The book of Revelation is a book everyone loves to read but few dare to preach. It’s an odd thing – we all very quickly understand the main point (Jesus wins!), and we all love it, but for some reason we so fear the details of this strange genre of literature that its joys and glory seldom receive the attention they deserve.
For all such timid souls, Jim Hamilton’s sermon commentary through Revelation will provide a welcome relief. Combining good scholarship with popular preaching, and with a clear love for his subject, he serves as an enlightening guide through John’s inspired apocalypse.
Dr. Jim Hamilton is Preaching Pastor at Kenwood Baptist Church in Louisville, KY, and Professor of Biblical Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He also serves here at Books At a Glance on our Board of Reference and as Review Editor for Biblical Theology. He’s here today to talk to us about his book – and about the book of Revelation.
Books At a Glance (Fred Zaspel)
Hi! This is Fred Zaspel with Books at a Glance. We’re here today talking to Dr. Jim Hamilton of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. We’re talking about the Book of Revelation and his excellent sermon commentary, Revelation: The Spirit Speaks to the Churches. Revelation is one of those books we all love and we’re all afraid of, and Jim does just a great job in his commentary guiding us through it. We’re here to talk to him about it today. Thanks for coming with us, Jim.
Hamilton
Oh, glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
Zaspel
All right. Let’s start, first of all, on sort of a personal level. How did this book come about, and perhaps something of your own experience in study and preaching and teaching through the book?
Hamilton
Sure. The book came about—I think what happened was I went to—I was teaching at the Houston campus of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and they invited me to come up and preach in the chapel on the main campus in Fort Worth. I went and preached on Revelation 19, and I’m pretty sure that Justin Taylor (Between Two Worlds and then Crossway) listened to that sermon, and I think he must have liked it because—I do know this, I know that Justin recommended me to Kent Hughes, who had written many of those Preaching the Word volumes and is the editor of the series. So one day I’m at my home in Houston, where we were living at the time, and I got this email from Kent Hughes saying that he would like to visit with me about the possibility of contributing the Revelation volume to the Preaching the Word series. I was thrilled, and I called him, and that’s what set me down the path to writing that book.
Zaspel
Interesting. I didn’t know that history.
Hamilton
Well, and my own experience with the book, in some ways goes back to my college years, where I listened to a very classical dispensational exposition of the book by Tommy Nelson of Denton Bible Church in Denton, Texas, and was intrigued by his preaching of the book. Because of Tommy Nelson’s preaching, I went to Dallas Theological Seminary, and really came out of there convinced that what I needed to do in order to determine where I was on all these issues was get an opportunity to study for myself the books of Daniel and Revelation. So, I’m thankful now that I’ve now had the opportunity to write on both of those books.
Zaspel
All right. And you’ve preached through the book in your church, I assume?
Hamilton
Right. So, once Kent Hughes had invited me to begin, or to do the Revelation volume, the first thing that I did was I decided that the next sermon series where I was serving as the preaching pastor at Baptist Church of the Redeemer in Houston at the time, and my next sermon series I determined was going to be on the book of Daniel in preparation for then preaching through Revelation. So, the way it worked out—while I was preaching through Daniel, I was invited to join the faculty of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, which entailed a relocation to Louisville. In that process, I communicated a desire to continue to serve a local church as a preaching pastor. That was affirmed by Dr. Moore at the time, the dean. So when I got to Louisville, I found a place to serve, and the first book that we launched into was the Book of Revelation. So the first book I preached through in my tenure at Kenwood Baptist Church was the Book of Revelation.
Zaspel
You’re a brave man.
Hamilton
It was a lot of fun.
Zaspel
That’s great. All right, there are a lot of books on Revelation. What did you hope would distinguish yours?
Hamilton
You know, I think that often what can tend to happen in commentaries is, as good as the information is, and as thorough as the scholars are, you can often begin to feel lost in the weeds. So the train of thought can be lost as you deal with all of the possibilities and the arguments and the suggestions and the arguments and what everyone else has said. It is very easy to lose your way and to forget exactly what the point that’s being made by the author of the biblical book is. So I think that if my contribution has a strength, it is that it stays on point, it stays with the point, I hope, that John, the author of Revelation, is making. Then another thing that I think you don’t often get if you’re not reading an expositional commentary like mine, is that you don’t get explicit comments on how this book applies to Christians, what it means for us. Since mine is a sermon commentary, there are direct applications made to the audience. Then thirdly, if I can add one more thing, I think that my strong interest in bibliology might be a distinctive feature, although that is not to deny that other people who have written on Revelation are also interested. I mean, clearly Greg Beale is very interested in biblical theology, as is Grant Osborne and Richard Bauckham. These are great men, and they’ve done great work. But I think we’ve made advances in our study of biblical theology, and I hope that my effort adds to what’s happening there.
Zaspel
Let’s talk a little bit more about what you mentioned about balancing the details with the sermonic application and all that. I’ve always been fascinated with that with the Book of Revelation. On the one hand, it is apocalyptic literature. Maybe you can mention to us, by the way, what exactly “apocalyptic” is. And may accept other views in the mix as well, but you do admit to a futuristic interpretation of it. It has to do with eschatology and end times and all of that, and yet at the same time it is a letter written to churches to encourage Christians in their own context. So it is supposed to be applicable to us today. How do you work all that out?
Hamilton
Well, let’s start with the word, apocalyptic, and we’ll try to take it bit by bit. The Greek word means something like “unveiling,” and so apocalyptic literature is characterized by being addressed to persecuted people who are in the minority. The idea of the “unveiling” is that these beleaguered saints are being shown the way that things really are. So you have John, who has been exiled to Patmos because of the Word of God. Apparently he’s been persecuted because of his preaching and teaching ministry. What happens for him is the Lord Jesus shows up in glory and shows him who is really in charge and how things are going to turn out. So this is a feature of apocalyptic literature. Often there will be a sort of “unveiling” of the end of all things, and where history will culminate, and that is meant to encourage these saints who are trying to be faithful in the face of an overwhelmingly hostile culture. So you have that, and then there are other features that tend to characterize apocalyptic [literature] such as having a human prophet, such as Zechariah or Daniel or John. They are shown visions that are difficult to decipher, and then they will be helped by what we might call or what we might refer to as a “heavenly tour guide,” where an angelic figure or something along these lines will explain to the seer what he has seen. There are other features that accompany this, but I think that Greg Beale is correct when he says that apocalyptic tends to be an intensification of prophecy. Some others, such as Charles Scobie and others have suggested that whereas prophecy can tend to focus on the flow of history leading up to the climax of history, or the climactic resolution of all things, apocalyptic tends to train its gaze on that climactic resolution. So I think all of those things are helpful ways of distinguishing between apocalyptic and prophecy.
And then, you asked me about—what was the other thing? Application? Is that what it was?
Zaspel
Application. Here is something about eschatology, and yet it is to be applicable to our own day.
Hamilton
Right. Right. So, as I preached through Revelation, again and again and again—because, I knew that I had people of different perspectives in the congregation. I knew that I would have everything from an amillennialist, to a person who is inclined toward postmillennialism—which I think is thoroughly unbiblical, but we’ll leave that alone—to a classical dispensationalist who was expecting me to give the timeline like the one that I received as a student at Dallas Theological Seminary. Again and again, what I said was something along the lines of, we can disagree on the specifics of what we think this vision is addressing. So, you might think that it is addressing the final seven years of human history, and someone else might think it is addressing a postmillennial, or maybe a climax before a postmillennial situation, and someone else might think that this is speaking to us right now. But what we can agree on is that John, the author of this text, the John who wrote this book—he meant to encourage Christians. He meant to inform and strengthen Christians to persevere in the faith and to be faithful to the Lord, even unto death. And so, we may disagree how we envision this playing out, but we can agree on how it is supposed to encourage us in our walks with Christ right now. I think that that diffused the tension and the arguments that can tend to surround some of these discussions.
Zaspel
I think it—some Christians have found it ironic that “apocalypse” means an “unveiling,” a revelation, and that Revelation itself is so symbolic and seemingly hidden. But the symbols—how do you work out the symbols?
Hamilton
I would argue that we ought to interpret the symbols first and foremost self-referentially within the Book of Revelation. In other words, I think it is very significant that Jesus is described as a lamb who has these horns, and by contrast, the beast that Satan conjures, he is going to also have horns, but he’s not a lamb—he’s this ravenous combination of a leopard and a bear and all these rapacious, ripping, tearing, killing animals. Then Satan’s fake Christ, if you will—he suffers a sort of imitation death and resurrection, in the fact that one of his heads has a mortal wound, and then the head that seemed to have a mortal wound is healed. So I think that one of the things that John wants us to do is to compare the Lamb with the Beast. Then, also, to take that, a little bit later in Revelation 13, he describes this second beast who has the appearance of the Lamb but he talks like the dragon. It is almost as though John is saying this is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. This is someone who is trying to appear to be Christian, but then when he opens his mouth he sounds like Satan. So I think we are to interpret these symbols self-referentially within the Book of Revelation. I’ll say on more word about that related to time. I think that this helps us to sort out what are clearly symbolic numbers in the Book of Revelation, these references to things like ten days of tribulation. I don’t think that Jesus meant to tell the Church that they were going to have exactly ten days of tribulation. I think that it is a shorter period of time than the 42-month period that is described elsewhere, and it is much shorter than the thousand years. So I think the way that we are to respond to these symbolic numbers, these round, whole numbers, is to say: Okay, let me think about how this number relates to other numbers in the Book of Revelation, and thereby sort out what it is that John is trying to communicate to me.
Zaspel
Yeah, great. Well, then—let’s do a little more of that on interpretation. What is the situation and view, what period of time do you see depicted? Is this only eschatology? Is this today? Is it both?
Hamilton
Well, I think that this is where a New Testament approach to eschatology helps us to, I think, say both, in that Paul can speak to the Corinthians and he can refer to them and himself in terms of “we upon whom the ends of the ages have come.” Jesus can speak as though in His ministry—this is in John 4 and in John 5—He says things like “a time is coming and now is,” and then He goes on to describe this new reality. So I am very much in agreement that in the New Testament we find this already/not yet dynamic, and I think that we are in this overlap of the ages between the time that Jesus inaugurated and the age to come, this sort of already/not yet situation. So I think that’s the situation that John means to address, and this is the situation that he seems to envision all Christians living in until the return of Christ. So I think that if we were to ask John, “To whom are you writing?” He would say, “All those who are going to hold to the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus until we see Him coming with the clouds, even those who pierced Him”–so, in other words, until the Second Coming.
Zaspel
All right, very good. So then, I was going to ask you about your approach in the book, then, Preaching Through the Book of Revelation. I think you’ve answered it already pretty well. I was going to ask: How do you characterize your approach, broadly speaking? Is the focus more on eschatology or contemporary application, something else, or is it both? Evidently, you’ve done all of the above.
Hamilton
Yes, and I think also that there are some things that would have had clear—you know, one of the reasons that the symbols are difficult to sort out, is that we don’t live in the culture that John lived in. So it seems evident, from what we know of the time, that there was this widespread awareness of this Nero Redivivus myth, and I think there are ways in which that “beast with a mortal wound” would have evoked, for people who are aware of that, it would have evoked their awareness of this myth about Nero that he hadn’t actually died, but that he had gone away and he was going to return and seize power. So I think that what John writes there in Revelation 13 would have triggered a lot of those cultural resonances, and would have spoken to people where they were in their culture, in their situation, and specifically would have warned them not to participate in the Roman imperial cult, but to avoid all of the sexual immortality and idolatry that accompanied many of those celebrations of the Roman emperor as, in some cases, the Roman emperors are accorded the same titles that are used to describe the Lord Jesus in the New Testament. So it is a very pertinent warning, and it would have been a culturally relevant warning because, in many cases, if you wanted to participate in a trade guild in that world—in other words, if you wanted to participate in the economy—you had to go to these feasts. You had to offer incense to the emperor. You had to participate. So what John says about not being able to buy or sell there if you don’t take the name of the Beast—I think that would have spoken directly to his audience and they would have understood it readily, what he was talking about.
Zaspel
I think we’re seeing a great application of that more and more in our own culture, that if you don’t think and behave like the Beast, then you’re not welcome in this economy, in this culture.
Hamilton
Yes, that’s exactly right. You can’t be the president of Mozilla if you donate money to certain causes.
Zaspel
Yeah, that’s right. Okay, let’s talk a little bit more about the Book of Revelation itself. How does the story unfold? What are the seals? The trumpets? The bowls? How are they all related? Are those chapters to be understood chronologically, or is there overlap?
Hamilton
That’s a great question. I’ll give you my take on it, my view. My view is that, in the opening verses, John gives a kind of preview of the unfolding dramatic storyline. I think that when John describes the way—this is not exactly the way that he words it, but when you sort it out, this is what he’s described—God has given this revelation to Jesus, who has given it to His servant, who has delivered it to John, who is then to make it known to the servants of Jesus. When you track through that revelatory chain, where God gave this to Jesus, who gave it to this angel, who brought it to John, who gave it to the people of God, you see this enacted in the book as in Revelation 5, Jesus approaches the One seated on the throne, and He alone is able to take this seal, I’m sorry—this scroll that is sealed with seven seals—so Jesus is able to take this scroll, and then in Revelation 6 He begins to open the seals on that scroll.
I’m convinced that when you compare Revelation 6 with the so-called Olivet Discourse, the teaching that Jesus gives that is recorded in Mark 13 and in Matthew 24 and 25, when you compare Revelation 6 with these passages and the Olivet Discourse, what you find is a high, high degree of similarity in terms of the first seal is opened and this rider on a white horse—who really, in some ways anticipates the picture of Jesus in Revelation 19 [as] He goes out to conquer. I think this corresponds to the false Christs, and the many who are going to come in Jesus’ name in the Olivet Discourse. Then, following that, as other seals are opened, you get war, and you get rumors of war, just as Jesus talked about in the Olivet Discourse. You get famines…and in the Olivet Discourse, Jesus repeatedly says these are the beginnings of the birth pangs. He makes these comments about how as this begins to happen, the end is not yet.
Eventually, He gets down and He makes a statement about the Son of Man coming. We can talk about this generation in a moment, but I want to stay on track right here. My view is that this depiction, in the Olivet Discourse and in Revelation 6, pertains to, and is a summary description of, the whole of church history between the First and Second Coming of Christ, or between the Ascension and Second Coming of Christ. Then, as you move through that, when you come to the trumpets in Revelation 8 and 9, and the bowls in Revelation 15 and 16, when you compare those to one another, I think that those are overlapping and that they correspond to the plagues on Egypt. The area affected by the first trumpet matches the area affected by the first bowl, and so it proceeds throughout all seven. Then when you think about what the plagues on Egypt were, they match very closely to this sort of climactic, final end time judgments in the trumpets and the bowls in Revelation 8, 9, 15, and 16.
So I would argue that the seals depict the outflow of history between the Ascension of Christ and His return. The trumpets and the bowls present this sort of final set of Exodus-style plagues before the last installation in the New Exodus and return-from-exile pattern, which will result in the liberation of God’s people from bondage to corruption and decay, and their entrance into the fulfillment and realization of the land of promise, which is the new heavens and new earth, which is the new Jerusalem that comes down from God out of Heaven.
Zaspel
Excellent. Excellent. All right, let’s talk about the role of the Book of Revelation in the biblical canon. How does it fit? What’s its contribution? It’s the last book. What’s significant about all of that?
Hamilton
I think that a case can be made that by the time John wrote this—I am strongly persuaded that the early testimony that John wrote this book near the end of the first century is likely correct. It seems to me to match John’s own exile to Patmos, and in some ways it’s the only testimony that we have, so why would we forsake testimony that we do have for testimony that we don’t have? So I think that it is probably reliable. If that is indeed the case, I think it is probably likely that John would have had access to the rest of what we now know as the New Testament materials. So I think it is entirely possible that John was conscious of the fact that he was writing something that would serve like an exclamation point at the end of the long sentence that is the Bible story. So I think that matches the way that he seems to be drawing together all of the threads of prophecy and pattern across the Old and the New Testaments. Richard Bauckham makes a claim in his book, The Theology of the Book of Revelation, that every oracle against Babylon in the Old Testament is either quoted or alluded to in the Book of Revelation. That would sort of fit the idea that John is consciously saying that this is the end.
Zaspel
Bringing it to a close.
Hamilton
That’s right, that’s right.
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Revelation: The Spirit Speaks to the Churches