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As we begin our 4th study together, remember that our chief aim is to establish an order of events. We just looked at the Olivet Discourse. This is a condensed order of events from the Olivet Discourse. I have included references to the parallel verses in Mark and Luke.
(Send “Matthew 24 Chronology Chart to everyone in chat) (share screen)
Event Scripture From Christ to the Tribulation Many come in Christ’s name Matthew 24:5 Mark 13:6 Luke 21:8 Wars and rumors of wars Matthew 24:6 Mark 13:7 Luke 21:9 Famines, pestilence, and earthquakes Matthew 24:7 Mark 13:8 Luke 21:11 7 year Tribulation begins Beginning of “Tribulation” (last 7 years) Matthew 24:8 “Beginning of birth pains” 24:9 “Then” “Tribulation” Christians delivered up and killed Matthew 24:9 Mark 13:9 Luke 21:12 Betrayal, apostasy Matthew 24:10 Mark 13:12 Luke 21:16-18 False prophets Matthew 24:11 Lawlessness, lovelessness Matthew 24:12 Gospel preached in all the world Matthew 24:14 Mark 13:10 Great Tribulation begins Beginning of “Great Tribulation” (last 3 ½ years) Matthew 24:21 Mark 13:19 Abomination of desolation Matthew 24:15 Mark 13:14 Luke 21:20 Flight into wilderness Matthew 24:16-20 Mark 13:14 Luke 21:21 False prophets, christs arise Matthew 24:23-24 Mark 13:21 Deception about Christ’s return Matthew 24:26 Mark 13:22 End of the Tribulation After the Tribulation Matthew 24:29 Mark 13:24 Luke 21:25-26 Sun darkened, moon doesn’t give light, stars fall, powers of heaven shaken Matthew 24:29 Mark 13:24 Sign of Son of Man appears (Christ 2nd Coming) Matthew 24:30 Mark 13:26 Luke 21:27 Trumpet sounds, He sends His angels to gather the elect. (Rapture of the Church) Matthew 24:31 Mark 13:27
Now that we’ve laid the outline out for the end-times based on the Olivet Discourse, now we will proceed to the book of Revelation. Again, since we are being Christo centric, the book of Revelation is called “the revelation of Jesus Christ.” It was a direct revelation given by Jesus to the apostle John. It is also the final revelation given in the Bible. If we can find a definitive order of events anywhere, it should be in this book. So, let’s dive in.
The book of Revelation is about a vision given to the apostle John that reveals what the last days and years of this planet are going to look like. Actually, I should be more precise than that. It tells us what the world is going to look like in the 7 years before Jesus returns and sets everything right.
Now, as we go to the book of Revelation, I need to explain how I approach it. There are multiple philosophies about how to interpret the book of Revelation.
There are generally four different ways that this book has been interpreted.
1. The Historicist view—The book describes things that would happen from the first century, all the way to Christ’s return. According to this view, some of the events of Revelation have already happened in history; the are not future events.
2. The Idealist view---The book is just a description of the continuing battle between God and Satan. It is not to be taken as prophecy of future events.
3. The Preterist (past) view---All of the book was already fulfilled in 70 A.D.
4. The Futurist view---The book of Revelation is a prophecy regarding the future apocalypse, and will be fulfilled in the future.
Well, it almost goes without saying that I fall in the futurist camp. But even in the futurist camp of interpreters there are varieties of opinions. And the reason for that variety of opinions is that the book of Revelation is a mysterious book. It’s mysterious for at least 4 reasons.
1st, it has a lot of strange things happening. It describes a time that seems totally foreign to anything we know.
2nd, it describes these events from the point of view of heaven, and a vision given to John. Any time we read the account of a vision in the Bible, we would expect to read strange things. For example, it describes creatures being released from the bottomless pit. We have to ask, as we read that, “Will those be creatures that people actually see? Or maybe they are demonic, invisible, spiritual creatures. Or maybe John is seeing some microorganism in his vision.” So, the fact that this is a vision, automatically leads us to wonder if everything described will be seen by the naked eye.
3rd, It is also mysterious to us, because it describes this coming apocalypse through the eyes of John, who lived in the 1st century. We see it through the eyes of a first century man. So, for example, it describes a burning mountain falling to the earth. If we saw the same vision that John did we might call that an asteroid. But John didn’t have that word in his vocabulary, so he described what he saw; a burning mountain falling to the earth. And there are a number of things in the book that we have to bring into the modern world.
But there is also a 4th reason that the book of Revelation is mysterious. It is mysterious because preachers and teachers have made it confusing. It has been taught and preached from every angle imaginable. So, we come to it with ideas already in our heads about what to expect. The very fact that it has been taught by preterist, futurist, idealist, and historicist means that we can get 4 different opinions about the meaning of any part of it.
Remember the first time you were introduced to the study of this book. Was it by a preterist, futurist, historicist, or idealist? Whatever you’ve been exposed to will influence what you think as you study the book again. It is sort of like any movie that you’ve ever seen. Many of the movies we watch, we come at them with a certain bias, or preconceived notion of what they are about. Somebody told us about it. Or we saw a preview, or we read what it was about. And that knowledge influences how we watch and what we take away from the movie. If we came to the movie misinformed, we can be confused about the story.
The same is true of most of us when we read the book of Revelation. We approach it already having some idea about its contents. We come to it already having a set of beliefs about the end times and Jesus’ return. So, we tend to take its stories, and make them fit what we already believe.
Now, I say all that about the mysterious nature of the book of Revelation, because I’m about to tell you what I believe. And it may not be what you have been taught.
But here’s the important bit. You, and I, need to learn the difference between what we’ve been taught, and what the text of Scripture actually says. Particularly in reference to end-times prophecy, we need to learn to approach it with an open mind, as though we are hearing it for the very first time.
Let me give you an example of what I mean. As I was growing up, we went to church services on Sunday, and we napped in the afternoon. Why did we rest on Sunday? Because, I was told, “This is the Sabbath day.” “God said to rest on the Sabbath day.”
There’s only one problem with that. Sunday is not the Sabbath day, Saturday is. The Jewish Sabbath day was Saturday. Sunday is the day that Jesus rose from the grave, so it became the day that Christians gathered for worship.
But people were pushing a principle of resting on Sunday, by calling it the Sabbath. So, what happened over the years is Christians began calling Sunday, the Sabbath day. So, when they read the 4th commandment, “Honor the Sabbath day, to keep it holy,” they read it as though it was talking about Sunday. They read the 4th commandment with a preconceived notion about what it means.
That’s what I mean by learning to tell the difference between what we have been taught, and what Scripture actually says. Now, I have no problem with naps on Sunday. In fact, I regularly partake. But I don’t do it because I have some legalistic notion that Sunday is the Christian Sabbath. The Bible never says that.
So, I’m telling you that the book of Revelation has been studied and taught, thousands, probably millions of times. There are books upon books written to explain it. But, in the end, you have to try and approach it, without a bias toward what you’ve already heard.
Now, the second thing that I am going to do, is what I do with all Scripture. I will try to take it at face value.
Here’s what should happen any time a preacher or teacher prepares to teach the Bible. The first question that they should explore is, “What did this verse/passage mean back then?” In other words, you are studying where that thought came from. What do the original words in Greek and Hebrew mean? What did it mean to the person who originally wrote it?
And only after you figure that out should you ask, “What does it mean to me now?”
Too many preachers and teachers ignore the past, and jump right into “what does it mean to me now?” That is really the heresy that happens in many Bible studies. We spend little time studying what it meant in the past, and spend our hour asking each other, “What does that verse mean to you?”
So, we will read Revelation, and ask that question of its visions. “What would this vision have meant to someone who heard it the 1st century?”
Now there is a third thing and final thing I need to let you know before I jump into chronology. In light of taking it at face-value, we have to decide when each of the events takes place. If we take the book at face-value, we might assume that the events of the book happen chronologically. In other words, chapter 4 events happen, then chapter 5 events, then 6,7,8, all the way to chapter 22.
And initially I tried to approach it that way. But we run into a problem with reading it that way. The first 4 chapters are not an issue. They just introduce us to the prophecies in chapter 5 and following. Some interpreters contend that the messages that Jesus gives to the 7 churches of Asia Minor somehow represent the ages of the Church spanning from the 1st century up to the start of the apocalypse.
Ephesus: The church at the end of the age of the apostles; losing their first love
Smyrna: The church under great persecution; up to 316 AD.
Pergamus: The church under imperial favor; 316 A.D. forward
Thyatira: AD 500 to 1500; the church of idolatrous compromise
Sardis: the Reformation church
Philadelphia: the believing church (the church to be raptured)
Laodicea: The apostate church of the Tribulation
But I find no evidence in the book that indicates that this interpretation is true. The messages to these 7 churches are simply presented as 7 messages to 7 very real churches that existed in the 1st century.
You may have been exposed to that teaching. Anybody ever heard a preacher or teacher say that we are living in the “Laodicean age?” That comes from that way of interpreting the messages to these 7 churches.
In searching for evidence of a pre-tribulation rapture in the book of Revelation, some will point to the message to the church in Philippi.
Revelation 3: 9 Take note! I will make those from the synagogue of Satan, who claim to be Jews and are not, but are lying—note this—I will make them come and bow down at your feet, and they will know that I have loved you. 10 Because you have kept My command to endure,[g] I will also keep you from the hour of testing that is going to come over the whole world to test those who live on the earth. 11 I am coming quickly. Hold on to what you have, so that no one takes your crown.
They consider the church in Philadelphia as representing an age of the church just before the Tribulation starts. And so, “I will keep you from the hour of testing that is going to come over the whole world” to them, is the promise to be raptured before the Tribulation.
But there are a number of problems with that interpretation.
1. These messages are never revealed by our Lord to be prophesy of future events. Jesus doesn’t tell us they are “ages” of the Church. So, at best, this is just conjecture.
2. Once you get past the 1st century Church, the Church can be found all over the world. It’s more difficult to say that all of the Church can be represented by one of these types of churches. For example, those who interpret these messages this way would probably say that we are now living in the Philadelphian Church age. But can you really look at all the churches, all around the world, and say that, as a whole, they are “the believing church” who deserve to be taken out of the world before the rapture?
3. If they represent “ages” of the Church, how can these 7 churches be so different? Weren’t all these churches in the same “age?”
4. Even the message to the church in Philadelphia has no clear promise of the rapture. All it promises is that they will be “kept from the hour of testing to come over the whole world.”
5. It’s better to take these messages at face value; as messages to 7 specific churches. Beyond that they can be understood as representing 7 types of churches that have existed throughout history.
Now this is not just my opinion. Even some who believe in the pre-tribulation rapture of the church hold the same interpretation of these church messages as I do.
Faithsaves.net
Numerous reasons exist to reject the testimony of these commentators in favor of the views of those who, like John R. Rice, John MacArthur, Albert Barnes, and Matthew Henry, take the churches as literal entities which, while certainly chosen by God for a purpose and representative of the various sorts of the Lord’s assemblies, do not fit the mold of a seven-fold division of the history of the so-called universal “church.” The supposed prophecy does not actually fit the history of Christendom. Furthermore, the history of the professing multitude and of the Lord’s true churches are entirely distinct—the prophetic theory presupposes an unscriptural Protestant ecclesiology and historiography. Finally, the prophetic theory is contrary to the literal hermeneutical principles the truth of inspiration demands.
John MacArthur “A Jet Tour Through Revelation”
But they are also representative churches, because each one of them has a unique character all its own. And it represents churches of all times because each of them is a special kind of church. And in all the periods of the history of the Church, there have always been these kinds of churches, and each of them gets a special message from the Lord.
So, the prophetic portion of the book begins in chapter 5. And let’s get back to why it is very difficult to consider the events of Revelation as happening chronologically.
Let me explain.
(put chart on screen and send it to them)
Beginning with Revelation 5 the book describes 7 seals that are opened, unleashing 7 judgments against the earth. When the 7th seal is opened, it reveals 7 trumpets. Revelation 8 describes 7 trumpets that are blown, unleashing 7 judgments against the earth. After these 7 judgments, 7 bowls are revealed. Revelation 16 describes 7 bowls that unleash 7 judgments on the earth.
So, here’s the problem. If we try to take these judgments chronologically, in other words, God sends 7 seal judgments; 1, then 2, then 3, 4,5,6,7, then 7 trumpets one after the other, then 7 bowls, we run into some interpretive problems. Let me illustrate with this table. Let’s put the events down chronologically, exactly as they are listed.
If you take Revelation in order; First comes 7 seals 1st seal – conquest 2nd – death in war 3rd – famine 4th – death 5th – Christian martyrs 6th – 12 I saw when he opened the sixth seal, and lo, there was a great earthquake; The sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; 13 The stars of the heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. 14 And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. 15 And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the mountains; 16 And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; 17 For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand? Hold it! Doesn’t this sound like the return of Christ?! Look again at Matthew 24. 29 Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken: 30 And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. But if we take the book of Revelation in strict chronological order, this can’t be the return of Christ. Why not? Because we’re still just in chapter 6 of the 22 chapters in Revelation. We’ve still got the 7 trumpets and 7 bowl judgments to be unleashed on the earth. You can’t have the powers of the heavens shaken and Christ return before the judgment of God is complete. But just to make my case thoroughly, let’s proceed laying out the book as though all these events happen one after the other, as they are listed. When the 7th seal is opened – 7 trumpets revealed 7 trumpets 1st trumpet– hail and fire mingled with blood 2nd trumpet– burning mountain thrown into the sea 3rd trumpet– great star falls from heaven 4th trumpet– Sun moon and stars give a third less light 5th trumpet– locust like creatures released 6th trumpet– 2 million horsemen released 7th trumpet– 11:15 And the 7th angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever. 16 The twenty-four elders, who sit on their thrones before God’s throne, fell on their faces and worshipped God, 17 saying: “We give you thanks, Lord God, the Almighty, the one who is and who was, because you have taken your great power and reigned. 18 The nations were angry, and your wrath came, as did the time for the dead to be judged, and to give your bondservants the prophets, their reward, as well as to the saints, and those who fear your name, to the small and the great, and to destroy those who destroy the earth.” 19 God’s temple that is in heaven was opened, and the ark of the Lord’s covenant was seen in his temple. Lightnings, sounds, thunders, an earthquake, and great hail followed. Hold it! Again, doesn’t this sound like the return of Christ? The time for rewards and punishments has come. The time for Christ to reign. But if this is the return of Christ, and we take Revelation chronologically, then this is the second time that Christ has returned. It doesn’t make sense because we still have 7 bowl judgments to be unleashed. Now, to be totally honest, we could read this 7th trumpet to be an announcement of the coming of Christ, not the literal coming. But let’s go on to and look at the 7 bowls. 7 bowls 1st bowl - sores 2nd bowl – sea turned to blood 3rd bowl – rivers to blood 4th bowl – great heat 5th bowl – darkness 6th bowl – Euphrates dried up to allow armies to cross 7th bowl – 16: 17 The seventh poured out his bowl into the air. A loud voice came out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, “It is done!” 18 There were lightnings, sounds, and thunders; and there was a great earthquake, such as has not happened since there were men on the earth, so great an earthquake, and so mighty. 19 The great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. Babylon the great was remembered in the sight of God, to give to her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath. 20 Every island fled away, and the mountains were not found. 21 Great hailstones, about the weight of a talent, came down out of the sky on people. Then in Revelation 19:11, the return of Christ. 11 And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. Now, this makes the most sense, that the return of Christ will be after the 7th bowl, the final judgment of God against the earth. Christ returns and fights in the Battle of Armageddon, and then follows the 1000-year reign of Christ. But if we strictly follow the chronology of the book of Revelation, we have Christ returning three times. It just doesn’t work.
So, in my opinion, the book is not describing events in chronological order. But how do these events fit together? It’s obvious that there is some order of events here. From the start of the book it says,
Revelation 1:19 19 Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter;
And each of the 7 seals is opened in sequence, along with the trumpets and bowls. And everything leads from the time of John to the Battle of Armageddon and finally a new heaven and earth. So, there is sequence here, but how does it fit together?
Well, some have proposed that the seals, trumpets and bowls happen simultaneously. In other words, the first seal happens at the same time as the 1st trumpet, as the 1st bowl. And the 2nd seal, trumpet and bowl happen around the same time.
Now, this is possible. It would make the 7th seal, trumpet, and bowl happen at the same time. But there is a problem with interpreting the timetable this way. (Show table)
7 seals 7 trumpets 7 bowls 1st seal – conquest 1st trumpet– hail and fire mingled with blood 1st bowl - sores 2nd seal- death in war 2nd trumpet-burning mountain falls into the sea 2nd bowl – sea turned to blood 3rd seal- famine 3rd trumpet- great star falls from heaven 3rd bowl- rivers to blood 4th seal- death 4th trumpet- sun, moon, stars give a third less light 4th bowl- great heat 5th seal- martyrs 5th trumpet- locusts like creatures released 5th bowl-darkness 6th seal- 12 I saw when he opened the sixth seal, and lo, there was a great earthquake; The sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; 13 The stars of the heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. 14 And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. 15 And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the mountains; 16 And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; 17 For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand? 6th trumpet-2 million horsemen released 6th bowl-Euphrates dried up to allow armies to cross 7th seal- reveal 7 trumpets 7th trumpet- the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever. Lightnings, sounds, thunders, an earthquake, and great hail followed. 7th bowl- lightnings, sounds, and thunders; a great earthquake, such as has not happened since there were men on the earth, The great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. Babylon the great was remembered in the sight of God, to give to her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath. 20 Every island fled away, and the mountains were not found. 21 Great hailstones, about the weight of a talent, came down out of the sky on people. Then in Revelation 19:11, the return of Christ.