Revelation Questions for Studying Revelation 2/8/2015 Copyright by Mark Vaughan 2/2015 I was encouraged to hear how our End Times Primer & our look at what it was like to write Revelation were helpful the past two weeks. This week I want to further prepare us to study the last NT book by handling some questions to help approach Revelation. These are questions that some of you have asked me already in one way or another, so I trust they will shed light on our study ahead. If you are tempted to throw up your hands & give up on getting a clear grasp of what God wants us to know about future prophecy, I pray you will be helped & encouraged today. I pray you ll be invigorated with a desire to study & an assurance that God gave His Word as clear communication not contorted confusion. And I pray that as you study, you ll be amazed at God s grace & filled with gratitude for His promises for His people. The 1 st question I want to address is how this book fits together. I ll only have 2 main points today & they will both be questions so if you are a note-taker you ll need to know that today s points are questions, not answers. I ll give the answers, but they are not exactly short answers. Hopefully you can write down the verses we read & other thoughts that give answers to the 2 broad questions I ll address. Question #1 HOW DOES THIS BOOK FIT TOGETHER? If you hear that & don t feel like it matters, related questions are what happens in the Tribulation & which chapters cover it. I got asked those yesterday & it confirmed my need to answer them by grasping how the whole book of Revelation fits together. So turn to chapter 1 to find the key verse that gives us a general outline of the thought & flow of Revelation. And this book outline is not one I made up it s one that is given in the text & that proves itself in how later verses flow after it. Last week we discussed the Apostle John as the author of this book & we read in chapter 1 how he wrote to 7 local churches. So we ll skip down to his reaction to seeing Jesus in verse 17. Read Revelation 1:17-20 with me. [READ] This was the glorified, Risen King Jesus speaking to His beloved & now ever-more astonished disciple John. And in verse 19, Jesus said what to write & gave a divinely inspired outline for John to follow. Do you see the 3 things in verse 19 that John was to write? 1 st was the things which he had seen and what had John seen at that point in what he s telling us? He had seen the jaw-dropping majesty of Jesus in chapter 1, right? So John was to write what he had seen in chapter 1 that s a first section of outline in the flow of this book. Then what s next that Jesus said to write about in verse 19? It s the things which are, the things that presently were existing at that time. What was existing at that time that we read a bit about last week? 1
7 churches were existing at that time, right? And chapters 2-3 are 7 messages to those 7 churches. Those messages have application for all churches throughout time, but they were written first to those churches. Those churches existed as the things which are when John wrote. So chapters 2-3 are the 2 nd section in the outline & flow of this book the messages to the churches existing at that time. We know how this book fits together then by seeing chapter 1 as the things John had seen and chapters 2-3 as the things that were. Look again at verse 19 for the other things Jesus said to write. They are the things which will take place after these things. So the 3 rd section in the outline & flow of this book is the things which shall take place after these things. If you have an ESV translation or a KJV or NKJV, your translation will say, after this, but it s literally after these things, after these plural, referring to these things in the time of John. Clearly Jesus was referring to future things, to prophetic events following the time John was living in. Though John would ve been expecting Jesus to return to rapture His church at any time, Jesus was giving John a look at things to come. So that makes the 3 rd section of this book about the future, about what was to come in the future after John wrote. It was at least future to John s time & all commentators agree on that. As I explained before, those who take a Preterist view of Revelation typically say that John wrote before 70AD & he prophesied about the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD. But again, one huge problem with that view is that the cataclysmic, worldwide events depicted in Revelation 6-19 cannot be minimized or allegorized into the destruction of one city & temple. Besides, as we also said before, the unanimous testimony of the early church is that John wrote this last book of the NT as the last living Apostle in the last decade of the 1 st century. So chapters 6-22 must all reveal what came after about 95 AD. And since we ve already considered the historicist view of Revelation, we ve noted that it s impossible to link the global judgments of the book with events that have already occurred. And we re also already noted the problems of the idealist view of Revelation that clouds all the prophecies into an ongoing, non-specific conflict of good & evil throughout the ages. With those two views or the Preterist view, the details & symbols are forced to mean far smaller things than what they are or they are forced to mean nothing at all. Yet we know God gave specific words for specific reasons & that affirms the futurist view of Revelation that we find in verse 19 also. Since chapter 1 covers the things that John had seen and chapters 2-3 cover the things that are, it only makes sense then that chapters 4-22 cover the things which shall be after these. So all of chapters 6-22 are about future events for John & still for us. I know that seems like a kind of unbalanced outline with sections of 1 chapter, 2 chapters, & then 17 chapters, but that s the outline that Jesus gave John in verse 19 of chapter 1. 2
And that flow is not only proven on just that one verse. Turn to Revelation 4:1 & let s read more. [READ] Do you see the words used to describe the 3 rd section of the book? The first words & last words of Revelation 4:1 are after these things as Jesus showed him what must be after these things. So chapter 4 clearly begins the 3 rd section of the book about the future. It s a section of high drama from heaven & earth with characters & creatures that Hollywood can only hope for & with frightening finality that insists on some response. It starts in chapter 4 with transcendent worship of God that is followed by similar worship of Jesus in chapter 5 to demonstrate Christ s deity. Those 2 awesome chapters lead to Jesus as the only one worthy to open the seals of this book from God s hand. With praise of Jesus & details we ll get to later, we find Jesus with this book that unveils judgments on the earth as it is opened. Read where that starts in Revelation 6:1-4. [READ] Notice how John saw the 1 st seal opened & saw its events & then saw the 2 nd seal opened & saw its events. It sounds chronological, like one after the other, doesn t it? It sounds like there s a progression from one to the next with each seal. And especially with this 1 st seal where the rider of the horse has a bow but no arrows & he went out conquering. Kids how do you conquer with a bow & no arrows? You can conquer without arrows if you are a savvy negotiator who can finagle the peace represented by a white horse. This rider has a crown & even conquers peacefully. Then in contrast & chronologically following that peace is the war of the second horse & its rider. We know it follows the first not merely because it s second, but also because the war & killing take away the peace that was there. So they follow a progression where the plainest way to read them is to see one after the other logically & temporally. The 7 seals follow in sequence & order & are not merely descriptions of future catastrophes that may happen or have happened in any order. That may seem obvious to you, but it s not for many commentators who try to find parallel phrases & pictures to draw out some literary structure that repeats itself. Though each seal follows the other in order saying, when the 2 nd seal was opened, this happened, and when the 3 rd seal was opened that happened, & so on, many teachers will tell you it s not really in order. I tell you that so you are prepared to question the notes in your ESV Study Bible though it is normally a trustworthy resource. Page 2461 in the introduction to Revelation s structure & outline says, recapitulation means that the order in which John received visions does not necessarily indicate the order of the events they symbolize. Now it is true that some parts of John s vision connect with truths from the past like Jesus coming through Israel in the imagery of chapter 12. But that does not lead us to force other visions to repeat previous ones. 3
And sadly, that s what is behind the recapitulation theories that morph Revelation into a figurative puzzle that matches or equates many possible parallels or similar thoughts. That s sad to me because I was intrigued to freshly study Revelation after years away from intense study of eschatology & I was prepared with more experience to look more deeply into other approaches. So I was disappointed at how twisted & forced & imagined the ideas I found were even in the expert commentaries. Those strained ideas of structure also led to total disregard for the explicit naming of the tribes of Israel in God s fulfillment of His kingdom promises for Israel as a nation. And having recently studied God s sure promises for Israel s future in Romans 9-11, these problematic approaches led me to shake my head at otherwise faithful teachers & just not get it. They reminded me of my freshman English class at Tech when we took some novel we were required to read & did literary analysis of it. I m not throwing out all such analysis, but I recall drawing 5 circles on the board in a class presentation about some classic. But God did not give us the Bible to impose supposed links that undermine the normal flow & natural sense of the text. So here s my point I tell you all this to encourage you that you can read your Bible & understand it. It s not some mystic puzzle that you need a special decoder kit for. We can make sense of tough texts in Scripture & probably one of the most effective ways of gaining insight is to simply read those books & passages of Scripture over & over again. It may require you to pay closer attention & to write down notes & track details & compare other verses, but you can understand the Bible if you are seeking the help of God s Spirit & giving the needed effort. So now, let s look at little more into how Revelation 6-22 fits together & reveals the Tribulation & other future events. The increasing tribulation or trouble of judgment unfolds in Revelation with the 7 seals first, then the 7 trumpets & then the 7 bowls. Revelation 6 reveals 6 seals opened & then closes with a question we can read in verse 17 Revelation 6:17. [READ] I claimed the author told his story by interconnecting these 5 sections that overlapped & drawing 5 circles like the Olympic rings. And somehow I made some imaginary comment about him connecting it all to the Olympics or something. I know that sounds ridiculous, but that is how I felt in reading some claims of parallelism & chiasm & literary structure in Revelation. I don t dispute that some literary devices do exist & that we can search the text of Scripture for them so my dear English majors, please don t take offense at me. Who can stand? that question is answered in chapter 7 with an introduction of the 144,000 Jews who will be saved by God and protected during the Tribulation read 7:1-8. [READ] 144,000 ethnic Israelites from the specific tribes named will stand & they will be Christ s witnesses to the world. Those clearly ethnic Jews who are saved are also still on the earth in contrast to the people found in verses 9-17 of chapter 7. Read Revelation 7:9-17 next. [READ]. 4
As people from other nations are saved, many will be martyred for their faith & be seen in heaven as coming out of the great tribulation. So even though chapter 7 seems like a pause in the unleashing of the seals, it is actually an answer to whether anyone will follow Jesus in these dark days. Yes they will no matter bad it gets, God will always have His people. Yet others will not repent & judgment will continue to increase as we can read in chapter 8:1-6 with the 7 th seal. [READ] What we find here is that the 7 th seal contains the 7 trumpet judgments. So the 7 trumpet judgments announced by these 7 angels are not AFTER the 7 th seal, but they ARE the 7 th seal. And that s the next key to grasping the flow of the book. That s a key to understanding how chapters 6-19 lay out the events of the Tribulation. Some call it a telescoping structure like you open the 7 th seal & out drop 7 trumpets like a telescope that s pushed together can be pulled out into a number of sections that make it longer. The 7 Trumpets are the contents of the 7 th seal. Read Revelation 8:9-13 to see the first 4 trumpet judgment that occur in the 2 nd half of the Tribulation. [READ] Then as if the silence wasn t enough shock, those woes point to how bad the last 3 trumpet judgments will be for those who dwell on the earth. And note that in contrast with the few interludes into heaven, the Tribulation judgments are always on those who dwell on the earth. Read how increasingly bad it will get in chapter 9. [READ] As these judgments increase on earth through the Trumpet judgments, God gives another picture of His power & outreach in the midst of it. We ll skip chapter 10, but we have to read 11:1-14. [READ] Can you imagine all this wow far better than superheroes! Then Revelation 11:15-19 depicts a thunderous heavenly scene as that transition is made to begin the 7 th Trumpet. And that 7 th Trumpet is the 7 bowls of wrath to be poured out in chapters 16-19. As with the 7 th Seal including the 7 Trumpets, so also the 7 th Trumpet includes the 7 Bowls of wrath to be poured out. That s another telescopic key to get the structure. A few explanations & interludes & peeks into heaven are included in chapters 12-15 as the descriptions of the Tribulation continues. I don t have time to get into more detail, but I tell you of this flow so you are sure you can follow what you are reading. It is greater & greater judgments like Jesus predicted in Matthew 24. They move progressively & logically & chronologically. The 7 seals & 7 trumpets & 7 bowls are not repeating or recapitulating each other as if any parallel greater judgment can be squeezed back to fit a previous one with allegorized vagueness. These are 7 real future seal judgments where the 7 th seal opens up to 7 more real future trumpet judgments where the 7 th trumpet opens up to 7 more real future bowl judgments. 5
That s the way it reads & that s the way it s to be understood. And they all build into Christ s final victory over evil in chapter 19 that leads into the millennium in chapter 20 & then the new heavens & new earth in chapter 21-22. That s how this book that we call Revelation fits together. Chapter 1 is the vision John saw & chapters 2-3 are the messages from Jesus to the churches of John s time. And then chapters 6-22 are the things that will happen in the future & they are still yet future to us also. Chapters 6-19 describe the 7-year Tribulation period & chapter 20 describes the millennium & chapters 21-22 the eternal state. That s the plain reading & naturally evident flow of this book. So the future will have a 7-year Tribulation period followed by Christ s return to earth with His saints to rule for 1000 years. After that will be a final victory over evil before God makes a new heavens & new earth to dwell forever with His people. That s a long answer to the question of our 1 st point today the question of how this book fits together. And let me recommend to you the best overview sermon I ve ever heard on this book it s A Jet Tour Through Revelation by John MacArthur & it s available to read or hear at www.gty.org. Now before I close today, I want to answer one more question. If you are like me, you are putting these sections of years together & mapping out what we can learn from Scripture & you still have one lingering question where will you be when all this happens? Where is the church during the Tribulation period? We saw local churches in the things which are in John s time, but where is the church in the things which will come to pass? So outline question #2 I hope to answer today is this where is the Rapture in Revelation? To get at the answer to where the church is in the Tribulation after we ve seen the church in chapters 2-3, it s better to ask where the Rapture is in Revelation. So question #2 is this where is the Rapture in Revelation? The Rapture is a term for Christ s gathering of His church to Himself as promised in 1 st Thessalonians 4:13-18 & other texts. 1 st Thessalonians 4:13-18 says that believers in Christ will be caught up together with believers who have already died & we will inherit new bodies to meet the Lord Jesus in the air. Then we will be welcomed into heaven in His presence. Jesus repeatedly said we do not know when this will be & yet the NT clearly expected it at any time. Jesus said in John 14:1-3 that He was going to prepare a place & He would come again & receive His people to be with Him. So if we should expect that Rapture & Revelation is the book about what comes next, then where is it in that book? If the Rapture is the next thing the church can expect, where is it in the future things revealed in Revelation? Turn to Revelation 3:10 to see a promise that makes the most sense as promising a Rapture before the Tribulation. 6
Read this promise that refers to something more global than only the church at Philadelphia that it s written to in Revelation 3:10. [READ] On this verse, the ESV & KJV & NKJV are better translations for the phrase is coming or is about to come. The idea is that it is going to come this hour of trial or temptation is going to come, it is sure to come, it is destined to come. The word does not indicate that it was about to come as if it was coming that day or that any delay would make it untrue. The point was that this hour of trial was going to come. And the language twice emphasizes that it will come on the whole inhabited world, to test those who dwell on the earth. What was that what trial was coming on the whole world that the believers of this Philadelphian church would be kept out of? And that s the sense of to keep from it is to keep out of. That global testing to come in Revelation has to be the Tribulation. So Revelation 3:10 must be a promise to believers at Philadelphia to be kept out of the coming Tribulation period. That sounds like a promise of Rapture out of the world before the Tribulation comes, doesn t it? In other words, it sounds like a Pretribulational Rapture. And it comes in a section that can be generalized to all believers like the overcoming promises at the end of the message to each church. So it seems reasonable to see Revelation 3:10 as a promise to gathering Christians out of the world before the Tribulation. It seems reasonable that the church will escape this 7-year judgment on those who dwell on the earth. I admit that if Revelation 3:10 were the only verse in all the Bible teaching a Pretribulational Rapture, it would not be the strongest argument, but it is one place to find it in Revelation. And I admit that the timing of the Rapture is not as clear in Scripture as the millennium and it s certainly not a primary issue. But let me offer a few more answers for where the Rapture is in Revelation & where the church is not in the Tribulation. Do you remember what we said happens in Revelation 4? The outline moves to the things which will be after these things, the things of the future. And you know what s missing on earth while all the judgments are poured out on earth? The church is missing from Revelation 6 forward until the marriage supper of the Lamb in Revelation 19. We find 144,000 Jews who are saved & witnessing to people who get saved during the Tribulation, but we don t find mention of the church. And I could turn us to other passages on the Rapture & highlight other reasons why I believe the church will be taken up before the Tribulation, but I want us to stay in Revelation. So turn to Revelation 19 & let s read about these people who are already in heaven to enter the marriage supper of the Lamb. Follow along with me in Revelation 19:6-16. [READ] Doesn t that sound exciting? 7
The exciting thing is that these saints are already in heaven, apparently already with glorified bodies, ready to enjoy the marriage supper of the Lamb who is Jesus. And according to Ephesians 5, Jesus bride is the church, right? So these saints must include the church & they also come from heaven in verse 14 to rule with Him in the millennium. But somehow these believers had to get to heaven before this. A Pretribulational Rapture of the church would allow for all that to happen, wouldn t it? A Pretribulational Rapture affirms that believers go up to be with Jesus in resurrected bodies while also affirming that we return with Jesus. Glorified saints only get to be in the place Jesus prepared for us according to John 14:1-3 if we have time in heaven between the Rapture & Christ s return to rule on earth. And then here s another catch when glorified saints do come to earth to rule, they are not in bodies that can get married & have children. Yet Revelation 20 & Isaiah 65 & other passages promise normal earthly bodies in the millennium to someone. They predict that people will bear children & live long years & enjoy peaceful blessings of earthly life in earthly bodies. Those bodies can only come from believers that live through the Tribulation, including the 144,000 Jewish believers. Those Tribulation saints will not have resurrected bodies or be raptured after the Tribulation. So they are the ones who populate the earth in the millennium and enjoy the earthly blessings of Christ s earthly reign. And descendents of those people will be the ones who rebel after the millennium and are judged in the final defeat of the devil. That need for saints with earthly bodies in the millennium is another reason the Rapture had to take place earlier in Revelation, before the Tribulation. So that s a peek into where the Rapture must be in Revelation it must be between chapter 3 & chapter 4. It may not be mentioned in the chronology of the book, but that does not mean it does not happen. So I believe that the church will not go through the Tribulation. And as we study Revelation, we will evaluate that & continue to pray for to shape us to respond to Him & His Word. But regardless of the timing of the Rapture, what s the point for all who turn from sin to faith in Jesus Christ? We will not face the final wrath we will be welcomed into the new heaven & new earth described in Revelation 21 & we will radiate with the joy of the Lord. I ve immersed you in a lot of details about this book & the Tribulation & the millennium & the timing of the Rapture & the eternal state, but what matters is how you respond to the words of Jesus. I pray your faith to study Scripture has been strengthened, but most of all, I pray you are really ready for Christ s return. If you are not ready, please come talk with us after the service. And if you are, would you thank Him & tell others about Him? Pray with me as we close. 8