Revelation Down to Earth: Making Sense of the Apocalypse of John

Dr. Edwin Walhout's lifelong interest in the book of Revelation comes to a mature climax in this volume, which shows convincingly how and why this elusive Christian scripture provides a comprehensive world-and-life view for understanding the world in which we live.

Arguing that the orientation of Revelation is present, not future—a perspective that brings balance to much current writing on the topic—Walhout explains John's enigmatic visions in Revelation in pastoral, down-to-earth terms. He carefully describes for readers what the apostle John saw, and he relates these compelling visions to Jesus, the gospel, and the church today.

According to Walhout, John was deeply concerned for the churches under his care, even though he was writing to them in exile, and he transcribed his visions in order to encourage them in their current persecution and trials. Through these strange yet powerful symbolic images, the churches were meant to grasp how God was working through Jesus, by means of the gospel and the power of Christ's Spirit, and how they in turn might cope in troubled times.

From this perspective, the challenging visions of Revelation, discussed here as septets (the "Seven Churches," the "Seven Seals," the "Seven Trumpets," the "Seven Bowls") take on fresh and highly relevant meaning. The implications of Revelation for the future can be seen, but only as the result of what is happening in the present—John's first-century "present" and also our own. Walhout's study shows the book of Revelation to contain a magnificent theology of history, with Jesus Christ directing humanity irresistibly toward its ultimate goal—the new Jerusalem, where sin is no more.

In this strangely deflationary commentary, Walhout, a retired minister in the Christian Reformed Church, attempts to make Revelation applicable to the present. In the process, the text's strange and violent images become commonplace inconveniences. In Rev. 16, for example, an angel pours out a "bowl of God's wrath" onto the rivers and streams, which turn into blood as a judgment on those who have "shed the blood of your saints and prophets." Walhout's interpretation: "The rivers and springs represent the philosophies and policies we follow to gain a good life. If these policies require us to be... immoral... then the ultimate result will be disappointing." His thesis is that Revelation "reveals" that the church has been leading the world toward perfection, "so that the world will slowly be brought under the sway of Christ and away from the devil." The structure for his thesis is very orderly, but the text simply refuses to fit into his neat little boxes. Walhout's pastoral background may attract some conservative readers, but his interpretation will not; he radically reconfigures many traditional theological concepts, such as the Second Coming of Christ, hell, judgment and resurrection. While seeking real-life application for this enigmatic part of the Bible, Walhout has reduced the mysterious to the mundane, and traditional Christian hope to an astonishingly optimistic humanism. (Nov.)
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