Our campus minister has chosen to study Revelations in our Sunday morning class. I'm skeptical that we can make anything out of it, but I wonder what to do about the couple of verses in it about nudity.
What's your take on Rev. 3:18 and Rev. 16:15? What is "shameful" about the first mention, and why not be caught that way in the second mention?
Rev 3:18 is the completion of 3:17. this is part of the letter to the church at Laodicea (now part of Turkey). Laodicea was noted for its wealth—it's money, the fine cloth produced there, etc. Citizens of Laodicea were noteably proud of the wealth of their city. The Christians here are warned that because they lack commitment for or against Christ (they are merely lukewarm), they will be vomited out. In their pride they think they are rich and wearing the finest clothes, but actually in Christ's eyes they are so spiritually poor that they can't even afford clothes.
16:15 comes at the end of a series of disasters that come as the bowls of God's anger are emptied upon the earth. In the society in which these churches lived only slaves commonly went naked; their owners were normally clothed (except at the public baths or the gymnasium). The warning here is to stay alert and be ready for God to act, so that they may receive blessing instead of wrath.
Revelation is a wonderfully encouraging book as long as it is remembered that it is a book written in code to a people who were living in a desperate situation as they endured persecution. The message had to be in a form that the Roman persecutors couldn't understand, so it was written in the same sort of symbolic manner as is found in parts of Daniel. There is a large amount of similar non-Biblical material that survives.
Keep in mind that anyone who attempts to attach literal meanings to it, or to use it to predict events 2000 years or more into the future, is revealing that they don't have a clue about what it means. The key interpretative question is, "What would this passage have meant to people who were struggling to keep the faith even at the cost of their lives and property?"
For anyone who wants to study Revelation, I recommend Barclay's Daily Study Bible as being both sound scholarship and written in understandable English.
Neither of these passages have anything to do with modern naturism.
That was the best I've seen so far! That is exactly my take on it as well.
Not many people understand that an apocolypse is an incripted language that uses spiritual terminology (demons, angels, heaven, hell, etc) to depect natural (earthly, human, physical) surroundings (being political mostly). (Dante's Inferno was an apocolyps, but churches took it literally and that is where people get the idea of a burning hell with a devil and demons and tormenting souls in it. It was actually a political view of their polititions of the day)
You might say, it was the political cartoon or political editorial of it's day.
Yes, it was meant to be a warning to the people, but mostly an encouragent. You might say "In the end, we win!"
Many churches (including ours) have suffered many years of "waiting for nothing" because we put too much stock in Revelations and Daniel and other heavy "hard-to-understand" scriptures. (hard to understand because they misapplied it).
I do have an article that touched on it on my BACN website, but not in depth. Mainly, don't get caught with your spiritual pants down.
Does it also say, "If you are working in the field and your cloak (clothes) is in the house, do not go back after it"? (Something to that affect).
But anyway, it isn't related to naturism, seeing that area is not known for its lack of clothing. It was a play on words. They also have warm springs there that is not cold or hot, but luke warm. They don't use it for drinking because it doesn't taste good. God used that as an analogy as well because they would understand the reference, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't drink luke warm water or turn our house temp to luke warm.
I see where the "shameful" comes from now, from their activities. Without knowing that, it just pops out totally out of context with any other mentions of nudity in the Bible. Any of those where it is called "shameful" was always in connection with their having done something wrong first. Looks as though this is the case here, too.
