Revelation: A Narrative?

I have spent some time in the final book of the Bible over the past week. I am doing a master’s research project on this, which means I need to seriously increase my knowledge of the book!

Finally, here, I’ve had some free time to actually start grappling with it. I’ve discovered a number of things, but on my initial read through (which is still in progress) the narrative structure of the book is really impressing me.

I wouldn’t have said that Revelation had a narrative structure. I’d have thought it was too apocalyptic for that. Instead I find some of the best dramatic tension, a whole series of offline/online switches and other narrative techniques. The ‘plot’ slows down so much in places that there are whole chapters where the narrative doesn’t so much as move forward a single inch. There are even weird sort of Brecht-ian moments where John reappears in the narrative to remind you of his all-important witness to these events. I’m sure there are other reasons which I just don’t see at the moment for his reappearance as these precise moments. All very clever, but who really cares?

I care.

Because I think this demonstrates that John the Apostle is the author of Revelation. I know this is hopelessly old fashioned, because after all that is the tradition of the church and the evidence of the text, so it must be wrong. But I really don’t care. John the Apostle (whom I also think wrote John’s Gospel, demonstrating that I am lost cause on the issue) is remarkably clever at story telling. He arranges his Gospel with all the artistry and scientific precision of a da Vinci, incorporating different genres (narrative and teaching) to breathtaking effect. This is precisely what I see happening in Revelation: a blending of genres, (letter, apocalyptic, narrative) which dovetail and create a meaning more substantial than is possible with any one genre. John seems to be a master craftsman when it comes to shaping content using form, in which the form is more than the packaging but adds meaning to the content. Revelation, although it has different stylistic features and uses different language, feels Johannine in this way.

But John is doing more than merely being clever. At this stage in my thinking, I would say that the overarching theme of Revelation is the sovereignty of God. God owns all people, all creatures, all of history and he will bring it to an end and rearrange everything. Those who love him will be recognized by him, and will themselves recognize and applaud his work. Those who hate him will be compelled to recognize and submit to his rule, despite his rejection of them. It is a stark message. The focus from the beginning is the rule of God in this, seen in the content of the various chapters.
However, the form adds to this content in several ways: (in no particularly order)
• Worship completely slows down proceedings. The action completely stops while various groups cry out to God about how extraordinary he is and praise him for what he has done. Nothing can happen for an entire chapter, twice between chapters 4-11 because of the worship. It could have been written as a less detailed narrative: “And all the angels, creatures and believers worshipped God in various ways.” But instead the detail is given: who is speaking, what they are saying, what they are doing and in what order. The effect is to show us that responding to God is not incidental. God is not merely acting without any interest in the response of his creation: their response is important. The reader’s response is also important. And the effect is also to model a response. Some of the things happening in the book are unusual to say the least and it is hard to know what is going on, let alone how one should respond. The detailed responses help orientate the reader as to his or her response: the book is not intended as a showpiece of apocalyptic literature but to call from us faith and love. These scenes also show that there are definite groupings (each grouping has a different level of intimacy: believers almost exclusively are the group which use ‘you’ to address God; the whole of creation (and presumably those who hate God) only speak of God in the third person). This too is to help us respond appropriately now and learn to love God before finding ourselves hating him, we are cut off from him forever.
• Everything is numbered. Yes, the numbers are very interesting and you can add them up and do all sorts of things with them. But when someone numbers something, then you can tell they are in full control of it. The seven angels with seven trumpets, for example, show that the woes visited on the earth are under the precise management of God himself. They are unleashed at precisely the right time in precisely the right order, with lots of narrative clues along the way that this is the case. The end of the world does not happen because God loses control of the cosmos even momentarily and it unravels accidentally. The end of the world happens because and as God chooses. The form and the content make that crystal clear.
• The narrative focuses our attention on the critical moments by drawing out the action and creating dramatic tension. There is a major interruption between the sixth and seventh angel, creating substantial dramatic tension in the narrative. Not only that but the fifth and sixth angels have between them completely broken the pattern of the angels with their trumpets, so that the reader is completely disoriented and remains disoriented as a strong angel (who fits no pattern) pops up and proceeds to push the narrative in a different direction with John re-emerging into the narrative once again. The effect is to highlight the seventh angel and his ‘woe’, which is nothing less than everything being handed over to Jesus as true Lord of all lords. The narrative is structured to focus all of our attention on it.
• God is introduced, seated on a throne. He is surrounded by colour, movement, noise (presumably melodious but that is simply not in the text; the various creatures may be singing off key for all we know) and various responses to him. God says and does nothing. That is a rather unfashionable observation because it sounds like the ‘unmovable mover’, but I think it is done deliberately to set the context for the rest of the book. God isn’t frantic. He isn’t busy. This is not one of the Parthenon of gods, restless and ill at ease, planning things. God is utterly in control. The proper response to this God is to worship him and acknowledge his rule.
So John isn’t just being clever with his design of this immensely complex book, but is carefully helping us wade through complicated apocalyptic things and see the real message of the book: God is utterly sovereign; Jesus is Lord. He wants to help us see and say these things now and live in light of them (rather than be condemned by saying them against our desires in the final day), and so he does that in various ways. One of those ways is through the actual design of Revelation.