Despite numerous readings, detailed study, and prayerful contemplation, the book of Revelation remains, for me, one of the more challenging portions of Holy Scripture. In spite of all the commentary written about this book through the centuries—much of it presented as the unequivocal explanation of the intricately complex symbolism contained in John’s vision—I am able to rest in the fact that the Lamb is already victorious.

Today’s portion of Revelation is loaded with powerful images John recorded for all of us who were to come after him so that we might be blessed. (Rev 1.3)  While correct understanding, right interpretation, and appropriate application are proper goals when we read, study, and contemplate God’s written word, too often such intentions have occasioned harsh theological disagreements; polemical contests that continue to fracture the Church.  Whenever the book of Revelation is under consideration, both eschatological arrogance—laying claim to special knowledge of all that underlies the symbolism of John’s vision, and hermeneutical hubris—revealing an over confidence in one’s own interpretive system can become mere cudgels; fratricidal weapons used to ‘win the day.’

Whether we set up our interpretive tent within the more literal (that is, Antiochene), or the more allegorical (the Alexandrian) camp of Biblical interpretation, for those of us who know Jesus as Savior and who seek to yield ourselves to Him as Lord, there remains one central, unmistakable, and profoundly encouraging message in John’s Revelation: the “Lion that is from the tribe of Judah…has overcome” (Rev 5.5); this is the same One about whom the angels at the throne said “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain.” (Rev 5.12)

So whether John’s imagery clarifies or confuses; whether the ‘four horsemen of the Apocalypse’ are victory—war—famine—death from the past, in the present, or of the future (literally or figuratively); whether there will be only 144,000 souls among the remnant of Israel or that the multitudes saved from all the other nations of the earth are literally beyond count and all sealed as ‘bond-servants;’ whether seven literal trumpets will initiate both cosmologically-disruptive and woefully-destructive events upon the earth, it remains true that the Lamb is victorious.

It is amazing to me that in the aftermath of all that is described in chapters 6-9 of John’s terrifying vision there will remain unrepentant survivors.  Regardless of the interpretive variety surrounding what John did record, the tenth chapter begs the question, “What did the ‘seven peals of thunder’ reveal that John was not allowed to write?”  We know only that at that point, there is to be ‘delay no longer;’ and that ‘the mystery of God is finished.’ (Rev 10.6-7)  Still, the mercy of God remains, as we see in chapter 11 through the two witnesses who, though martyred in Jerusalem, will be raised back to life and called up into heaven.  John tells us that those who survived the earthquake that followed ‘gave glory to the God of heaven.’  The ‘Lamb that was slain’ is both merciful and victorious.  Take heart, friends!