Rethinking Revelation

The book of Revelation is much easier to understand than most people imagine. This is because the book itself provides a rich set of clues as to its theme and timeframe if we would only pay attention to them. In addition, Scripture provides another crucial interpretive key. The three Gospel accounts of Jesus' Olivet Discourse speak about the exact same events, so they provide an outline or roadmap for deciphering Revelation.

It is common for Christians to make two crucial mistakes when trying to understand the end times. The first is placing the "millennium" at the center of their end times thinking. The millennium refers to a thousand-year period referenced six times in six verses in chapter 20 of Revelation and nowhere else in the Bible. Open almost any book about the end times and it will immediately begin framing the whole discussion in terms of the millennium. This approach to end times thinking is misguided. Christians do not build the foundation of any other theological doctrine on such scant and cryptic biblical evidence, yet for some reason, many people do not think twice about doing it for the consummation of all things.

The second mistake is failing to recognize that the Bible talks extensively about two different ages that come to earth-shattering ends. The conclusion of God's Old Covenant brought with it the total dismantling of the Jewish priestly and sacrificial system as the New Covenant was ushered in. This was not a quiet transition, but one so cataclysmic that the Bible describes it with cosmic-shaking imagery often thought to attend the end of the world. In fact, Scripture speaks of the end of the Old Covenant age even more than the end of the world, but many readers fail to make this critical distinction and thus confuse one end with the other as if they were one event.

Taking a preterist, amillennial approach, Rethinking Revelation places these two error-prone issues into proper biblical perspective and shows that the last book of the Bible is not some great enigma that ends the canon of Scripture in a bizarre and incomprehensible fashion. Rather, it is a thoroughly eloquent and glorious way to end it-with a real-life drama full of divine love, purpose, promise, fulfilled prophecy, righteous judgment, and unimaginable blessing-and the supremacy of Jesus Christ at its very center.