My Involvement With The Book of Revelation*
In 1976, I was a seminary student, a new pastor, and interested in studying the book of Revelation. I thought that by reading the available commentaries at Biola College I would come to understand the book. I was completely unprepared for what I found.
In commentary after commentary, the book of Revelation had been taken captive by systematic theologies and various schools of thought. If an author wrote from the Reformed tradition, he saw any mention of believing Israel as a spiritual reference to the predominantly gentile church. If an author was a pretribulational dispensationalist (my original position), an end-time believing Israel could not be included in the church, and the church could not be found in most chapters of the Revelation because it must necessarily have been raptured before the tribulation. Calvinist authors tended to soften the Lord's frequent warnings concerning the saints' deeds, while Liberals saw the book of Revelation as a late sermon by an unknown author designed in response to conditions in the Roman Empire.
There were, of course, notable exceptions—men who broke ranks with the theologians. The work of three of these faithful men, George Eldon Ladd, Robert H. Mounce, and Robert H. Gundry encouraged me in an otherwise discouraging study. And recently, I have been further encouraged by the work of Grant Osborne.
But in nearly every study I have encountered, the author has failed to recognize the place of worship in the theme of the book and the role of believing Jews as members of the church in the day of the Lord.
Despite the overwhelming mass of well-intentioned works, I became convinced that the Revelation needed fresh study from the ground up. I knew I would have to translate the book and read it repeatedly so that it became a part of me. I would need rules in place to keep me from repeating the mistakes of others. I did not want to develop views that could only be defended as private revelations.
The Spirit of God, the Word of God, the rules of hermeneutics, and the members of my church became my indispensable companions, forming the rules and boundaries for this study.
I confess that I first approached the Revelation with a kind of crystal-ball mentality. I was intrigued with the idea of uncovering information about future events. But God did not let me stay there long. For while it is true that the Revelation discusses the future, the larger message concerns the God of all time, and how we are to live for and worship Him.
The subject of the book is the revelation and coming of Jesus Christ. The imperative statement "Worship God!" (14:7, 19:10, 22:9) emerges as its theme. The altar is the defining symbol of that worship, and Jewish believers stand as those in the end-time churches who demonstrate worship at the altar to their nearly apostate, suffering, gentile brethren. Every chapter, movement, character, and symbol becomes meaningful in the light of these elements. From the messages to the churches, correcting apostasy and encouraging worship, to the new Jerusalem, where worship is finally and fully realized, the Revelation is God's message to all of His churches about worship defined by the altar and demonstrated by Jewish believers grafted in again to the Olive Tree of faith (Rom. 11:23).
Total Eclipse: Christ Returns is not in the mainstream of popular evangelical eschatology. It is not a compilation and synthesis of the works of past scholars.
Total Eclipse: Christ Returns is a fresh, original, and faithful study of the Revelation performed in the light of the Scriptures. I dare to compare events in our contemporary world with prophecies in the book of Revelation. I find evidence that we are currently witnessing events that immediately precede the abomination of desolation and second coming of Christ. But, most important, I find in the Revelation God's instructions about the worship that should be typical of His church at all times.
I regard with faith and sobriety the promised blessing (1:3) and warning (22:18-19) of this sacred book.
Probable Fulfilled Prophecy
On December 8, 1991, the Minsk agreement was signed and the USSR ceased to exist. Thirteen days later, it was replaced by the eleven member Commonwealth of Independent States. One of the newly independent states, Russia, was emerging as the most powerful of the eleven, but it had a problem. Russia and three of the other states—Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine—all shared control of the former communist empire’s formidable nuclear arsenal. Russia, in order to solidify itself as the unopposed leader, negotiated and seized control of the nuclear weapons in the three competing states.
The events unfolding in the USSR strongly suggested that prophetic events foretold in the book of Revelation and Daniel were beginning to unfold. An empire, mortally wounded, was resurrected from the dead to become a confederation of ten states (Rev. 13:3(a) cf. 17:8-13). One horn (state) had seized the power of three horns to emerge as leader of ten horns (Daniel 7:24).
But there was and is a deafening silence from the leaders and teachers of Jesus' churches concerning those events. They failed to recognize, comment, and sound an alarm about what might be happening.
In the latter part of the first century A.D., Jesus spoke to His churches of the end-times through the apostle John about the events that would precede, attend, and follow His second coming. John recorded Jesus' words in the book of Revelation, where the Lord addresses the churches of the end-times as largely fallen, compromised, and in need of repentance. Jesus had warned earlier that, before He returned, love would grow cold (Matt. 24:12). Paul taught that a falling away would precede the revelation of the end-time desolator (2 Thess. 2:2-4). In Revelation, Jesus warns His churches of consequences that will attend His coming if they will not repent. He supplies details regarding the terrible desolation that will destroy one-third of the saints and signal His coming. He describes the persecution and domination of those saints who will live in the end-time kingdom of the diabolical antichrist, preparing them for their exclusion from the economy for failure to take the mark of the beast.
But the message of the Revelation is either not being told, or it is falling on deaf ears. The church, warned not to be deceived regarding end-time events, has been deceived. The message of the Revelation has been compromised by commentators on two distinct fronts. “Crystal ball commentators" see fulfilled prophecy in nearly every headline involving Israel or her enemies, but insist that the church is not a player in the end-time events of the Revelation. At the other end of the spectrum are the "scholarly spiritual interpreters," who refuse to venture any comparison of the Revelation's prophetic statements with current events, finding such efforts as intrinsically dangerous and likely to do damage to the credibility of the book or the commentator.
We are on the brink of the culmination of history, and one of our greatest assets, the book of Revelation, is being compromised because of those who say that its story of the end-times largely does not involve the church, or that its story is for the church but does not speak about the end-times at all. Repeatedly, we hear the disclaimers, "every generation has believed it was experiencing the end-times," or, "you cannot know the day and hour," as excuses for ignoring the contents of the Revelation.
One is reminded here of the Old Testament saints being lulled to sleep by the false prophets who claimed that Israel would never be taken captive because they had the Ark of the Covenant.
However, the Revelation is meant to inform and encourage Christians about the events of the end-times that may intersect their lives and the spiritual lessons that are urgently needed to correct the witness of the church.