How can we bring new energy, new understanding, new vigor to reading the book of Revelation?  How, in fact, can we bring Revelation to life?

The video above is excerpted from the first session of the free biblical seminar, "The Apocalypse Unplugged."  (No matter when you see this, you can still get in to this seminar.  All live sessions are being recorded live so you'll have access to all sessions.  And because they are recorded live, they feel live. )

This seminar is not a typical approach to the book and not a full study of every part of that book.  It is, instead, a focus on some specific aspects of the book asking, 

"How might we bring
the book of Revelation to life
now in the 21st century?"   

There has been quite a bit of interest and even excitement about this seminar—as you can see from the short excerpt, the live interaction has been spirited.  The question is not really "how can we focus on the mysterious things in the book and get excited?"  It is rather, "How can we bring Revelation to our real and challenging lives, day after day?"  

Revelation as Part of "the Biblical Canon"

One of the things we are looking at—and it shows up in the clip above—is how the book was apparently not widely accepted among the early Christians of the first three centuries, precisely because of its apocalyptic character.  Apocalyptic was more "Jewish" in origin than Gentile, and the church of the 2nd-3rd centuries was highly Gentile.  That is at least a general consideration. 

At one point in the clip above, I roll out the book Canon Wars.  This is a 110 page response to Michael J. Kruger on canon.  Revelation is not the specific focus of this new book (August 2024), but it mentions Revelation 10 times throughout the book. 

Canon Wars opens with a direct response to Kruger’s claims about the biblical canon, particularly his conflation of "canon" with "authority" and his assertion (which, of course, plays well with some traditional "set-in-stone" approaches) that the NT canon was divinely predetermined and what Kruger names as "self-authenticating." 

Canon Wars is, at heart, a fresh challenge to many assumptions about the concept of canon.  It pointedly critiques the anachronistic imposition of later theological concepts onto early Christian texts. Central to this critique is the simple, but game-changing question, "Whose idea was the biblical canon?"—a question that reframes the debate entirely. Rather than accepting a traditional, static, theologically constructed view of a preordained canon, Canon Wars  invites Christian readers to take hold of a thoroughly faith-based understanding of biblical texts as part of an unfolding, dynamic theological conversation.  This book offers a historically grounded and thoroughly fresh perspective.

More than Canon

The seminar is far more than questions about canon.  You can find full info and an outline of topics here.  Mostly, this will be an energetic jaunt into the text of Revelation, especially on some key words and phrases and how they might challenge and change how we approach the last book of the New Testament. 

Gary D. Collier
Director, IABC