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revs Who wrote it? To whom was it written? When was it written? Why was it written? What is the historical context? |
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it was written approximately AD 95. It was written by John the Apostle, even though he was a very old man. John wrote to 7 real churches, Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamon, Thyatira, Sardis Philadelphia, and Laodecia’. John was in prison on Patmos, which is a small island near Turkey. His crime? He was a Christian. We know from history that in 95 the Roman emperor was called Domitian. Domitian was a fanatic about emperor worship. Now by emperor worship, we mean that once a year every citizen of the Roman Empire, would have to stand in front of a statue, raise his right hand, and say the Emperor is Lord, and God. The citizens would then take a pinch of incense, and drop it into the flames. Domitian began every one of his letters, ‘Your Lord and your God Domitian speaks’. And when he entered a theatre, everyone had to stand and state, ‘Our Lord and Lady, our God’. Many Christians would not stand, and simply confess, ‘Jesus Christ is Lord’. Therefore when John refused to bow to the Emperor, he was imprisoned, and he worked in the marble mines, John had chains around his wrists and feet; he lived on bread and water, as he had done for a number of years. The word witness in the book of Revelation actually means martyr. As far as these early Christians were concerned, if you are going to give witness or testimony that Jesus Christ is God, you have a martyr mentality. This book was written to people under persecution of such a degree, that if they opened their mouth, and confessed they were Christians, they had better already have faced up to martyrdom. A martyrdom of real bloodshed and death, or a martyrdom, which was a living martyrdom, banishment like John, or the loss of home or job. So as we come to this book, we must take into account the Christians it was written to. Just supposing that this Book was only about future prophecy; if that were the case, then we have got to find it plainly stated to those first-century readers. They must understand that when they’d finished reading this book, they will have to close it and say, we understand that there is nothing in this book for us, it awaits another 2000 years before its fulfilment, because if God wrote this book to the people that are alive today, and did not tell those first-century readers, who thought it was for them, then God is cheating them. Unless of course, God put in the letter, ‘this letter is not for you’. The only way to read the book of Revelation is by reading it over the shoulder of the first century believers. It was only written to us, as the whole Word of God was written to us. We will never understand it until we understand what it meant to the first century believers. In verse 3 the Book promises to be a unique blessing to everyone who reads it. ‘Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy’. Now that is suddenly taken out of the context of the first century readers and is now for us, but we must read it looking over their shoulder. In the very first verse of Revelation the original Greek is ‘He sent and made it known by signs and symbols’. When you read of a Lamb that has been slain, everyone knows that the lamb is Jesus. Now if you use that same logic for every other part of Revelation, then it is a very simple book to understand. We will find a lamb that is full of eyes and horns, and we will also find a woman sitting on a beast, and she is carrying a cup full of blood. This is a book full of signs and symbols, picture numbers, and picture colours. So when we meet a city called Jerusalem, even though we do not know what it is, we know it is NOT Jerusalem. For a symbol is pointing away to something else. If we are going to look at a book that was written 2,000 years ago, and interpret it by looking at today’s newspaper, we are heading for a lot of misinterpretation. So our aim in this work is to bring the pictures and symbols to life. We couldn’t possibly give you all of the symbols, echoes and allusions on this tape. So we have set out to give you the big picture and then you can fill in the blank spaces yourself.
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