Apocalyptic Symbolism in Revelation: Language, Images, Colours, and Numbers

This material systematizes the teaching on how apocalyptic works and how Revelation uses symbols, images, colours, and numbers to form Christian hope, resistance, and faithful practice. It gathers the substantive content from the session into a clear study outline.

Apocalyptic as Hope and Resistance

Apocalyptic literature both expresses and generates hope. It does this by (1) exposing and critiquing oppressive powers, (2) exhorting God’s people to faithful defiance, (3) preparing them for confrontation, and (4) affirming unwavering confidence in God’s final defeat of evil. Because of this, apocalyptic is a language of resistance that asks the ultimate sovereignty question: who is Lord over the world—God or the empire, the oppressor, the dictator?

The Poetic, Pictorial Language of Revelation

Revelation communicates chiefly through visions, symbols, and ancient mythic imagery. Its register is evocative and emotive—often closer to poetry than to prose. The book does not primarily “deliver data”; it invites readers to experience what John experienced. The language can be mysterious and deliberately “slippery,” nudging readers to make new connections rather than merely extract facts such as dates and timetables.

Symbolic World: Creatures, Objects, Places

  • Recurring figures: beasts, a dragon, a woman, horsemen, angels, elders.
  • Recurring objects: trumpets, bowls, lampstands, a book of life, keys, a sword from the mouth, a golden sash, crowns.
  • Places and structures: sea (often symbolic for the nations or chaos), New Jerusalem, a sea of glass, golden streets, jeweled gates.
  • Daniel and other apocalypses: Daniel 7 pictures four empires as a lion, bear, leopard, and horned beast; 4 Ezra reuses Danielic imagery (an eagle with twelve wings and three heads). Revelation fuses Daniel’s beasts into a single seven-headed beast that is wounded and yet lives—an image of idolatrous imperial power mimicking resurrection.

Reading Revelation 1:9–20: Sample Observations

Symbols include lampstands, stars, a robe and golden sash, a voice like a trumpet and like many waters, a sharp double-edged sword from the mouth, and keys. The text itself offers partial interpretation: the seven stars are the angels (or messengers) of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches (1:20). “Angels” can also mean “messengers,” leaving deliberate ambiguity about heavenly or human referents.

Colours: Consistent Symbolic Tendencies

  • White: victory, resurrection, purity, heavenly reality (white hair of the Son of Man; white robes for saints and martyrs; a white horse; the great white throne).
  • Red (and scarlet/purple): blood, violent power, decadent imperial luxury (a red horse; red breastplates; a red dragon; the scarlet beast; the scarlet-clad prostitute; Babylon’s purple cargoes).
  • Black: death and calamity (a black horse; the darkened sun).
  • Pale green: death (the pale horse).
  • Gold: glory, imperishable wealth, and divinity—but also parodies of divinity when co-opted by evil (golden lampstands; a golden sash; golden crowns; golden altar; golden bowls of incense and of wrath; gold idols; the prostitute’s golden cup; measuring rod of gold; New Jerusalem’s gold and golden streets).

Numbers: Patterns and Meanings

  • Seven (7): completeness or perfection (seven spirits of God; seven stars; seven churches; seven lampstands; seven seals, trumpets, and bowls). “Seven spirits” most plausibly means the Holy Spirit in fullness rather than seven separate spirits.
  • Twelve (12) and its multiples (24, 144): fullness of God’s people (twelve tribes; twelve apostles; twenty-four elders; twelve gates, angels, foundations; twelve fruits of the tree of life; 144,000 as a symbolic totality).
  • Four (4): universality or creation’s breadth (four living creatures; four horses; four winds/corners of the earth).
  • Three (3): divinity and its parody (the thrice-phrased “who was, and is, and is to come”; the dragon with two beasts forming a counterfeit “trinity”; three unclean spirits; triads of judgments).
  • Three and a half (3Âœ) / 42 months / 1,260 days: a limited, incomplete period (trampling of the holy city; ministry and death-to-life of the two witnesses; the woman nourished in the wilderness; the beast’s blasphemy). 3Âœ is half of seven—intentionally incomplete.
  • Fractions (⅓, Âœ): partial and temporary judgments.
  • Six (6) and 666: falling short of perfection; 666 as the beast’s number accentuates imperfection and counterfeit lordship (further layers of meaning may also be present).
  • Thousand (1,000) and large multiples: rhetorical magnitude or vastness (144,000; “seven thousand” killed in an earthquake; the millennium as a symbolic “thousand years” of rule and restraint).

Spotlight Texts: Practicing Symbolic Reading

  • Revelation 1:3: blessed are those who read, hear, and keep the prophecy—emphasis on obedience, not date-prediction.
  • Revelation 3:4–5: “not soiled their clothes” = moral faithfulness; “dressed in white” = vindication, purity, and honour granted by God.
  • Revelation 7:14: “washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” = purification through Jesus’ sacrificial atonement (symbolic logic, not literal laundering).
  • “Seven spirits” vs. “the Spirit” (singular): letters end with “what the Spirit says to the churches,” while 1:4–5 can speak of the Spirit in sevenfold fullness—the same reality from different symbolic angles.

Guidelines for Interpretation

  • Read Revelation’s images as true symbols: they disclose real, transcendent realities without being woodenly literal (e.g., no need to expect actual multi-headed monsters or to arithmetically total symbolic numbers).
  • Let Scripture interpret Scripture: Daniel, the prophets, and other apocalyptic texts provide the background for many of Revelation’s scenes and figures.
  • Track patterns: repeated colours, images, and numbers often carry consistent meanings across the book.
  • Keep the ethical aim central: the book forms resilient disciples who resist idolatrous empire and worship the true Lord.

Summary

  • Apocalyptic cultivates hope and resilient resistance by unveiling God’s sovereignty over oppressive powers.
  • Revelation speaks in a poetic, pictorial register designed to be experienced, not merely decoded.
  • Colours, creatures, objects, and places carry stable symbolic tendencies that cohere with the Old Testament and other apocalyptic writings.
  • Numbers function theologically (completeness, fullness, universality, limitation, parody) rather than as mechanical ciphers.
  • Reading “symbolically true” safeguards both the reality behind the symbols and the call to obey: hear, keep, conquer—by the Lamb’s blood and faithful witness.