The mark of the beast. Armageddon. The Four Horsemen. The false prophet. Babylon the great. Falling stars, stinging locusts, and giant hailstones. The seven last plagues. The bottomless pit. The lake of fire. These images of terror and catastrophe from the book of Revelation have greatly influenced the thinking of millions of Christians through the ages.
Even the secular press uses images such as "Armageddon" and "four horsemen of the Apocalypse" to describe calamities in our world. Despite 1900 years of fascination with the book of Revelation, John’s letter to the seven Churches of Asia continues to be misunderstood. And badly misinterpreted!
One misconception shared by some is that the Revelation has nothing of importance to say to us. It’s considered to be merely a bizarre piece of first-century writing with no relevance for today. Another wrong idea is that the Revelation is a code book describing a specific outline of history written in advance. Countless interpreters have tried to "decode" the book from a historical perspective to find all the major world events of the past 1900 years.
Others interpret it more literally as a handbook for predicting the cataclysmic events that will bring the final wrath of God and the end of the world. The claims of Christian groups from the early church to the present — that the Revelation pinpoints the events, personalities, and time periods of "the end" — have all failed. This should be a caution to believers for using the book of Revelation as a predictive handbook.
Other people’s interpretation of the book of Revelation is based on the "Pan Theory" — it’s all going to pan out in the end! Beloved brethren, the fact is, it’s not panning out the way the end-time prognosticators are projecting!
Through the years I have ministered the Word in Bible studies, seminars, and church services of various types. When there has been a question and answer session, or when opportunity was granted for people to request teaching along a particular line, the most often requested subject has been — THE BOOK OF REVELATION!
I have met people who were babes in Christ, carnal Christians whose lives were a mess, they had incredible problems and needs, including deliverance, and instead of prayer or counsel or messages that would help them overcome and grow up in Christ, they wanted me to teach them the book of Revelation! "Yeah, brother, that’s for me, lay it on me, I want the book of Revelation!
In retrospect, in the early days of my walk in God, my desire was no different. I was young, both naturally and spiritually. I knew little about the word of God or the purposes of God, but a call was in my heart. Being unlearned and immature, my very first dream was that I wanted to be a "prophecy" teacher. I imagined that I would be able to so eloquently expound the mysteries of the book of Revelation that great crowds would flock to hear me teach.
After all, where do you start when you’re brilliant and young in the Lord! Thank God, very few of those who read these lines had to suffer through some of the things I taught out of the book of Revelation! The old adage was surely fulfilled, "Fools rush in where wise men fear to tread." Today it seems to me that the dumber a person is spiritually, the more determined they are to teach the book of Revelation!
Those who know nothing are convinced that they know everything, and the first place they head is for deep water. There are depths in God, and heights of revelation and reality far beyond anything that the carnal mind can conceive.
The reason people who are spiritually illiterate jump into it with such gusto, and people who have some idea of the majesty and meaning of its message are more hesitant, is because the book of Revelation is the most dynamic, powerful, awesome, devastating book of the Bible!
Those who have caught glimpses into the transcendent glories of its deepest mysteries often shy away from it in the light of its loftiness and eminence. What Christians are normally exposed to are the radio and television preachers, the "good ol’ boys of religion" who think they know all about it and parrot and elaborate on all the absurdities they have been taught by their teachers.
Today, many Christians are confused. They are tossed too and fro with every new book that hits the market or every new fad end-time scheme introduced by some celebrity preacher. The popularity of the Revelation today is due to man’s insatiable curiosity regarding the future, the interest in the unknown tomorrow, which characterizes the restless human soul.
To claim that in the pages of the Revelation we can see the signs of the present times and thus predict the tomorrows; to pull back the veil and claim to lay bare the future is to attract an audience, for that is the nature of man — fascination with the future! And that is the thrust of the scores of books always appearing, almost all of them claiming to be able to unravel and accurately predict the great world events about to unfold. Man reveres the past, but he is intoxicated by the heady wine of prophecy. The very claim, then, of these many books — that they can reveal to us things which are soon to come — helps to explain the popularity of those books on the Revelation.
