Catholic Bible Study, Revelation: The Book of Revelation, An Introduction, Fr. Tim Peters

[Music] in the name of the father and of the son of the holy spirit amen dear heavenly father we ask you to guide us as we begin this journey through the Book of Revelation we ask this through Christ Our Lord in the name of the father and the Son and the Holy Spirit so let's go to chapter one Revelation chapter one The Journey that you've been waiting for and we'll just start with a couple verses and then I'm going to get into the introduction The Book of Revelation and just kind of go through what are the things you want to look for but I'd like to start with the scripture first so let's begin with the scripture and then we'll get into the introduction Revelation chapter 1 it begins this way the revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave him to show to his bond servants the things which must soon take place he sent and communicated it by his Angel to his bond servant John who testified to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ even to all that he saw blessed is He who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy and heed the things which are written in it for the time is near John to the seven churches that are in Asia grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come and from from the seven spirits who are before his throne and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness the firstborn of the dead and the ruler of the kings of the earth to him who loves us and released us from our sins by his blood and he has made us to be a kingdom of priest to his God and Father to him be the glory and the Dominion forever and ever amen behold he is coming with the clouds and every eye will see him and even those who pierced him and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over him so it is to be amen I am the Alpha and the Omega says the Lord God who is and who was and who is to come the almighty and with those words we We Begin The Book of Revelation where did this book take place John says this he says I John your brother and fellow partaker in Tribulation and Kingdom and persever which are in Jesus Christ was on the island called poos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ I was in the spirit on the Lord's day and I heard behind me a loud voice like the sound of a trumpet saying write in a book what you see and send it to the seven churches to Ephesus and smira and pergamum and thyra to Sardis and Philadelphia not Philadelphia here but Philadelphia in Asia Minor and lodia and I turned to see see the voice that was speaking to me and having turned I saw seven golden lampstands and in the mid in the middle of the lampstands I saw one like a son of man clothed in a robe reaching to the feet and girded across his chest with a golden sash his head and his hair were white were white like white wool like snow and and his eyes were like a flame of fire and his feet were like burnished br Bron and when when it has been made to Glow in a furnace and his voice was like the sound of many Waters in his right hand he held Seven Stars and out of his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword and his face was like the sun shining in its strength and when I saw him I fell at his feet like a dead man and he placed his right hand on me saying do not be afraid I am the first and the last and the living one I was dead and behold I am alive forever and I have the keys of death and Hades and therefore write the things which you have seen and the things which are and the things which will take place after these things as for the mystery of the Seven Stars which you saw in my right hand and the Seven golden lampstands the the Seven Stars are the Angels of the seven churches and the Seven lampstands are the seven churches thus thus begins revelation chapter 1 okay so give me one second here all right well let's go to our notes in the Book of Revelation and let's kind of talk about the introduction in this book so we first start off and I ask you this question what is the Book of Revelation is the Book of Revelation a letter is it a prophecy or is it apocalyptic literature and really the answer is that it's actually all three it's a letter that Paul's writing he starts off writing the letter to seven churches so when you read the beginning you you kind of say wow you know Paul's writing to seven churches in Asia Minor Asia Minor is basically right around where turkey is today okay that would be in the western part of turkey uh and we'll look at a map in a little bit a little later on and so he's writing this letter to the seven churches in Asia Minor and he tells them that this is a prophecy so he specifically begins and ends by saying that it's prophetic in in what sense does he mean prophecy and then in recent years Scholars have discovered that there was a form of writing a form of literature they call it a literary genre okay a type of literature and they call it apocalyptic literature you may have heard this okay and so apocalyptic literature it has certain characteristics and many schol SCH have said that the Book of Revelation also falls into this classification of literary genre of apocalyptic literature now if you don't know that you're going to misread a lot of things in the book right so if you don't know that you know it's part of this larger type of literature you're going to misread a lot of things because the book is filled with all kinds of symbolism in every verse there's there's symbolism throughout and if you and if you realize that you're simply going to misread the book so let's uh let's look a little bit more at this you know Scholars have wrestled over the correct manner in which we should classify the Book of Revelation notice notice it's singular not plural now the concept of Revelation it kind of has the sense of unveiling something if you look at the Greek word the Greek word has a sense of like you're taking off the veil so that one can see what's there uh so the question is you know what type of written literature is in the book you know we see all three a prophetic message a prophetic message a letter written specifically to seven churches specifically to seven seven churches and then also it follows this style or literary genre of apocalyptic literature which flourish between 200 BC and 200 a so it's really you have to put all this together when you when you read the book and say okay I'm going to take all this into consideration when I read the book of Revelation Les lest I be confused so let's just talk a little bit about prophecy so what's interesting is he starts off he's writing he's writing this to seven churches in Western turkey and Jesus promises that those who read who read hear and will hear and keep this prophecy if they hear and keep it they will be blessed and so he calls it a prophetic book in the very beginning and also at the very end the book so it kind of underlines a theme in the book because it's at the beginning and at the end uh and then also you know if you look at the letter you know every letter has a historical context so you have to look at the historical context what was going on in those local churches what was happening there that's going to help us to understand uh some of the context when he's talking to these local churches uh if we don't look at that historical context what was happening in those local churches then we might misunderstand some things in the book okay so that's something else to consider and then finally when you look at apocalyptic literature this is probably the biggest debate among Scholars so how how much weight do you do you uh you know give to this to this concept of apocalyptic literature uh the I think the easiest thing you can say to somebody is that if you don't know that it's a certain type of literature you will easily misunderstand things in the book because it's filled with lots of symbolism uh in symbolic meaning and actions uh and so that's probably the easiest way you could describe it um but you know the conversation gets kind of complex once we get into it now there's much more that we could talk about so first and foremost we talk about the three literary Styles in you know it's it's presented as a prophetic letter it's a letter specifically to seven churches and apocalyptic literature but there's much more now you're going to say oh boy now I'm ready and I'll say hold on you're not ready yet you're not ready yet because there's much more now we have to talk about the hermeneutic or the interpretive method how how do we interpret this book now what's the approach that we what's the best approach to take to interpreting this book and understanding this book and so you're gonna you're going to be you're going to love this well there's four or five hermeneutical um methods and each one of them has a little bit of truth to it okay so it's not just one hermeneutical method so what over the years what people have done is some have looked at it and said it's all in the past others have looked at it and said it's all in the future others have said no it's unfolding over the course of church history how do you like that talk about confusion right and and you've probably run across people who who've may maybe shared with you those uh hermeneutical methods of interpreting The Book of Revelation so let's look at the four these four different approaches there really is five and we'll talk about this so the one thing you want to say is that if you look at these interpretive approaches where where you look at everything being in the past everything being in the future everything unfolding over history and so forth none of them is mutually exclusive mutually exclusive means you don't want to just hug one of them and go with that and that's usually what happens with viewpoints that kind of get a little extreme is they just latch onto one hermeneutical me way of reading the book and and they just they run with it okay um and so none of them is really mutually exclusive what you want to look at is what are the benefits and what are the shortcomings of each method what are the benefits what are the shortcomings that's what you really want to look at those two words okay so let's just talk about this a little bit so there are some who have taken what's often been called the futuristic approach to the Book of Revelation and you've probably seen this in in kind of like Tel evangelists who come up with a new Theory every you know every 20 minutes of how Revelations is going to be unfolding and every time there's a new conflict in the Middle East they've got a new theory of how it's all going to be fulfilled and then a new video comes out a year later it's completely different than the other one right and so what it there's a truth to the futuristic approach though John is saying look this is going there's there this is a prophecy that's going to fold unfold in the future there's a truth to it but you have to see that it has limitations as well okay so the Book of Revelation understands that that the book was written primarily for the last generation according to this approach the benefit of this approach is that allows us to read Revelation as prophecy for John makes this claim moreover it provides context to Jesus's words concerning the Great Tribulation that will happen at the end of time because Christ talks about a Great Tribulation that will occur before he comes and so it gives us some context okay um but also there's also some problems with the futuristic approach and one of the biggest problems with the futuristic approach is that could be easily manipulated and easily misused and you really don't have to explain this to people because most of them have already seen many examples of how this approach has been manipulated or misused to produce almost any outcome that you can you can possibly imagine okay so you can kind of make it fit almost any scenario that's where one of the weaknesses is um and so basically you could potentially squeeze out of the text or Force into the text whatever you want how do you like that that doesn't sound good in fact this approach has been very popular in the United States by televangelists and S self-proclaimed prophecy experts who invent extravagant theories and change their storyline every year or two so that it will conveniently fit just about any circumstance or situation so when you basically push meaning into the text when you manipulate the text or push your own meaning into the text what is that called it's called ISO Jesus you impose an interpretation upon the text okay as opposed to EXO Jesus where you're you're trying to find out what the text really means okay so ISO Jesus is where you're you're imposing an interpretation upon the text as opposed to EXA Jesus which is trying to really bring out the true meaning of the text so that's one of the weaknesses you know there's truth in it there that John talks about things in the future it helps us to understand this Great Tribulation that will happen before Christ comes but you can also see how this approach could be manipulated a little bit so the next one is called the prist approach the prist approach is a fancy word for just saying it's in the past it's past history okay so many Scholars have looked at the majority of events in the Book of Revelation and they've already and they say that look they've already occurred in the first century and so you can look at how the prophecies describe things that were fulfilled in the most part in the First Century ad so the the proponents of the prist approach what they'll do is to look at the persecution of Nero or dimen Dimension or some Roman Emperor and they'll say look how it all fits right here in the first century when the church was persecuted and the temple was destroyed and therefore you know John is he's giving us this prophetic book but he's really reflecting on the past and there's a truth to this approach because when you study the Book of Revelation closely you'll see how just about everything happening throughout the book is is literally playing on events that happened in the first century because what was the climactic event that happened in the first century that everybody forgets about the destruction of the temple in 70 a and and Scholars when they look at the gospels when they look at the apocalypse they're thinking about the destruction of the temple that climactic event and so the Book of Revelation according to the Predator approach it gives us this this uh very profound spiritual world view of the destruction of the temple where it understands this in a very profound spiritual sense the church is being persecuted violently in Rome the temple is is destroyed and here it is presenting this all in a in a highly spiritual sense and here there's there's much much truth to this approach but once again it's not mutually exclusive do you see the point it's not mutually exclusive so you'll read a lot of commentaries that look at the Prest approach they'll and they'll they'll underline how many events were taking place in the early church and how they correspond to events that are described in the Book of Revelation and so just to be aware of you know where are they coming from so whenever you read any biblical commentary you kind of want to ask that question like where's this author coming from you know what's the what's the approach that this author is using as they approach this biblical book and that'll help you kind of un understand uh that commentary a little bit better okay well let's look at one more right here okay so after that we have What's called the historis histor approach and basically the idea is that the Book of Revelation is throughout history church history it's going to be F fulfilled so so the book itself describes um what will occur throughout all of church history and so this approach uh was actually very very popular during the uh Protestant um reformation and they kind of they they use this approach to kind of explain you know why why could you break away from the church that Christ founded okay and so this approach was used during the Protestant re re Reformation but it also has many weaknesses so other interpreters have have use similar approaches mostly for political reasons there are many many interpreters who have used this approach for political reasons uh in which any government or any political figure Could Be the Beast in Revelation chapter 13 so Hitler musolini Ronald Wilson Reagan notice you know Ronald Wilson Reagan 666 if you count the letters in his name people come up with all kinds of of of reasonings so the shortcoming to this approach is that it continually attempts to reinterpret the Book of Revelation in light of church history so every couple years you have to come up with a new and improved interpretation of the Book of Revelation to make it fit whatever scenario you've come up with and so you can really see how this can be isogenic you're forcing the meaning into the text you start with what you want the interpretation to say and then you're kind of forcing it into there so you can see where where a big problem is okay so um a new interpretation is provided and no explanation is given for the failure of the older interpretation how do you like that you just kind of forget about it sweep it under the rug okay so the the next uh approach is often called the idealistic approach and it focuses especially on Jesus's Eternal Victory and I think that you know all of these approaches have a little truth to them but I think the we often forget about this one right here Jesus is eternal victory over all things over sin and death um and what's so beautiful about this idealistic approach is that you read the book and you could say yeah I can see how the whole book is about Jesus's Eternal victory over over sin and death it it very much underlines that Truth uh and within the idealistic approach I have it here in one of your footnotes you also have what is a lurgical interpretation of the book and many Catholic commentators have I put it as a subcategory of the idealistic approach some might put it as a separate category but many commentators have have noted how much the Book of Revelation has influenced our liturgy why has it influenced our liturgy because if you really sit down and you look at the mass and you study the the mass it's all about Jesus's Eternal victory over sin and death and and our celebration and actual even participation uh in that Victory and so so what's beautiful about it is you can when you look at the idealistic approach you can also understand how the early church looked at the Book of Revelation and how many elements of the Book of Revelation were drawn into the Liturgy drawn into the sacred liturgy so I I think that the idealistic Pro approach is among the Ley it's the most um overlooked approach among among some Scholars what they do is they they sometimes try to make it mutually exclusive of all other approaches and they they fall into the same problem where it's just only idealistic approach and and that's it um and so there's something beautiful here that that we we want to really look at and this this will really help you you know when you talk with people about the Liturgy you'll be able to say that you know look if you read the book of of Revelation you'll see how so many elements in the Book of Revelation have inspired the sacred liturgy the mass that we celebrate and we're going to get into that in a little bit okay you're probably wondering why and I'm gonna say don't worry we're going to get into that okay we're going to talk about that in detail today so uh over the next three hours put on your seat Bel okay so one of one of the places you really see this is when you get to the the The Throne scenes in the gospel every time there's a theme in a a scene in the Bible and it talks about God being on his throne you have to stop right there and and say wo this is this is this is high Revelation because the he because God's Throne we're we're we're learning things about the Lord on his throne so you see that in the prophetic books for instance Isaiah chapter 6 you see the Lord Seated on his throne when Isaiah receives his call Ezekiel chapter 1 he talks about The Throne of God and he describes a person who looks like a human being on the throne of God in Ezekiel chapter 1 and so the the real um High Point right here is Revelation chapter 4 and 5 when you get to chapter four and five suddenly you know John is seeing Heavenly things that you know that are that go beyond what we can describe and he describes it with a very symbolic language okay so when you get to four and five you're going to see amazing amazing uh things about The Throne of God about about the about God and about the lamb okay so get ready um what what else what more can we say you know you you also have added on to these idealistic scenes you have Revelation chapter 12 the the woman who's clothed with the Sun the Victorious Army that's that's uh with the Lamb of God on Mount Zion the Judgment scenes that are in Revelation 16 and 17 and then finally It All Leads to the climactic what marriage supper of the Lamb so you can see you know if you read the Gospel of John remember we talked about in the Gospel of John the marriage supper of the Lamb the wedding Feast of kaaa and and it's really giving us this image of the marriage supper of the Lamb you can see how the Book of Revelation how it leads the reader all the way to this climactic event the marriage supper of the lamb in Revelation chapter 19 so the idealistic approach helps the reader to appre appreciate the profound theological Concepts that are closely tied to the symbolism within the book and remember what's the key the key for the idealistic approach is Jesus's Eternal victory over sin and death however what's the shortcoming you always have to be able to say what's the what's the benefit what's the shortcoming what's the shortcoming of the idealistic approach well the disadvantage to this approach is that it allows one to impose a minimalistic reading upon the text okay so that's one of the disadvantages it it it it underlines a a very key concept that I believe is often overlooked by the average reader however the one problem is when you make it mutually exclusive all by itself you avoid everything else it can it can give you this very minimalistic reading of the text do you see what you see what the disadvantage is right there that's and so so basically the text you artificially overlooks the prophetic message that John wants to especially convey in the light of the persecution that the church faced and also the Lord's second coming and his final judgment um and so uh in other words it avoids these things sometimes intentionally speaking uh speak speaking about future events and that will take place when Jesus comes again um and comp and so that's one difficulty with the idealistic approach um but here's here's my conclusion for you with these four approaches um very simply avoid any extreme application we or Mutual ex Mutual exclusive or extreme application it's you usually what happens is you run off into never never never land and you can you can just look at the history of interpretation on the Book of Revelation and if you read you know read about you know very historical approaches and interpretations you'll see the ones that kind of went the wrong way you know they just they took one idea and they just ran too far with that without taking into consideration you know the whole book another thing is um um avoid the mutual exclusive application of approaches that that usually result in Gross misinterpretations and we have many examples in the last 1900 years so all of the above approaches contain measures of Truth and they do have a benefit all four approaches have a benefit the problem is when you only isolate one of them okay and so this is what makes Revelation tough and I I I I I sum up this short introduction in this way you have three types of literature you have a letter A prophetic book and it's apocalyptic genre whoa and then you have four four interpretive approaches and all of them have a little bit of Truth so that's so so I would just sum it up by saying this we have to be humble readers of sacred scripture that's what it really comes down to and and we have to be humble readers who prayerfully read sacred scripture I don't think you're going to go off track if if you have a real humility when you read scripture and you're and what's also beautiful is look at the look at how the Living Church has interpreted scripture throughout the centuries and you'll you'll find reading the church fathers you'll see how they interpreted the Book of Revelation and then reading modern biblical commentaries you you'll you'll see how there's a consistency of interpretation or at least at the very least you'll see the limits of how far you can go uh and that will that will keep you from going off track it's a tough book to read a tough book to interpret and that's why I think um it's the it's a book that is extremely popular if you give a bible study on the book of re Revelation you get five times as many people as you get and so I'll tell you a little story when I was a young kid my my mom said you know let's all go to Eucharistic adoration so we went to E adoration I grabbed the Bible and uh you know let's and she said let's sit down and talk with Jesus for one hour so we so and kneel down and pray and and adore our Lord and so I picked up the Bible and I'm like you know what book do I want to read and I said you know I kind of a young kid I said I was probably about 10 or 11 years old I said do I want to maybe I'll just go to the very end and get the answers right here so I just went all the way back to I went to the Book of Revelation because that's what I thought you know young guy you don't want you know I just want the an so I went and I started reading the book of Revelation you know so I'm reading through the Book of Revelation and going through all these symbols and everything like that you know and I think my mom looked at me she's like she's looking at me like you know are you sure you know what you're reading over there and and you know the the one thing I'll say is wow A lot of it was over my head but I will tell you this read scripture continually and even if there are things in Scripture that you don't read humbly approach the biblical text again and again and you and studying learning reading commentaries and and over time you'll be surprised how much more you understand in the sacred text okay so I think I think the emphasis is continually reading scripture humbly doing so with the mind of the church and and the humility of Christ and I think over over time you're going to understand the text better and better okay uh so a lot of the misinterpretations sometimes the aspect of humility might not be there and just say that in a very simple way okay well there there's the there's our introduction to the Book of Revelation I mean that's let's see what else we can say so I want to just mention a couple more a couple more things here um you know we kind of already summed this up right here the historical context you know it's especially important when you look at the destruction of the temple you guys got the right answer by the way okay um what happened when Jerusalem was destroyed you guys remember the name of the of the general whoa who came to Jerusalem Titus but who was titus's father any of you guys remember starts with a V Vespasian yeah and so Vespasian first came with 12 Legions to Rome and then he was elected Emperor everything stopped and he went to Rome to be elected Emperor some say that the Christians when they saw the Gentiles surrounding the city escaped from the city during that time he was elected Emperor and then he told his son go to Jerusalem and finish the war with the Jews and so his son what was his name Titus and so he went to Jerusalem he finished the war unfortunately the temple caught on fire the whole Temple burned the gold in the temple melted between the giant rocks in the temple every stone was turned aunder as you can say uh and if you go to Jerusalem today there is a place you can you can walk right down next to the Temple Mount and you can see these massive Stones cut stones that weigh thousands of of pounds all piled up there for 2,000 years almost and it's really amazing to just walk over walk next to those stones and look at that and think oh my gosh this is this is the destruction of the city right here um and so it only took 12 Roman Legions by the way isn't that amazing each Legion had how many how many troops was in a legion 6,000 6,000 troops in a legion so that means you had 60 centurions by the way okay and there was only 12 72,000 troops they believe that over a million people died the ancient historian flavius Josephus says that 1.1 million people perished when the city was destroyed you can just imagine how gruesome this was okay so another thing to really consider is is the Old Testament background when you read the book of Revelation you'll see that there are over 1,000 over 1,000 references or implications where there's a play on words or recalling of a verse in the Old Testament 1,000 references to the Old Testament now that's a lot of Old Testament right there and literally in every verse sometimes in every verse there's numerous references to the Old Testament you could you see that you know uh John had this incredible understanding of the Old Testament that's I'm most Amazed by by the Old Testament background to the Book of Revelation I'm fascinated with it the notes that I give you um have a lot of Old Testament background to it uh what's also amazing is there's an incredible understanding of the Hebrew Bible but there's also a very profound understanding of the Greek minor who would have celebrated their liturgy in Greek so you can see why the Greek septu aent would have been important as well okay um there's Timeless theological truths that are expressed in the Book of Revelation and so we have to pick up on those truths and especially the the big ones are the Divinity the Divinity of Jesus Christ and the conflict between good and evil and I I would have to say that when it comes to christology understanding the very person of Christ that that he's true God and true man I humbly say that we Overlook many profound passages in the Book of Revelation Revelation has so much to say about the Divinity of Jesus and we're going to talk about jesus' Divinity as we go through the text okay so that's just something to be uh aware of and we will talk about that what about authorship what about authorship there's a lot of uh varied opinion on this the traditional authorship the earliest position is that John the Apostle wrote the Book of Revelation that's the traditional opinion I agree with that opinion personally but you're going to find a lot of Scholars who who argue that there there's other candidates so for instance in the early church if you look at if you look at some early church writings you'll find that look at papius Justin Martyr irenaeus ttian Clement of Alexandria origin hpus and victorianos they all say it was John the Apostle okay however um if you if you um look at some other authors you'll see for instance uh that they had other opinions so um let's see if I have that here in the notes so here's some of the opinions that you'll find okay so Scholars will say that the Greek is unusual and demonstrates some differences with John's gospel so the the Greek is a little bit different than the go the Greek and John's gospel sometimes when people write something years later than another work their their English is different than you know in an earlier work possibly many of you could look at something you wrote 15 years ago and go wow that's a lot different than how I write today I certainly would say the same thing with myself so that's not is slam dunk in any in any way um and then you know we would kind of expect that if John was you know traveling to a lot of places where they spoke Greek and basically improving his own grasp of the language uh the Apostle John is never mentioned by name and thus the name John leaves open the possibility so he's called John but never really the Apostle John so you get the idea uh number three the Apostle John and John the Elder could be the same person so some some argue that this is written by a different John called John the Elder but it's not clear they could easily be the same person okay um according to Yus in his ecclesiastical history eus recounts the claim of gas who argued that Revelation was written by the Gnostic corinthus um however it is more likely this rumor was proposed in order to weaken the credibility The Book of Revelation which in some ways was used by those who were mous the in early heresy thus those who oppose monism attack The credibility of Revelation for the wrong reason some Scholars have proposed that John was a pseudonym and the name used by another author which would give the work more credibility and so the argument is is that it follows a lot of the Theology of John but it's written by somebody else and the name John is uh used as a pseudonym this is simply a theory I think it's weak but that's you'll find that theory out there much more could be said I I think that though if you look at the early church I think you look at what the what was said in the early church most likely the the the the vast majority of the evidence says it was John the Apostle and that's the traditional understanding um you will find some other other theories why was it accepted into the Canon exactly for that reason because because it's it because it was considered to be written by the Apostle John okay uh there was a lot of um uh discussion over you know the worthiness of this book in the Canon it was eventually accepted and that's one of the major reasons because the early church believed that it was written by the Apostle John um so the historical context of the Book of Revelation we talked about this already the historical contexts are the Jewish revolts that occurred between 66 and 70 a 3 and a half years of what I call veritable chaos three and a half years of chaos um and to really give you a little background um there was a Roman legion that was coming down from Syria because there was a lot of restlessness in Jerusalem around around 66 ad this Roman legion was coming south they were attacked by Jewish Rebels they were ambushed the entire Legion was destroyed an entire Roman legion how many troops in a legion 6,000 even worse than that they there was a symbol that They carried in the Legion of the authority of Rome it was a it was an eagle and the eagle was stolen so the news went back to Rome the entire Legion has been killed and the eagle has been taken and it's like this was an absolute affront to all Roman Authority to do something like that right and so what happened is the Romans responded by sending 12 Legions to Jerusalem and that's essentially how the Revolt began okay with uh with the murder or destruction of an entire Roman legion and the Romans responding by sending 12 12 uh Legions um and so 12 Legions would be 72,000 troops okay a legion if you really really look at what a legion was the way I would describe a legion to lay person it was it's like a human tank because the Romans when they fought they fought in close um vicinity of each other they marched together they worked together so it was literally like a human tank almost like a human meat grinder if you will because of how Ancient Warfare was there was close contact swords and Spears and so forth and so what the legion would do is you know when they engaged enemies they would strategically find the best location to fight them so that it would fade fa the way that the legion fought um and so to make a long story short it was like the Green Berets the best of the best the Navy Seals you know you've got your best soldiers in the legion so 72,000 soldiers is more than enough if you're going against a million people pretty amazing if you think about it um because you've got the best of the best and they're highly trained and work together uh so a long story short here so what about the what about the seven churches in Asia let's take a look and see if we can find uh you know some biblical Maps here let's go back to our notes here okay so the seven churches in Asia what's really interesting about the these seven churches is that um they kind of they're they're kind of around the same area you can almost form like a circle around the area where the seven churches are why is it seven so there's a lot of proposal y7 you know maybe and maybe it signifies that there's like a universal scope to this message okay um that's one that's one Theory where's John writing from he's writing from a small island right off the coast of turkey Western turkey what's the name of that Island pmos how big is pmos 13.36% .98 square miles poos is only 13.36% when does he begin to have this Revelation when does he begin to have the Revelation key it happens on the Lord's day now that's key to understanding the lurgical background to the Book of Revelation it's the day that he would be celebrating with the church the Lord's Supper the the Eucharist the breaking of the bread as it was called in the early church but here it is the day the Lord rose from the dead and instead of being able to celebrate the Liturgy with the church he's going to be given a Heavenly perspective of the Liturgy instead of celebrating the Liturgy on Earth with the church that celebrates with all of the church victorious in heaven God is going to show him this heavenly perspective of his eternal victory over sin and death and so it's very important to look at this phrase the Lord's day that's the day that the vision comes and you could when you understand that you can understand a little bit about the idealistic approach and the lurgical uh uh implications that are throughout the Book of Revelation okay um so another another uh uh point is the Old Testament background I think I brought this up already there's over a thousand references to the in the Old Testament I want to look at one scholar his name is Richard buckham Richard buckham he wrote a great book uh on the Book of Revelation and the name of the work you can see in the footnote right here the name of the book the book is called the climax to prophecy and this is what he says about about Revelation he says that Revelation has been composed with such meticulous attention to the detail of language and structure that scarcely a word can have been chosen without deliberate reflection on its relationship to the work as an integrated interconnected whole The Source critics of the 19th and and early 20th centuries who divided Revelation into a number of disperate sources incompetently combined by an editor could only do so by crash failure to appreciate the Pacific literary Integrity of the work as it stands what he's basically saying is that um beginning about 200 years ago a number of Scholars they wanted to break apart a lot of biblical works and they came up with these theories of how the works were composed and he's saying that you know after a century and a half of this we can see that there's a big problem with that that the book is is really a literary unity and and because because it's so complex and so interconnected you can't take it apart okay it's this incredible literary Unity which which presents this profound theological message of Jesus's Eternal victory over sin and death um and so something that you just take into consideration as you read through the book what are some of the main theological themes in the book so theological themes we already talked about this one of the main themes is the Divinity of Christ and most of you know this that many altars you'll see you'll see this image you'll see the Alpha and the Omega have you ever noticed that on the front of altars or churches doorways and so forth and why do you have that image the image of Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega the first and the last the beginning and the end of all things isn't that amazing Jesus is the Alpha and Omega well if he's the Alpha and Omega it's language that's used about God we're going to see he Jesus is also called the word of God in Revelation chapter 19 now that reminds you of John chapter one do you remember John chapter 1 in the beginning was the word the word was with God and the Word was God and so he's called the word of God in Revelation 19 the one who makes all things new well this is this is uh this is a reference to God at the very end of the book but you can see how Jesus is in various ways called God uh another aspect of the Book of Revelation is the concept of New Creation the restoration of all things and so the concept of biblical restoration we underestimate what this means the biblical con concept of restoration climaxes with a new creation a new heavens and a new Earth and it comes directly from Isaiah chapter 65 verse 17 to about 25 Isaiah 6517 and forward and so this concept of restoration we misunderstand we underere this concept because it's all leading us to understand this new creation this new heavens and new earth which will only be possible in Christ okay so the Book of Revelation it it in many ways helps us to understand this concept of New Creation in order for this new creation to take place one of the climactic events that has to take place is this marriage covenant between the lamb and his bride who is the Lamb Jesus who is the bride chur the church uh the book also in the beginning chapters it underlines the importance of repentance and perseverance repenting from sin and persevering through trial and you can understand that in the early church there was great persecution the church was persecuted violently in Rome and in other places so you can understand why the themes of repentance and perseverance were so important to the Book of Revelation we we talked about the lurgical approach already and as I said before when you get to Revelation 4 and5 it becomes very clear but the theme of the the lurgical themes are carried on throughout the rest of the book as well okay well with that my brothers and sisters that's our introduction we're going to start Revelation chapter 1 um in just a moment in the name of the father and the Son and the Holy Spirit