Revelation’s interpretive challenge

And in those days people will seek death and will not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them.

Revelation 9:6

For me, one of the huge problems with the preterist view of the Book of Revelation is to find proper historical analogy to the various plagues and judgments in the book. Normal reading of the text sees prophetic prediction going on. This has to be wrested away from the text to force the meaning of the Book of Revelation to be fulfilled in the first century or shortly thereafter. Revelation reads like prophecy. So interpretive honesty must humbly start there. It is the “when” of the events that is hard to pin down.

There is no event in the first century or in the Roman Empire for that matter, that fits this account of supernatural flesh eating locusts torturing humanity. It just isn’t found in history and the Romans would have some sort of record of this kind of event. So the preterist turns the Apostle John into an imaginative old man, says there is something deeper and non-literal to these plagues, and moves on to close the book. And this is usually a person who in every other text of scripture wants a normal, plain reading to govern the interpretation. This is a person highly committed to the gospel who misses a chance to see just how powerful Jesus is in judgment. 

Somehow preterism is comfortable denying the Book of Revelation the same respect given all the rest of the Bible in matters of interpretation. And this is a key reason why I do not ascribe to this view that the Book of Revelation was all fulfilled in the fall of Jerusalem... or as some extend to view... in the collapse of the Roman Empire. It is such a big stretch of imaginative interpretation. 

The Book of Revelation is apocalyptic New Testament predictive prophecy literature. It details in elaborate visions times of God’s judgments upon mankind. It fits into a broader prophetic picture of what the Old Testament AND the New Testament apostles wrote of as “the Day of the Lord.” It describes and warns about God’s judgment to come. It is predictive prophecy. It is also very challenging to interpret for this reason, and I approach it with respect and a humble hermeneutic as a result. There are dispensationalists who equally harm the Book of Revelation by forcing it to interpret present events. It was not meant for that either. Again... humble hermeneutics should approach the text... for me, I’m OK that I don’t know all that is going on here, just that future judgments are the power of God that will be at work in the world.