My simple point is that when we read the book of Revelation we read it over the shoulders of those to whom it was originally written - like all books of the Bible. We have to determine from history what it meant to them then we can apply its principles and council to us in our day. It was already fulfilled in their day - except the one and only second coming and its assocuiated events.
Today so many have turned Revelation into a playground for eccentric speculations that all reside in the Future. If you start seeing First Century Christianity and read the accounts of what they were going through you will quickly realize that this was a very serious time in history and the book of Revelation was meant as a comfort to them in their persecution. Read Foxe's book of martyrs for a starter.
If this is the case, why did all the Christians who wrote about it in the first hundred years after it was written all conclude that it spoke of times far in the future.
The earliest non-scriptural Christian document which said anything about it was the Epistle of Barnabas. Some believe that this was written less than ten years after the Revelation was given, but others put it as far as between thirty and forty years later.
The fifteenth chapter of this epistle says, “The Sabbath is mentioned at the beginning of the creation [thus]: ‘And God made in six days the works of His hands, and made an end on the seventh day, and rested on it, and sanctified it.’Attend, my children, to the meaning of this expression, ‘He finished in six days.’ This implieth that the Lord will finish all things in six thousand years, for a day is with Him a thousand years. And He Himself testifieth, will be as a thousand years. Therefore, my children, in six days, that is, in six thousand years, all things will be finished."
As Christians of that day thought the world was between five thousand six hundred and five thousand seven hundred years old, they were looking for a fulfillment three to four hundred years into their future.
Further, the conclusion that these things were about the future was so all pervasive in the early church that in the mid fifth century Jerome wrote, "We should therefore concur with the traditional interpretation of all the commentators of the Christian Church, that at the end of the world, when the Roman Empire is to be destroyed, there shall be ten kings who will partition the Roman world amongst themselves. Then an insignificant eleventh king will arise, who will overcome three of the ten kings, ..." (Jerome’s comments on Daniel 7:8, as found in “Jerome’s Commentary on Daniel,” translated by Gleason L. Archer, Jr., published by Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, 1958.)
