All right, we're good. Well, Revelation, the book of Revelation, is one of how many books in Scripture? 66, Maggie, that's right, 66. And God has given it, for many purposes, one that I wrote down in addition to Jim's excellent response, is to comfort the persecuted suffering church. That's really probably the main driver in the whole book. The four Gospels, like Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, reveal Christ in his humiliation. but in Revelation, we see him in his exaltation. Sharp contrast, Gospels, humiliation, Revelation, exaltation. And when trouble and persecution comes upon Christians, which it has been doing now for the past 2,000 years, And as Christians in different parts of the world have passed through periods of great tribulation, which some of our brothers and sisters are passing through right now, what they need more than anything is the exalted, triumphant view of the Lamb which is what John paints for us here in the book of Revelation. Think of it that way. That exalted view more than anything else will, what? It will strengthen their hearts and lift them up in their day of trouble. However, As needed and helpful as this book is, especially for persecuted Christians, it is often a neglected book because of its perceived difficulty to interpret properly. But we need not despair and feel unable to understand this book. Some people just don't read it. Some great commentators in the history of the Christian church have avoided it, they've skipped over it. Most Christians are familiar with the name John Calvin. He wrote a massive 22-volume commentary on the whole Bible, but he never wrote anything on the book of Revelation. Most people would concede that he was one of the greatest commentators ever given to the church. I don't find myself in agreement with everything that he taught, but then again, I don't know if I agree with everything that I teach, if you know what I mean. That's lighthearted and humorous, I trust you know. The main focus of the book, I want you to get a hold of this, if you leave today and nothing else goes with you, I want you to think of the main thrust of the book of Revelation being the triumph or the ultimate victory of Jesus Christ over his enemies. And if you said, Pat, well, which ones of the 20 some odd revelation commentaries would you most highly recommend? I would say this one might be first. It's called Triumph of the Lamb, published by PNR. Dennis Johnson is the Excellent commentator. I think it would be a blessing to you to read it. Might be a little different than you are used to reading or understanding. Another one, The Returning King, a guide to the book of Revelation by Verne Poythress. It's P-O-Y-T-H-R-E-S-S. Another really good commentary on the book. Satan and his emissaries are constantly doing what? They're waging war against God and his people. But ultimately, they have been what? Defeated, utterly defeated by the victorious, triumphant, conquering Lamb of God. And that's the lens through which we should always read and view this book. And if we do, then it will go a long way to clear up much of the confusion that often accompanies its interpretation when that focus is lost. Let me just quote to you from one of these two commentaries, Verne Poitras in The Returning King. He summed it up this way. Can you understand the book of Revelation? Yes, you can. You can summarize its message in one sentence. Jim almost quoted it. God rules history. and will bring it to its consummation in Christ. Did you sneak a peek at my notes, Jim? All right. Read it with that main point in mind and you will understand the book. You will not necessarily understand every single detail. But guess what, it's not necessary that you understand every detail in order to profit greatly from it spiritually. And that same thing is true of all of Scripture. Is it not true that Scripture is inexhaustibly rich so that we never plumb all of its depths and mysteries? I heard of a pastor who some years ago, this is a true story I heard about a pastor, who had gone through a book of scripture, I'm sorry I don't know which book it was, maybe Ephesians, I think it may have been Ephesians, such a popular book among Christians. The most popular I've heard, most surveys I've read. And when he finished it, the next week he got up and started in chapter one again. unapologetically, and he said, there's so much here that I missed, I need to go through it again. And most of the people who were in that church said the second time around they learned more than the first time. Well, that's just the nature of scripture, isn't it? It's like that. There's blessing in every book of the Bible, but in Revelation, listen, in Revelation, God explicitly says that a special blessing belongs to those who read and obey it, right? Blessed is he who reads and those who keep the words of this prophecy. This is a special blessing that God gives. No other book of the 66 has this accompanying blessing. But let me just pause to give you a little historical context of the book of Revelation. And by the way, my overruling purpose for wanting to help you to read and interpret Revelation is because I have heard so many people lately talking about Revelation and how, you know, we're right at the very end of the end times, and I'm, I don't, I'm not sure about that, but I don't, that's, that's not for me to know, actually, is the way I kind of look at it. But I find in listening to people and the way they're coming to conclusions about things, that there are some important principles to keep in mind as it relates to how to read a book like Revelation. And we're going to get to that, hang on. The book of Revelation, I hope as you know, is addressed to how many different churches? Seven, right, good, I see your fingers going up. Seven churches located in Asia near Western Turkey, the cities of Ephesus, Myrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. Those churches were persecuted. You read about that in chapter two. They were threatened by false doctrine and teaching, such as the Nicolaitans, also in chapter 2. And they were compromised with cultural paganism through idolatry and immorality, and by spiritual complacency and neutrality, all throughout those second and third chapters that we read about those things. And John, the author of the book, identifies with and speaks of his experience of tribulation and persecution that he himself experienced in chapter one, verse nine, where he wrote this, I, John, your brother and partner in the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus was on the isle called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. Now at this time, the known world was under the rule and reign of Rome. And Emperor Domitian was on the throne. Really nice guy. He was an incredibly cruel ruler who reigned from about 81 AD to 96 AD. About 25 years earlier, Nero carried out a local wave of severe persecution in Rome. blaming Christians for fires that had destroyed parts of their city, and using Christians as human torches to light his gardens at night. You can only imagine walking around that city and seeing people's bodies burning. But Domitian was even worse, because his persecution of Christians was more widespread and universally done, and unlike Nero, Domitian demanded, utterly demanded, to be worshipped as God, very specifically. At the time of the writing of the Book of Revelation, emperor worship as deity was enforced, and it was enforced as a requirement on every single citizen. Government documents began with verbiage like our Lord and God, Emperor Domitian demands this or that or whatever it might be. And everyone who addressed the emperor had to do it in a way that acknowledged that he was deity. Caesar is Lord, right? There's the language right there. But of course, Christians couldn't do that. Some probably did to save their skin, but most hopefully refused to do so. And consequently, they were labeled as traitors to Rome and were regarded as criminals, and thousands were brutally martyred, and others, like John, were banished and sent to places of isolation, like the Isle of Patmos. So Revelation was written during a time of great tribulation and persecution of Christians. And it was written for the purpose of comforting, bringing comfort to those Christians who were experiencing such great tribulation. And John the Apostle was one of them. Now, men, would you come up again just now, and right in front of me here on the bench, there's an outline. I'd like you to give everybody one of those outlines. The one that's, yeah, that one. Not the other one. I want to, in order to help you to know how to read and interpret the book of Revelation. I want to explain to you something about the literary style of the book and how it differs immensely from other portions of scripture. You can kind of read along with me. Everybody have an outline? An obvious reason why Revelation tends to be difficult to interpret is its literary style or genre. God crafted His Word for us and He's used different kinds of literary styles or forms because He knows, listen, He knows that some styles are better at conveying certain messages than others. So it's important for us to interpret every part of scripture as best we can according to its literary style, which differs in different places, in order to properly interpret what's being said. God's Word comes to us packaged, think of it that way, it comes to us packaged in different styles. For instance, one style, epistles, right? like Romans or 1st and 2nd Corinthians, which are personal letters written to particular churches concerning particular matters that were happening in the life of those particular churches. Second, genealogies. They are often long lists that document family histories and lineages, often proving who someone is in terms of their genealogy or family tree, we tend to kind of just skip over those chapters, don't we? Half the names or three quarters of them we can't read anyway. They're too hard. Tongue twisters. Names you'd never give to your kids. Thirdly, historical narratives. Now here, oh, we like this, don't we? Factual accounts written in prose concerning what happened at a certain time and place and involved people, nations, and events like Joshua and Ruth and Esther or the gospel or the book of Acts in the New Testament. Law books. What are they called, the first five? The Pentateuch, what does that mean, Jim, Pentateuch? Five books, good. Those are law books, which is what much of the first five books of Scripture are, showing us what God required of his people in Old Testament times. Fifthly, poetic verse. I don't know if you're aware of it, but Andrew's father is a Christian poet, and a very gifted one. It's been a pleasure to get to know him a little bit via email and phone, but you ought to pick up the conversation with him. There's not a lot of Christian poetry being published today. Did you know that? And it really should be. Why? Because so much of Scripture comes to us in poetic verse. Lots of it. John Piper is probably somebody who's revived that more than anybody I know of in a contemporary sense, but a great need. Some of the best poetry ever written is contained in the Bible. In fact, some books of the in the Old Testament are written entirely in poetic verse. I have a good example of that. Crossway Publishers does Bibles, right? You know about Crossway, I'm sure. This is the Psalms. Just the Psalms. All poetic verse. It's just, it's a lovely book. And you know, well, you know how you get a New Testament, and it usually has in the back, it has Psalms. and Proverbs, right? What's that doing? It's telling you, these are the books that we tend to read a lot. If we're going to cut some things out, we're going to focus on at least these. Or how about parables, number six? Stories that are used to illustrate an important point, such as in the Good Samaritan, And Jesus used parables all the time to communicate truths powerfully, memorably, so that his audience would never forget it. Or Proverbs, wisdom literature, which are short statements of truth for common and general rules of life and contain many sayings that deal with a variety of aspects of daily living. Ecclesiastes and Proverbs are great examples of that literary style. What about prophecy, number eight? words that foretell or proclaim God's message, often a warning or call to repentance or righteous living by a designated prophet of God, a messenger, like Jeremiah or Ezekiel. And then on the next page, last but not least, we have the literary form of apocalyptic literature. And that's what Revelation is. It's a classic example of apocalyptic literature. I made a note, the principal characteristic of apocalyptic literature is that it is highly symbolic or figurative. It is not to be understood in a literal sense, but primarily in a symbolic or figurative sense. Now, some of you who are maybe bristling a little bit right now with that statement, let me assure you that we always interpret Scripture literally where we can, where we have license to do so. where the literary genre permits us to. But there are other places where we cannot and should not, must not try to force, as it were, a literary interpretation on a portion of scripture that God has clearly given to be figurative and symbolic. At times it provides a number of clues for its own interpretation, such as in Revelation 1.20 where John informs us that the seven stars are angels, the seven lampstands are churches, but in many other instances the symbols are not self-interpretive and it must be mined, the meaning is, or the meaning must be mined from other portions of scripture. Look at the paragraph next, interpretive keys in the Old Testament. I hope somebody will kind of pass out when they hear this or read this. Of the 404 verses in the book of Revelation, 278 of them, or 68%, make some allusion to the Old Testament. They are figurative, they are symbolic. If you're gonna know what they mean, you're gonna have to go back and find them in other apocalyptic literature portions of Scripture, like the prophets, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and so forth. So almost seven out of 10 verses in Revelation are pointing back to the Old Testament. But John doesn't cite those Old Testament references, so we're forced to trace them back by careful study to their sources. Again, from other apocalyptic books, other prophetic books, like Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and Zechariah. These are the fields from which the visual images and symbols in Revelation have been harvested, which requires of us diligent parallel study in those books in order to ensure proper biblical interpretation. And that's why I believe Revelation is so difficult for most people to interpret, because the prophets and the apocalyptic portions of the Old Testament are among the most neglected portions of Scripture. You know it, don't you? You've seen your own Bible, you've seen other people's Bibles. you know and and when you pick it up and you look at it like kind of like like this you can see that the New Testament is all crinkly and worn right all those pages and and then maybe there's some in the middle where the Psalms and Proverbs are but if you look carefully at it you'll see that most of the reading has been skipped over when it comes to certain portions of Scripture. Now Maybe that's not the case for you, but I'm guilty of it. I've tended very, throughout my lifetime as a Christian, I've tended to be much more frequently in certain portions of scripture. I think it's almost natural in a sense because we're drawn to it. Psalms and Proverbs are rich. I mean, they're separately published by Bible publishers. The New Testament. obviously is a very important portion of Scripture that we pay a lot of attention to. And then there's other ones that we just like the best, right? We like historical narrative. We like the life of David, or the story of David and Goliath, and 1 and 2 Samuel, or wisdom literature like Proverbs and Psalms. But what don't we like? What do we tend to avoid? We tend to avoid law books, much of the Pentateuch or parts of it, genealogies, and prophetic books, especially the apocalyptic portions of books like Revelation. So, in order to understand and properly interpret revelation, we're going to have to do something. We're going to have to understand and we're going to have to be very familiar, I should say, with the prophetic and apocalyptic portion of Scripture, especially in the New Testament. And, listen, we're also going to have to be familiar with something else, and that is the symbolic use of numbers. I want to get into that subject briefly while we still have a few minutes remaining. The use of numbers is significant in the book of Revelation, especially certain numbers like 7, 10, and 12 and multiples of those numbers like 1000 or 144,000 which are both multiples of 10 and 12. Whole books are written about the use of numbers in Scripture. I brought just one from my library, up from the library this morning. This is a famous one, Bullinger, have you heard the name? Number in Scripture. And he has many comments on all the different numbers, like for instance, seven, well let me just read to you from this first. The number seven is used 54 times in the book of Revelation. There are seven churches. seven spirits, seven golden lampstands, seven stars, I already told you about those who are right, seven seals, seven horns, seven eyes, seven trumpets, seven thunders, been hearing a lot of those lately, seven signs, seven golden bulls, seven crowns, seven hills, and so forth and so on. Any of you happen to know what the number seven indicates? What does it point to, what does it mean? Perfection, good, or completeness. And throughout the book of Revelation, it is symbolically used to represent that, to represent completion or completeness. When John addresses himself to seven churches, he's actually addressing himself to the complete or total number of Christian churches in the entire world until the end of time. Likewise, the Lamb's seven horns. What do they symbolize? They symbolize his complete power, that is the Lamb's complete power or omnipotence. Furthermore, the Lamb's seven eyes, now you don't really think that that's what it looks like in heaven, right? That you got a lamb with seven horns or seven eyes, no. The Lamb's seven eyes symbolize his complete knowledge. his omniscience. He knows everything. Nothing escapes his notice. And therefore, we must not interpret, listen, we must not interpret these symbols in a literal manner. because obviously their intended meaning isn't to refer to a grotesque looking lamb with seven horns and seven eyes and so forth. And yet there are other times when the number seven can be literally interpreted. such as in Revelation 1.11, which refers to the seven churches to whom John wrote this letter. It says, look at it, right? What you see in the book and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus and all the different churches. Well, there's the difference. Sometimes we define it literally because we have license from scripture to do so. Other times we would never do that, such as the seven horns or the seven eyes of the lamb. And then on your next page, I believe you have a, just something for your own personal study. symbolism in the Book of Revelation from the Old Testament. The Book of Revelation is literally steeped with imagery from the Old Testament. The chart below is a small sampling of more than 400 references and allusions in Revelation taken from various Old Testament books. It is on the basis of these scripture references that we must interpret the apocalypse. Let me conclude by telling you a story about a very famous theologian who was known to be one of the greatest Hebrew scholars in America in the early 1800s and he was called to a very prestigious position at a leading seminary in America And when he came, the students knew he was coming, and they knew of his accolades, and they gathered around him one day in some kind of a campus area, and they asked him, they said, sir, would you please, his name was Moses, Moses Stewart, Moses Stewart, would you please teach us the book of Revelation? And he said, I'll answer your question tomorrow. And the next day, he came again, and there were three times the number of students this time. Will you please teach us the book of Revelation? And he said, yes. Oh, they were so excited, and a few of them were clapping, and he said, yes, I'll teach you the book of Revelation in 10 years, 10 years from now. and everybody got quiet and they thought, oh no, what's coming next? He said, I believe it will take me judiciously 10 years to study that book, to be able to responsibly show you where all of the allusions, all of the reference points come from in the Old Testament scriptures from the apocalyptic literature of the Old Testament. I think it was a 10-year project for me to do it. And 10 years later, he did it. And he wrote a very famous commentary, a very thick one. I wish I had it myself. I only have parts of it. And it is a magnificent production. This brief list given to you here is from William Hendrickson, who was a great New Testament scholar. in a book called More Than Conquerors, which was a commentary on the book of Revelation. Well, this is, I know a lot of material to go over in a very short compass of time, but I trust in some small way it might be helpful and useful to all of us to know how to read and to interpret the book of Revelation.