The following is an excerpt from Into the Abyss by Mo Thomas. Originally shared in December 2020, we felt a pull to repost this for this special January edition. 

Believers in first century Palestine expected the arrival of a King that would enact a violent, bloody, Messianic overthrow and restore them to their rightful place before their enemies. This was based in their honest, reverent, diligent study of their Scriptures, coupled with a healthy awareness of the times and seasons.

They got it completely,

Absolutely,

Wrong.

The justice they pictured involved sacrificing their enemies for their own benefit. They assumed God’s justice was retributive, an eye for an eye, punishment to fit the crime.

Jesus is not planning on coming back to renounce the Sermon on the Mount and slaughter over 200 million people. Why would we think this about God? How could we?

Rather than wholesale slaughter, Jesus came and demonstrated God’s version of justice by sacrificing Himself for His enemies instead. He believed that Love would triumph, and that His justice would restore all people back to health and wholeness—to shalom. He loved the whole world, and this highlighted God’s justice as restorative. It sets the world back to its original design.

This was a total and complete subversion of their expectation.

How about ours?

At the very least, keep open the possibility that mainstream expectations among modern believers for Jesus’ “second coming” look awfully close to those of the religious leaders at His first coming. Just because we have more scripture doesn’t mean that we aren’t seeing through the same distorted lens that they used.

We’ve been wrong before.

We’ll be wrong again.

Humility is a very good idea . . .

Let the Spirit lead you

To a more beautiful portrait of Christ.

Rev. 1:1-2 (AMPC) [This is] the revelation of Jesus Christ [His unveiling of the divine mysteries]. God gave it to Him to disclose and make known to His bond servants certain things which must shortly and speedily come to pass in their entirety. And He sent and communicated it through His angel (messenger) to His bond servant John, who has testified to and vouched for all that he saw [in his visions], the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ.

The word revelation (Ἀποκάλυψις) in the Greek is “Apocalypse” and it means an “unveiling” . . . So our introduction is that we are about to read the Unveiling of Jesus Christ. More than the symbols, the timelines, and the detailed charts and graphs thousands have used to explain the book, it is primarily meant to throw back the curtains and show us the character of Jesus Christ as the central figure in the Grand Story.

I grew up embracing a futurist view of the book of Revelation; that it was a prophecy about how the end times were going to unfold. I assumed this was the only biblically faithful perspective. I didn’t realize that this particular interpretation had come into popularity only recently in church history, and I wasn’t familiar with any alternative perspectives that remained faithful and true to the scriptural texts.

Since childhood, my view was that there was only one particular way of seeing the end times, the mainstream framework since the mid-1800s. This involved a lightning-fast vacuum-like catching up (rapture) of the saints, and an anti-Christ figure rising up during a tribulation period and wreaking utter havoc across the earth. This would be followed (I was taught) by a holy army led by Jesus Himself that would wipe out His enemies with a sword, leaving rivers of blood in His wake. The only question for discussion, in my understanding, was the placement of the rapture and the details of the millennium in context of the Great Tribulation (was it before, during, or after the Tribulation; i.e. pre-tribulation, mid-tribulation, or post-tribulation).

But how does this forecast align with the beautiful, universe-embracing-portrait  of the crucified Christ we find prior to the Creation?

It doesn’t.

This narrative I grew up believing eventually began clashing severely with my growing understanding of Christ’s unconditional love for all people, including God’s enemies. It also conflicted with the hope and desire Jesus spoke about regarding His expanding Kingdom. This then forced a deep dive into some serious study and, as a result, I found myself arriving at a cross-infused perspective. Here are four startling images in Revelation that forced me to reconsider the main themes of the book:

Subversion 1: The Roaring Lion is a Lamb: An announcement is made of the Lion of the tribe of Judah. At face value, this reference to Christ corresponds to a mighty lion who rips apart his victims. However, this announcement is that that He has already overcome and conquered (before any ensuing battle occurs).  John, in the vision, then turns to see a little Lamb as if it had just been slain, and not a Lion (See Rev. 5:5-6).  Yes, this One is certainly a King, with all power and authority—but it’s the way He became King that is so shocking.  This Ruler overcomes, not by might and power over . . . but by love and forgiveness and power under . . . This King is “the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.” From that point on, the Lion is no longer mentioned. Rather, the Lamb is mentioned 29 more times, thus making it the primary symbol as the narrative proceeds.

Subversion 2: The Robe is Bloody Before the Battle Begins: The rider on the white horse is clothed with a robe dipped in blood before He goes into battle against His enemies. It’s not blood from His enemies. It’s His own blood—another reference to the Lamb that was slain (see Rev. 19:13). This is the constant, overarching theme throughout the narrative in Revelation.

Subversion 3: The Sword is Coming from His Mouth:I’d always heard that Jesus was coming back with a sword, filled with a furious vengeance, to pierce through His enemies and spill their blood. I didn’t realize the sword was coming from His mouth as He rides in on His stallion, robe already bloody (See Rev. 2:16, 19:15-21).  Scripture aligns this reference to the sword of the Spirit, the Truth of the Word of God which He uses to confront deception and judge the nations.  This is a huge subversion to the common image of the sword in the first century. Matter of fact, after this “fury of the wrath of God” is poured out, we find Jesus ruling over these same nations with righteousness and peace. Obviously, this isn’t possible if He wipes them off the face of the earth!

Subversion 4: Saints Conquer by the Blood of the Lamb and Word of Their Testimony: The theme continues around the example of the central Character. The Way of the Slain Lamb is the means to overcoming the enemy (See Rev. 20:4). It’s quite humorous, actually . . . a tiny little Lamb wages war against the dragon and the beast with a sword of Truth, and conquers them as the story moves forward.

The Revelation of Jesus in this light becomes a subversive guide to overcoming the enemy’s anti-Christ systems through the power of cross-like love and mercy—the Love of the crucified and risen Lamb. It highlights the landscape into which the Gospel is meant to explode and expand.

Centering Criteria

I find that the centering criteria for all discussions on eschatology, the study of the last things, is the “portrait” one’s view paints of Christ.

The important questions aren’t about the particular views we have of the end times, whether they are theological positions like the futurist, preterist, historicist, or allegorical perspectives. The overarching question is whether the wrath, judgment, and holiness of God that we perceive is consistent with the Divine Flow we saw prior to the Creation, as well as in the incarnated life of God we find in the Gospel narratives.

More specifically, is it consistent with the Crucified Christ, where we most clearly see God’s love expressed—an unconditional love that’s fully and perfectly integrated with his wrath, judgment, holiness and justice?

The book of Revelation is the Apocalypse, the “Unveiling” of Jesus the Christ, who displays His Power as the Crucified and Risen and Victorious Lamb. Let’s not distort the brilliant subversion by making it a literal book about “end times” and Anti-Christ figures and the necessity of God’s Rambo-like bloody violence against Their enemies.

Let’s emphasize our Beautiful God, the Crucified One Who joins Themselves to us in order to become our very life.