A Study Of The Book Of Revelation
Lesson No. 1: Introduction

Date: March 5^th, 2003, Wednesday Evening Adult Bible Class
Speaker: John Phillis
Note: Much of the information for this Study of Revelation was taken from the book “Revelation Through First Century Glasses” by W. B. West. Other sources: “The Living Word, Study of Revelation, Parts I & II” by Dr. Frank Pack; “Revelation” by Jim McGuiggan; “Commentary on Revelation” by Homer Hailey; “Commentary on Revelation” by Burton Coffman; “The Book of Revelation – Spiritual Sword Lectureship, October 18 – 22, 1998”; “Commentary on Revelation” by Howard Winters; “Revelation for Christians Today” by Lonnie Woodruff; “Unlocking Revelation” by J. Stafford North.

Revelation, chapter 1, beginning with verse 1: “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants—things which must shortly take place. And He sent and signified it by His angel to His servant John,who bore witness to the Word of God, and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, to all things that he saw. Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the Words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written in it; for the time is near.”

I ask you to consider for a moment about what crosses your mind when you think of the book of Revelation. Is it a book that you know a great deal about? Is it one that you read and consider often? Or is it a book that you perhaps sort of shy away from? Well, consider the irony of the point that the very book that many people think is quite confusing—that is surrounded with much misunderstanding and even controversy—is called “The Revelation.” There’s a certain irony in at, isn’t there?

The very term itself, this word that we use in English, “revelation,” is a form of the Latin equivalent of the Greek word “apocalypsis.” It has been commonly defined, and understood to mean an “unveiling.” In other words, “revelation” is the very opposite of some sort of dark concealment. It is an “apocalypsis,” or an “unveiling.” I heard one man who was teaching in Revelation one time equate it to an “uncovering.” He said that it is as if we are given an opportunity to uncover and look inside of something, or to “unveil” something—to “peer” into it. It is not too pompous or acting too smart, or whatever, to suggest that we can understand Revelation. We can know what is there! It’s not something that we should “keep at arms length,” or that we should shy away from. As a matter of fact, several writers, whom I have read, point out that it is a contradiction for us to resist Revelation when, in fact, God has provided it to us through His Holy Spirit, through His Son, and it was given to us to be understood! And, there is also a blessing. This is the only book in the New Testament—in fact, in all of the Bible—where there is a specific blessing associated with reading it and with obeying it. We’ll look at that in just a moment.

“Apocalypsis”(revelation) is also termed in this way: like the “pulling back of a curtain” on something that is “unknown.” I read what I thought was an interesting anecdotal [anecdote: short, entertaining account of some event] story about such a thing used to illustrate this idea of “pulling back the curtain.” In W. B. West’s book on Revelation [Through First Century Glasses], he mentioned a time when he was preaching for a church in Los Angeles, the Central church, many years ago. He said he was in his office one Wednesday afternoon, and all of a sudden a policeman came to the door of his office and said that a fellow had robbed a bank up the street and was seen coming into the Central church’s building. So they were going to search the building to see where this bank robber might be. Brother West allowed that he sort of stood there and watched, and he could see the policeman approaching the pulpit area. He said there was a big, heavy, blue curtain that covered the baptistery. The policeman apparently stood there and sort of crept up on that curtain and he grabbed it and sort of jumped into it, and he got wet clear up to his shoulders because he had jumped into the baptistery. Brother West said that was an “unveiling”—an “unveiling of the curtain”—something that the policeman didn’t know about, and didn’t know was there. That is an interesting idea, as we think about the “unveiling” or the “pulling back of a curtain.”

Indeed, Revelation is a Divine Message. It was divinely given by God. What a cruel and capricious God we would have if He were to give us something that we could not comprehend or understand! Along with all the other books of the Bible, it is a vital message. It is a timely message in that is was greatly needed in its original day, and it was written for that day, no doubt. But it still has much application for us in this present day. The message that is contained in Revelation is one that will continue to be needed as long as time stands, because the message of Revelation is truly timeless.

The first line that we read, Revelation, chapter 1, verse 1, is: “The Revelation of Jesus Christ,” as it was told to Him by God, and then as He conveyed it to an angel. Now, it is the direct revelation from God. It is not the revelation of John, as we hear it referred to often. The message, by inspiration, came through Jesus Christ. It was given to John and it was his duty—his responsibility—to then record it, and to record it, of course, accurately. But John cannot be considered the author, unlike perhaps as we consider Paul the author of Ephesians, or Colossians, or Galatians, where the message was revealed to him, his hand was guided, and his mind was guided as he authored those. In this particular case, as we understand from verse 1, these words came from Jesus. All John needed to do was to record them. John was directed to “write” “what you see in a book,” Revelation 1, verse 11 [“saying, ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last,’ and, ‘What you see, write in a book and send it to the seven churches which are in Asia: to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamos, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.’”]. A great deal of discussion has been given concerning the author of the book of Revelation, but all such references to John being the author must be understood in sort of an “accommodative mode”—to accommodate the fact that he was the chosen servant. He was the one whom God chose to simply record the Message that came from God, through His Son.

We all know, and it goes without saying, that the book of Revelation is a unique book. Because of its uniqueness, it is perhaps more important to understand some of the background, to understand some of the things surrounding this book than maybe some of the other books, if not most of the other books in the Bible.

One of the things that makes Revelation unique is the type of writing—the writing style—that style being “apocalyptic” in its nature. There is a lot of misunderstanding about the book and, in many cases, that comes because of a misunderstanding of this apocalyptic language in which it is written. That’s also one of the reasons why so many resist, or don’t read or attempt to study Revelation. As readers, we may have a tendency to get lost in the symbols, and we feel that whatever message is there is an obscure one. Some would say it just simply cannot be understood and so why bother? Well, again, the book has a unique style, and it is one that we, in our generation have, and many generations before us had, no doubt, difficulty in understanding. So, it is misunderstood and it is neglected, but it is one book that we should study. We can and will understand it when we study it as we should.