Session 3, Study in Revelations continues: Mark Lanier, 01/28/24

Revelation Lesson 3
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[00:00:00] If you've not been here before for this Revelation series, welcome. We are in class three, and, uh, uh, the third session, and you're here just in the nick of time. You come next week, it might have been too late to get into it. But you're here now, time to get into it. Um, we are in the middle of finishing up some construction, and during the week, I had a chance to, uh, meet with, uh, one of the Harris County fire marshals, a buddy named Matt, who's out trying to make sure that we pass inspection when the time comes on some of the housing construction for the church's residency program.

And in the process, he said, "Hey, I've started listening to your classes on Revelation." And I said, "Yeah." He says, "You've had [00:01:00] two." And I said, "Yeah." He says, "You haven't gotten to chapter one verse one yet." And I looked at him and I said, "Matt, you told me when we started our construction progress-- process, I couldn't put drywall on until you had checked the fire sprinklers."

He said, "Right." I said, "You gotta do the foundation work before you can cover it up." And I-- not that we're gonna cover anything up. We're gonna reveal things. But it got me thinking about class this morning, and I thought my metaphor for the way we're gonna approach class is construction work, because that's what we're doing.

We're building what we need to build to understand and work through and live in the book. So class this morning, three bricks we're gonna lay. First thing we're gonna do is we're gonna review some material. You say, "Dale Hearn's gonna email me, I hate review." Well, that's because you pay attention, but not [00:02:00] everybody does, and we always get new people.

And w- for you, Dale Hearn, who pay attention, I'll give some new examples so that the review itself is new review. And then after that, I wanna spend a little bit more time talking about the approach that we might use in looking at the Book of Revelation, and then we will read the first five verses, God willing, of Revelation chapter one and start to work.

So let's begin with a review. Our review points are pretty simple and succinct right now. Review point number one, and if you want more detail about this, go back on the internet and watch class one and class two. But review point number one, I want us thinking of the Bible as a library and not simply a book.

Remember, at the time the Bible was being written, it was just a collection of scrolls, [00:03:00] a collection of books. If you get to the point of Jesus and his ministry, Jesus referenced the idea of the Old Testament Jewish sacred writings in either two or three categories, depending upon, uh, where you find your passage in the Gospels.

I've pulled the three category out of Luke 24 because Jews today still divide their scriptures into three categories. The Tanakh, which is the Hebrew word for their scriptures, is an acronym from the T, Torah, N, Nevi'im, the prophets, and, uh, the Ketuvim, the K part, which are the other writings. Jesus had those same three divisions referencing in Luke 24 when he said, "These are my words that I spoke to you while I [00:04:00] was still with you-" Everything written about me in the Law of Moses, that's the Torah, the Prophets, the Nevi'im, and he calls the other writings the Psalms, which are the bulk of the other writings.

The other writings include, um, uh, uh, Song of Solomon. They include the Proverbs. They include the Book of Ruth. They include the Book of Daniel. But when you get to the Prophets, those are what we would typically call the Prophets, save Daniel, and they are also a lot of the history books, Kings and Chronicles, Joshua and Judges, things like that.

So those divisions existed, but it wasn't a whole Bible. It was a collection of scrolls. When Paul talks about them in Romans 3, Paul references, uh, uh, what the Jews have been entrusted with are the oracles, the logion, the oracles [00:05:00] of God, and, and these are the words of God. These are what God had to say. It, it doesn't take away from it being inspired to call them a collection of books.

It's a collection of inspired books, and that's what the Bible is. Now, by the time you get to, uh, uh, uh, Peter, and I've got the reference on this wrong. I've got it as Romans 3:1-2. Excuse me, this is Peter. But Peter, by the time... And this is, uh, probably written, if Peter wrote this in the early '60s, '61, '62, '63.

But some things in Paul's letters are hard to understand, he said. The ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction as they do the other scriptures, the other writings, the other s- uh, uh, scrolls, the other... So Paul's letters, they weren't scrolls. They were [00:06:00] letters in a sense, parchments probably, but even those are being referenced independently.

It's the Bible that gets put together by the church and the Holy Spirit in the process of early church history. So if we go back to the time of Revelation being written- We could have stumbled into a library in Alexandria, and it would've been a collection of scrolls by and large, and probably had filed loose parchments and other types of papers.

But you'd go and, and Alexandria, Egypt, I'm sure they had a lot of papyrus there as well. But you'd go and you'd find, and there would be a lot of different kinds of writings in antiquity. You'd find writings that are historical writings, just recording history. Uh, the, the Greeks had wonderful historians that kept history, uh, uh, or went after history and tried to write it up.

You'd find epics, stories of the big and the bold. You'd find [00:07:00] books that writes, uh, scrolls of poetry and, and papers of poetry. You'd find simple how-to manuals, the community rule scroll, the Dead Sea Scrolls, for an example. You'd find books that were books or scrolls on teaching. Uh, you'd find scrolls on law.

You'd find scrolls that would be wisdom scrolls or papers. You'd find collections even of songs. You would find a group of writings that we would call apocalyptic. That's the current academic word for a genre of writing that existed at the time Revelation was written and before and after. So the Bible, if we think of it as a library of books, we have a much better time understanding that the library of the Bible has all of those kinds of writings in it.

The Bible's got loaded. You'll find songs in there. You'll find wisdom [00:08:00] literature. You'll find historical literature. You'll find apocalyptic literature. You'll find, uh, uh, poetry. You'll find all sorts of wonderful writings. You'll find law. You'll find how-tos. You'll find all sorts of historical writings or, or, or genres of writing all in a, what is now one book.

But technically, if you got a Bible, you've got a library because that's what it is. Review point number two, I wanna talk about apocalyptic genre There are a group of writings that we appropriately or inappropriately, depending upon who you're talking to, call now apocalyptic. Some people don't like that term.

They don't like the term because it's been used in such a broad manner. They don't like the term because now when it's used among [00:09:00] laypeople, it just means the world's coming to an end. You know, something's apocalyptic, that, that means it's the end of the world as we know it, R.E.M., thank you. And, um, uh, that, that is not, uh, the way the word is used when talking about that genre, that type of writing that existed at the time of Revelation.

The closest thing we've really got to it is probably our, um, fantasy, uh, type literature. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings comes to mind. Chronicles of Narnia come to mind. Um, Harry Potter maybe a little bit. Sorry, you know, you may like Harry Potter more. Um, but that's just like, uh, that's Disney Tolkien. You know, that's just like lightweight.

You know, it's... You graduate and get to the real stuff. But that's coming from somebody who wears his hair in the '70s. Um-[00:10:00]

But the apocalyptic type of literature was a type that was popular in nu- a number of circles, and the first circle we looked at was the Jewish apocalyptic. And, uh, we have looked at a few of these. I didn't have time to go through all of them, but if you go to the last class, we looked at the Apocalypse of Baruch, we looked at 1 Enoch, we looked at 4 Ezra.

I don't remember if I touched 2 Enoch or 2 Ezra or not. I did not get to the Ascension of Isaiah or the Apocalypse of Abraham. We looked briefly at some of the various apocalyptic matters in the Dead Sea Scrolls. But there's this whole wealth of Jewish apocalyptic writing that came before the Book of Revelation.

Revelation wasn't some weirdo writing that just mysteriously appeared on the shores of the island of Patmos proceeding from John the Revelator in [00:11:00] 95 AD or whatever it may have been. Revelation was a type of literature that those people knew well when it came out Apocalyptic was not limited in Jewish circles.

There was also a good production of Christian apocalyptic material, even beyond the Book of Revelation. So you can go back and you can read the Apocalypse of Peter. You can read The Shepherd of Hermes. Now, this, a lot of peop- this one almost made it into the Bible And by that I mean they had-- the Holy Spirit o-oversaw these incredible councils where they tried to figure out exactly which scriptures had been inspired by the Holy Spirit that they merit a position in the holy scriptures, the Bible.

And, and in the debating process, there were [00:12:00] some people weighing and arguing really hard for the Shepherd to be in there. You've got inside the Bible itself some references to apocalyptic material in the Book of Jude, which is a little one-chapter book right before Revelation, the way the Bible's been put together now.

But in the Book of Jude, you've got in verses fourteen and fifteen a quotation that comes out of one of the apocalyptic, Jewish apocalyptic writings. You've got that quotation from First Enoch It is the passage that I've put up here. "It was about these that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied, saying, 'Behold, the Lord comes with ten thousands of his holy ones to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of their, [00:13:00] all their deeds of ungodliness that they've committed in such an ungodly way and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.'"

And he goes on to talk about them as grumblers, et cetera. So you've got that passage out of Jude 14 and 15, and you see then that even the Christian writers that are inspired knew and referenced other contemporary writings. Now, a lot of people are stunned over this and say, "The Bible quotes something that's not in the Bible that's a, a, an apo- a pseudepigrapha write?"

Now, look, Paul quotes Greek poets. There's nothing wrong with quoting things people know to make a good point. But within the framework of that, you've got a lot of people in the early church that were spending more time in the fake writings, the, these apocalyptic writings, [00:14:00] than they were in scripture sometimes.

So if you, if you read the book 1 Enoch, you start out reading-- I remember I got my first copy when I was 17 or 18 years old. I had seen in Charles Mickey's office a copy of-- Uh, it, it was put out, there was a two-volume set by Oxford. It weighed, like Capes was-- and I were talking about this last night. We think 45, 50 pounds at least.

It was a honking big book by R.H. Charles, one on the Apocrypha and one on the Pseudepigrapha. And this, this was the Pseudepigrapha were these early writings. And the first time I started reading 1 Enoch, I remember thinking, "Well, this is kind of boring," because what it starts out with is all of this history of the angels and, and their descendants and these genealogies and, and all of these myths about the angels, uh, stemming off of Genesis 6:1, the angels falling and, [00:15:00] and impregnating women and producing giants and all of this kind of stuff, and it goes into this lurid detail about all of it.

And a lot of people in the early church were spending more time with that than they were with the Bible. And it causes Paul, when he's writing to Titus, he says-- uh, gotta fix that reference. Titus 1:13 through 14 and 2:1. Look what Paul says. Paul says, "Rebuke them sharply that they may be sound in the faith, not devoting themselves to Jewish myths.

But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine." There were a lot of people who were spending time in the Jewish mythological works. These were the apocalyptic writings that were not biblical So if we think about the Bible as a collection of scrolls, and we think about these [00:16:00] different genres, then we realize that you've got Jewish apocalyptic, you've got Christian apocalyptic, but then you've also got biblical apocalyptic, because in the Bible there is this type of literature I mean, uh, the, the obvious places are two.

Daniel in the Old Testament, Revelation in the New Testament. But then you'll find portions that some people will say, "Well, that's apocalyptic. Well, that's apocalyptic." So you'll find a section in early Isaiah 24 through 27, later Isaiah 55 through 66, that some will say is apocalyptic. A good bit of Zechariah, a lot of people will say is apocalyptic.

You've got passages in Ezekiel that a lot of people will say apocalyptic because there's this whole genre. And, and you gotta remember, when you're reading something like Isaiah, uh, uh, I am about [00:17:00] 80% done with, uh, my ninth book. I've been working hard. I wrote on it this morning. And, um, what I do when I write a book, generally, not always, but I try, is I sit down, I get started on it, and I work till I'm done, and when I'm done, I'm finished.

I proofread it. I get friends to proofread it. I send it off. Back then, they didn't just keep it on their hard drive Back then they didn't just sit there and say, "Well, I'm gonna bang this book out." Isaiah, man, I got 60 some odd chapters. I gotta get this puppy done No, they, they're getting it in fits and starts, and sometimes they're remembering it, and sometimes they're dictating it to someone else, and sometimes they're making notes.

Jeremiah is put together from stuff he dictated to Baruch and, and stuff he put together, and it's, it's put together in 30 different forms because the visions and the prophecy words [00:18:00] and the-- these happen at different times in different stages. And so, uh, uh, you, you've got portions that can be apocalyptic, portions that won't be.

Review point number three. When we talk then about apocalyptic, we're talking about writings that have a certain set of traits. Um, it's the reason that, that we can say Harry Potter belongs to one genre of literature, whereas Zane Grey westerns or Harlequin romance belong to another genre. You know? And, and you don't expect to read Harlequin romance, um, which I've never read, but Dale Hearn reads-- swears by them.

And, um, you don't e-- I'm joking. It's not Dale, it's Brent Johnson. You, uh, you, you, you don't expect to read the same type of literature in one place or another. [00:19:00] So there are certain traits that make you think this is apocalyptic. One of the main traits is symbolism, especially animals. I won't go into much detail.

We talked about this a lot last week. Some people automatically get a rash under their collar, especially in a, in an evangelical church, when we talk about reading the Bible symbolically. Well, don't get a rash. Some of it's symbolic. And the clearest example that I can give you is Psalm 139:13, "You knitted me together in my mother's womb."

It's not a reference to God using knitting needles in utero. It's a reference to the delicate work that God's done in making us who we are today. It's just a s- a, a metaphor. It's a symbol of that. We see the symbols, especially we looked at last week in Daniel chapter eight with the goat and the way the goat [00:20:00] is representative of Alexander the Great, and it's so clear when you read it.

Now, a second trait is the peculiar use of numbers. Now, this is one of the problems that I have with, um- Different folks who approach the Bible differently. See, um, for example, last night, Professor Deaver talked about how the numbers that are used in reference to the people building the temple, or you'll also hear this in reference to the genealogies in Genesis, or you'll hear this in reference to the apparent numbers of Israelites that were brought, uh, out of Egypt.

Um, uh, which, you know, if you figure it's six million plus, uh, that's probably more than the population of the, the whole area, uh, uh, by far. And, and so [00:21:00] o-one of the things that, that scholastics do is they teach us to better read and understand scripture, because our tendency is always to read the Bible from the framework that we carry today.

So Professor Deaver will write off part of the Bible because he's thinking of it as a twenty-first century Western academic who's not a specialist in certain areas that would allow him to look at the Bible in textual form in an ancient culture. But when we have the benefit of archeology, and we've got a lot of archeology PhD students in here today, why I'm throwing this in.

When we've got the benefit of archeology, it will sharpen our ability to dig deeper in scriptures to understand. And, and so one of the biggest areas that is different for us today than in scriptural time is the way numbers are [00:22:00] used. I can tell you my Social Security number. It is four... That's identity theft if I put that out on the internet.

It will be gone, like immediately. But I could tell it to you. I can tell you my Texas driver's license number. I can tell you my zip code. I can tell you my phone number. I can tell you... I can do numbers. I can do math. I know how to do math. My brain can do-- I can give you the quadratic formula if you want.

I'd need to look at it first, but I could give it to you. I can do pi to the tenth digit given time to remember it. Um, you know, we use numbers with great precision today, but numbers used to be used very differently. Remember, we've got-- the average American high school graduate has [00:23:00] a working vocabulary of 25,000 words and a functioning vocabulary where you'll understand, even if you don't use it much, about 50,000 words.

Your entire Hebrew Bible has about 6,000 words, different words, about 1,000 names. But these words that were used in the Hebrew did, like, not just double duty, triple duty. On average, we got 10 English words being expressed with each one of these words And so their words had a whole different area of meaning, especially with numbers.

You take the number three, and the number three in that ancient society was representative of something divine. Now, sometimes it just means three. One, two, three. Uno, dos, tres. But sometimes it [00:24:00] means something very different than three. It's a divine reference. And so, for example, a lot of Jews today will say the Shema three times a day, or they'll pray three times a day.

That's a divine number. Daniel prays three times a day. You've got a threefold Levitical blessing. "The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace." It's a threefold blessing. This is a divine number.

The throne scene in Isaiah is a threefold, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts." Doesn't just say, "Holy is the Lord of Hosts." The Christian Trinity Uh, you know, three is a very divine number. In the Revelation throne scene, three is a very divine number, [00:25:00] and it's like a three by three. Look at the Revelation s- scene.

You've got the angel saying, "Holy, holy, holy," you got a three, "is the Lord God Almighty," you got a three, "who was and is and is to come," you got a three. You got three threes. It's the most divine of the most divine of the most divine you can have. Praise of God. Three has very important significance. Now, I give you that from the Bible, but it wasn't just the Bible.

We've got Lawson Younger here. Lawson, wave your hand. Great, great guy, surpassed only by his wife- ... in that family, and his kids. But you can go back into [00:26:00] Babylon and you will see th- look, you have a triad of gods that head up the pantheon of all the Babylonian gods. You've got Anu, the god of heaven, you've got Enlil, the god of Earth, and you've got Ea, the god of water.

Now, that's not a trinity. They're three distinct gods. In fact, they fight among each other. So don't think, "Oh, they had the trinity at that..." No, no, no, it's totally different, but it's a triad that headed up the pantheon. If you needed to get an exorcism, they'd do the incantation three times. Lots of their spells and incantations were in, done in threes.

The pathway of the sun was divided up into three sections, each one ruled over by a deity. If you were going to war, you would do sacrifices to three gods. Not only that, the sacrifice was a three-course meal where you'd slay three sheep Three is a very [00:27:00] divine number in antiquity. And if we don't understand that and look for that to possibly be at play when we're reading these texts, we stand a chance of misreading them.

So you got three, the divine number. The number four is a very worldly number. It's a very earthly number We still today, but certainly in biblical times, you'll see over and over. Well, I mean, it starts out with Eden, and you've got four rivers that come out of Eden. But over and over, the Bible will talk about the four winds of the earth Well, I mean, why aren't there eight?

You got north, south, east, west, northeast, northwest, southwest, southeast. No, there, there's just the four winds. That's just referencing all the winds of the earth. You got four corners of the earth. Well, I got news [00:28:00] for you. It's round

But we still talk about the four corners of Earth. That's a reference to the world Look at this passage out of Revelation 7. "I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth, that no wind might blow on earth or sea or against any tree." Well now, if you're not gonna read this with an understanding of the symbolism, you might say, "Well, wait a minute.

Northeast wind could blow. Southwest wind could blow." Southwest winds, I'm from Lubbock. We know a southwest wind But no, the, the, the four winds, that's, that's all the winds. That's the whole earth. The four corners, that's the whole earth. The four angels, that's all, uh, that, that, that's the whole angelic presence of the earth.

So you've [00:29:00] got four corners. You know, Marduk, the Babylonian big-time god who's like that's, that's, that's the one they think was the one. He ruled over the other gods. He has fourfold vision, we're told, and fourfold hearing. In other words, he can see everything on earth and he can hear everything on earth.

The Greeks had four elements. You've got, uh, fire, uh, air, water, and, and earth. Those are the four elements. So you've got now a heavenly number three. You've got an earthly number of four. What do you get when you put them together? Seven What do you get if you multiply them? Twelve. Oh, let me put earth up there.

If you want a number that expresses a totality, all of heaven and [00:30:00] earth, you either add them or you subtract them, and you get the numbers seven and the numbers twelve. Those are full numbers. That's everything. Seven days of the week, twelve months of the year. Twelve tribes of Israel, twelve apostles to the church

Seven and 12 are very complete and total numbers back then, and we need to realize that they served that purpose in what they had to say. There are seven days of creation. You remember when, uh, uh, Cain gets slain, or Cain slays Abel and he's got his vengeance. Then Lamech later, he says, "Hey, if the vengeance of Cain is seven, I'm gonna be seven times seven, sevenfold vengeance."

You see seven over and over in the tabernacle, in the temple, and even the garb that's worn by the high priest. But the lampstand was seven [00:31:00] candles or se- seven pots for the oil. You know, Jericho, they march around the city seven times for seven day, or seven days, and then the seventh day, seven times, and they blow seven horns, or trumpets seven times.

Seven is, uh, not just in, in, in, um, biblical writings. The Babylonian flood story, the flood happens for seven days. How long's the flood for Noah? 40. All of Earth, four. Four, 10. 10's just a multiplier. It just makes it more intensive

Certain rituals that were done in the Babylonian stories, the altar, incense, and wine are all based on seven. They had seven doors to the underworld. They also had seven doors coming out of the underworld. The Greeks were big about seven stars in the Big Dipper, seven stars in the Little Dipper, in the Pleiades, in various [00:32:00] constellations.

Seven, a complete number. There was a contemporary writer of the Apostle Paul, a very learned man in Alexandria, place of the library that we were talking about, named Philo. Philo was very conversant not only with his Jewish history, but with his Greek education as well. And we can read the writings of Philo.

He talks about Hippocrates having saven- seven ages of man, each built around seven-year cycles. Your seven-- Zero to seven and then your teeth are in. Seven to 14 and then you hit puberty. Fourteen to 21 and then you're impudent. Twenty-one to 28 and you become a real man and, and your, your beard's fully grown and, and all the rest.

It keeps working. Forty-nine, at that point you're getting kinda peaky. But, you know, you got seven stages a- according to Hippocrates. Uh, he writes about, uh, uh, the seven stars and the constellations as well as the other Greek writers before him. He says, "The [00:33:00] principle of the number seven, having begun from above in the heavens, descended to us and visited the race of mortals."

This is the importance of seven. And so he talks about then how in humanity we have seven parts of the soul. You've got your five senses and the power to speak and the power to have offspring. You've got seven entrails, the stomach, the heart, the lungs, the spleen, the liver, and two kidneys. You've got, uh, uh, all of this kinda stuff, the parts to the body, two legs, two arms, your belly, chest, and head.

And you may be saying, "Well, yeah, but you've got other appendages. You can divide this up in other ways." That's not the point. The point is this is how he saw the number seven and wrote about it as a full number. That's what the number meant. Seven features to the head, two eyes, two ears, two nostrils, and a mouth.

Doesn't mention hair

I doubt, this is a quote, [00:34:00] "I doubt whether anyone could adequately celebrate the properties of the number seven because they're beyond all our words." So this peculiar use of numbers is something that we need to adjust for as we're reading apocalyptic literature especially. It's a literature where one of the traits are visions and dreams.

If you go to Daniel chapter two, the king said to him, "I had a dream, khalam, and my spirit is troubled to know the dream, khalom." Then the Chaldeans said to the king in Aramaic, "O king, live forever. Tell your servants your khalama," in that form, "and we will show the interpretation." And by the way, that's where Daniel switches over into Aramaic from Hebrew.

And so as you start reading the rest of it, you're going to read instead of a dream, the [00:35:00] Aramaic word vision, chesar. It's a different word because the Hebrew word had been used up to this point, and now it shifts and, and through the Aramaic section you have the Aramaic word, and it's translated differently in our Bibles as vision instead of dream.

Doesn't have to be a dream that happens at night, but the dream didn't have to happen at night either. So the reason... Don't, don't get wrapped up in a difference between dreams and visions. It, it, it can happen in your sleep as a dream. It can happen as a vision, um, uh, uh, uh, hopefully when you're not, uh Uh, under the influence, but it, uh, you know, the, some, some of them were.

Not the biblical writers, some of the other ones clearly. Uh, I think LSD hit a lot sooner than we know. Um, you read some of that stuff, some of that ancient writing that's, that's apocalyptic is really creative. Um, they write about coming cataclysms and the age to come, and that's a very common motif in a lot of these.[00:36:00]

A lot of these writings have angels and demons, uh, warring it out, fighting it out, and, and there's a whole lot of angelology and demonology that's developed through a lot of these writings. Um, a lot of these writings are pseudonymous. They're not... You know, Enoch was a great guy to write, uh, to claim to write an apocalypse because the Bible says in, in the Old Testament, in Genesis, that Enoch hit a point where he was not, for God took him.

Doesn't look like he died. God just took him up like Elijah or something. So the writers were quick to say, "Yeah, he got up there, he got to see all these heavenly secrets, and then he came down and told us. He wrote this out." S- pseudonymity is, is there. Now, one last point on this before we, we wrap up this part and, of the review, and that is there is a difference between prophecy and apocalyptic writing.

Prophetic writing is a thus sayeth the Lord. It's a writing "Ki pi Adonai debear," because the mouth of the Lord has spoken it. It's, [00:37:00] it's a writing that's, that's focused in on what God is saying. Apocalyptic is a type of literature. That doesn't mean there's not prophecy in apocalyptic, because the two come together, and you'll read that a- Revelation's not only apocalyptic, it's also prophetic.

But we must remember those are different types of, of ideas and, and literature in a sense. So that's review. Now, let's talk about approach a little bit, and I wanna divide this into two different areas. I want us to talk briefly about how we understand the symbols that are in Revelation and apocalyptic literature in general, and then I wanna talk about how the Book of Revelation flows, how we understand the flow.

Now, the symbols, let's start with that. We know in Daniel chapter 8 that the goat represented [00:38:00] Alexander the Great. It's pretty clear. You read it, you read history in that day, you got it. That's Alexander the Great. Last class, I talked about it in more detail. Go back and watch that i- if you, if you're interested.

But one of the questions we've got when we get to these symbols is do we tie each symbol to one particular event

And a lot of people like to do this. There I thought the goat should walk in. Um, so if the goat equals Alexander the Great, we've got a legitimate reason for seeing this. But you've also gotta be real careful because there are other symbols that aren't so readily apparent. And one of the questions is, instead of seeing each sym- symbol as one particular event, should we see the images as greater than a single [00:39:00] event?

So I had some fun, and I went and searched for what six six six, the mark of the beast is. Now There was a time in my life where I weighed about 35 to 40 pounds more than I do right now. And my weight, I mean, my weight is just, uh, I do this, okay? I'm-- I am the yo-yo of, of weight. But I was up at the top part, and my buddy Louis Meori said to me, "How much you weighing?"

This is about the year he bought me the T-shirt that said, "I beat anorexia."

He said, "How much are you weighing?" I said, "This morning I hit the scales at t- 226." He said, "226, the mark of the feast."

I decided I would look at the mark of the beast, [00:40:00] 666. You wanna know what everybody says it is? Not everybody, but bunch... You, you can find people saying the mark of the beast, 666, something you're gonna get on your hand or your forehead, or is it the chip?

Is it a UPC code?

Is it Bitcoin?

Oh, it gets better. There is a court case where a fellow sued to get a job that he wasn't hired for because he refused to have a Social Security number. He said it's the mark of the beast. And so he sued and said, "You didn't hire me 'cause I won't get a Social Security number. You-- That's a religious discrimination."

If you're tempted to go there, let me warn you, he lost the lawsuit. He's a mark of the beast. There are a [00:41:00] group of people who are convinced that Make America Great Again- ... is a mark of the beast. Don't wear that hat Terrifying truth of artificial intelligence and transhumanism integration. Getting the microchip that's gonna plug you into the internet, the mark of the beast.

The mark of the beast hidden in the COVID vaccine

Are smartphones the mark of the beast? We got them on our hands. I've yet to see anybody walking around with their smartphone up here, but I'm sure people do. And I told you last week, if you go into history, the mark of the beast has been associated with Nero, Pope Leo X, reformer Martin Luther, Henry Kissinger, and not to [00:42:00] be outdone, the Ku Klux Klan.

Oh, I left out Hitler

So do we see these images as one particular event, or are they greater than a single event? I-- My greatest, um, second greatest enlightenment in a lot of ways for understanding Revelation came from the writings of an ancient fella from Carthage who wrote in the 300s. His name was Tyconius. In about 380, in that era, he wrote two books.

One of them we've got a pretty good copy of, Tyconius' Book of Rules. It gives the seven different rules for how to understand scripture. We don't really have a copy of his book on Revelation, his commentary on Revelation. They've parsed together a good bit of it, and it's based on his rules for reading scripture.

But it was incredibly influential [00:43:00] Augustine relied heavily upon Tyconius. Uh, even though Tyconius was a Donatist, and we don't need to get into all of that. The Donatists, uh, excommunicated him anyway. Uh, but, but, but Augustine just thought it was the best commentary on Revelation out there. Bede, the venerable Bede, and countless others for the next hundred year-- or no, thousand years through the Middle Ages.

Tyconius' commentary on Revelation was kinda like bedrock for understanding the book. It's really good. And his view is with these symbols, they can be particular if it's clearly understood, like the goat. That's clearly Alexander the Great, clearly referring to an event. But if it's one that, that doesn't clearly do something, then it's a general idea.

And that was his approach to scripture, uh, uh, of understanding the symbolism of [00:44:00] Revelation. Um, so how do we see this? How do we see these symbols? I told you last week in reference to the email I got the week before from someone in South Africa asking me if the war that's happening right now in Israel is talked about in the Book of Revelation as that specific war right now.

Not the Seven Day War, not all the other battles that have taken place, but this specific fight right now in Gaza. So, how do we understand the symbols? Next question is: How does the book flow? And so how does the book flow is one that, that, um-- Scoot up there. Thank you. How does the book flow? Some people read Revelation like a chronological timeline.

So it starts here, and it ends with the second, uh, uh, coming and, uh, end of the ages and the New Jerusalem. Others say we read [00:45:00] this book as multiple visions that cover the same information over and over, with some differences for different reasons. But you've got multiple visions that are covering this repeated information within Revelation.

Ticonius, if we go back to him, said that these visions cover much of the same territory, and they recapitulate each other, and I think that he's right. And so my approach will be one that covers it much like if we were studying the Book of Daniel. Daniel is a collection of visions, but the collection of visions in Daniel, chapter seven is a vision that starts with the Babylonians and goes all the way over to the Seleucids, which are one of the four kingdom break-offs after Alexander the Great.

Then you've got another vision, and chapter eight starts with the Medes and the Persians, goes [00:46:00] arguably up to the Romans. And I say arguably because some people are not sure of the last part, but the parts before it are pretty clear. Then you've got chapter 11, and that vision covers the Persians all the way up to the Seleucids.

And so you've got visions that come one right after another in different chapters, but they're all covering the same history. And if Revelation is to be read the same way Daniel is to be read, you've got the same thing. You go back and read 1 Enoch or so many of these old apocalyptic writings, and they'll have visions, and each vision is, in a sense, an independent one that covers a certain segment of history.

It's not a chronology where one vision picks up where the other vision left off in a chronological timeline. So that's the approach that I expect we will use. Now, because we've got seven minutes left, and I don't wanna face the wrath of everyone who says, "Three classes just [00:47:00] to prepare to read the text?"

Let's read some of the text together. So we'll start with Revelation 1:1. "This is the revelation." That's the first word in the Greek, apokalypsis. We get the word apocalyptic from this Greek word. When we talk about apocalyptic literature, we get the word from the first word of Revelation. However, apocalyptic literature is not a phrase that was used back at the time.

That's a modern scholastic identifying label for this literature or for various religious approaches back then or a number of other different things. But it comes from this first word. The Greek word actually just means a revealing, an uncovering, a revelation. So this is a revelation of Jesus Christ.

Now, [00:48:00] anytime you're reading a Greek book and you-- or a Greek passage and you see this of, the of in the Greek is expressed in the genitive ending of Iesou Christou. It's the little part here at the end of Jesus Christ that says this is a function. Of could mean it's a revelation that shows Jesus. It's a revelation of Jesus.

Who is that? That's Jesus. It's a revelation of Jesus. Or it might mean that it's from Jesus. It's a revelation of Jesus, that Jesus gave. Those core distinctions in Greek are called... If s- a lot of you are taking Greek, it's the difference between a subjective and objective geneti- uh, genitive or genitive of source some old grammars use.

But the revelation of Jesus Christ, this is a revelation which Jesus had that He's delivering I'm not saying it doesn't [00:49:00] also reveal Jesus. It does. But this is a revelation that Jesus is worthy to open seals, we'll read later on. Jesus is the one who delivers this revelation. This is a revelation from Jesus Christ, which God gave to Jesus to show to his servants, to show to Jesus' servants the things that must soon take place.

Look, Daniel, there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries. That's what revelation means, apokalypsis. Who apokalypsis, who reveals mysteries, and he's made known to King Nebuchadnezzar in that case what will be in the latter days. God is in the revealing business, and so was Jesus. So we read, for example, in, in, uh, uh, John 1:18.

John says, "No one has ever seen God, the only God who's at the Father's side, he has made him known." Jesus, [00:50:00] at the side of the Father, has made known the Father. So, so we-- Jesus is in the revealing business. God is in the revealing business. So we have the revelation of Jesus Christ that God gave Him, God showing Him, God's revealing to Him the things that must soon take place.

Tache, tache. If you have tachycardia, it's a rapid heartbeat. Tache, uh, that's what it... That's the tach part of tachycardia. Um, that's what it comes from. It's, it's supposed to be soon. That's gonna be pretty relevant as we try to read and understand what this book's talking about and how we understand the visions.

So keep it in mind. But you can go to Romans 16:20 and see how Paul uses that same word tache. You can read it in Luke 18:8, and it, it references something that's at hand, um, but it doesn't mean it's immediate. [00:51:00] And we'll talk about that more as we go through and look at the visions and try to understand them.

Now, he goes on to say that must soon take place. He made it known. Semaino. Semaino in this sense means to take symbols or signs, uh, uh, uh, it, it... The root of the word is a s-sign, uh, to take symbols or signs and to make them known. These are symbols that we'll be reading about, and we're told that at the start of the book.

And this is all about... That's the John who bore witness to the Word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ. Whoops. The-- Go back, go back, go back, go back. Thank you. Testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw. This is the Word of God What we're gonna be reading in Revelation is nothing more and nothing less than the Word of God.

Now, here's the cool part. [00:52:00] "Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of the prophecy." That's why I'm reading this to you. I just got blessed. Don't get jealous, because also blessed are those who hear What's being read, and who keep what's written in it. This is a blessed, and yes, it includes prophecy.

And so when we read it, we read it accordingly, but we read it out loud, and we listen, and then we are blessed knowing the time is near. Now, this Greek word-- Greek has two words for time, chronos, which means chronology, and kairos, which means a propitious moment. This is a very special time that's near us, and it makes this worth reading.

So with that, we'll take a break. We'll give you the points for home, and, um, um, we will, uh, [00:53:00] recess till next week. Uh, let me scoot there. Number one, God is bigger than I realize

I want you to just say that. You don't have to say it out loud. Say it in your heart. It's true. God is bigger than I realize. I mean, the ways He has informed us of Him, the ways He has done things, this is a revelation of Jesus Christ that God gave Him. The greatness of God is something that, that changed the world.

It made the world, but it will change each one of us because God not only is greater than I realize, God cares God doesn't have to do any of this. I mean, honestly, do you think you're of such use to God that he's doing all of this for his ROI, among you accountants and business people? Return on investment?

No. [00:54:00] No. But God gives this to show the servant the things that must soon take place because he cares about us. If we know there's a God bigger than we realize who cares about us, it will transform how we treat people, what's important to us, what we worry about, and we'll start living in the blessing that should come from someone who reads this book and understand God wins Let me bless you in the name of Jesus, and we will be back to pick up next week.

Father, in Jesus' name, I thank you for the opportunity to teach through this book. I thank you for the opportunity to study this book. I thank you for the provision of this book. I thank you that we live in a day and an age [00:55:00] where we've got so many resources available to allow us to start to plumb some of the depths and riches of your revelation of Jesus Christ to us.

I pray your blessings on everyone in here, that they will understand you are bigger than they realize, that you care for them, and that you bless them I pray this in Jesus' name, amen