One of the areas I have grown in most over the past year or so has been in my recognition that Scripture, as a whole, centers and builds on the concept of liturgy. The liturgical functions of ancient Israel, and now the Church, is the means by which God governs, redeems, and lifts all of reality unto himself. Christ is of course at the center of this—the great incarnational reality of the liturgy, where man is lifted into God, made to participate in him. It is no accident that the Church is called “the Body of Christ.” The Church, by the power of God’s action in the liturgy, is quite literally made to be the incarnation of Christ on the earth; the means of salvation for the earth.

Liturgy makes the world go around—quite literally.

Much of my understanding of this Christocentric, liturgical way of reading Scripture has been influenced by the ancient fathers and in a modern context, Peter Leithart and James Jordan. Yesterday, I watched a video by Seraphim Hamilton (an Eastern Orthodox theologian) on this very subject, and to my delight, he has also picked up on a lot of liturgical undertones in Scripture through the work of Leithart, and more prominently, Jordan.

All this to say, as I have grown in my recognition of just how deeply liturgical Scripture is, I have recognized the failure of modern Protestant interpretations of books like the Revelation of Jesus Christ, recorded by St. John.

In a modern Evangelical view, you are really given four interpretative options.

First—and most common in America—you have the futurist view—most often associated with dispensationalism. This view, in its dispensational form, is foreign to orthodox Christian teaching and utterly self-absorbed by modern-day concerns foreign to Scripture. It is thoroughly disconnected from any and all historical-cultural context, and worse, misses the entire narrative thrust of the New Testament. It is an untenable position based on heterodox ideas.

That being said, the other three views, usually thought to be “the orthodox views” are often just as westernized and disconnected from Revelation. Preterism can turn into a backward form of “ancient newspaper exegesis”—something I believe Jordan himself says. Idealism can be so “pie in the sky” in its interpretation, that Revelation is completely disconnected from history. Historicism is, quite literally, newspaper exegesis down through the ages. All fail in their own way.

The key to understanding Revelation, as I have come to understand, is through its liturgical drama. Revelation is a book about liturgy, and the victory of the Lamb and his Church through the divine liturgy.

All that being said, preterism and idealism, when paired with this larger theme of liturgy, pull the whole narrative together.

What preterism does well is that it takes seriously John’s words to the seven churches that the events contained will take place “soon” and that “the time is near.” All other views, most notably the futurist, have to completely change the plain meaning of these timestamps in order to make sense of their interpretation. However, these words are important because they set up the reality that the first-century recipients of the book were ACTUALLY the recipients of the book. What idealism does well is that it recognizes the cyclical nature of redemptive history. It recognizes that worlds will come and go. It sees plainly the repetition of God’s process of bringing all things in subjection to his Christ.

However, even with Preterism helping GROUND the events of Revelation in the first century and Idealism helping demonstrate the cyclical nature of these symbols, without liturgy—without a sacramental worldview—the meaning of Revelation will be lost. It is meant to be read and understood as a liturgical narrative, not simply an account of the fall of Rome or Jerusalem—or worse, a narrative about “the end times.”

Revelation depicts the heavenly divine liturgy of the Church, through which the world is governed; beasts are subdued, and the world reaches its eschatological telos, finding its yes and amen in the Lamb of God on the eternal Altar of heaven, offered up for the sins of the world.

If you lack a sacramental worldview, you will miss the entire point of Revelation. Of that, I am sure.