WORDS YOU NEED
TO
KNOW WHEN IT COMES
TO THE
END
OF THE
WORLD
Since Revelation is primarily an apocalyptic text, how are we to understand the letters to real-life local churches at the beginning of the book of Revelation? y Are these epistles to be read simply as introductory letters for the seven original recipients of this apocalypse? y Or do they represent examples of churches that exist in every age? y How do the letters connect to the visions in the rest of the book? Might they even be historical retellings of the entire story of Christianity, encoded in the form of letters? Here’s one way to think about the apocalyptic texts that are found between the bonded-leather bindings of your Bible: y Road maps for the future? If you see Daniel, Revelation, and other apocalyptic texts mostly as road maps for the future, you are probably taking what’s known as a futurist view. y History textbooks about the past, present, and future? If you think apocalyptic texts prophetically provide information about a long period of history— perhaps the history of Christianity or some other significant epoch—that’s a historicist approach. y Allegories for all times and places? If all the visions seem to you to be allegories of struggles that God’s people in every age, that’s closer to an idealist view. y Long-lost newspapers from the past? If you see the biblical apocalypses as books that mostly tell about current events from the times when the texts were written—something like a lavishly-written newspaper report—that’s a preterist perspective. It’s important to notice that none of these four approaches completely excludes the others. Partly because the biblical writers mixed literary genres, nearly every interpreter of the end times draws from more than one of these approaches when reading biblical apocalypses and end-times prophecies.
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