Revelation Introduction (Part 2) - Symbols and Images

Revelation — Steve Gregg

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Revelation Introduction (Part 2) - Symbols and Images

RevelationSteve Gregg

In part two of his introduction to the book of Revelation, Steve Gregg delves into the symbols and images used throughout the text. He emphasizes the importance of understanding that many of the descriptions are not meant to be taken literally, but rather symbolically. Gregg also discusses the significance of various numbers used in the text and the potential meaning behind certain events and characters mentioned. He concludes that the book of Revelation is a complex tapestry of biblical imagery that when understood in context, reveals a powerful message of divine deliverance and judgment.

Transcript

We talked last time about the authorship, because I consider the authorship of a given book to be all-important, because if the author is an apostle of Jesus Christ, then on that basis his writings belong in the New Testament. That is in fact the qualification for a book being included in the New Testament. People say, well why weren't the Gnostic Gospels included in the New Testament? Weren't there a lot of other books besides these 27 books that they wanted to put in and somebody removed? The popular yarn is that Constantine removed them, because he didn't like their theology.

Of course, that has nothing to do with the truth. The choice of the books of the New Testament was based on one criterion. Is it apostolic? The reason that the Gnostic Gospels, for example, are not in our Bible is because they were not written by apostles, although the authors lied and claimed they were.

The Gnostic Gospels, for example, which we hear so much about now, were written in the 2nd and 3rd centuries after the apostles were long dead, but they claimed to be Peter, Thomas, Philip, and Mary Magdalene, who were the writers. But they were liars. Now, if you're considering a book for inclusion in the Bible, and the very first lines in the book are a lie, it raises questions about the authenticity of the rest of the book.

If the author can't tell the truth about who he is, who knows whether he can tell the truth about anything? And that is why the Gnostic Gospels are not in our Bible, and many other works that were rejected. The criterion for including a book in the Bible, in the New Testament at least, is that it must be written by an apostle, or at least an apostolic associate. That is, somebody so close to the apostles that he could not possibly have written without their oversight.

Someone like Luke, who traveled incessantly with Paul, and no doubt wrote both Luke and Acts while Paul was with him, and probably didn't sneak it out without Paul taking a look at it. After all, Acts was mostly about Paul. I doubt if Luke would have published that without Paul proofreading it, at the very least.

The fact that Luke was so closely associated with Paul means that his books are apostolic, at least receive apostolic approval. Likewise, Mark, who traveled with Peter, though Mark was not an apostle, his book is considered apostolic because the early fathers said that Mark was simply translating what Peter preached. So that that gospel, though we call it the gospel of Mark, is really the gospel according to Peter, as translated by Mark.

So, in other words, to include a book in our Bible, in our New Testament, requires that the author is apostolic. Is the author of Revelation apostolic? That took a long time for the Church to decide. The book of Revelation was the last book to be accepted into the New Testament by the Church.

It wasn't until 396 A.D. that the Church finally decided to include it. The question was, was it written by John the Apostle or another John? The author five times refers to himself as John. He simply says, I, John.

He does not say which John he is, which is one of the strongest arguments for being the apostle. Because in the time of the Apostle John, anyone named John would have to tell who he was, unless he was the Apostle John. The Apostle John was the most famous John in the Church, probably the last surviving apostle in those days.

To simply say John would call to mind John the Apostle, unless one would qualify that, no, I'm John this other guy. I'm not THE John, I'm another John. The author just calls himself John and the early Church, for the most part, all the Church fathers whose writings have come down to us, have said this was the Apostle John.

The son of Zebedee, brother of James, one of the four fishermen, one of the two signs of thunder. One of the twelve apostles, and part of the inner circle of three, and the one that Jesus loved. That's that John.

And if it was that John who wrote it, then the book belongs in our Bible just like the Gospel of John. Or the Epistles of John, or any other book written by any apostle belongs in our Bible. And I accept that John did write it, but that was disputed for some time, and actually continues to be disputed among some.

Because the style of Greek is very different in Revelation than in John's other known writings. And so some have thought a different man must have written it. But we talked last time about various reasons why that style could differ and still be by the same man.

We will not go over that again. We come now to important considerations that we have to look at if we're going to make sense out of a book that is really quite enigmatic. A book that has symbols that puzzle most people.

I perhaps should say that puzzle all people, except for people that don't realize they're puzzled. You see, there are people who think, I mean the first reading they say, oh I get it. And what they mean is, I just take it at face value.

You know, I just read what it says and I just believe what it says. God, and I've heard people say this, God says what he means and he means what he says. Therefore, if it says the blood shall flow to the horse's bridles, then so be it.

The blood's going to flow up to the horse's bridles, literally. God wouldn't say it if he didn't mean it. On the other hand, the book is full of symbolism.

And you can't take everything just at face value. For example, in Revelation 5, 6, John sees Jesus. What does Jesus look like? Well, you and I should suspect that Jesus looks like a man with holes in his hands and feet.

That's what he looked like when he appeared to his disciples after his resurrection and when he ascended into heaven. But when John sees Jesus in Revelation 5, 6, he sees a lamb with seven eyes and seven horns. Now, I think any reasonable person would recognize that's a symbolic description of Jesus.

He is not literally a lamb. To call him the lamb conveys certain information about his redemptive sacrifice, but he is not a lamb. He does not have wool.

He does not walk on all fours. He does not have cloven hooves. And he does not have seven eyes and seven horns.

He's not that monstrous. But seven eyes and seven horns are very meaningful symbols in the Jewish symbolism and numerology. So we can see that Jesus is not at all depicted literally.

Something like 27 times in the book, he's called the lamb. That's the normal term for Jesus, the lamb. And that is a symbol.

As I said last time, we are so accustomed to thinking of Jesus as the lamb of God or even depicting him as a lamb in Christian iconography and classical artwork that we forget, oh yeah, a lamb, that's not a literal description of him. He really is not a lamb. He's a person, a human being.

But he is called the lamb, and that's a symbolic way of speaking of him. The devil is called a dragon. The devil is not a dragon.

He's a spirit. He's not a mythical beast, nor is he literally a serpent. He's called that too.

The devil is not a reptilian. He is a spirit being. But he is depicted symbolically as a dragon and as a reptile.

That's how Revelation is. It's written symbols. And people say, well, I just take it at face value.

Well, they're going to be misunderstanding it. They're confused, but they don't know they are. The person who is much better off who reads the book of Revelation knows they're confused and knows that there's more here than immediately meets the eye and that there's things to contemplate, things to research, things to meditate upon, things to pray about, things to compare Scripture with Scripture to gain understanding and to interpret.

That's what a book like this requires. Now, I mentioned that I sometimes meet people who say, well, the Bible wasn't written for scholars. Why should we have to learn Greek or Hebrew? The Bible was written for common people.

But, of course, the answer is the Bible was written for common people who read Greek and Hebrew, not who read English. People who don't read Greek and Hebrew have to study it to know it. We don't know it intuitively.

They did. Common people back then knew some things already that we have to study a great deal to know. They knew what apocalyptic literature was.

They read a lot of it. They knew that certain books were written to convey certain ideas in a certain strange way. They had read many books of that type.

We have not. The Book of Revelation may be the only book we've read like that. And if we've read any others, it's probably Daniel or Zechariah.

But we do not read a lot of books like this. And, therefore, studying the whole genre of apocalyptic literature becomes helpful to us, although it would be unnecessary for the original readers. They already had that familiarity already in place as part of their mental furniture.

That doesn't come with us factory installed. We have to learn it. And so that's why we have to look into these matters.

Now, one thing we have to understand about Revelation is it has stylistic features that other books of the New Testament do not have. Some books of the Old Testament have them. I mentioned Daniel and Zechariah.

Ezekiel has them. But most books, even of the Old Testament, don't have them. It's pretty unusual in the Bible to find apocalyptic writings.

But it's not unheard of. It's just unusual. But I want to talk about the symbolism that is used in the Book of Revelation.

First of all, we find as we read the book that people, nations, and spiritual beings like the devil or like demons or like Jesus, they're depicted like animals. I mentioned Jesus is depicted as a lamb. The devil is a dragon.

There are a swarm of locusts that are almost certainly references to demons. Represented as locusts. There's an animal with seven heads and ten horns that is said to rule the world.

Now, by the way, even the people who say they take the Book of Revelation literally do not believe the world will ever be ruled by an animal with seven heads and ten horns. They realize, oh, well, that stands for such and such. Well, as soon as you say that stands for such and such, you've said it's not literal.

It stands for something that is literal. It is not literal. It is a symbol.

And so we see that animals of various kinds are a common image and symbol for things that are not really animals. People, spirits, nations, kingdoms, and so forth. That's one thing.

Also, we find that in the Book of Revelation there are two women that predominate the picture. One is a bride and the other is a harlot. They are also equated with two cities.

The harlot is equated with Babylon. The bride with Jerusalem. And these metaphors are mixed in peculiar ways.

For example, in Revelation 21, the opening verses, especially verse 2, John says, I saw the heavenly city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from heaven dressed like a bride, adorned for her husband. Now, you almost just have to work with the words and try to avoid images. How do you dress a city like a bride? How do you dress a city in clothing at all? Cities don't dress in clothing.

And therefore, we realize that this is all very symbolic. We're talking about what is symbolically called a city, but is also symbolically called a bride. As it turns out, that same entity is referred to as the Lamb's wife.

And since the Lamb is symbolic of Jesus, the Lamb's wife must be the bride of Jesus, which would be the church. Therefore, we find that the church is depicted as a woman, a bride, which would be a pure and faithful woman, and also likened to a city, a new Jerusalem. But something or someone is depicted as a harlot, whose name is Mystery Babylon the Great.

Now, Babylon, revealed in chapter 17 of Revelation, is one of those images that there's some explanations given about. But the explanation is not very helpful. The woman is seen riding on a beast with seven heads and ten horns.

An angel says to John, let me explain this to you. The seven heads on the beast that the woman is sitting on, those are seven mountains that the woman sits on. There are also seven kings.

Five are fallen, one now is, and one is yet to come. And there's an eighth one of the seven. Well, I'm glad that's cleared up.

That's one of the few things that's cleared up. And that's as clear as mud. But it goes on to say at the end of that chapter, that woman that you saw riding on the beast is that great city that rules over the kings of the earth.

So we need to find out what city is it that John is told is ruling over the kings of the earth. And that is the one that is symbolically called Babylon. You see, the New Jerusalem isn't the literal Jerusalem.

The Mystery Babylon isn't the literal Babylon. Nor are either of these cities literal women. These are symbols.

The book is full of symbolism. It's cast in symbols from beginning to end. Also, persons and places are given symbolic names.

For example, there's a woman in the church of Ptyra, and she's referred to as Jezebel. Now, of course, there could be a real woman named Jezebel. There was at least once a woman by that name.

But the likelihood that the woman in this church is really named Jezebel is not very great. For one thing, it would be too coincidental. The woman called Jezebel is teaching God's servants to fornicate and to worship idols.

Well, that's exactly what Jezebel in the Old Testament did in Israel. It would be almost too coincidental that we find a woman in the church teaching the same things that Jezebel in the Old Testament taught. And lo and behold, her real name is Jezebel.

Not likely. She is called Jezebel because she's like Jezebel. Just like John the Baptist is called Elijah because he's like Elijah.

Or Jesus in some of the Old Testament prophets is called David because he's like David. Old Testament characters, sometimes their names are taken to describe persons whose real names are not given but who bear a likeness to them. And so a woman whose name probably was not Jezebel but who was actually teaching in the church of Thyatira is referred to as Jezebel.

That woman, Jezebel, Jesus says. The city where the Lord was crucified, which we would call Jerusalem since that's its name, is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt in Revelation 11.8. It says that the two witnesses, their bodies after slain, lay in the streets of that great city which is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt. And then John says, where our Lord was crucified.

Well, we know where the Lord was crucified, the city of Jerusalem. But it is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt. It's symbolic names given to people and places.

Obviously Babylon, as I mentioned, the mystery Babylon in chapter 17 is not really Mesopotamian Babylon where Nebuchadnezzar ruled. Or more recently, Saddam Hussein. It's not the place we call Babylon.

It is that great city that rules over the kings of the earth and is the harlot drunk with the blood of martyrs. That's at least what we get from Revelation 17. And so it's not really Babylon.

That's a symbolic name. New Jerusalem is a symbolic name. The book is full of symbolic names.

Also, you should recognize as symbolic the frequent and recurring references to cosmic and geological disruptions. Things like earthquakes. Things like stars falling from the sky.

The sun going dark. These images are found fairly commonly in certain parts of the Old Testament when they are actually referring to political upheavals. The fall of, for example, historical Babylon in Isaiah 13.10. When Isaiah is talking about how Babylon will fall to the Medes and Persians, which did happen in 539 B.C. It says the sun will be darkened.

The sun will not give its light. The stars will fall from the heavens. This is what Isaiah says happened when Babylon fell in ancient times.

It didn't really literally happen. That is itself apocalyptic language. And so in Revelation we see those kinds of phenomena.

The heavens rolled up like a scroll. And this is early in the story. You know, if it happened at the very end, we might say, well, I guess that's the end of the world.

The curtain falls. The scroll is rolled up. The heavens are gone.

But it happens in chapter 6. And we have to realize that this kind of language, the readers would have recognized instantly as language of apocalyptic literature. It is not literally the case that stars fall to the earth. How many stars do you suppose could literally fall to the earth? How big are the stars? How many could land on the earth? Wouldn't it be more like the earth would have to fall into a star and it would be like a BB falling into the ocean? The stars are so much bigger than the earth.

To suggest that literal stars are going to fall to the earth, I don't want to pop your bubble or something, but that's not going to happen. No stars are going to fall to the earth. But we find stars falling to the earth.

One of them has a key to the bottom of this pit. A star with a key to a pit that's bottomless. And it opens the pit and out come these insects or arachnids or whatever they are.

They're said to be like locusts, but they're not very much like locusts because locusts eat green things. And the locusts that come out of the pit do not touch any green thing. Locusts, according to Proverbs chapter 30, have no king over them.

But these locusts have a king over them named Abaddon and Apollyon. These locusts are not a danger to plants, but to people. They have stingers like scorpions.

They have faces like men. Hair like women. Now don't look at me.

I'm not one of them. Although I did know a fellow who styled himself as a Bible teacher back in the 70s. Who taught Revelation and he thought the locusts must be the hippies.

Because they have faces like men and hair like women. He was serious. He was an old guy.

He knows better now. But the locusts are not real insects. They're not real locusts.

That's symbolic. But the thing is, they are released from a bottomless pit by a star that falls to the earth with a key. Now if you can't recognize that as symbolic, I'm afraid we're not going to get very far together here.

That's not literal. The book is full of symbolism. Also, the numbers in the book need to be recognized as symbolic as well.

For one thing, the most prominent number in the book, obviously, is the number 7. And you can find many uses of the number 7 in the Old Testament. In places where it's very clear that it's not used as a literal figure in the Old Testament. For example, it says, The righteous man falls seven times, but the Lord upholds him.

Or, you know, seven times in the night I will arise to praise you. Or many references to 7, which are, I think all Bible scholars, regardless of their view of Revelation, I think all Bible scholars would say the number 7 in Hebrew numerology means completeness. Perfection or completeness.

So it means something total. Now, therefore, a series of seven judgments would refer to a total judgment. For Jesus to have seven eyes means he sees totally everything.

He's, in others, omniscient. For him to have seven horns, an image from the Old Testament, the horn is power. Usually in the figurative language of the Old Testament, a king or kingdom might have horns.

Like a ram has horns. Or a he-goat in Daniel 8 has a horn. It refers to political power.

The horn is the animal's power. David always talks in his psalms about how God exalted his horn. He's talking about how God exalted him to power.

Now, Jesus has seven horns. The number 7 meaning completeness. He's got all power.

To say the Lamb has seven eyes and seven horns is simply an apocalyptic way of saying he's omniscient and omnipotent. The number 7 is not the literal number of eyes that grace the face of Jesus. And he does not have horns on his head, not 7 or any other number.

But the number 7 is symbolic for completeness. Now, that should tip us off. The number 7 is woven through the fabric of the book of Revelation all the way through.

It begins with an announcement that the book is addressed to seven churches in Asia. Asia in Revelation is a reference to the Roman province of Asia, which corresponds in boundaries with our modern country of Turkey. These seven churches were existing churches, it is true, but there were more than seven in Turkey.

We don't know how many there were, but we know of at least three others. Troas is not mentioned in this list. Colossi was in that same region.

Hierapolis, those three churches are mentioned elsewhere in scripture in the same region, Turkey, but they're not mentioned here. Only seven churches are named. Why? No doubt they are considered to be representative of the whole church, the total church, hence seven churches.

There are seven spirits of God in Revelation. There are seven angels of the seven churches. There are seven seals on the scroll, which then are broken, and there are seven trumpets then that are blown.

There are seven thunders in chapter 10. There are seven vials or bowls of wrath in chapter 16. The number 7 is woven through.

In fact, those are the times where it actually mentions that there are seven. That is, those are the occasions where there are seven trumpets, there are seven bowls. There's a lot of other sevens in there that the writer doesn't call attention to.

For example, there are seven beatitudes in the book of Revelation. A beatitude is a statement that begins with the words, Blessed are the, you know, the beatitudes at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount are the most famous ones. There are seven such beatitudes throughout the book of Revelation, and many other sevens in the book.

It's a book of sevens. And when you find the number seven, you should not think it's talking about a statistical unit. The numbers of Revelation are not statistical.

They are impressionistic. They are conveying ideas. Seven is the symbol for perfection.

Now, other numbers are also found recurrent in the book of Revelation. When the seven trumpets sound, each of them seems to affect one-third of some domain. A third of the sea turns to blood.

A third of the rivers turn bitter. A third of mankind dies. A third of the city falls.

There's a lot of references to the third. Now, a third, I believe, I can say with some confidence, although this is not identified for us anywhere in Scripture, I believe a third means a significant minority. It is the largest whole fraction less than one-half.

And so it's a minority in that it's less than a half. But it's a large minority. It's as large a whole fraction as you can get under a half.

So it is a significant minority. In Zechariah 8, I think it's chapter 8, it talks about how God, it might be chapter 3, as a matter of fact, but in Zechariah it talks about how God's going to purge the city of Jerusalem and a third of them will be spared and two-thirds will be wiped out. It just means a remnant, a significant minority, a third will be preserved.

It doesn't mean literally one-third. Ezekiel was told to shave his head and divide his hair into thirds and to chop up one of the thirds with a knife, to burn one-third with fire and throw a third of it into the wind and let it blow around. He said, these are the things I'm going to do to Jerusalem.

I'm going to kill a third of them with the sword, a third of them are going to be burned with fire, a third of them are going to be dispersed into all the world. These are not neat fractions. This just means there's going to be a significant portion, a minority that would die by the sword, a significant portion or minority would be scattered.

And so in Revelation, the word third, the third should not be thought to be a literal number. I mean, if it was, it would stand out against all the rest of the book of Revelation in that the rest is symbolic. It would be very strange for that number to be absolutely literal, especially when other places in the Bible it is not.

The number 12 is found in some occurrences. There are 24 elders around the throne, obviously twice 12. There's 144,000 persons who received the mark of God on their forehead before the judgments were poured out in chapter 7, and they're mentioned again in chapter 14.

144,000 is obviously a multiple of 12. It's 12 times 12,000. In the city of the New Jerusalem, there's 12 foundations with the names of the 12 apostles of the Lamb on them.

There's 12 gates. The number 12 seems to be the number that signifies God's people because God's people in the Old Testament were divided into the 12 tribes of Israel. In the New Testament, God's people are represented by the 12 apostles.

And so multiples of 12 are simply the number 12. Although in the case of the number of apostles, it's the statistical number, the usage of it as a number of foundations to the city no doubt suggests that we're just talking about the people of God, the apostles as a group. The 24 elders before the throne probably just represent God's people, a symbol for God's people.

At least that's what most commentators think. And there's not very many things that most commentators agree on. That's one of the few.

Now, where this gets rather interesting in the symbolic use of numbers is that there's the famous 1,000 years in Revelation 20. Famous because it is the only reference in the Bible to 1,000 years. The millennium.

Some have said that Revelation 20 is the most controversial chapter in the Bible because theologians have divided over the interpretation of that 1,000 years since early times. The early church fathers divided over it. Many of them believed it was a literal 1,000 years.

Others did not. And the 1,000 years, what is it? Well, we'll have to decide that when we get to chapter 20. We'll have to take it in its context and see what clues we have.

But suffice it to say there's no reason to take it as an exactly literal number. Why would it be literal there when the other numbers are not? And especially when the number 1,000 is not used literally anywhere else in Scripture. In the Psalms, in Deuteronomy, in 2 Peter, in many places the number 1,000 is used but never literally.

God owns the cattle on 1,000 hills. Exactly? 1,000? Not 1,001? No, 1,000 hills. He keeps covenant to 1,000 generations.

A day in His sight is as 1,000 years when it is passed. And as a watch in the night, Psalm 90 verse 4 says. Peter says, a day to the Lord is like 1,000 years, and 1,000 years is like a day.

1,000 years literally? I believe we have to understand here, as Peter certainly intends, that he's not talking about a literal 1,000 years corresponding to a literal day. He's saying that 1,000 years, which is a long time to us, is like a day, a short time, to God. And the 1,000 years in Revelation, if it is more literal than in the other places in the Bible where it's not literal, that would be very surprising since Revelation is the most symbolic book in the whole Bible.

It would be strange for no other book in the Bible to use it literally, and yet Revelation is the one that does. I believe it's a mistake to take it literally, but I will not go into the details as to what I believe it refers to right now. Some of you already know what I think, and some of you probably couldn't care less what I think.

And that's okay too. But suffice it to say, when we look at the numbers in the book of Revelation, they are not generally statistical. I don't think they ever are.

The church of Smyrna is told that they will have tribulation for 10 days. I've never read a commentator that thought that was a literal 10 days. It is said in chapter 17, there are 10 kings that give their authority to the beast for one hour.

I do not know any commentator that believes that's a literal 60 minutes. These numbers, these time designations are impressionistic. An hour means a short time.

10 days means, when it comes to being in jail, it means long enough to be uncomfortable, but short enough to not be a crisis. A thousand years means a very long time. Many generations in duration.

So long you'd stop counting, probably. But the point is, the numbers are symbolic. Now there's also interesting parallelism in Revelation.

I won't go into that too much, because people disagree as to what degree that is true. Some people think that there are seven parallel sections. This is particularly the view of those who hold what is usually called the idealist view of Revelation.

They say that Revelation is like a Greek drama. It's got seven acts, and each act is divided into seven scenes. Well, that's very neat, and it's really almost intuitively correct.

Why not? Seven is everywhere in the book. Why wouldn't there be seven acts, each one divided into seven scenes? However, it's not really that neat. It is possible and reasonable to divide the book into seven portions.

To call them acts would be okay. I don't have any objection to that. There are definitely seven natural divisions of the book.

Now dividing those into seven subsections each, it gets a little trickier. Now the first section that is usually identified, chapters one through three, is the seven letters of the seven churches. That's pretty compact.

That's pretty unmistakable. The next section, chapters four through seven, is the seven seals of the book. That's easy to identify too.

Then you have the seven trumpets in chapters eight through eleven. But after that, you've got chapters twelve, thirteen, fourteen, there's no sevens of anything there. Seven great signs in heaven.

That's what they usually say, seven great signs. I've tried to count them. You have to kind of ignore a few to keep it at seven.

I don't want to contradict you, but I definitely have read 50 commentaries on Revelation, and they do say that section is seven signs. I have tried to discover them without the help of the commentators, and I have to use the commentators because they're not evident. Let me say this.

There may be, indeed, seven signs in that particular act. I could not deny it, but I could not affirm it. All I'm saying is it's not as obvious in that one as it is in some of the ones where they're actually numbered, like the seven bowls of wrath in chapter 16.

Once you get past chapter 16, the identification of seven this and that is much more difficult, and I've seen it done many different ways by different commentators. I do not object to someone saying the book of Revelation is divided into seven acts, each having seven scenes. I would just say that the seven scenes in some of those cases are going to be a little arbitrary.

That would be my judgment call about it. I'm not objecting to it in principle. I'm just saying I cannot establish it from my own research.

Now, on this view, many commentators believe, especially the idealist commentators, that these seven segments, these seven acts, are parallel to each other. For example, each of them can be found to have a reference in them to the second coming of Christ. And the idealist view, which is not the view I hold, holds that each of these acts is about the whole age of the church.

One sees the age of the church through the figure of seven churches. One through the figure of judgments that, through the whole church age, are represented as seven seals being broken. Another sees seven trumpets, another seven bowls of wrath, and that these actually are parallel to each other.

One of the parallels that is often pointed out, which I find extremely impressive, actually, although I don't buy into the scheme entirely, it's rather interesting that as you look at the seven trumpets and you look at the seven bowls of wrath, it's rather interesting, on page four of your notes it's in there, the first trumpet and the first bowl both affect the earth. The second trumpet and the second bowl affect the sea. The third trumpet and the third bowl affect the rivers of water.

The fourth trumpet and the fourth bowl affect the heavenly bodies, sun, moon, and stars. The fifth, and this is even more impressive than any of the others before, the fifth trumpet and the fifth bowl affect the river Euphrates. Now that gets more specific and more coincidental if it's not intended.

And the seventh of each seems to bring us to the end of the world, or the end of the series at least. So there seems to be some parallelism there. The significance of the parallelism might be questioned and different people might take different approaches to it.

For example, many people feel that since the trumpet judgments affect one third of everything and the bowl judgments affect the totality of everything, but they affect the same realms, that the trumpets represent a partial judgment in these realms and the bowl a final and complete judgment. Those are all things we'll have to consider the merits of when we come to the relevant passages. The only point I'm making is there seem to be some parallels.

For example, we find the birth of Jesus in Revelation 12. In others we find the beginning of the church age, beginning in chapter 12. It is possible we find the beginning of the church age in chapter 20 as well.

So that chapter 12 and chapter 20 would have some degree of overlap or parallel between them. We seem to find the end of the world at the end of chapter 11 and at the end of chapter 19. Now that's disputed in both cases.

But the language has led many to believe we've got the second coming of Jesus with the blowing of the seventh trumpet in chapter 11 and with the rider on the white horse in chapter 19. Now Jesus isn't going to come again twice. If these are talking about the second coming of Jesus, it's discussed in two different places.

And therefore there would be parallel things in the book of Revelation, at least something to consider. Now, Revelation interplays with the rest of the scriptures in a way that is very, well, it's unique. In that, unlike most New Testament books, the book of Revelation does not quote a single Old Testament scripture.

There is no exact quotation of the Old Testament anywhere in the book of Revelation. However, the imagery of the Old Testament is all there is in the book of Revelation. It's like a reworking, a rehashing of images and thoughts that are found in Daniel and Ezekiel and Isaiah and the Exodus.

I mean, it's like everything in Revelation is a rehash of something from the Old Testament. There's not so much as a single direct quote. But the degree to which the Old Testament imagery weaves together to make the fabric of what we call the book of Revelation is astonishing when you see how much scripture is rewoven together by this author or by the Holy Spirit, I believe.

Those who don't believe it's inspired would have to speculate about how a man could be such a genius as to be able to take hundreds of images from the Old Testament and weave them together into a narrative as amazingly as the book of Revelation has. To my mind, it's frankly one of the evidences to my own subjective judgment that we're dealing with a book that God has revealed and inspired rather than something man put together. If it was put together by man, the book of Revelation is the most astonishing piece of composition of religious literature that probably has ever been written.

But, for example, the book in the Old Testament that is most frequently alluded to and provides more images than any other for the book of Revelation is actually Isaiah. We usually think of Daniel. When we read Revelation, we think of Daniel being the most like it.

Well, Daniel's a lot like it, but Isaiah actually provides more material for Revelation than any other Old Testament book. 79 allusions to things in the book of Isaiah are found in the book of Revelation. Then comes Daniel.

53 allusions to Daniel are in the book of Revelation. And we're talking about a short book you can read through probably in a half hour. It's got 22 chapters, but they're short.

And you can probably read through the book in not much more than a half hour. And yet it's got hundreds of allusions to the Old Testament. 79 from Isaiah, 53 from Daniel, 48 from Ezekiel.

By the way, 48 is conservative. I actually was reading an article about Revelation by somebody. I don't remember who it was recently, but he believed the whole book of Revelation is a reworking of the book of Ezekiel.

He felt that Ezekiel, the book of Ezekiel, provides the very framework for the book of Revelation. It was a rather intriguing thesis, but I didn't have time to really analyze it. I was doing something else and just happened to come across it.

But the number of allusions to Ezekiel that this author thought were in Revelation was more like 84 rather than 48. The Psalms, 43 times. The book of Revelation alludes to something in the Psalms.

The book of Exodus. Parallels to Exodus exist in Revelation 27 times. 22 times to Jeremiah.

15 times to Zechariah, which is more than one time per chapter of Zechariah. Zechariah is only 14 chapters, yet there are 15 places in Zechariah that are alluded to in the book of Revelation. Amos, 9 times.

And the book of Joel, 8 times. Now if you total those up, that's a few hundred. So you've got... I didn't do the math, but you can see it just intuitively.

That certainly adds up to more than a couple hundred. And so we can see how thoroughly the book of Revelation involves the rest of Scripture. And more than I've already said.

We'll talk about it a little more in a moment. But I want to say that while the book of Revelation does not quote from any other part of the Bible, and alludes hundreds of times to different parts, it uses images from other parts of the Bible, but it doesn't use them the same way. Which is even more creative or just confusing.

For example, the two witnesses in Revelation chapter 11. We are told that they are the two olive trees that stand in the presence of the Lord. Well that image, as anyone who knows the Old Testament will recognize, comes from Zechariah chapter 4, where there are two anointed ones who stand before the presence of the Lord.

They're called the two olive trees. That's where the book of Revelation gets that phrase. The two olive trees from Zechariah chapter 4. But in Zechariah 4, generally speaking, scholars believe the two olive trees are Zerubbabel and Joshua, the political and religious leader of the exiles who returned from Babylon in Zechariah's day.

In other words, the two olive trees in Zechariah would be, if scholars are generally correct, Zerubbabel and Joshua, men who lived five and a half centuries before Christ. But that certainly isn't who the two witnesses are. I don't know of any commentators or scholars that would identify the two witnesses in Revelation as Zerubbabel and Joshua.

They might identify them as Elijah and Enoch, or Elijah and Moses, or some other two, but I've never heard a single theory that they are Zerubbabel and Joshua. And yet the term, the two olive trees, which is what they're called, refers to those other men in the Old Testament, but the image is picked up and reused, but reapplied. One commentator on the book of Revelation called his commentary a rebirth of images, that Revelation has taken images from the Old Testament and kind of reincarnated them into different settings and different meanings.

As I said, that makes it very creative and also very confusing, but it is not as if we can't make sense of it. I'm admitting to you that the book is very confusing, and I certainly would admit that I don't understand everything in it, but I have been working on it for about 43 years, and most of the things in the book of Revelation I think we can make some sense of. There will be some things I'll just have to say, I don't know what they mean, but part of it is because it's such a complex tapestry of biblical images from other parts of the Bible that are now brought together in innovative and new ways.

Now, among the ways that the book of Revelation interacts with the rest of Scripture is that it repeats images, especially from the period of the Exodus. Many references in the book of Revelation recall the Exodus. For example, in Revelation 1.5, it says in the Alexandrian text, it says Christ freed us by his blood.

Now, if you have the King James or the New King James, and by the way, I use the New King James in this study, they follow the Textus Receptus, and it reads differently. In the Textus Receptus, it says he cleansed us, or washed us with his blood. In the Alexandrian text, which all the modern translations use, it says he freed us with his blood.

Now, it's hard to choose between those two, because either of those two could be verified from cross-references. Certainly, to say Jesus washed us by his blood has other references. For example, 1 John 1.7. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin.

And other places that talk about being washed in the blood, even later in Revelation, says they have washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb. So, for Revelation 1.5 to say that Christ has washed us in his blood is quite orthodox and fitting. But many manuscripts, the oldest, say he freed us by his blood.

And that, too, presents no theological difficulty at all. But it suggests the image of the Passover. That the blood of the Passover Lamb, applied to the lintels and the doorposts of the houses of Israel in Egypt, freed them from Egypt.

That was their deliverance from Pharaoh. It is to say we were freed by his blood would recall Christ our Passover. That's what Paul calls Christ.

In 1 Corinthians 5.7, Paul says Christ our Passover has been slain for us. So, it's one or the other. Now, if you prefer the oldest manuscripts, the phrase is he has freed us by his blood, which is a clear allusion back to the Exodus.

And it would fit much of the rest of the book of Revelation that echoes the Exodus as well. For example, the persecutor of God's people in Revelation 11.8, which is identified with Jerusalem, is actually spiritually called Egypt. In other words, Jerusalem has become the new Egypt.

Israel was originally delivered from Egypt, but now Jerusalem has become the new Egypt, the new persecutor. Spiritually, it's called Egypt. And, the dragon who persecutes the woman in Revelation 12.3, that is the image of a dragon, is also like Egypt.

In Ezekiel 29.3 and Psalm 74.13, Egypt is referred to as the dragon in the sea. Just an image for Egypt that is used in some of the Old Testament passages. And that image of Satan persecuting the woman uses the image of a dragon, which would recall to the Jewish reader the image of Egypt persecuting the people.

Interestingly, the woman, who is very similar to Israel, I mean, she's got a crown of 12 stars on her head, she's clothed with the sun, she stands on the moon, all those things recall Joseph's dream about the family of Jacob, Joseph's dream about the sun and the moon and the 11 stars bowing down to him. The woman in Revelation 12 is identified with Israel in some way. The dragon recalls Egypt, although, of course, the dragon in Revelation is Satan.

The imagery recalls Egypt. And, the dragon chases the woman into the wilderness. That's what happened in the Exodus.

Egypt pursued Israel and they fled into the wilderness. What then? In Revelation 12, God sustains her in the wilderness, just like God sent manna to Israel in the wilderness and sustained them. And even in the wilderness, the earth opens up and swallows a flood that the dragon sends out, just like the earth opened up to swallow up Korah and his rebellion after the Exodus.

So, there's lots of images here of the Exodus. They're kind of a little esoteric in some cases, but they're really intended. And so, we find that the plagues in Revelation, for the most part, are repetitions of the plagues of Egypt.

There were 10 plagues in Egypt. Not all of them are repeated in Revelation, but the majority of them are. In Revelation, you find a plague of darkness, a plague of hail, a plague of locusts, a plague of boils, a plague of frogs, a plague of water turning into blood, and so forth.

These are echoes, and deliberate echoes, of the Exodus. We should be cautious about assuming that these are literal events. The book of Revelation is an apocalypse, and it uses symbolism.

And to say that all the oceans turned to blood, and all the fish died, and all the ships of the sea sank, I mean, that's pretty striking. And there's many people who say, well, that's gonna happen in the end times. Well, maybe it isn't.

I'm not so sure this is predicting something like that happening in the end times. I'm not sure it's even literal at all. But it is intending to recall the plagues of Egypt, and therefore to make a connection to what is going on in this story, to what went on in the Exodus.

And we'll, of course, look at these things individually as we come to them. Those who are saved in Revelation sing the song of Moses. In Revelation 15.3, they sang the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb.

In Exodus 15, they sang the song of Moses when they came through the Red Sea. In Revelation 15, the saved who seem to be in heaven are singing the song of Moses too. Why? Because their deliverance, which is also the song of the Lamb, parallels that deliverance that was celebrated in the song of Moses in the book of Exodus.

And so forth. Also, of course, right after Israel came out of Egypt, God gave instructions for the building of the tabernacle and the furniture of the tabernacle, and so forth. And most of that tabernacle furniture reappears in the book of Revelation up in heaven.

You remember when God told Moses how to build the ark and the table to show bread, and so forth, that God continually said, make sure that you make everything exactly according to the pattern that I showed you on the mountain. Which sounds as if the tabernacle and its furniture that was made by Moses was patterned after some archetype that God, a transcendent archetype that God showed him, perhaps a heavenly counterpart, that Moses was shown that he was to make an earthly model of in the tabernacle. It's possible that John saw that same heavenly counterpart, because up in heaven, when he's up there, he sees things like the golden lampstand, he sees the ark of the covenant, he sees the altar of sacrifice, he sees the holy of holies.

These things are mentioned throughout the book of Revelation as things that John sees in heaven, reminiscent certainly of the Exodus, since those things first appear and are described in the Exodus. And so also, we find Revelation has these echoes of the Exodus, but also echoes of the Babylonian exile. Not so many.

Not anywhere near as much. But in the Old Testament, the Babylonian exile resembles the bondage of Egypt. Twice in Israel's history, the whole nation was in bondage in a foreign land, away from the promised land.

Once in Egypt, once in Babylon. In both cases, God delivered them and brought them back to the promised land. In the Exodus, they escaped from Egypt and eventually ended up in Canaan.

In the Babylonian instance, through Cyrus the Persian, conquering Babylon, the Jews were allowed to go back and restore their nation again too. Twice God delivered Israel from bondage. In the Exodus and in the return of exiles from Babylon.

Both of these events become types. In the Old Testament, they are types of the Messiah's salvation of us. Christ's salvation is a second Exodus.

It is a second deliverance from the exile. And in Revelation, we've got the Exodus and the Babylonian exile as milieu informing some of the visions. For example, I mentioned there's Babylon in there.

Babylon is the enemy who's drunk with the blood of martyrs. And many times, in Revelation, we are told Babylon is fallen. Well, that's exactly what happened when God delivered Israel from Babylon.

Jeremiah chapter 51 talks about how Babylon is fallen. In fact, the line comes from Jeremiah and predicting that God would cause Babylon to fall to the means of the Persians, which would result in Israel being delivered. It's like a second Exodus, this time from Babylon.

And that imagery of that historical second Exodus is now brought up alongside echoes of the original Exodus. Now we have Babylon falling again. Interestingly, in Revelation 16, one of the things that happens when the bowls are poured out is the rivers of the Euphrates dried up to make way for the kings of the east.

Now, if you read popular commentaries on Revelation, it is often said that this is something going to happen in the tribulation period. The kings of the east, they say, are China. You've probably heard this if you've been around.

The Chinese army, numbering 200 million men, is going to march into the Battle of Armageddon. For that purpose, God is going to dry up the river Euphrates. I believe it was Hal Lindsay who said, you know, the Russians have built a dam up at the top of the river Euphrates, so it can happen.

They can dam up the river Euphrates, then the Chinese armies can march across, and Revelation says the river Euphrates dried up to make way for the kings of the east to come. Marvelous. But has it occurred to anybody that we no longer live in a time when rivers pose any obstacle to armies? You don't need to dry up rivers to invade a country.

Most of the time you come by air. Or you don't come at all, you just send your missiles on ahead. Drying up rivers was what had to be done for ancient armies, not for modern armies.

The river Euphrates would not, it being dried up would not make a lick of difference for a Chinese force to invade Israel. They don't need to dry up the river Euphrates. The river wouldn't slow them down a second.

To suggest that this is predicting that, to my mind, is silly, if I might be rude. But to recognize that the drying up of the river Euphrates for the kings of the east to come in is an echo of the fall of Babylon in the Old Testament is sensible. Since the fall of Babylon is repeatedly mentioned in the book of Revelation, the fact that the river Euphrates was dried up to make way for the kings of the east reminds us of how Babylon historically fell.

Cyrus, the king of Persia from the east, brought his armies against Babylon and could not invade it except under the walls where the river Euphrates ran. So he rerouted the river, dried up the river Euphrates and marched his armies, the kings of the east, under the wall and conquered Babylon. Thus Babylon fell.

The language of Revelation is reminiscent of the fall of Babylon. Because why? Because that was like another exodus. That's like the judgment of Egypt by which Israel escaped Egypt and went to the land.

So the fall of Babylon was another instance of the same phenomenon. God delivers Israel so they can go back to their land. These are the images that make up the milieu of the book of Revelation.

Of course, it's not talking about those events. It's talking about something else. Something after John's time that in principle is like those things.

Obviously, the book of Revelation is talking about some kind of salvation. Some kind of divine deliverance. Some kind of judgment on the enemies of God's people so that God's people are freed to be the true Israel of God.

Whatever Revelation is about, it's something like that. That is a lot like these other events that are echoed in its imagery. Another interesting historical setting that is echoed in one place in Revelation is the life and ministry of Jesus.

That is in the story of the two witnesses. I believe the two witnesses are symbolic. Although I have met the literal two witnesses many times.

In 43 years, as much as I travel, you can't help but meet the two witnesses here and there. I was picked up by two hitchhikers once that informed me they were the two witnesses. They were hippies.

I think they had been smoking dope and they had read the book of Revelation. It was revealed to them that they were the two witnesses. I've had others.

Recently, Enoch wrote to me. No, it was Elijah, excuse me, emailed me. In all sobriety, he said he was soon going to meet up with Enoch and they were going to go to Jerusalem and they were the two witnesses.

You know, not all Christians are sane. If you circulate in as many Christian circles as I do, you'll run into them, the two witnesses. However, in my opinion, the two witnesses are not literally two people.

The two witnesses are symbolic like many other things in the book of Revelation are. And the imagery by which they are symbolically depicted is deliberately borrowed from the actual historical life of Christ. Just like some of the images of plagues are borrowed from the historical exodus or the historical fall of Babylon is alluded to, so the historical life of Jesus provides the pattern for the symbolic description of the two witnesses.

They minister for three and a half years like Jesus. Their ministry is miraculous like Jesus. They are persecuted at the end of time like Jesus and put to death like Jesus in the town where Jesus was.

The city where Jesus was crucified was specifically told in chapter 11, verse 8. Then they are dead for three days and then they get up again and ascend into heaven like Jesus. Now, I don't believe those events literally are to happen with some group of witnesses in the future. Forgive me if you disagree, but my own studies of the book of Revelation have convinced me that this too, like the rest of the book, is very symbolic.

But what I can recognize is the two witnesses, whoever they represent, and I do have a pretty firm opinion about that, which you'll have to wait until chapter 11 to find out about, but the two witnesses are likened to Jesus, obviously. And the imagery of the three and a half year ministry, the death, the resurrection, the ascension after three days, these images are borrowed from the actual historical life of Christ and applied symbolically to the career of whoever the two witnesses may be. We are going to, in the course of this introduction, before we actually start going through chapter 1, 2, and 3 and so forth, we're going to talk about the four views of Revelation, the four approaches.

You might be aware that some years ago I wrote a book that's called Revelation Four Views. In that book I do not reveal my preferred view. I simply present four views side by side, as objectively as I know how, and judging from the Amazon.com reviews, it sounds like most people feel that I have succeeded in concealing my own view pretty well, not perfectly.

You can certainly tell from reading my book which view I don't believe is correct. But which view I do believe is correct is not that easy to discern because my own view is kind of a mixture. But the truth is there are four distinct approaches and I come to the book of Revelation without a preference about it.

But as objectively as a person can, I don't have anything at stake. Now, if I had written a book about Revelation defending one of the views, I'd have pressure to defend that view. I actually thought, after I wrote the book, I thought maybe I'll write an appendix saying what I believe.

I thought, nah, better not do that. After all, I've changed my view three times in my teaching career. What if I do it again? I don't want to go on record as believing a certain thing and then change my view and wish I'd never published.

I've often thought, what if Hal Lindsay would change his mind today? Forty million people have read his view. He's made fun of every other view than his own, insisted that it's correct, written book after book, made millions of dollars on it, and then imagine he began to think, wait a minute, maybe this one isn't right. Can't even entertain those thoughts.

I'd rather remain free to think and therefore not go on record, at least in print, about my view. But I'll tell you what my view is when we teach through. But the point is, I really don't have a dog in this race.

It's not like I have some commitment or agenda to defend a particular view. But I have reached conclusions that convince me. And yet I want people to know what all the views are and why they are believed.

I want to actually give you the strengths of each view for you to assess and what I consider to be the drawbacks of each view for you to assess. And then you can make up your own mind. And that's what we'll do in the course of this introduction before we're done.

But it'll be in our next session tomorrow night that we'll actually survey those views and actually weigh the strengths and weaknesses of each view.