In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.
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If you really want to understand Revelation, you'll first need to understand what it is and what the Bible actually is.
Certain people will tell you that God wrote the Bible. This is objectively false.
They will squirm and tell you that God inspired people to write the Bible. This also is false. None of the authors thought they were writing a greater book.
They will squirm some more and tell you that the Bible is made up of inspired words by prophets and apostles. This also is false. Much of the writing is clearly not from a prophetic or apostolic source.
They will squirm some more and tell you that God caused a series of events to occur that just happened to coincide with the Bible coming into being. This may or may not be true, but it is irrelevant. It still doesn't tell us what the Bible is.
Now, here is the truth.
The Bible didn't exist until relatively recently. Up until that point, people referred to prophets and apostles and certain sacred writings they called scripture. No one before the Bible was put together ever put those sacred writings together into a single book because that would be absurd. Each of the sacred writings stands on their own.
In addition to these writings, most of which did not exist at the time they report on, people followed the words and teachings of prophets and apostles. IE, it's clear that Isaiah was written down long after Isaiah died, because it mentions thing that Isaiah was not contemporary of. So, there was a man named Isaiah, he was a prophet, and he said some things and wrote some things. People followed what he said, what he wrote may have been lost, but eventually someone compiled his sayings into a book.
Furthermore, there is evidence that these books were tampered with over time. So the account you read in Genesis probably was foreign to Moses. If he wrote an account, it most likely is not what we have today. (Thanks, jews.)
With that in mind, the key to understanding Revelation is pretty simple. Revelation is different from other books because it was so late and because it really wasn't accepted as scripture for such a long time. (People thought it was esoteric gnostsic shit for a long time.)
Revelation, like all sacred works, is something a guy was inspired to write down. When you read the words, you are supposed to understand or realize some things. The things you understand and realize are not necessarily the literal words written down, because the author is not necessarily being literal. His style of writing follows the style of other kinds of work of a similar nature. Not only that, but thanks to the age of the work, unless you have a perfect understand of the culture at the time, you simply will never understand what the author meant. And no one understands what exactly people were thinking and doing in the First Century.
So, stop reading it like a modern Western man. Try to imagine you are a First Century Christian. Try to engage you Eastern mind. Try to think metaphorically and allegorically. It is not literal and it was never meant to be read literally.
Now, moving past that, there are things to understand and things that you can glean from it, but those things are spiritual in nature and thus must be taught by the Spirit and not by Man. If you're not seeking God to reveal to your mind what you are meant to understand, you're just doing an academic exercise and the end result is going to be a mess that doesn't make any sense at all.
As far as my interpretation of Revelation, it roughly means the following:
* Rough times are coming for the believers in Jesus Christ. These things are not news for people who have read other sacred books talking about end times and the future (IE Daniel, Isaiah, Matthew 24, etc...)
* After a lot of different kinds of tribulations, God will overcome Satan and have his people join him on his throne. This is clearly a reference to early Christian beliefs about "theosis". See, for instance, 3:21.
* In addition to this, the earth itself will become part of God's kingdom. Satan will not win and his people will not be there.
As far as specifics, there is nothing definite in the book and trying to map modern events to the prophecy is a fool's errand. Everyone is going to see their own time and their own events as prophesied by the book but that's because everything prophesied is so vague and general. Yes, there are going to be wicked people doing wicked things lead by a wicked leader. Yes, the honest followers of Christ are going to suffer and be rejected by the world. That's not news and it's not new.
You'll find that taking the Bible for what it is, treating each text for what they are, and not reading the Bible like a Western mind will help you understand a lot more about the nature of God and his workings in this world. Stop trying to treat it like a scientific treatise or a mathematical proof. That's stuff only Greeks would be interested in in ancient times.
Certain people will tell you that God wrote the Bible. This is objectively false.
They will squirm and tell you that God inspired people to write the Bible. This also is false. None of the authors thought they were writing a greater book.
They will squirm some more and tell you that the Bible is made up of inspired words by prophets and apostles. This also is false. Much of the writing is clearly not from a prophetic or apostolic source.
They will squirm some more and tell you that God caused a series of events to occur that just happened to coincide with the Bible coming into being. This may or may not be true, but it is irrelevant. It still doesn't tell us what the Bible is.
Now, here is the truth.
The Bible didn't exist until relatively recently. Up until that point, people referred to prophets and apostles and certain sacred writings they called scripture. No one before the Bible was put together ever put those sacred writings together into a single book because that would be absurd. Each of the sacred writings stands on their own.
In addition to these writings, most of which did not exist at the time they report on, people followed the words and teachings of prophets and apostles. IE, it's clear that Isaiah was written down long after Isaiah died, because it mentions thing that Isaiah was not contemporary of. So, there was a man named Isaiah, he was a prophet, and he said some things and wrote some things. People followed what he said, what he wrote may have been lost, but eventually someone compiled his sayings into a book.
Furthermore, there is evidence that these books were tampered with over time. So the account you read in Genesis probably was foreign to Moses. If he wrote an account, it most likely is not what we have today. (Thanks, jews.)
With that in mind, the key to understanding Revelation is pretty simple. Revelation is different from other books because it was so late and because it really wasn't accepted as scripture for such a long time. (People thought it was esoteric gnostsic shit for a long time.)
Revelation, like all sacred works, is something a guy was inspired to write down. When you read the words, you are supposed to understand or realize some things. The things you understand and realize are not necessarily the literal words written down, because the author is not necessarily being literal. His style of writing follows the style of other kinds of work of a similar nature. Not only that, but thanks to the age of the work, unless you have a perfect understand of the culture at the time, you simply will never understand what the author meant. And no one understands what exactly people were thinking and doing in the First Century.
So, stop reading it like a modern Western man. Try to imagine you are a First Century Christian. Try to engage you Eastern mind. Try to think metaphorically and allegorically. It is not literal and it was never meant to be read literally.
Now, moving past that, there are things to understand and things that you can glean from it, but those things are spiritual in nature and thus must be taught by the Spirit and not by Man. If you're not seeking God to reveal to your mind what you are meant to understand, you're just doing an academic exercise and the end result is going to be a mess that doesn't make any sense at all.
As far as my interpretation of Revelation, it roughly means the following:
* Rough times are coming for the believers in Jesus Christ. These things are not news for people who have read other sacred books talking about end times and the future (IE Daniel, Isaiah, Matthew 24, etc...)
* After a lot of different kinds of tribulations, God will overcome Satan and have his people join him on his throne. This is clearly a reference to early Christian beliefs about "theosis". See, for instance, 3:21.
* In addition to this, the earth itself will become part of God's kingdom. Satan will not win and his people will not be there.
As far as specifics, there is nothing definite in the book and trying to map modern events to the prophecy is a fool's errand. Everyone is going to see their own time and their own events as prophesied by the book but that's because everything prophesied is so vague and general. Yes, there are going to be wicked people doing wicked things lead by a wicked leader. Yes, the honest followers of Christ are going to suffer and be rejected by the world. That's not news and it's not new.
You'll find that taking the Bible for what it is, treating each text for what they are, and not reading the Bible like a Western mind will help you understand a lot more about the nature of God and his workings in this world. Stop trying to treat it like a scientific treatise or a mathematical proof. That's stuff only Greeks would be interested in in ancient times.
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