Every eye will see him, no cameras necessary

Browse the bookshelves of your local Christian bookstore and you will see any number of “guides” to biblical prophecy with cover designs that include helicopters, tanks, and bar codes. Prophecy “experts” today often ignore the historical circumstances of prophetic visions recorded in Scripture. They interpret the images and symbols used by the prophets as though they were crude first century descriptions of weapons and technologies not invented until the late twentieth or early twenty-first century. These are imaginative interpretations, but they are not faithful to the original intent of the biblical writers.

When John received the glorious vision recorded in the book of Revelation, he was in exile on the island of Patmos. His testimony to “the word of God and the testimony of Jesus” was too much for the Roman government to bear. Tribulation, suffering, and persecution were not a future prospect, but a present reality for the church at that time. John’s message to the seven churches in Asia is one of encouragement to persevere under trial. His original readers understood the vision to have implications for their own contemporary situation. They would not have read it as though it pertained only to some distant future generation. The images and symbols John uses would have been familiar to them and they would have interpreted them within their own historical and cultural context.

Thus, when John writes, “Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him” (Revelation 1:7), it is neither necessary nor proper to read any twenty first century technology (eg. television cameras and satellite broadcasts) into the text. John sees a vision of Christ which is concurrent with the vision of Daniel, who “saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed” (Daniel 7:13-14).

It is a mistake to assume that Daniel and John see, in this instance, a vision of Jesus returning to earth from heaven. This is not primarily a vision of Christ coming again at the consummation of history, although his glorification after his time of suffering certainly points in that direction and instills a yearning in the heart of believers for the dawning of that glorious day. The primary focus of the vision, for both Daniel and John, however, is Christ’s ascension “to the Ancient of Days,” that is, to the Father in heaven, to be given his “everlasting dominion” over which he will reign forever and ever. The “clouds” symbolize vindication. Having endured the ordeal of suffering and death, Christ has risen victorious over all his enemies and is now glorified in heaven as King of kings and Lord of lords.

Conversely, the “clouds” also symbolize judgment upon the enemies of the now glorified Christ. In particular, “those who pierced him,” the Jewish religious leaders who conspired with the Romans to put Jesus to death, will receive the penalty due their wickedness. In this context, it is easy to understand how “every eye will see him.” The center of the Jewish religious establishment was, of course, Jerusalem. It was a city which was located at the intersection of the three continents which made up what was then the entire known world. The “clouds” of judgment were gathering around Jerusalem and, because of its strategic geographical location, when God visited his judgment upon the city, “every eye” would see it without the aid of television cameras, satellite uplinks, or YouTube video downloads.

Reading present-day cultural presuppositions into biblical passages obscures the meaning and message of Scripture. God did not intend his Word to be difficult to understand. The original readers of the New Testament not only read and heard it, but also lived it so faithfully that their witness to “the word of God and the testimony of Jesus” became a source of great discomfort to the guardians of the old order who inflicted untold suffering upon them. Nevertheless, they persevered until they had saturated the entire Roman world with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Perhaps we would be more effective witnesses today if we were less impressed with technology and more immersed in living the testimony.