An Overview of Revelations (Apr 21, 2013)

April 21, 2013

• I pray that you may come to know and understand Revelation as much as John's Gospel and Genesis. Revelation is the culmination of the entire Bible.
• Read one and a half chapters of Revelation each day for the next 2 weeks. 
• Choose a question and share what you learned today at next week's Sunday service.

1. What is another name for Revelation?        The Apocalypse

2. What is the meaning of Revelation or Apocalypse?

In the west, apocalypse conveys the meaning of catastrophe, disaster, or terrible things befalling the earth, a last judgment. In a sense, this is true; because God will destroy the power of Satan when Jesus comes again. But the word actually means "unveiling" or "uncovering." What was hidden, God will uncover, so that we can begin to see and understand what the end times will be. The last words of Revelations say, "Come, Lord Jesus" (Rev 22:20). Basically Revelation tells us that our greatest hope as Christians is that Jesus will come again very soon, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet, like a thief in the night, when you don't expect it. That's the hope of not only 1st century Christians but even Christians throughout the ages.

3. What is Revelation about?

It's about the end times, what will happen in the end or in the future.

4. How would you define "the end times"?

In Revelations, the end times are referred to as “a time, times and half a time” (Rev 12:4; Dan 7:25, 12:7), 1260 days (Rev 11:3), or 30 months or 3 1/2 years, or 1,000 years (Rev 20:2, 4, 6) or the millennium, (according to the amillenial view). When you read any of these phrases in the Bible, know that it is referring to the end times. We are living in the end times. To define it, it is "the time period between Jesus' first coming and his second coming.” Basically it refers to the entire church age, when Jesus established the church through his cross, his death and resurrection, and it will go on until Jesus comes again to rescue his church from the power of sin and Satan.

5. What kind of genre of literature is Revelations?

It is apocalyptic. Some books of the Old Testament that are apocalyptic are Ezekiel, Daniel and Zechariah.

6. What are characteristics of an apocalyptic genre?

It is full of symbolism. It doesn't tell you what it is but it gives you a symbol representing what it is. Revelations contains a lot of imagery that is symbolic and should not be translated into a literal sense since it may confuse the readers.

7. What is the best tool to use to interpret the symbols of Revelations?

The best tools to interpret symbols in apocalyptic literature are the Old Testament books. It is important to study the Old Testament as well because a lot of things in the New Testament especially the book of Revelations will cause confusion to the reader if the Old Testament is not studied carefully.

8. In Revelation, what is the importance/significance of:

• the number seven? 
• horns? 
• seven seals, seven trumpets and seven bowls?
• salvation through judgment?
• lampstands?
• bride?
• Beast (out of the sea)?
• False Prophet (or Beast out of the land)?
• Harlot, whore, prostitute?
• 666
• Lion/Lamb?
• Conquer by being killed?
• Everything is not what it seems?

Seven. It is a perfect number and refers to wholeness or completeness. In the book of Revelations, Satan has seven heads ("complete" wisdom) and ten horns (complete power) (Rev 12:3; 13:1; 17:3, 7). There are two characters of the book that have horns: Jesus and the dragon (Satan).

Jesus’ power is complete and perfect. Jesus is the horn of salvation (Lk 1:69; 2 Sam 22:3; Ps 18:2). This implies that Jesus, whose power is perfect, is the only one who can fulfill his promise to you. Money, marriage, they can’t do that; nothing else in the world can do that. God has perfect power.

Horns. Yet Satan has seven heads and ten horns. What does this mean? He seemingly has "perfect" power but it is counterfeit. What does Satan do? He leads the whole world astray (Rev 12:9). As such, his power seems complete because it can defeat, tempt, overpower, lead you to do what you don’t want to do, think what you don’t what to think, and rebel against God. But it's fake, it's counterfeit. Satan seems to have power over the world, even over churches and Christians, attacking them, tempting them, seducing them, and leading them to sin. This is evident with the five of the seven churches who are being rebuked by Jesus because they were compromising and sinning due to Satan's attacks. Yet one day, on the last day, when Jesus comes again, Satan’s power will be completely destroyed forever, and this will usher in a new earth and heaven, a New Jerusalem, which will be by the power of God.

Seven seals, seven trumpets and seven bowls. In Rev 2-3, there are seven churches, and in other parts, you will notice three sets of confusing sevens. These are the seven seals (Rev 6-8), seven trumpets (Rev 8-11), and seven bowls (Rev 16). These seals, trumpets, and bowls basically refer to what God is going to do in the last days; they refer primarily to acts of God’s judgment against the ungodly, to those who persecuted the church, and rebel against God, while protecting the people of God. Each of the sevens have an increasing intensity in their acts. The seven seals affect 1/4 of the earth, the trumpets affect 1/3 of the earth, and the final seven bowls entail that judgment is complete; that it is the end of the age when Jesus comes again to make all things wrong, right. Only those who are truly protected from the deceptions of Satan will enter the new heaven and earth.

It is important to know that these three sevens do not occur sequentially but they occur concurrently/simultaneously. A scholar interpreted these as seeing different aspects and angles of God’s acts, similar to when you watch a sporting event, like basketball or baseball. They have different camera angles that give different views but it is of the same game. In Revelations, the seals, trumpets and bowls represent different aspects/angles/emphasis of the same event that will happen throughout the last days.

In Rev 5:12, notice that the Lamb received seven qualities/attributes in worship: power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise. Another "seven" is in Rev 6:15 where it mentions seven groups of people. This means that the judgment of God will affect everybody, nobody can escape from it. When He comes again, every human being who ever lived will stand before the judgment seat of Christ and receive God's judgment according to how he lived. This is quite a hard pill to swallow, and strikes fear to the hearts of men, but remember that His love and mercy is always perfect. This is the gospel.

God's salvation is always through His judgment. What we deserve is the judgment of any person who denies Christ (even if we do good things and have intact morals, etc. for we are still sinful to the core). The only reason we don’t receive that judgment is that God gave us mercy, and love, and forbearance. He overlooked our judgment because Jesus fully took the judgment deserved for us. If you truly know the love of God, you would understand that God decided to save you even before you were born. Why did He do that? That is a glorious mystery beyond comprehension. But that is the message of the Bible.

Lampstands. Other symbols you will come across in Revelations can help you understand more of this book. Rev 1 mentions there are seven lamp stands which refer to the churches (Rev 1:20). “Jesus is walking among the lamp stands” (Rev 1:13). This teaches us one simple truth, if you truly are a believer, realize that Jesus is with us. His eyes of blazing fire looking into your heart (Rev 1:14; 2:18; 19:12), knowing what you are thinking and feeling, knowing everything about you and yet still loving you. He is always with his church.

Bride. Another name of the church is bride. Jesus views his church like a bride He is meeting on His wedding day, walking down the aisle, to welcome her, cherish her and love her forever. If you believe and follow Him, you are that bride. But what kind of brides are we? We’re runaway brides, unfaithful brides, all-the-sins-of-the-world brides, but he overlooked that and when the end times come, we will become that perfect bride that He has longed for us when He created us in the beginning.

The stars are the angels of those churches. Apparently every church has a messenger for it, like a guardian angel although there are still many other views about this.

The dragon is of course Satan. 

Beast. Then there is the beast (two kinds: one comes out of the sea, and one comes out of the land), and the harlot (prostitute). These are the three main seductions and temptations to the church. As such we will face these beasts and the harlot throughout the end times.

The beast out of the sea stands for Rome (during the time that Revelations was written) but now it may stand for any controlling authority of the place where you're at (possibly the government) that is controlled by the dragon.

False Prophet. The beast out of the land refers to false prophets/religions, including counterfeit Christianity. Interesting things about these two beasts is that they will try to look like Jesus, the real lamb, the real God, but in truth, they are not the real thing.

Harlot is Babylon which refers to the seductive and seemingly irresistible temptation of the WORLD.

All people who are not God's people are controlled by the two beasts and the harlot. These three enemies are all manifestations of the Dragon, and are constantly deceiving the church, trying to make it ineffective. These three deceptions of the devil are constantly harassing everyone in the world.

666

This number actually comes from the numerical value of letters. Each letter of certain languages have numbers assigned to letters. The Hebrew word for beast, when you add up its numerical value, is equal to 666. Satan is crafty, he finds ways to deceive and tempt you. And he does it two ways. One is you isolate yourself form the world, “I’m holy, you're dirty, disgusting, etc.” (sin of self righteousness). And the other way is you compromise and sin. But what God does to us in order to sanctify us is He allows us to experience this life under the attacks of Satan so that through them, He will purify us to become His pure virgin bride. Let us pray that we may never compromise our purity as children of God.

Lion/Lamb

The lion symbolizes power but in the Bible, we can clearly see that the Lion of Judah (Rev 5:5; Gen 49:8-12) conquers His enemies by becoming a lamb that was slain/slaughtered (Rev 5:6-7). If you are a Christian, you know in your heart that because Jesus is my Lord, no one can defeat me not because I'm better than others but because Jesus died for me. But the way we live our lives is not to belittle other people or to be rude or condescending to them, or lord over them like a lion. Rather, the way we live our lives should be like that of a lamb: humble, gentle, and meek. That’s basic Christianity. Jesus looks like a lion but when you look closely and get to know Him personally, you will realize that He is also a lamb that is slaughtered. This is another mystery of the Bible. The God who is almighty and all-powerful became a lamb that was slaughtered, for us.

Conquer by being killed

“His witnesses have conquered the dragon.” We are these witnesses and we have conquered the dragon. How? By conquering them in martyrdom. You conquered even though you are killed. The devil will kill Christians but even though this happens, they still conquer. The prosperity gospel is a false gospel because it says that if you love Jesus and obey Him, you will become prosperous in this life and live a good comfortable life in this life. It's a lie. Although there are some Christians who become rich, there are those who are killed because of their love for Jesus. Pray to understand this. It is another mystery but it is also a truth of God.

Everything is not what it seems

Revelations tell you that “what seems to be, may not be the case”--like the church in Sardis which "looks" like it's very alive, but Jesus says "You are dead." Revelations always exposes the truth of a reality that might be portrayed in the opposite aspect.

To end this, the poor church is rich, and the rich church is poor. Smyrna was poor because they will not worship the beast (the government and the Jewish synagogues would not give them privileges and ostracized them because of their worship and love for Christ). But in God’s eyes they are the Bill Gates' of the world! They are very rich! In Laodicea they gained much wealth and are in no need of material things. But they were told by Jesus as being “wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked” (Rev 3:17). They are physically wealthy, but spiritually poor.