Revelation Intro

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If you are able, please stand as we read scripture to begin. Today our reading is from Revelation 1:1-3
Revelation 1:1–3 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, who testified to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, whatever he saw. 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.
Please be seated.
What happens to the Church when it seems darkness is winning? What does it mean for our witness when the loudest evangelists are pilfering the poor for their own benefit? And the faithful speakers and preachers and prophets are forgotten, shunned, imprisoned, and hated?
What would it look like if the the gospel that the church preaches doesn’t seem to have the power to change people, so they partner with kings and governments and powers to coheres people to behave a certain way?
What happens to the churches worship when their view of God becomes so skewed and distorted that they no longer have fear or reverence before him? What happens when they lose sight of his holiness and become so comfortable with God that his commands become suggestions for holy living rather than ordinances to live by?
What would happen to the church’s hope? What would happen to her witness and joy?
Welcome to the world of Revelation. In many ways, our world has echoes from the world in the first generation in which this book found it’s beginning. A book written to people trying to live for a God in a world ruled by powers of darkness.
Today we begin our study of the book of Revelation.
There is a large part of me that is astounded with myself that we are now embarking on study through the book of Revelation. For a significant part of my life, Revelation was absolutely terrifying and confusing to me, and I was flustered by it, and I legitimately ignored it.
One embarrassing story comes to mind. My dad was a youth pastor, and was my youth pastor when I was in high school. And he hosted a high school Bible study in their home on, I want to say it was Sunday nights, I’m not sure on the day. Whatever - I don’t remember, honestly most of what we studied - but I know that when I was a freshmen I wanna say, we started going through the book of revelation as a group. It was confounding to me - and it caused great angst, and I didn’t understand it - and I remember getting so upset with the study, that in the middle of the study, I literally stormed out of the Bible study, and went upstairs to pout in my room. Super mature, i know. Nothing like the pastors kid storming out of the bible study that his dad is leading.
Revelation is an incredible book - and I, now, am incredibly, although admittedly humbly, excited for us to begin this journey - It is God’s word, and I believe that God’s Spirit uses God’s Word to transform God’s people. Part of us being a Fully Focused people, is studying Scripture.
For a lot of believers when it comes to Revelation, we tend to succumb to two different camps, and traps, when it comes to Revelation.
Tim Dwyer calls them Revomania, or Revophobia. Hyper-fixation, or complete avoidance.
Revomania is a fascination, typically with parts of revelation, mixed often with Daniel, and predicting and coordinating Revelation with world events. There are websites like raptureready.com which is updated daily trying to get a best guess at when the rapture will happen. They typically have charts, and books both fiction and non-fiction. They have terms for everything - pre-mil, post-mil, a-mil, pre-trib, post-trib, mid-trib, and if you aren’t studied in it, it can be difficult to understand all the nuances of all the views they throw out! Revomaniacs typically have a pessimistic view of world events - and they are constantly watching the horizon to see what lines up with what, so they can be prepared for the rapture.
Revophobia was my condition. It’s the opposite of revomania. It’s an avoidance, or glossing over of the richness that revelation offers! instead of pre-mil or post mil- they tend to be pan-millenial - it will all pan out in the end. So this position ignores the book due to the hysteria on the other end, and therefore gets cheated out of incredible spiritual food and blessing found in Revelation!
What’s interesting, is Revophobia is a long standing hallmark in our faith!
John Calvin, one of the great reformers from Geneva wrote incredible commentaries that still hold up on every book of the Bible except Revelation.
Martin Luther, the monk who God used to spark the protestant reformation has a quote on revelation that he gave in 1522 where he wrote that the book of revelation is “neither apostolic nor prophetic,” saying further that he “can in no way detect that the Holy Spirit produced it” (LW 35:398).  Later writing that “My spirit cannot accommodate itself to this book. For me this is reason enough not to think highly of it: Christ is neither taught nor known in it” (LW, 35:398-399).
And he later did come to seemingly adopt it and recommend it - I think it’s worth noting that some of the heaviest hitters in our faith have been so confounded by Revelation that it lead them to great consternation or ignoring of it.
Often, I would argue we get so caught into our camps on either side, and miss some of the most encouraging scripture there is contained in the canon of Scripture.
I have moved, over the course of the last, I don’t know, last decade or so, moved from revophobia, to it being one of the books that I treasure most - and has given me more hope and clarity. And it’s my prayer that as we study this incredible work as a church, that God would use it to fill us with a real and tangible hope and faith that endures so that we can be the most effective at working with God as he moves around our world to seek and save the lost.
All that said - I want to let you know, I perhaps make both camps upset in our study. Sorry revophobes - prayerfully, we are studying Revelation! and it will likely take us over a year to study, with some breaks here and there for different seasons. Perhaps your fears coming true - I hope God uses this study to heal ways that fear has caused wounds in your faith and that Revelation would become for you what it has become for me, a treasure.
And revomaniacs - if you are hoping for charts and predictions, you are likely going to be found wanting. This will not be a classical or hyper dispensational series on Revelation.
So don’t think that pastor Jimmy is gonna be quoting a lot of Tim LaHaye or Hal Lindsey - no we are going to take a ground level approach to the book that is deeply grounded in church history. We don’t need some secret decoder ring to understand this book, and I will admit that some of the baseless speculation and predictions over history about who is the anti-christ is (by the way, the word anti-christ doesn’t appear at all in the book of revelation), what the mark of the beast is or isn’t (visa card, bar codes etc), can make it seem frustrating and fear mongering to study. And yet - we can’t lose a grounding from this book so as to miss the grounding and warnings contained. Revelation will cause us to worship Christ for who he truly is.
Now that I’ve confessed how I’m going to potentially frustrate both sides , one may ask, then why would we study this book? One that’s so contentious? Well for one, it’s part of the scripture, and if all scripture is God-breathed and profitable, let’s study it. Also, it’s not a light decision, but one that a lot of prayer has gone into - and I believe that God wants to use this work to speak to us for such a time as this. I feel that the American Church is in a sort of exile in Babylon much like the church in asia minor at the end of the first century was. I think Revelation is needed for our church in our world right now.
So with that, let’s begin. Today we beginning with background information to set the stage for the work to come, and set up the framework that we will structure our study around. We aren’t going to get into the text much at all today, but just set the ground work and framework for our study going forward.
Let’s start with authorship, who wrote this book?
The author identifies himself as John, though we don’t get a detailed description of which John in the book. The traditional answer would be that this John is John the brother of James and son of Zebedee, one of the twelve disciples.
Some others think this is perhaps a different John, that they would call John the Seer. They consider it unlikely that the apostle was still active in ministry when the book was composed, and there is some difference in the greek stylings between this and gospel of John that lead some to speculate in the direction of a different John.
In my opinion the evidence leads me to consider the Apostle John as the likely author.
I get this position from several key evidences:
first, We have good reason to believe that John the Apostle was in Ephesus for quite some time, and given that proximity, him speaking and writing to other churches in Asia Minor and to be received as a man of God makes a whole lot of sense,
Second, While the greek may be a different style, the themes of light, and love, which are big themes in the gospel of John and the epistles of John also appear heavily in Revelation suggesting they had the same author.
Third, Iranaues was an church father writing in the mid to late second century, who attests to the Apostle Johns authorship of the book. And while thats a while off, Iranaeus was taught by Polycarp, who was older and knew the apostles himself, so it seems he had good reason to believe in John’s authorship.
All said - There is good reason to believe in the traditional understanding that it was written by the apostle John, and that is the position i take.
We will get into the date of writing of the book at various times throughout our study - an its much less clear than the authorship - but I hold to the view that it was likely written close to the end of the first century, likely under the reign of Domitian, so perhaps in Ad 95 of so. This would make John a very elderly man.
Again we will unpack the date more as we go on through out study - but that traditional dating seems to make the most sense.
Let’s look on to more details about the book itself.
The Books title comes from the first few words in the greek
Look at the first part of verse 1
Revelation 1:1 (CSB)
The revelation of Jesus Christ
“The Revelation of Jesus Christ” - it’s not Revelations, as some will call it, - its a specific revelation, and it’s that of Jesus Christ.
At it’s core - Revelation is all about revealing Jesus Christ. To the christian, to the church, and to the world.
The word translated revelation is apocalypsis. Yes, this is the word that nowadays we think of as apocaliptic - where there is a host of media, movies, and books devoted to stories at the end or after the end of the world.
But it’s really important to note - that is not what the word means. It has come to mean that, but it means revealing. Unveiling.
It’s suggesting to us that God and his realities are far away, or high above the clouds - but are actually close, up against the skin, deeper and more real than are eyes can see - but we need it to be revealed. We need an appearing of Jesus and the truth. Hence, apocalypse.
It is also a kind of jewish literature and we have several different examples of it, some in the canon of scripture, but a lot of it out of the Bible but contemporary to second temple period, but specifically between 200bc and 200ad.
Parts of Daniel feature apocalyptic literature, but so do the non-cannonical books of 1 Enoch, 2 & 3 Baruch, 4 Ezra, and many others.
The Lexham Bible Dictionary defines Apocalyptic literature as A genre of biblical writing that reveals God’s actions and coming judgment in symbolic language. The transition from prophecy and apocalyptic is characterized by an increased use of symbolism and an increased use of heavenly mediators explaining the vision.
In this genre, There is generally a revelation given to the human by another heavenly being, which reveals a supernatural truth. It generally includes a invitation therefore for humanity to come into alignment with that revealed supernatural truth.
And as a hallmark of its highly symbolic nature, it can be hard to get to the core truth. Enter in the endless debates around the various details in the book of Revelation!
However, I would suggest it would be far too limiting to just qualify Revelation as an apocalypse. John employs apocalypse, but it is pastoral, and an Epistle, or a letter. Meaning JOhn knows the people in these places, and through God’s inspiration is addressing specific issues in their midsts. So he writes the letter to them.
It’s a pastoral epistle, it’s an apocalypse, and it’s also prophetic, and in a lot of ways is a continuation of the Old Testament Prophets. That’s what verse 3 says, let’s read our passage again,
Revelation 1:1–3 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, who testified to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, whatever he saw. 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.
Now when many hear the word “prophetic” or “prophesy” we default into thinking future teller, and while there is an element of foretelling the future in prophesy, that is not what MOST of prophesy is. Prophecy is mostly the word of God coming into a specific context and speaking into it. IT’s cutting to the heart of the present time.
Revelation will do both in terms of prophecy - speaking to the situation in the first century, with prophetic futures being predicted for the church at large, or what must “soon take place”
Revelation is therefore a prophetic pastoral epistle that employs apocalyptic literature to communicate. That may seem like a bunch of Biblical nerd language - but it really matters when it comes to interpreting the book.
Let’s turn to interpretive methods and keys when it comes to revelation.
First, when it comes to all epistle literature where there was reason and cause for the author to write - we need to remember the interpretive key: it was written TO them and FOR us. It wasn’t written TO us. We are not first century christian in Asia Minor where the apostles are getting martyred persecuted and arrested. We live in a different time, place, and culture. So we need to do our best to understand what the text would have meant to the original audience first, and then draw conclusions from there.
There is so much in the this book for us and all Christians - but the proper interpretative method is going to require us to do the hard work of context, realizing it wasn’t written to us! John grew up in a jewish context, and his knowledge of the Old Testament is insane. Revelation is like jumping into the deep end of pool when it comes to old testament fluency. He alludes to, directly quotes, or references countless old testament stories and prophecies. more than any other new testament book. I have a book for study strictly on JOhns Use of the Old Testament in Revelation. It’s immense.
So When John writes, he is taking for granted that his audience is going to pick up on all this old testament imagery and meaning. So we will do our best to ground ourselves in that time and place and understand it in its original context before we look at it for us.
Next, over the last two thousand years or so of church history, there have been four main methods on how to interpret Revelation, I want to go over all of them - along with where I come from.
The first view is the preterist view. Preterist meaning past. Holders of this view are going to suggest that Revelation is actually a prophecy of the fall of Jerusalem that took place in AD 70 - meaning the book would have had to be written before then, and everything in the book has already been fulfilled - thus preterist. While full blown preterism is not very common, and produces a lot of interpretive and theological issues - there are sub categories of this camp such as partial preterism in which most of the book was fulfilled in AD 70, but still some remains to come about. While I have no doubt that John had in mind the fall of Jerusalem when he wrote revelation - Daniel and Revelation seem to be talking about a broader cosmos wide scope - not one specific to the jewish people. This view would reduce revelation purely to a very strange history book - and i don’t find it very compelling.
The second is the Historicist view. Proponents of this view suggest that the seals, trumpets, and bowls describe the successive ages of the church. Almost exclusively from a western church view, it tries to tie the symbols in Revelation to specific historical events - think the fall of the roman empire, corrupting of the papacy, reformation and on and on. It seems that whoever is doing the work always ends with thinking that Christ’s return is imminent in their lifetime. Greg Beale points out several problems with this view - first being every historicist interpret views the book differently - with very little consensus, it’s western only focus, neglecting the church of god in the east and africa, and it illustrate the danger of trying to make the symbols of revelation refer to specific historical events even though the book of Revelation doesn’t demand that that sort of interpretation - specifically, no where in the book does it say that the order of the seals, trumpets, and bowls represent the chronology of the western church. I am not compelled by this view.
The third view is that of the Futurist View. This view sees the book of Revelation - outside of Revelation 1-3 (or the letters to the seven churches) almost exclusively to events surrounding the return of christ at the end of history. Classical dispensationalism is the most common futurist view, especially in American Churches. This position interprets the visions as literally as possible and chronologically as referring to events of history. Beale summarizes this view that generally Chapters 4-21 are seen as referring to the order of events to happen in the future latter days. They would say that Israel is restored to its own land immediately prior to Chapter 4:1, then the church is raptured into heaven, there is a seven-year tribulation, the reign of the antichrist begins, the nations gather to make war against Jerusalem, Christ returns to defeat the nations then institutes the millennial kingdom. Satan gathers unbelievers together at the end of the millenium for one last fight, and Christ then defeats evil and begins the eternal reign of heaven. This over the end of the twentieth century had become the most predominant view especially on the popular level - with LEft Behind and different conferences, it became a very common view, though I would point out that historically speaking, it is not the most common throughout church history, it really wasn’t popularized till the start of the 20th century. It was the view i was raised with, though i no longer hold to it. A couple things to point out - first, in the book of revelation there is no mention of israel being restored geographically to its land. Nor is there any reference to the rapture of the church. At its worst, this view has lead to wild speculation of which historical events are what symbol. Depending on which war has gone on, I’ve seen so many people identified as the ant-Christ, from hitler, to sadam hussein, to popes, or politicians. At it’s core, my issue with this view has been that the bible is interpreted by modern events first, rather instead of by itself. Remember - it was written to the seven churches. It would have needed to make sense to them! There are different sub categories of this, like progressive dispensationalism and modified futurism - though it’s not how i have come to view revelation.
But that brings us to the fourth view
The Redemptive-Historical / Idealist View. The idealist view would see the book as a symbolic vision of the overarching battle between good and evil through the ages with the exhortation to remain faithful in the face of suffering. I agree with Beale that on a whole, I think this is the most compelling view - but in light of the fact that parts of REvelation do definitely refer to the end time events around Christs return, we would want to adopt an eclectic redemptive historical view with futurist views incorporated where appropriate, but all of them must be grounded in the ordinal audience of the seven churches. Many of the events in this book speak to the church in all generations as a call to live faithfully and hopefully even when exiled in babylon. This is the view that I have become convinced of, and where i’m going to be coming from as we work through the text.
Now we don’t all have to agree on what view is the right one, but how we interpret the book will determine what actions we feel called to. As long as our view of revelation is grounded in the context, and leads us to living faithfully as followers of JEsus, witnessing to others, worshipping him, and being filled with hope in Exile - well then we can agree on a lot!
And the last note i want to bring up today on our brief introduction of Revelation.
Preaching through revelation is different then doing a systematic seminary class on revelation. What I am after, as I pray through the text, is what this text is communicating to us in our lives in order to be fully focused on God and his mission so we can come into better alignment with him.
Okay - we’ve nerd-ed out a lot - i know outlines and intros and backgrounds and different interpretive view points are not for everyone.
So let’s get to our Question
So What?
I feel it’s appropriate now, as we ask our Question of So What as to reveal why I think REvelation is so needed for our time.
What is revelation trying to communicate?
We will see that a key phrase in Revelation is to conquer. To overcome. And Christ is shown as the one who as overcome.
He is said to be the Lion of Judah who conquered the grave - and yet when JOhn sees him he looks as a lamb who was slain. In our world where it seems like people want power and influence to conquer - we see that our messiah conquered by suffering. Therefor we should see that willingness to suffer for Christ is the path to ultimate victory. We should faithfully follow the slain lamb into new creation - realizing that this world with its empires and glories and opulence is not our home. And it’s not even fully real.
And we shouldn’t see God as distant! Revelation reveals how in control God is - how sovereign he is in history. And how shockingly close and involved he is. God is not like the false gods who are don’t answer, are unmoved, and unresponsive. God is shockingly involved, emotionally invested - and working a plan to redemption.
Revelation teaches so many things - here’s a quick list of 10 things revelation will teach us of the course of our study
Revelation wants believers to be conquerors, by death if necessary
Revelation wants to persuade us readers and hearers not to worship the monster of the sea or the beast of the land or to participate in emperor worship
Revelation wants us to not tolerate false teachers in the church
Revelation wants to encourage us to pursue holiness and faithfulness
Revelation shows us the danger of economic idolatry and entanglements
Revelation will show us the danger of pluralism and “tolerance”
Like Exodus, Revelation will show that God will rescue his people through plagues
Revelation will demonstrate there is a special reward for faithful followers of Christ - especially those who die for their faith
Revelation will teach us that God is just and righteous even in his judgments
Revelation that Jesus is coming quickly, and that should fill us as believers with great hope, and motivate us to be on mission
Friends, Revelation is brilliant, and beautiful, it’s worth studying. But part of why it’s so important to study and focus on is because so many people just use it so unresponsibly to promote false teaching, heresy, fear, and use it to try and support their own designs.
Especially in our world right now, wars and rumors of wars, political elections where both sides use existential language to motivate their voter base with fear to get out and vote as if any president can solve our issues.
No - we need to focus on JEsus Christ, the risen christ. The lamb that was slain and the lion who conquered the grave. We are entrusted with the message of reconciliation. So we must endure, overcome, preach, be holy, and be faithful - walk with christ even into suffering - loving and forgiving all that we can.
And trusting - that new creation is coming. We have the hope of the world living in us.
So let’s not be ruled by fear, or political powers, or gross speculations - but by the enduring perfect presence of God, and let’s partner with him on the mission of the Gospel!
It is my desire that as we study Revelation - that God would be glorified and that we would be reminded of the presence and ways of GOd, and that we would walk on those paths.
LEt’s stand and pray.
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