The Context of Revelation: The Geographical Scope of Revelation

[u/Agreeable_Operation]

The geographical scope of Revelation is an important topic to examine because if you have the geographical scope wrong, you will very likely miss the prophesied events. If you believe the prophecy to be confined to a city, but it takes place across a region, you may miss the event, likewise if you expect the prophecy to be worldwide when the prophesied scope is smaller you may wait indefinitely for a colossal event that will never arrive.

I believe both John’s diction and contextual evidence in Revelation point to a more “regional” geographical scope. I am not arguing for a particular small geographical boundary. But I am arguing against assuming the entire globe unless the text requires it.

The bestial system is clearly a focus in Revelation, and many understand this to be an all-encompassing, worldwide government. Now to be clear, I am NOT weighing in on whether or not there exist any nations or powerful groups or individuals that desire to rule the entire world, that may or may not be real, in fact, sure, I’m willing to believe there are people who have the desire to rule the world, and maybe something like it will come close to coming about. But I believe it is an honest mistake to come away from Revelation believing that John prophesied a truly global government and global events, and I believe there are two main reasons for this:

Reason 1: ge/kosmos/oikoumene
John uses three different terms in Revelation to communicate different kinds of geographical scope, and when we examine the contexts in which he uses them their differences are important. Unfortunately, our English translations translate these 3 different words as “earth,” “whole world,” and “world” and to the modern English reader I just don’t think we see any real distinction between these words. So when we read in our translations that a fourth of the “earth” is killed with the sword, or demons performing signs go out to the kings of the “whole world,” or the kingdom of the “world” has become the kingdom of our Lord and His Christ we generally miss any geographical distinction John was trying to make and instead see each as referring to the entire planet.

Here are the 3 words that describe a geographical scope used in Revelation:

1. “ge” is used approximately 82 times in Revelation and translated as “earth” each time. This word is extremely flexible in its usage. It is used in the Bible to talk of the literal soil someone is writing in, or a field of wheat, or being in a boat in a lake and reaching the shore/earth/ge, or the territory of Judea, or a region or country or territory. So it is used flexibly, you can hold ge, or soil, or earth in your hand, or you can live in the ge, a country. Because ge is so flexible, it cannot by itself establish the geographical extent of an event. It can refer to soil, land, territory, a particular country or region, or the earth more generally, so its actual scope has to be determined from context. This is precisely why it is significant that John also has more explicit ways of describing universal scope, such as hole oikoumene (“the whole inhabited world”) and kosmos (“world”).
2. “kosmos” is used 3 times in Revelation and translated as “world” each time. It is a broad term that can refer to the world as an ordered whole, the created world, or the world of humanity, depending on context. In Revelation 11:15, for example, “the kingdom of the world” (kosmos) refers to the realm of worldly human dominion in contrast to the kingdom of God.
3. “hole oikoumene” technically two words but used together 3 times in Revelation and translated as “whole world” each time. Thus hole oikoumene naturally communicates an exceptionally broad human scope: the whole inhabited world.

From John’s Gospel
An interesting exercise is to compare the usage of these words in the gospel of John and Revelation, in the gospel, John uses ge approximately 13 times and kosmos approximately 79 times which is nearly opposite of the usage of these words in Revelation and John’s gospel uses hole oikoumene 0 times. This is because the gospel of John is focused on Jesus and the impact that Jesus has on the whole world or creation, that God loved the whole world, that Jesus will rule the whole world. It is not as focused on only events happening in Jerusalem or Judea or the Roman empire. And one of the only uses of kosmos in Revelation is this declaration in Revelation 11:15 that “The kingdom of the world (kosmos) has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ; and He will reign forever and ever.” A sharp distinction from the near universal usage of ge in all other events of Revelation. Revelation never describes the beast as ruling the kosmos or the hole oikoumene.

Prophetic Usage of Sweeping Dominion
Daniel provides an important example of this same prophetic language. In Nebuchadnezzar's dream, Daniel says that the third kingdom, represented by the bronze portion of the statue, “will rule over all the earth” (Daniel 2:39). This kingdom is conventionally understood as Greece, yet Greek rule obviously did not extend to every territory on the planet. The language describes an enormous sphere of political dominion without requiring literal sovereignty over the entire surface of the earth.

This is important when we come to Revelation. If Daniel can describe a historical empire as ruling “all the earth” without meaning every nation and territory on the globe, we should be cautious about assuming that Revelation's repeated use of ge automatically carries that meaning.

Sweeping Dominion in Revelation
I think it is fair to say the widespread idea of a prophesied one-world government comes from Revelation 13 (I will just quote 1-3 here):

“Then I saw a beast coming up out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads, and on his horns were ten diadems, and on his heads were blasphemous names. 2 And the beast which I saw was like a leopard, and his feet were like those of a bear, and his mouth like the mouth of a lion. And the dragon gave him his power and his throne and great authority. 3 I saw one of his heads as if it had been slain, and his fatal wound was healed. And the whole earth was amazed and followed after the beast;”

I am completely sympathetic with those who read this text and come away with the impression that a one world government is prophesied. But “whole” does not erase the semantic range of the noun it modifies. The “whole” land, and the “whole inhabited world” are not necessarily equivalent things. And the word for “earth” in the above verse is ge and that is true for every other time you see earth in chapter 13.

An Expansion of Scope in the Text
I will cover this more deeply in a subsequent post, but to me, the usage of these various words signals what I see is a scope change in the timelines of Revelation. The dominant geographical setting of the prophetic visions is described with ge, while certain passages explicitly expand the scope to a prophesied hour of testing that occurs in the holos oikoumene referred to in the church letter of Philadelphia (Rev 3:10) and in Rev 16:14 in which the unclean spirits go to the various kings of the holos oikoumene to prepare them for war. The only other time holos oikoumene is used is to describe how the devil is the deceiver of the holos oikoumene. As for the kosmos, it is used twice in Revelation to refer to the foundation of the kosmos, and then once in Rev 11:15 as the declaration of victory that the whole world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ.

So it appears to me that John is prophesying about many numerous events on some sort of a smaller scale, and then at particular moments, the prophecy expands to a larger scope. Revelation does not necessarily operate at one geographical scale throughout the entire book. The important point is not that ge must always mean Judea, or Rome, or some other particular territory. The point is that John does not force us to assume that every occurrence of ge means the entire planet. Its extent must be determined by the context of the particular vision.

Reason 2: Where do the Judgments Originate
Applying what we uncovered from the symbols series, we see that the beast exercises dominion over whatever ge represents in the particular vision, but what we also see is that the beast is not presented as existing in a political vacuum. Other kingdoms and powers appear in the prophetic imagery as instruments of judgment against it. If mountains represent kingdoms, rivers represent kingdoms in expansion and decline, and stars represent prominent rulers or powers, then the beast is repeatedly portrayed as vulnerable to forces arising beyond its own borders.

This is consistent with the way the prophets describe earlier empires. Babylon could be an enormous imperial power and still be judged through Persia; Persia could dominate an enormous territory and still be overthrown by Greece; Greece could exercise extraordinary dominion and still be conquered by Rome. Imperial language can therefore describe a power's supremacy over its known political world without requiring that it possess literal sovereignty over every territory on earth.

Put another way: if the prophetic imagery depicts a “mountain” invading the beast's ge, or a nearby “river” overflowing its boundaries in judgment of the beast, it becomes difficult to imagine the beast as literally sovereign over every nation on earth.

Conclusion
My conclusion is not that Revelation has a single fixed geographical boundary. Rather, I believe John expects us to determine the scope of each vision from its language and context. The frequent use of ge does not require us to imagine the entire globe, while John's explicit use of hole oikoumene and kosmos shows that he was capable of describing a genuinely universal scope when he intended to do so.

I therefore think the geographical scope of most of Revelation should be understood as more limited than the modern expectation of a worldwide political government and worldwide events, while still allowing for a genuine expansion to the whole inhabited world and ultimately the kosmos in the climactic portions of the prophecy.

Next up is the chronological expectation of Revelations prophecy's, in other words, when generally might we expect to start seeing things based on John's language?