SUNDAY, August 29

Revelation 1:1-2

The book of Revelation in many ways, I believe, holds a key for the end-time church in coming in to our full destiny.  But there is battle over this book that is emerging in the church and it seems to be based on the date that it was written.  If it was written in the ‘50’s or early ‘60’s, then it can in some ways be applied to the destruction of Jerusalem and is largely written off as not applicable for our day.  Some have entitled this ‘victorious eschatology’.  But their definition of ‘victorious eschatology’ is to remove the cross of Revelation 19:10 so the church does not have to suffer persecution. The testimony of Jesus is the cross.  True prophecy has the cross in it.  Without the cross it is not true prophecy.  Prophecy, void of the testimony of Jesus, has no cross.  Crossless prophecy tickles ears and is worthless.  To look at Revelation and take some of its promises by faith for application in our day necessitates understanding when it was written.  If John was exiled under Nero in 66 AD then chapters 4 through 20 possibly could be stretched to the approaching destruction of Jerusalem but only by figurative interpretation.  Too many things do not fit to make this viable.  It is interesting to note that the Jesuits were the first to originate a pretarist view of Revelation with an apparent motivation of rescuing Rome from the denunciations of chapters 17 and 18.  Sometimes the origin of an interpretation speaks volumes about its validation.  Pretarism is the view that Revelation has already been fulfilled.  I do not subscribe to this view but some good men do!