Part 1

The Book of Revelation

Revelation 1:1-8; Daniel 2:27-28; Zechariah 12:9-10

Revelation 4:1-11; Ezekiel 1:26-28, 1:4-11, Revelation is full of references to Old Testament apocalypses

Revelation 5:1-14; John 1:29, 36, 19:14-15, 36, 20:25, 27-28, Only the Lamb Having Been Slaughtered is worthy to open the book

Revelation 6:1-8; Ezekiel 5:5-17, Four seals release four horsemen

Revelation 6:9-17; Joel 2:31; Isaiah 13:6-9; Ezekiel 30:2-3; Jeremiah 46:10; Amos 5:18-20; Malachi 4:5, The fifth seal reveals the souls of the martyrs

Revelation 7:1-17; Isaiah 49:8-10, The servants of God who have survived martyrdom are marked with a seal on their foreheads to protect them

More of the Book of Revelation

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San Juan Evangelista en Patmos. Attributed to Alonso Cano (courtest of the Museo del Prado and Wikimedia). Click to enlarge.

San Juan Evangelista en Patmos.
Attributed to Alonso Cano
Courtesy of the Museo del Prado and Wikimedia)
Click to enlarge.

Our email Bible study has been going for 18 years, and we've never studied the book of Revelation. There are two reasons for that. First, as Harley Swiggum said, there are already 653 interpretations of Revelation, and I didn't feel like adding another one. Second, Revelation has very little to say to American Christians, who aren't being persecuted.* However, our initial group of five has been joined by thousands of fellow readers all over the world, and Revelation may well speak to some of them. In this study we'll try to sort out the known symbols from the unknown and discern what Revelation might have to say both to its original audience and to modern Christians who worship in safety.

* If you are offended by a Darwin symbol on the car in front of you, call me back when you are jailed, beaten, or killed for the Faith.

Revelation 1:1-8; Daniel 2:27-28; Zechariah 12:9-10 (06/02/25)

Probably no other book of the Bible is as misunderstood and misinterpreted as Revelation. Revelation is a coded message for first-century Christians suffering terrible persecution, who knew the meanings of all the symbols in the code. We know some of the meanings, but not all, which gives plenty of room for modern distortions to arise and circulate. Many of the symbols come from the Old Testament, and those can be a little easier for us to interpret. Most days, we'll read both Revelation and a related passage from the OT. Some symbols are new. For example, we don't know for sure who "the beast" is (as in "the number of the beast"), but it certainly is not any modern politician, religious leader, or celebrity. We don't know for sure when God will step into history, but Revelation certainly cannot be used to determine the date. It isn't at all clear that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are War, Famine, Pestilence and Death. So what do we know? The slaughtered lamb is always the crucified Christ, and when he returns in triumph, he will bring justice, righteousness, and the beginning of a new age.

The name of the book is Revelation, not Revelations. Revelation 1:1 calls itself "the apocalypse of Jesus Christ," and the Greek apokalypsis means revelation, as in "what is revealed." In both Revelation and Daniel, it is God who reveals the information. Only in modern times does "apocalypse" mean "catastrophic, widespread destruction and the collapse of civilization." As illustrated in the painting above, an apocalypse is typically given in a vision (Revelation 1:1, Daniel 2:28) and transmitted in writing, as opposed to prophecy, which is typically heard (Hosea 1:1, Zechariah 7:1) and then transmitted orally (Jeremiah 2:2) for quite some time before being written down. An apocalypse typically claims to be prophecy (Revelation 1:3), but in fact it's writing about its own current events.

Revelation 1:9-20; Daniel 7:9-13, 12:4 (06/03/25)

An apocalypse is symbolic and needs an interpreter. I asked my son, "If you saw a political cartoon talking about deep-dish communion wafers, what would you think it's about?" He said, "There's a new pope, and he's from Chicago." He hadn't seen the day's cartoon, and I hadn't even mentioned the two guys in black wearing dog collars, or the gold communion paten, or the man walking away in white robes and a mitre. Those were extra clues for someone not quite as quick-witted as my son. Now, how did he know what the cartoon was about? Because he knows the background information:

There's a new pope, and new popes change things. The new pope is from Chicago.
Chicago is famous for deep-dish pizza. Pizza has a bread crust.
Communion wafers are bread.

Revelation is written in the style of a political cartoon. First-century Christians knew the background and the symbols, and most of them found it easy to interpret on the first guess. For example, the golden lampstands of Revelation 1:12 come straight from the temple lampstands of Exodus 25 and 2 Chronicles 13:11, so the readers knew the vision took place in, or at least was set in, the temple. Some readers needed additional clues, and those are there, too. We are not 1st-century Christians, however, and we don't know all the symbols. This study will try to sort out the symbols that all scholars agree on, the ones that many scholars agree on, and the ones that there's very little agreement on. We'll also think about some of the ideas that are not in Revelation, no matter what people say.

In Revelation, the recipient of the vision is John of Patmos (Revelation 1:9). Sometimes the interpreter is "one like a son of man" in vs. 1:13*, and he tells John the meaning of the stars and lampstands in vs. 20. More often, the symbols are not explained. By saying "one like a son of man," John means that the person he's talking about initially looks like an ordinary human being. Then the vision seems to shift a little bit, and the "one like a son of man" suddenly has white hair, flaming eyes, white-hot metal feet, and a voice like Niagara Falls. Not ordinary. The first-century reader immediately recalls the writings of Daniel and the intertestamental period and says, "Aha! We're talking about the Messiah!"

Revelation is not a book of prophecy. Many books of prophecy include a bit of apocalyptic writing, and Revelation may include a bit of prophecy. However, prophecy and apocalyptic are separate genres with different purposes and completely different styles. Prophecy is ordinary prose or poetry directed at unfaithful, sinful people who are being urged to return to God to avoid future calamity. Apocalyptic is a message encoded in symbols, directed at faithful people who are currently experiencing calamity and are being urged to remain faithful until God fixes it. They may be martyred in the meantime, but God will fix it. Most apocalyptic claims to have been prophecy written by some earlier historical figure and "sealed" until the current time (Daniel 12:4); however, it is actually written at the current time by an anonymous writer claiming to be the prophet. This is why the "predictions" in apocalyptic tend to be incredibly accurate. As we'll see much later, Revelation is not "sealed."

* A number of translations have "One resembling the Son of Man," but that doesn't agree with the Greek.

Revelation 2:1-17 (06/04/25)

Seven stars, seven lampstands, seven angels, seven churches. So what's with all the sevens? Seven is a symbolic number throughout the Bible; the readers would know that it stood for completeness or perfection. Yesterday, the one like a son of man was holding 7 stars and was surrounded by 7 lampstands. Now the one like a son of man dictates letters to seven churches. In Daniel, and even more so in the writings between the Old and New Testaments, The Son of Man became more or less synonymous with the expected Messiah, and the churches accepted Jesus as the Messiah, or in Greek, the Christ. Neither the original readers nor we need a course in rocket science to know that the letters came from Jesus. One idea Revelation should drive home to modern Christians is that we have to study the Old Testament in order to fully understand the New Testament.

Obviously the first readers knew exactly what the letters were about; we're less certain. For example, no-one has known since about the second century who the Nicolaitans were or why they were loathly. YouTubers will tell you all about them, but they're just making it up, or even worse, transmitting what someone else made up, without checking their facts. The readers would know, and so do we, that the references to the "tree of life" and "paradise" use exactly the same Greek words as in Genesis 2:8-9. According to Wikipedia, there's a pagan altar in Pergamon that resembles a giant throne; this may be "Satan's throne," and it may be a coincidence; who knows? I think Balaam is getting some undeserved bad press here. Balak hired him to curse the Israelites (Numbers 22:4-6), but he ended up blessing them instead (Numbers 24:3-16). Maybe vs. 14 is based on some intertestamental legend, or maybe the Balaam/Balak story had come to be a symbol of idolatry.

Reader Question Answered: Rev. 2:14 (when the Lord is talking to one of the churches) says that He is angry because they've eaten meat offered as sacrifices to idols. Is there more to this than just eating the meat?

Revelation 2:18-3:6 (06/05/25)

So was there a woman at Thyatira who was actually named Jezebel? Hard to say. The Old Testament Jezebel (1 Kings 21, 2 Kings 9) was a Philistine princess who married Ahab, the son of the king of Israel, and promoted the worship Baal, an idol, among the Israelites. Her teaching certainly led the king and the nation astray. She was accused of fornication, and she and all her children were killed.

But we need to remember that fornication and adultery are standard Old Testament symbols of idolatry and apostasy. So maybe there really was a woman in Thyatira with that name, and the letter is saying, "What a coincidence - she's just like the original Jezebel!" Or maybe her name was Gertrude, and the writer is saying, "You have a modern-day Jezebel on your hands, and you know exactly who I mean. Don't let her lead you astray into apostasy!" We don't know who the original writer and the folks at Thyateira had in mind; however, it's good advice for us, too. When a self-proclaimed teacher (like me, for example) tells you to do or believe this or that, you need to read the Bible for yourself. Is their teaching consistent with the tenets of the faith? Do they encourage a continued relationship with God? Or are they leading you into idolatry and apostasy?

All seven of the letters end with the basic message of an apocalypse: "Stay faithful to God no matter what, and God will reward you in the end." We see this in every letter:

Ephesus: To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.
Smyrna: Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life.
Pergamon: To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna...
Thyatira: Only hold fast what you have until I come. The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations...
Sardis: The one who conquers will be clothed thus in white garments, and I will never blot his name out of the book of life.
Philadelphia: The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God.
Laodocia: The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne ...

An apocalypse is directed at people who are in trouble through no fault of their own. It's a tract for hard times that encourages the readers to hang in there, because God will fix everything in the end. Hold fast to the faith, and conquer doubt and despair.

Revelation 3:7-22 (06/06/25)

Have you noticed that the letters to the seven churches have something positive as well as something negative to say before encouraging each church? Remember this the next time you'd like someone to change their behavior.

Revelation is full of symbols:

The Lamb/Slaughtered Lamb is always Jesus/Jesus Christ.
7 is always perfect/complete.
OT symbols, like adultery, almost always have the OT meanings, like apostasy.
And we know a handful of others, e.g., Babylon is always Rome.

Then there are hundreds of OT references, which normally mean, "you know what I'm talkin' about, wink wink." For example, we see "the one who has the key of David" - and we remember God's promise to David (2 Samuel 7:5-16) and know that this message is from the Messiah. We see "gold refined in the fire" and "white robes" - and we remember Malachi's message that God will purify and save a faithful remnant of the people (Malachi 3:1-6). We see "I will feast with him, and he shall feast with Me" - and we remember both the Messianic banquet that signals the coming of God's kingdom, which was foretold by several prophets, and the many times that Jesus ate and drank with sinners, friends, opponents, and disciples. Possibly the writer had other specific examples in mind than the ones I've given here, but these are enough to show you that we can decipher most of Revelation in reasonable, first-century terms.

Of course, there are many symbols in Revelation that we don't understand, because we don't have clues from the Old or New Testaments or from history. For example, there are three major competing and mutually exclusive views the millennium (which we'll talk about later), and nobody knows who the Nicolaitans were, so there are hundreds of views.

Nevertheless, the crucial message is repeated over and over again in Revelation, so we can't miss it: "cling to that which you already possess, so that your wreath of victory be not taken away from you," or "be in earnest and repent." In brief, stay faithful, and God will save you!

Revelation 4:1-11; Ezekiel 1:26-28, 1:4-11 (06/09/25)

Revelation is full of references to Old Testament apocalypses, and apparently also to several intertestamental apocalypses, although I haven't read those. Because I haven't read the latter, references to them go right over my head. In my defense, I try not to make stuff up to explain them.

The living creatures with the four faces clearly come straight from Ezekiel. Are they real creatures? Do the faces of the man, lion, ox, and eagle represent Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, as we are told by ancient Church tradition? The Jerusalem Bible Study Edition suggests in the footnote for Ezekiel 1:10 that they represent the servants of pagan gods, harnessed to God's chariot. There's a cross-reference to Revelation 4:6-8, where the footnotes in that same Study Edition suggest that the four animals represent "the four angels responsible for directing the physical world" and cross-reference back to Ezekiel. If this team of professionals can't keep their story straight, what chance do I have?

Or is John just saying, "Remember Ezekiel? He wrote to the people of God at a really bad time, too, and eventually it turned out okay for them." It's easy to come up with ideas, but hard to know which is correct. It doesn't pay to be dogmatic, let alone to argue, about some of the symbols in Revelation. However, it does pay to read the Old Testament and at least know that most of the symbols come from there.

On the other hand, both John and Ezekiel agree that being in the presence of God is like being in a place of glorious light, color, and beauty. We can probably take that at face value.

Revelation 5:1-14; John 1:29, 36, 19:14-15, 36, 20:25, 27-28, Only the Lamb Having Been Slaughtered is worthy to open the book (06/10/25)

In John's Gospel, he repeatedly makes the point that Jesus was "the lamb of God," and that he was crucified at the hour of the slaughter of the Passover lambs, which would connect the Lamb Having Been Slaughtered to Jesus in the minds of the first readers. Everyone agrees that the Lamb represents Jesus, and the Lamb Having Been Slaughtered is the crucified and risen Christ, who still bears the marks of his suffering; this may be the only symbol in Revelation that everybody does agree on.

We first see the word sphazo/slaughtered, killed in Genesis 22:10, when Abraham is about to give Isaac as an offering to God, and usually we see it in the context of animal offerings. It also appears as ordinary killing of human beings, and - worst of all - of child sacrifice to pagan gods; however, the early readers of Revelation would almost certainly perceive this as a reference to Jesus as a sacrifice, not just as an ordinary murder victim.

We know that 7 means complete, so the book sealed with 7 seals is completely sealed - at first no one seems to be able to open it. Then it turns out that the Lamb Having Been Slaughtered is worthy to open the book. The lion is a very old symbol for the tribe of Judah (Genesis 49:9), although the connection doesn't seem very strong if you look at all the occurrences of "lion." Isaiah prophesies that "the surviving remnant of the house of Judah shall again take root downward and bear fruit upward" (2 Kings 19:30) and that "In that day the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples - of him shall the nations inquire, and his resting place shall be glorious" (Isaiah 11:10). I suspect the early readers were saying, "Right on! Jesus is from the tribe of Judah, descended from David son of Jesse, from the tribe of Judah! So he's the Messiah for sure."

Revelation 6:1-8; Ezekiel 5:5-17, Four seals release four horsemen (06/11/25)

Quick! Who are the four horsemen of the apocalypse? War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death, right? We all know that.

Well, not so much. The first four seals release four horsemen, representing:

(1) Conquest, possibly by Rome's enemy, the Parthians, who favored the bow;
(2) Possibly war, but I think more likely just violence, because the verb is our old friend sphazo. I looked at all 91 occurrences of this word, and only a few refer to the deaths of people, as opposed to (mostly sacrificial) animals. The most warlike one comes from - you guessed it - Ezekiel 21:14-16;
(3) Famine; and
(4) Death by sword, famine, plague, and wild beasts.

I had never heard of a choenix (usually translated "measure"), which seemed odd after we did a whole study on weights and measures, so I looked it up. It only appears twice, both times here in vs. 6. It's apparently about a quart, where a choenix of wheat is selling for a day's wage.

Verse 6 takes me right back to 2 Kings 6:25 and 7:1.* While the city of Samaria (capital of Israel) was besieged by the Syrians, even unclean foods were selling for outrageous prices. The prophet Elisha tells the king, "Thus says the LORD, Tomorrow about this time a seah [about a gallon and a half] of fine flour shall be sold for a shekel, and two seahs of barley for a shekel, at the gate of Samaria." I love this! John is talking about famine, but he's paralleling a verse about abundance. And guess what? Samaria was saved when then LORD terrified the Syrians into abandoning the siege and all their supplies outside the gate of the city.

Again, the message is to stay faithful to God, and he will save you.

* Which, by the way, wasn't in any of my cross references. You need to read the OT more than once so you can notice these connections for yourself.

Revelation 6:9-17; Joel 2:31; Isaiah 13:6-9; Ezekiel 30:2-3; Jeremiah 46:10; Amos 5:18-20; Malachi 4:5 (06/12/25)

The fifth seal reveals the souls of the martyrs and the bad news that they will be joined by many more (vs. 11b). Notice that the martyrs are not participating in the battle; they're sitting on the sidelines (vs. 11a). The idea that God will avenge the wrongs done to his people is an ancient one (e.g., Deuteronomy 32:43, Psalms 79:10; Zechariah 1:12-13). The opening of the sixth seal ushers in the Day of the LORD (vs. 17). The original readers of Revelation clearly understood that the situation is going to be bad for everyone on the great and terrible day of the Lord, when both the One on the throne and the Lamb are angry (vs. 16).

Revelation 7:1-17; Isaiah 49:8-10 (06/13/25)

The servants of God who have survived martyrdom are marked with a seal on their foreheads to protect them. Much ink has been spilled - and whole denominations have been created - over the issue of who ezzackly is gonna be among the 144,000 who are saved. People, get a grip! We know that 12 is one of the two most symbolic numbers, along with 7. Twelve is the number of tribes of Israel, no matter who is doing the counting or what tribes, half tribes, or non-tribes are included. Here in Revelation, for example, the large half-tribe of Manasseh replaces the small tribe of Dan. The twelve tribes as a group are often used as a symbol of all the people of God, so we have 12 tribes times 12,000 people per tribe, i.e., 144,000. The 144,000 represents all the people of God, no matter what the real number is. Right now there are about 2.38 billion Christians and 15.8 million Jews worldwide, and they all count among the 144,000.*

* Depending, of course, on who's doing the counting. I urge you to err on the side of counting in, not counting out.

More of the Book of Revelation
The Book of Revelation - Part 2

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