Spiraling Time
REVELATION
Number 15
Spiraling Time
Before we begin examining the messages to the churches, I want to pause to talk a bit more about chronology and The Revelation.
As I pointed out earlier in our study, the Jewish calendar follows lunar cycles. As I’m confident you’re aware, the Jewish religion is full of holy days and feasts. These happen each year. Rosh Hashanah marks the new year, remembering the day God created Adam and Eve. The Passover or Pesach is celebrated in the spring and remembers the liberation of the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt. Yom Kippur is the day of atonement when repentance and forgiveness are expressed. In addition, other special days occur at various regular intervals. Most familiar, of course, is the Shabbat or Sabbath, which occurs every week.
Each of these special days along with all the events of history are seen as markers or signposts helping people to remain connected to the cycle of life and of history. Understanding this is an important key to grasping the flow of The Revelation.
Generally speaking, everyone in the world sees time as a linear progression. In the world’s view time runs in a straight line from past, through present, into future. The past is over. The present is a point along this line that has never been before and will never be again. And the future is yet to come and unpredictable.
Here are some things Jewish writers have to say about time.
Eitan Press writing for The Huffington Post said, “Rabbi Natan of Breslov, an 18th century Jewish mystic and spiritual leader, teaches that time does not progress an in exclusively linear fashion -- that the past, so to speak, repeats itself in the future but in a new form. According to the teachings of the Torah, history does not unfold along a time-line but a time-spiral.”
Eitan goes on saying, “Movement on a spiral implies growth: In traveling on a spiral, there is a circular motion revolving around a center, but it is also combined with a vertical movement. You don't come back to the same place you started but a similar place farther along the spiral.”
According to Rabbi Asher Resnick, “The Jewish model of time is a spiral. While time is certainly moving forward, it progresses ahead specifically through a seasonal cycle. Each year we pass through the same seasonal coordinates that are imbued with whatever spiritual potentials were initially established within them.”
Similarly, Rabbi Adam Zeff asks, “What gives us the courage to step into the new, when so much is unknown?” He answers, “The ancient rabbis gave us a gift in this regard when they set aside the view of time that sees it as an arrow shot from a bow, inexorably leaving the past behind and barreling into the future. Instead, they saw time as a cycle, a spiral. As we walk along the path, we see patterns recur and familiar signposts come up again, even as we are never precisely in the same place that we were when we last passed by these markers.”
The Revelation, written as it was by the Apostle John who was raised in Judaism, contains references and elusions to past events and earlier writings. To me, the seven segments of The Revelation reflect this helical view of time. Given this understanding of the flow of time, it would seem almost counterintuitive to anticipate that the events and visions depicted in The Revelation should flow in a linear chronological fashion. Rather, I see this view of time as almost presupposing the use of multiple perspectives.
As time progresses between the first coming of Christ and His return, we come around again and again to the same plan of God. As we traverse history in such a helical fashion, we find that as it progresses the same pattern of events, from creation and birth through slavery and bondage to warnings and plagues and finally to judgement and exodus to freedom.
