Revelation Chapter 1

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Chapter 1 – Introduction and Four Views

So why write a new Bible Study on John’s Revelation? There are so many good and not so good resources out there. In fact in the last fifty years the market has been flooded with End of Days prophecies and interpretations. The series Left Behind has been read by millions of people and presents a fictional account using scripture as a basis for what those last days would look like. But the truth is that God wants us to know what God is up to. That is the purpose of prophecy. Jonah was sent to Nineveh to change the course of history and evidence suggests that he did just that. All of the prophets of God were given specific instructions about what to say in order to change the course of human events. Some were successful and some were not, not because God was not present and desired the people to take a certain path. Rather we know that history happened precisely because God was present and even though the people had been warned of their course of action, they followed their own will anyway. Exile and destruction follows the story of the people of God even up into our own present generations. So what does the future look like? When will these events happen? What does John’s Revelation really tell us?

The answers to those questions are complicated at best. I want to start with the four Christian views of John’s Revelation so that you might know how the text has been interpreted and will freely use some of those interpretations as we move through the text. I also think that we have to start with Daniel's two visions which I believe play into the interpretation of the final days before Christ comes again. There are four distinct views which have evolved over the course of the last two thousand years as it attempts to understand John’s Revelation. We believe that a disciple named John reveals this vision to us, though the actual identity of the prophet is never ascertained throughout history. There has been much argument that this is the work of the Apostle John but in all truth this may not be likely since he would have to be well over the age of 100 at this time in order to be the author. Also, all of John’s writings were in correct and elegant Greek and this Revelation is neither. It is believed that it is written around the time of Emperor Domitian (81-96 CE) who was one of the series of Emperors who considered themselves God and demanded people worship them as such from the people of the Empire. Revelation is part of the apocalyptic writings of the Bible and is the only text of its type in the New Testament even though there are a number of apocalyptic messages within the Gospels and the Epistles. It primarily references the Old Testament works of Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah and various Psalms.

There have been four primary views of John’s Revelation down through the ages. They are:

·       Preterists – understands that John’s Revelation has been fulfilled in the period leading up to the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD with the destruction of the Temple and events leading up to the reign of Constantine which legalized the church and removed persecution. This view believes that Christ will return after the millennium or postmillennialism. Originally formulated around the late 1600’s this thought was part of the Reformation. The belief is that the church would rise up and people would become spiritually enlightened to the point that Christ would return to an almost if not perfect world. They believed that the Gospel would prevail as the correct way to live into a perfect world. The letters of John were to existing churches of John’s day and dealt with issues related to each church in that period. The persecution and tribulation were events current to John and immediately following his prophecy.

·       Idealist (Spiritualist) – Folks who follow this view begin to appear in the fifth century with Augustine of Hippo who believed that the millennial reign of Christ is not something in the future but something happening right now. This view was and has been the dominant view of the church until the Reformation. They believed that the time of tribulation has happened and will happen again and again throughout the history of the world. The concept of a thousand years isn’t a specific period of time but representative of a large time period. They believe that John wrote in a literary pattern called, “Progressive Parallelism” meaning that the battle between good and evil is an on-going battle throughout time. Amillennialists believe that we are challenged to be a faithful church and as Christianity grows so then does the power of Satan diminish. You may see some parallel here with the Postmillennialists. Amillennialists believe that Christ will come when the power of the Kingdom is at its height and then Jesus will come in judgment.

·       Historicist – This was one of the early views of John’s writing including through the early period of the Reformation until about the 14^th century when it began to fade into obscurity. Folks who followed this thought believed the Bible to literal in its dates and times and that the events were primarily historical. Their belief is that the Anti-Christ is the Roman Catholic Church. Because of its literal interpretation of the timing of things, the fact that it had a tendency to be based on more Western events and the difficulty in attaching real time to events in the Revelation, it has fallen from following among most Theologians of modern day.

·       Futurist (Dispensationalist) – The folks who follow this view believe that the Revelation of John’s judgments happen prior to the thousand-year reign or Premillennialism. This is probably the most modern of views of John’s Revelation and in the last fifty years has been widely broadcast as the only view of the End of Days. This view is the basis for a number of writers and preachers whose names you will immediately recognize including John Nelson Darby, Charles Stanley, John Hagee, the writers of the Left Behind series, and Hal Lindsey. This view believes that John’s vision is a literal sequence of events and details of the final days before Christ comes again. All views believe that there will be a time of tribulation when the church is under tremendous persecution and that there will be a moment when the people of Christ are caught up with Him in the clouds or rapture. But Dispensationalists believe that they rapture will happen as a separate event to the second coming of Christ unlike the other views which believe it will be one event, the taking up with Christ while Christ descends for final judgment. To the Dispensationalist, there are two churches, the Jews and the Christian church and God will deal with each of them individually, the end of the age will come for the Gentile church and then it will be time for the Jewish people to come to Christ. This view believes that the tribulation, a period of seven years, will follow the rapture and then Christ returns and reigns for a thousand years. This view appears to have first appeared in the 16^th century by a Spanish Jesuit Priest and then spread widely by John Nelson Darby in 1830 when he began teaching his theory of Premillennial Rapture of the church.