Introductory notes for Revelation Bible Study:
We have decided to resume our 7:30 pm Wednesday Bible Study at Sion Baptist. Do join us if you can. If you cannot, then we will try to provide some notes to help you study at home. We have decided to take the plunge by embarking upon a study of the Book of Revelation. Our first study is simple. Read the book of Revelation at one sitting; or, if you have access to an on-line bible, listen to it being read. On average it will take about an hour. Read and listen to it as if for the first time. Enjoy it.
Imagine you selected a large novel from the shelves of a book store, opened it for the first time but turned to and read the final chapter. You just wouldn’t do it! The book of Revelation is the last chapter of a novel called “The Bible”. The Bible consists of sixty-six books which are like chapters in a story about Jesus. That story starts with Creation and the Fall; then it moves through history, introducing characters and describing events that explain God’s plan of redemption. In the final chapter (Revelation), all the loose ends are wrapped up and the story comes to a climactic conclusion.
“It is unthinkable to believe that God would speak with precision and clarity from Genesis to Jude, and then when it comes to the end abandon all precision and clarity.”(MacArthur, John). It is not God’s intention to train us how to read and understand 65 books of the Bible and then, inexplicably, in the 66th book expect us to adopt an entirely different approach. Our God isn’t a God of confusion. He is the God of order, so we should approach this book with an expectation that we can and will understand it. Many people avoid it to their detriment. It would be a shame not to know how the story ends and what it means. The early Church was inundated with false teaching – especially with teaching regarding the return of Jesus. Today’s church is guilty of the same thing.
The guidelines we want to follow in interpreting Revelation come from the best interpreters and scholars who have learned that that the teachings of the bible are internally consistent. “The Golden Rule says that when the plain (historical, literal) sense of the text makes common sense, we seek no other sense. So, take each word at its ordinary, usual meaning unless the text itself tells us to do otherwise. Symbols are always interpreted by Scripture itself. We never need to guess at the meaning of important symbols because the answers are in the Bible somewhere. Imagery and symbols are there in earlier books of the Bible. We don’t need to go searching for mysterious meanings when the plain meaning makes sense unless the context tells us to do otherwise. First, we look for the symbol’s meaning in the immediate passage, and most often that’s where the answer is found; we go backwards in the book to find the answer. And, if we don’t find an interpretation in the same book, we go backwards in the canon of Scripture to find it (S. Armstrong, Verse-by-Verse Ministry).”
We have to let our fingers do the walking! Reading and studying the book will force us to take a much closer look at many other parts of the Bible. That will mean we are better bible students and so have a better relationship with the Lord. If there are things we don’t understand at first reading? Well, we make a note of these and pray for inspiration. Often God will enlighten us in his own good time. Remember the old adage: “The New Testament is in the Old concealed; the Old Testament is in the New revealed.”
Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near (Revelation 1: 3).
That is just the first beatitude or blessing promised in the book of Revelation.
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