Revelation today

We all want to know the future, it's why people study the stars or tea leaves or whatever to try to know what will happen. 'Will I meet a tall dark stranger?' as the BBC news put it recently, and then commented 'it would probably be a tax man'.

Events in Lebanon this summer have got me wondering about the so called 'end times', the time running up to Jesus return. So I re-read the last book in the Bible a couple of times, trying to see if I could match what I was seeing in the world with what I had read in the Bible.

The more I read Revelation the more it didn't look like a blow by blow schedule of events to come, but a visionary description what will happen on a spiritual level. A friend of mine had been reading Eugene Peterson's book 'Reversed Thunder' which looks it Revelation as a book written by a pastor, poet and theologian. As such Peterson sees John's 'subject is God (not crytographic esoterica) and that his context is is pastoral (not alarmist entertainment)'.

So why do so many people see Revelation is a literal day by day, blow by blow prediction of events to come? Those of us who come from the charismatic or pentecostal sides of the church have a current experience of visions today. In prayer we might see pictures or visions, which reveal something God is trying to communicate with us.

Today I was discussing this with someone who cited an example of a vision that came to someone he knew of the palm trees along the sea front all bending down. People who heard this vision interpreted it spiritually, not literally. Yet many in the charismatic and pentecostal sides of the church read Revelation and try to interpret it literally.

Dispensationalists are people who believe that time is broken up into distrinct chunks and one of those chuncks was the time for God to give spiritual gifts to people, but that He stopped doing that nearly 2000 years ago. Because of their belief that God no longer gives spiritual gifts today they don't believe that He gives pictures or visions to people today. They are therefore ill-equipped to interpret visions as they are alien to their daily life.

It appears to me that dispensationalists are basically cultural modernists, wanting everything to be in neat packages that can mechanistically be understood. As such they are a relatively recent group who reject the conservative understanding of scripture thus interpreting it liberally. Ah, now there's an anomaly, because most dispensationalists would be self-professessed conservatives accusing others of liberal interpretations of scripture.

So why (and I have no answer here) do charistmatics and pentecostals, who reject the basic tenets of dispensationalists then use their technique of systematic theology to analyse a book that is a poetic treatise?

People who analyse Shakespeare often miss the enjoyment of the play. The Daily Star quotes and old joke about William Shakespeare being an Arab - how else, it explains, can you account for the name, Sheikh Zubair. Certainly the playwright's preoccupation with despotic leaders, times of civil unrest and bloodshed fit in perfectly with the tempestuous nature of contemporary Arab politics. Maybe there will be some people who see Othello as prophecy of current events in Cyprus!