Apocalyptic

The apocalyptic genre of literature is the literature of the oppressed. This is especially true of ancient Jewish apocalyptic literature. 

The Jewish people spent a considerable amount of time in exile and under oppression. They lived under systems and governments that did not look favorably on the Jewish ideas that Yahweh was the world's one and only true king, thereby making there gods and kings all inferior. In fact the claim would have been nothing short of treason.

In the Book of Daniel we find a deeply symbolic and coded vision of great beasts and kings who rule. Then finally "one like a son of man" approaches the Ancient of Days and is invested with worldwide dominion; moreover, his everlasting reign over all kings and kingdoms is shared with "the people of the Most High" 

This book was written to the Jewish people who were in captivity in Babylon.

For a Jewish person to pass around literature that overtly claimed that Yahweh would ultimately put the Babylonian kings and gods in their place would be an invitation to be tried, and likely killed for treason. But a coded story that says even in the midst of suffering Yahweh is still in charge would be a much needed source of hope in dark times.

We see Jesus use this same kind of language to offer hope to the people living under the dark rule of the Roman empire. John, the writer of Revelation, uses the same language in a letter he sent to his church community from his Roman guarded island exile.

Neither Jesus nor John was attempting to lay out an accurate description of future events that would directly proceed God ending the world, as some have proposed. They are not looking to give instructions that will only be of any real use to one generation of Christians living thousands of years in the future. They are speaking a radically subversive message of hope. The hope that, even though it may not seem like it, God's Kingdom is under way.

The hope that the oppressed and the abused, the foreigner and the outcast, the orphan and the widow, the poor and the downtrodden, and all those that are viewed as last place by the current power standards are exalted in God's eyes and will be the first welcomed into the new world that God is creating right under the noses of the unsuspecting empire.

Grace & Peace