Days of Vengeance - The Preterist Archive

INTRODUCTION
(as well as other Old Testament readings). As Austin
Farrer wrote in his first study of Revelation, St. John
“certainly did not think it was going to be read once to
the congregations and then used to wrap up fish, like a
pastoral letter.” 48
Goulder’s thesis on Revelation is supported by the
findings in his recent work on the Gospels, The
Evangelists’ Calendar, which has revolutionized New
Testament studies by setting the Gospels in their proper
liturgical context. 49 As Goulder shows, the Gospels
were originally written, not as “books,” but as serial
readings in worship, to accompany the readings in the
synagogues (the first New Testament churches). In fact,
he argues, “Luke developed his Gospel in preaching to
his congregation, as a series of fulfillments of the O .T.;
and this development in liturgical series explains the
basic structure of his Gospel, which has been a riddle so
long.’’ 50
The structures of both Ezekiel and Revelation lend
themselves readily to serialized lectionary usage, as
Goulder observes: “In the division of the Apocalypse
and of Ezekiel into prophecies or visions, units for the
successive Sundays, the interpreter has little discretion;
a happy feature, since we are looking for clear,
uncontroversial dividing lines. Most commentaries
divide the Apocalypse into about fifty units, and they
do not diverge greatly. Ezekiel is divided in the Bible
into forty-eight chapters, many of which are selfevidently
single prophecies standing on their own.
Further, the length of Ezekiel’s chapters is on the whole
level. The book covers a little over 53 pages of text in
the RV, and many chapters are about two columns (a
page) long. Some of the divisions are perhaps
questionable. For example, Ezekiel’s call extends
beyond the very brief ch. 2 to a clear end at 3:15, and
the short ch. 9 could be taken with 8; whereas there are
some enormous chapters, 16, 23, and 40, which are
more than four columns in length, and which subdivide
naturally. But one encouraging feature will have
become obvious to the reader already: both books
divide into about fifty units, and the Jewish
(–Christian) year consists of fifty or fifty-one
sabbaths/Sundays. So we have what looks like material
for an annual cycle of Ezekiel inspiring a year’s cycle of
visions, which could then be read in the Asian
churches alongside Ezekiel, and expounded in sermons
in its light.” 51 Goulder goes on to provide a lengthy
table showing consecutive readings through Ezekiel
and Revelation, set out alongside the Christian year
from Easter to Easter; the correlations are amazing. 52
The Paschal (Easter) emphasis of Revelation was also
brought out in a study by Massey Shepherd, almost
twenty years before Goulder wrote. 53 Shepherd
demonstrated another striking aspect of the
architecture of Revelation, showing that St. John’s
prophecy is laid out according to the structure of the
early Church’s worship – in fact, that both his Gospel
and the Revelation “give their testimony from the
vantage point of experience of the Paschal liturgy of
the Asian churches.” 54
The lectionary nature of Revelation helps explain the
wealth of liturgical material in the prophecy.
Revelation is not, of course, a manual about how to
“do” a worship service; rather, it is a worship service, a
liturgy conducted in heaven as a model for those on
earth (and incidentally instructing us that the Throneroom
of God is the only proper vantage point for
viewing the earthly conflict between the Seed of the
Woman and the seed of the Serpent): “The worship of
the Church has traditionally, quite consciously, been
patterned after the divine and eternal realities revealed
in [Revelation]. The prayer of the Church and its
mystical celebration are one with the prayer and
celebration of the kingdom of heaven. Thus, in
Church, with the angels and saints, through Christ the
Word and the Lamb, inspired by the Holy Spirit, the
faithful believers of the assembly of the saved offer
perpetual adoration to God the Father Almighty.” 55
The failure to recognize the significance of Revelation
for Christian worship has greatly impoverished many
modern churches. To take only one example: How
many sermons have been preached on Revelation 3:20
– “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone
hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to
him, and will dine with him, and he with Me” –
without recognizing the very obvious sacramental
reference? Of course Jesus is speaking about the Lord’s
Supper, inviting us to dine with Him; why didn’t we see
it before? The reason has much to do with a puritanical
notion of worship that comes, not from the Bible, but
from pagan philosophers.
Dom Gregory Dix, in his massive study of Christian
worship, hit it right on the head: Liturgical puritanism
is not “Protestant”; it is not even Christian. It is,
instead, “a general theory about worship, not
specifically protestant nor indeed confined to
Christians of any kind. It is the working theory upon
which all Mohammedan worship is based. It was put as
well as anybody by the Roman poet Persius or the
pagan philosopher Seneca in the first century, and they
47. M. D. Goulder, “The Apocalypse as an Annual Cycle of Prophecies,” p. 350.
48. Austin Farrer, A Rebirth of Images: The Making of St. John’s Apocalypse
(Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, [1949] 1970), p. 22.
49. M. D. Goulder, The Evangelists’ Calendar: A Lectionary Explanation of the
Development of Scripture (London: SPCK, 1978).
50. Ibid., p. 7. Goulder suggests that the Book of Revelation was written in the
same way, as St. John’s meditations on the lectionary readings in his church.
51. M. D. Goulder, “The Apocalypse as an Annual Cycle of Prophecies,” pp.
350f.
52. Ibid., pp. 353-54. James B. Jordan has written a very helpful series of studies
on “Christianity and the Calendar,” published over a three-year period in The
Geneva Papers (first series), available from Geneva Ministries, P. O. Box
131300, Tyler, TX 75713. See esp. No. 27 (January 1984): “Is the Church
Year Desirable?”
53. Massey H. Shepherd Jr., The Paschal Liturgy and the Apocalypse (Richmond:
John Knox Press, 1960).
54. Ibid., p. 82.
55. Thomas Hopko, The Orthodox Faith, Vol. 4: The Bible and Church History
(Orthodox Church in America, 1973), pp. 64 f.; cited in George Cronk, The
Message of the Bible: An Orthodox Christian Perspective (Crestwood, NY: St.
Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1982), p. 259.
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