Here is a video promo for an adult education class I’ll be teaching in October at my church. Below the video clip is a blurb about the class.
Revelation is a strange and often frightening text. Christians have struggled for almost two thousand years to understand it. Today, it is often used to support detailed scenarios of what will happen in the “end times.” Perhaps you’ve read novels or seen movies that take this popular approach.
While these books and movies can be entertaining, they probably don’t have very much to do with what the text of Revelation meant in its original context, or with what it might mean for us today. We’ll explore the thought world in which the text was produced — the genre of “apocalyptic” literature, particularly among Jewish people in the first century A.D. — to gain insights about the meaning of the text to its first hearers. Then we’ll consider how the horizons of the text relate to the horizons of our contemporary understanding and concerns.
We won’t try to produce a final or complete interpretation of the mysteries contained in this text. Instead, we’ll come to appreciate that, like all of scripture, this text points to the glory and beauty of Jesus Christ, the hope of all creation.