Intro & Prologue

Intro

What we need right now is a family of faith that lives the word of God, that knows the word of God, that when the are tried and tested bleed the word of God. A family of Jesus that does all things for the glory of God and is living for the word of God, awake to the things of God. But not just that, living and breathing out the word of God. This is necessary because Obedience is better than revelation.

We hear people say all the time that they just want to hear a word from God. When all we need to do is do what we have already been told and we will hear more from Him. We do need to have ears to hear what God is saying, but you are not going to hear the word of God unless you are doing the word of God. When you obey, then you will hear. What would it be like if you actually believed that God could save your neighbor, to practice radical hospitality. But we have tall fences and small dining room tables. What would it look like To actually engage people.

Sometimes I think that even though we may understand the words, but we fail to understand the cost. Eugene Peterson was preaching in Texas and wrote to His son "why am i so uncomfortable in this world. They are all on my side but it is gospel without depth, without suffering. Smooth and ironed out but no starch in the collar." We live in a culture that does not own the mission of God. we have a thin watered down gospel. No sacrifice, no courage, no great faith. We need to be a people that is captivated by the glory of God. Jesus is life, and I think sometimes the church forgets that.

Revelation helps us but it is plagued by bad preaching and teaching. It gets to the point where people rely on either tradition (that is what they have always been taught) or their personal soap box to the point of not listening to any one elses point of view. We are going to spend some time going through The Revelation of Jesus, Not relying just on tradition but the word of God. You may not be happy with How I interpret some of it, but that is okay. I will be using outside sources to research this series, if you are interested in knowing some of m sources please let me know.

In my experience people can get a little testy when you challenge their beliefs that have been held for so long. I was leading a bible study once. I cant remember what we were going through, but I believe that it had something to do with the basics of the faith. I am a person that likes to know why people believe the things that they do. Sometimes I poke at them a bit to help figure this out. Like playing the devils advocate to see what they say. People do it to me to, and it can be very annoying but good for the soul. This person started to talk about her views on the end times so I decided to challenge her on what she was saying. Not that I disagreed with her but I wanted to know if what she believed was based on evidence or it is just what was handed down through tradition. So I started to question her and she started to get angry so I soon shut my mouth before I got in trouble.

Revelation is a book of comfort and consummation. It is to inject courage into our lives as we count the cost of what it means to live and breathe the word of God. The vaccine is not the mark of the beast, if you are really worried about people tracking you get rid of your phone. . This is about Christian courage. The book sets us up for this to live and breathe the word of God.

some things about the book of Revelation

it is a letter, written to a specific people in a specific time in a specific place. It can not mean something to us that it did not mean to them. It was written for us but was not written to us. It was written at a time of intense persecution and the church was still booming. the temptation to join the pleasures of the world around us rather then sit under the same persecution they where dealing with must have been overwhelming.

it is a prophecy. not just about the future but "thus saith the Lord". it is not what happens next but what John sees next. John usually says " I turned and saw". a series of windows that we are going to peer through, not in chronological order. the purpose is to unveil that things are more then they seem. (colors and numbers have meanings).

There are many details in the book of Revelation that may be debatable, but the main ideas running through the book are not. Revelation reveals important truths about the end times but it also calls on all the hermenuetical courage, wisdom and maturity one can muster in order to understand it properly. I have been avoiding it for a while now but I am going to attempt to poke my way through it together. We must start to take a look into the revelation of King Jesus. We start out with a bit of background work.

Background

The author of the book is named at the beginning of the book, His name is John though there is some debate which John wrote it. John calls this book the revelation, or the Apocalypse.

We need to also understand that Symbolism plays a major role in Apocalyptic literature.

For example we read that the book was originally written to 7 churches. Though they where actual churches the number is more than just the amount of churches that needed to hear it, the number 7 has meaning in itself. The numbers throughout the book have meaning apart from the amount they come out to. sevens are woven throughout the book.

also meaningful images are drawn from the OT to bring meaning here as well and the original readers would have been encouraged to go back and find meaning in where they were originally mentioned. Also meaning must be anchored in historical context, we must go back to what was going on at the time to see what they originally meant as well.

So we go back to the churches that the Letter was originally written too. The 7 churches had likely served as a distribution point for the letter to other churches in the area. It is a bit hard to figure out what happened around the time the church was written as finding the date IT WAS WRITTEN has been difficult. It has been dated as early as (A.D. 41-54) and as late as A.D. 98-117.

Regardless of the conflict in the date that it was written, what we do know is that persecution of Christians was happening. The Roman empire was not nice to those in there midst that worshiped the Christian God.

The Roman Empire was one which personified the beast of Revelation who required people to bow down to the emperor or face death. There was emperor worship happening along with polytheism and ancestor worship. It was under the reign of Domitian that failure to honor the emperor as a god became a political offense and punishable. The Christians had been blamed for the great Roman fires under the rule of Nero and because o that they where being heavily persecuted.

With this in mind it is not a huge surprise that some of the churches that this was written about where having troubles. The major problem seemed to be disloyalty to Christ. Heresy was creeping into the churches, and honestly it would have been easier to deny Christ at the time where you would die for it, then to actually have to face death.

Similar to the book of Daniel people where faced with the decision to either worship the emperor or die. To worship the one true God meant taking your life and entrusting it to God’s hands, quite literally.

Main Idea

We move from the history of the book to the main idea of what is going to be said. There will be times when we will take broad strokes rather then focus on the finer details. This may be frustrating but we must remember not to get so bogged down in the details that we lose our way and forget what the main idea God was trying to get across here. Remember as we go through this the persecution that was imminent for those that chose to follow Jesus.

This book was to be one of Hope and encouragement to the persecuted church, one that they could look to for strength through those hard times.

God knows what He is doing and is still continuing to lead us to the New Jerusalem where He will wipe away all the tears and we will dwell with Him forever.

God exists, Has created the universe, is Guiding the course of history, has overcome evil, and will bring everything to a triumphant conclusion in His own good time. Our job is to hold fast to this truth, the testimony of Jesus and to the great word of God.

We are encouraged to work together to build authentic Christian disciples by looking at the suffering that we face and view it in light how Jesus brought victory through His death and resurrection.

Keep these things in mind as we go through the book.

Intro to the book.

Revelation 1:1 CSB

The revelation of Jesus Christ that God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John,

The word for Revelation here is the Greek word Apokalypsis Or where we get the word Apocalypse from. .

It is a type of literature like what is used in the OT that reveals symbolic visions about things that are to come. Usually Eschatological, meaning dealing with the end times, it deals with a period of time in the future when God will break into the world and bring the universe to a final reckoning. It tells us what the nature and the purpose of the book is going to be.

God gave this revelation to John to show what must soon take place regarding the coming of Jesus for the second time. It is given to those who are followers of Jesus and as warnings to those that do not follow Jesus what is going to take place.

Revelation 1:2 CSB

who testified to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, whatever he saw.

John came to offer firsthand what he had heard from God and testified to by Jesus. What is being said here is authenticated through the scriptures and through the life of Jesus. These two things are important asd we go through this.

John promises to that what was made known is a sign of what is to come. To make known means to show some sort of sign. A warning of sorts from the beginning that what is soon to be made known isn't all literal but a symbolic portrayal of what yet must take place.

Revelation 1:3 CSB

Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear the words of this prophecy and keep what is written in it, because the time is near.

Highly favored is the person who reads these words and takes them to heart and does something about them. There are 7 beatitudes like this throughout the book.

This beatitude echoes the words of Jesus in Luke when He tells them to hear the word of God and keep the word of God.

It is of vital importance that we take the word of God to heart. To read them and to live by them. Because there will come many who will claim to be the messiah, who will teach false things and lead people astray. The time is near, it would appear so anyways. But whether Jesus comes back now or 100 hundreds years from now, the response is the same. We must be prepared and know what is to happen.

So What?

Though the book of revelation was written to a specific people at a specific period of time, we must still learn from it today. We went through some historical context, because that is important to understand, to give us more understanding of what is going on. The thing I want to leave you with today is the main idea of the book of Revelation, that tells the broad picture of what is being said. We start with the title of the series.

The Revelation of King Jesus

Notice I have not been saying revelations, it is revelation singular. The revelation of God about King Jesus who is going to come establish His Kingdom. We must remember not to get bogged down in tradition, not to to get bogged down by the small details but remember what this book is really about. The fine details are okay to research and to try and figure out but we can not let that make us lose sight of what God was trying to tell us about when Jesus is going to come back.

God exists, Has created the universe, is Guiding the course of history, has overcome evil, and will bring everything to a triumphant conclusion in His own good time.

Given the grander context of scripture what is taken for granted, but important to remember going into this series is that God has always existed outside of time, He is the creator God and has set the course of History to fulfill His plan. What has happened is not surprise to Him. He doesn't cause evil but it will not thwart His plan.

God will overcome evil and give people one last chance to turn to Him in the process. It will be in His time but it will happen none the less. People will be brought to their knees, and yet some will still refuse to follow Him.

God will; triumph in the end, He will win. Jesus will establish His kingdom on earth and a new heaven and a new earth will be established and it will go back to what it was meant to be. I look forward to going through this with you guys.

Our job is to hold fast to this truth, the testimony of Jesus and to the great word of God.

Hold fast to these truths. find joy in the fact that no matter what gores on in this world, the Lord’s plans will come to pass. What Jesus has said He will do will happen. This book, though scary sometimes, we can read with joy knowing no one can thwart the will of God.

In the mean time, while we wait we need to get in the work of discipling and making disciples. What are you going to be found doing when Jesus comes back.