I’ve started a series on the book of Revelation. It probably won’t be what you would expect.
You’ll never see me make specific and fanciful predictions about the end of the world. Instead, this series will review four major themes in Revelation. I’ll be upfront about things we cannot know, and focus on what is knowable.
Our theme verse about the timing of the end of the world is a quote from Jesus. “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” [Matt. 24:36]
Today let’s look at how it fits in the New Testament.
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Our instinct may be to stay away from the book of Revelation. Let’s not. Many might want to throw up their hands in bewilderment and say, “What’s the use? You can’t understand it anyway. Let’s move on. What’s for lunch?” Yet we can’t ignore God’s truths. At the end of the book of Revelation the author, the Apostle John, writes;
Rev. 22:18-19 I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds anything to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book. And if anyone takes words away from this book of prophecy, God will take away from him his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.
To ignore Revelation is to ignore God’s clear desire that we learn from that mysterious book. We’ll not learn in the same ways that we might with the other 26 books of the New Testament. We’ll not learn facts and figures, nor see God at work through miracles and presence. But we can learn from it. We need to learn from it.
2 Tim 3:15 tells us how the Scriptures are “able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” In his biography of Jesus, John writes that his narrative is “written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” [John 20:31]
If that’s true for all of Scripture, it’s true for Revelation. But we approach Revelation differently.
There are a host of proposed methods about how to read and interpret Revelation. Pre-millennial. Post-millennial. Amillennial. There are good Christian people in all of those camps. I tell people I’m Pan-millennial. I think it will all pan out in the end and I don’t spend much time thinking about it. I’ve heard people say they are Pro-millennial; they’re all for it.
The introduction to Revelation in my New International Version Study Bible says the following. Fortunately, the fundamentals truths of Revelation do not depend on adopting a particular point of view. They are available to anyone who will read the book for its overall message and resist the temptation to become overly enamored with the details.
Revelation has a rich text, including art. Throughout his ministry Jesus used a number of artistic means to reveal God’s truths. Parables are stories, mostly fictional, that dramatize divine teaching in memorable ways. Miracles are acts of compassion, and sometimes street theater. Prayer is poetry and therapy.
The Christian faith is not just a collection of facts, doctrine, and time-tested guidance for life. The faith of the Christian also involves amazement of the majesty of God. I’ve known people who were very brilliant, knowing a lot of facts about the Bible and Christian Doctrine. But they never really felt it in their hearts.
Head knowledge of God is useless without a heart connection to God, and it might just be dangerous. It can make people arrogant, over confident, and focusing on the wrong priorities. The Christian faith is primarily about relationships; relationships between God and humanity, and between person to person.
The Book of Revelation helps us better understand the benefits of a right relationship with God, and the dangers of ignoring or disappointing or defying him.
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Next time we’ll look at how the Book of Revelation blends and balances emotions and facts, inspiration and instruction, the past, present and future.
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Dave Soucie lives, serves and writes in Indianapolis.
Copyright © 2023 by Dave Soucie. All rights reserved [but permission is granted for non-commercial use only, with proper citation].
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