25: World News & Prophecy – Introduction to Revelation

[Darris McNeely] Good morning, everyone, and everyone online watching these series of classes. Today we are beginning the book of Revelation. We finished the book of Daniel, and we're ready to do a deep dive into what some might call the book of books. Revelation, the last book of the Bible, last book of the New Testament, and another book on prophecy—and rather deep and interesting. Some say mysterious. Some say unable to understand—the book of Revelation.

But I think by the time we get through with the text and go through it here in the next series of classes, I think you will find that there is much that we can understand about the book of Revelation. Especially as it is kind of a capstone of all of Bible prophecy, encompassing not only aspects of the book of Daniel, but also Ezekiel, Zechariah, and other of the prophets—all allusions and quotes and images from so many of the other prophets—and it’s put together in the book of Revelation.

It’s kind of a capstone of not only prophecy but really of God’s revelation and of God’s overall intent and purpose for mankind and for human life on this planet, as we will see.

And in spite of many misinterpretations and private interpretations, people throwing up their hands and saying it can’t be understood, I think we will see that this is a book that can be understood in many ways, while at the same time retaining a bit of mystery in that there are things that we likely will be surprised about. I’ve always said that about the book of Revelation and other aspects of prophecy—that we may look back after the return of Jesus Christ and it’s all been unfolded and say, Oh, that’s what You meant. While we, in our best efforts to understand, can come to certain conclusions, always be humble enough to be willing to admit that we don’t know. We may see only in an unclear fashion. And even where we think we may be dogmatically certain about certain things, we are yet to find that there are things to understand—perhaps this side of the Second Coming, perhaps after the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

I want to make a personal comment here. The book of Revelation is one of the first books of the Bible that I can remember being led through in a Bible study when I was a young man in the church. It must have been about age 15 or so—maybe 16—when, in the congregation I attended back in Missouri, our pastor took us through the book of Revelation, verse by verse, over a period of several weeks on the Wednesday night Bible studies that we used to have at that time in person, all gathered there.

It was in the days before Zoom, before the internet—before paper. No, it wasn’t that far back. But we actually physically went to Bible study, and we all gathered on a Wednesday night. I think in those days, about every Wednesday night, we had a Bible study.

So in the Wednesday night Bible studies that we were doing back in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, where I grew up, we knew about the beast. We didn’t have this nice full-color graphic at that particular time. So our pastor handed out plain sheets of white typing paper, and we drew the beast as we went through Revelation—heads and horns and images and everything like that. And for years, I had that. I kept that with me. I thought, this is a prize. I never put it on my mom’s refrigerator, but I did carry it in my Bible and carried it with me around for a while and had that.

And then somewhere along the line, it disappeared and just got lost. Probably realized it wasn’t all that great a piece of art that someday was going to be worth a lot of money. But the point is, I learned about Revelation at a very early age as one of our initial Bible studies.

And so it’s always fascinated me. I’ve studied it, preached it off and on through the years. I will admit that in my early years in the ministry, I didn’t preach a lot of prophecy nor out of the book of Revelation. You’re raising kids, you’re dealing with a lot of other issues in your congregations that don’t necessarily pertain to the book of Revelation and prophecy. But about 30 years ago, I kind of rekindled that interest and began going back into the book of Revelation, Daniel, and other prophecies—especially in the beginning days of the United Church of God—as we were rebuilding not only our doctrinal base of understanding, but also our prophetic understanding of the Bible.

And by that time, I was in my late 40s and the children were grown and I had more time to kind of devote to it and rekindled that interest, as well as did the church. And we have rebuilt that in our booklets: The Book of Revelation Unveiled booklet and Middle Eastern Bible Prophecy and other booklets that we have on that particular topic. And we have rebuilt that.

In regard to Revelation, I want to make another comment here for the sake of you as students, but also those of you that will be watching this over the coming months and perhaps years into the future. We’re taping this for the ABC class this year to be distributed on our website to all of our people, our members, and anyone else that is interested in the topic. And I recognize there’s a bit of danger in that—going into the book of Revelation in particular.

Book of Daniel was a piece of cake as far as I was concerned. But Revelation is a little bit different because everybody’s got an idea about some aspect of the book of Revelation. Who are the 144,000? The two witnesses of Revelation 11—who are they?

We’ve had people come into our midst through the years claiming—they walk in off the street to our offices—claiming to be the two witnesses. Well, you know, we usually usher those people right back out the door with very little ceremony. I even heard a few days ago that a paper was presented to our doctrinal committee postulating that there was one witness, not two. And I never saw the details of that particular idea. But if you read Revelation 11—which we will—it’s very clear that God has two witnesses that appear at the time of the end.

But sometimes people—somebody—came up with the idea that there was only one witness. My point is, Revelation has many different adherents and ideas. And I have been mailed papers, booklets, treatises on the book of Revelation by well-meaning people through the years—each with their own different idea about how what it is saying should be interpreted, what it means for the church and the world and predictions and everything else. And so that’s just par for the course.

So to lay this down for the class and also taping it for posterity, I fully recognize that I will probably be getting some emails and some comments. And that’s fine. I’m willing—you know, that’s part of the package in that.

But I will tell you, as I did with starting our study of Daniel—we will read what the text says. We will look at the interpretations that have been generally held by many different groups of people. Particularly in the book of Revelation, it has myriad numbers of interpretations. I’ll mention some of those as we go through. I will always tell you how we have understood it, and what we in the Church of God...

And I have to be careful, and be honest, that, you know, I may tell you that back in the days of the Radio / Worldwide Church of God, this was an understanding. But in the United Church of God today, we may have a slightly different understanding. But I will present those to you and show you why there may be more than one way to understand a particular section, or why we have, in a sense, adapted a view of particular aspects of the Scriptures in light of events—current not only world events but also church events.

But I’ll lay all that out so that we will understand. But always we will look at what the text says and what the Bible says and be honest with that. And at the end of the discussion and the classes, we’ll have an understanding—a better understanding. I will admit, I learn something new every time I go through the book of Revelation. Your eyes fall upon a verse, and you read it a little differently, or you study in comparison with other Scriptures, and it brings out something else. And so there’s always a great deal to learn in that way.

I wanted to also say regarding this, that about 25 years ago when the manuscript for the booklet The Book of Revelation Unveiled had been written and was being reviewed by the doctrinal committee of the Council of Elders and the prophecy subcommittee of the Council of Elders—at that time I was on the prophecy subcommittee. I was not on the doctrine committee because I was not a member of the Council of Elders at that moment. But we went thoroughly through this manuscript and other biblical topics—the 70 Weeks Prophecy being another one—and other aspects of our prophetic teaching. And we had many, many meetings, conferences—many conferences—for our working group to go through a lot of things.

And I still have a lot of the papers and ideas that were presented. I’ve kept those files. I brought in one here this morning. This was a multi-page comment on the Book of Revelation manuscript—this one right here—by a number of the reviewers on those committees as we worked through it. And it’s very instructive for me to go back 25 years ago to some of our documents and look at how we were looking at it.

But I mention that so that everybody understands that we take very carefully and seriously our doctrinal teachings, but also our prophetic understandings of the Bible prophecies in the Church. And we were careful then—and are careful today—to maintain our traditional teachings, but also, especially in prophecy, if a traditional teaching was a bit dated because of events. And I can demonstrate that going back into the 1940s or even late 1930s, that sometimes events and time influenced certain writings. But you have to alter that if the teaching—and/or prediction, if I can use that term—wasn’t quite right or didn’t come out that way.

That’s not... it’s just a fact. And so those are things that we have to be careful about. And I’ve mentioned this before, but we have striven—particularly in our media efforts and writing about these topics, prophetic topics, world events—to be balanced, to be accurate, biblically accurate, but to also be balanced and responsible with the Bible and what it says in regard to that, as we have presented our media proclamation efforts in the Church based on Bible prophecy.

So there’s a lot to think about. And again, while I would welcome reasoned comments and input, if there are some comments and inputs that people have based on their particular interpretation of prophecy that are kind of way out there—usually, I would say that I probably have seen it, gone through that idea, and either personally or, sometimes, even in our committee work, we’ve rejected those ideas. So just be aware of that as we go.

Let’s get into a little bit of background to the book of Revelation more specifically. I want to bring up a slide here that contrasts where we are with the book of Daniel and Revelation. We concluded our studies in Daniel 12, and you will recall that in verse 9 of Daniel 12, Daniel is told, “Go your way, Daniel, for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end” (Daniel 12:9). And Daniel then died.

And yet he had writings—his book—that had a great deal of information, visions, and interpretations. And as we pointed out, as we look back on the times of Daniel and the book of Daniel today, we have more understanding than he did because of the flow of history—i.e. the Roman Empire, for instance. He didn’t live during the time of the Roman Empire, and yet his visions pointed to that. But we now look back 2,000 years from the time of the Roman Empire, and we can lay that into that understanding.

Yet there are other aspects of Daniel that we may continue to see through in a dark way. And God said this to Daniel. But as we open the book of Revelation, we find in the first verse of the first chapter—and the first few verses there—that it is “the Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants—things which must shortly take place” (Revelation 1:1).

And so now we see a bit of a difference here. There’s an opening. There is a revelation. Keep in mind that when something is revealed, it is opened up. You reveal the contents of a package by opening it up, taking the wrapping off, or whatever, and there it is. It’s revealed—what’s inside.

With the book of Revelation, the very name Revelation—which comes from the Greek word apocalypse or apokalupsis—is the Greek term here, which means a revealing. The very nature of the book is meant, then, to give understanding—or to reveal understanding. And going into it with that approach helps us realize that God wants this to be brought down to us.

I have a reference here to Revelation 5:1–5. You can turn in your Bibles and we’ll read that. But this also helps us to understand the book and the purpose here.

“And I saw in the right hand of Him who sat on the throne a scroll written inside and on the back, sealed with seven seals” (Revelation 5:1). John writes this. He said it was a scroll—held by Him who sat on the throne, a reference to the Father. Fantastic image—the throne of God, the Father holding a document, a scroll, sealed with seven seals.

What that would be—that’s different from a book like this that we’re used to in terms of Scripture. This would have been a scroll that would have been rolled out. But with seven seals binding or closing seven sections of that large scroll, you would have to unloose one of them at the beginning to unroll it to a certain point. There’d be another seal, and then that would have to be removed to unroll the scroll further. And typically, you’d be looking at that on a kind of bigger type of table and rolling it out there to where there was room to do that.

And each of these seals had to be opened—or released—in order to read what was in there.

He goes on. He says, “I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, ‘Who is worthy to open the scroll and to loose its seals?’” (Revelation 5:2). So it would take a worthy individual to do that. “And no one in heaven or on the earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look at it” (Revelation 5:3). “But one of the elders said to me, ‘Do not weep. Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has prevailed to open the scroll and to loose its seven seals’” (Revelation 5:5).

This is a reference to Christ. It’s the only place in the Bible where Christ is referred to as the Lion of the tribe of Judah. Just a bit of an aside there. But that’s the responsibility that He has.

While things were not fully revealed to Daniel in his visions, we now see that we may fall—at least in a large grouping—among those that God calls the wise at the time of the end who are able to have a further understanding of these prophecies, while not a complete and perfect understanding. But what understanding we have here comes because Christ is the One who unlocks the meaning of the symbols, the visions, and the descriptions.

And so, keeping that in mind, it is important to help us appreciate exactly what is in front of us here. And it helps us to put our minds and our eyes on Christ. One of the things that—if you take nothing else away from the book of Revelation—if the images, the beasts, and the heads, and the horns confuse you or just seem like Greek or whatever, take away the fact that you will have a better vision about Jesus Christ if nothing else. That can be done. And in fact, I would say that would be the most important thing to have. Walk away with a better view and relationship and understanding—or should I say view, understanding, and relationship—with Jesus Christ, which ultimately is the goal of the whole Bible in that sense. And as we develop that relationship with Him as our Savior—and the Father.

But that’s all over the book of Revelation here. And so keep that in mind as another significant point.

I want to transition for a moment to some of the historical and differing views about Revelation and prophecy as a whole. Recall that when we were in the book of Daniel, we talked about this idea of premillennialism, post-millennialism, and amillennialism. I won’t spend a lot of time on all of those. But premillennialism is the idea that Christ returns and then the millennium is established—peace and order and goodwill upon the earth—and the messianic promises come to their full bloom.

Post-millennialism is the idea that the church, in a sense, through its gospel preaching efforts—and this would include all of the Christian churches of the world—the church in a sense creates the conditions of the millennium and then Christ comes back. That’s kind of a rough view of post-millennialism. In other words, the millennium comes first through the efforts of the church, and then Christ comes back.

And then amillennialism is that prophecy and Revelation—Daniel in particular—is metaphorical, symbolic only, and not literal. And there’s a difference. The millennium is just a nice idea of world peace rather than a literal 1,000 years. That’s what amillennialism is.

Laying that over the book of Revelation—from the time of the first and late first and then certainly the second century—as people, commentators, church fathers, commented on, wrote about the book of Revelation down into our modern age—it’s quite instructive. Opening introductory chapters of any commentary on the book of Revelation—a modern commentary—will kind of lay this out.

But from the time of the second century, essentially, ideas that are still with us began to develop about the book of Revelation. They believed that it was written by John—the Apostle John. They looked at it as the book that kind of was the seal—and again, the capstone—of the biblical Revelation and included in the canon of the Bible.

However, what we are looking at in those ideas and those writings are some that are still with us today. By the time we come down to the fourth and the fifth century AD—the writings of people like Augustine—the book of Revelation and the literalism is taken out, and it is spiritualized away. And we have those ideas still with us today, because Augustine was a very influential writer.

When we come into the modern era of history, we find that people through the ages had varying interests in prophecy. When we come into the 1700s–1800s, especially with some of the religious awakenings and spiritual revivals that were occurring both in England and in the United States of America, focus on the book of Revelation took a very literalist view. As people looked at the book of Revelation and began to put together prophecies from Daniel—a timeline into Revelation—predictions of when Christ might return.

One of the more famous episodes is in the 1840s in the United States when a man named William Miller, a Bible student and minister—I believe he may have been with the Baptists at that time—William Miller put together scriptures from Daniel and Revelation, came up with the idea that Christ would return about 1844–1845. He came up with a couple of specific dates—both of which failed. And that, in religious history of part of the American experience, is what’s called the Great Disappointment. And his movement kind of collapsed.

Anytime you make predictions about Christ’s return as to a date, time, and hour—that doesn’t happen. You can do that once, twice, three times—in most cases. Some people keep going on and on with it, I recognize. But eventually your following is going to dissipate. That happened with William Miller.

But one famous, well-known adherent to William Miller was a woman named Ellen G. White. And Ellen G. White repackaged a lot of his ideas. And she came up with what we know today as the Seventh-day Adventist Church. You’ve heard of the Seventh-day Adventists. Ellen G. White is kind of the—shall I call her a prophetess or a guru or the leading spiritual founder of SDA. Ellen G. White started the Adventist Church. But her interpretation of Revelation and some of these—what really did happen—is unique, and it’s not what we believe as well.

Then came the Jehovah’s Witnesses. A man named Charles—I believe Charles Taze Russell—came up with certain ideas in the early 1900s. He founded the Jehovah’s Witness Church. They had predictions about the events surrounding 1914. And I won’t go into how they came up with 1914, but they looked at 1914 as a date when something big would happen—Christ’s possible return. That didn’t happen. But Jehovah’s Witnesses are still a going concern. They’re all over the world.

And on and on and on—even down into more recent times with the Left Behind series that popularized the rapture teaching. Even though the rapture is not mentioned in the book of Revelation, still the book centers on a lot of those particular ideas.

As we look at the book of Revelation—interpreting it from a post-millennial, pre-millennial, or amillennial idea—largely, we are pre-millennial. But I think there are a few distinctions that I want to lay down for us to appreciate and to understand with this that I think are important as we look at the book of Revelation. And we look at it, and we come up with what I again go back to as the received prophetic narrative—RPN—the storyline that we have as we look at Daniel and Revelation regarding world history, end-time prophecy, and beyond.

That received prophetic narrative for us has a few distinctives that I think help us to come to an understanding. And I think it is through a revelation of God to focus on these things, and it helps to open up an understanding of this.

The first one I’m going to talk about is the rise of false Christianity. The rise of false Christianity. When understanding how, in the beginning of the late first century AD and then into the succeeding centuries, a different Christianity develops within the world—and what we read about in the book of Acts as the Church that Christ founded with the twelve apostles leading out on—goes into change. Things change. The Church itself—the true Church of God—doesn’t change, but false teaching comes in.

First in Rome, probably in the late first century, they moved from keeping the seventh-day Sabbath to Sunday. That’s big. We can document that from history. And then other doctrines begin to be altered—Holy Days, the idea even about the millennium, etc. And a different Christianity arises.

Christ said that would happen. He said, “Many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many” (Matthew 24:5). Representing Christ. Preaching Christ’s message. But it’s a false Christianity. We see that. You can document that through the historical record beginning in those periods and growing as Christianity takes on a different color.

And what we read about in the New Testament with the Church of God then largely disappears from history—from, let’s say, the recorded history that we have. We can find scraps, bits, and pieces. That’s another part of the story. But what emerges in history is a different church. And understanding that—especially as that church becomes wedded to the Roman model...

First, it becomes the official religion of the Roman Empire under Constantine in the early 4th century. And then it becomes the dominant religion or power that, wedded to the state, does some very interesting things. We touched a little bit on that as we were studying the Trinity teaching. But that story can be shown as well. And that church grows in power and influence and size through the West, throughout—from Rome and into Europe and other parts of the world. But it’s a different church. And as it is wedded with this temporal power of what then is the Holy Roman Empire, we see revivals of that that fit into the understanding about the book of Revelation.

And as we look at that, we recognize that what springs out of the 1st century and the context of the writing of the book of Revelation, there’s a distinction. And we can clearly see that. As we look at what we believe in the Church of God—Sabbath, Holy Days, the distinctive teachings that we have, our fundamental beliefs and teachings and understanding of the Bible—we look at that as the truth of God. And that helps us to see clearly God, His purpose and His plan, His Church, who and what we are as human beings, and many other aspects of truth.

But we see the distinctions, which is why we come down to this time of year and we’re not putting up our green Christmas trees and our lights as a celebration of the birth of Christ or anything like that. This is a very important distinction. We’re able to go back to the 1st century and see then that as we read the book of Revelation, particularly the messages in chapters 2 and 3 to the Church—given in the midst of the Roman Empire, at the height of the Roman Empire, really—John is exiled on the island of Patmos when he writes or receives the Revelation.

And he’s a victim of the Roman Empire. He’s exiled. He’s kind of under arrest and put off on this island. And the Church is going through a time of persecution. And we understand that. We also see that at that time there’s a parting of the ways with the Church’s roots in Judaism. Because they are put out of the synagogues. We’ll read that in the messages to the churches.

What’s clearly going on there is that the Church—where they once had kind of an entrée into the synagogue—and we’ll see that when you read the book of Acts, we see that Paul goes into a synagogue to preach on the Sabbath. But by the end of the 1st century, that’s not possible. It would not be possible for you or I to have gone into a synagogue. The antagonism between, let’s say, the Christ-followers—Church of God—and those that were adhering to Judaism, the gulf would have been so big that there’s a divide. That’s called the parting of the ways by historians. And we recognize that impact there. And we see the rise of a different church.

And we look at the messages in Revelation 2 and 3, and we see that those messages are to the Church then and now—to help the Church understand the times in which they live, then and now. And that there cannot be any compromise—then or now—with sin, with idolatry, as we’ll see. That we have to repent. To every one of those churches, the message is to repent and to overcome. We have to overcome the world and keep our eyes on Christ and His reward. And we understand that.

And contrasting that with the false church and the system of the revived Roman systems that creates a whole different scenario, we then can look at the book of Revelation and then gain an understanding of what that harlot is in Revelation 17, and the two beasts of Revelation 13, and piece it together from history—a broad outline at the very least, some detail as well in other areas—we can understand then that mark of the beast in chapter 13. So important to the book of Revelation. And that gives us understanding.

There’s another distinction as well—of understanding—that is the key to Revelation. And that is the identity of Israel within the Abrahamic promises. We all know that Israel was the nation that God made a covenant with. But the tribes of Israel sprung from twelve sons of Jacob, whose name was Israel. Remember, Jacob had his name changed from Jacob to Israel. When Jacob was dying, he put his name upon the sons of Joseph—Ephraim and Manasseh—made certain predictions about them. And the promises that God began making to Abraham—of a seed and of blessing—are made and kept within Israel through the Bible and through history, all the way to the end.

And in fact, we see that in the book of Revelation as well. The name of Israel is all over the book of Revelation. We just read Revelation 5 where Christ is called “the Lion of the tribe of Judah” (Revelation 5:5). Judah being one of the tribes of Israel. He’s called “the Lion of Judah.” There’s a—God’s telling us something.

In chapter 7 of Revelation, we read of a group of people—a grouping—called the 144,000. And we will read and study that. That is composed of 12,000 people sealed out of each of the twelve tribes of Israel, and they’re listed there. We’ll talk about that.

And so the 144,000 of Revelation 7 has a very clear definition—relation with Israel. When we come to Revelation 21, at the end of the book, the heavenly Jerusalem that comes down out of heaven—on the gates of the New Jerusalem are the names of the tribes of Israel (Revelation 21:12). Israel is all over the book of Revelation.

And it’s understanding who Israel is, was, and is in the modern times—that is another important key to understanding the book of Revelation. And I think that helps us to get a leg up on others and to see the book of Revelation from a unique perspective—because God’s going to wrap up all the various elements of His purpose, including His purpose for Israel.

We know from other prophecies that in the millennium, the nations are going to go up to Jerusalem to learn of the God of Jacob—Isaiah 2 tells us that, right? “The God of Jacob”—Jacob or the God of Israel. And so God hasn’t lost Israel. God has not abandoned Israel.

Romans tells us that—chapter 11 of Romans particularly. Revelation shows us how God’s going to wrap together all the elements of His purpose with Israel—that unique instrument on the human level that will then ultimately lead to the fulfillment of His purpose for all mankind.

And so the identity of Israel within the Abrahamic promises is another aspect and another part of that. I want to give one more key here. And this is perhaps—you know, this is as important as the others—but it’s a bit... well, let me just explain it here.

We all know God is eternal. He’s always existed. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). Lived and died, and returned to spirit as the resurrected Christ and as our High Priest. We understand the family of God, how it is. But God dwells in eternity.

When we get into Revelation, from the very first chapter, John is fixed upon the image of the resurrected Christ. He comes face to face with Him—the resurrected Christ. He sees Him in His glory. Now John is given a unique vision. I don’t know what kept him from turning all of his hair white, probably—but maybe it had already been white—maybe—or falling out. I mean, I would have been blown... I would be blown away with what he envisioned, what he saw.

He sees the resurrected Christ. That would have been toned down a bit so that he could have lived through that encounter. But the point is, he’s seeing into eternity. Christ dwells in eternity. The Father, in chapters 4 and 5 of Revelation—He’s taken up to a vision of the throne of God. We’ll talk about that. And Christ unveils all of this. We’re seeing this. He’s seeing it. He’s relating it from the perspective of God in eternity.

And I think that’s an important thing as we read the book of Revelation—to keep in mind—to view the scenes of Revelation from God’s perspective rather than just ours. Yes, plagues will be poured out upon the earth—literal plagues. But let’s look at the timing of that. Let’s look at the unveiling of that from God’s perspective. God sees it all from eternity.

And here’s—let me put it another way. If you and I were to have—to see the same vision that John saw of Jesus—we’ll see it in chapter 1—it would be the same. Why? Because “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). He lives in eternity. And what John saw in the mid-90s AD, we would see today, because it’s the same. God—there’s no time with God. That’s an important thing to remember.

And so with what we obtain from Christ in this Revelation from the Father, let’s look at it from eternity rather than only the linear perspective, okay? With a timeline. You know, students of prophecy love their timelines, all right? To get to that time of the return of Christ, right? We all like timelines.

But there is a timeline in God’s plan and purpose. But let’s look at this also from a perspective of eternity and understand that we have to look at it in a multi-dimensional way. Rather than just a linear way, let’s begin to look at it perhaps in a multi-dimensional way, okay?

And I think that doing so can keep us from making some assumptions that may not be true about any number of scenes that we will see, and seeking to understand exactly what is taking place here. Yes, there is an end point—chapter 19—the return of Christ. That’s an end point. But all that leads up to it—let’s look at it from a multi-dimensional perspective.

And keep that in mind as we go through, because I find that looking at certain scenes in the book of Revelation from that point of view keeps us honest—and peeking into eternity—rather than trying to fit it all into a box, in a neat little chart, you know, 8½ by 11 size where everything fits.

And I’ve got my charts. I’ve got files full of charts that have been devised by people, and even the Church, etc. But sometimes it’s good to put the chart down and think in eternal terms.

Those three points, I think, help us to appreciate that. So let’s keep that in mind as we delve into the book of Revelation. Our next class, we will get into chapter one and start working our way through this.