Other things. Last week, somehow I did not get everything technologically worked out, so we have no tape of last week's session. I don't know about you. The laws of physics just don't always work for me. I don't understand why, but that just means that I've been asked to review quickly what we went over last week. Some of you probably weren't here last week, so that won't be too difficult for you. Those of you who were here last week, I just asked for your patients that you would act interested and laugh at all my jokes. I know that's calling upon you to do a lot this early in the morning, but let's make a beginning. I think I will start by reading chapter 1, verses 17 and 18, and then we'll pray. This is after John has seen the risen Christ who has appeared to him on the island of Patmos, verse 17, when I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand upon me saying, fear not, I am the first and the last and the living one. I died and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and hate ease. Let's pray. Our Lord Jesus Christ, we praise you with all our hearts this morning bet. You are the first and last, the living one who died and who lives again, and that the keys of death and hate ease are in your hands. Lord minister, we pray your comfort to us as you did to John on that day telling him, fear not, we come to you with many trials and burdens, but these are all trials and burdens that we know you are aware of and have come from your fatherly hand. We pray that you would be with us to minister to us this morning. Grant us understanding of this marvelous book. Please forgive our sins as we come before you in Christ's name. Amen. Does everybody have a copy of the handout from last week? I will just or can, can I ask you to pass these out to those who don't have them? We will try to keep, I will try to keep a supply of those available in case you, well in case we get some new comers in case you have lost yours. We will probably refer to that from time to time and as time goes on hopefully I will add to that. Just by way of review from last week, we try to introduce revelation. Well I try to introduce revelation with a rhetorical question. Should we not simply call a moratorium on the teaching of revelation? Because let's face it throughout Christian history, revelation has been misinterpreted by well intentioned Christians. It has been abused by crack pots and revolutionaries. Even today it is the source of never ending struggle and disagreement and bitterness between Christians, between evangelical believers. And throwing into that mix there have been instances in Christian history where wise and prudent and good exegies have more or less declined to give an interpretation of revelation, saying that they didn't understand it. So I posed that rhetorical question which of course was answered very quickly in my face by you all that we cannot avoid looking at revelation can we. As part of scripture it is indeed as Paul says profitable for us. And as we observed as well, John in Revelation actually pronounces a blessing on those who read and hear and keep the words of this prophecy and keep the words of this prophecy. That's in 1-3 also in 22-7 I think a blessing pronounced upon this book and those who read it and take it seriously. So not only is that a silence not allowed to us, we would be missing great blessing if we were to do that. And somebody I didn't say last week, I think that maybe those of us in the reform tradition and not really you, it's more people like me who have teaching positions. I think we've been a little bit negligent in our responsibility in teaching on revelation. I think the reasons are, some of the just outlined, that it's been so hard because there have been so many bitter disagreements about the book. We don't want to get into a fight, it's a difficult subject and many of us have somewhat refrained from it. I think that we should feel called upon to teach about this book, to think about this book, to promote people reading this book. Well, that was about it for the initial introduction. What I wanted to do is go through some of the first verses of Revelation and do the rest of our introductory things from Exodus. That is, you know, there's still a lot to say about the structure of the book and the approaches to the book. How do you approach this book? But I wanted to do that as we encounter the text itself. We read then just the first verse. I think we read the first three verses and talked about apocalyptic and the theme and the purpose of the book. Could I have a volunteer to read verses one through three? Have chapter one? Larry, okay. Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place, committed known by sending his name to a servant John. Everything he saw, that is the Word of God and testimony of Jesus Christ. What is the one who reads the words of this prophecy and bluster those who hear it and take so far what is written in it because the time is near. Thank you. Okay. We pointed out last week we have really a kind of a chain in the first verse or so. A chain, this book is often called, of course, the revelation of John. We pointed out really it is not the revelation of John but the revelation of Jesus, exactly. The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him so we could draw a chain here. God gave to Jesus to give to his servants. But there are a couple of other links in that chain, aren't there? And he made it known by sending his angel to his servant John. And that is how it has come to us, his servants. So there is an interesting chain from God to Jesus to the angel to John and the servants. We are going to see a little bit more clearly how this works out with Jesus to John and the angel to John as we go through. But just at this point that is kind of an interesting thing to notice. The word revelation, we pointed out word revelation to reveal. There is a lot of ink that has been spilled on the question of apocalyptic. Apocalyptic is just a revelation in Greek coming from the Greek instead of Latin. Revelation is often linked to a genre of literature from the ancient world called apocalyptic literature. We looked a little bit at some of the qualities of that literature and asked how far to what extent does John fit into that genre, if you could call it a genre. And though we didn't go into it too much detail and we could later if we wanted to, one important thing is that John's revelation does not fit in this genre in one large respect. Can we remember what that was? It is not anonymous or pseudonymous, false name. Most of these almost all the other apocalypses from the ancient world were written under false name, usually an Old Testament worthy like Enoch or Abraham or Isaiah. John however uses his own name, he does not write under a pseudonym. And that says some important things about the prophecy. It means it's not a fake prophecy like most of these were that is the common practice would be to put your words in the word word in the mouth of let's say of Isaiah to make it look like things that are happening in your day were predicted long ago. That's not what's happening with John. He's writing his own name and so he's not doing that kind of thing. This is I think we have to hold a real, a true revelation, a true prophecy. It's not something that John made up. Yes, there are literary qualities to the book. John is an author. He writes it in his own name, but he's writing about visions that he received. From God. Any questions about that by the way? Andy? They do. Apocrypha. And he says apocrypha and apocalyps sound a lot alike. What are the differences of similarities? Well apocrypha means something that is hidden and apocalyps really means something that is revealed. Even though they sound a lot alike. Apocrypha usually refers to books that were written most of them before the New Testament, between the old and the New Testament, that the church has always had a kind of undefined relationship to works that were seen as good for reading but not scripture. There's a controversy between Protestants and Roman Catholics on that. Roman Catholics consider the apocrypha to be part of scripture and Protestants never have. So that's what apocrypha is briefly in apocalyps is more of a kind of literature that could pertain to certainly revelation, the book of Daniel. And maybe other parts of other books that are like a revelation, a direct revelation from God or from an angel. Does that make sense? Okay. And we also said something about the theme and the purpose of revelation. Revelation is not probably an easy book to get a handle on. How do we approach it in terms of its theme and purpose? Is it about, is it mainly about the end of the world? Is it as some would say about the destruction of Jerusalem in 8070? I suggest that I hold that the main theme of revelation, main theme of revelation, if you could boil it down, could be expressed in the words Christ rules. Jesus Christ is sitting on the throne of his father in heaven. And from that throne, he rules over all things for his church. That sounds simple, but I think that if we keep that in mind with the book of Revelation, it will prevent us from getting lost in all the details. Christ rules. I do want to mention a couple of things that I went over last week, because I don't know. I think they're so good. And that is a couple of quotations from the second century. We mentioned the martyrdom of Paulic Carp. Paulic Carp was an early Christian bishop in the second century. And he was martyred for his faith in Christ. And at the account of that martyred, the author says at the end, he just simply is giving a time reference when this happened and he says, you know, this happened. And he was arrested by a carad when Philip of Tralis was high priest, and St. Chaudratis was the pro-concil. And here you just expect him to mention the reigning emperor at the time. And he says, but Jesus Christ was reigning forever to whom be glory, honor, majesty, and eternal throne from generation to generation. Amen. And that I think really captures it. This is the kind of person who understands the gist of Revelation. That even in these dark hours of persecution and even martyrdom, when it looks to all the world like Christians are losing, nothing could be further from the truth according to the book of Revelation. Revelation teaches us that. And what a perspective it gives us. What a perspective it gives us on the world and our place in the world. That just when the world thinks we're losing because we're maybe getting a mode down in persecution, we're winning. One of the theme verses I'd say for the book of Revelation is found in chapter 12, verse 11. And they overcame him, talking about the beast, the dragon, in fact. How did they overcome him? Anybody? By the blood of the lamb. Amen. By the blood of the lamb and by the word of their testimony because they love not their lives even unto death. What a paradox at what an important paradox. They sums up the paradox of the book. They overcame him. They are conquerors. They won. They won. But how do they win? First of all, the blood of the lamb. But also by the word of their own testimony because they love not their lives even unto death. They were willing to go to death because they were followers of the lamb.
As another second century motorologist put it, talking about the experience of the church. This is a church in France that was being persecuted. He said, Satan's aim was to ring some blasphemy out of us. And how often do we think of our lives that way? Do you think of your life as Satan is attempting? He's not merely attempting to mess you up but by messing you up to get you to blaspheme Christ. And so Revelation does offer this crucial dimension for Christians in the way we look at the world. It's missed by all those who are not followers of the lamb. That's a paradox in itself, isn't it? The Lamb of God, the slain lamb, whom we'll encounter in chapter 4, the slain lamb, who is ruler over all things. Revelation therefore is about the triumph, the triumph of Jesus Christ and his ongoing rule, his ultimate triumph at the end of history. But it even goes beyond that it's our triumph and it is Christ reclaiming of the world that departed from him through sin. Because if you think about the images in Revelation, they don't simply concern what's happening right now or what's happening in the future. They go back all the way to the beginning. We encounter in the book of Revelation a woman who is with child and this child will rule the nations with a rod of iron. This is in chapter 12. What does that remind you of? Well, go all the way back to the garden. We encounter a woman who is with child, we encounter a dragon, a serpent, an ancient serpent. These are themes that go all the way back to Genesis. So in a real way, Genesis and Revelation are not only literally but fittingly, literally the book ends of Scripture. Revelation is not just about the future, it's about the past and it's very much about our present. Alright, that pretty much sums up and maybe gives a little bit more than what we did last week. But let's go on to the rest of chapter 1, verse 1. To this phrase, what must soon take place? Maybe your translation say something a little bit different, what must happen quickly or something like that? This is in a sense the content of Revelation. In one sense it's what must soon take place. This is what was revealed to John. This gets us into questions, not only what Revelation is about but how should we approach Revelation? How should we approach Revelation? And my apologies, but here's where we have to deal with a few labels, if you will. Labels such as our very conveniently outlined on your glossary, that was handed out. If you want to skip to, well it's the bottom of the, I guess it would be the third page, approaches to Revelation. The first one being futurism, futurism, futurism as an approach. There have been throughout history so four major approaches to interpreting Revelation. And that's not too much. That's not more than we can handle. We can do four, maybe five. The first one being called futurism. This is associated mostly with pre-millennialism. We're stumbling again. More theological terms, pre-millennialism. I think I'm going to save the full discussion of what the millennial approaches are to later. But for right now, please have a show of hands. How many consider yourself pre-millennialists here? Oh, we have a small minority but a faithful remnant of pre-millennialists. That took some courage really in a group like this. I want to commend you three. I won't mention your name, Bob, but for those listening by tape. Kind of. His hand folks was only up a little bit. Pre-millennialism, okay, you can read about that in your glossary. And we'll talk about a lot later. How many would consider yourself to be a post-millennialist? Oh, my. Oh, this is going to be easy. How many are millennials? Okay, quite a few. And how many haven't the foggiest notion I'm talking about? Okay, that's great. And there's no shame in this. Haven't made a determination. You're prudently looking at all views right now. A smart shopper, comparison shops. Okay, that's good. That's good. That kind of helps me to know where my easy targets are. What sort of straw man I can build? Okay. The future is a macro-futurism associated mostly with pre-millennialism. Futurism as an approach would say that after the first few chapters of Revelation, really the bulk of the book is concerned with the very end of history, very end like even the last seven years of tribulation. Many of you are aware of this kind of language. You hear it on the radio. You see it on TV. You read it in books. The seven-year tribulation period at the end of history. That's mostly what Revelation is all about. So you get to the last two chapters. Okay, that's futurism. So you see why it's called futurism? Most of the book is concerned with a distant future or for us maybe who knows a very near future, but it's the very end of history. It's very long in the future from John's standpoint. Okay, questions about that. The next approach has been called historicist historicism and this depicts or this views the events depicted in Revelation as occurring throughout history so that you could really look at Christian history and sort of mark time with Revelation and see okay, this happened in the third century, this happened in the sixth century, this happened in the eleventh century and this brings us to where we are today. Now that might not sound as familiar to you as an approach because well almost nobody holds to that today, at least not in any kind of strict way. It's very interesting though, if you were to go back to the sixteenth century and even the seventeenth century, you'd find most of the Protestant reformers taking basically a historicist approach. That was the view that was popular around that time, both in Roman Catholic and Protestant circles, and in this approach, the Antichrist, the beast from the sea, is always, you guessed it, the Pope or the papacy. Okay, and that tradition of the Pope as the Antichrist maybe outlives this particular approach to Revelation, historicism. Okay, any question? In fact, if you go back to the original Geneva Bible and the notes from the Geneva Bible, you will see the author, the notes, who was Francisco, genius taking a historicist approach. We can talk about that later if you want. Okay, preterism, preterism. Now I know some of you here are at least attracted to the approach of preterism. I'm not going to ask for hands yet. Only when we're going to zero in on a preterism, preterism is the approach. Now, first of all, what does preterism mean? What does preterism mean? What does past, right? Like the past preterist in grammar, preterism means past, so this views most, if not all, of the events depicted in Revelation as already past, from our standpoint. There may have been future from John's standpoint, but their past from our standpoint. That is they happen basically in the first century. Some preterists would extend that away, but what's the focus? The focus for the preterist view is the war and the destruction of Jerusalem in the middle and late 60s of the first century. Jerusalem was destroyed in what year? 70, yeah, 80, 70. And so they would view most of Revelation as speaking about that conflict and the destruction of Jerusalem, which was a cataclysmic event, a very important event in terms of the New Testament and history of the Church history of Revelation. There are a couple of types of preterism. I would point out at this at this juncture, something I've called orthodox preterism because I said orthodox because this followers of this approach would not of course deny any of the cardinal points of Christian doctrine, the second coming of Christ, a resurrection and a last judgment. But there are preterists who say that even those events as predicted in Revelation have come to pass already. Strangers that may sound, there are many people out there, seriously promulgating this view, saying that Jesus already has returned, He returned in 80, 70. And the temple was destroyed, I had to do with the last judgment and we are now in the New Heavens and New Earth. Yes, talk? Well, yeah, that's right. The suggestion box is in the back of the room for improving the New Heavens and the Earth. But again, we'll talk about this probably as we go on. You should probably know at this point that I'm not a preterist, but someone that we all know in respect, not Frank James, unless he's changed on me. But RC, RC's role in his latest book has come out adopting the preterist approach, the orthodox preterist approach, not the other one. So this makes life interesting, people we know and love, disagree, so there you have it. Well, as I said, we'll talk about this more exegetically as we come to passages that may have to do with this topic. But as you probably already have figured out, if revelation is about what happens in 80, 70, it had to have been written before that. So that commits you, that commits you to an early date for revelation, early meaning in the 60s of the first century, probably 65, 678, something like that. Whereas the more common view is that revelation was written in the mid 90s, mid 90s of the first century. Both views can hold and usually do hold that it was written by John the Apostle. But there's a difference in the dating on that. Another approach called idealism, views revelation as having to do with ideas or principles, theological truths that are always applicable, and does not really seek to interpret the symbols in any kind of literal way or apply it to any given point in history. It would still be compatible with the hope of a future literal return of Christ, however. Sometimes, I mean, idealists have been, well, I mean, if you took this principle to an extreme, you could just about allegorize anything out of existence. But it doesn't have to be taken to that sort of extreme. Dr. Kistemacher at RTS would identify himself, basically, with this approach, idealist approach. And then I want to mention one other principle that I think is important, and that is recapitulation. This is not quite an approach as the others are approaches, but I think it's a very important principle. Obviously, I hold that it's valid. It means that revelation often speaks of events, well, it often speaks of the same event in different parts of the book, which means that it can't be strictly sequential. You see the difference in approach. Particularly, the futurist approach would say things in chapter 6 happen earlier in history than things in chapter 17. Linear progression, sequential progression in the last part of history as we go through the book. Recapitulation says, no, wait a minute. We seem to have a description of the last judgment, the return of Christ in chapter 6 already. We seem to have another one in chapter 11. We seem to have another one in chapter 15 and so on. So revelation comes back around. It recapitulates. It comes back around and talks about the same thing from a different angle, a different vantage point. You see what potentially, what difference that could make in the book. You could have something that's spoken of in chapter 7 that really takes place after something mentioned in chapter 18 or chapter 19 or whatever. Does that make sense as a view? I know this won't really sink in until we actually flesh it out, but I think it's helpful to get some kind of head start. Robert. Is that really only a problem that we assume that the author and headlier view of history in the sense that the other things could happen again and vice over and so on and so more sort of just more of a future for history? Well, that's an interesting question too. The whole idea of a linear or a cyclical view of history. But I don't even think we have to get into that question so much here. Really, it's not a question of a cyclical view of history, but simply on a literary level revelation talks about the last judgment once and then it comes back and talks about it again and talks about it again. Does that make sense? So it's more of a literary. It's coming to look at the same thing from several different angles. Does that make sense? So that you've got what we're really gets crucial. Okay, this is just kind of a free we throw now this morning is when we get to chapters 19 and 20. A key question is going to be do the events that are spoken over the beginning of chapter 20 follow sequentially the things spoken of at the end of chapter 19. So do you go from a sequence and this if you're a pre-millennialist, you would say, well, yes, obviously. Jesus returns at the end of chapter 19 and then we have the millennium of chapter 20. Or do you say what happens at the beginning of chapter 20 isn't necessarily later than what happens at the end of chapter 19 because of this principle of recapitulation. So John could be going back and starting over again with the beginning of Christian history. All right. Yes, Jim? In any terms of, you know, like the jar. Yeah. In terms of these approaches, I've mentioned, I think I think the approaches are not airtight. That is you can see where each one of them has something to contribute. And I think most, most people in our orbits would say something like that. In terms of the pre-post all millennial thing, I like to think anyway that all millennialism predominates in circles like ours. But there are a lot of post-millennialists in the Reform Camp. Fewer pre-millennialists. Right, thinking reform people, of course. But we're not talking about, we're talking about the whole camp. But I would have to say, I would have to say before I come to Laurie's question. The post-millennial, particularly this preterist view, this preterist approach is catching on, I say begrudgingly, is catching on in some reformed circles. So if you are not aware of it now, you probably will be at some point. I know some of you may have studied it to an extent already. Laurie.
That's a good question. Laurie's asking the millennial views are they strictly based on revelation or do they have to do with other passages of scripture? Of course, other passages of scripture too. So it is a pretty vast subject. It really is. You've got to interpret a whole host of biblical texts. And it gets into your, how do you approach? Well, what are your principles of interpretation, literal always, or not always literal, and that kind of thing? So yeah, it's more than just revelation. What would I attribute the rise of the preterist view to Frank? Be careful. I am on tape. Thanks for the reminder, Frank. People do talk about the purity of the water supply and things like that. What's the air pollution? What? Gold buoy. Okay, I'll avoid that one for right now. What do I attribute the rise in reformed circles? I think that the preterism is attractive to many in our circles for at least a couple of reasons. And this may, you could still, I think you could agree with me, even if you are a preterist, to some extent. And that is, preterism is a great antidote to pre-millennialism, dispensational pre-millennialism in particular. If you don't know what that means, just, it doesn't matter at this point. If you're wanting to counter a view that is looking at the newspaper every day and saying, oh, this is a fulfillment of Isaiah 63-1. This is a fulfillment of Ezekiel 35-9. And if you're wanting to counter a view like that, what's the easiest way to do it? Say, it's all fulfilled. It's all in the past. All happen already. I mean, I think that's an attractive aspect. That doesn't mean it's not right. But I think that's an attractive aspect of preterism for people in our camp. It's a great way to pull out the rug from under dispensationism. Wish. Nobody here holds, right? Okay. This is my wife shaking her head so I know that no one does. Yes? Difference between pre-trib and pre-mill. Yeah, there is. I don't know how much to go into that right at this point, but yeah. You sometimes hear pre-tribulation, mid-tribulation, post-tribulation. All these things. That has to do with when they think the rapture is going to be. It's a rapture pre-tribulation, mid-tribulation, post-tribulation. And most dispensationalists would be pre-tribulation. That's a big rallying point for them. The rapture occurs before the tribulation, then the great tribulation, and then Christ returns. That's more or less identified with dispensationalism, pre-tribulation rapture. There are a few exceptions, yeah. When Christ says, you know, nobody knows the time of coming again. It comes like a feast in the night and so forth. I've always taken that as an admonition to not try to figure out the time of Christ coming again. Because he says it to the people who ask him, like it's an admonition, to be trying to figure that out. And you were talking about the bedside revelation. It does seem like it would be a good idea to spend a sight trying to use it as some sort of a barometer to measure when the storm arrives. And you know, like you were saying, one of those things every day, seeing this film of this and fulfilling it with that. For the idea that we're in the last generation in Israel, and reconstructed, and all that sort of thing. Does anybody bring up that point that Christ doesn't want to see you now? Yeah, they do. They add to asking, what about when Jesus says that no one knows the day or the hour, and shouldn't this be, shouldn't this really put the breaks on all kinds of speculation as trying to set the date? And yes, that comes up. And you know what, I mean, some people respond, okay, Jesus said you don't know the day or the hour, but he didn't say anything about a month or a year. That gives us some leeway. I'm serious, you know. Waters of life. Right. So, yeah, but I think that is absolutely essential. If you look closely at the, where Jesus, the all of it discourse, where Jesus says not one stone will be left at the temple, that won't be destroyed. That whole discourse there in Matthew 24 seems like what he's really trying to do there is to keep them. He wants them to say, look, it's not yet. All these things like earthquakes and disasters here and there and famines, this means it's not here yet. All these things must happen, but the end is not yet. So, it's a very interesting, you know, you read that carefully and you really keep saying, put the breaks on your expectations at the end of the world here. But that's not a subject. Okay, it would be nice to look at the Bible now and I think we've gone through the major approaches to Revelation. And again, these will come up, I'll keep coming up and that's fine. We can talk about them at length, other times. Okay, this phrase, what must soon take place? I've used that as sort of springboard to look at the approaches to Revelation. There is one other thing I wanted to look at from that phrase and that is the structure or the outline of the book. This too is a bit controversial, not like the last ones that we talked about, but if we're asking, how do we start to get a handle on Revelation? Often, if you have a kind of an outline of what's going on, that can really help. And some of you have seen outlines or structures of Revelation in the past. Many people will outline it in a sevenfold way and try to find, because they're after all many sevens in Revelation, it would seem like that would be a legitimate approach. I think that we can be even simpler than that and look at Revelation in terms of the four major visions in Revelation, just four, not seven. So, just four major visions. That's on the first page of your handout, outline of the book of Revelation. I've had a quick glance. You can see that there's a prologue in an epilogue, beginning in the end. And in between, there are four major visions. The first starts with one nine and has the Son of Man as its object. What does John see? What he sees, Jesus. He sees the Son of Man appearing to him in glory, resurrection of glory. The second vision is of the Lamb taking his reign in heaven. This is chapter four where John sees this awesome scene of worship in heaven. The next vision, the second one is a very long one. The third one is the judgment of the harlot introduced in the 171 Babylon, the mother of harlots, and the judgment upon Babylon. The fourth one is the glory of the bride by contrast, the glory of the bride of Christ in chapters 21 and 22. Now, you can go through this on your own and looking at these elements that are identified here. I've listed ABCD and then an aftermath, which occurs in all of these, after all these visions except the last one. It's kind of like, you know, at this point, there's no aftermath period. But the first, in all of these, they seem to have some common elements. That's why I think they're identifiable as visions. The first element is that there's an introduction from the voice of, well, the first two, it's the risen Christ himself. And the second two, it's the voice of one of the angels, one of the seven angels in heaven, that introduces the vision to John and says, look, I'm going to show you something. And the second element is, John always refers to his being in the spirit, in the spirit, and that's significant. The first one, he says, I was in the spirit on the Lord's Day on the island of Patmos, and that introduces that he's, whatever that means, it means he's about to receive this vision. The second time, which is in 4, 2, the B element, and the second vision, he says he's in the spirit and he's called up to heaven. He hears a voice saying, come up, come, hither. And it's the voice of the risen Christ again. In the third vision, he mentions being carried away in the spirit, carried away in the spirit, whatever that means, to a wilderness, where he sees a woman in the wilderness. And the fourth vision, he's carried away in the spirit to a great high mountain, to a great high mountain, that's where he beholds the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven, as a bride adorned for her husband. So there are these elements in common, and there's always some indication of what he's going to see. In the first vision, the C element, write what you see in a book, and write what you see, what is, what is to take place here after. Just a very tantalizing introduction of what's going to happen. In the C element, in the second vision, I will show you what must take place after this, and the C element and third vision come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot. That's the subject of the main vision. And in the fourth one, it's come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the lamb. And then this last, this D element, a very curious one. I'm not sure I understand this completely, but in the first one, you can see, and you can understand this, when John sees the risen Jesus, what does he do? Of course, he falls down as though dead. He falls down at his feet. What would you do? I mean, it would be of the natural reaction. So that he falls down at Christ's feet and worships. In the second vision, John doesn't mention himself specifically, but he mentions the 24 elders falling down and worshiping. And at the end of the vision, he says, everyone, everyone in heaven, earth and under the earth, fell down and worshiped the lamb. And then more curiously, with these last two visions, the third and fourth, after the third one, it says John falls down to worship at the feet of the angel. Now, that sounds very weird to us. Why would that happen? And I'm not sure I understand that, but it does seem to follow this pattern. When he receives these awesome and overwhelming visions, his reaction is to fall down in the worship, even though he's told, don't worship. At this spot, in front of the angel, and that happens after the last vision as well, he falls down to worship at the feet of the angel. The reason I'm just bringing up that now is to show that there's a sort of pattern to these visions. And this, I think, can help us get a handle on revelation. You notice that each of these, except the last ones, also fall by what I've called an aftermath. An aftermath of the vision is a main vision of something, and then following from that vision, there's a whole bunch of other stuff that takes place that John sees. But in a way, it all goes back to that initial vision, that initial main vision. And we'll talk about that. We'll see that, I think, as it unfolds. So that's how I would approach the outlining of revelation. Any questions on that? Okay, you can see if that works for yourself. Do I see the man's linear? Yeah, I see recapitulation in them as well. But it's interesting, the first two, the introducing person introduces the vision as Christ himself, and the second two, it's his angel and angel. For whatever that means. That's just an interesting aspect of it. Okay, that's enough, I think, on the structure of outlining revelation. We've talked about approaches. Still in chapter 1, verse 1, oh my, we've got a long way to go. But I think there are some things that we should talk about at the outset. And another one of them is, when John says he made it known by sending his angel to a servant John, he made it known. He made it known in this translation, translates a word that can mean signify, that is show by sign, show by sign, show by sign. And I think that that is a tip off at the very beginning of the revelation, a tip off, that's going to help us interpret the symbolism. In other words, who is putting it in symbolic form? John or Jesus or the angel, the angel, right? Jesus or the angel, you could argue Jesus. But not John, why does that make a difference? When we come to like, let's say chapter 9, and we hear of a great locust plague, a great locust attack, how do we view that? He stole my thunder. Nuclear helicopters, right? Nuclear helicopters, and John describes these in a bizarre way. One of the things that's like women's hair, I mean that I suppose could be done. What do you call that thing? The rotor around with the propellers, the propellers on top. You can identify all those aspects in that sort of way and say, well look, you know John, he sees what's happening at the end of history. I mean he's never seen the nuclear helicopter. How's he going to describe it to his audience? Well it's sort of like a locust, you know, with armoured plates and with a stinger in the tail, and so that's one approach. That would be, however, that would be John putting it in symbolic form. What this seems to indicate here is, no, John sees it in symbolic form. When he sees it, it's already in symbolic form. You see what that means? The question is, what did John see? Nuclear helicopters, no matter what you think of that interpretation. Or did he see locusts? Well I would say he saw locusts, he's told the right what he sees. Now those locusts might stand for something else, they're a symbol, but he already sees them as locusts. Does that make sense? Or let's think of chapter 4, John has taken to heaven, to the very throne room of heaven. And what does he see? Among other things, he sees a lamb as though slain. Okay, we all know what that means. But what did John see? Did John see Jesus, the glorified son of man, son of God, and then describe it as a lamb? Or did he see a lamb? Well I think what this tells us is that he saw a lamb. He saw a lamb standing as though slain. Now we know what that symbol, we know that's a symbol. And we know what that symbol means. But I think this is an important thing to remember when we approach the book of Revelation, that it is a book of symbols, a book of visions. Now think of other visions in the Bible. For instance Joseph had dreams, right? Joseph dreamed of his star and the son of the moon and other stars, 11 other stars, bowing down to his star, right? So does that mean he saw his mother and father and all his brothers bowing down to him? No, what he saw was stars and the son of the moon. Right? Or when Pharaoh has the dream of the seven skinny cows eating up the seven fat cows, what did he see? Did he see seven fat years, good years, followed by seven lean years? No, he didn't see that. Otherwise he wouldn't need an interpretation. What he saw was seven skinny cows being eaten up by seven fat cows. So I think that's similar. What's John's describing is what he sees. And it's the challenge to the church to understand that, to understand what is signified by that. Fortunately, sometimes we're told explicitly what these things represent and other times we're not. But that's part of the challenge of Revelation.
That's in the RSV translation. It is he made it known. I know Todd always carries his Greek around. So it's a same on end, the word same a sign related to that.
Well, the meaning of that point as I see it, Bob, is that you often will hear of, excuse me, the kind of approach I've mentioned with the nuclear helicopters. That is, John has seen the end of history. He's brought there like a newspaper reporter and he sees it. And then he can't describe nuclear helicopters and tanks and so forth. So he puts it in an image himself rather than seeing that that's how he saw it. And then that's how we've got to figure out what that symbol means. It also could mean, I think, that not every detail of every vision has to be assigned a literal correspondence. Such as in that vision in chapter 9, the locusts are described with all these terms. They've got, you know, well, just read some of them. Crounds of gold, faces like human faces, hair like women's hair, teeth like lions teeth, they had scales like iron breast plates, noise of their wings was like a noise of me. Do you have to find, you know, for each element, you have to find some correspondence on those nuclear helicopters or, or do you say that, look, this is just part of the symbol. It's part of the building up of that image, the image of a ferocious, terrifying, overwhelming hoard of locusts. And so I think this approach that I'm suggesting allows that promotes that kind of thing. To see this as just building up of a strong image rather than saying, you know, we've got to find a correspondence for each of those details.
Well, it could be, it could be, and yeah, that's right, you know, we're a little bit laughing about the nuclear helicopters, but the point the point Andy's making is a good one. We still have to figure out what is meant by seeing a locust, and hypothetically, that could mean nuclear helicopters. I mean, it could mean other things too. But you see the difference in approach rather than saying John saw nuclear helicopters and he just described it as a locust. He sees in a vision locusts, and it may or may not mean nuclear helicopters. You know, beat this nuclear helicopters interpretation with a stick, but okay, we are getting to the end of our session right now. And I'm going to say we're done with chapter one, verse one. For next week, we will try to finish chapter one, and hopefully even make a beginning into chapter two. I'd like to get into the letters to the churches. So pay attention next week to the, the salutations. See if you find, let's say, the three persons of the Trinity in the salutations in verses four through six or so. And take special note of the way that John describes his vision of Jesus, the way John describes his vision of Jesus in starting with verse nine through the end of the chapter. Okay, there are any last questions that you want to bring up. There are some really interesting things going on here, particularly seven spirits, seven spirits of God, what is that all about? And how does this work into the notion of the Trinity, the vision of Christ, a lot of interesting things going on there. That'll be important for chapters two and three. Okay, let's go. I see that hand. Okay. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we confess that you are King of all kings and Lord of all lords. We thank you for opening your word to us this morning. We pray that you would grant us understanding beyond our abilities by your Holy Spirit. Now be with us as we continue to worship you throughout the day. In Jesus name, Amen.