Today's guest blogger is Dr. Kenneth Gentry Jr, author of Nourishment from the Word: Select Studies in Reformed Doctrine. I asked Dr. Gentry to discuss my favorite book of the Bible, Revelation.
The Book of Revelation is one of the most mysterious and intriguing books in the Bible. Most Christians express a great interest in this work, from the newest convert to the oldest saint.
Unfortunately, Revelation is difficult to master and easy to abuse. The main reason for these problems is: The interested reader doesn't pause and read the sign on its front door before barging in and running through it. The very key to Revelation is found in its opening verses. And without this key, the book remains subject to distortion.
The key, in fact, is contained in two of the first three verses! So we really should not have missed it. Consider the implications of these two verses:
Rev. 1:1: "The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show to His bond-servants, the things which must shortly take place; and He sent and communicated it by His angel to His bond-servant John."
Rev. 1:3: "Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy, and heed the things which are written in it; for the time is near."
Did you notice something quite surprising? Something you had not caught before? Just in case you didn't, let me repeat these verses, while emphasizing the keys in the them:
Rev. 1:1: "The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show to His bond-servants, the things which must shortly take place; and He sent and communicated it by His angel to His bond-servant John."
Rev. 1:3: "Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy, and heed the things which are written in it; for the time is near."
John himself tells us that he expects the events of Revelation to occur "shortly" because "the time is near." Consequently, when we try to interpret the events as occurring in our future some 1900 years after he wrote it, we are going against his stated purpose.
If Christians would only take seriously these opening verses, they might find that John wrote Revelation to help a persecuted church in the first century — so that we today might have the joy of hearing the gospel, despite the early challenges the church endured from persecuting Israel and Rome.
Unfortunately, we not only miss the key to understanding Revelation by moving too quickly past its opening verses, but we also miss them as we exit the book. For John leaves the keys in the door so that we have to pass by them as we exit from the book! Notice some of his closing verses, which are virtually identical to Revelation 1:1 and 1:3:
Rev. 22:6: “And he said to me, ‘These words are faithful and true’; and the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, sent His angel to show to His bond-servants the things which must shortly take place.”
Rev. 22:10: “And he said to me, ‘Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near.”
In my book Nourishment From the Word, one of the chapters provides an introduction and overview of this grand prophecy of John’s. I explain how John is actually writing about the coming end of the old covenant order, as the new covenant replaces it. That is, John is writing about the coming destruction of the Jewish temple in A.D. 70. And he does so by presenting it as a forensic (legal) drama, with God on the throne governing the events.
In my introduction to Revelation I site many references from Josephus, the first century Jewish historian, who witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem and lived to write about it. I show how many correspondences exist between John’s symbolic Revelation and Josephus’ historical Jewish Wars. The correspondences are fascinating — and quite compelling as evidence that John wrote Revelation about those very events that Josephus witnessed.
Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., Th.D.
Nourishment from the Word
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