Introduction to the Revelation

February 19
First, allow me to freely admit that I do not have the education of those who have gone before me who have taken on the task of commenting on the Revelation. It is an almost entirely eschatological book, meaning it deals almost entirely with future events. I believe more of those future events have already occurred than do most expositors who attempt to comment on the Revelation. It is a historical fact the first three seals have already occurred. The fourth seal is in heaven, thus we cannot see it, therefore it may well have already occurred also. I have made it a point to avoid reading most books about the bible for the thirty-seven years I have been saved. I focus nearly all of my time on reading the bible itself. I don’t believe my understanding of the Revelation has been diminished one iota for my failure to read the comments upon it by those who have preceded me (John 16:13). It is the Holy Spirit who leads us into truth, not those Christians who have preceded us. That said, if anyone reads extensively, I’m confident he will find that everything the Holy Spirit has revealed to me about this book, He has already revealed to someone else, somewhere, at some time. I have read Hal Lindsey’s book, The Late, Great, Planet Earth; and I have read the commentary by Dwight J. Pentacost, Things to Come and a book by a post tribulation rapturist several decades ago. I read the entire Left Behind series written by Tim LaHaye and David Jensen. I have also read or listened orally to the pre-tribulation rapture arguments posed by John McArthur, Chuck Swindoll, David Jeremiah, John Hagee, and several others whose names escape me at the moment. While I have a great deal of respect and admiration for most the teaching of most of these pastor/teachers, I must declare that I am sorely disappointed at how poorly they interpret the book of the Revelation.

It’s safe to say that there have been hundreds of commentaries and bible studies written on the book of the Revelation to John the Apostle even in contemporary times. When I use the term contemporary, I refer to the past three or four decades, the time I have personally been a follower of Christ. Men like Hal Lindsey have written books like The Late, Great, Planet Earth which was an popular book in its time. Published around 1970, just two years before I got saved, it is only biased by brother Hal’s pre-tribulation mindset, which means he had to do a lot of stretching of time periods and concludes the Revelation was not written chronologically. I am sort of a post-tribulation theorist on the issue of the rapture, though not strictly speaking. I will argue in this book that the bowl judgments, the final judgments of God on planet earth consume about 45 days, occur right after the rapture of the church, and thus end the period we call the Great Tribulation. Technically, therefore, while I am a post-tribulation rapturist, the final judgments of God on planet earth do, in actuality, come after the rapture; so my understanding of the book really doesn’t fit into the pre, post, or mid-tribulation theories heretofore espoused.

If you are a new Christian, or an old Christian who has not personally read the Revelation numerous times, you will have trouble understanding any study on this book. The Revelation is written in a fashion intended by God to make it unintelligible to the casual observer. It is a book of types, metaphors, similes, and symbols like few others in our time. I believe it is purposefully clouded in symbolism, so the casual reader cannot understand it. It is a book that God intended only the generation that would see its fulfillment to understand it in its entirety (Dan. 12:4, 9, 10). Most of the symbols, types, metaphors, similes, and illusions to the antichrist have had countless partial fulfillments countless times in the past. John makes this clear with statements like, “For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist.” (II John 1:7). The antichrist is a person; but the spirit of the anti-Christ has been with us since the resurrection and is stronger today than at any other time in history. Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, and the long line of popes, all manifested the spirit of the anti-Christ. These have all been men who wanted to establish a world wide kingdom with themselves as the head of it. The anti-Christ is every spirit that refuses to acknowledge Jesus as coming in the flesh and, of course, all that is meant by that coming. That said, it is clear that the Antichrist, the one indwelt by the devil himself, will appear in the final seven years of history as we know it, and make his final attempt to thwart the eternal plan of God in the final 3 ½ years of that seven year period.

As already indicated, I have made it a point to study God’s word without reading too many extra-biblical books by brothers I really do respect as conservative, knowledgeable expositors of scripture. My reason is that I simply want to hear God’s voice speaking to me as I read. While I know He has spoken to great multitudes before me, I can’t know what He has said to them until I know what He has said to me. This is the reason I have made it a point to prayerfully read His book from cover to cover many times each year. My theology is almost entirely based on what God has shown me from His word as I have read it countless times in the past thirty-five years. I have had just enough exposure to outside sources (books and lectures of brothers in Christ), to be confident my exegesis of scripture is sound.

I make absolutely no claim of exclusivity. I don’t believe there is any person on the planet nor has there ever been who alone knows what God’s word means. If God has not revealed to anyone else what He has revealed to me, I immediately suspect that I do not yet understand fully what He means. That said, I must say I believe even as I am writing that this commentary has some insights I have not yet heard anyone else proclaim. I have attempted to make that point clear where such teaching exists. After thirty seven years of studying God’s word, He continues to grant me new insights each day into its meaning. Please pay close attention to the grammatical structure of all I have written. I have attempted to be faithful to observe appropriate literary English protocol in every jot and tittle.

The following is an example of the kind of irresponsible preaching I have encountered regarding the Revelation. Riding home from a symposium on the United States Constitution one day, I heard a radio pastor limping through an almost comical exposition of the eschatological events. He made some rather amateurish errors in both the dissemination of information and in dealing with objections posed by listeners who ask why we should bother studying the Revelation if we’re going to be raptured before the tribulation begins. This pastor’s first error was the way he dealt with that question. The question, all by itself, is the strongest argument for the post-tribulation view of the rapture I know. It is a most obvious question, and one to which I have never heard a pre-tribulation rapture theorist provide an adequate answer. This radio broadcaster did exactly what every pre-tribulation theorists has done that I have ever heard deal with that issue. He stated that while he understood how difficult it is to accept that apparent problem, we should still study the Revelation because it’s part of God’s word, so we must try to understand it.

I fear it’s far too easy today to teach things not supported in scripture because far too many churched people spend so little time in the scriptures themselves searching them to see if what their pastors are saying is true. I find it hard to believe that so few believers today spend enough time studying eschatology to understand this book of the Revelation. It’s disconcerting to me that mainstream Christianity has swallowed the pre-tribulation theory hook, line, and sinker. It, like the theory of evolution, is filled with false assumptions, blatant contradictions, countless unanswered questions, and literally dozens of scripture verses about the end times that are ignored entirely.

It is perfectly logical to conclude if we are going to be gone during the tribulation, there is no reason to study the book of Revelation. Its threefold purpose as detailed in Chapter 1:3, to bless the one who reads, hears, and heeds the words written in it, is wasted on anyone who isn’t going to be here to experience the devastation that is described in it. The truth is, when those events described in the book come upon the earth, God’s people will endure them because they will know He described them in detail hundreds of years before they came to pass, thus proving He is in complete control of them. The thought that this book will suddenly begin making sense to people who aren’t saved when the tribulation begins without God’s prophets, evangelists, preachers, and pastor/teachers around to explain it is absolutely preposterous.

I often wonder how my pre-tribulation brethren who are preaching this theory are going to deal with the immense problem they have created when they discover the tribulation has started and they and the multitudes they have been teaching the pre-tribulation rapture theory are still here. Of course, if they are right (the odds of which are zero and none), my point will be moot. If they are wrong, it seems rather obvious to me, they will have created one of the most astounding crises with which the church has ever had to deal. Try to imagine, if you will, the great multitudes who did not bother to learn what God has in store for us during the tribulation because they believed they were going to be gone. Try to imagine what will happen when the number of people who believed these men of God all of a sudden come to realize that, on this incredibly crucial issue, they were wrong. Try to imagine the chaos that could erupt in conservative churches all over this planet. Just try to imagine the number of church goers today who would then join the world church referred to in the Revelation as Babylon the great, the mother of harlots. At least that might explain why there will actually be true believers who have joined themselves unwittingly to this false world church. These are true believers who will be temporarily overwhelmed upon discovering their conservative pastors in whom they had placed so much confidence, were wrong. Their response will be to seek understanding from those leaders of the false church who will appear at this time to have a better grasp on end time prophecy than their conservative pre-tribulation counterparts.

The second thing this radio pastor said had to do with his misunderstanding that all nation of the United Nations have an equal vote in U.N. resolutions. He made the absurd claim that the U.N. was unequally represented because all nations who are members of it—even the tiny ones who have only recently joined—have an equal vote in its resolutions. That is simply untrue. Five nations of the original United Nations have absolute veto power over all U.N. resolutions. Russia, the United States, China, France, and Great Britain must all agree to any U.N. resolution or it is immediately rejected. All anyone has to do is Google the U.N. to acquire this information. Clearly, all nations to the U.N. do not have an equal say in the passing of its resolutions. If that were true, there would be no reason whatsoever for nations like the United States to be a member. To this pastor I heard on the radio (I did not ever hear his name), I would say, “Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we shall incur a stricter judgment.” (James 3:1) To claim to be a teacher of the word and to make such incredibly inept error in one’s teaching is, to say the least, unfortunate. I fear this brother will have much for which to give account when he stands in the presence of our Lord.