesar and then they would get a little certificate and they'd be fine right and if they didn't if they refused to do that they'd be killed right and for them that is what it meant to be stamped by the Beast like will

I will I just do this tiny little thing that allows me to stay and buy and sell and do all this stuff but they read this text and they're saying they would say oh no like that would be to be to to be placing my allegiance to the Beast instead of the Lamb right and and and for us today I think the pressures maybe are more subtle right and that's part of the power of Revelation is to is to imbue our everyday subtle sort of life with this Cosmic imagery that says what we think is just politics or

the markets or the pleasures of or Temptations towards anything pornography sexual immorality whatever it is think those are just like everyday things but Revelation with it powerful imagery says no no no that's the Beast and the prostitute where's your Allegiance going to be whose Mark are you going to be stamped by because you know where the story is ending right with the Judgment or new creation and whose name you're stamp with determines kind of where you end up yeah that that makes it uh ve

ry relevant and and so so you're not you're not taking so I I've actually heard different ones where it's like yeah this is all future stuff future technology whatever but then you also have other opinions where it's like well this is all historical he's only writing about this era of History that's way back there and it's not you know not for today I guess or whatever um I haven't heard that one as much but I've heard some people kind of hint at that and you're saying whoa neither neither of th

ose no it's both I mean it's it's it because this was written to all of God's people right from the first century to the 21st to the 31st or however many centuries until Jesus returns right it's so that we conquer and this this book is written in this way using rooted in first century Roman imagery and even way more than that rooted in the Old Testament right but speaking archetypally to to the present and then speaking prophetically to um to the Future when Jesus Jus returns so let's let's pivo

t on that a little um you're saying it's it's so steeped in Old Testament imagery and then looking forward to the return of Jesus um yeah give us some examples there because I'm guessing some people listening to this like whoa okay yeah this is interesting but like now what like how do I how do I get into this text and actually learn what's some Old Testament stuff what what I don't know I mean that's a huge huge question but give us maybe some examples of what are some some Old Testament pieces

that will help us understand this okay so I can give you yeah what's fascinating about Revelation is that there are none or almost none no direct quotations of the Old Testament oh that's interesting which is surprising but what it has instead is just it's absolutely infused absolutely infused by the symbolism of the Old Testament and it would I mean it takes it would take forever to kind of go through it but but I think that's an I mean that's an encouraging thing so we were like some people m

ight be like oh my goodness if Revelation is in this alien genre now what do I do actually really what you all you need to do is kind of study your Old Testament really well it's it doesn't you don't necessarily have to have a you know deep knowledge of Greek and Hebrew and things like that so much as you just you need to read Isaiah read Ezekiel read Daniel read Exodus and start recognizing that John's picking up all this stuff so it has you can understand it pretty well if you have if you just

sort of change I mean not everything about it it's complicated but you can see a lot of it if you come out that way um one I I guess one thing I will I mean this this take a while but Revelation 21 and 22 what we have um is this amalgamation of Garden of Eden imagery and Temple imagery and the bride imagery right all of those are themes from the Old Testament the bride as um as the people of God right because God and Yahweh and Israel get married and then that's fulfilled and messiah's married

to his his renewed people the church um and that's carried into here we have the temple imagery uh which is straight up you know from Exodus but goes through Ezekiel because Ezekiel 4048 has this vision of a renewed a new Temple that has the River of Life flowing out from the middle of it and trees of life on the side and God's presence flowing from it and that's what Revelation drawing a lot on here when he speaks of the measurements of the city and he speaks of the river of life flowing out of

the middle of it and stuff he's picking up Ezekiel but then things like when he describes the New Jerusalem New Creation as as a temple so I'll just give one example here he speaks of the temp of the city being a cube shape right and people kind of have drawn weird pictures of that and stuff but again this is just Old Testament imagery um there's only one other there's only one other Cube shaped structure in the in the Bible and it's the holy of holies right and so what John is John is not tell

ing you sort of how much wallpaper they need or anything like that he's telling you that finally as the story of Redemptive history um comes to its conclusion because of Jesus death for his people and because he's finally removing wickedness from the world that finally he'll be able to live with his people so fully and so completely that that one space that was this this contained space where where God most fully dwelt among his people the holy of holies will now the whole of creation will be th

e holy of holies that God and Humanity will dwell fully uh without barriers um again right wow yeah that's that's interesting because I've heard that interpreted as you know oh it's a literal City It'll be such and such size be this that whatever okay but that doesn't tell us anything helpful well that was always kind of my yeah I was kind of like okay I I get I mean that's kind of intellectually interesting I guess but what you're outlining there is like oh whoa the the meaning there gets a lot

deeper right and it's the Fulfillment of the whole story of the Bible right because that's that's been the question right when Adam and Eve fell they get banished from the place the G the place where God and humans walked with each other right the whole history of redemp all of Redemptive history is this this this question of how how do we get God to live with us again right and that was that happened with temples where God could dwell in their midst but not quite with them right and then Jesus

claims to be the new Temple presence of God um that enables eventually through his death and Resurrection all of us to become little temples through the spirit and then this is the end right there will be no they I saw no temple in the city because it's Temple is the Lord and the lamb like it's the direct presence of God the whole entire Place wow is the holy of holies and so that's that you know John is saying to all of us um at the end and through the spirit and look right after that he says

um they the people who dwell in the city will be the ones they will see his face and his name will be on their foreheads so the the issue here is persevere to the end live your life bearing the stamp of God's name on you in despite the pressure of persecution or the Allure of of the world because a day is coming when God and Humanity will dwell together um fully you know so that's one example of Old Testament imagery in the text yeah oh that's that's so powerful it almost feels like that's a nic

e conclusion like you know to like as you're saying to the to the whole scripture he tying that that theme together the whole way through um like the cube thing and that that imagery um you know from the holy of holies I've I've never heard that before I've never seen that yeah before that's that's fascinating to me yeah and it's beautiful it's a beautiful book oh yeah wow so so out of this um as we as we kind of start bringing this to a close here what would be one thing you would like our audi

ence to take away from this interview um that Revelation teaches the same message as the rest of the New Testament it's it's tells the story of the Bible the story of it's centered in the in Jesus death and Resurrection um it does it a different way but it's it's a call for all of us to see the present and the future in light of God's in God's perspective um and yeah get dig into it um there's great resources out there there's great helps but dig into the Old Testament dig into it expect it to u

m be full of again weaving the threads of Redemptive history to its to conclusion and then live in again it's a it's a pair of glasses not a code okay so that's that's a key remembering that it's a that it's glasses a way of like what you would Define that a bit like instead of this this code of some crazy prophecies or whatever you're looking at as glasses yeah it's a way to it's a way of seeing seeing the world through through a different lens so the again the things that I think are just ever

yday life or the things I'm tempted to the things I'm tempted towards um I'm supposed to see the cosmic significance of supposed to see them from God's perspective and recognize that that again to use the mark of the beast versus The Mark of God imagery that I'm faced throughout my whole life with the temptation to be marked by the Beast instead of be marked by God these are not just little if I if I choose to Wed myself to a certain political party because I think it will advance the cause of t

he kingdom of God or something Revelation never pictures God's people doing that it pictures God's people W bearing witness and suffering that's pretty much it right and so you know you start asking yourself am I actually risking kind of being marked more by the likeness the image of the Beast than by the image and likeness of the Lamb right that's what I mean by glasses right so wow well that's I think that's a pretty profound that that's a that's a good one to end it on right there to me yeah

yeah it is it's where Revelation other ways is never really that convicting yeah right but this actually has a punch it's like ooh okay I see things in my life in ways that I don't live this way right so I think that's what John would want wow that's fantastic well hopefully out of this episode um people have gotten some more tools and ways of thinking about these things but also just a real encouragement to get back into the Book of Revelation and and as you're saying those Old Testament pieces

too oh you know that that was the part that was really encouraging to me is um you know you don't have to go take all these courses and read all these other books like just start reading the Old Testament again and seeing how it ties in with Revelation that's really powerful wow thank you so much for sharing Paul this has been excellent thanks thanks for listening to this episode with Paul lella on the Book of Revelation if you found this interesting we've done several other interviews with him

on how to study the Bible and read it well so you can find those linked down below and of course you can find all our content over on our website at anabaptist perspectives.org thanks again for your support and for listening to this [Music] podcast