Learning to Read Prophecy

There are many methods of interpreteting Revelation used by various traditions and organizations. Here are four major schools of thought. If you are familiar with these groups, you may be able to quickly understand, when conflict arises, where your fellow Christian is coming from:

THE PRETERIST METHOD:
PRETERIST, from Latin, meaning ‘past’)

This method is used typically by liberal scholars. In it, the imagery of Revelation is interpreted to represent events and people that had happened and were happening in John’s day, usually Nero Caesar’s day.

In this interpretation, the Beast or the Dragon may represent certain elements of government—the Roman Senate or Emperor, for instance. Likewise, the Harlot may represent an unfaithful city, perhaps Jerusalem, and Babylon might represent the kingdom of Rome.

Typically, this method makes little or no allowance for further prophetic interpretation. The events in Revelation related only to John’s day. They do not relate to the future or our own day. This is a common attitude among preterists, but not all preterists embrace this part of the approach.

THE IDEALIST METHOD

Under this method of interpretation, the message of Revelation is an ideal one; the book is a book of ideals, representing the enduring struggle between good and evil, between light and dark, between God and Satan.

This method is quick to see Revelation as revealing an infinite God who is mighty to save, an all-powerful Savior. This method typically focuses on the moral, ethical, and spiritual truth found in Revelation. While this is a good method in some ways, often specific imagery is over-generalized and becomes generic and meaningless within a Christian context.

For instance, there is no single Judgment Day under this interpretation—Judgment Day occurs whenever any great moral issue is decided.

THE HISTORICAL METHOD

The historical method of interpretation is the most popular and most common method in today’s church culture. Held in high esteem by most church Reformers, this method was also especially popular at the turn of the 20th century, and countless volumes of interpretation have been published utilizing this method.

The historical method holds that every event in the book of Revelation is a prediction of a future event that would happen to the Church. For instance, the breaking of the seals on the book represent the breaking of the Roman empire; the plague of locusts is a picture of the “Mohammedan” invasions of the Christian empire.

Most historical interpretations also teach that Revelation has not been entirely consummated, that we are somewhere in the process of fulfilling these revelations.

Often, historicists view the fist part of Revelation—concerning the churches at Ephesus and so on—as symbolically representing seven ages of the church.

These interpreters have worked out various calendars and timelines predicting and explaining major events, and have proposed many different solutions to different symbolic interpretations. Disagreement between historical interpreters is widespread and common; someone, somewhere, is wrong. There are so many proposed interpretations and conflicting visions that not everyone can be right. And perhaps no one is.

THE FUTURIST METHOD

Sometimes allied with historicists, futurists interpret Revelation to be a book of future prophecy only; separating the futurist from the historicist is the futurist’s different interpretations of everything after the end of the third chapter of Revelation. While the futurist may or may not believe that the seven churches in Asia represent the seven church ages, the futurist certainly believes that the remainder of the book refers specifically to future events that will take place in a period typically called the “Great Tribulation.”

This type of interpretation is often accompanied by a rough timeline, where the order of coming events is given, but not their exact dates and times. While the futuristic method to a fair extent acknowledges symbolism in the book of Revelation, this approach takes most of the book as literally as possible.

This approach has drawbacks as well as strengths. For instance, while the futurist method treats Revelation as a legitimate source of future prophecy, variations in interpretation are widespread and divisive. Churches have been split or destroyed based on slightly different interpretations of when the rapture will occur, when the millennial reign will begin or end, or what exactly the locusts will do to the earth.

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Of course, these are just four major schools of thought. I will look at at least one more school of thought before we begin Revelation itself.

Some Christians (me) fall into more than than one, two, or even three of these catagories; these schools can overlap, but they serve as a handy reference point for conversation.

Justin Staller - Moderator
justinstaller@yahoo.com

Search the scriptures--for in them ye think ye have eternal life:
They are they which testify of me--and ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.
John 5.39-40