Episode 16: Forgiveness and Non-Retaliation in a Partisan World

In our fourth episode of our study of Revelation, we're going to look at Revelation 6-8 as begin to get into some of the bizarre and contested texts on judgement.

We find the infamous “seals,” broken by the lamb that evokes the four horsemen, a variety of plagues and catastrophic events that seem to signal the crumbling of the world.

Why does God offer such visions of judgement to John, and what are those visions meant to teach us about the politics of Jesus in the present?

We clearly live in a highly contested, highly partisan time, where political loyalty is divided between contested visions, contested platforms, and contested policies that seem to urgently denounce the other party, while even more urgently upholding themself as salvation to this moment’s needs.

How do we navigate the constant assaults, character assassinations, virtue signaling and cancel culture that accompanies our present political discourse? Do these texts of judgement offer us any vision of guidance for the people of God to follow the politics of Jesus in a highly contested partisan world?

While these images may seem strange, they open our eyes to the world God is forming, intervening with, and redirecting, even as they cause us to pause over how we interact with our perceived enemies in this world.

Check out our companion study available at our store and journey with us as we continue Revelation and the Politics of Jesus, by looking at “Forgiveness and Non-Retaliation in a Partisan World.”