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1. Introduction

A couple of months ago, I bought a book I’d wanted to read for a while: Dante’s Inferno. The book is an epic poem about Dante’s descent into the rings of hell where he encounters various men and women from the past and from his own time period. As I started, I saw a lot of ornate language, symbolism, rich description, and images of intense suffering. I felt like I couldn’t understand its content and I was afraid it was too complex for me. I set it down on my bedside table to collect dust. I just wasn’t up for the challenge or intensity that would come with reading Inferno… but this book is a classic, and I felt like I was going to continue wanting to read it until I was able to finish it. To do this, I was going to have to see Dante as less remote.

Over the Christmas break, I finally decided to dust it off and give Dante another shot. As I started, I realized it wasn’t as difficult as I thought. The language was descriptive, but it flowed. The images were scary and other-worldly, but believable. My fears about the complexity, strangeness, and obscurity were dispelled. What dispelled these fears? Well, starting the book did; picking it up and reading. I realized that it wasn’t as remote as I thought. It wasn’t too hard to read. Now, I did consult a few notes on the background of the story, so that I understood his context, but other than that, I found the writing to be accessible.

Our study of Revelation is meant to show you, that this last book of the Bible, is also accessible. Through God’s Holy Spirit and our knowledge of the rest of his Bible, we can read and understand Revelation. Our goal in this study is to introduce you to the book, to show you how important it is for Christian living, and to encourage you to pick it up and start to read it; to see that it too is accessible.

2. Introduction to book of Revelation

To help us study Revelation, let me give a little background. Revelation was written by John. Tradition has it that this is the same John that wrote the gospel of John and the 3 NT letters by the name of John. The book was actually a circular letter written to 7 churches that are in modern-day Turkey. By circular letter, I mean that it was written to all 7, and was meant to be passed between them, read, and understood. We know from Ch. 1, verse 9 that the writer John was on the island of Patmos (a Greek island located about 100 miles SW, as the crow flies, of the city of Smyrna, modern-day Izmir). John was on the island because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. He says he is the believers’ companion in suffering and patient endurance. The book was written to speak to real needs that the church was suffering. The book was to be an encouragement for those under great pressure and suffering pointing them to Christ, and it’s a challenge to combat the forces of evil all around them (even within them).

Their form of persecution might have been different than ours today. Today we are told to leave our faith at home, in private, to not bring it into the workplace. We can end up scared to say anything, because someone might think less of us. It might hurt our chance for promotion. But the encouragement, the focus on Christ, and the challenge to resist evil are still relevant to us and should cause us to pause and think about how we live.

Four millennial views

(Download the Four Millennial Views Handout)
Because Revelation deals with many heavenly and future things, it has been interpreted in many ways. I’ve put together a handout for you of the four major variations of interpretation of the book and end times. The sheet is meant to be a quick reference for you, if you ever need it… Why are there different views, you might be thinking? Well, basically Christians disagree over how to interpret the end times. All the views wrestle with the Scriptures, but come to different conclusions. This isn’t that different than why we have different denominations. Christians agree on the major points of faith, but disagree on how it plays out in the day-to-day life of the church.

What is a millennium? A period of 1,000 years. To help us understand the meaning of “millennium,” I want you toremember the year 2000. People were worried that it was going to be the end of the world. All the computers were going to malfunction, cause widespread chaos, potentially damage, and perhaps even the end of the world as we knew it… People were afraid of the uncertainty, of what might happen. Besides fears about the unknown, it was also 2000 years after the birth of Christ. It was the beginning of a new millennium, and many predicted that it was going to usher in the return of Christ and the final judgment. I tell you this, so that you can see how having a specific end-times view can cause you to interpret our current times. Having this view shows one of the interpretations…

Looking at our handout, we see that there are shared beliefs that Christians have about the end times. The difference is that Christians disagree on the order in which these events will take place. A lot of the differences stem from an interpretation of Revelation 20 which refers to a thousand-year period in which Christ reigns and Satan is bound.

1. The first view says that Christ will come the second time, a literal 1000 years will follow in which Christ literally and bodily reigns on earth, and at the end of this “millennium” the last judgment will occur. This view gets its name from the fact that Christ returns prior to the millennium, or premillennium. Holders of this view are called premillennialists. Some famous premillennialists are some of the early church fathers, Fuller Seminary, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
2. The second view is really a sub-category of the first. They insert a period of 7 years between the 2^nd coming and the millennium calling these 7-years the time of tribulation. The period of tribulation is to gather in more Christians, and then Christ will come the 2^nd time (again) to start his earthly 1000-year rule. Holders to this view are often just called Dispensationalists. Famous dispensationalists are the authors of the Left Behind series, Dallas Theological Seminary. This view is often seen in association with Bible churches throughout the evangelical movement.
3. The third major interpretation of the millennium, or the 1000 years, is that we will continue living as we currently do, and at some point in the future, the millennium will begin. We will recognize it because the gospel will win more people, nations will become Christian, laws will all become Christ, and evil grow less, more and more during this time. This view gets its name from the fact that Christ returns after the millennium, or post-millennium. Holders of this view are called posmillennialists. I struggled to find some famous postmillennialists that I thought you would know. It’s not as widespread in American churches as it was in other time periods. (A few theologians who hold to this view are Greg Bahnsen and Kenneth Gentry.)
4. The fourth major interpretation of the millennium, says that we currently live in the millennium. Christ has already triumphed over death and Satan on the cross, and ever since then, he has been reigning over the earth. He will still return at some point in the future. The 1000 years are seen as symbolic, because they appear in apocalyptic visions in a symbolic book. Holders of this view are called amillennialists, because they don’t distinguish a millennium from our current circumstances. Proponents of this view are Episcopalians, Catholics, and many Reformed people, including Presbyterians, specifically PCPC, and most people at Westminster and Redeemer Seminaries.

Whew! That’s a lot to cover in 5-10 minutes! You might be thinking, what does it matter? Do I have to choose one of these beliefs to be a Christian? No, you don’t have to choose one of these views to be a Christian or even to come to this Bible Study. Ashley and I hope that by at least introducing you to them, you’ll be better able to understand why people interpret the end times and Revelation so differently. The next time you encounter the words rapture or tribulation or millennium, you’ll know that these words are associated with how people read the book of Revelation (and other end times prophecy statements).

3. Revelation 1: What is “revealed” about Jesus?

Okay, let’s dive into Ch. 1 of Revelation now. I’ve already given you a little background on the book. Now, I want to look at its content. When I think of “apocalypse,” I think of end times, maybe the great battle of Armegeddon, the end of the world, a great disaster, or some sci-fi movie, even Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto about the Mayan end of calendar in 2012. There are many things that come to mind.

The word “apocalypse” actually comes from the Greek language (apokalypsis) and is the same word as the English “Revelation.” An alternate title for the book of Revelation has traditionally been “Apocalypse.” So, the word apocalypse (or revelation) means an “unveiling,” a lifting of the veil, a revealing of something. It’s supposed to be a disclosure of something hidden. That’s what we have here in the book of Revelation. Ch. 1 reveals or makes known the risen Christ, as God, to us. In the first verse of the book, we learn, even though the book was written by John and he received the vision while he was in the Spirit, that this is “the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave to show his servants [that includes us!] what must soon take place.” It’s this message and testimony of what John’s seen that has landed him in exile (verse 9). He stood up for what he heard and believed, and he suffered for it. Right off, we know that as Christians when we live out our faith, life is not necessarily going to be easy for us; it’s going to be a struggle…

This vision of Christ in heaven, after his resurrection, helps shape the way we view our future, what heaven will be like (or a vision to share with a loved one who is dying), but it even more importantly shapes the way we view our present day and life (this vision should change the way we view God and the resurrected Christ). To give you a quick and short outline, this chapter can be divided into two main parts: one, the Prologue in verses 1-8, and two, the son of man and his message, in verses 9-20.

3.1 The Prologue

The Prologue, in verses 1-8, goes through a lot of the important background information I’ve already talked about. For now, I’m just going to focus on some of the details about Christ that are shared with us in this section. Revelation 1 is revealing Christ to us.

Think of the way when you look through the lens of a camera, you can adjust and focus your view on the world. Reading Revelation is like further focusing our view on God and on Christ. It allows us to see him in a bigger and more magnified way. The more we study and read and learn about him, the greater our picture of him is and the better we will know him and how much he loves us. The more powerful our lens and the more we use it, the better prepared we will be to face the struggles of life, because we will know God better and we’ll be able to understand better what he’s doing.

About Christ, it is revealed, in verse 5, that Jesus is the faithful witness, he’s the firstborn from the dead—this means that he was the first to be resurrected to eternal life, he’s the first of many more to come—, and he’s the ruler of the kings of the earth. Christ is now already the ruler of the kings of the earth. Verse 6 tells us what he has done for us: he’s loved us—you and me—he’s freed us from our sins by his death and blood, and he’s made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve God, the Father. In verses 7-8, we see that the urgency of the letter is because Christ is coming again; the NT often describes him as returning with the clouds.

As his servants, you and I have an important role and mission for our lives. We are to show his kingdom to the world and to serve him, either through our words or our actions. We do this by living out our faith at work, at home, in our relationships. We must honor our employers and their time; our spouses or significant others, our friends. We may be called to speak up about our faith or leave a situation that’s not in accord with our beliefs. These are further ways that sharpening our focus on Christ helps us live more consistently with our beliefs.

3.2 The Son of Man

Let’s move to the second part of this chapter in verses 9-20. In these verses we learn a lot about what the risen Christ looks like. We didn’t get descriptions like these of Jesus when he was on earth, after the resurrection. This is after he has ascended to heaven and where he reigns over the earth now. These descriptions add depth to our understanding of who Christ is. They help us focus our lens.

These verses reveal Christ even more to us as God. In verse 10, we are introduced to the voice of, which verse 13 reveals is, one “like a son of man.” He is described as having a voice like a trumpet and like the sound of rushing waters. His feet are glowing. His head and hair are white like wool and snow. His eyes are blazing; his face is like the sun in all its brilliance. He is radiating! This is a picture of the glory that he has now that he is resurrected. Out of his mouth comes a sharp, double-edged sword. At first I thought, oh, that’s a bad sign, someone’s going to get cut, but in the context of the rest of the Bible, specifically Hebrews 4:12, we see that a double-edged sword is used to describe the word of God. So Hebrews 4:12 says,

“For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

So, I think we can safely say that what he holds in his mouth is the word of God, which is able to penetrate our hearts, souls, and thoughts.

What is the reason John refers to Christ as “one like a son of man?” Why does the text call Christ this? How can we be sure it is Christ? Here’s where we want to use the context of the whole Bible to help us interpret this passage.

Let’s look to the OT, to Daniel 7:13-14:

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. ¹⁴ He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.”

Daniel prophesied of one coming on the clouds, one like a son of man, who would approach the Ancient of Days, another name for God, and he would be given authority over the whole earth,. When John wrote Revelation, he meant for the people to understand that he was referring to Daniel’s vision. We also know that in the NT, in the gospels, Jesus repeatedly takes the title “Son of Man” to describe himself. Jesus says, “I am the Son of Man.” Finally, when he predicts his return he tells them (citing the Dan 7:13 passage) that they will see the son of man coming with the clouds (Mt 24:30, 26:64; Mk 13:26, 14:62; Luke 21:27). So we see this was predicted in the OT, Jesus says it about himself, and then it was revealed to John in his vision.

I also want you to notice that it says his kingdom will not pass away and will never be destroyed. This gives us hope as we live today, even when we see the brokenness of the world, fighting, war, dirty politics, maybe the erosion of America as a “Christian” nation, Jesus has established his kingdom, we are part of it, but he is the one ultimately carrying out his purposes, so we don’t have to despair when things don’t look like what we think they should. We don’t have to get overwhelmed at all the work to be done, but to trust in God’s purposes and desires to see his kingdom fully established on earth.

We saw in the Daniel verses, the son of man approaches the Ancient of Days, who we have a description of just a few verses earlier in verse 9.

“As I looked,/ “thrones were set in place,/ and the Ancient of Days took his seat./ His clothing was as white as snow;/ the hair of his head was white like wool./ His throne was flaming with fire, /and its wheels were all ablaze.”

Notice how the description of the Ancient of Days in Daniel matches, now in Revelation, the Son of Man, the risen and glorified (his shining glory) Jesus Christ. This reference reminds us that Jesus is God in the flesh. Revelation is taking OT images about God and applying them to Jesus, saying, look: “Jesus is God.” The God of the OT is the same as the God of the NT. The story of what God has been doing throughout all history is continuing even now.

Flip back to Revelation 1, verse 17. I want you to notice that Jesus reaches out and touches John and tells him to not be afraid. Just as Jesus did for John, he does for us: wanting us to not be afraid of what we’re going to read and see in the book, but also what we might see going on in the world. His hand is a comfort and is to calm our own fears. God is not some big absent presence off in the heavens, but he has come down to live among us and be near to us. See Christ as always close to you.

After touching John, Jesus identifies himself as God, the First and the Last, just like in verse 8, the Lord God said, “I am the Alpha and the Omega” (the first and last letter of the Greek alphabet—he encompasses the start and the finish of all things). John, as the writer, and Jesus do not want us to forget that the risen Christ is God. Jesus is the Living One, he is alive now and forever. Death no longer has power over him (Rom 6:9).

The chapter concludes with the risen Christ telling John to write what he has seen, what is now, and what is to come. So, there are going to be parts of the book of Revelation that were true in John’s day, are true in our current days, and there are parts that are still to come. We’ve seen tonight Revelation 1 revealing what is currently true about Jesus Christ.

4. Application: How does this Revelation Impact the way we live?

How does this Revelation of Christ change the way we live then? I’ve talked a lot about it as we’ve gone through the lesson tonight.

1. It gives us a vision of our future hope for death.
2. It gives us a present hope in our own struggles.
3. It gives us a lens to better understand God and the world. It helps us focus and it magnifies.
4. It shapes the way we live and go about our work, and even view politics
5. It teaches us that Christ is near too.

5. Conclusion

In conclusion, seeing the risen Christ, knowing him better, helps us face our struggles, because we know that we follow a triumphant and risen Savior.

Questions for Discussion & Application…

• How has your current view of the end-times shaped the way you live? Should it?
• How can you apply this picture of Christ (the “lens”) to your current situation?

Next lesson on Revelation by Keeley