Revelation 1:1-3 Victorious Faith

How many of us have read Revelation and just given up? Just thrown our hands up in the air with visions of dragons, locusts, trumpets and bowls and said I have absolutely no idea what any of this means?

But God says All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3:16-17).

And that includes Revelation.

One of my goals for today and over the next few weeks is to give you back a book of the Bible. To give you back the book of Revelation and help you understand what it says so that it might be profitable for your spiritual life.

What is the Book of Revelation talking about and how do we live it out in our everyday life?

For starters, we need to understand that Revelation is meant to be just that…a revelation.

Revelation 1:1-3 The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place.

The very first word of the book is the Greek word Ἀποκάλυψις.

And the roots of this word mean to unveil or uncover. To pull back the curtain.

The idea of Ἀποκάλυψις or revelation, is to take something that is hidden and make it fully known.

So the very beginning of the book is not talking about making something obscure, mysterious, or confusing.

The very first word of Revelation tells us the book of Revelation was written to make something known and understood.

That’s what an Apocalypse is. An Apocalypse is a literary genre that uses pictures and symbols to help show and communicate, to reveal, ultimate spiritual truths.

So God wrote Revelation so that you would understand it. Well how do we go about doing that?

4 Views

There are basically four different views for how we should interpret Revelation.

They are the:

Futurist

Historicist

Spiritual or Idealist

And Preterist.

Futurist

The Futurist View is the majority view today. It is probably the one you are most familiar with.

The Futurist reads Revelation and sees most of the prophecies written in the book as still in our future.

That ultimately Revelation its talking about the end of the world just before the Second Coming of Christ.

Historicist

Then you have the Historicist View.

It is less common today, but it is the most common interpretation of the book of Revelation throughout Protestant history.

This sees the book of Revelation as describing the entire Church age. That the prophecies of Revelation unfold throughout church history like the unrolling a carpet.

This is where you get the idea that the Pope is the Antichrist or Muhammed is the False Prophet.

Another way the Historicist approach works itself out is seeing the seven churches of Revelation as seven church ages.

That the churches are less historical churches from John’s own day and more describing seven great periods of church history.

So you might hear we are living in the Laodicean Age. The age where the church is lukewarm.

And just as an aside, that’s one of the conveniences of both the Historicist and Futurist approaches to Revelation.

We are always the terminal generation. The last ones before Christ returns.

We are never one of the earlier church ages or one of the earlier generations of the church. We always want to read ourselves into Scripture and make ourselves the church of the Last Days.

Spiritual/Idealist

Third you have the Spiritual or Idealist View.

This is the cop-out view.

And I say that as a joke because honestly, this would be the view I would hold were it not for the next one.

This view says that Revelation isn’t describing and prophecies with specific earthly fulfillments.

Rather, the book is the great drama between good and evil, Christ and Satan, Christians and antichristian forces ultimately culminating the Christ’s and the church’s victory over all other powers.

So Revelation is not describing specific events in world history, but the kind of events the church will face in world history.

The Revelation is an unveiling of spiritual realities, what’s going on behind the scenes, when the world goes through trials and tribulations.

So the prophecies are applicable to all Christians in all ages.

So Revelation is not describing a specific beast, a specific person or empire in world history, but rather beasts in general and how the church is to stay faithful to Christ under them.

Now the reason I say its a cop-out view is because if you are doing Bible interpretation right, no matter what view you take, you’re ultimately going to get here.

No matter when you see the prophecies being fulfilled whether in our future, sometime throughout history, or in the 1st century our job is to find the spiritual principle that applies to all Christians, in all times, in all places, and then apply that principle to our lives today.

This is the difference between particulars and principles.

So whether the Beast is some future person or its the Roman Empire personified in the Emperor, Nero, both of us are going to agree that Revelation gives us words to live by.

That when we are facing a Beast in our day, Revelation tells us how to live.

So ultimately, no matter what view you hold, eventually you are going to come to the spiritual or idealist interpretation when you apply the book of Revelation to your life today.

Preterist

Finally, you have the Preterist view. That’s my view.

Preterist simply means past in fulfillment

That when John wrote the book of Revelation the prophecies were in his future, but they were fulfilled in our past.

That most of the book deals with the Great Tribulation and the Fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD.

And then the last few chapters focus of Revelation the Kingdom of Christ throughout history. The entire church age, leading up to and culminating in the return of Christ and the consummation of all things.

Now when you say that, when you say most of Revelation has already happened, people start to bristle.

People get nervous. I mean if Revelation was mostly fulfilled in our past, then what does it have to do with us today?

We always want to put ourselves in the story and if we aren’t a part of the story doesn’t that make the book of Revelation irrelevant?

Well let me ask you. Is Genesis irrelevant? Daniel? Jeremiah What about Matthew or Galatians? Hebrews, James, or Jude?

What about prophecies about the virgin birth or Christ’s death on the cross?

Just because most of the prophecies of Revelation are in our past does not make the book irrelevant for us.

There are still timeless spiritual truths that are God breathed in Revelation and profitable for us today.

But saying that, I know I’m in the minority view. And so the onus is on me to prove it.

So here’s what I ask. Give me a chance.

Hear me out and give me the opportunity to show you why I think the preterist interpretation is the best explanation for understanding the book of Revelation what it says for us today.

Don’t let your traditions or preconceived notions just block out everything I say.

Give me at least let enough rope to hang myself, and if after the next few weeks you still think I’m wrong, that’s fine.

But give me a fair listen.

And if you do that, I think you will see Revelation in a whole new light and at the very least get a book of the Bible back.

Now all four views are held by orthodox, biblical, godly believing Christians, and all four views are represented throughout church history.

All of them are legitimate approaches to understanding the book of Revelation.

So what are we to do? How do we decide?

Dating Revelation

The first thing is ask when was Revelation written?

That question goes a long way in helping us figure out what Revelation might be talking about because if it was written after AD 70 then obviously it couldn’t have been the destruction of Jerusalem John was talking about, but something else.

When it comes to dating Revelation, there are really two options.

The more common view is that Revelation was written in the mid 90s under the reign of Domitian.

This is nerd stuff and I don’t want to bore you too much but it is important for you to understand.

The main reason people think Revelation was written under Domitian is because of a quote from an early church father, a part of the generation after the apostles, named Irenaeus.

Irenaeus wrote a book called Against Heresies and in that book he basically says that John saw the apocalyptic vision and quote “that was seen no very long time since, but almost in our day, towards the end of Domitian’s reign” (Leithart, Revelation. Vol. 1. 36-37).

So the argument goes, “Aha! Irenaeus wrote this in 180-190 AD so we have early church testimony that Revelation was written in the mid 90s towards the end of Domitian’s reign.

Here’s the problem. Irenaeus’ language is ambiguous. He could be saying that John saw the vision of Revelation in 95 AD or that John himself was the one seen as an old man at the end of Domitian’s reign.

I think its the latter. Because Irenaeus also refers to quote “ancient copies” of Revelation which would be an odd thing to say if the Revelation was seen “almost in our day” like the quote says (Sproul, Last Days According to Jesus, 146)

Also, another church father and contemporary of Irenaeus, gives us two hints why Revelation had to be written before 70 AD.

First, he talks about john chasing down a young apostate on horseback after his exile.

If He was exiled during the reign of Domitian that would mean John did this when was in his 90s.

Second, in his book Miscellanies, Clement claims that all of the apostolic Revelation, all the books of the New Testament ended during the days of Nero.

This would put Revelation before AD 68 when Nero was forced to kill himself (Sproul, Last Days According to Jesus, 147-148).

I think this gives us a better date that Revelation was written in the mid 60s, maybe 64-66 AD just before the Jewish Wars and the Fall of Jersualem.

This would put it with other New Testament books with similar themes of perseverance under persecution like 1 Peter, Hebrews, Mark, and 1 John that were all written around this time (Bruce Gore, YouTube: 12. A Benediction of Praise (Rev 1:4-6), 20 min).

But objectively, there is no external evidence that definitively tells us when Revelation had to be written.

So the next step is to go to the book itself.

Is there any internal evidence that might tells us when John expected his prophecies to be fulfilled?

Now I need you to lock in a little bit here because I’m about to flood you with information, and that’s intentional.

I want to overwhelm you with evidence from Revelation itself and other parallels of the New Testament to show you that that John clearly expected the book of Revelation to be fulfilled in the 1st century.

That literal interpretation demands that John was writing about events that were just about to happen in his immediate future and not thousands of years down the road.

So here’s what we're going to do.

First, we are going to look at all the evidence that points to a 1st century expectation for the book of Revelation, and how the text itself makes it clear that what John was talking about was the Great Tribulation and the Fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD.

Then we are going to take a thousand foot view of Revelation.

How do you read the book and how does John himself organize it?

And finally, we are going to close this sermon with what’s the point of all of this.

Why was the book of Revelation written and how is it profitable for us today for life and godliness?

These might feel like just a pile of bricks, but hopefully by the end of this, that pile of bricks will become a house.

Evidence for 1st Century Expectation

Audience Relevance (Slide of Rev. 1:1-3)

So first, Audience Relevance.

Remember the nature of the Apocalypse itself.

An apocalypse is an unveiling. Something meant to inform and enlighten, not hide and cover up.

On top of that, any time you come to a book of the Bible, the first question you need to ask is not what does this mean to me, but how would the original audience have understood this book the first time they heard it.

Every book of the Bible was written to a particular people, in a particular time, for a particular purpose.

You always start with the original audience.

What was God saying to them then? And then from there, we can interpret the spiritual principle that God is speaking to us today.

Every book of the Bible was written for an original audience and Revelation was no different.

Revelation was written to 7 churches in Asia Minor suffering intense persecution.

And John wrote the book to tell them something for their life and faith.

Verse 3: Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near (Rev. 1:3).

Don’t miss what John says. Blessed are those who hear and keep what is written in it.

John expected the seven churches of Revelation to understand exactly what he wrote and then live it out.

And he expected them to be able to understand Revelation just from hearing it read. Blessed is the one who reads aloud and those who hear.

The didn’t need hours hours of study or a bunch of commentaries. They would understand it just by hearing it read.

Why? Because Revelation applied to them.

If it was talking about Cobra helicopters, high tech tattoos, digital currency, or microchips you insert in your hand then those seven churches would have been just as confused about the book of Revelation as we are.

But...it was written for them. The seven historical churches of John’s day.

One of the clearest pictures that the book of Revelation was written primarily for the churches of John’s day is Revelation 3:10.

In Revelation 3:10 Jesus tells the church of Philadelphia Because you have kept my word about patient endurance, I will keep you from the hour of trial that is coming on the whole world, to try those who dwell on the earth.

The word world is the Greek word οἰκουμένη which means whole inhabited world talking about entire Roman empire.

And the word earth is the word γῆ meaning land or good earth. So, in Revelation, the Promise Land of Israel, and not the whole planet.

And Jesus tells the church of Philadelphia that they will be kept from the hour of trial thats about to happen.

And in context, that hour of trial is what John is about to write about in the rest of the book.

Now ask yourself, if John was writing about some future tribulation that wasn’t going to happen until after this church was all long gone, how would this promise from Christ be any comfort at all for this persecuted and beleaguered body of believers?

What a cruel thing for the Lord to say to His Bride unless the hour of trial was just about to happen and they really would be kept from it.

Not only that, but John even says in Revelation 1:9 I, John, your brother and partner in the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus...

John was a fellow partner. He was going through all of this with them.

So just from the historical context and audience relevance, Revelation was not talking about something that was going to happen thousands of years in the future but something that would have applied to those churches who were alive then.

Blessed are those who hear and keep the words of this book.

And this book was a message first and foremost for them.

Time Indicators

Moving on...not only does the Audience Relevance point to a first century fulfillment for Revelation, but John uses specific time indicators throughout the entire book that tell us the events of Revelation were near when John first wrote the words.

Soon & Near - Emphatic Nearness

Revelation 1:1 and 3.

Revelation 1:1-3 The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place...Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near.

2 Peter 3:8 objection

Seal Up/Don’t Seal Up

Finally we have instructions for John at the end of the book.

Let me ask you this way. If John had wanted to say that everything he had to say was about to happen in the next few years, how else would he have said it?

Pushing all these things out into the future ignores a literal understanding on the face of the text.

Particular Vocabulary

Great Tribulation

12.

Beast “Is”/Number

Biblical Parallels

The Seals & The Olivet Discourse

10.

Revelation’s Theme

iPad note

How to Read Revelation

Signify

Verse 2

Revelation is a book of pictures - political cartoons They are symbol communicating spiritual realities - signify If you don’t read it like this, if you take a “literal” approach youre going to wind up in trouble. Seven horns or eyes. Woman on the moon. The child is Christ Read as literature What spiritual trusts are the signs revealing to us

OT Background

Outline

Have Seen - Are - Shortly Take Place

In the Spirit

2nd = Covenant Trial and Marriage

Benediction

verse 3

Christians conquer over Satan and the world by being faithful unto death.

Overcome

Definition

Rewards

Conclusion

Let’s Pray

Scripture Reading

External evidence for the date of Revelation is less helpful than you might think.

Some people assume its an open and shut case cause irenaues but 1 and 2. Plus another church father 1 and 2.

So is there anything in the book itself that tells us when john expected these things to happen and what he was talking about?

Timing words = the original audience would’ve read this and thought these things were about to happen not thousands of years in the future