I heard an interesting notion last week in my studies, how to read the book of Revelation as a dissident follower of Jesus. In my preaching, I rarely preached on the book of Revelation, now looking back, I really did not have much experience in the book. The Catholic tradition I grew up with did not spend a lot of time there as my Protestant friends did. Because of this, I was not seeped in the Apocalyptic language that drapes some Protestant traditions.
Recently though, as I considered this idea from my studies and started looking at the Book of Revelation, I began to see parallels to John’s Rome to my America, specifically the “Christianity” that is being pushed in the dominant American narrative right now.
In this week’s post, I want to demonstrate how the book of Revelation is not a book that warns us of a second coming, but instead a well written book of subversive text that encourages John’s churches to stand up to the tyrrany of Rome and speak truth to the power of Jesus’ message.
Understanding the Political Landscape of Revelation
The Book of Revelation was composed during a time when the Roman Empire wielded significant power over the Mediterranean world. The text itself indicates that John, the author, writes from the island of Patmos (Revelation 1:9). Early Christian traditions suggest that he was exiled there during the reign of Emperor Domitian (AD 81-96), although some propose Emperor Nero’s era (AD 54-68). These historical details help explain why Roman politics appear so prominently in the apocalyptic visions.
Throughout Revelation, allusions to imperial power, pagan worship, and persecution coincide with what believers under Roman rule would have experienced. Yet this cultural setting does not negate the book’s prophetic future emphasis. Instead, it provides a framework through which John communicates divine revelations to believers who were intimately familiar with the oppression and religious demands of Rome.
It was dangerous to go against the Roman authority as we see with Jesus and other early Christian followers during a time of intense persecution. The Roman Empire demanded ultimate loyalty from its subjects, including religious devotion. Citizens were required to make sacrifices to the Emperor, symbolizing their allegiance. The Empire’s power was often represented by symbols like the eagle, which signified violence and dominance. Going against this system meant almost certain death, often one that was gruesome and violent.
The writer of Revelation uses coded language and symbolism of empire such as a beast and Babylon. When we look at Revelation through this lens, we begin to get a sense of the manifesto for resistance the writer was putting together for his seven churches. In this wrting, we see him urge his believers not only to resist the shadow of empire, but to survive it. He challenges his believers and their communities to subvert imperial logic through coded visions and symbolic beasts. This language not only warns his followers of future calamity’s; it equips the faithful to challenge the mechanisms of domination that pervade every age. This apocalyptic protest literature calls for a commitment to justice that transcends personal safety, inviting communities to imagine new possibilities of belonging beyond the reach of violence or coercion. In the face of overwhelming power, Revelation provides a language for dissent that is rooted in hope and the courage to live out the Lamb’s witness amid oppressive systems.
What It Means to Be a Dissident Follower of Jesus
In the odd spaces where I do my thinking, I was thinking of this concept this morning between sets at the gym and while on my run. As a pastor who was introduced into the small group ministry style early on in my career, I take the Acts chapter 2 church model very seriously. As a college professor who has spent the last couple of years teaching World Religions and digging deeper into Judaism, I also have learned a lot about who Jesus was and what his expectations were for the Jews that followed him. With this in mind, I was considering what it meant to be a dissident follower of Jesus.
Jesus in the writings about him in the Gospels and later messages in the different letters all are fairly consistent, especially when we get to Revelation, we are challenged to resist the status quo.
Cláudio Carvalhaes offers that “The Christian church is born out of dissidence. It began as an “extraordinary contestation” within the Roman Empire. Jesus himself is killed by the Empire as a dissident. It is with Constantine that Christianity loses its kernel of contestation and becomes the apparatus of the empire.Footnote1 From then on, the struggle between contestation and normalcy ensued. Thus, the church, if we think of early Christianity, before Constantine, is a site of contestation, moving in a thousand directions with people and other traditions left aside from the normalcy of the church. So much of the history of Christianities were dismissed, destroyed, shut down. Christian ecclesiology, theology, spirituality, rituals, and so on have fundamentally been a history of contestation turned into normalcy. A history of dissent that we tried to settle under confessions, dogmas, rituals and the ecumenical movements, an endless movement towards normalcy.”
As modern believers, we must take seriously Jesus’ call to love and to action. Nothing in the current dominant American Christian rhetoric reflects Jesus’s call to give to Ceasar what is Ceasar’s and give to God what is God. Jesus as well as the entire Old Testament continue to call us to caring for the poor. Being a dissident for Christ through the encouragement of Revelation challenges us to dissent rather than conform to today’s world.
Reading Revelation through Dissident Eyes
Revelation critiques the political authority of the Roman Emperor, who claimed divine status. Using the political landscape, the writer encourages his believers to dig deep into the practices of hope and the ultimate triumph of God over earthly powers. The writer calls for faithful resistance against corrupt political systems, urging believers to focus on God’s ultimate authority. Finally, Revelation suggests that all earthly political arrangements are flawed and often lead to violence and corruption.
As a word of note, many Christians read this book as a doomsday prophecy book that outlines the endtimes. In my studies of this book over the years, I have come across the futurist approach as the name for this reading of the book. I feel however that the idea that I am positing here offers a healthier and life affirming approach to this book. As Christians, Jesus called us to action, Paul eventually calls us to action and the many writers of the letters in the New Testament call us to action. Apocalyptic literature can be read as protest literature. It reflects a crisis of faith and uses vivid imagery to convey messages about the end times and the ultimate triumph of good over evil.
Living as a Dissident Follower Today
Recognizing this call for a new language—from Kingdom to Commonwealth—means rethinking what it means to live faithfully under systems that often co-opt religious identity for power. Revelation invites us to craft a vocabulary of resistance and belonging that isn’t confined to the boundaries of empire or institutional religion, but instead finds its roots in justice, compassion, and mutual care. By reframing discipleship as communal dissent, we move toward a vision of faith that is grounded not in dominance or conformity but in hope and creative renewal. This shift challenges us to imagine practical ways in which protest, generosity, and radical hospitality can redefine our daily lives and relationships, making the teachings of Jesus a lived reality that stands in contrast to the coercive structures around us.
When we then consider what this Commonwealth would look like now, it would not mean oppressive regimes storing their grains in storehouses, we find that in Revelation an emphasis that true power lies not in violence but in sacrificial love and forgiveness. Early Christians were encouraged to reject the Empire’s demands and instead honor the Lamb. Modern Christians must engage in justice, protest, and faithful rebellion.
Conclusion
Hopefully, this is a fresh approach to an often abusive text, highlighting our inadequacies with God. By engaging in this new vision, we are called to cultivate a faith that is courageous enough to challenge oppressive narrative while drawing deeply from the well of radical hope. While we have been dealing with the problem of Jesus’ return since he left us, and many Christians are now living with a post millennial attitude, Revelation challenges us to participate actively in the creation of communities rooted in equity, generosity, and imaginative dissent. This lived dissidence might manifest in small acts of solidarity and hospitality, or in collective movements that disrupt cycles of injustice, always guided by the subversive wisdom found in the Jesus’s and the Act’s 2 Church’s witness. By embracing Revelation as a manifesto for creative resistance, we discover a sacred mandate to reimagine the boundaries of belonging and to enact a love that refuses to be domesticated by empire. In this way, the prophetic vision of John continues to echo through the centuries, summoning each generation to resist complacency and to practice a discipleship that is as bold as it is compassionate.
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