Revelation resources

I was lamenting that I've become pretty infrequent in my posting; but also reflected that a 'sub-category' of this blog has become what I might call "pastoral advice" as it's advice on how to interact with various portions of Scripture—situational correspondence that I realized might have more general usefulness. So I've decided to just embrace that! Here's some thoughts on resources for the book of Revelation:

Revelation is one of the trickiest books to approach because of how many ways Christians have interpreted it, and because of the way Dispensationalism has cast a long shadow over modern interpretation among evangelicals. 

Here's a paper I wrote in seminary where I exegete Rev 20:1-6 because most of the differences of interpretation come down to what you do with the millennium described there. 

You may or may not be familiar with the idea that there are 3 basic "camps" of interpretation. These camps are basically answering the question, "does Jesus come back..." before the millennium in Revelation 20 ("Pre-mil"); without reference to a specific millennium ("A-mil"); or after the millennium ("Post-mil"). 

But what is probably the stronger division is between Dispensational interpreters on the one side and the historic pre-mil, a-mil and post-mil interpreters on the other, because the Dispensational camp started straying into some places that did violence to how you interpret the rest of Scripture,* demands we see the modern secular state of Israel as having eternal significance, and requires us to see God saving people by different means: the Jews by the law in the old dispensation (and for many still the Jews by the law today); Christians by grace in the new dispensation. 

Modern exegetes who have sought to remain faithful to the Scripture while remaining within the Dispensational tradition have developed "neo-Dispensationalism" which is basically the historic pre-mil position. 

Pastors and Elders in the PCA can subscribe to any of the three historic views, but because of the departure from good exegesis required by Dispensationalism that view is 'out of bounds.' Of course, PCA members may believe whatever their consciences lead them to, but we urge everyone to conform their belief to the Scriptures. 

Unfortunately I don't have a great 'Bible study-type' recommendation as the controversies that have grown up around Revelation are so big it tends to take pretty heavy-hitting academic treatment to deal with all the things floating out there in the ether... G.K Beal has written the definitive and masterful commentary which I find most helpful (and used when I preached a sermon series on Revelation back in IL) but it's also over a thousand pages and goes into detail only a person writing a book on Revelation would need to get into. He has also written a much more accessible commentary I'd recommend. There's a good, short book that presents the 4 views called The Meaning of the Millennium: Four Views by George Ladd. I have also used and appreciated a few other commentaries I'll note: J. Ramsey Michaels, Revelation (it's hard to plott Michaels on the spectrum of millennial views); Simon J Kistemaker, Exposition of the Book of Revelation (a-mil); and Robert Murray M'Cheyne, The Seven Churches of Asia (just deals with the first chapters addressed to the churches).

*This is an odd development because most people who are in the Dispensational camp are firmly committed to understanding the Bible as the reliable and trustworthy Word of God. The difficulty is that simplistic engagement with the doctrine of Scripture led people to think everything must be taken "literally." This was because revisionist exegetes in the late 1800s (in the English-speaking world) began questioning whether miracles and many essential aspects of the doctrine of Christ—including the resurrection—needed to be taken literally, despite the Biblical texts very clearly presenting these things as literal events. The concern to stand for literal interpretation, when applied simplistically, led people to interpret figurative texts as necessarily literal. It was no longer up to the biblical author whether the text was figurative or literal: everything had to be taken literally. But with vision narratives that is hugely problematic, and leads to some significant inconsistencies. For example, when Joseph or Daniel give interpretation of rulers' dreams, should we accuse them of revisionism for saying what the meaning behind fat cows and thin cows means? Trying to force a literal read onto figurative material also causes modern interpreters into some strange linguistic gymnastics, like the common interpretation among contemporary Dispensationalists that the grasshoppers in John's vision are really what contemporary military attack helicopters would look like to a first century person! So now we have John describing 20th/21st century military gear, but not being intelligent enough to know it's large flying machines, not grasshoppers. And that would imply that the literal word 'grasshopper' in the sacred text of Holy Scripture is, in fact, a mistake!