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Reading Revelation Responsibly

Reviewed by Chris Skilton.

This book is an excellent introduction to the Book of Revelation. There can be few books in Old or New Testament for which trees have lost their lives in vain than those written about Revelation – but for this one, they have been chopped down in a very good cause.

Gorman offers guidance for reading Revelation and identifies key themes and structures which will help in charting a way through its chapters. He draws attention to how Revelation sees itself – as apocalypse, prophecy and pastoral letter. A key chapter examines a range of interpretative approaches: it is cautious about readings which focus wholly on the past. Understanding the context in which the book was written is vital, but must lead on to how it addresses the church today. Gorman is especially harsh on predictive readings, largely because of the popularity of some expressions of this (75 million ‘Left Behind’ books sold worldwide!).

He sees Revelation as a pastoral, prophetic and political text cast in poetic form. The main dangers for the first century church are seen not primarily as persecution, but as accommodation and assimilation to the civic religion of the day. The book is therefore a call to the church to remain faithful to the Lamb on the throne who is victorious on the cross – in spite of how the world was, is and will be. Along the way, Gorman demonstrates how civil religion (by which he means exaltation of the state as ‘god’) of our own day (especially manifest in the America in which he lives and works) is not a million miles from the world of empire depicted in Revelation.

The book emphasises that it is guide rather than a commentary and so is limited in what it can say about each chapter of the text, but there are plenty of good and albeit brief insights here as well.

The book is a fine introduction for ministers looking to preach or teach on Revelation. It could be happily recommended to others, especially those bewildered or puzzled by much else that has been written (perhaps after they have read Ian Paul’s excellent brief introduction in the Grove Biblical Series!).  The book is admittedly not cheap – but worth every penny and every tree.