As foreign as Revelation’s symbolic scenes may seem to us today, God had been unveiling his plans in vivid, visual imagery long before John reached Patmos. Joseph’s and Daniel’s dreams and visions in the Old Testament illustrate this (Gen. 37; Dan. 7–12). God also spoke in pictures to other Israelite prophets such as Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Zechariah, and even to pagan rulers, though they needed God’s spokesmen to interpret their disturbing dreams (Gen. 41; Dan. 2). These biblical precedents to John’s visionary experience and the genre of his book introduce an important principle that will guide us as we seek to understand Revelation: The Old Testament gives us a key to unlock the symbolism we meet in Revelation.
The dreams of Joseph and Daniel are just two of many examples. The imagery of sun, moon, and stars in Joseph’s dream represented his parents and brothers, who constituted God’s covenant community at that point in history. The meaning was obvious to Joseph’s jealous brothers and even to his doting father Jacob. The same imagery—sun, moon, stars—reappears in Revelation 12:1, where John sees the covenant community portrayed as a mother who gives birth to the Messiah. Daniel’s dream and vision showed four vicious beasts, followed by a son of man who receives everlasting dominion from the Ancient of Days. Aspects of the beasts reappear in Revelation’s description of the beast that wages war on God’s saints (13:1–9). Before that horrific scene, however, John sees Jesus, the church’s champion, radiating glory as “one like a son of man” (1:12–18). Throughout the Old Testament, not only in visions granted to prophets but also in history’s concrete events (Creation, Exodus, etc.), the Spirit of Christ was introducing a symbolic “vocabulary” that he would employ in the visions to John, the “climax of prophecy.” It’s tempting to look to 21st century current events for clues and cues to unlock Revelation’s mysteries. But the reliable keys that fit the locks are those that God embedded in his ancient Scriptures, as accessible to Revelation’s first-century hearers as they are to us today.
Footnotes
Adapted from the Core Christianity Bible Study, Revelation, by Dennis Johnson.
