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Your companion in the suffering

Let’s stop for a second and make sure that we’re on the same page. I’d like to take a break from progressing through Revelation for a moment and really take some time to make the best case for properly and responsibly reading Revelation in the way that we have been. Think of this as a commercial break, an advertisement or a pitch, a defense of the view we’ve taken.

My grandmother asked me a really good question the other day: “If Matthew 28:20 says, ‘I am with you always, even unto the end of the world,’ how can you say that Revelation does not have the end of the world in mind?”

If you recall, we said a few weeks ago that Revelation does not describe the end of the world as a whole. Many people have heard that the total destruction of the world is coming. That is a misreading of Revelation; in reality, it only describes the end of a particular kind of world. I want to clarify this idea and show you how true it really is.

First of all, Matthew 28:20 only says “end of the world” in the King James Version. Most translations will say “end of the age.” Now I am not making an issue about which translations are best. I only show you the differences because I want you to see how flexible some words are. In this particular verse, it’s actually pretty easy to see why most translations prefer “age.” The word in question is aion—where us English speakers get “eon” (a word which could refer to any given period of time, usually a long one).

Of course, you already know that there are some words in English that could mean many different things. I hope you do not “love” pizza the same way you love your family.

So it should be no surprise that one Greek word may have a range of possible meanings. In this case, the author could mean either “world” or “age.”

Just think for a moment about our English word for “world”. Don’t we use it in different ways? We use it figuratively when we say “welcome to my world.” Here, world means something like “my experience.” Or perhaps we use it to refer to planet Earth, or even the entire universe. We even use it in a spiritual sense to refer to the fallen state of things.

It’s actually this last way of using it that is most similar to what’s going in Matthew. Obviously, the world was created good, so it wasn't always fallen. But that was in a past age. It's the age we are in now that is a fallen one.

So Jesus is not saying, “You, the world, and everything in it will be completely destroyed, but don’t worry! I am with you.” Instead He is very tenderly saying, “Even throughout your entire experience of the brokenness of these times, I am with you. And when the right time comes, I am going to fix everything. So keep going, my friend.”

I don’t want to get too ahead of ourselves, but let’s briefly skip to the end of Revelation. In chapter 21, John tells us that he saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” and that the old had passed away. But John isn’t just seeing. He hears a voice—God’s voice—saying, “I am making all things new!”

All things? Does that sound like a complete destruction, or does it sound more like God plans to restore the “things” that are already there? Doesn’t it sound like God is going to rescue and clean up everything from the old, bad condition it was in?

But what about the part where the old is going to “pass away?”

Let me ask you this. When our loved ones pass, do we ever think that they are totally gone? Or what about this. Do we think that God is going to completely erase us before giving us our resurrected bodies?

I hope not. Revelation does not imagine the complete destruction of the world. In fact, it doesn’t even tell us that God has plans to take us out of it and bring us somewhere else (notice that the New Jerusalem comes down to earth—this is a symbolic way of saying that God is bringing heaven to us by restoring the world we already live in)! Revelation is a powerful testimony to the idea that all suffering will end, and that every wrong will be righted. Everything that we know, that has hurt us, that has made our experience of God difficult will be made new. “Every tear will be wiped…”

Now John is very much like Jesus here. He isn’t just saying good news for us. This is also really bad news for all the bad things in the world.

Have I ever shown you Revelation 1:9? It says, “I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering and kingdom and patient endurance that are ours in Jesus, was on the island of Patmos.” What on earth is Patmos?

Where on earth is a better question: it’s the name of the island where John was kept prisoner for his message.

So why are Jesus and John so similar?

The idea that Jesus was only a great teacher is beyond silly. There is simply no way that He would have been killed if He was just a “nice guy.” To an empire that valued material success and human glory above all, Jesus says, “I am the real king, and I will have my way. The path to life is not found in your strength or your ability to control things but in following me.” They couldn’t simply let Him say these things; the obvious answer was to crucify him.

In the same way, John could not have been taken prisoner on a secluded island just for speculating about the end of the world as a whole. If that was his point, he would have only been dismissed as a crazy person.

The fact that the Romans took him seriously and regarded him as a threat proves that he was not merely speaking to the distant future. For John, one thing that can be said without a doubt is that when he envisions the end, he clearly has in mind the end of the Roman kind of world—the kind of world that we as humans have always tried to build for ourselves regardless of who is in power, the patterns of life we all fall victim to, the kind of world that we regularly experience in which we have to build ourselves up with a false sense of security in order to survive.

John saw "too much Rome in the Church, and not enough Church in Rome," and he demanded his followers to resist the Roman way of life in their communities.[1] So John had to be punished because he made the shocking claim that the rulers of the present world—both physical and spiritual—were imposters and destined for destruction.

In this way, John’s Revelation becomes the story of the Church in every age until Christ returns. Compromise, and you will not find Him. But refuse to participate in the fallen patterns and rhythms of life in a dying empire, and you will have life in His name.

Or in the words of Christ Himself, who can put it better than I ever could, “Whoever loses their life for me will find it.”

I can't wait to tell you about the kind of world that will last.

Notes:
[1] Scot McKnight and Cody Matchett, Revelation for the Rest of Us: A Prophetic Call to Follow Jesus as a Dissident Disciple, 19.
I did my Master's capstone on the book of Revelation. After hundreds of hours of research in the spring of 2024, I never came across this book until recently! In fact, I discovered it at a bookstore months after I titled both my first sermon and blog posts on Revelation as "Revelation for All of Us." It is not really an academic book, so that's probably why it didn't come up in the sources I was using. It has much more of a devotional/practical quality to it. There is a lot of learning in it, no doubt, but I think it could be enjoyable to read and talk through with friends, or even as a bedside read. If you care to look at it, do so critically, and I think you would find some valuable insights. I am not endorsing it as a reflection of my thought; we have our differences. I can only say that, after skimming through it, I found many conclusions that were in line with the views I came to after studying John's Revelation so throughly. McKnight is a fine evangelical New Testament scholar, and perhaps I could have benefited from looking to his work sooner. Blessings!

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