The Book of Revelation is more like Psalms than the four Gospels. That was one of my very first breakthroughs when I began to study the closing book of the Bible with fresh eyes. John was not writing a sermon or documenting a movement as historians do. He wanted to describe a vision, stretching his brain to capture almost indescribable images. Try to imagine Jesus leading a charge across the heavens on horseback while balancing hundreds or at least dozens of crowns on his head (Revelation 19:12) and you instantly realize this is not literal stuff, here.
The gospels and epistles foretell Christ's return as a literal event, a certainty. But the reference in John's vision is figurative, a way of projecting the majestic power and heavenly authority of the returning savior. The fire coming from his eyes suggests judgment, not laser beams.
As conservatives, we tend to demand literalism from the Bible. No doubt, that’s a response to the ongoing efforts of liberal theologians to dismiss all the fantastic elements of the Scriptures as symbolism and primitive ignorance. But we can uphold the doctrine that the Word of God is inerrant without making the naive assumption it must be entirely literal as well.
When Jesus asserted no one can enter the Kingdom of Heaven without being born again, Nicodemus took him literally. (John 3:3) That was a mistake, and the Lord marveled at such a superficial response from a trained man of letters! The scholarly rabbi had missed the point. In the same way, nobody takes Jesus literally when we read John 6:53. His words about “eating my flesh” and “drinking my blood” came from the lips of a devout Jew for whom drinking blood was an affront to God. The kingdom's priority of fully ingesting his life into our lives as true disciples was the obvious point. Seriously, think about that.
The distinctions I learned to make while studying Revelation have brought other words of Jesus into sharper focus. Consider the text in Luke 17:6 where Christ tells his disciples a grain of faith the size of a tiny mustard seed would allow them to command a tree to pull itself up by the roots and replant itself in the sea. When our first response is to speculate how that could happen literally, we have already missed the point. There would be no practical or theological reason for making such demands of a sycamore tree or a mountain, for that matter. (Matthew 17:16) The context for that statement is a request from Christ’s inner circle: “Master, increase our faith.”
The size of one's faith is irrelevant. The Lord’s intended message is this: reliance on a relational God who is all-powerful, ever-present, all-knowing, and completely loving is a radical, life-changing discovery. When anyone takes that colossal idea seriously, even in the smallest, most basic way, all the rules change and the world looks completely different. Faith in Christ is radical and revolutionary; not one small part of a well-balanced life in the material realm. The moment such a cosmic insight is born in one’s heart and mind, it instantly unleashes an unmistakable, seismic transformation. The location of sycamore trees or a mountain is a small thing compared to the expansion of God’s eternal lordship into my surrendered heart.
In Revelation, the Lord is described as the Lion of Judah, but that doesn't mean he's the king of the beasts. It tells us he's the King of Kings.
For other insights into Revelation and the biblical principles of countercultural faith, check out my new book, The Epic Life: Revelation, Resistance, and Revival. It’s available through our website TimFloydAuthor.com, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever good books are sold.
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