Devotions with Dre Episode 33: Book of Revelation Part 13: An Overview

An overview of Revelation - what the heck are we reading?

It's "apocalyptic (revelatory) Jewish literature", just like Ezekiel and Daniel and such, which contains symbolic prophetic visions. Jewish apocalyptic literature often contained:

Sharp contrast between the current age and the age to come.

Ahocking or strange imagery.

Visions of heaven and angelic worship.

The Bible Project's two-part summary video of Revelation, which I'm pulling from today, and which I highly recommend you go watch for the visual aid, says the book reveals "a heavenly perspective on history, in light of its final outcome."

It also says "the book opens and closes as a circular letter to seven churches in the ancient Roman province of Asia."

And we know that many of the believers reading it would have been suffering persecution under the Roman Emperor of the time, Domitian.

Mitchell Reddish, in his book “Revelation” says: It “uses visions, symbols, and ancient myths to convey its message. The language of the book is primarily pictorial, symbolic language. It is not the language for science or logic. Rather it is evocative, powerful, emotive language, at times more akin to poetry than prose… the language of Rev ‘works’ not by imparting information, but by helping the reader experience what John experienced.”

Bible researcher Tyler Gilreath from Skywatch TV explains that this book is the pinnacle of all prophesy, and he calls it the most supernatural book in the Bible. In his interview on Strange Planet, he says “there’s a consistent theme in which the book is written. It is apocalyptic literature, but even more importantly than that, there is a template behind it… There is a way to approach the book through the Old Testament.” So Tyler Gilreath teaches that Revelation is a composite of a ton of OT scripture, and he describes it as “blender theology” that John the author uses when he describes the vision he sees. The better a person knows their Hebrew scriptures, the more they’re going to pick up on what John’s doing.

Another quote from Gilreath: “The snowy white hair, the eyes like fire, all those tings were said of YHWH in the OT and now they’re said of Jesus.” So there’s a big emphasis on the high position and indeed deity of Jesus throughout the book.

Pastor Tim Peck says, "I read the Bible as God's unified plan to redeem creation and create a people for Himself. The book of Revelation is an important part of this unified plan. Revelation is a precious gift, promising a blessing to all who hear it and take its message to heart - but it can also be confusing!

In it, we find images of dragons and beasts, fallen cities and flying locusts, stars falling from the sky and armies gathered for battle. Jesus is pictured as a Son of Man with woolly white hair (Revelation 1:12-18), a lion who is also a lamb (5:1-14), a child (12:1-11), a groom at a wedding (19:6-9), a temple (21:22-27), and a judge (22:12-13).

Some people avoid Revelation because they find these images frightening. Others avoid it because they find Revelation difficult to understand. The Sixteenth century Reformer John Calvin wrote commentaries on every book of the New Testament...except for Revelation.

However, other people can't seem to get enough of Revelation. This is especially true over the last 100 years here in the U.S. Today books about Revelation and end times are a multi-million-dollar industry."

There are four common ways that Christians have been interpreting the text over the last 2,000 yrs - you can check these out in the book Four Views on Revelation by Tate, and also in Scott McNight’s book on Revelation, but in summary they are: 1) It mostly describes the past (preterist), 2) it mostly describes the future (futurist) which has gotten more popular in the past 150 yrs - these are your one-world-government-is-coming peeps, 3) it describes a historic timeline where things like martin luther, catholicism, ww2 can all be read into it (historicist) and 4) it describes the past, present, and future (idealist view).

Here's Tim Peck again: "According to this fourth view, the symbols, images, and events in Revelation describe the Church's experience throughout history in every age and place. The events of Revelation not only correspond to specific historic events from the first century (which is how John's first readers would've understood them), but they also describe recurrent patterns that repeat themselves throughout history that will culminate in Christ's second coming.

For example, the Beast does describe the ancient Roman Empire (as the [preterist] view claims), but it also describes any government attempt to destroy the Church. Every generation of the Church potentially faces a "Beast," culminating in a final "Beast" before Jesus comes again.

This view leaves room for multiple fulfillments of prophecy, much like Daniel's prophecy about the "abomination that causes desolation" in Daniel 7:27 and 11:31 had more than one fulfillment.

This view seeks to take the best of the first and second views, without limiting itself exclusively to the past or future. This view treats the book of Revelation as relevant for Christians in every generation."

This last one is the view that I'm personally more familiar with.

Let's divide the book into sections. (There are many diff ways to divide up/outline/organize the book, these are just my section numbers that I'm making up for the sake of describing the chunks of scripture in an audio format).

Section 1 = the letters to the churches, where Jesus through John addresses problems like moral compromise, being persecuted, or apathy. each church was faced with a choice to stay faithful to Jesus or to join the spirit of the age which was idol worship and sinful roman culture. A reward is promised for the faithful conquerors/overcomers - a reward that will happen in the new creation, the marriage celebration of Christ and His Church, which ends up being described more thoroughly at the end of the book of Revelation.

Section 2 = A heavenly scene (chap 4-5 which we just studied) which is the throne room court scene, filled with worship and awe. (By the way I read Ezek 1 again and noticed an interesting difference - Ezek and the four living creatures are below the sea of glass or the crystal like surface. when John witnesses the same scene, he and the creatures seem to be nearer to the throne and above the crystal sea on level ground with it) ... the slain and resurrected lamb is found worthy to open the scroll - He's the one that's going to "guide history to its conclusion" Tim Mackie from Bible Project says.

What happens next, most Bible scholars will tell you, is not linear. John is likely writing about the same event from 3 different metaphoric viewpoints, so we're going to refer to them as three cycles. They have to do with God's perfectly just and correct judgement on the earth, and the three metaphors are seals, trumpets, and bowls. They all end in the same description of the final judgement.

The seals cycle is in chapter 6 through the first part of chapter 8. The trumpets cycle is the rest of chap 8 through chap 11. The cycle of bowls is in chapters 15 and 16. (inserted in chapters 12-14 is a bit of an aside about spiritual warfare on earth).

Section 3 = the Cycle of seals (6-8a)

As each seal is open we see descriptions of all the horrible things that our enemy causes on the earth - famine, war, death, martyred believers... then we see that the famous Day of the Lord is coming, and the slain resurrected lamb now has an army of believers with Him, who conquer by faithfulness as opposed to violence, it's quite beautiful.

Section 4 = the cycle of trumpets (8b-11)

At each trumpet blast, plagues are released, famine, war, death etc are released ... but the nations of the world largely still don’t repent. At the end of this section there's a pause in the action where John is told to eat the scroll, just like some OT prophets used to, and to prophesy and proclaim it out to the world.

He then sees a vision about believers suffering but the persecution cannot take their ultimate victory which is through the Lamb. He then sees a second vision about two witnesses, and then people around the globe finally repenting - not because of the day of the Lord "warning judgements" (as Tim Mackie calls them) but because of witnesses on the earth who proclaim the love of God even through their persecution and deaths.

Section 5 (chap 12-14) = John pauses the action and describes some signs (aka symbols, visions). They "explore the message of the open scroll in greater depth" (Mackie). There's a cosmic spiritual battle, described several ways with metaphors: beasts, marks, numbers, and lots of OT hyperlinks. The Lamb and His army sing a song of victory, aka the eternal gospel, which contains a call/invitation for anyone and everyone to come to God.

There's also a vision of a final justice grape harvest / grain harvest.

Section 6 = back in action with the cycle of bowls (15-16)

Divine Judgements, again, and the familiar theme of some repenting but some not. There's a battle at Armageddon (which is a plain in northern Israel where many battles were historically fought). The day of the Lord is poured out from the 7th bowl, where evil is defeated.

Then, as you'll see in the Bible Project video, the final three sections are expansions on specific themes. They're all about the kingdom coming, but from slightly different angles.

Section 7 = John expands on the theme of The Fall of Babylon (chapter 17 through the beginning of chapter 19).

This is where we see the dragon beast and the whore of Babylon. At the time of writing, the Roman empire was the latest iteration of "Babylon" which is the 'world system', the rebelliousness of worshiping idols and demons instead of YHWH. It's always happening in different forms, and it will, up until Jesus' return.

Section 8 = John expands on the theme of The Final Battle (chapter 19b through chapter 20).

John tells the account twice, with a picture of the vindication and 1,000-year reign/rule of the martyrs sandwiched in the middle. The Day of the Lord is happening in the form of a battle here (compared to being in the form of a fire or an earthquake or a harvest in previous chapters). We're hearkened back to the 6th bowl, and shown how Jesus brings justice all around.

Section 9 = John expands on the theme of The New Jerusalem (chapter 21-22).

There's a marriage celebration! God has arrived to live with humanity forever, and is making all things (heavens and earth) NEW. There's a new great harmonious city, and it doesn't need a temple bc God's presence is fully everywhere. At this point, we believing humans will partner with God in His rule and reign.


This should encourage the first readers, and every reader who follows the Lamb Jesus Christ, and help us stay faithful until our King returns.

(if you want a pdf of this outline i wrote, sign up on my email list and binley.band)

There are many other ways to break up/outline Revelation like I mentioned, and I want to give an honorable mention to Dr J Vernon McGee's even-more-zoomed-out outline on BlueLetterBible.org.

He describes it like this:

The PERSON Jesus

(Chap 1)

The POSSESSION of Jesus (which is the Church)

(Chap 2-3)

The PROGRAM of Jesus (the heavenly plan is unfolded)

(Chap 4-22 which is broken up into A) the Heavenly setting in chap 4-5, B) the great tribulation in the world chap 6-18, and C) the Marriage of the Lamb and return of Christ in judgement chap 19-22)

[re-read The Message Paraphrase's intro to Rev]

... So that's the book we're looking at, and next time we'll zoom back in and chapter 6 - see you there!