Revelation: The Hermeneutics of Amillenialism: Part Three

Introduction:

God intended the book of Revelation to be understood and not to be a secret code that only a few could understand with the right historical event or person as the key. Listen to the expectation of understanding in the first 3 verses of the book, ‘The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, 2 who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw. 3 Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near.’ The very word ‘revelation’ is translated from the Greek word Apocalypsis, this is the noun of the verb, apokalypto which means to remove a veil and disclose. The original recipients would have not read but heard the book being read in the worship service and were expected to understand and benefit from it. ‘This means that the besieged believers scattered throughout the cities of western Asia Minor (now Turkey) in the first century, who had not read it with their own eyes, could nevertheless understand the core of its message with sufficient clarity to respond to it as God desired and to receive from it the comfort, encouragement, and correction that God wanted them to receive—to be blessed (in the rich, biblical sense of blessing) through this word, this means of grace.’