Reading Revelation for the Resistance: Why the World's Most Misunderstood Book Might Be Our Guide for Turbulent Times

Pastor Anthony and I knew we needed to tackle the Book of Revelation eventually—that wild, violent, deeply misunderstood text that most of us have either weaponized or written off entirely.

We've been calling it "Reading Revelation for the Resistance: Dissident Discipleship in an Unjust World," and honestly, I've been excited about the conversations it might provoke and the ways it could form us more deeply as people trying to live faithfully in an incredibly turbulent historical moment.

So before I say anything else about apocalyptic literature or ancient resistance movements, I need to acknowledge that this week has been hard. I know that what we're all feeling is probably wildly diverse, and that every one of us has been told that whatever we do feel is wrong. Some of you feel relief—maybe you feel like you newly have a sense of what Miriam might have felt when she sang her song after the Hebrew slaves were rescued from the Egyptians: "Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea" (Exodus 15:21). Others may feel wonder and want people to lean into the God who forgives sins without requiring blood, who favors mercy over vengeance.

"I don't want a world where death feels like a victory, even if that's the world we know."

These are the exact tensions that make Revelation so relevant—and so dangerous. How do we resist empire without becoming what we're fighting against? How do we shape our resistance to the beasts of this world so that it doesn't make us into beasts ourselves?

The Book We Love to Hate (And Why That's a Problem)

Let's be honest: most of us have a complicated relationship with Revelation. Many progressive Christians have effectively decanonized it, reacting against the way we've seen people obsess over and abuse it. It's full of wild imagery and problematic binaries and lots and lots of violence. The critiques are legendary and often devastating.

Martin Luther said it was "neither apostolic nor prophetic... I can in no way detect that the Holy Spirit produced it." Friedrich Nietzsche called it "the most rabid outburst of vindictiveness in all recorded history." My personal favorite comes from playwright George Bernard Shaw, who dismissed it as the "curious record of the visions of a drug addict."

But here's what bothers me about our wholesale rejection of this text: we're letting the dispensationalists and end-times speculators win. We're ceding one of early Christianity's most sophisticated pieces of resistance literature to people who want to use it for escapist speculation about when the four horsemen will appear or whether someone's choice of hat is tied to the mark of the beast. And honestly, in the perfect words of Sweet Brown, "ain't nobody got time for that!"

Meanwhile, scholars like G.K. Beale argue that "Revelation may be the most relevant book in the entire Bible," and Richard Bauckham calls it "not only one of the finest literary works in the New Testament, but also one of the greatest theological achievements of early Christianity."

How can both things be true? That's what I want us to wrestle with.

Revelation as Resistance Manual

Here's the first thing you need to understand: Revelation is not about decoding the future. It's about discerning the present. It's about how to live as what I'm calling a "dissident disciple"—someone who refuses to bow to the empires of this world while also refusing to become consumed by the very violence and hatred they're resisting.

The word "revelation" comes from the Greek apokalypsis, which means an unveiling or stripping away. The idea is that something about reality that hasn't been previously known is about to be uncovered. While much about Revelation seems strange to us now, its genre would have been extremely familiar to first-century Jews and Christians. Just as we understand the rules for science fiction or political cartoons, the original audience knew how to read apocalyptic literature.

This is crucial: Revelation works through imagination, not logical propositions. As Christopher Rowland puts it, "To extract a message from Revelation and leave behind the images in favor of something more manageable and rational is to run the risk of evacuating the Apocalypse of its power." The symbols and images aren't decorative—they're central to the message. Reading Revelation is like looking through a kaleidoscope; every time you turn it slightly, you get something new and incredibly vivid.

The book has characteristics of three genres: apocalypse, letter, and Old Testament prophecy. But at its heart, it's a vision received by someone in exile—likely John, writing from the island of Patmos where he'd been banished for preaching about Jesus. This gives Revelation the character of a prison letter, joining the ranks of famous works by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela.

The Churches That Wouldn't Bow

John's first audience was "the seven churches in the province of Asia"—communities struggling with a very specific problem: how to faithfully resist the kind of worship that the Roman Empire demanded. This wasn't just about religious ceremonies; it was about the entire imperial cult that declared Caesar as lord and demanded allegiance to the economic and political systems that kept Rome in power.

These early Christians faced a choice that many of us recognize: conform to the dominant culture and maintain your social and economic standing, or dissent with your life and face the consequences. Sound familiar?

"How do we follow the Lion who is really a slain Lamb, who as one scholar put it, 'wreaks weakness,' and is, in the end, victorious?"

This is where Revelation gets really interesting—and really challenging. The book doesn't call for violent overthrow of the empire. Instead, it presents this radical image of the Lion who is really a slain Lamb. Jesus appears not as a conquering warrior but as one who "wreaks weakness," who triumphs through faithfulness rather than force.

One scholar argues that this makes Revelation "a classic example of art that stimulates rather than prescribes." It doesn't give us a political platform; it gives us an imagination for how power actually works in God's economy.

Staying Human in the Fight

This brings me back to where we started, to the churning in my stomach and the question that keeps me up at night: How do we resist without becoming what we're fighting against?

I'm not the right person to solve all the tensions about what a Christian should feel right now. My personality is generally mild-mannered. I tend to believe deeply in direct confrontation with unjust rulers, but only of the nonviolent kind. I tend to see violence as a tool of the master's house.

But as your pastor, here are two things I do know:

First, nobody has the right to police your emotions. I say this as someone whose gut reaction is too often to want people to feel certain things I've been taught were righteous. But if abolition means anything, it has to mean getting rid of the cops in our own heads. In the Bible, much of the most egregious violence is actually revenge fantasy—expressions of profound grief and rage in desperate situations, or ways of making clear that God was indeed on the side of the oppressed. We can encourage people not to let revenge take root while also not inhibiting their need to feel difficult emotions.

Second, our vengeance and God's good judgment are not the same things. As the brilliant Brandi Miller puts it: "I don't want a world where death feels like a victory, even if that's the world we know."

How do we orient ourselves toward the new Jerusalem instead of being preoccupied with Babylon? How do we keep doing what gives life instead of what brings death?

The Center That Holds

Here's what I need you to hear: The center of Revelation is not the four horsemen or the number 666. The center of Revelation is Jesus Christ—the Risen and Exalted One who has triumphed through faithfulness and models for us how to triumph through faithfulness. This is about what it means to witness and live in patient endurance, which the first hearers would have understood as keeping commandments like love of God and neighbor even when the situation was not conducive to that. It's about learning to not be afraid, even when everything around us suggests we should be terrified. Right at the beginning of the book, John lets us know that his revelation comes from the one who says, "Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last and the Living One. I was dead, and see, I am alive forever and ever, and I have the keys of Death and of Hades" (Revelation 1:17-18).

The voice that speaks through Revelation is the voice of someone who has been through death and come out the other side. Someone who holds the keys to the very things that terrorize us most. Someone who invites us into a way of being that doesn't depend on the empires of this world for validation or protection.

This is what dissident discipleship looks like: following the one who refused to fight empire with empire's tools, who "wreaks weakness" and calls it strength, who insists that the last will be first and the first will be last.

As Dan Savage once said about queer activists in the 1970s and 80s, "it is the dance that keeps us in the fight because it is the dance we are fighting for." We dance not because the world is fine—it's clearly not—but because the dance itself is a form of resistance, a way of insisting that beauty and joy and hope are more ultimate than the forces that would crush them.

Over the coming weeks, we'll dive deeper into this strange and wonderful book. We'll ask hard questions about power and worship and hope. We'll wrestle with images that disturb us and metaphors that challenge everything we think we know about how change happens in the world.

But for now, I want you to sit with this: What would it look like to resist in the key of the Lamb? What would it mean to fight for justice without seeking revenge? How might we stay human while working for change in turbulent times?