The Eight Basic Visions in the Book of Revelation

The book of Revelation is a remarkably well-constructed literary piece, containing a mu1 tiplici ty of neatly intertwining patterns. Such patterns are more than simply demonstrations of aesthetic taste and compositional skill, and they also transcend the useful purpose of serving as mnemonic devices. Indeed, in a forthright and forceful way they highlight various aspects of the book's theological message. In broadest scope, the entire Apocalypse is structured into an overall chiastic pattern in which prologue and epilogue are counterparts and in which the intervening major prophetic sequences or visions are also paired in a chiastic or inverse order. This broad chiastic structure and its significance I have treated on several previous occasions,l and they need no further elaboration for our purposes here, except to notice two specific features: (1) Aside from the prologue and epilogue, there are eight major prophetic sequences-four that precede and four that follow a line drawn between chaps. 14 and 15. (2) The visions preceding the chiastic dividing line have basically an historical perspective (that is, they relate to the Christian era), and the visions after the chiastic dividing line depict the eschatological-judgment era. With respect to the first item above, it should be emphasized that there are indeed eight major prophetic sequences in the