The book of Revelation is full of some pretty interesting symbols – from locusts with lion teeth to sea monsters to dragons! Sometimes focusing on the symbols can distract us from the bigger picture that John is painting in Revelation. In Volume 13 of his series Buck Denver Asks … What’s in the Bible?, Phil Vischer walks kids through the book of Revelation – and doesn’t shy away from the tricky parts. But he does intentionally leave out visual image of some of the most memorable symbols in Revelation.
“We don’t illustrate a lot of the symbols, and that was very intentional,” Vischer says. “We’re not supposed to focus on the symbols themselves, but on the meaning of the symbols.”
While he does address many symbols and their meanings in the video, Vischer uses a great illustration to explain how we should look at Revelation. He says to make sure we “don’t forget the forest for the trees” – basically, don’t get so caught up in analyzing the individual symbols in Revelation that we forget to look at the big picture – that God has a plan to defeat evil forever, and we will live in a new kingdom with him.
Additionally, Vischer notes that there are some really “freaky” symbols in Revelation, and visualizing those for kids might cause them to focus on those images rather than their meaning.
“Some of the symbols are so bizarre like a lamb with seven eyes that if you drew that – if you actually represented it visually – that image would be stuck in kids’ heads forever and they would forget about what it’s representing they’d be so focused on what it looked like and how freaky it was,” Vischer says.
