This is the first talk in our Winter/Spring 2005 series called Apolcalypse Now.
The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. (Revelation 1:1)
Since these words were penned sometime in the late 1st Century, Christians have been waiting for the things written in this book to unfold.
Within it’s pages are prophesies of things yet to come. While much of what we will teach in the coming months will be somewhat mysterious, one thing is for certain:
There will be a time in the future when the words of this letter will leap out of the Bible and into reality. As we learned in looking through Daniel, everything that God predicts will be fulfilled. Not in spirit, not in a round about way, but exactly as transmitted to us.
Personal story:
There were a few things I hated to hear as a youngster. One of them was “you’ll understand this when you get older.”
My brother is 5 years older than me, and he used to say this to me all the time.
– When we shared a room, he would make me get in his bed so the monsters would eat me first.
– He would quietly play with matches in his room, but I wasn’t allowed to tell on him.
– He would sneak out to go to his girlfriend’s house.
– He would knock on my window to let him in when he’d been out all night.
– He would have me delete the phone messages from the high school.
– He would change the oil on his car.
– He would talk about strange things with his friends.
– He would drag me a long to parties so he’d have an excuse to leave early.
With all of those things, he would say “you’ll understand this when you get older.” As the little brother I hated to hear that phrase because it was somehow demeaning to me… it was really saying “you are smart enough to figure out what I am up to… when you learn a little more you’ll start to understand somethings.”
This is a lot like the book of Revelation. Revelation is the culmination of all the other books of the Bible. It assumes that they reader knows “some stuff” about:
Creation of the world
God’s promises to the patriarchs
The story of the Jews
The story of Jesus
The story of the early church
And the story of the church today.
The simple fact is that if you are missing basic knowledge about the Bible you will be completely lost and confused with what Jesus teaches us about the future.
For this reason, in the last 3 years we’ve taught you Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Daniel before we’ve come to Revelation. All of that should act as background for what is to come because this is the language the author uses. He was a Jew and he used Jewish metaphors to communicate.
So when we start to look at Revelation we must first acknowledge that it is in harmony with the rest of the OT and NT prophesy about the end of the world as we know it.
Revelation from 10,000 feet
Author:
John
This is the same John who was one of the 12 disciples and author of the Gospel of John. John was in the inner circle of the disciples. (Peter, James, John) John was probably the youngest disciple and the one that Jesus was the closest to. This is the same man referred to in John 19:26-27.
By the time of this book being written, John was an old man. He would have been between 55-80 years old.
Date:
Among scholarly types, there is a lot of debate about this. We know for 100% certainty that it was written before AD 96. There are two primary dates people argue over (AD 54-68 or AD 81-96) but to keep things simple we are going to say it was written in the 1st Century AD.
Place:
John wrote this book from the Island of Patmos where he had been exiled. (Rev 1:9) The story goes that John was put in exile for refusing to acknowledge Domitian as god. But the emperor respected John and wasn’t much of a killer, so he exiled John to Patmos. He was released and went back to Greece after Domition was murdered in AD 96.
What was going on in the church around this time?
This is very important. In the spring of AD 70 there was a great upheaval in Jerusalem. History tells us that a Roman ruler tried to place a statue of Julius Caesar on or near the Temple Courts.
Obviously, since this is a sacred site for Jews and they thought putting an idol on God’s temple was dishonoring, they rioted! The result of the scuffle was that about 10-15 Roman soldiers were killed. As we saw in The Passion of the Christ the Romans were always fearful that they would lose control of the city and a lot of people would get hurt. So the Roman ruler sent word to Rome that there were problems in Palestine.
Rome responded with massive force. The Emperor Vespian and the Roman senate ordered that Jerusalem be destroyed. By late summer 2 legions of the Italian Regiment totally 20,000 soldiers arrived outside of the city. The city fell on August 10th, AD 70 and the people of the city either died, were enslaved, or escaped.
Up until this point, the church was still headquartered in Jerusalem. But after Jerusalem was destroyed, the church was scattered. Between AD 70 and AD 150 there wasn’t much central leadership in the church. It wasn’t until about AD 250 that the bishop of Rome, Clement, began to be recognized as the leader of what would eventually become the Roman Catholic Church.
During this period of time the church, though scattered in leadership, continued to flourish. (We’ll learn more about this next fall when we study Acts!)
Language and form:
Unlike the gospels or the epistles, this book uses a poetic language called Apocalyptic. This means that the language is visionary and by definition vague and symbolic.
For the most part, we teach you to read the Bible literally. Since the Bible is God’s love letter to mankind, we believe that it was written in a language that is easily understood.
Example: If I were to give you a sentence and then to ask you what it means… you would see that interpretation is important.
Lisa, in a few minutes go upstairs to my office and get a bag of water balloons, we’re going to use them for a game.
Understood normally: This would mean what it says, it’s a command.
Understood metaphorically: This would mean “Lisa is an important compatriot who is a skilled helper, she enjoys destroying dryness.
Understood poetically: This would mean, nothing since it doesn’t rhyme and isn’t lyrical it must mean that I have poor thoughts about Lisa.
Understood apocalyptically: This would mean, in a time Lisa will help me destroy the earth with a barrage of unexplained water bombings.
It’s important to note that we only look at the Bible “abnormally” when it is clear to do so. We will see that John’s vision is clearly laid out to be a time to look at the Bible apocalyptically.
Outline:
The book of Revelation can be broken up into 4 time periods.
Section One: Past History (1-3)
Section Two: Tribulation (4-19)
Section Three: Millenium (20)
Section Four: Eternity (21-22)
Purpose of the book:
As John mentions in Rev 1:1, the purpose is to show the church what will soon take place.
Key verse:
Revelation 22:17 “The Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let him who hears say, “Come!” Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life.”
So that is an introduction to this letter, let’s dive into it!
Read 1:1-3
– An angel came and visited John.
Read 1: 4-5
– this is a personal greeting
– including a greeting from Jesus keys us into what kind of visit John must have had!
Read 1: 6-8
– this is a combination of two verses of prophesy about Jesus’ return.
– Daniel 7:13, “”In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence.
– Zechariah 12:10, “”And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit [a] of grace and supplication. They will look on [b] me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son.”
– Alpha and Omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. This is Jesus acknowledging his eternality! He was, is, and is to come always God.
Read 1: 9-11
– I’ve already told you that John was on the Island of Patmos in exile.
– This happened to him while he was privately worshipping God.
– He was told that he was going to see a vision and he was supposed to write down what he saw and send it to 7 churches.
– These churches are all in Asia Minor, in present day Turkey.
Read 1:12-16
– This is the same imagery of a man used by Daniel. (Dan 7;9)
– John would have been well aware of Daniel’s prophesy!
– John also knew Jesus intimately, this was the first time he had seen Jesus since Jesus’ ascension in Acts 1.
– John described Jesus’ mouth as a “sharp double edged sword.”
o One commentator describes this imagery like this:
§ The sword is both a weapon and a symbol of war, oppression, anguish, and political authority. But John seems to intend a startling difference in the function of this sword, since it proceeds from the mouth of Christ rather than being wielded in his hand. (Expositors Bible Commentary p. 32, Alan Johnson)
§ Obviously, this is not literal language but symbolic.
§ It’s as though John is saying, “Jesus appeared to me… he was dressed for battle!”
Read 1: 17-18
– We get a feel for the intimacy in their relationship.
– John was so excited to see Jesus and in such awe that he dropped to his knees “as though dead.”
– Jesus recognizes his beloved disciple and reassures him, “I was dead, but I am alive forever and ever!”
Read 1: 19-20
– This is Jesus explaining to his disciple what is going to happen next. We’re not going to get to it today, but the 7 stars and the seven angels and the 7 churches are all talking about the churches that Jesus is about to have a message for.
Application:
I’m going to close today by drawing your attention back to the imagery of Jesus’ appearing to John as a soldier, ready for battle.
We like to think of Jesus as a nice man, with children sitting on his knee… he looks as innocent and harmless as Santa Claus.
But we need to remember that Revelation is teaching us of a Jesus who is coming back to both judge the world and enforce judgment.
Jesus is a strong and might warrior as well. He is no weakling.
I’d like to leave you tonight with a song. In the song, we’re going to hear a story about a man who goes off to war. He writes letter to his mom, his mom writes letters to him. She prays for him, he is sustained by her prayers during hard times.
But I want to leave you with this image because it is the exact image we should have in our brains as we await the return of Jesus.
The mother waits with anticipation every day for her boy to come home… so we too should be awaiting the return of Christ Jesus.
As the song plays, I would ask just that you quiet yourself and listen to the words of the story… remembering, that this level of emotion is the same anticipation we should be waiting for these things in Revelation to happen.
Play song, “Letters from War”
Pray
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