Reading the Book of Revelation: A Liturgical Cosmology Understanding

Before offering a liturgical synopsis of Revelation, it may be helpful for the reader to move through two “Reading Guide” sections: (i) General points in reading Scripture, and (ii) General points to remember in reading the book of Revelation. The substantive section of this exposition nevertheless stands independent of these “general points.”

General points to remember in reading Holy Scripture

First — The Scriptures come to us across a long span of history, and an entire span of historical experiences that are strange to contemporary people. Thus, try to read them in their own terms, not in our contemporary terms. Nevertheless, they will have a contemporaneity because the nature of man has not changed, although the worldviews of persons and societies have changed.

Second — Recognize that we are confronted with a variety of literary genres, and often different literary genres will jostle one another; that is, do not impute neat and consistent blocks of text. For example, in a single verse of Exodus 14:21 we have a “strong East wind” driving back the Red Sea, and the waters divided on the “right and the left”: the first may be a historical memory, the second may be a saga dramatization. However, whatever the literary form, its bedrock is an encounter and memory of Exodus that was/is formative for the Israelites, and for the Church.

Third — Recognize that scholarly views will not all agree, and some scholarly views will push one way of reading, and another scholarly view a different way of reading. That is, if you refer to secondary sources, try to discern where the secondary writer is “coming from.” In approaching Scriptural texts themselves, we approach them in their canonical status as Sacred Scripture, while nevertheless recognizing that the texts may present different voices: for example, King Solomon was wise, and King Solomon was far from wise. That is, from a “revelatory” position the “revelation” may be the fickleness and folly of the human actors, while nevertheless encountering this human narrative under Divine Providence — a revelatory Divine Providence that moves to its dénouement in the reconciling work of God in Christ. It is this “Christological perspective” as led by the Holy Spirit in the Church that leads us toward authentic and dynamic reading of God’s action as present in the canonical Scriptural inheritance of the Church of God.

Fourthly — Recognize that the Scriptures are cultural books: that is, they are human and societal products as well as “divine” products. As such, there may be present elements that are not necessarily revelatory (or not necessarily directly revelatory). For example (as already mentioned), sometimes the “revelation” is the nature of human folly or simply a then-contemporary understanding, such as the “flat earth” worldview. Nevertheless, such recognitions need to be situated in the encompassing understanding such as found in the Vatican II Constitution, De Verbum, where on this perspective we read, “The interpreter must investigate what meaning the sacred writer intended to express and actually expressed in particular circumstances by using contemporary literary forms in accordance with the situation of his own time and culture” (DV, n. 12, emphasis added).

Fifthly — Thus, the most important thing is to come to the Scriptures “bringing as little ‘baggage’ as possible” and trying to hear strange language and trying to hear within that strange language (and with worldviews and cultural perspectives) what under God one needs to hear and to learn: that is, allowing the Scriptures to speak God’s word to us, rather than reading “our word” and projecting “our thinking.” One indeed needs to read with a critical eye, but only in a process that leads to reading with a listening heart.

Sixthly — Our Scriptural reading may be comforting, may be contemplative, but with both of these will always be confronting: confronting because the word (Word) of Scripture is to be lived, not just “heard.”

Seventhly — The living of the sacred text calls for valor and sustained application by us readers, but both these only with a bedrock of Come Holy Spirit! Because a truly Christ-like life at bedrock is a fruit of the Holy Spirit: an authentic Christian life manifests the fruits of the Holy Spirit and it is God-working-with-us that brings these fruits to fruition: brings our life as a life of grace.

Eighthly — In dealing with secondary authors (that is, interpreters of the sacred texts), try always, pray always, to discern what is not of grace, but what is of “man” (“male and female he created them”), because “religious” people may try to present “piety” as godliness, when it may be “me!” “my doing!”: discern this, so that the counterfeit is recognized, and the authentic fruits of the Spirit are cultivated. This requires humility — God, give me a discerning heart as I search for truth and authenticity; my righteousness, Yes, but my righteousness under Your Righteousness. We have ultimately to be God-referenced, not us-referenced. Where our self-reference is an under-God reference, it becomes genuine and not contrived, as manifested in the fruits of the Spirit.

St. Ephraim the Syrian: “Your Word, O Lord, has many shades of meaning, just as those who study it have many different points of understanding . . . He who comes into contact with some share of its treasure should not think that the only thing contained in the Word is what he himself has found . . . If when your thirst is quenched the fountain [of the Word] also is dried up, your victory will bode evil for you” (Diatessaron, 1:18–19).

Introducing a synoptic architectural view of the book

The book Revelation presents many interpretative challenges that are not addressed in this article. Instead, we present an “architectural” perspective on the book under the banner of “Liturgical Cosmology”: that is, a structured worldview that has a liturgical focus. In this perspective I “bookend” that opening chapter of the Bible (Genesis 1) with the closing chapter of the Bible (Revelation 22), each of which closes with the Holy Day (the first, a Sabbath, and the last, being a Sunday). Discerning this interpretative structure began for me when reading Genesis 2:2 and noticing, “By the sixth day God had finished the work [e[rga] he had been doing; and so on the seventh day he rested from all his work [e[rgwn, LXX].” And I thought, in reading back to Genesis 1, this is a liturgical text: we are dealing with a Sabbath, and when we deal with a High Sabbath, we are dealing with the celebration of an Octave, Sabbath to Sabbath (Genesis 1:1–2:2).

With that thought, my mind moved to something that stuck with me in the closing sequence of the last book of the New Testament, Revelation 21:10–22:5 that which the Church interprets as the “New Jerusalem” (Revelation 21:10) descending from heaven and the worship [latreuvsousin] of God and the Lamb as seen by the addressed disciples. This evoked for me Romans 12:2, where I have an understanding that our “work of God” is worship that Paul names latreivan. This led me to wondering whether this “bookending” of the Bible (OT + NT) was a high Holy Day, a high Sabbath — and whether the structure of Revelation was an Octave: a sequence of 8-day revelatory events Sabbath to Sabbath (for us, Sunday to Sunday), each beginning and ending with a vision of heaven that may be interpreted liturgically.

A close reading verified my thought, where the “first day” in ecclesial terms is a Sunday (Rev 1:10): I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day. There then follow seven “Sundays”: Rev 4:1, 8:1, 11:15, 14:14, 16:17, 18:20, and 21:1, each an “eighth day.” That is, the OT opens with a liturgical cycle leading to Sabbath worship that may be read as a programmatic text that presents a liturgical theology cosmology. Similarly, the NT closes in a like manner, with a dénouement in a Christological liturgical theology cosmology.

There was no scriptural NT canonical order of the Bible at the time that the book Revelation was written. Yet the Bible opens with worship, and the Bible closes with worship — the “New heaven and the new earth” (Revelation 21:1) — which again supports a reading of the architecture of the book as a liturgical theology cosmology (and history / prophesy). We need to be reminded that our word cosmos derives from the Greek kovsmo~, which means “order,” “created order.” That is, from the opening to the closing of our canonical Scriptures we have a bookending of a created order and a consummation of a created order — an order that centers on the worship of the Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier.

Such a reading of Revelation takes us into a divine cosmology and a divine temporality — which, of course, is not “temporal” in our sense of “time,” because God is outside time. Nevertheless, the Scripture presents witnesses of the entry of God into our temporality: thus, “The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all” (Revelation 22:21), often rendered as “all the saints” (the ecclesial readers / hearers). That closing text is a now, where the Kingdom of Heaven is “in heaven” and “on earth” in the Communion of the Holy Church of God. Amen!

Having posited an “octave” liturgical structure of the Revelation text, we now turn to specifying those 8 days across 8 weeks.

The weeks / days that give shape to the Revelation text

1. Prologue and the Letters: The “scene” is He who is coming (1:7): The author is in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day, Sunday (1:10: the 1st Week). This gives the tenor of the book as presenting pneumatic and prophetic and liturgical literary genres. It should be noticed that the 1^st week in the liturgical architecture of the book Revelation presents seven letters to the seven churches in Asia (Rev 1:11): Ephesus (2:1), Smyrna (2:8), Pergamum (2:12), Thyatira (2:18), Sardis (3:1), Philadelphia (3:7) and Laodicea (3:14).

2nd Week. 1. The scene again is a door open in heaven [oujranw`] with a vision of what is to take place after this (4:1). Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty (Rev. 4:8b).

2. Monday (6:1) the breaking of the [first of the] seven seals: exposition of the reign of Christus Victor.
3. Tuesday (6:3) the breaking of the second seal: the red horse (the color of slaying, blood).
4. Wednesday (6:5) the breaking of the third seal: the black horse with scales of justice.
5. Thursday (6:7) the breaking of the fourth seal: the deathly pale horse.
6. Friday (6:9) the breaking of the fifth seal: the cry of the martyrs [marturivan]: the call for waiting!
7. Saturday (6:12) the breaking of the sixth seal: the Great Day of wrath [ojrgh`~] of the Lamb: the victory does not consist in achieving power, but in being found worthy to wield it. Chapter 7:1–17 represents an interval expositing the reign of God and the vindication of those who remained faithful. Note the liturgical text at 7:12: Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God for ever and ever!

3rd Week. 1. Sunday [and an eighth day] the breaking of the seventh seal (8:1): When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven . . . (Rev. 8:1a):

Silence in heaven and the prayers of the saints, and note the location, earth [gē: the root of the word geology] (verse 5) and the forthcoming great signs.

2. Monday (8:6) the first trumpet: readiness to blow: sign of hail and fire.
3. Tuesday (8:8) the second trumpet: sign of a great mountain burning.
4. Wednesday (8:10) the third trumpet: sign of the falling of a great star, Wormwood.
5. Thursday (8:12) the fourth trumpet: angel announces further anticipation of the torments.
6. Friday (9:1) the fifth trumpet: the unlocking of the abyss and the fate of those not having the seal of God on their foreheads.
7. Saturday (9:13) the sixth trumpet: the hour, the day, the month, the year: plagues upon those who refused to abandon idolatry; and the exposition of the angel with a small scroll (10:1) and the time of waiting is over and the seventh angel announces fulfilment of the mysteries of God [musthvrion tou` qeou`], the gospel [eujhggevlisen] (10:7), followed by the deliverance of the small scroll to [John] with the agony of the proclamation of the Gospel to the nations (10:8–11). There follow the witnesses [marturivan], with the “world” going its way and the vindication of the martyrs (11:1–13). (Understand “world” not firstly in terms of God’s creation, but in terms of that which is not-God-referenced.)

4th Week. 1. Sunday [and an eighth day] (11:15) the seventh trumpet: When the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever:

the [heavenly] worshiping activity of the Church brings crisis to the world.

2. Monday (12:1) the [1st] great sign: woman in heaven in labor: birth pangs of the Church.
3. Tuesday (12:3) the second sign: the dragon and the woman and her flight to the desert [e[rhmon], a place prepared for her by God for a determined period.
4. Wednesday (12:18) the third sign: the emergence of the beast for a determinate time: allusion to Rome and to the cult of the Emperor worship — with a reference to heaven and those who are there “entented” [skhnh;n] [in Latin, tabernacled].(13:6)¹ in LXX [tabernaculum in Latin] before the construction of the Solomonic temple).] and the maraudings of the first Beast (13:7–10).
5. Thursday (13:11) the fourth sign: the second Beast, his parodying the Holy Spirit and the totalitarianism of his pernicious reign.
6. Friday (14:1) the fifth sign: the day of Calvary and the vision of those who have followed the Lamb.
7. Saturday (14:6) the sixth sign: the angelic announcing of the gospel eternal [eujaggevlion aijwvnion]² and of the fall of Babylon [Imperial Rome], and the call for constancy in faith and perseverance, and the angelic cry, Blessed are they who die in the Lord! . . . their work[s] follow them [that is, into the heavenly realm] (14:13) leading into the Sunday.

5th Week. 1. Sunday [and an eighth day] (14:14, 20): And Lo, a white cloud, and seated on the cloud, one like a Son of Man, with a golden crown on his head, and a sharp sickle in his hand (Rev. 14:14): the seventh sign that is conflated with the first vision: the harvest at the end of an era, and the wrath of God. The harvest is the prelude to the heavenly liturgical singing of the hymn of Moses and of the Lamb (15:3f). This triumph / vindication heralds the seven last plagues (15:7).

2. Monday (16:2) the [1st] plague: evil sores on those who had the brand of the Beast.
3. Tuesday (16:3) the second plague: blood of dead men and death in the sea.
4. Wednesday (16:4) the third plague: rivers and fountains of blood; (16:5) the vindication of the witnesses of Christ and the cry from the altar, Yes, Lord God Almighty, just and true are your judgements (16:7).
5. Thursday (16:8) the fourth plague: fire and heat on the unrepentant.
6. Friday (16:10) the fifth plague: pain and sores on the unrepentant with the whole empire of the Beast plunged into darkness.
7. Saturday (16:12) the sixth plague: the Armageddon in the East (the empires outside the reach of Imperial Rome), and anticipation of the blessedness of those who persevere in the faith.

6th Week. 1. Sunday [and an eighth day] (16:17): And a great voice came out of the temple, from the throne, saying, It is done! The seventh plague: the final punishment / destruction of the great Babylon and the cursing of God by men [a[vnqrwpoi]. This is the context from which the cry of the angel is heard, “It is done!” gevgonen. We encounter some conflation of a diurnal structuring of the text with that Sunday triumph extending into an amplification in chapter 17 that traces the demise of Babylon.

2. Monday (17:2-7) the seven sights: the image of the Woman drunk with the blood of saints [tou` ai{mato~ tw`n aJgivwn] (17:6).
3. Tuesday (17:8) the second sight: The ambivalence of the beast that was and is not [ēn kai ouk, and not is] h\n kai; oujk e[stin, and the call for wisdom to comprehend these contradictions.
4. Wednesday (17:10) the third sight: the defeat of the Kings and victory of the Lamb (in which defeat the faithful share).
5. Thursday (17:15) the fourth sight: the crushing of the Woman (the Prostitute) and the end of her debauchery.
6. Friday (18:1) the fifth sight: Babylon has fallen! (partly a conflation with the fourth sight).
7. Saturday (18:4) the sixth sight: the call of my people [oJ laov~ mou] to go out of her (a conflation of the Beast and the Woman); and the mourning of the corrupt world and the blood of the saints (18:9–24).

7th Week. 1. Sunday [and an eighth day] (anticipated in 18:20 and extended in 19:1–10): Rejoice over [the great city], O heaven, O saints and apostles and prophets, for God has given judgment for you against her! (Rev. 18:20). The seventh sight: the heavenly celebration of the saints, apostles and prophets of God’s judgement over the throwing down of wickedness [the Woman] — conflated with the Songs of Victory and the liturgical worship of the twenty-four elders and a great multitude crying to God: Amen, Alleluia! (19:3, 6). The marriage of the Lamb and the Bride (19:7–10).

2. Monday (19:11) the 1st of the seven destructions: The Faithful and True seated thereupon and wearing a cloak soaked in blood of the Word of God and who executes the fierce anger of God.
3. Tuesday (19:17) the second destruction: the feast of carrion birds.
4. Wednesday (19:19) the third destruction: the fiery lake of burning sulphur.
5. Thursday (20:1) the fourth destruction: the chaining and the shutting of the Abyss.
6. Friday (20:4) the fifth destruction: this is really a Consummatum est (John 19:30, tetevlestai) — the Last Word of Jesus at his Crucifixion: “Death [Destruction] is swallowed up in Victory!” 1 Corinthian 15:54).

There follows (20:2–10) a long intermediary [a millennium] ending again in the lake of sulphur fire that may be read as the sixth destruction.

7. Saturday (20:11) the seventh destruction: the final judgement and the burning lake of the second death of judgement.

8th Week. 1. Sunday [and an eighth day] (21:1): Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth . . . (Rev 21:1) The New Heaven and Earth: God is with His People, those who proved themselves victorious (21:7). There is then a reprise of the seven angels leading to a perspective of the New Jerusalem, wherein there is nothing unclean or false (21:27), followed (22:1) with the showing of the River of Life.

(22:3–15) Testimony of the truth of the book and the proclamation of its truth. There is the terrible text (22:11) prophesying wickedness in the Church — perhaps read as the “World,” but I think the Church as the grave referent, or perhaps both referents). (A prevalent ambiguity that is markedly present in the Pauline epistles and is gravely encountered across ecclesial history.)

(22:16–21) Labeled as an Epilogue with the Spirit and the Bride saying, Come! The ban on tempering with the word of the book as written (22:18). The “Last Words” (22:20b), Amen, Come Lord Jesus! [ jAmhvn e[rcou kuvrie jIhsou`]: a Coming that joins a new heaven and a new earth.

Closing remarks

We thus see the pneumatic and programmatic structure of the book Revelation, beginning on a 1st Sunday and ending on an 8th Sunday, an Octave, where every Sunday is located in “heaven” — but understanding “heaven” as both here-and-now (on earth and in temporality) and outside temporality and our spatiality (the realm of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). The force of my reading is that we are to live at once in both temporality and in a-temporality and, as such, we find a continuity in the present life and the life of consummation (“heaven”). This is true for all the faithful, not just a select class of the faithful disciples of Christ.