The Therapeutic Bible – Revelation: Acceptance • Grace • Truth

By Sociedade Bíblica do Brasil and Jairo Miranda

The Therapeutic Bible is an original edition, perhaps unique in the world today. A group of highly regarded Christian mental health professionals — supported by the Brazilian Body of Christian Psychologists and Psychiatrists and by the Bible Society of Brazil — have dedicated themselves to the task of commentating the therapeutic content of the biblical text, using their gifts and professional experience to explain how the Holy Scriptures foster our physical, mental, and spiritual health. This volume is the first fruit of this work in the English language, in the hope and prayer that the Wonderful Counselor will use it to help bring rest and relief to many souls who seek comfort from God's Word.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sociedade Bíblica do Brasil
• Release date: Mar 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9788531115813

Book preview

Good News Translation. The Therapeutic Bible. Acceptance, Grace, Truth

The Revelation

to John

The United Bible Societies is a world fellowship of National Bible Societies, joined together for consultation, mutual support and action in their task of achieving the widest possible, effective and meaningful distribution of the Holy Scriptures and of helping people interact with the Word of God. Bible Societies seek to carry out their task in partnership and co-operation with all Christian churches and with church-related organisations. You are invited to share in this work by your prayers and gifts. The Bible Society, in your country will be very happy to provide details of its activities.

The Therapeutic Bible - Revelation

© Bible Society of Brazil, 2016

P.O. Box 330 06453-970 Barueri, São Paulo – Brazil

email: [e-mail]

All rights reserved

Bible text

The Good News Translation

© 1992 American Bible Society

All rights reserved

Presentation

We are pleased to present The Therapeutic Bible to you. It is the fruit of the loving reading of the Word of God in the midst of our families. We, the authors, are Christian mental health professionals committed to a personal testimony of the grace and truth manifested in Jesus Christ.

We believe in personal salvation in Jesus Christ, the incarnation of his life, the Son of God the Father, the first fruits of the biology of resurrection by the powerful action of the Holy Spirit who inspires us, draws us close, and enables all of our relationships: with God, with others, and with ourselves.

Our professional task, psychotherapy and counseling, puts us in daily contact with the faces of our patients. It is in them that we have witnessed the daily mystery that reveals itself in their gaze. In this mystery we testify that God is indeed present.

The comments accompanying the sacred text originate from these meetings. They are rooted in wonder: consultation with our patients is scheduled by grace. In this sense we are happy to meet in our offices with the envoys of the Lord, who were sent to experience kinship with the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ and become part of a new family that is the Church. They speak words in everyday language that testify to the decisive importance that faith has in our lives and professions.

These comments, thus, are written as prayers, designed to encourage listening of the text. The decisive turn is in the text that gives itself to us and that the Holy Spirit allows us to receive. The joy and satisfaction to awaken this wonderful experience is the goal of The Therapeutic Bible.

The authors

Preface

A group of eighteen Christian mental health professionals, members of the Brazilian Body of Christian Psychologists and Psychiatrists (CPPC) and supported by both the CPPC and the Brazilian Bible Society (SBB), have worked with great effort to identify and explain the various fostering elements of mental, physical, and spiritual health that exist in the Holy Scriptures. In 2011 the New Testament commentary was published in Brazil. What you have in your hands, though, is being published for the first time in any language: the New Testament commentary combined with commentary on the Book of Psalms.

We pray that God blesses all the readers of the biblical text, the commentaries, and the explicative boxes — and hope that this work helps each reader to grow in physical, emotional, and spiritual health. We would appreciate any comments or suggestions that readers have so that we can improve our work — after all, our objective is to cover the entire Bible, and there will certainly be much that needs improvement as we tackle this difficult yet enriching task which has blessed our lives so far. We solicit your prayers for our editorial team, that The Therapeutic Bible will be an instrument that brings acceptance, grace, and truth on the part of God to our people in need.

Jairo Miranda (team coordinator)

Karl Kepler (editor, The Therapeutic Bible)

About the CPPC

The Brazilian Body of Christian Psychologists and Psychiatrists (CPPC), an active organization since 1976, researches and promotes the dialogue of the science and practice of psychology and psychiatry with the Christian faith. Through the years we have noted that in spite of occasional tensions, it is not necessary to give up either scientific truth or the truth revealed in Scripture — we believe that both originate in God.

We promote conferences, meetings, fellowships, lectures, and agreements with educational as well as ecclesial institutions. We publish Psychotheology magazine and make ourselves available to our readers on our Internet site: www.cppc.org.br, where one can access diverse texts of our authorship, find professionals in every region of Brazil, and get to know us better.

The CPPC supports the initiative of The Therapeutic Bible, and hopes that its collaboration with this project will lead more people to encounter a path of wisdom and health in their lives, not only in the physical dimension, but also in the emotional and spiritual.

Index

Cover

Colofon

Presentation

Preface

Thematic Box Index

Revelation

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Writing and Translation Teams

Thematic Box Index

The Soul of Revelation

Don’t Be Afraid

The Seven Letters to the Churches

Numbers in Revelation

The Two Roads

Silence

Repentance

The Mark of the Beast

Faithfulness, Suffering, Prostitution, and Joy

The City

The Revelation

to John

Go to chapter index

Revelation, the last book of the Bible, is presented with extreme vitality and vivacity. The context of deadly persecution in the early church, which confessed Jesus Christ as Lord, enlightens us and encourages us to live faithfully in our times and circumstances. Many lords, rulers, and Caesars, people and ideas, want our heads and hearts. How can we live our lives today amid so much competition for our loyalty? In Revelation we have the culmination of God's revelation to mankind through Jesus Christ. From the world of the risen dead, he ascends to the heavenly throne by the power of God.

Unlike the popular impression that associates Revelation with bad news and endless catastrophes, we will find in this book the clues to orient ourselves amid the convulsions of history as it heads towards its consummation and the emergence of the new heaven and new earth. The dominant tone in reading and studying in Revelation does not need to be one of concern, fear, or horror. Also, it is best not to read Revelation in small parts without following the natural sequence of the text. Although metaphorical and full of symbolism in its messages, it is a rich book, valuable for its insights.

In an overview of the book, we realize that what determines the content of events is the sovereignty of God and his eternal glory, the victory of the Lamb, the risen Christ, the defeat of the devil, and the removal of all evil, as well as the happiness of the saved who will enjoy life with God forever and ever.

These evidences serve as encouragement, motivation, and consolation for the church at any time in its history. The book of Revelation was written for the guidance and strengthening of the faithful, both in its time and for all times. Today we are also included in this guidance and strengthening, for it is a pastoral letter of the highest quality, both for the strong drama of its narrative and for its applicability.

John was a church leader who was exiled to a Roman prison on the island of Patmos, thus prevented from preaching, teaching, and guiding his sheep. God gives him, in exile, these visions to be written and sent to the churches (1.19). Military censure was inevitable. The censors may even have considered this an interesting work of fiction or fantasy that John had written — as if God had blinded them not to see the tremendous truth described within its pages.

In these visions, God led John to use symbolic language — which was current at that time — and that could be understood by people who had good knowledge of the Scriptures. The most common feature was probably the use of names and terms from the experience of God’s people in the Old Testament (Israel, Jerusalem, sacrifices, incense, etc.) to refer to God’s people in the New Testament era (the church).

The socio-cultural context

The seven churches mentioned in the beginning of Revelation were the original recipients of the book, and were located in Asia Minor, a kind of bridge between Europe and Asia, which is comprised by the modern-day country of Turkey. Near the end of the first century, when the book was written, the churches founded by the apostle Paul and some of his disciples were already consolidated and had local leadership. In the political-religious context, the cult of the Roman Emperor was well-established, and a divine character was attributed to him. At first, there was religious pluralism, since the public order did not change and there were no attempts to change established institutions. Nevertheless, in certain cities, Christians suffered oppression from influential Jews in the government because of their faith. Another aspect to consider is the economic boom of the region, and the close relationship that existed among the industrial, commercial and artisanal sectors, and the religious practices in pagan temples. These activities favored an uninhibited and licentious sexual lifestyle that challenged the norms and values of the young Christian communities.

A book of judgment

In regards to this book, differences of interpretation among Christians are greater than those of any other part of Scripture. The style of symbolic and figurative language gives rise to enormous differences and subjective views. If we want to treat the book as written primarily for our time, we must ignore any meaning it may have had for the first recipients (the seven churches around Ephesus), and vice versa.

For Revelation, the world is divided into two basic groups: those who follow Jesus and are part of his true church (which are treated in the book with terminology used in the Old Testament such as Israel or the people of God), and those who do not follow Jesus, who are called those that dwell on the earth. The judgment of the church begins shortly after the introduction and is portrayed as a process that is already in progress. For the rest of the world, chapter 9 reports a description of plagues, in which judgment and punishment are also taking place and will continue to get worse. The book