Jesus’ Letters to the Churches Unlock Revelation - Paul Lamicela

And so let's say you were the church at Pergamum, right? And you get this, and you pay special attention to your letter, right? And you're like, "Whoa, this is a letter from Jesus." And then you read the rest of the book with your letter in mind.

And when you see stuff, you're going to see lots of stuff in the rest of the book of Revelation that points back to your letter. And when you see that, you're going to be like, "Ooh, wow. Yeah. Ouch." You know, you feel convicted again, or you feel like comforted again, or whatever.

Well, Paul LaMicella, welcome back to the Anabaptist Perspectives podcast. We've done a number of episodes on the book of Revelation. Some of them are probably out by now. We're not quite sure what the order will be, but this is one where we're going to take a step back and give us some frameworks to better understand this somewhat confusing and complicated book. We're going to link to some of the previous ones down below if you want more context. But let's just jump right in and give us some context to work with. I think you have some frameworks that we're going to start with here. Yeah. So in the episode that we released a few months back on Revelation, we talked to some big picture, like how to read Revelation in terms of its genre.

We talked about apocalyptic literature and stuff like that. And that's really foundational, I think, to reading Revelation. But there's three other pieces, like not so much theoretical frameworks, but more three parts of the book of Revelation itself that I think can help to anchor us as we read what is a swirling and sometimes, well, always complicated book, right?

And so I just want to talk about what I think is a good lens to read Revelation through, which is the letters to the churches, and then a story right in the smack in the center that I think can help us as a good anchor point as we're getting confused and go back to that in the middle and say, "This is grounding all the swirling stuff." And then the way the book ends. One of the things that makes Revelation tricky is that, as many scholars now recognize, the book of Revelation isn't a fully sequential. It's not just a linear sort of, "This happens after this happens after this happens" scheme.

There is a general trajectory to the book. So obviously, the book ends with new heavens and new earth and final judgment, like a fire, whatever. And it has to go that, you know, there's a progression. But at the same time, it's also recursive.

What I mean is, like, some of the judgments, some of the scenes in an earlier part of Revelation are then kind of repeated in a different way later in the book. And so for some people, it can be kind of confusing. You see scenes throughout the book that look like this is the final culmination of all things, and everyone's rejoicing in front of God and the Lamb, and the kingdom has come. And then the next chapter is like, and then we start these new judgments. You're like, "Oh, I thought the book..." But that's because there's a cyclical nature to the book as well as a trajectory. So it's a style of communicating that's like giving us extra reinforcement and then coming back around and then like, "Okay, hit this again from another angle."

Yeah, kind of. Yeah, basically. And you know, we see things like this happen in the Old Testament prophets. Yeah. And actually, I think a great example of this is the first epistle of John, right, which is a head spinner. If you try to follow it linearly, I mean, it's not a story, but it's like, how do you know that you know God? Well, if you love the brothers and sisters. And this is how we know we love the brothers and sisters. If we believe in Jesus, and you're like, "Okay, all right." And then how do you know you believe in Jesus? Well, if you keep God's commandments. And what is his commandment? That you love one another.

And you're like, "Oh, wow." I'm just like going around in circles, right? But it's meant that way because it really reinforces the interconnected nature of those things. And it's a way of writing. And the book of Revelation works somewhat similarly. So, for example, you have these three cycles of judgments. You have the trumpets, the bowls, and the seals. Yeah. What is that? I'm sure we got a lot of questions. And people are like, "What is this?" Right. And so it starts out in the early chapters of Revelation with the seals, right? Because there's this scroll representing God's purposes for the rest of redemptive and judging history. And only the Lamb can open the seals. And so he does.

And as he tears off each seal to open the scroll, it represents one sort of burst of judgment in a sense, right? And these judgments are not complete, right? So in some examples, he opens one of the seals and a quarter of the earth or the quarter of the sun is impacted or something. It's representing tribulation, suffering, trouble, but not ultimate judgment. It's not the whole sky and sea blotted out, right? It's part of it. Because it's basically taking a fraction there to... To represent this, essentially. Yeah. And I think these different seals are symbolic of the type of judgment, disasters, or whatever that characterize this entire age as we wait for the final judgment.

It's like a little burst of God's displeasure or judgment. Not final, but it's this whole time of judgment and tribulation, if you want to say that way. From this whole time from the destruction of Jerusalem all the way to Jesus' second coming.

But in the sixth seal, it kind of gets worse, right? And the moon becomes blood, the sun gets blotted out, and the sky and the stars all fall to the earth, and it's like, "Whoa, everything seems to be getting destroyed." And then the seventh seal ends really with what seems to be the end, right? Like right before the seventh seal, you've got this song that the Lamb in the midst of them shall be their shepherd. But we're still in kind of the beginning of the book as well. Like you're in Revelation 7 reading this, and it's like, "Well, there's 20-something chapters." Yeah, it seems like we're kind of hitting almost the end. Oh yeah, it's very confusing to me.

Yeah. And then the seventh seal opens, and the seventh seal is actually the launch of the seven trumpets, which is the next cycle of similar judgments. Okay. Right? So the Lamb opens the seventh seal, and there's silence, and such, and then the seven angels start blowing their seven trumpets. And these trumpets do a similar thing, right? The first angel blows his trumpet, and there's hail and fire and blood. A third of the earth is burned up. You're back to just fractions of creation being destroyed and things like that. But you do notice that it ramps up a little bit. Some of these judgments seem a bit worse than the seals, right?

So it's recursive. And then the trumpets end with the seventh angel blowing his trumpet, and there's a loud voice in heaven, this is chapter 11, saying, "The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and his Messiah, and they shall reign forever and ever."

It seems like, "Yay, the kingdom is here," right? But so... Sorry, what chapter? Or where are we at? Chapter 11. Chapter 11, so several chapters. It's the end of the trumpet cycle. Okay, and it's like, "Wait, that sounds familiar. That sounds like chapter 7, where we were just talking about the seals, essentially." Yeah, exactly. Though this is more explicit. The other one was like, "Yeah."

And so... Oh, this is interesting. And then you have later on. So you're like, "Whoa, there's two cycles kind of talking about the same judgment." It's basically tribulation, distress, prefigurations of that judgment that Jesus talks about, final judgment that Jesus talks about in like Matthew 24. This will be a time that's characterized by wars, rumors of wars, earthquakes, famines, all sorts of things. But then that cycle culminates in a picture of final judgment. And then there's a new cycle that goes back and kind of covers the same thing, but a bit worse, right? And then that final culmination of the seven trumpet cycle maybe is a bit more explicit as well.

And then, so you're like, "This happening twice?" No, it's just a depiction of, so within each cycle, within the seals, you see judgment, judgment, judgment, culminating final judgment. And then in the next, in the trumpets, you see judgment, judgment, judgment, final judgment.

But if you put those both together, you also have its own progression, right? You have judgment getting worse and culminating. So within the seals, you have an internal trajectory of judgments and then a culmination. But then if you zoom out and say, "Wow, if I put the seals and the trumpets together, I see the same progression, but on a macro scale," right? Because the trumpets are worse than the seals, in a sense, right? These are not meant to be taken literally as, you know, these seven things are going to happen, and then these seven things are going to happen. It's a cyclical depiction of the same basic realities. And then you have the seven bowls at the end, which are the last and final sort of installation of that same judgment, judgment, judgment, final judgment.

And where does that end? So we had chapter 7, then we're in chapter 11, and then where's this latest cycle, I guess you could say? The seven bowls ends kind of takes us right to chapter 16, which announces the destruction of Babylon.

And then the next chapters are about the fall of Babylon and the final judgment and new creation. So it kind of takes us out right there. So what's confusing about these is that it's easy to want to line up the trumpets, the bowls, and the seals sort of separately and say, "We put these on this, these are going to happen in these years, followed by these, followed by these." But instead, we should say, "No, it's like a spiral that goes like this and like this and like this," right? Literarily. Whoa, yeah. Okay. I'm starting to see that. That gives a lot more of a, almost like an arc through the book that you could track.

Not track with counting numbers and dates and figures and things. You're saying it's not intended to be that way necessarily, but a literary arc. Literary, exactly. But also looping. Exactly. It's like a, "New, new, new." He is a technical. That's fascinating though, because I'm thinking about there's other points in scripture where that happens too, right? Like where you kind of have maybe one of the prophets, they'll get it, and then they'll loop back around and get it again. Exactly. When you were saying it, 1 John is that way. A lot of this. Yeah, Isaiah likes to do this kind of thing. Exactly. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. I'm guessing if you were aware of this style of presenting material, it probably shows up in a lot of places, and I can see how that could, what is this, a way of reinforcing the material, helping it be more memorable?

Is it just a style of presenting things? I think it's a number of things. You know, we don't ask all of those questions about genres that we're familiar with, right? So like if someone from the 32nd century or whatever comes back to the 21st century and says, "Why do these people, what's up with the way they do sci-fi?" Like sci-fi is just strange. Like why do they have these creatures do this? And you're like, "Well, that's the way it is." Like that's the way it wouldn't be sci-fi if we didn't have whatever. I don't like sci-fi, so I don't know. But that's a vivid example that's obviously a thing in pop culture, and it's not like you have to explain it.

No, but you have to feel it. You just have known that people just know this is what it is, right? And it produces a real genuine effect, I think. So there's many reasons for that. But the tricky thing is that, and these different judgments all connect to the Old Testament. There's a lot of the plagues of Egypt.

A lot of the imagery from the plagues of Egypt is here in these judgments, and it would be fun to get into that, but we can't. I mean, well, we could. It's just the episode we're doing. No time. There's so much material here. And just to plug it for that, I mean, people keep saying you should do a whole series on this. So I don't know, maybe one day this will turn into a whole course. I'd love to. Because there's just so much. Yeah, it's one of my goals is to do a whole course on it someday. Well, we'll have to see about that. Anyways, continuing. Yeah. So anyway, that can all be confusing, right?

So you go through and it's like, man, it spirals. So these three anchor points. First, the letters to the churches. These are easy to grasp onto, easy to keep a handle on. And these really, really help, are supposed to serve as the lens by which we read the book.

Because that's how it was to John's first, to Revelation's first readers, right? John sent this book with these letters, you know, affixed to the front of the book. You know, it's like each of them have their own little sticky note at the beginning of the book of Revelation, right? Sure.

And so let's say you were the church at Pergamum, right? And you get this and you pay special attention to your letter, right? And you're like, "Whoa, this is a letter from Jesus."

And then you read the rest of the book with your letter in mind. And when you see stuff, you're going to see lots of stuff in the rest of the book of Revelation that points back to your letter.

And when you see that, you're like, "Ooh, wow. Yeah. Ouch." You know, you feel convicted again or you feel like comforted again or whatever. And you're always going, if you keep these letters in mind, you're always going to front and center sort of keep the main point, the main point, which is be one of the ones who conquers so that you will participate in new creation and not be thrown into the lake of fire type of thing, right? And so I just want to take a couple of minutes and look at a couple of ways that the letters kind of preview some of the imagery that you see later in the book. Oh, yeah, that would be really interesting because they tend to be.

We think in my experience, yeah, it's like, "Oh, this section on the letters, yeah, that makes sense. That's easy to understand." Oh, and then there's all this weird stuff in the rest of the book, and we'll look at that separately. That's always been at least my own experience of hearing people present more that way. And I always just kind of assume that's kind of how it works. Exactly. But there shouldn't be such a sharp line. But it makes sense because you got to keep in mind that this is a letter that was sent to churches, very much like how other epistles and things were. I feel like I've completely lost touch of that context, actually.

Yes. Like I think, like you said, people tend to almost bifurcate Revelation. And it's like, "Ooh, the letters to the churches, thank God, this is something we can preach on." And then the rest of the book is like, "Whoa." Or the other way around. It's like, "Wow, we have all our awesome prophecy charts on the rest of Revelation." And then the letters to the churches kind of seem less relevant. Or people come up with strange speculative theories on that too, on the letters. So for example, in the church to the letter to the church at Ephesus, right? He starts out, "I know your works, your toil, your patient endurance," etc.

And he does this, Jesus gives this whole, all of his warnings and stuff. And then at the end of the letter, he says, "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers, I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God." And that's not just throwaway language because it's at Revelation 22, where the tree of life shows up again.

It's in the new Jerusalem, the new creation. And that's the final, you know, that's the final hope, right? But it's right here, right? It's in the letter as well. It's like right at the beginning. So then you almost have it like, "This is where we're starting." And then at the end of the book, you see the same thing in there. Yeah, and also in the back and forth. And the church at Ephesus is supposed to be, when it gets to chapter 22 and reads about the tree of life, they're supposed to say, "Oh yeah, Jesus specifically told us, reminded us to be someone who overcomes so that we experience that vision," right? It's very much taking these visions, that vision, and personalizing it and applying it, right?

Because these visions in Revelation are meant to be practical in a sense. I'm not a huge fan of that word, but they're meant to be applied. They're not meant to be so speculative. I think that that's a piece that keeps coming up as we've done different discussions on Revelation on this podcast. Again, we'll put all the links down because I'm not quite sure what order we'll release these in. But is the sense that Revelation turns into this big thing on speculation about the future and this and that? And I felt like I was really starting to lose touch with it. It's like, "Well, I don't know. How's this even relevant?" Okay, sure. Maybe this is going to happen.

I don't know. But it doesn't really seem to make any difference in my own life. And you're saying, "Whoa, okay, we're missing a huge point of this." It is relevant. It is. It matters for our lives today because it starts with the letters to the seven churches, right? It's an apocalypse. It's a vision that John received, and then he figured out how to write it down. Took a long time, probably.

So it is a real vision. I mean, John, I should say John received real visions, I think. But then he spent a lot of time, I think, thinking about how to record these visions well. But it's also a letter, right? To real churches to encourage them to conquer. And that imagery from the rest of the book is embedded here. So we got that in the letter to Smyrna.

Jesus is the one who died and came to life. He says the words of the first and last who died and came to life, which reminds us of a few chapters later, the lamb who had been slain, right? Jesus says this kind of thing throughout. And there's also the beast as the parody of that, who looks like he had a deadly wound that was healed.

He's the anti-Messiah. So you have that right away. You have in chapters 9 and 10, "I know your tribulation, your poverty, etc. Don't fear what you are about to suffer. The devil is about to throw some of you into prison that you may be tested, and for 10 days you will have tribulation. Be faithful to death, and I will give you the crown of life." This very much previews language later in Revelation about how the beast is given, is granted to overcome, to conquer God's people for a time. There's this vision of the two witnesses that looks. That's just like a bizarre piece, by the way. Yeah. It is very bizarre. I mean, even for Revelation level, bizarre.

It's kind of like the most surrealist thing, little kind of element. But most scholars think that the two witnesses are simply a depiction, again, from a different perspective of the church, right? God's people who bear witness to him and suffer, right?

And the beast and co have authority to end up killing them, right? And then God raises them up. So you have this, when the church at Smyrna gets to chapter 11 and reads this, they say, "Yes, that's right. The beast is going to be able to maybe kill us.

But the lamb has the keys of death and Hades, and he will raise us," right? This imagery in one of the weirdest visions in the book is still supposed to be for the people of Smyrna, right? It's supposed to remind them, "Yes, the beast may put us to death. We will have tribulation, but we'll overcome because the lamb will be raised." Does that make sense? Oh, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah.

It's so easy to read this and it just kind of washes over you, and you don't actually think to try to put the pieces back together. Exactly. I guess it's like that. It's almost like a puzzle without the box picture to explain where do all these pieces go. Yes, I think that's a good way of saying it. Or at least that's how it feels. And I think that is often why people just don't really read the book that much. Yeah. Or maybe they do, and they go way off on money trails. Actually, we were just doing another podcast earlier today with a different guest. And after the cameras were off, we were talking about the latest prophecy book that's coming out.

And just being like, "Oh, no." They're totally, they're wildly speculating down. There's one rabbit trail, and they're just going way off. And then you're missing so much of this in the text. Anyways, not to get off on money trails. No, I think that's a good way of talking about it.

And I think, if you will, these letters to the churches can be, in one sense, part of that box, the picture of the puzzle on the box, you know? Oh, yeah. See, I never thought of that. Not that it fills all the pieces in, but it at least grounds you. It's a lens. That's why I like to think of these letters as a lens to read the book through. And if you start speculating in crazy ways that would never are sort of at odds with the purpose of these seven letters, that might be a sign that maybe I'm reading Revelation through a slightly wrong lens. Maybe I'm taking this a little too far. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Smyrna's letter ends with Jesus saying, "The one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death." And that phrase, the second death, shows up once more in Revelation at the end, speaking of the lake of fire, right? That's a good way of saying it. And I think that's the easy bit to miss is the quote-unquote hyperlinks or whatever. Exactly. The linking, the weaving that's going on. Because is this not also some of this to do with more a Western modern way of engaging with information where I expect this to be 0.12345? It's all in a nice order. It's just right here. And that's not how this book is laid out at all. Oh, yeah, very much.

But even in the modern West, in good literature or visual arts, or maybe even music, you have things like this, right? A good piece of literature or poetry is going to be very elusive and very dense and not linear, right? That's a great point. Yeah, I hadn't thought of that. So it's not like we've ditched it. It's just that we've come to the Bible expecting the Bible to be sort of a bullet point list instead of a poem, right? Isn't that? And this is more like a poem.

This might get me in hot water, but I've heard the Bible describe, "Oh, this is the instruction manual," you know, and all that stuff. I'm not saying it's not, okay? But if you have this idea, "Oh, it's an instruction manual," that's like, "Oh, instructions like 0.1, 0.2," you know, it's very linear. It reads kind of boring like a textbook or something.

It doesn't seem, it feels like that could get it almost the wrong impression of what we're looking at here. I mean, it is an instruction manual, obviously. Yeah, at a very loose level. I don't know if I'm communicating this right. No, I think that's really. Maybe I'm way off in terms of. No, no, I think that's absolutely, I think that's actually, I think that's a really, I think that's insightful. Because I've heard people say that, and I think trying to be helpful and all that stuff, of course. But it's like, well, if I'm coming to this looking at it as like a textbook or a list of instructions, maybe that's the way of saying it, I think you're going to miss a lot of what you're saying is like, "Oh, well, it uses this language here," and then, hey, later on, it refers back, you know, and it's linking back and forth, and there's weaving, and there's layers involved of meaning.

Because in an instruction manual, you're not doing any of that. It's just like surface text. Anyway, I could be way off. No, no, you're absolutely right. I think good wisdom literature, so in Proverbs even, sometimes you read things like about the words of the wise and their riddles, right?

And sometimes in wisdom tradition, there is this sense that to gain wisdom, sometimes you have to sit with a riddle for a long time. That's part of what the wise do. That's a good point. Right? So even in instruction, sometimes it's very, I mean, it's like Proverbs sometimes has very, you know, don't do stupid things, right?

Right. In type of instruction. But other times, other times it's riddles or even things that seem paradoxical. Yeah. And you're left with that because sometimes the best way to be instructed is to sit with something that's a little less explicit, you know? Well, but isn't this kind of classic teaching style that Jesus uses with parables, where even his own disciples are coming like, "Oh, wait, you know, we're not quite tracking here. Can you explain this?" And there's something profound about, say, one of the parables of Jesus. You can read it, and you can just sit with that parable for a long time, and just layers of meaning will start coming through. And it's not, if it were just an instruction, you'd be like, "Okay, 0.1, 2, 3, 4."

Okay, done. You know, it's not like that. Anyways. And I don't want to derail us, but I think. No, it's not derailing at all. It feels like that's a piece of starting to really click for me because I have heard that a lot, you know, in my own life. And it feels almost like that's not wrong, but it feels like you can miss a lot of levels. Again, I'm thinking like a parable of Jesus, if you turn that into just an instruction manual, I don't know, it feels like you're going to miss some stuff there. Absolutely. So anyways, yeah, I feel like I'm going to have to go and think on this a while, honestly, because that's, yeah, anyway.

Anyway. So I think that's, so again, these can serve as the letters to the churches, I think can serve as a lens through which to read the rest of the book in, you know, insofar as they themselves have embedded within them links to the later imagery. And it's helping you to realize, you know, all the imagery we see later is meant to be reminding these churches how to be faithful to Jesus and overcome, right? And so you see things like the second death, or in Pergamum, you have Jesus has a few things against these people because they hold the practices of the teaching of Balaam, etc.

And if they don't repent, Jesus is going to wage war against them with the sword of his mouth, which shows up in chapter 19. Yeah. Jesus. Oh, whoa, yeah. Oh, that's fascinating. Because that's that famous imagery of. Of the rider on the horse? Yep, yep. And the sword out of the mouth. Yeah. And so. Ooh, interesting. And so. I've never noticed that. Yeah. But when you read about the word of, you know, who comes riding on the horse with the sword out of his mouth, which just comes from Isaiah, I think.

Again, the people from Pergamum are supposed to say, "If we don't repent, that sword is going to be wielded against us," right? Again, it's not, "When is that going to happen?" It's, "We're going to be on the wrong side of that sword if we don't repent of our sexual immorality." That's what Jesus is telling them. And that's how they're supposed to encounter that image of the rider on the horse later. Because they're going to be reading through the rest of this book and be like, "Oh, that kind of steps on some toes," you know? Or like, "Oh, pay extra attention here." From his mouth comes a sharp sword. So they'll just be reading, right? From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron.

And they're like, "Oops." Jesus mentioned that in our letter, right? We better avoid that, right? So it's that kind of thing, right? That is powerful. That is really powerful. At the end of their letter, of that letter, "I will give him a white stone with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it." Jesus is later described in Revelation as having his own name written that no one knows, his own secret name. Yeah. Which represents probably, so if you have your own secret name and he has his own secret name and you're sort of led into this, it represents perhaps authority, special authority, but also maybe special knowledge, special relationship or something, right?

But again, it's tied together. When you read about Jesus' secret name, you're supposed to remember, "Oh, and he's going to give us one too if we belong to him," right? Let's stay with him, kind of thing, right? Yeah, yeah.

Just a couple more examples here, and then I'll stop. So in Thyatira, there was this woman that Jesus calls Jezebel, right? And she's seducing the people of the church to practice sexual immorality and to eat food offered to idols. I gave her time to repent, but she refused to repent. So I'm going to throw her onto a sickbed, and those who commit adultery with her, I will throw into great tribulation until they repent.

And then we get to, so this is talking about some probably specific false teaching that was in that church that was teaching the people to go into licentiousness or whatever. And Jesus describes this as using this very kind of Old Testament adultery imagery that then is judged by the adulteress and her lovers, like all being thrown onto this bed together and facing lots of tribulation. But in the later chapters on the fall of Babylon, Babylon is the harlot, and Babylon and her lovers, basically, the nations, experience great tribulation, right? They're essentially thrown into this sickbed, if you will, right? Of torment and stuff. And so when you read the chapter 18 on the fall of Babylon, you should just be like, "Oh, man, this is like a, this scene about how the harlot Babylon is being thrown into torment with all the people who drank the wine of the passion for sexual immorality with her."

You know, that sounds a little too eerily like what Jesus warned our church about the false teaching, what he's going to do to us in that false teaching, but we're sort of the licentiousness we're going into. Whoa. Right? It's like almost like a way of reinforcing things or stuff that's here, but then a different angle almost. Yeah. To make it really memorable or to stick, I guess. Yeah. And I think that the whole way, like all of these imagery, all of this imagery in the rest of Revelation is meant to hit us like that, right? Just like these specific embedded ones. And that's, again, where we can miss the warnings, like almost. Exactly. Or like you're saying, it's kind of supposed to almost like smack you metaphorically speaking, like, "Hey, pay attention to this.

This is really important. Don't go down that street." But instead, if we're speculating and calculating years and dates and numbers and figures and all that stuff and trying to put it out there in the future somewhere, you may really miss that warning. Yeah, and you may be missing the way these letters to the churches, in a sense, are the author and Jesus' first application and interpretation of the rest of Revelation, right? Ooh, that's a thought. And the way that Jesus is applying Revelation is pulling some of the imagery and pointing it out to specific churches and saying, "Make sure you catch this," right?

Whoa, what a thought. Yeah, okay. I see that, though. So there's plenty more like this, and we're not going to, there's no time to go through them all. There's only one more I want to mention. And it's this very curious phrase where Jesus says in the letter to Thyatira at the end, "The one who conquers, I will give him authority over the nations. He will rule them with a rod of iron." This is Psalm 2, which pops up throughout Revelation. Jesus has this authority of the Messiah, but he's going to share it with his people. And then he says, "And I will give him the morning star."

Okay. It's just like, "Okay, thanks." You know? Like, "Oh, that's great." Oh, whatever. I'm confused, yeah. Yeah. But the morning star is very much, this language of the morning star is tied to Balaam's oracle of the scepter and the star that will come from Judah, which becomes in the Bible and Jewish tradition a very important symbol of the coming Messiah, right?

And this phrase, this word, this wording shows up one more time in Revelation. And it's like it's at the very, very end. It's like the last words of Jesus in the book. In chapter 22, "I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you about these things for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star." Huh.

And so like in this weird way, Jesus seems to be saying that, "Yeah, I will give you the authority that I've received from the Father, and I will give you myself." Like, "If you overcome, you will get the morning star." And at the end of the book, he says, "That's me."

Whoa. Like, what does that mean? Like, I don't know. I think that's beautiful. Yeah. That's wild. I've not seen that before. No. The morning star, yeah. That's all the way Revelation 22, right? Like all the way at the very end. So imagine you're thinking about this, you're in the church of Thyatira, you're thinking, "I'll give him the morning star," and you're like, "I know that oracle about the scepter and the star will come out of Judah." And that's Jesus, yeah. And then you're just waiting, you're listening to the rest of the book being read, because that's how you receive the book of any book of the Bible. It's somebody reading it to you. You don't have your own copy and you're quiet time, right?

Yeah. And then you come to the very last bit and Jesus says, "I am the morning star." And. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's powerful. That is powerful. And you say, "That's why we have to overcome." Yeah. So these letters are, I think, a lens. Okay, we're talking about, there's all these spirals, there's these bowls and these trumpets and these seals that go cyclical, but also have a trajectory to the end. You're like, "Wow, you know? That's interesting, that's intriguing, but it's also complicated." One of the anchor points to keep us grounded as we try to read the rest of the book is these seven letters, because they help us to say, "How are we supposed to apply this imagery?

What is the most important kind of thing? What matters?" And I think, you know, this is the lens, if that makes sense. Yeah, this feels like such an immediately actionable way of reading Revelation, as in you don't need to do all kinds of fancy research and study. You can just pick up Revelation and start looking through that lens and immediately start seeing this stuff.

And there's, "Oh, wow." Like you're talking, again, starting to peel back the layers. Yeah, exactly. And also try to remove a lot of the extra biblical layers that have been piled on top from our culture and worldview and our biases and all of these things. It's just gotten kind of snow and under, you know, by that. Yeah. Wow. So that was the lens.

And then there's another piece that you want to search through. Yeah, I don't want to spend, so the other two pieces, the one is the ending, the vision of new creation, chapters 21 and 22. That puts the whole Bible together. It brings in imagery of temple and Eden and marriage, and it like weaves it all together to the end of the story.

We are doing a whole nother episode on specifically that, right? Yes. But that's, so if the letters to the churches are a lens, then the ending kind of grounds you at the end of the book, right? To say, "Okay, the story may do all these strange movements, but we end here," and that's a grounding place. There's one more in the middle, Revelation chapter 12, and we could do a whole episode on this, but it's the story of the woman and the dragon.

Oh, yeah. Oof, crazy. This is a, again, I mean, again, Revelation's a little bit wild. This is also bizarre. It is bizarre. Or I say that lovingly, but like it's just. No, it is bizarre. It's just like. It's very chill.

Whoa. It's hard to get our heads around all this. It's kind of surrealist, yeah. But what's happening here is, in a sense, right smack in the middle of the book. It's kind of like a pause. And we say, "Hey, this chapter kind of gives you a little separate perspective on this whole era of redemptive history, from Jesus' first coming to his second." And that gives you another little lens to help you understand what's happening in the previous chapters and in the succeeding chapters.

So it's not supposed to be like, "Huh, then there's," again, it's not sequential. This is like, it's kind of the center point. You're like, "Okay, I need to zoom out again and see, get a full perspective on this." So we have right in the middle, just as you're starting to get really confused, this story to say, "Okay, just remember, this is sort of the big meta story I'm trying to tell," John's trying to tell. Gotcha. Okay. And it's the story of this woman. She has stars over her head. She's apparently a very, she's ruling. She's pregnant. She's crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth.

And then there's a dragon. And he stands before the woman so that when she bears her child, he might devour it. And she gives birth to a male child who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. This is Psalm 2 again.

And her child is caught up to God into his throne. Who is this woman? Because it's a little confusing. Then she, the woman, flees into the wilderness where she is kept preserved by God for this whole time, this whole era of tribulation until Jesus returns, symbolized in the 1260 days.

And then the camera zooms to, goes back to heaven and says, and from heaven's perspective, there was Michael and the angels fighting against the dragon. The dragon gets kicked out. Why does the dragon get kicked out? Well, because of what had just happened with this child that was born to the woman, Jesus, right?

So he gets kicked out. And the dragon sees that he'd been, when the dragon saw that he'd been thrown to the earth, he pursued the woman that had given birth to the male child. So he realizes his time is short because the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Messiah has come. The accuser of the brothers has been thrown down. He's been conquered by the blood of the lamb and the word of their testimony. Jesus has triumphed through his death and resurrection. So the devil's been, the dragon's kicked down to earth, but he's not destroyed yet. He realizes his time is short, and so what does he do?

He pursues the woman, but the woman is kept preserved by God for this whole length duration of time that the dragon has left. And then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus. And he stood on the sand of the sea. And you're like, "Why?" Well, the next verse says, "I saw a beast rising out of the sea with ten horns and seven heads." So what does this dragon do? He realizes, "Bummer.

The son, Jesus, the Messiah, has been born, has died, has risen from the dead. I'm kicked out of, like my, the accuser of the brethren has been thrown out. The authority of Jesus has, you know, has come. My time is short. What am I going to do with that? I'm going to spend the rest of my short time in making war on the rest of the offspring of the woman," which John says is those who keep the commands of God. And the next thing he does is go and create the beast, right? That is what, that's his plan for the rest of the time he has left is to generate these beasts out of the sea and the land that are going to persecute the seed of the woman, the rest of the disciple of Jesus' people.

So it's a very short. It's a lot, but it's very simple when you come down to it. It's just, I mean, it's saying Jesus came into the world, he died and rose again, he's seated at the right hand of God, all authority is given to him, the accuser of the brethren is booted, but he's not destroyed yet, and he's very angry. And he's going to spend all the rest of his time on trying to make, trying to make war on all the rest of Jesus' people. Wow. And that sets up for the whole, kind of the rest of Revelation with all these beasts and all this stuff. So when we read about all these crazy beasts, we're supposed to go back to this chapter 12 and say, "What this means is the dragon, the devil, is very mad, and he's going to spend there, because he knows Jesus has, Jesus is sitting at the throne, on the throne of God, and he's very angry, and so he's going to spend the rest of his days, which he knows are numbered, trying to make war on us."

It's, and that's the whole, that's, again, in the middle of the book, this lens that we're supposed to read all these beasts and all this crazy stuff through. Okay, so we had what you were saying, the lens at the beginning, which is the letters to the seven churches, and then you're calling this an. An anchor point. An anchor point. So like this is a spot in the middle to kind of peg some things to, essentially. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Do you want to tear into that a bit of like, how exactly are you, are we thinking of this as an anchor? Yeah, well, because, so before this, you have two cycles of judgments. You got the trumpets and the seals.

And you say, "Okay, good. So we've got these judgments, and that seemed to culminate in the kingdom coming, and then another cycle happens. And then after chapter 12, we've got these beasts that arise, and these two beasts, and then we've got the seven bowls of God's wrath, and you're like, "Wow, okay, I need a little help." And then we have the prostitute and the fall of Babylon and all this stuff. And right in the middle, you're saying, "Okay, this whole progression, the cyclical progression that we see the rest of Revelation kind of spinning out, just remember, pause, you know, not a commercial break, but pause." And remember, just, do you remember this story from Genesis 3?