Introduction to the Book of Revelation

INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOK OF REVELATIONS

It has only been in the last few weeks that I truly believed that the Lord wants me to take another look at the book of Revelations.  I was all set to begin in a study on the book of Colossians until I was listening to the book of Revelations a couple of weeks ago and it was then that I decided to do this study.  It was all the way back on the 17^th of January in 2005 that I first studied the book of Revelations as far as putting it in my Spiritual Diaries.  It took to the end of December of 2005 to finish my study the first time and it was at the end of my study of the entire New Testament which I really don’t remember when it began.

As I begin this study of Revelations I want to begin in this introduction with a passage all the way back in the book of Genesis, a passage that I have looked at many times in my Spiritual Diaries.  “15 And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel’ (Genesis 3:15).”  This verse is the first prophecy of the coming Messiah, and as I have mentioned before it is the only time that the term seed of the woman or her seed is used in the entire Bible.  I firmly believe that this is a prophecy of the virgin birth of the Lord Jesus Christ who will be the one who defeats Satan, the one who tempted Eve to sin by eating of the fruit from the tree of good and evil.  Now why is it important in a study of Revelations to bring this verse up?  My answer to that question is that this begins a long road of prophesies that will actually end in the book of Revelation.  John MacArthur states that there is actually no quotations from the Old Testament that are in the book of Revelation, however he states that “278 of the 404 verses in Revelation allude to the inspired Old Testament Scriptures.”  That is another answer to the question that I brought up earlier.  I once heard Hal Lindsey state that the best way to study the book of Revelation is by using a good concordance, and I suppose that is one way to study this wonderful book for if 278 verses allude to the Old Testament then a concordance would be a good way to study this book.

I want to take us back to Psalm 2 and verse 7 ““I will surely tell of the decree of the LORD: He said to Me, ’You are My Son, Today I have begotten You.’” And this verse is seen three times in the book of Hebrews too.  Why do I want to look at this verse?  This verse is fulfilled after the resurrection of our Lord, as that is when it is told that God the Father has begotten His Son, and that is part of what the book of Revelations is all about as the first verse reads “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show to His bond-servants, the things which must soon take place; and He sent and communicated it by His angel to His bond-servant John.”  God gave this book to His Son and this book is all about His Son, and not the Son who the last time the world saw Him was dead on a Roman cross, but His Son whom He raised from the dead after He had paid for our sins on the cross and was in the grace for three days, and then raised again to life, a life in which He was the firstfruits of those who have believed in Him for salvation will someday do the same.  Yes this book is not about Christ in His humiliation, but Christ in His glorification as we will see. 

The human author of the book of Revelation is the Apostle John, the son of Zebedee who as we will see was living on the island of Patmos when He received instructions on what he was to write down.

I believe that this book was written in or around 96 AD, and no earlier, and there is a reason as to why I believe that and it has to do with how this book is interpreted.   In his introduction to Revelation John MacArthur gives a number of interpretive approaches of this book.  I will list them, but there is only one way that I believe is the proper way to interpret this book and I will state that after I mention the other ways.  “The preterist approach views Revelation not as future, predictive prophecy, but as a historical record of events in the first-century Roman Empire.”  “The historicist approach finds in Revelation a record of the sweep of church history from apostolic times until the present.”  “The idealist approach sees depicted in Revelation the timeless struggle between good and evil that is played out in every age.”  Now I will give the approach that I have believed is seen in Revelation since I first became a believer.  As a matter of fact the first book that I read after becoming a believer was the book of Revelation, and I must say that I got little out of it.  “The futurist approach sees in chapters 4-22 predictions of people and events yet to come in the future.  Only this approach allows Revelation to be interpreted following the same literal, grammatical-historical hermeneutical method by which no-prophetic portions of Scripture are interpreted.”

John MacArthur quotes John F. Walvoord in his introduction in the same section that he addresses this futurist approach of interpreting Revelation.  John F. Walvoord is a noted author and speaker on the study of Eschatology, as he has written several books on this theology.  I once listened to him speak in 1978 at the first Moody Founders Week that I attended.  He spoke on the eschatology that is found in the letters of First and Second Thessalonians.  “Much of the prophecy of the Bible deals with the distant future, including the Old Testament promises of the coming Messiah, the prophecies of Daniel concerning the future world empires, the body of truth relating to the coming kingdom on earth as well as countless other prophecies.  If the events of chapters 4 through 19 are future, even from our viewpoint today, they teach the blessed truth of the ultimate supremacy of God and the triumph of righteousness.  The immediate application of distant events is familiar in Scripture, as for instance II Peter 3:10-12, which speaks of the ultimate dissolution of the earth; nevertheless the succeeding passage makes an immediate application:  ‘Wherefore, beloved, seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent.’”  I will at this time quote all of 2 Peter 3:10-12 “10  But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up. 11 Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, 12  looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat!”  Now remember that Peter would shortly be crucified upside-down after writing these words as this was his last letter recorded in the Bible, so when you are about to die you want to things that are most important to you.

John MacArthur finishes his introduction with the following words:  “Anything other than the futurist approach leaves the meaning of the book of human ingenuity and opinion.  The futurist approach takes the book’s meaning as God gave it.”  Now this is the way we will look at this book, for I truly believe that the things that take place from chapters 4-22 are still future.

Let me give the best outline, although it is a very short one, but comes from Revelation 1:19 “"Therefore write the things which you have seen, and the things which are, and the things which will take place after these things.”  Now we will look more closely at this verse when we later study it, but briefly what we see here is that John had seen things as recorded in the first 18 verses of Revelation which he was not suppose to write down, but in chapters 2-3 we will see the next part of this outline as he is told to write down the things which are, and this speaks of what will be said of the seven churches who will receive this letter, and then the last part of verse 19 he is to write the things which will take place, and this speaks of what will happen from chapters 4-22.

We are going to take our time as we go through this wonderful, insightful book, a book where we will learn much about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as He is now in His glorified body.  We will see Him as Lord of lords, and King of kings.