The Book of Revelation

Revelation 1:1-8 - Riley Boggs

I think that the book of Revelation is the single-most misunderstood book in all of the Bible. It is a book that most Christians just aren't sure what to do with. If you were to walk into any given church and ask the people what they think about the book of Revelation, you would likely get a lot of different answers. But the 2 that would probably be the most common would be that the book of Revelation is confusing and scary. And if you were to ask why they think this, they would likely point to passages like the one found in Revelation 9. Turn with me there for a moment and let’s read it together. Revelation 9 starting in verse 1. 

It says, “And the fifth angel blew his trumpet, and I saw a star fallen from heaven to earth, and he was given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit. 2 He opened the shaft of the bottomless pit, and from the shaft rose smoke like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke from the shaft. 3 Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth. 4 They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any green plant or any tree, but only those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. 5 They were allowed to torment them for five months, but not to kill them, and their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it stings someone. 6 And in those days people will seek death and will not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them.

7 In appearance the locusts were like horses prepared for battle: on their heads were what looked like crowns of gold; their faces were like human faces, 8 their hair like women's hair, and their teeth like lions' teeth; 9 they had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the noise of their wings was like the noise of many chariots with horses rushing into battle. 10 They have tails and stings like scorpions, and their power to hurt people for five months is in their tails. 11 They have as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit. His name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he is called Apollyon.”

I mean, that seems pretty confusing and scary, right? Well yeah, upon first reading, it might seem that way. You have people being tormented so badly that they long to die, but can’t. You have locusts with human faces and lion's teeth. Would you believe me  if I told you that book, and even this passage in particular, was never intended to confuse or scare Christians at all? I know that can seem a bit impossible, but that is because many of us have been a bit blinded by a major interpretive flaw when it comes to this book. Many Christians just aren’t sure how to properly read this book, and so they end up taking their interpretive cues from movies like “Left Behind”. They read this book as if it were a puzzle book that we are supposed to piece together so that we can know what is to come. They get their red string and they start to make all of the made up connections between the things that are happening in our world today and the things that are happening in the book of Revelation. The issue is that this book was never intended to be read in this way. And when it is read in that way, you are almost immediately setting yourself up to fail.

The book of Revelation is not a puzzle book, it is a picture book. In fact, I would argue that it is a book that is looking at the same picture from multiple different perspectives. Let me try to explain that a bit more by telling you the 4 main ways that people have approached this book throughout history. I’ll be honest about the one that I take to be true, but I will also be honest and tell you where other faithful brothers and sisters have landed as well. Each of these should show up on the screen for you. The first of the 4 is called the Preterist View. This view interprets the book of Revelation to be about things that have happened in the past. Specifically, this view interprets these events to be the 1st century events that lead to the major event in the year 70AD, the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. Now there are several issues with this view of the book. The main issue being that the majority of scholarship agrees that this book was written somewhere around 90AD. And so if this book were a prophetic book written to 1st century Christians about what would happen in 70AD, then the authorship date would have to be before 70AD, not after. The other issue is that when you read this through the book of Revelation, there seems to be references to things after the supposed fall of Jerusalem that would have no longer been referencable given the destruction itself. And then on top of all of that, an honest reading of the book within the Bible as a whole seems to pose many interpretive issues.

The second view is called the historicist view. This view is a bit more common than the last one, but I believe contains many of the same errors. The historicist view sees the book of Revelation as essentially the history of the church, from the beginning until the end. This view says that the book of Revelation is literally charting out historical events that have, are, and will take place during the entire church age. And so as time passes, so does where we are within the book itself. A historicist, if they are consistent, should be able to point you to times in history as the generally correlate with the events in Revelation. Often times when people say, “We are in the last days” and then reference events in the book of Revelation, this is the view that they are coming from, whether they realize it or not. They are identifying things within the book and things within our world today, and placing us within the historical progression of the book. 

Now I think there are several major issues with this view, but the main one is that you can make history fit whatever you want it to fit depending on where you are in the world and what is happening. In other words, this view is very subjective. The book doesn’t give specific historical details about the world we are living in now, and so it has to be imposed on the text. And so if you wanted to, you could impose historical events onto the book all the way through and sort of chart your own interpretive path. Revelation simply does not read like that, and here in a minute when we look at verses 1-8 I think that will become clear.

The last 2 views, I would argue, are the safer views. There are people who interpret this book in these 2 ways and neither one of them are crazy heretics. The third view is the futurist view. This view sees the book of Revelation as a book about events that are going to happen in the future. A futurist reads this book and reads about literal events that are going to happen in and around the 7 year tribulation, the 1,000 year reign, and so on. They would read this book and understand it to be a prophetic foretelling of what is to come. Now there are smaller views even within this view as to whether or not the church is a part of the tribulation and so on, but both would still see this book as telling of what is to come. 

Now I will be honest and say that though there are many people I respect who hold this view, I don’t think it is the right one. There are many reasons for this, but I am going to wait and tell you them until I have explained the final view, which is the one I hold to. The final view is called the idealist view. This view says that the book of Revelation is a symbolic portrayal of the time between the first and second coming of Christ. Now that’s not a chronological portrayal, but rather a series of perspectives, or portrayals, of the entire time between these 2 events. This is what I meant a minute ago when I said that this book is like looking at a picture from multiple different angles. Holding to this view, I think that this book is a symbolic picture of what life for Christians will look like from the time that Jesus ascended to heaven until the time that He returns again. It isn’t a literal telling of what will happen, but is a symbolic portrayal from multiple different angles. And from every angle, every perspective, it’s not a chronological progression, but rather the picture is just becoming a bit more clear, and ultimately more full. 

Now the reason that I hold to this view is because I think it fits best with how this book was intended to be read. The Bible is full of all kinds of literature. You have narrative, poetry, letters, and so on. And each of these kinds of writing demand a certain kind of interpretation. When you read through the Psalms and you read about the trees singing, you are supposed to read that in a certain way. You aren’t supposed to read that and think that the trees have actual mouths and are singing, but rather we recognize it as a poetic way of saying that heaven and earth ought to worship the Creator God.

In the same way that is true, the kind of literature that the book of Revelation is demands a certain kind of interpretation. The book of revelation is known as "apocalyptic literature”. You can actually see that in verse 1. The word there for “revelation” is where we get the word "apocalypse". So when we read that, that is supposed to cue us in that we are to approach and interpret this book not like a letter, not like a narrative, but like apocalyptic literature. And that is really where the problem begins for most Christians who are attempting to read this book. Because Revelation is in the New Testament, there is an underlying assumption that is to be read like the majority of the New Testament. The issue is that this book is not the same kind of literature as the rest of the New Testament, but instead it is like some Old Testament books, such as Daniel. 

And the question that we should be asking is, “How is apocalyptic literature supposed to be interpreted?” Well this is how I want to spend the rest of our time together this morning. I want to give you 2  important takeaways for reading this kind of literature, then I want to show you the overall structure of the book, and then we’ll take all of that and quickly apply it to verses 1-8.

The first key takeaway for interpreting apocalyptic literature is this…

Interpret symbolically, unless forced to interpret literally

This is the primary reason that I find myself taking the idealist view. When you read apocalyptic literature, you are not supposed to assume that what you are reading is literal unless you are forced to read it as symbolism. If you do that, then you are actually reading the book in the opposite way that it is supposed to be understood. I won’t spend time showing you this now, but if you were to go to the book of Daniel and read the visions that are given, and then read the interpretations, you would see that this is the case. The visions are full of symbolism that are then meant to be interpreted as such. And as we work through this book, what you’ll see is that many of the same kinds of symbols used throughout the Old Testament are being used here. 

There are multiple uses of symbolism throughout the book of Revelation, but one of the main ones, and the one that will be the most helpful to understand now, is the use of numbers as symbols. As you read through this book, you’ll continually come into contact with numbers that are not meant to be interpreted literally, but  are intended to be intercepted symbolically. Numbers such as 3, 4, 7, 12, 1000, and many more. Let me show you what I mean by explaining how the number 7 is meant to be understood. The number 7 as a symbol is used to express completion or fullness. For our call to worship in Psalm 12 you actually saw this. Psalm 12 verse 6 says, “The words of the Lord are pure words, like silver refined in a furnace on the ground, purified seven times.” When you hear that, you aren’t supposed to think that the silver is being refined a literal 7 times, but rather it is that the words of the Lord are pure, like silver that has been refined completely. And you can trace this understanding of the number 7 all throughout Scripture, beginning with Creation where God created the world and everything in it in 6 days, and then on the 7th day He rested. Creation was complete. 7 is the number of completion.

When you are reading Apocalyptic literature, this is how you should assume numbers are being used unless you are essentially forced or told otherwise. And this is incredibly important because if you decide to take the numbers literally, or even switch between symbolism and literal for convenience, then you will find yourself struggling to make sense of what is being said. This is one of the main issues that I see in the futurist view. The futurist, I think, is not consistent in their interpretation of the numbers and it begins to make things blurry in ways that the author never intended.

Let me show you how fast this can change your interpretation of the text. Look with me at our passage in starting in verse 4. It says, “John to the seven churches that are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings of the earth.” Right here, already, we have 2 examples of the number 7. First, John mentions the seven churches that are in Asia. So, if we take the rule we just learned about numerology in Apocalyptic literature, then we should assume that this number is not literal, but symbolic. And so we would read this as if John is saying, “John to complete churches that are in Asia.” And as we work through the book, you’ll see that this is the case. John is not writing just to the seven literal churches in Asia, but is writing to the entire church.

But see many of the other views, including the futurist view, want to take this number to be literal. That is, John is writing to the literal 7 churches in Asia. But the issue is that if you do that, then immediately when you get to the reference of the 7 spirits just a few words later, you have to be consistent or admittedly break the rule of interpretation you said you were following. The proper understanding of the seven spirits is the same as the seven churches. John is speaking of the complete Spirit. What does that mean? Well this is a reference to the Holy Spirit. John is using Trinitarian language here and using the number 7 as it was intended to be used in this kind of literature. 

Let me show you one more place that this happens, just to make it a bit more clear. Flip over to Revelation 5. In verse 6 we read, “And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.” At first glance we read this and think, “Okay, the Lamb who has been slain is probably Jesus, right?” But then it says that He has seven horns and seven eyes and we start to scratch our heads. Well this is why it is so important to have the right key of interpretation. If we are reading well then we know that 7 means complete and horns are symbols of power and eyes a symbol of knowledge. And so we put it all together and we see that it is Jesus, the Lamb who was slain, who has all power and all knowledge.

This will be something we will continually be growing in our knowledge of as we work through this book, but it is very important that we go ahead and store it away before we begin, because it matters almost immediately.

The second key takeaway for interpreting apocalyptic literature I want you to know this morning is this…

It is largely from God’s perspective, not ours

We have to remember this. This book is giving us a picture of the time between Jesus’ first coming and Jesus’ second coming. But the picture is not entirely, or really at all, from our perspective. It is a spiritual perspective, namely God’s perspective. He is giving John a vision of the unseen realities that are happening during this entire time. And this again really matters for interpretation because if we think that all of these visions are realities that humans are to experience in a literal manner, then we will find ourselves missing the whole meaning behind the book. We’ll find ourselves, like I mentioned at the beginning, more afraid and fearful, than comforted and encouraged. 

An example of this can be seen in chapters 12-14. In those chapters there is this cosmic battle taking place. We all know that there is a cosmic battle taking place at this very moment in time, but we can’t really see it. Sure there are moments where it can partially be seen, but the truth is that the war that is raging on is not one of flesh and blood. Nevertheless, it is a war. Well that is what is being conveyed in those chapters. The futurist reads this and says, “This will happen in time and space in the future.” The idealist says that this is happening right now. And the difference between those 2 makes a significant difference. 

I don’t want to spend anymore time on this point, because I think it will be abundantly clear for you as we go, but I did want to get that before us.

Structure

Alright, the next thing I want you to see is the structure. Now there are plenty of disagreements as to how this book is structured. And of course the view of interpretation you take certainly affects how you see the structure. But, I am convinced, at least for the moment, that this book is a seven cycles of seven. Or using the language I used earlier, it is seven perspectives of the same picture, and each of them have to do with seven as well. You should see the structure laid out on the screen. (Borrowing a bit from Vern Poythress)

Chapters 1-3: seven churches

Chapters 4-7: seven seals

Chapters 8-11: seven trumpets

Chapters 12-14: battle against satan (seven symbolic histories)

Chapters 15-16: seven bowls

Chapters 17-19: downfall of Babylon (seven messages of judgment)

Chapters 20-22: new heaven and earth (seven last things)

I want to highly encourage each of you to spend some time between today and next Sunday reading through the book of Revelation. If you’ll take the time to do it in one sitting that would be even better. And if you do it, then you should use this structure outline as your guide, and you’ll begin to see the cycles play out. Each one has this sort of escalation about it that eventually ends in hope and joy for those in Christ, because He is King. When you don’t know this structure, you can find yourself missing this a bit. This book has this constant ebb and flow, back and forth, and it is very intentional.

My plan is to preach through this book using this outline. Each week we will look at one of the cycles from a higher perspective. It will likely take us 1-3 weeks per cycle, depending. But regardless, what I want to do is make sure that each sermon remains faithful to this overall ebb and flow. You can certainly preach slowly through this book, looking at small passages at a time. I don’t think that there is anything wrong with that at all. However, if you do that, you have to constantly ensure that everyone is seeing the larger cycle it is sitting in. So in an effort to preach the text as I believe it was intended, even when we do zoom closer in to make sense of things, I will always try to be faithful to zoom back out and allow us to see where the text is moving us overall.

So far this morning, this might have felt a bit more like a lecture than a sermon. From here on out, I promise that won’t be the case. But I do think it is necessary to spend a Sunday morning doing this so that we can be faithful to read and hear and apply God’s Word. And that is a task that takes time and effort, and relies entirely on the Spirit. That being said, I do want to spend just a short amount of time applying what we have seen in verses 1-8. I want you to see what I believe to be the main point of the whole book of Revelation spelled out right here at the beginning. It’s been a minute since I have read it, so let me read it again. Think about all the tools you’ve gained this morning and see what it is John is saying here in these verses.

Starting in verse 1, “The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, 2 who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw. 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. 4 John to the seven churches that are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, 5 and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood 6 and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. 7 Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so. Amen. 8 “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”

The main point that I think we can glean from these verses is this…

We can boldly face the tribulations of this world, because the King who saved us and loved us is coming again.

John is writing this book, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to the church who is awaiting the return of Jesus. He is writing and telling them, “I know what is coming, and it’s hardship. It’s suffering on account of the name of Christ. Things are going to be hard, really hard. You’re going to wonder if it’s worth it, if you’ll make it.” He’s saying all of these things and then he is also saying this, “Take heart, stand strong, for the one who loves you and freed you is coming soon! Not only that, but He reigns as the King of the World right now. And as He has brought you into His Spiritual kingdom now, one day that spiritual kingdom will put on it’s tangible clothes and will consummate once and for all. And on that day, those who have hated God and hated you will stand no match for Mighty King Jesus.”

John is writing to encourage you. Yes, you specifically. For those in Christ, from the first reader to the last reader, this book was literally written to them. And that’s not normally the case. The letter to the Ephesians wasn’t written to us. And so we don’t say it’s to us, but we do say it’s for us. That is, it is God’s Word and we can learn about God and what it means to love Him. But this book, this book is different. This book is written to encourage the church who is waiting, and that is us. This book was given by God to the church throughout the ages so that they may be bold in their faith and trust Christ completely. That is what is supposed to lead us to. It isn’t supposed to lead us to fear and bunker building. Each and every Sunday as we gather around this book, we ought to leave hopeful. We ought to leave feeling safe in the arms of our Lord. We ought to leave here longing evermore for the return of our King.

One of the books I have been using in preparation for preaching through this book is called, "Triumph Of The Lamb” by Dennis Johnson. It’s a wonderful book that works through the book of Revelation and has really helped me. And in the back there is an appendix chapter titled, “What should this book do to us?” I love that question, and I think the answer he gives is so good. I want to read it to you. He says, “Scripture is not a passive cadaver, waiting for curious medical students to dissect it in their quest for information. It is a living, double-edged sword that proceeds from the mouth of the triumphant Son of Man and pierces the thoughts and intents of our hearts. It is the hammer that shatters, the seed that grows, rainfall that never returns to its Giver without accomplishing the mission on which he sent it…So it is right to conclude our study by stepping back from questions of interpretive theory and cognitive content to ask how God intends the Book of Revelation to change us, its hearers.” 

He goes on to list multiple things and explains them. Here’s what he says. This book should do these things to you. “Help you see your situation in its true perspective”, “Help you see your enemies in the true colors”, “Help you see your champion in His true glory”, “Help you see yourselves in your true beauty”, “Help you endure as you suffer”, “Help you stay pure as compromise invites”, and “Help you bear witness as God waits.”

God, in an incredible act of grace and mercy, gave us His Word. Let us steward this great gift well.