With this episode of The Voice of Hope, we’re beginning a new series of study from the last book of the Bible, the Revelation of Jesus Christ. Some people are intrigued by the Book of Revelation, some are scared by it. Others, because they’re not sure what to do with it, ignore the book completely. For a Christ-follower, ignoring a portion of Scripture is not a valid option. Furthermore, it is the only book of the Bible that pronounces a specific blessing on those who read it and keep its sayings (1:3).
Before we begin to examine the text of John’s letter, I will use this episode as an introduction to our study. Let’s start with some definitions of terms. First, Revelation 1:3 says, “Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written in it; for the time is near.”
So, John, the author of the book, inspired by the Holy Spirit, tells us that his writings are words of prophecy. Prophecy has two main definitions: the inspired declaration of divine will and purpose. We might call that forthtelling or proclaiming the truth. It can also mean the prediction of future events. That is how we most commonly use the word today.
We must also remember that the “biblical prophets were able to read the signs of their times. The Prophet Amos, when he saw what was happeningin the Kingdom of Samaria in the mid-eighth century, could alreadydiscern—perceive—the distant rumble of the Assyrian army, even thoughthat army would not begin marching for another 30 years.”[1]
Another term you may encounter in discussions about future events is eschatology. Webster defines it as “a branch of theology concerned with the final events in the history of the world or of humankind.” It includes “a belief concerning death, the end of the world, or the ultimate destiny of humankind.”
After rehearsing some of Israel’s history at the beginning of the chapter, the Apostle Paul writes in First Corinthians 10:11, “Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition [instruction], upon whom the ends of the ages have come.” Notice that last phrase. Paul and the early church viewed the coming of Jesus as the beginning of the eschaton, or the culmination of human history as we know it. We sometimes refer to this period as “the church age.”
Some years ago, I was discussing prophetic Scripture with a man, and he said something like this. “As a child and a teenager, I knew very little about prophecy because it wasn’t preached or taught in our church, and we were forbidden to discuss it among ourselves.” When I asked him the reason for that prohibition, he said, “We were told it was too difficult to understand and too divisive.” I said, “Wow, roughly one-fourth of the Bible is prophecy, and you were forbidden to teach or discuss it? That’s unbelievable!”
Surely, genuine Believers should be able to discuss Scripture without rancor and bitterness. Everyone who reads and studies prophetic Scriptures must admit there are many things in them that we don’t fully understand. My experience has been that when people become loud and attack the character of others, regardless of the subject, it is often because their arguments lack strength. We must hold our understanding and convictions with humility.
In the New Testament, the word for revelation is apokalupsis. From this, we get our English word, apocalypse. This may surprise you, but contrary to the understanding of many people today, the apocalypse has nothing to do with ominous disasters or catastrophes of any kind. It has no connotations of doom or of the end of the world as we know it. It simply means “to reveal or unveil something that was hidden.”
We often don’t acknowledge it, but John’s writing in the Book of Revelation is a letter. It is “addressed to real people who lived very real lives and struggled to stay faithful to Israel’s God in a dark and pagan world.”[2] This letter, of all the New Testament writings, is most explicitly eschatological or prophetic. Therefore, it shouldn’t surprise us that from a very early time it was one of the most systematically read and used books of the New Testament. Try to imagine the comfort it brought to Believers suffering for their faith when they realized that, in the end, they would triumph over their enemies and enter the glorious kingdom of Christ!
If you have listened to any of my teaching, you know I emphasize context and how the original readers of Scripture would have understood it. I approach the text of Revelation no differently than I do John’s gospel or epistles. The primary meaning of the Revelation is what John intended it to mean, which in turn must also have been something his readers understood it to mean. We must discover what Revelation meant to John’s readers if we hope to comprehend its meaning today.
However, since I believe in progressive revelation, certain aspects of the letter help us better understand specific prophetic Scriptures, given that nearly 2,000 years have elapsed since John received these visions. This also applies to the books of Ezekiel, Daniel, and other prophetic Scriptures. Furthermore, people who eventually live through these events will have a better understanding of them than we do.
Whether you realize it or not, you have an underlying framework by which you interpret and understand the Bible. We call it a hermeneutic. It simply means the method or principle you use in interpreting the Scripture. Some possible methods of interpretation include literal, allegorical, symbolic, and even mythical, as well as combinations of these.
“Dispensationalism and Covenant Theology are two theological systems that govern how we interpret the overall storyline of Scripture. Each system seeks to describe how God’s redemptive purposes unfold throughout history. These are “whole-Bible theologies,” ways of understanding God’s redemptive purposes throughout Scripture.
If you have seriously studied the Bible, you belong somewhere in one of these camps, whether you realize it or not. If you believe that some of God’s promises to Israel in the Old Testament await fulfillment in a future millennium, you are generally aligned with dispensationalism. If instead you believe that all of God’s promises to Israel are fulfilled in the church, you are somewhere within covenantalism.”[3]
These theological frameworks can be summarized as follows: “the two primary distinctions of dispensationalism are (1) passage priority in hermeneutics and (2) a distinction between Israel and the church. Covenantalism mirrors these, holding (1) New Testament priority in hermeneutics and (2) Israel, with all its promises, is fulfilled in the church.”[4] Keep in mind, these are broad definitions with many variations within each of them. (credit to Julian)
At this point, I will briefly introduce some of the views of eschatology within Christianity, as these impact one’s understanding of the Book of Revelation and other prophetic texts. However, you should be aware that within each of these views, there are various understandings and applications. So, my definitions will be broad.
First is Preterism. It has two main divisions. Full Preterism teaches that all prophecies, including the Second Coming of Christ, the resurrection, and the final judgment, have been fulfilled in the past, specifically around the 1st Century AD. This view is held by a tiny minority and is considered heretical by most Christians.
Second is partial Preterism. It affirms the future bodily return of Christ and the resurrection, but teaches that most other prophecies, especially those concerning Jerusalem, were fulfilled in 70 AD. This view is held by the Churches of Christ as a denomination, as well as by some Reformed and Presbyterian churches. The late R.C. Sproul espoused a partial form of Preterism. Christian Reconstructionism sometimes influences this idea, which posits that the Old Testament law should serve as a guide for civil society. Reconstructionists teach that Christ will return to set up His kingdom on earth when enough people have been converted to Christianity.
Next, we have millennialism, a reference to the 1,000-year reign of Christ as described in Revelation 20:1-10. The major views are as follows: premillennial, amillennial, and postmillennial. I will explain them briefly.
The premillennial view of prophecy has two major divisions. Historical premillennialism teaches that the Church is the fulfillment of Israel and that the resurrection and Second Coming of Christ occur immediately preceding the Millennium. Historical premillennialism interprets Scripture as mostly grammatical–historical.
Dispensational premillennialism teaches that Israel and the Church are separate entities with unique redemptive plans, and the Rapture of the Church (1 Thessalonians 4:17) happens before the 7-year tribulation. Dispensational premillennials also believe that Christ will reign on earth (literally) from Jerusalem after the tribulation. Their method of interpreting Scripture is the most literal. For this reason, it is the hermeneutic I use in studying and expounding the Scriptures, whether they’re prophetic or not.
Amillennialism teaches that we are currently in the millennium, but not a literal 1,000-year reign of Christ. Revelation 20 clearly states that Satan will be bound for the duration of 1,000 years. In their interpretation, he must be bound now. However, that is not my experience!
They also believe that the Church is the eschatological fulfilment of Israel. In their view, the Rapture takes place just before the judgment of the nations. The method they use to interpret the Scriptures is allegorical and non-literal. This leads to subjectivity in deciding what is literal and what is figurative in the entire scope of Scripture.
Finally, postmillennialism teaches that the millennium is an era, not a literal 1,000-year period. Like others, post-millennials believe that the Church is the fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel. They do believe in a literal reign of Christ, after the Church “Christianizes” the world. In other words, Christian Reconstructionism. This, they have in common with the Partial Preterists. They interpret Scripture from a covenant-historical perspective.
Apart from dispensational premillennialism, all the others teach that the Church is the fulfillment of God’s promises to Israel. How this can be reconciled with the prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel, as well as Paul’s lengthy discussion of the subject in Romans 9, 10, and 11, is beyond me. It appears that Emperor Constantine and the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD played a significant role in these conclusions.
Another thing to keep in mind when studying Revelation is that it doesn’t always progress in a neat, linear fashion. Being a thoroughly Jewish book, it doesn’t promote the individuality, abstract values, and linear reasoning of us Westerners who are primarily influenced by Greek philosophy. Jewish thought is more practical, cyclical, and community-focused. You will see this Jewishness unfold as we progress through the Book of Revelation. Specific themes are repeated and expanded as you work through the book.
Furthermore, apocalyptic literature, as a genre, makes generous use of creatures, images, and symbols to communicate its message. Comparing Revelation with other non-canonical apocalyptic literature of the time shows many similarities. While the Early Church Fathers did not consider most of those other writings to be divinely inspired, that doesn’t make them worthless. However, they must be used with caution.
Some argue that the scenes in the Book of Revelation should not be taken literally. But picture language, with its symbols, images, and figures, is capable of conveying literal truth and describing literal events. It’s just another way of communicating reality. Revelation uses picture language to emphasize historical fact rather than to deny or diminish it.
Revelation 1:1 says that God “signified” (KJV) the book to John. The word translated “signify” (NIV, “made it known”) suggests that God communicated the book to John through signs or symbols. According to G.K. Beale, the background of this term is Daniel 2, where God “signifies” to the king through his dream what will occur in the latter days by showing him a pictorial revelation (Daniel 2:45). The pictures Daniel used represented concrete facts related to Nebuchadnezzar’s future. For most of the Bible, the general rule is to interpret literally except where the context clearly calls for a symbolic reading.
In his preface to the revised commentary, “A Revelation of Jesus Christ,” authored initially by Dr. J. B. Smith, the late Dr. J. Otis Yoder wrote, “the central premise of this commentary is ‘When the literal sense makes sense, seek no other sense. Any other sense is usually nonsense.’” I don’t think that quote was initially attributed to Dr. Smith, but he makes a valid point. (Incidentally, the revision of Dr. Smith’s commentary on Revelation was the last significant contribution of Dr. Yoder to the contemporary church, made just before a stroke ended his public ministry in March 2000. Copies of that commentary are available from our offices.)
However, having said that, we readily acknowledge that not everything John saw can be taken literally. For example, he describes a woman sitting on seven hills in Revelation 17:9. Either that is one enormous woman, or those are some tiny hills. While we acknowledge this is not a literal woman, it doesn’t deny the truth of Scripture. Rome was a city built on seven hills, and John’s readers were familiar with that word picture.
Another important aspect of correctly interpreting and understanding the Book of Revelation is its connection to the Old Testament. John’s letter is filled with echoes and allusions to the Old Testament. In fact, nearly 70% of the verses in Revelation contain Old Testament references! That’s more than any other New Testament book by far. Many of those references come from the books of Psalms, Isaiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, and more. As I teach this series, I will highlight many of these references.
Conservative scholar John Walvoord wrote, “Among the great prophetic books of Scripture, none provides a more comprehensive and chronological prophetic view of the broad movement of history than the book of Daniel. Of the three prophetic programs revealed in Scripture, outlining the course of the nations, Israel, and the church, Daniel alone reveals the details of God’s plan for both the nations and Israel.
Although other prophets like Jeremiah had much to say to the nations and Israel, Daniel brings together and interrelates these great themes of prophecy as no other portion of Scripture does. For this reason, the book of Daniel is essential to the structure of prophecy and is the key to the entire Old Testament prophetic revelation. A study of this book is, therefore, not only important from the standpoint of determining the revelation of one of the great books of the Old Testament but is an indispensable preliminary investigation to any complete eschatological system.” End quote.
I hope that these introductory ideas have been helpful, and I invite you to join me for this exciting study from the Book of Revelation.
[1] St. James Daily Devotional Guide, p. 30
[2] Lizorkin-Eyzenberg, Eli, and Shir, Pinchas, Hebrew Insights from Revelation, pp. 27-28
[3] Stoltzfus, Julian, “My Concerns with Covenantal Theology,” Sword and Trumpet, September 2025, p. 12
[4] Ibid., p. 13
