He's not going to have any problem with just shouting out and saying, Hosanna, Lord! Hey, this chapter is going to be closed. God is going to close the chapter on sin. And He's going to close the chapter on this age that we live in and Christ is going to return. It's going to happen. He just said, I'm not telling you when. You've got a job to do. Go out, He said, and take the gospel out. That's what He's given us to do is a job. And he says, just watch for me, just be looking. We're going to start a study this morning, a study that I had been looking forward to for a long time. And it's the first message of the book of Revelation. And there are 22 chapters in the last book of the Bible, 22 chapters in Revelation. And that translates into probably at least the next two years that we'll be here looking at the gods of Apocalypse. the apocalypse of the things that he's going to do in this world. The day is coming when the God of this universe is going to invade the world. Now, here's what that means for you and me, and this is the ethical implication of Revelation. The God of this universe is coming to this world, so you better be ready. Everything that we study in the Bible should have an ethical implication for us. In other words, the ethical implication is kind of like the, so what? We teach something about the person and work of God. Then we say, so what does that mean for me? Here's what it means. It means that you should be living for him. You should be waiting for him. This is what doctrine should do, is it should give us more faithfulness in our own life. You see, Jesus is coming back. And it's not going to be like it was the first time. When Jesus came 2,000 years ago, He came to offer God's kingdom to the people of Israel. He brought the offer of the kingdom, but we know what happened. He was betrayed by the hands of godless men. The nation rejected Him, and He was murdered. John MacArthur just recently put out a book. It's called The Murder of Jesus. The Murder of Jesus. And that is exactly what happened. The Lord of this universe was murdered by the hands of godless men. But it had to happen! The Bible says that it had to happen because Jesus had to be sacrificed for sin. And when people tried to stop him from that end, like Peter did when Peter said, No, Lord, this will never happen to you. Jesus said, Get thee behind me, Satan, because you're not putting your thoughts upon men's thoughts, but you're not putting your thoughts upon God's thoughts, but upon men's thoughts. Jesus had to die. It had to be that way. But you see, when He came, He was bringing an offer to Israel. He brought an offer of the Kingdom. He was the Lamb of God, though, who had to take away the sin of the world, and so He had to die for sin. It had to happen the way it did. It had to happen that way. He had to be the Lamb of God to take away the sin of the world. The Bible says that Jesus is coming back again, only this time it's going to be different. Because when He comes, In glory, he is not going to be a lamb who is slaughtered, but he is going to be a lion, a ferocious lion. He is not going to be a meek and humble servant, but the Bible says he is going to come as a conquering warrior. He's coming as a conquering warrior. He's coming back and he's going to smash through the forehead of every foe who opposes him. Now you see, this is not a message that people really like to hear sometimes. Unbelievers particularly don't like to hear the message of the fact that God is going to bring a judgment upon this world. But in Numbers chapter 24 verse 17, Balaam Balaam said, as he looked out into the ages, he said, I see him, but not now. I behold him, but not near. A star shall come forth from Jacob, and a scepter shall arise from Israel. And it says that he will crush through the forehead of Moab and tear down all the sons of Sheth. Referring to some of the neighboring nations that were very hostile against God's people. And what it says is that when Christ comes to bring God's kingdom, that He is going to crush through every enemy. It's a very harsh message, and you know what? It should not give us joy to see that men will be judged in their sin. I don't think it would give any compassionate Christian the joy to know that a person is dying in disbelief. It doesn't give us joy. But what does give us joy is that we have a God of justice. We have a God who is holy and righteous, and He's not going to let the evil keep going as it is today. He can't let it keep going the way it is today. But you see, people don't want this to happen. The unsaved world does not really rejoice in the fact that God is going to come in and invade this world again. As a matter of fact, I took an article out of World Magazine a couple days ago. It's called, Just the Facts, Please. And what it is about, it's about the evolutionary debate that is happening, especially in Kansas. You know, in the state of Kansas, they said that we are not going to make evolutionary, macroevolution a part of the testing criterion. for our students in our public schools. Because they said it simply cannot be supported from scientific evidence. And so we shouldn't demand that it be a part of the testing criterion. What's interesting is the reaction that is coming from the educational institutions and the society against the Kansas School, Kansas Board of Education. One of the things that they said, and I thought this was very curious here. Now, what I'm getting to is this. It's the way that people just want to shut God out of this world, you know? They want to shut God out and say, God, we don't want anything to do with you, and we don't want you invading our world. Scientists, as they look at this issue of the evolution, they supposedly follow the evidence wherever it leads, and religionists are supposedly blind to the evidence by faith commitments. But the fight, really, this article says, is faith versus facts. However, the faith that gets in the way is the facts of the faith of the Darwinists themselves. One of the guys who wrote something in January 9th, 1996, in a book called The New York Review of Books, who was a Harvard biologist by the name of Richard Lewontin, and he said that he is a materialist, meaning that basically you deny the supernatural and you just believe in the natural realm. He said that he is a materialist, Not because of the facts, but despite of them. And even while admitting that the patent absurdity of some of the theories that come from evolution, he says, we cannot allow a divine foot in the door. Why do we teach evolution? Well, it's not because the facts support it, because we don't want to let the divine foot in the door. We don't want God invading our thinking. So we prefer to believe a lie. rather than acknowledge God. You see, the world doesn't want God to invade this world. Another individual wrote over here, Kansas State University immunologist, Scott Todd, struck precisely the same note. In a letter published September 30th in the issue of Nature Magazine, he declared, quote, even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic. In other words, We know that what we're believing is really going against the evidence, but we're going to keep believing it because we don't want to acknowledge the fact that there is a divine being, there's a God in heaven, who owns this universe, and who designed this universe, and who created this universe, and who's going to come back and take it back one day. Listen, this is what the book of Revelation is all about. The God of this universe is going to invade this world. And He's going to come and He's going to take it back. In Psalm 2 it says, Why do the nations rage? King David, the time of the Davidic dynasty. Why do the nations rage and all the heathen together plot a vain thing against the Lord and His Anointed One? They say, let us tear their fetters from us and let us tear their bonds away. God says, I've got my King. I have installed my King upon Zion, my holy mountain. You see, Jesus is going to come back, and from Zion, from Jerusalem, Christ is going to take and He is going to establish God's Kingdom on this earth. on this very earth. Do you believe that? I do. The Bible says that Jesus is going to come back and he's going to bring God's kingdom to this earth. But man does not want this to happen. The unsaved man does not want this to happen. Well, this morning we're going to begin our study of Revelation by considering four basic points of introduction which are very crucial for this book. Very, very crucial for this book because of the presuppositions that so many people bring to the book of Revelation. presuppositions that really lead them into an erroneous view of what the book is saying. And what we're going to see here as we begin studying this book is that God has a message. He's got a message for mankind. God wants men to know certain things. If He did not want us to know, He would not have given us a book to tell us about it. In Revelation 1, verse 1, it says, The revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave Him to show His bondservants the what? the things which must shortly take place. God's purpose for giving us this book is to show us the things that are going to take place very shortly. He wants us to know certain things about the future. He hasn't told us everything. And that's okay. God doesn't have to tell us everything. If He didn't reveal something to us, it belongs to Him. We don't need to know it. But God has given us this book so that we can know His plan for this world. In the book of Revelation, this is what God is doing. God is showing us Now, there are four things that I want to consider today, and the first one is the author of this book. There are two main views in terms of who wrote the book of Revelation. One of them is the historical view of the church, it is that it is John the Apostle. And then there is another view, that there was another individual who wrote. Okay, let's talk for a minute about the author. There are two good reasons for believing that John, the apostle of Jesus Christ, was the author of this book. Two good reasons. Number one, it's the claim of the book itself. If you go down here in chapter 1, you see in verse 1, that it says, it's the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him, to show to his bondservants the things which must shortly take place. And he sent and communicated it by his angel to his doulos, his bondservant, John. Who wrote it? John. Very simple. Chapter 1, verse 4. John to the seven churches. You go down to chapter 1, verse 9. I, John. Notice he says, Your brother and fellow partaker in the tribulation and kingdom and perseverance which are in Jesus. John, he says. Now you notice how John identifies himself. In verse 1, he says that I am his doulos. The word means bondservant, a slave. I'm the slave of Jesus Christ. You notice down here in verse 9 that he says, I am your fellow partaker in the tribulation that belongs to Jesus. I'm right alongside you guys. He says, I am your brother. Now it's kind of interesting that John does not lay heavy claims of authority when he writes. It's not as though he says, you know, I am John. You remember me, the one back in the gospel that was the one that Jesus loved? I'm the one that was with Jesus for three and a half years. I'm the one that took care of his mother. He doesn't build some type of a big case to say that, you know, I am the apostle. Matter of fact, he comes at it from really the opposite end of the spectrum. And he says, I'm your brother. I'm just a fellow servant along with all of the other saints. I'm a fellow servant of yours. Now, the reason why this is significant is because if somebody wants to claim that there was a different person other than John the Apostle writing, it seems unusual that John would simply say, Hey, I'm your fellow brother. I'm your servant of Jesus Christ. And that there was not this large attempt to establish some kind of authority for the writing. All he says is, that I'm just your fellow bondservant. He wasn't trying to usurp any kind of authority. He was not trying to establish a claim. And he writes it in such a way that you would recognize who it is right away. In other words, he doesn't say, you know, I'm John, the one that did this and this and this. He just says, John. Now, you know, when you can just mention your name and people know who you are, you're pretty famous, you know? Like, I'm Elvis. People know who you're saying, right? Right away. John just says, I'm John. And it would be very unusual if there was some other person who wrote this book that they would not try to build up the case in terms of who they are. So what I'm saying is this, is that there is good reason to believe that John the Apostle, from the book itself, there is good reason to believe that John the Apostle was the author. Some people have raised an objection and said, well, John doesn't say that it was coming from him as an apostle. Well, there's a good explanation for that as well. And it is in the fact that the Book of Revelation lays its claim for canonicity upon the fact that it is a prophetic writing. It is prophetic scripture. Numerous times in the book you find this. In chapter 1 in verse 9, chapter 2 verse 1, chapter 2 verses 8 and 12 and 18 and 20, chapter 3, chapter 10, chapter 19, chapter 22, you've got seven mentions of this issue of prophecy. Whether you're talking about the verb or the noun, prophecy is a very, very significant element to this book. And so, when Paul writes sometimes, he says, I'm writing to you as an apostle. In the book of Revelation, John does not appeal to his apostleship as the basis, though he was indeed an apostle, but what he does is he appeals to the fact that this is genuine prophecy. And one of the reasons why this was becoming significant, apparently, is because of the fact that by the end of the first century, when you had all of the apostles dying out, John was the last apostle to live, is that you had a growing movement of false prophecy that was arising in the church. In 1 John 4, in verse 1, John says, Do not believe every spirit, beloved, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false what? Many false prophets have gone out into the world. And what you had in the latter part of the first century was a proliferation of false prophets. And what God does when he speaks through John, is God says, this is in fact true prophecy. It is not false prophecy. So the claim for authority is its propheticity. And by the way, every book of the Bible is prophetic in nature in the sense that it comes from the Spirit of God. But we have good reason from the Bible itself to believe that John was the author. And there's a second good reason that we can accept the apostolic authorship of this book, and it is this. We have extremely good evidence from the early church, from early Christians, that John the Apostle wrote this book. As a matter of fact, we have more evidence For Johannine authorship, this was written by the Apostle John, we have more evidence for this book than any other book of the New Testament. And it's early evidence. Now, this is very, very good for us to look at Revelation itself, but it's also a very, very helpful thing for us when we look at the way that people attack the Word of God. You know, some people come along, maybe you've heard somebody say this when you talk to them and they say, well, you can't believe the Bible. It wasn't written for, until decades or maybe centuries after Jesus. Has anybody ever said that to you? And try to, you know, attack the Bible and say, well, you know, it came along a long time after Jesus. Ain't true. Ain't true, my friend. That is not true. This book, the New Testament, was written within a year or two, written in between the years 45 and 95 AD. There's about a 50-year gap, a 50-year window when you had every book of that New Testament written. And there is very strong evidence that it was completed by the end of the first century. And we see some of these evidences in the early Christians. For example, Justin Martyr was an early Christian. He lived from about the year 100 to 150. A.D. 100 to 150. Now when these guys talk about the fact that John wrote Revelation, You know, they're not trying to prove some kind of case, like if the Bible was being attacked today and we were trying to support the Bible. It's not as though these guys were trying to make something up. They were simply, in a matter-of-fact way, saying, here's what happened. And so, as we look at these early Christian testimonies, it shows us we have a Bible that was written exactly like God said it was. It is genuine. Listen to what Justin Martyr says. Justin Martyr was one of the earliest of all church fathers. He wrote this roughly about 135 AD, which was only about 40 years after John died. He has a book that is called Dialogue with Trifo. Trifo was somebody that was contesting Christian claims, was rejecting the faith. In this book, Justin Martyr says, There was a certain man with us, whose name was John, one of the apostles of Christ, who prophesied by a revelation that was made to him, that those who believed in our Christ would dwell a thousand years in Jerusalem, and that thereafter the eternal resurrection and judgment of all men would likewise take place. You know what he says right here? He says, John wrote this book. It was the Apostle John. John tells us that there is going to be a 1,000 year kingdom on this very earth. Extremely strong evidence that John wrote this book. And by the way, it tells us something else as well, doesn't it? It tells us that the early Christians were pre-millennial in their theology. The early church very clearly believed that you cannot have a kingdom until you have a king. You are not going to have God's kingdom until you have God's king. You are not going to have the rule of God on this earth until Jesus comes and establishes it. Now, you know that there are a lot of people today who are amillennial in their theology, not premillennial, but amillennial. A premillennialist believes that Jesus has to return premillennium, or before the thousand-year kingdom, because he establishes it. An amillennialist would say, well, there is no thousand-year kingdom. We're just living in the kingdom right now and it's just a long time period. That was not the view of the early church. Justin Martyr makes it extremely clear right here that the early Christian church was distinctly premillennial, believing that Christ is the one who establishes God's kingdom. Another early testimony for the apostolic authorship is from a source called the Apocryphon of John. Now, this writing was not a Christian writing, it was actually a Gnostic writing, but it comes from about the year 135, and it also attributes the authorship to John, who was the brother of James, the son of Zebedee. Another early source comes from a guy by the name of Irenaeus. Irenaeus, R-I-E-N-A-E-U-S. Irenaeus lived in the second century. He died in 202. He was a very prominent early Christian, and he quoted numerous times from the book of Revelation. Irenaeus claimed that the book was written by John, and he says, John also, the Lord's disciple, whom beholding the sacerdotal and glorious event of his kingdom, says in the Apocalypse, that's the word Apokalipsis, first word in the Greek Bible here that means revelation. The Apocalypse, or Greek Apokalipsis, In another section Irenaeus said, If anyone will devote close attention to those things which are stated by the prophets with regard to the time of the end, and those which John, the disciple of the Lord, saw in the Apocalypse, he will find that the nations are to receive the same plagues universally as Egypt did particularly in the past. Again, what we see is this. We see that John the Apostle wrote this book, and they believe that it is a literal prediction, a literal prophecy for this world. In other words, he says right here, you know these judgments that the Bible talks about? These aren't just figurative kinds of things. This is not just some kind of spiritual warfare happening in the angelic realm. He says those nations of the world are going to receive every one of the plagues that this book predicts. It's literal interpretation. This is the principle of literal interpretation. Now the significance of Irenaeus is the fact that he was a native from the town called Smyrna. Smyrna was one of the seven churches that you find mentioned in Revelation chapters 2 and 3. Smyrna was one of the seven churches to whom a copy of this book was sent when God gave it to John. He came from the very town. Furthermore, Irenaeus had been a disciple of a guy whose name was Polycarp. Polycarp was the Bishop of Smyrna. And Polycarp himself had been a disciple of, guess who? The Apostle John. Do you think these guys had any kind of proper understanding of the book when the one who discipled you was John himself? They were pre-millennial in their theology and there was no question, there was no attacks against who wrote this book. Another illustration of historical source comes from Clement of Alexandria in the mid-2nd century. In his book, Who is the Rich Man That Shall Be Saved?, he said that this book was written by John the Apostle, the one who had been exiled on the island of Patmos. And Tertullian from the mid-2nd century, who died in 220, he said, We confess that a kingdom is promised to us upon the earth, although before heaven, only in another state of existence in as much as it will be after the resurrection for a thousand years in the divinely built city of Jerusalem let down from heaven these guys believed in a literal kingdom now the reason why I say all these things to you and give you all of this and there's more you can look at origin who was a mid-third century scholar origin was very brilliant Unfortunately, he had some bad approaches to scripture, but he was a brilliant man. He supported the apostolic authorship of this book. But the reason why I tell you these things, and I want to give you this information, is because the biggest problem that comes when you approach the book of Revelation is a foundational kind of error. And what people do is they will try to deny the apostolic authorship to try to minimize its authority. They will try to attack the authorship because they want to propose a different kind of meaning for the book. And they come up with different ways of interpreting the book of Revelation. And many times what happens is the starting place is to attack the authorship. Well, the other view that people have suggested is that it was not John the Apostle that wrote, but a guy by the name of John the Elder. John the Presbyterus. Now, there are two reasons why this view became something that was suggested. And the first view is basically a theological presupposition. A theological presupposition. There was a guy by the name of Dionysius of Alexandria. Dionysius from Alexandria, Egypt. Dionysius was an overseer. He was an elder in the Alexandrian church, which was a strong center for early Christianity. And Dionysius was the first person that we have any record of who attacked the apostolic authorship. He was the overseer in Alexandria from 247 to 254, and Dionysius had been a disciple and a pupil of guess who? Origen. Origen, this guy that I mentioned just a minute ago, Origen is the father of what we would call the allegorical approach to Bible interpretation. In other words, Origen said, oh, well, when we look at these things that the Bible talks about in terms of prophecy, that's not supposed to be understood literally. It's just an allegory. It's just kind of telling a story by using all types of imagery. Origen really was the father of this allegorical movement. He's not the one to invent allegoricalism, but he really, in terms of the Christian church, is the father of the allegorical school of interpretation and the allegorical movement. Well, Dionysius had been one of his pupils. And Dionysius, like his father Origen, rejected, and I say father, I mean in a spiritual sense, Dionysius rejected, on an a priori basis, he rejected an earthly kingdom to Israel. You see, what you have is you have a theological presupposition that was driving their viewpoint. Because Dionysius says, no, no, Jesus isn't going to return to this earth. That would be unspiritual. Jesus isn't going to establish a kingdom with its capital in Jerusalem. That would be unspiritual. Jesus is the true vine. Jesus is the true fulfillment. And so, we're talking about a spiritual kingdom. And what you have is you have the error of Greek philosophy that tried to make a dichotomy between the spiritual and the material, or the material and the physical world, the physical and the spiritual. In Greek thinking, it was often taught that creation was a mistake. In Gnostic kinds of philosophies, it was taught that the material world is corrupted and the spiritual world is good. Therefore, it was untenable for an earthly kingdom because they said that that just wouldn't be consistent with what we think is good. Well, you have to remember something. There is nothing unspiritual about a physical realm. There is nothing unspiritual about tangible, material things. What makes it bad is sin. and the corruption that comes from sin, but there is nothing inherently wrong with a material kingdom here on this present earth. But these guys rejected that idea because it went against their preconceived theology. And what he did is Dionysius concocted a theory that there was another John in Ephesus called John the Elder and that it was this other John that wrote the book. And what he wanted to do is he wanted to discredit the authorship of the book so that he could discredit the message of the book. He was really discounting the authorship because he wanted to teach his theology. He didn't believe that an earthly kingdom could come. And so what he did is he taught his views very forcefully. Another reason why he really had an axe to grind is because a short time before this there had been a Christian pastor down in Egypt by the name of Nepos, N-E-P-O-S. Nepos had written a book that was disputing these views. It was called The Reputation of the Allegorists. And what Nepos did is he wrote a book to say, these people who are practicing allegorical interpretation of the Bible are wrong. And he refuted their views. Dionysius got very upset because that was an attack against his mentor, Origen. And so what he did is he very vehemently went against the long-standing tradition to say that John was not the author. Well, what we have here is a case of eisegesis. Eisegesis means that you put a meaning into the text that is not there. It's not exegesis where you try to bring the meaning out, but you're putting a meaning in. And so this whole thing, what happened as a result is that the influence of Dionysius ended up influencing another guy by the name of Eusebius. who was an early historian of the Christian Church Eusebius picked up on this mentality that John wasn't the author and that you should not interpret the Bible literally and what happened is there was a growing movement within the early Christian Church that began to reject the idea that there's going to be an earthly kingdom in Jerusalem well, you know, hostility was there was a fair amount of hostility against the Jews at that time as well A lot of the Roman world didn't like the Jews and they despised them and so it was really untenable for them to think that God would bring the kingdom back to Israel. They saw Israel as being cut off from God's plan. Now what ended up happening is that a guy came along by the name of Augustine or Augustine. in the fifth century, fourth century, fifth century. And Augustine came along and he wrote some very, very influential writings. And Augustine was a brilliant man. But Augustine was influenced by these amillennial viewpoints. And through the writings of Augustine and through his influence, it basically cemented in stone the idea that there is no thousand-year kingdom. And that became the dominant view of Catholicism, and it still is to this very day. The Roman Church became entrenched in the idea that there is no future kingdom. And the people who have followed in their footsteps still hold the same view. You can look at Roman Catholicism today. You can even look at some of the Protestant movements that came out of Catholicism in the 16th century that never went beyond some of these views. You can look at the Presbyterian Church that is all-millennial, generally speaking. Why are they all-millennial? Well, it's because the Roman Catholic Church was all-millennial. Why is the Catholic Church all-millennial? Because of Augustine. Why is Augustine? Because of Eusebius and because of Origen and Dionysius. But you see, this wasn't the view of the early church. The early church, very distinctly, was pre-millennial and we can even show that they believed in the pre-tribulation rapture. But what ended up happening is that you believe the lie long enough and it becomes the truth, you know? Like so many other things. And so, this was kind of the historical outworking of these things. Well, another reason why people have tried to deny the apostolic authorship and say that it was somebody else's, they will say, well, Revelation is so much different than the Gospel of John. After all, the Gospel of John talks about love. Revelation talks about God's wrath. That's true. Revelation does tend to talk about judgment, but you know why? Because you're dealing with different subject matter. In the Gospel of John, John says, Behold the Lamb of God! You see, God did not send His Son into the world the first time to condemn the world, but that the world should be what? Saved through Him. And so you're dealing with different issues. In the Gospel of John, you're dealing with Christ coming as the humble, meek servant who will die as the Lamb of God. Revelation, though, we see the other picture. We see Christ coming as the conquering warrior. And so you're dealing with different subject material to begin with. But there is an error in this thinking. And one of the errors is to ignore the fact that there is, in fact, a tremendous similarity between Revelation and John's other writings. Revelation and John both talk about the Lamb, uses the term the Lamb. It uses the expression the Word to refer to Jesus Christ. There's no other book that does that. It calls him the Word. You have the word testimony that is common in both books. Here's another interesting one as well. Remember back in Zechariah chapter 12, where it says in chapter 12 verse 10, God says, They will look upon me whom they pierced. Remember that prophecy? Zechariah chapter 12 verse 10. They will look upon me whom they pierced. In the Gospel of John, when John quotes this verse, in John 19.37, he uses a particular Greek word to translate the verb pierce. Ekanteo is the verb. John uses that same verb here in Revelation chapter 1 verse 7, ekanteo, to pierce. Now the significance of it is that John uses this verb ekanteo, but when you look at the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint, it uses a different word. It's very interesting that both the Gospel and Revelation use a different verb than the Greek version of the Old Testament, which would certainly lend further weight to the fact that it was the same author between the Gospel and the book of Revelation. In any case, if we look at a summary of Dionysius and his views, here's what we can say. He had weak evidence. There really was not good evidence to support it. He was going against all of the testimony of 150 years of Christian tradition when he did so. And really what it was, it was driven by a theological presupposition. John the Apostle was the author. He wrote this, our second point is the date of this prophecy. There's two main views. One view would say that John wrote it in about the year 95. The other view is that he wrote it sometime around the mid-60s of maybe about like 65, 66 AD. The early churches always believed that it was written in the mid-90s, about the year 95. And there are several reasons why we can support this. First of all, it agrees with the historical evidence of John himself. John himself continued to live in Palestine after the death of Christ. He continued to live, actually, in Jerusalem for quite a few years. What happened, though, in the mid-60s, in the year 66, the Jewish wars broke out against Rome. And when these wars broke out, the persecutions intensified against all the Jews. And John, and many other Christians, moved out of Jerusalem. And John moved to the city of Ephesus in Asia Minor. And when he moved, he took along the mother of Jesus, whom Jesus had put into his care. And John moved and he took Mary and he moved up to Ephesus and he continued to live in Ephesus for the rest of his life. Now the difficult thing is, if you say that John wrote this book in the mid-60s, it's very hard to see how John could have such an impact in his ministry in that short of time that he would become exiled. Because that's what happened, the book says, is that he was exiled for his testimony of Jesus. And it's just unthinkable that John could have that kind of an impact in a matter of only less than a year or two. A second form of evidence that helps us to see that the date should be about 95 is the fact that John was exiled on Patmos. And the one who sent him on to exile on this island would be like sending somebody out to Catalina, a barren island. Patmos was just off of the coast of Asia Minor, out from Ephesus. is that the one who sent him into exile was the Roman Emperor Domitian. Domitian. Irenaeus, again from the second century, he says, we will not, however, incur the risk of pronouncing positively as to the name of the Antichrist. He's talking here about why they wouldn't try to speculate on who the Antichrist is. But what he does say is, he says, the revelation was seen not very long time since, but almost in our day, towards the end of Domitian's reign. Irenaeus said that this book came near the end of Domitian's reign, and Domitian died in the year 95. Furthermore, under Nero, when you have the persecutions break out under Nero, there were persecutions, but they were more localized in the city of Rome. They were not widespread throughout the kingdom. But by the time you get to the end of the second century, the persecutions had become very widespread. And under Domitian, they were very, very intense. Another fact of evidence that points to a later date is the declining condition of the churches. Who was still alive and ministering in the mid-60s in Asia Minor? Paul. Until the early and mid-60s, Paul was still alive. And you see churches like Ephesus and you see churches like Colossae where there were strong churches in that area. When you come to Revelation and you see the letters to the seven churches, what you find is that the churches are going into a period of decay, and there's a decline in the nature of the churches. Well, this is very, very hard to reconcile if you're saying that John wrote this book in the mid-60s, because everything else that we see shows that the churches were very strong and healthy at that point. Another point that suggests a later date is the heresies that had arisen. John writes, for example, about a group called the Nicolaitans. The Nicolaitans. And John mentions the Nicolaitans in chapter 3, but he doesn't really elaborate upon it. He just mentions them because it was such a well-known heresy that had come into the church. Well, Paul never says anything about that in any of his writings. But it was so well-known in John's day that John could mention it and everybody knew. Furthermore, there is other historical data. Like the fact that when he writes to the city of Laodicea in chapter 3, in Laodicea he says, you are rich in Revelation 3. Guess what? If you go back to the mid-60s, they had just gone through a devastating earthquake and wiped out the city. The city was totally, totally wiped out. And it took many, many, many years for them to rebuild that city. But in Revelation chapter 3, he says, you're rich and you don't need anything. So the church had come, the city rather, had rebuilt its city. Well, I give you these facts for a reason. The reason why is because there are people around today who want to argue for a date of about mid-60s, 65-66 in the time of the Neronian persecutions. But there's a theological motive behind it. What they want to do is they want to argue for an early date to Revelation because they don't want it to be a prophecy for the future. Now, something very big happened in the year 70. Do you remember what it was? Rome came in and Rome wiped out Israel. Rome destroyed Jerusalem. Rome destroyed the Temple. Rome burned the city. Rome crucified over a million Jews. Wiped out Jerusalem. The people who argue for an early date are wanting to argue for a date before the destruction of Jerusalem because they want to say that revelation was fulfilled when Jerusalem got destroyed by Rome. They want to totally take it out of the futuristic realm, and they want to say that it was fulfilled in the year 70. They say that's the return of Jesus. Wait a minute, you can't do that. Jesus didn't come back 1900 years ago. None of these things that Revelation talks about were fulfilled in the first century. See, but there's a theological motive that is driving their method of interpretation. By the way, some of the names that you would see, some of the movements that would be associated with that kind of thinking are Reconstructionism, where they want to reconstruct the Old Testament law in today's economy. Theonomy is another name that describes these movements. Another one is called Dominion Theology. Post-Millennialism, that doesn't believe that Jesus comes to establish the Millennial Kingdom. But that we, the church, establish the kingdom. And after we establish the kingdom, and do that, and clean up the world for a thousand years, then Jesus comes back post-millennium, after the millennium. In other words, it's all based on what we do. Bad theology, beloved. Bad theology. And it's driven, really, by pre-supposition, not by the text itself. And there are people today, like Gary North, not the one that was in the military, huh? Oliver North, yeah, Gary North. That was Ollie, okay. Ollie's a good guy. Gary North is one of the names associated with this movement. David Chilton, Kenneth Gentry, who has written a revelation commentary. I think Pat Robertson's kind of in this camp. And that's why these guys are so militant in their political movements, because they believe that we have to establish the kingdom. That's why they fight so militantly, is because they think it's our job to do it. Guess what? The Bible doesn't say that we clean up the world. The Bible says that Jesus does it. I'm glad we don't have to depend upon ourselves because we don't do a very good job at it. We've got two world wars in the last century to prove it, by the way. Now there is a third point I want to make note of very quickly. It's the interpretational methods that have been suggested for the book. There are four basic approaches to Revelation. One of them is called the Preterist approach. A Preterist approach says that it's already fulfilled. In other words, the year 70 was the fulfillment of the book. A preterist approach says that the book is already fulfilled. One of the problems of that, though, is that Revelation claims to be a prophecy about the future, and the things that happened in AD 70 don't match what Revelation says. It didn't happen. A second approach is the historicist approach that says that that says that you have this sweep of church history all the way from the first century and you just kind of have this sweep of church history all the way to the end and so Revelation is really talking about a battle between the ages, so to speak. The problem is though, is that it means that you have to change from literal hermeneutics to allegorical approach. Another approach is the idealist approach that would say that Revelation is there just kind of to show us this battle between good and evil. Another problem is that it's just an allegorical handling of the Word of God. Now, have you ever heard of groups like, you know, in South America you have the Sandinistas down in Nicaragua and a lot of these movements where people are trying to overthrow, you know, regimes and overthrow empires. They will use an idealist approach to Revelation and they will come and they will say, well, that's talking about us. This is talking about us. And so we're going to overthrow the powers. And people come along and they use Revelation for those purposes. and it's not uncommon. The fourth approach, and I believe it is the only sustainable method, is the futuristic approach to the Bible, which says that this book is a prophecy, which is what Revelation says it is. It's a method of interpretation that allows us to use the same method of interpretation that we do for every other book in the Bible. literal, grammatical, historical hermeneutics. We approach the Bible in a literal meaning. We take it to mean what it says, unless there is some contextual reason why we look for a figurative meaning. Now, the Bible does use figures of speech. The Bible does use symbolism. Revelation of its 404 verses, 278 of them come from the Old Testament. 278 of the 404 verses of Revelation are allusions to the Old Testament. So there is heavy symbolism, that symbolism comes out of the Old Testament, and the symbolism is pointing to concrete realities. It's not symbolism pointing to symbolism, it's pointing to literal truth. You see, a literal approach to the Bible, by the way, if you look here in verse 1, you see when it says that he sent these things to John, and he communicated it, New American Standard says communicated it, it's the verb semino, which means to signify, or to use a sign. So the book does use symbolism, but guess what? There's concrete truth that is behind it, and that's very, very crucial, because the people who come up with all kinds of crazy ideas about what Revelation means, Well, one of the main errors is that they begin by not using literal, grammatical, historical hermeneutics. They come at it to mean a figurative or allegorical kind of story. And if we're handling the Bible that way, guess what? You can make the Bible say anything you want it to.