Revelation: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition

by Carol Rotz

Publisher:

Beacon Hill

, 2012

Overview

The New Beacon Bible Commentary is an engaging, indispensable reference tool that equips you to study and meditate on God’s Word. Written from the Wesleyan theological perspective, it offers insightful scholarship to help you unlock Scripture’s deeper truths and garner an awareness of the history, culture, and context attributed to each book studied. Readable, relevant, and academically thorough, it offers a new standard for understanding and interpreting the Bible in the twenty-first century.

Throughout its history, Revelation has suffered misinterpretations from allegory to literal manipulations, including the development of spectacular end-time scenarios. These caricatures of Revelation fail to grasp its foundational theology, reassuring promises, hopeful evangelism, and especially its pastoral nature.

Key Features

• Provides clear verse-by-verse explanations that offer a contemporary, Wesleyan-based understanding derived from the passage’s original language
• Contains comprehensive annotation divided into three sections:
  • Background elements behind the text
  • Verse-by-verse details and meanings
  • Significance, relevance, intertextuality, and application
• Includes insight into theological issues, word meanings, archaeological connections, historical relevance, cultural customs, and more

Contents

• General Editor’s Preface
• Author’s Preface
• Abbreviations
• Bibliography
• Commentary
  • Prologue
  • The Letters to the Seven Churches
  • Worship in the Court of Heaven
  • Breaking Six Seals
  • First Interlude: Visions of Earth and Heaven
  • The Seventh Seal and Six Trumpets
  • Second Interlude
  • The Seventh Trumpet
  • Conflict and Victory
  • Triumph and Judgment
  • The Seven Last Plagues
  • Judgment
  • The New Heaven and Earth
  • Epilogue

Top Highlights

“The heavenly perspective reported by John through his visions speaks to the church wherever it stands in history and draws it to the consummation of God’s redemptive plan. Throughout the book, readers are invited to glimpse the future from the perspective of the first century, from its own historical position, and in light of eternity. The kingdom of God constantly breaks into history so that time and eternity, earth and heaven are continuously drawn together.” (Pages 37–38)

“Revelation is not so much concerned with the last things as with the One who is ‘the First and the Last.’ The visions are not so much historical as theological, calling the church to repentance and faithful witness.” (Page 30)

“A view that balances the pastoral, prophetic, and apocalyptic elements as well as the linguistic, visional, referential, and symbolic levels of the narrative gives a more adequate approach.” (Page 37)

“The criticism is succinct: you have forsaken your first love but is not clear exactly what that first love was. It may have been their single-minded love for the Lord as in the early days of their relationship with him. Or it may have been that in their zeal for orthodoxy they lost the intensity of Christian fellowship. The problem may have been that they no longer expressed their love in witness to the world (see Matt 24:12–14; Beale 1999, 230–32). All three of these criticisms center in a loss of love for Christ. A loss of love for Christ results in a loss of love for one another and for those outside the church.” (Page 64)

“In ch 5, Christ received the scroll from God and opened it as a representation of his assumption of authority over his Father’s plan of salvation. Here John accepts his role as prophet in the unfolding of God’s plan.” (Page 152)

Product Details

• Title: Revelation: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition
• Author: Carol Rotz
• Series: New Beacon Bible Commentary (NBBC)
• Publisher: Beacon Hill
• Publication Date: 2012
• Pages: 288

About Carol Rotz

Carol Rotz received her BA degree in religious education from Northwest Nazarene University, BTheol from Canadian University College, MA from Olivet Nazarene University and the University of Port Elizabeth, and a DPhil from Rand Afrikaans University. Carol Rotz retired as a member of the faculty of the School of Theology and Christian Ministries at Northwest Nazarene University where she was the chair of the religion department. She teaches graduate and undergraduate Bible and theology. Rotz served internationally in mission education for 20 years.