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Q & A
Q&A: Getting the real message of Revelation Mary Jacobs, Aug 2, 2007
Does the book of Revelation offer the key to the future? Hank Hanegraaff, host of the radio program Bible Answer Man, says that believers will understand this book properly only if they "learn to read the Bible for all it's worth" by understanding its broader context and the principles of exegesis.
Mr. Hanegraaff spoke recently with Staff Writer Mary Jacobs about his new book, The Apocalypse Code.
Why is it so important for us to understand the book of Revelation?
In the book of Revelation there are 404 Old Testament passages. You have to begin with the premise that you have no hope of understanding what John is saying in the book of Revelation unless you have the chorus of the Old Testament coursing through your mind. Revelation, just like Romans or Corinthians or any other New Testament book, was not written to us, it was written for us. Revelation was written to people in a first-century epoch. It's been relevant to people in every epoch, but it was written to the seven churches in the province of Asia. John is telling them that with wisdom and understanding they will be able to discern and identify the number of the first-century Beast. Now that would have been absolutely impossible if the Beast, as is so popularly communicated, is a 21st-century character.
So you're saying Revelation was describing something that happened in the first century?
Yes. Revelation is written to first-century believers about an incredible apocalypse, which was going to take place in the first century. Jesus Christ is making the most apocalyptic of predictions: that Jerusalem and its temple would be destroyed. Jerusalem was the very place, as well as the temple, that gave the Jews their sociological and theological identity. Jesus is now saying that the temple and Jerusalem are going to be utterly destroyed, and that will take place within a generation.
John is encouraging [the seven churches] to be faithful, and to worship and extol the virtues of the Lamb in a time in which they are going to experience great persecution. He is also warning apostate Israel that the very center of their identity is going to be destroyed. Then he's also speaking about a new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven, like a bride beautifully adorned for her husband. He's also giving us graphic images, which are rooted in the Old Testament, of destruction that is going to fall upon apostate Israel.
If the book speaks to a first-century audience about predictions that have already occurred, what does it say to us today?
Well, in every epoch of time we are going to suffer tribulation. Jesus Christ said, "In this world you will have tribulation, but take heart, I have overcome the world." In every epoch of time we will face Antichrists and persecution. So just as Romans is relevant to redeemed readers in the 21st century -- though it was written to first-century Christians -- so Revelation is relevant to redeemed readers. Even though you have the quintessential persecution in the first century, Christians are told that they will suffer persecution for the cause of Christ in every epoch of church history.
You're taking issue with Tim LaHaye's Left Behind series. Dr. LaHaye claims he's just offering the most literal reading of what's in Revelation, rather than an interpretation.
He's not consistent with his own literal premise, because how does Revelation start? It's "the Revelation of Jesus which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place." Now, soon means soon unless you're exercising Clintonian grammar. (It all depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is.) Soon means soon and near means near. How could Jesus have communicated that more clearly?
More importantly, what does it mean to take the Bible literally? Does it mean you have to read it in a wooden, literalistic fashion? Or does it mean you read it as literature in the sense in which it's intended? The Bible may be inspired literature -- and I certainly believe that it is -- but it's still literature. So a simile is still a simile, a metaphor is still a metaphor, prophetic hyperbole is still prophetic hyperbole.
I'll give you a classic case in point. Revelation talks about the blood running through the horse's bridles. This is a very common, first-century judgment metaphor. Now [Dr.] LaHaye wants to take that literally. So he thinks there will literally be a 5-foot river of blood stretching the length and breadth of Israel. Of course there's not that much blood in the universe, so he suggests that there are going to be 100-lb. hailstones that fall and they're going to mix with the blood and that's how you're going to get all that blood. But [the expression] is a metaphor. If I say it's raining cats and dogs you don't suppose cats and dogs are falling from the sky. It's a metaphor.
In your book you quote commentators who call Zionism a "racist political philosophy." Have you had any reaction from the Jewish community?
Well, no. First of all, I'm for supporting Israel. But I make the point that God is not pro-Jew, God is pro-justice. God is not pro-Palestinian. God is pro-peace.
I take to task the very notion, popular in evangelical circles today, that God divides people by race or gender. God is neither a racist nor sexist. God does not divide people on the basis of race. So the very dispensational notion that God has two distinct plans for two distinct people eventuating in the Second Coming... I think is decidedly unbiblical.
If you read the Old Testament, you'll see that Ruth, who was a Moabite, the archenemy of Israel, is in an esteemed position of lineage of Jesus Christ. She didn't suddenly alter her DNA but she believed in Yahweh, the God of Israel, and as a result she was counted as [a true member of the tribe of Israel]. If you look at the famous vision that Peter received at Joppa, Peter's response to that is, "Ah, now I understand that God does not show favoritism." I think it is unfortunate that evangelicals are pointing their fingers at President Bush and Condoleezza Rice, and saying that to the extent you allow for a two-state solution in Israel you are poking your finger in the eye of God. This is because they want a racially exclusive state in the Middle East. I think that is unwarranted. God doesn't put Arabs or Palestinians on a different footing than Jews. He doesn't judge us according to race or gender. To see that, read Galatians 3, which says, "In Christ there is neither male nor female, and there's neither Jew nor Greek."
You say that in Revelation, "you may well discover that you hold the key to the problem of terrorism in one hand and the fuse of Armageddon in the other." Explain.
Evangelicals are no longer on the bleachers watching events unfold. We are on the playing field now, helping things unfold. For example, you have people like Tim LaHaye trying to herd Jews into the Holy Land. They're trying to inflame the fires of Armageddon by helping to fulfill the prophecy of a rebuilt temple where the Dome of the Rock now stands.
[We should not] focus on a little piece of land on the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea as the hope of the believer. The hope is not that people are going to be gathered into Jerusalem. The hope of Scripture was always to leave Jerusalem with the Gospel message. So I'm happy for democracy in the Middle East. But that does not mean that we should treat Palestinians -- many of whom are our brothers and sisters -- as though they were nonexistent, and not care about the plight of the largest displaced group of people in the world.
Well, in every epoch of time we are going to suffer tribulation. Jesus Christ said, "In this world you will have tribulation, but take heart, I have overcome the world." In every epoch of time we will face Antichrists and persecution. So just as Romans is relevant to redeemed readers in the 21st century -- though it was written to first-century Christians -- so Revelation is relevant to redeemed readers. Even though you have the quintessential persecution in the first century, Christians are told that they will suffer persecution for the cause of Christ in every epoch of church history. 
