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Dragons, beasts, falling stars, and demon locusts—Revelation is packed with wild symbols! In this episode, Jimmy Akin masterfully shows how to read them the right way: not through newspaper headlines or modern inventions like Vietnam helicopters, but by unlocking their true Old Testament roots and John’s first-century world. Discover self-interpreting clues, blended images, and multiple “comings” of Christ that will transform how you understand the Apocalypse! Don’t miss it.
TRANSCRIPT:
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The book of Revelation is full of dragons, beasts, falling stars, and monstrous demon locusts.
People have read the book as everything from a roadmap of the end of the world to a prophecy involving Vietnam-era attack helicopters.
So how are we actually supposed to read all these symbols?
Let’s get into it!
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A Book of Symbols
The book of Revelation gave its name—or at least its Greek name—to a whole type of literature.
The Greek word for Revelation is Apokalupsis, which is why older Bibles sometimes call the book the Apocalypse of St. John.
For several centuries before and after the time of Christ, books like this were very popular, and scholars call them Apocalyptic Literature.
Now, in contemporary English we associate the word “apocalypse” with the end of the world, but that’s not actually required.
An apocalypse doesn’t have to be about the end of all things.
What really sets this kind of writing apart from ordinary prophecy is that it uses a lot of symbolism—especially when it’s portraying history and what God is doing in it.
Often that symbolism gets interpreted for the visionary by a heavenly figure, like an angel, and sometimes the visionary even gets a guided tour of the invisible world.
The book of Daniel does this when it pictures the rise and fall of empires as a series of strange, monstrous animals, and Daniel is considered an early example of apocalyptic literature.
Jesus also taps into apocalyptic literature in the Olivet Discourse—his teaching about the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in Matthew 24, with parallels in Mark and Luke—which is sometimes called the “little apocalypse.”
But Revelation is the definitive example.
In it, John sees God’s purposes in history laid out in symbols, some of those symbols get interpreted for him by heavenly figures.
And he gets to see parts of the invisible world—God’s heavenly throne room and temple, the abyss or “bottomless pit” where the demons are held, and the lake of fire where the condemned are sent.
When Revelation Explains Itself
Now, here’s some good news: Revelation often helps us understand its own symbolism.
Sometimes Jesus, or an angel, or John himself simply tells us what a symbol means.
For example, right at the start, we’re told what the seven stars and the seven lampstands stand for:
Revelation 1:20
The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.
And these little built-in interpretations teach us some things that aren’t obvious.
Revelation 11:3-4
And I will grant authority to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth. These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth.
Take the two witnesses in chapter 11, who are interpreted as “the two olive trees and the two lampstands which stand before the Lord of the earth.”
That’s striking, because witnesses are usually people—and people aren’t olive trees or lampstands.
So here we’ve got a symbol, the witnesses, being explained by other symbols—and more than one of them.
That tells us a symbol in Revelation doesn’t always stand for a single, easily identifiable thing.
It also tells us something else, because those two olive trees and two lampstands aren’t explained anywhere else in the book.
So sometimes we have to look outside Revelation to figure out what its symbols mean.
Here’s another example, from chapter 17, where the seven heads of the beast get interpreted:
Revelation 17:9-10
The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman is seated; they are also seven kings.
So now we have a single symbol—the heads—standing for more than one thing: seven hills and seven kings.
An individual symbol in Revelation thus can point to several things at once.
And once Revelation interprets a symbol in one place, we can carry that clue elsewhere.
Since chapter 1 tells us stars can represent angels, when we later read about a third of the stars being swept out of heaven, or individual stars falling, we should at least consider whether angels are in view, rather than jumping straight to meteor showers or asteroids.
It doesn’t mean stars always represent angels—but it’s a possibility we need to consider.
Still, these self-interpretations only cover a small slice of the book’s symbolism, so for the rest, we have to look elsewhere.
No Newspaper Exegesis!
And that brings us to one of the biggest mistakes people make with Revelation.
They don’t understand where its images actually come from.
There’s a habit that’s called Newspaper Exegesis, where people try to interpret the book in terms of things familiar to us as modern readers—instead of what John and his first-century audience would have had in mind.
Here’s my favorite example.
In chapter 9, John sees the abyss opened, and out of the smoke come swarms of monstrous locusts:
Revelation 9:7-10
In appearance the locusts were like horses arrayed for battle; on their heads were what looked like crowns of gold; their faces were like human faces, their hair like women’s hair, and their teeth like lions’ teeth; they had scales like iron breastplates, and the noise of their wings was like the noise of many chariots with horses rushing into battle. They have tails like scorpions, and stings.
Now, some interpreters in the twentieth century decided these locusts were actually Cobra attack helicopters from the Vietnam War, with nerve gas being sprayed from their tail rotors.
The crowns on the locust’s heads might be like the helicopter’s rotors that keep it in the air. The wings that made noise also might be a reference to the rotors. The scales like iron breastplates could be the metal body of the vehicle. And the tails would be the tail boom of the helicopter. Some Cobras were even painted with faces and sharp teeth, although they were usually painted to look like sharks.
But this is all reading modern ideas into the text. Also, helicopters don’t spray nerve gas out of their tails.
And you could read other modern things into the text. For example, the mass murderer Charles Manson thought that when the text says the locust had human faces and hair like women’s hair and iron breastplates that these referred to the Vietnam-era rock group the Beatles, who had men’s faces, long hair like women, and electric guitars as breastplates.
Both the helicopter explanation and the Beatles explanation are equally mistaken because they both read modern ideas into the text.
And neither is remotely how John’s audience would have understood what the text says.
The locust are monstrous things confined in a supernatural prison with demons, and they’re led by “the angel of the bottomless pit,” whose name means Destroyer.
Read the way John meant it, these are demonic creatures—not aircraft or rock musicians, not even the musicians who did Revelation chapter 9—I mean, Revolution Number 9.
Where the Images Come From
So if the images in Revelation don’t come from the modern world, where do they come from?
The great majority of the time, the source is either the Old Testament or other Jewish literature from John’s period.
Take those two witnesses again, who are called “the two olive trees.”
Zechariah 4:3
And there are two olive trees by it, one on the right of the bowl and the other on its left.
That’s a reference back to the prophet Zechariah, which any of John’s readers raised on the Hebrew Scriptures would have recognized.
And that gives us a key for reading Revelation.
The two olive trees are going to be somehow related to the symbolism in Zechariah, where they represent the high priest and the king, so in Revelation they’re going to be somehow connected to the priestly and kingly functions God has authorized.
Whenever Revelation doesn’t interpret an image for us, our very first move should be to ask whether that image was already used in the Old Testament or in other literature of John’s day.
You can check whether it was by looking in the many serious, scholarly commentaries on Revelation.
The short, popular-level commentaries usually won’t help here—they often don’t even mention where John’s imagery comes from—but the big scholarly ones will give you a good survey of what he’s drawing on.
And it’s not only the Old Testament.
Those same two witnesses are also called “two lampstands,” and while Zechariah has a lampstand, he only has one, not two.
So John is drawing on something more.
One possibility is the synagogue of his day, since ancient pictures of synagogues often show two lampstands standing in front of the shrine that held the synagogue’s copy of the Torah.
Old Images, New Combinations
We also have to notice that Revelation doesn’t just borrow Old Testament images—it can blend and reshape them.
Look at the four living creatures around God’s throne. Revelation describes them as:
Revelation 4:6-8
Four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind: the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with the face of a man, and the fourth living creature like a flying eagle. And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes all round and within, and day and night they never cease to sing, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty.”
That picture is stitched together from two different Old Testament visions.
It draws on the cherubim that Ezekiel sees around God’s throne, and on the seraphim that Isaiah sees around God’s throne.
In Revelation, John sees the living creatures being like a lion, an ox, a man, and an eagle.
Ezekiel 1:10
As for the likeness of their faces, each had a human face. The four had the face of a lion on the right side, the four had the face of an ox on the left side, and the four had the face of an eagle.
And in Ezekiel 1, the prophet sees that each cherub has four faces, which are like a lion, an ox, a man, and an eagle.
Similarly, in Revelation the creatures cry Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.
Isaiah 6:3
And one called to another and said:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory!”
And in Isaiah 6, the prophet hears the seraphim crying Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.
So the four living creatures aren’t just Ezekiel’s cherubim or Isaiah’s seraphim.
John’s living creatures contain pieces of both, but they’re not identical to either one—they’re a fusion of the two.
Something similar happens with the beast. John writes:
Revelation 13:1-2
And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads, with ten diadems upon its horns and a blasphemous name upon its heads. And the beast that I saw was like a leopard, its feet were like a bear’s, and its mouth was like a lion’s mouth.
That imagery comes from the prophet Daniel, who saw four strange beasts that represent empires that oppressed God’s people.
In Revelation, John sees the beast with elements of a leopard, and bear, and a lion. It also has ten horns.
Daniel 7:3-7
And four great beasts came up out of the sea, different from one another. The first was like a lion. . . . And behold, another beast, a second one, like a bear. . . . After this I looked, and behold, another, like a leopard. . . . And behold, a fourth beast . . . and it had ten horns.
And in Daniel 7, the prophet sees four beasts rising out of the sea—the first of which is like a lion, the second is like a bear, the third is like a leopard, and the fourth has ten horns.
So John’s single beast combines features of all four of Daniel’s—which tells us it’s another persecuting empire in the same mold, without being pinned to any one of Daniel’s four.
The Many “Comings” of Christ
Now, here’s a place where knowing the Old Testament background completely changes how we read things.
We usually think of Jesus’ future “coming” as one event: the Second Coming at the end of the world.
But Scripture—including Revelation—talks about other “comings” of Jesus before that.
And to understand them, you have to know an Old Testament image: God riding the clouds like a chariot, coming in judgment on the wicked.
The prophet Isaiah uses this image, for example. He says:
Isaiah 19:1
Behold, the Lord is riding on a swift cloud and comes to Egypt; and the idols of Egypt will tremble at his presence.
Now, God didn’t literally show up in the sky over Egypt.
He “came” spiritually, as a judge.
The prophet Daniel then takes this image and applies it to a mysterious figure called the Son of Man. Daniel wrote:
Daniel 7:13-14
Behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away.
Notice that in Daniel, the Son of Man rides the clouds up to God to receive a kingdom—he isn’t coming down to earth.
Now hold those two images in mind, and listen to what Jesus tells the high priest Caiaphas at his trial.
Caiaphas asks if he’s the Christ, the Son of God, and Jesus says:
Mark 14:62
I am; and you will see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming with the clouds of heaven.
Jesus is not predicting that the end of the world will happen during Caiaphas’ lifetime.
He’s reaching back to Daniel, where the Son of Man rides the clouds to be given his kingdom.
So this points to Jesus ascending into heaven and receiving his kingdom, where he now reigns—not to the Second Coming.
That’s something we discussed in Episode 83, on Christ’s ascension.
And there’s yet another kind of “coming” that theologians talk about. It’s sometimes called the Adventus Medius, or Middle Advent.
It’s a spiritual coming, where Christ becomes present to his people.
That’s what Jesus means when he says:
Revelation 3:20
Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.
That’s not the end of the world—that’s Christ coming spiritually into a person’s life.
So the big lesson is this: not every passage that talks about Christ “coming” is talking about the Second Coming.
In fact, a major theme in Revelation is a coming of Jesus in judgment on the powers persecuting the early Church—not the final judgment at the end of time.
And that’s something we’ll discuss in future episodes.
Conclusion
So, to sum up, Revelation is a book of symbols, and we have to read those symbols in their own terms.
Sometimes the book interprets itself, and we should grab those clues whenever it does.
But most of the time it doesn’t explain its symbols, and our job is to resist newspaper exegesis and ask where John’s first-century imagery actually comes from.
Usually it’s the Old Testament or other Jewish literature of his day.
We also have to be ready for symbols that stand for more than one thing, images that are blended together, and even words like “coming” that don’t always mean what we assume.
Once we start reading Revelation the way John meant it, a book that looks bizarre on the surface starts to open up . . . and reveal what it has to tell us.
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