Apocalyptic Visions

The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show to His bond-servants, the things which must soon take place; and He sent and communicated it by His angel to His bond-servant John,  Revelation 1:1  NASB

Revelation – apokálypsis.  The Greek word translated “revelation.”  Don’t miss the fact that it is connected to kalýptō, the root that means “to cover, to hide.”  With the negative prefix, apokálypsis means “to uncover, to reveal,” but it’s based on what is hidden.  It is the appeal to disclose hidden things that often leads believers to conclude that God’s “revelations” are transparent unfolding of divine mysteries.  Oepke cautions us about this naïve view:

apokalýptō, apokálypsis. These terms raise special problems because dogmatic ideas may easily be imported into the NT passages with the usual renderings “to reveal” and “revelation.” Yet one cannot take refuge in purely philological exposition by using such translations as “to disclose” or “to unveil.” The terms are to some degree ambivalent, but they have a good measure of inner unity that is best brought out by “revelation” as the manifestation of deity, so long as this is first put on a broader basis.^[1]

OT religion, too, knows such means of revelation as signs (Gen. 24: 12ff.), seers (1 Sam. 9:6ff.), dreams (Gen. 28: 12ff.), oracles (1 Sam. 14:37ff.), priestly directions (Dt. 17:9, 12), and ecstasy and prophecy. Fasting may be preparatory (Dan. 9:3). . .^[2]

But we might still be inclined to think that “revelation” unwraps the divine mysteries of the transcendent God.  This, too, would be a mistake.  Heschel’s comment is important:

We must understand, however, that prophecy and apocalyptic belong to two distinct spheres.  Torah is sefer toledot adam the book of man’s history, which records the deeds of mankind and the mitzvot given to human beings.  The Prophets dwell not upon what goes on in heaven, but on what happens on earth.  The heavens are God’s, but the earth God gave to humans.  Prophetic thought is characterized by humility, as it confronts the Supreme Mystery of the world.  The great principle of Torah is, ‘The hidden things belong to the Lord our God, but the revealed things belong to us and our children’ (Deuteronomy 29:28).  “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter’ (Proverbs 25:2).  ‘But the Lord is in His holy Abode—be silent before Him all the earth’ (Habakkuk 2:20).  When the prophets speak of what they saw in a vision, they reveal one handbreadth while concealing two.  When Isaiah saw the King, the Lord of Hosts, seated on a throne in the loftiest heights, he trembled and was stunned.  ‘Woe is me, I am lost!  For I am a man of unclean lips . . . yet my own eyes have beheld the King Lord of Hosts’ (Isaiah 6:5).  This attitude prevailed also in the era of the Talmud, namely, all that a human being can comprehend is but the very edge of God’s ways.  ‘If we cannot comprehend even the nature of a storm, how much more impossible is it for us to understand the order of the universe!”

In contrast to the prophets, the devotees of apocalyptic reached out toward the Supreme Mystery of the universe.  Apocalyptic is the expression of potential yearnings for the transcendental world.  The apocalyptic visionaries were a generation thirsting and longing to strengthen their bonds with heaven.  They recoiled from a world that was in the power of evil, a world that had caused the fall of man, and they sought salvation by turning to the supernal world.  The prophets taught that humans would find healing and the path to salvation by teshuvah, turning back to God.  Apocalyptic thinkers, however, did not believe that there could be any improvement in the human condition on this earth.[3]

Now we see the scope of this naïve mistake—and the reason I so rarely write anything about John’s “apocalyptic” vision.  The biblical text is, at best, a prophetic text.  It is focused almost exclusively on God’s interactions and intentions for Man.  It tells us nothing about the transcendent God.  Apocalyptic literature attempts to break through the lead ceiling of the universe and discover some elements of the transcendent sphere.  In doing so, it leaves our world behind.  What this means for John’s vision is that it is not apocalyptic.  It’s prophetic.  It is still focused on this world—the world of the Millennial era to be sure, but not the transcendent unknowable.  What happens in John’s vision happens here, on earth.  In fact, it is so worldly focused that in the end heaven comes here, not the other way around.

It’s true that the Greek text of John’s vision opens with the word apokálypsis, a disclosure, but it is not true that John’s vision is apocalyptic.  This correction is vital.  John does not tell us anything about the essence of the Holy Other.  He tells us about the Holy One’s interaction with the world of men.  John uses Greek, but he thinks like a Jew, and his “book” is in line with the twenty-four others.  Don’t try to make it into something else.

Topical Index: revelation, apocalyptic, prophetic, apokálypsis, Revelation 1:1

^[1] Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged in One Volume (p. 407). Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.

^[2] Ibid.

[3] Abraham Heschel, Heavenly Torah as Refracted through the Generations, p. 287.