What is ‘Apocalyptic’?

“What is ‘apocalyptic’?” someone asked.

Literally, it means revelatory.

It is a category of ancient literature we’ve come up with, for writings which described visions—visions which revealed things—revealed things then-present, then-future, and even then-past. 

As it happens, much of it was about the fate and ultimate victory of God’s holy people, on the stage of political history; with the backdrop of unseen spiritual forces—and the behind-the-scenes action of heaven, of God. 

I would add, that the visions contained in [canonical] ‘apocalyptic’ writings were really seen by the writers, by the Spirit; and afterwards even the prophets themselves grappled to understand their meaning—it wasn’t that the writers started with a clear point they wanted to make and then made-up imagery to express their point in a way that complied with some pre-existing genre called ‘apocalyptic’, like the genre was an art-form where certain symbols had set meanings, and so forth. 

No, they truly saw visions first—often with little idea at first what it meant—then afterwards they wrote it down.

With hind-site perhaps we can observe some consistency across the Bible between symbols and their meanings—however, at the time the writers themselves often didn’t know what something they’d seen in a vision symbolised. 

Canonical examples include parts of Ezekiel, Daniel, Zechariah and Revelation. 

A noncanonical example may be parts of the book of Enoch

We can still have apocalypses—visions which reveal—today. It’s one of the manifestations of the Spirit gifted to the church. (By God’s grace, I’ve seen an ‘apocalypse’—a vision—myself, as have many others; you could too, anyone could, as the Spirit wills.)

(But of course every claimed-revelation is to be judged: assessed by the foundational standard of Christ, the Apostles and the Biblical prophets—because that foundation has already been laid, and no alternative foundation can be laid.)