Study – Grow – Know

A Walk thru Revelation: Intro

February 4, 2022 at 11:41 AM 5 comments

Audio/video for this article is here: SermonAudio.com/StudyGrowKnow

I’ve been wanting to do something on the book of Revelation for a while now even though the Daniel 7 and Revelation 13 series is in progress. I am still planning on continuing the Daniel/Revelation series, though there will obviously be some overlap.

This particular series – A Walk thru Revelation – is what I’m teaching to an adult Sunday evening class at church. Because of that, I am planning on video-taping each class and posting those videos at my page on SermonAudio.com/StudyGrowKnow, which will also have the slide show I use during each class as well.

Revelation of course, is a fascinating book and one that I believe is so often misunderstood. This is due to the fact that while most people understand Scripture in its most plain and ordinary sense, just as we do when reading or when in conversation with another person, the problem begins when people come to places in Scripture that are clearly prophetic. Too often, because the prophetic discourse offered in Scripture is usually filled with figures of speech, metaphors, and also includes the use of often tantalizing and over-the-top illustrations or symbols, people then begin to think that those areas of Scripture require weird and over-the-top explanations.

It is clear to me that most of the time, these over-the-top explanations are unnecessary and normally not founded on a clear grammatical-historical interpretation of the text. What makes matters worse is that almost all the time, a symbol used in Scripture is explained in that text if people will simply keep reading. If it is not explained in that portion of the text, it is explained in other areas of Scripture. What this means is that no guess work is normally needed. Scripture normally interprets itself.

The other problem with understanding symbolism, is that people want to apply numerous interpretations to them and then folks get into debates over which view is better and why. But in this case, even when a symbol is used in Scripture, it still has only one meaning. The goal of successful Bible study is to determine what God means by what is presented in Scripture, not what we want it to say or what we may even think it says. The goal is to find out what God originally meant and to do that, the student of the Bible needs to be properly informed. This can only happen when several things are taken into consideration:

• grammar
• history
• context

If students of the Bible will be purposeful in trying their best to find out what the grammar of Scripture means, what the history of society was like when those things were first uttered/written and what the actual context is for the passages in question, most of the work will then have been completed for the reader. Let me simply give several examples before we get going.

If I asked you to tell me the definition of the word “left,” you’d not be able to do it. Yes, you would be able to provide the various meanings of the word that has to do with what is remaining, in which direction to travel or which side of the political aisle a person is, but without context, it would be impossible to say for certain which “left” I am referring to. However, if I use the word “left” in a sentence and then ask you for the meaning, you’d likely have little to no problem in telling me what it means. Context is almost everything and must be included in our study of God’s Word.

Look at Zechariah 13:6.

And one will say to him, ‘What are these wounds between your arms?’ Then he will answer, ‘Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.’

You’re probably familiar with the above text. Ask people who are familiar with it what it means and many will tell you it is referring to Jesus, who was “wounded” by His “friends” (fellow Jews), and crucified.

The problem with this interpretation is that the entirety of Zechariah 13 and even a few chapters leading up to it are dealing with false prophets, not true prophets. If this is the case, then it cannot be referencing our Lord and Savior, Jesus. There were plenty of false prophets during the time of Zechariah and in fact, false prophets were a scourge on Israel constantly leading the Israelites away from Jehovah.

However, in this particular section of Zechariah, it is clearly referring to the future when there will be absolutely no need for prophets at all. The ones who claimed to be prophets will want to hide that fact. The “wounds” they are referring to are likely the wounds false prophets would do to themselves, much the way the false prophets of Baal cut themselves during the situation with Elijah on Mount Carmel (1 King 18:16-45). There, the prophets cut themselves, danced and loudly chanted to Baal hoping he would hear and notice them. Baal (Satan), was kept quiet by God to bring glory to Himself.

Cutting to bleed or otherwise wounding one’s self is something the false prophets of old did in order to prove their commitment to their false god. In the first verses of Zechariah 13, God says He will cleanse people who come to Him and this is referring to the New Covenant made possible by Jesus’ substitutionary death and a person’s faith in Him and His death. The false prophets will no longer have anything viable to offer the people because of God’s complete fulfillment and satisfaction with God the Son’s life, death and ultimate resurrection. In fact, false prophets will come to deny that they ever were prophets at all. When people ask them, “Yeah, but where did you get those marks on your body?” they will respond, “Oh these? Uh…a friend and I were goofing around and horse playing and you know how things go. Yeah, that’s it!” So keeping this in mind, it is important that the grammar, the history and the context of each section of Scripture is taken into consideration when seeking to understand the flow of the Bible.

Introduction to Revelation
The book of Revelation is divided into three sections:

• The things that John saw
• The things which are
• The things which must come to pass

That’s the whole book in a nutshell. The things that John saw refer to what John was seeing right then and there, in front of him and it mainly had to do with the glorified Savior, Jesus.

The things that John SAW:

• The Glorified Son of Man – 1:9-11
• The Revelation – 1:12-16
• The Interpretation – 1:17-20

The things which ARE:

• Ephesus – 2:1-7
• Smyrna – 2:8-11
• Pergamum – 2:12-17
• Thyatira – 2:18-29
• Sardis – 3:1-6
• Philadelphia – 3:7-13
• Laodicea – 3:14-22

The things which must Come to Pass:

• Preceding the Tribulation – 4:1-5:14
• The Tribulation – 6:1-18:24
• Second Coming – 19:1-20:3
• Messianic Kingdom – 20:4-14
• Eternal Order – 21:1-22:21

The above is certainly a viable outline of the biblical text, though there are numerous other outlines as well. A few more things to keep in mind while going through Revelation:

• No direct quotes from the Old Testament
• 550 references TO the Old Testament
• Only the last two chapters of Revelation deal with anything new (Eternal Order)
• The value of the Book of Revelation is that it takes the scattered Old Testament prophecies and puts them in chronological order so that sequences may be determined.
• Crowning book of all prophecy
• Angels play a dominant role in revelation and carrying prophecies out
• Only book that promises a blessing to those who study it
• Believers who look forward to Christ’s 2nd Coming will receive a special crown (conditional promise)

The main theme of Revelation is:

• The Second Coming of the Messiah
• Return of Jesus to this earth is the central theme of Revelation.
• It deals with events:
  • leading up to His Second Coming
  • accompanying His return
  • following the Second Coming

Revelation 1:9-20 make up first section of the book; what John saw.

• Saw Jesus as glorified Son of Man
• John describes Him using figures from the Old Testament or Hebrew Scriptures

If you’d like more information the video presentation of this and the complete slides used are found here: SermonAudio.com/StudyGrowKnow and I’ll apologize up front for the slight lack of quality on this first video. We are working hard to improve it. Part of the problem is my new computer and unfortunately, a particular program I’ve used for years is no longer available for Windows 11, so I’m having to find an alternative program. Thanks for your patience.

A good thing to keep in mind is that while walking through Revelation, we will be at times, detoured to other Bible books and/or chapters to help bring out the full meaning of the text in Revelation. So don’t be alarmed or think we’re getting off track when we do that. For instance, while the book of Revelation reveals the 21 judgments of God in detail, starting with the First Seal (the white rider), it does not provide specifics as to the exact incident that begins the Tribulation period, though it is clear that this rider on a white horse is there at the start of the Tribulation. To provide further details on the actual beginning of the Tribulation period, we will need to explore several sections of the book of Daniel.

I’ll do my best to keep things succinct and thank you for joining me on this journey! Next time in this series, we’ll take a look at the 7 churches John sends letters to and what those letters mean.

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