Craig R. Koester offers both a theologically vibrant and pastorally applicable presentation of Revelation in his book Revelation and the End of All Things.  Koester is professor of New Testament at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN.

I was trained in what has become a theologically obnoxious and pastorally irrelevant view of the enigmatic apocalypse of John–the Book of Revelation.  I was baptized into the dispensational apocalyptic visions of Revelation as a new, Junior High School believer.  U Thant of the U.N. was then promoted to be the anti-Christ, and so was Martin Luther King, Jr. and so was J.F.K. and lately so was Saddam Hussein.  I was led into the insider knowledge about “the secret rapture” and scared by visions of “the beast” and the dreaded “mark of the beast.” The Great Tribulation would be a ghastly time on earth, but Jesus would beam the insiders up before it happened, thus saving us not only from horses of death, bowls and trumpets of wrath, but from the Great White Throne judgment.

I was taught that when John wrote the Book of Revelation he was clueless about its meaning. It had nothing to do with him or with events in his day. Imagine this:  Someone asks John, “John, what are you writing about?” John replies, “I absolutely have no idea.” For example, if John saw locusts, we insiders saw military helicopters. Revelation was a coded message and John Nelson Darby helped break the code.  (Darby was influenced by a young woman who went into an ecstatic trance.)  We were always on the look out for “the ashes of a red heifer” so that Israel (the nation) could rebuild and dedicate a Temple on the Temple Mount. Oops! The Mosque of Omar/ the Dome of the Rock  is there. The Arabs are going to get really, really mad. After years of this ouija board approach, I became allergic to the Book of Revelation.  Eschatology was sadly reduced to an “end times” chart.

Koester gives the Book of Revelation back to me. I enjoyed the way Koester unfolds the inner logic of the Book of Revelation.  From the opening “revelation” to the final “Amen,” Koester presents the brilliant tapestry and interlocking pattern of Revelation. With insights into the conditions and challenges of churches of Asia Minor, Koester unfolds how chapters 4 – 22 address those current realities in John’s day (and those realities as they reoccur in the history of the church until today). It was so refreshing to drink the truth that Revelation was very meaningful to John and to the seven churches of Asia Minor, and thus, with an enduring message to churches all through church history.  The wild speculations I was subjected to within 1950s to 1990s dispensationalism give way to a “way of seeing” Revelation as pastorally- intensive, historically-conditioned, enduringly-applicable for all the church through all time.  John the author was sharp, creative and pastorally-driven to keep the church loyal to Jesus as Lord in times of compromise and oppression no matter when in history those times occur.

Revelation is not an “end times” book; it is an “all times” book. Amen!

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