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Revelation, Part 1: It Is All in the Symbols · The Bible in 3D

• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Greetings. Welcome to the Bible in three d. This is your host, Andrew. We are in a short series about four episodes. We're going to look at revelation.
• 0:21
  It's all in the symbols. There's a lot of material, both written and audio dealing with the book of revelation. Each resource offers to teach us about the timing, the world players, the geopolitics of end times, and perhaps even the second coming of Jesus Christ. While these are all often entertaining, they always leave us unsatisfied. Jesus did tell his disciples that no one, not even God the son would know the timing of his return.
• 0:53
  As a result, within a short time after reading or listening to something on the subject of the revelation, we simply don't remember what was presented. Consequently, these episodes are gonna take
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: a different approach. We're not
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: gonna talk about the specific timing of end time events or the proposed world players. We're going to examine Revelation as great literature and the literary challenges we have in studying this book.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: We begin by examining the means of communication, which is neither prose nor poetry, but symbols. The other book in the Bible that uses symbols is that of Daniel. Isn't it interesting? Most both of them talk about end times.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Next, we are gonna focus on what I call secondary gain issues which the writers and scholars have when they attempt to write or to speak on Revelation. These secondary gain issues influence the major schools of interpretation that are used in studying Revelation. And they influence the order of the sequence of being of a sequencing of events. Of course, that is what is used to to put the story together. Next, we're gonna look at repetition and recapitulation.
• 2:19
  Almost unique to semitic form of teaching or storytelling is the use of three cycles of repetition and recapitulation. And then finally, we're gonna look
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: at the spiritual battle. Now, please note that this podcast series
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: has been revised. It was initially presented in the gospel of basic truth, and it was incorporated into a larger ministry podcast platform entitled, biblical reflections. Now you can find, both of those on the cogworksmedia.org. That is in our biblical reflections channel. This is a revised and hopefully, still entertaining and informative series on the revelation.
• 3:08
  Realize that our podcasts are also found on, all of the podcast platforms like, Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Alright. That was the foreword. Let me now begin with the introduction. The English word revelation means to reveal, and the underlying Greek word is where we get our word apocalypse from.
• 3:33
  Today, we have turned the word apocalypse into meaning end times, but the actual underlying Greek word simply means to unveil or to disclose. Revelation begins with Jesus Christ standing excuse me, stating that he is going to disclose or to reveal some things to his servants, body of Christ, and in particular to the apostle John. Revelation is the last book of the Bible. The author does tell us that he is John, John the apostle. The year that this book was written is probably '96 or ninety seven a d.
• 4:12
  We know because of how old John was and he didn't have too many years left. John receives this prophecy or word from God while he is on the Isle Of Patmos. Patmos was a 24 or so square mile rock out in the Mediterranean Sea, about 90 miles from the nearest land, which today is modern Turkey. And it was in proximity close to the ancient city of Ephesus. In its day, the city of Ephesus was the second largest and most important city in
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  Speaker 2: the Roman Empire. The city of Ephesus was
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: incredible and had one of the seven wonders of the
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  Speaker 2: ancient world, and that would have
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  Speaker 1: been the Temple Of Artemis or as the Romans said, the Temple Of Diana.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: The book of acts provides further description
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: and of the adventures of the apostle Paul while he was in Ephesus. The time of John's vision was around ninety six AD. John reported in the book of Revelation that the vision occurred to him on the first day of the week, which was Sunday. We know this occurred about ninety six AD because one of the early church fathers, a man called Irenaeus, wrote a lot about the early church and about the apostles. He himself was a pupil of a disciple of the apostle John.
• 5:42
  So Irenaeus is like a second generation disciple to the apostle John. His information obviously is very good. The emperor the Roman emperor Domitian unleashed one of the last great empire wide persecutions of Christians in '95 to ninety six a d. He burnt many many of the Bibles. He killed and murdered many people.
• 6:08
  John was extremely important in the church and so he was not murdered. Instead, he was exiled to the Isle Of Patmos which was a perfect place for political prisoners. They were simply dumped off on the island. There was no jail because you couldn't get off. And if you did, you you couldn't swim 90 miles to shore.
• 6:31
  Irenaeus tells us that John reported that most of the time he slept in a cave when he was on the Isle Of Patmos. My understanding is if you visit the Isle Of Patmos, can vision the Cave Of The Vision, the cave of the apocalypse where supposedly John, if he didn't have it in the cave, he slept there. The last time John had seen the resurrected Jesus was after the crucifixion and resurrection, which was about thirty three a d. John was in his early twenties. At the last supper, John is reclining next to Jesus.
• 7:08
  John is very close to Jesus and he is so close that when Peter said to John, ask the lord who is going to betray him. John simply put his head back on Jesus' chest and said, I wanna ask a question. You know, I'm sure if you were to ask John back then, he would have said that Jesus was his best friend. Now we fast forward sixty three or more years. John is now an old man.
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  He's got arthritis. He's got cataracts. He can't hear. He doesn't have hearing aids.
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  Speaker 2: But John has this great vision of Jesus. What does he say when Jesus appears
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  Speaker 1: to him? Hey, bro. Haven't seen you in a long time. Boy, you don't look a day older. No.
• 7:51
  Of course not. In fact, John tells us he falls down in reverential fear as though he was dead. He totally understands it is overall odd by this veiled, unveiled grace of God that he's allowed to see. The purpose of writing the book of Revelation is found in chapter one verse 19. Jesus commands John, write therefore the things that you have seen, those that are, and those are that are to take place after this.
• 8:24
  Jesus intended that the prophecy in this book be read aloud. Jesus further stated that blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it for the time is short. Okay. Rhetorical question. What things are written in Revelation that you are to keep?
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  The command here upfront is, blessed are those who keep what is written here, the commands.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: All I hear is crickets. Well, that's part of
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  Speaker 1: the motivation of recording this series of podcasts. To set before you what he commands in the book. I'll give you my spoiler alert. If you can remember one command of Jesus in this book, let it be this one. Do not take the mark of the beast.
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  Speaker 2: And perhaps we could add one more. Do not worship the beast.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: That is center on the the main command here. Well, of course, the question is what is the mark of the beast? Right? You know, when I first was recording in the gospel of basic truths, it was to show where in scripture we could find the gospel in addition to John three sixteen? I will tell you that in the book of Revelation, we can find
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: the gospel set out in chapter one and chapter five. I will not read them all
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  Speaker 1: to you, but I I tell you that we can find the gospel in chapter one and chapter five set out very clearly.
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  Speaker 2: There's a begins a section, and this is chapters two and three, and these are the things that are. Remember, the things you've seen, the things that are, and the things to come. The things you have seen arguably are in the past, the things that are are in the present, and of course, the things to come are in the future.
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  Speaker 1: Jesus presents the things that are in a series of messages to the seven churches. We find these in chapters two and three. These seven churches include the church in Ephesus. The apostle Paul and Silas founded the church in Ephesus decades earlier than this vision to John. Ephesus was such a big city.
• 11:00
  It was such an important city that it was natural that the church in Ephesus became extremely important because it was a large church. We can tell by later letters of the apostle Paul that people went out from the church in Ephesus and planted daughter churches in towns and cities that were nearby. And this is what had been in the province of Asia. Today, we call that modern day Turkey.
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  Speaker 2: There were certainly more than six churches planted by the church in Ephesus, but
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  Speaker 1: here we get messages to seven. Six of them were planted by people from Ephesus and then the mother church in Ephesus. Those are the seven churches. I will not read all these things. It is instructive to do so.
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  I wanna make some observation. Our Lord Jesus chose these seven churches
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  Speaker 2: to write letters to because they're all different.
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  Speaker 1: The messages that Jesus sends are in real time with real current events. Jesus tells each church whether there are good things or bad things about them and what they should do to fix the bad things. Although these messages were for churches long ago, we can still read them today and we can see, if we could be objective, about our own church or or anybody's churches say, gee, I can see some things
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  Speaker 2: that need to be fixed here if I look at the seven messages to the seven churches in Revelation. Those are the things that are. Next
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  Speaker 1: come the things that are to take place after this. This is in the future. When the vision is given, of course, everything from chapter four to the end, chapter 22 would have
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: been in the future for John. One of the questions
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  Speaker 1: when we study revelation is whether all of these things take place, have already taken place in the past. Are there anything that we're gonna read here in the future? Are the is it past to us? So from four to 22, is it still future to us or or is some of it in the past? I'm not gonna give you the answer.
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  Speaker 2: You can tell what my opinion is as we go along. But that is hotly contested.
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  Speaker 1: We get through two and three and we come to chapter four, the things that are to take place soon,
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  Speaker 2: and we have this magnificent vision of the throne room of God. And we see the heavenly creatures and and
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  Speaker 1: the 24 elders and everybody is bowing down and worshiping God the father. Next comes chapter five of Revelation. By the way, one of my favorite songs is the Revelation song by
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  Speaker 2: Michael w Smith. That's one
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  Speaker 1: of two songs I want them to sing at my memorial service. It's just this takes you to chapter four and how glorious it will be. In chapter five, we see God and at the right hand of him excuse me. Then I saw the right hand of him who is seated on the throne. This was God the father.
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  So he was just described in chapter four. So seated on the throne is God the father and he has a scroll. The scroll was written on the front and back. It was sealed with seven seals. John says that he saw a mighty angel proclaim in a loud voice.
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  Who is worthy to open the scroll and to break its seals? And no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look at it. John began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll and to look into it. One of the elders said to John, weep no more. Behold, the lion of the
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  Speaker 2: tribe of Judah, the root of David has conquered.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: Obviously, Jesus, so that he can open the scroll and the seven seals. And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders, I saw and now we have another symbol, a lamb. Initially, we see Jesus as the lion of the tribe of Judah, of the root of David, the Messiah. But now we have another symbol. Jesus is portrayed as a lamb standing as though he had been slain.
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  John says that the lamb has seven horns and seven eyes and that seven spirits of God are sent out to all the earth. Again, Jesus does not have seven horns and seven eyes. Alright? These are symbols. This lamb who was standing as though it had been slain, he he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne.
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  So the lamb of God, Jesus, second person of the trinity, takes the scroll from the hand of God the father who's seated on the throne. And when Jesus had taken the scroll, the four creatures, the 24 elders fell down before the lamb, each holding their harp and golden bowls of incense. And they what was the incense? The incense was the prayers of the saints, and they sang a new song. Now that is an image that I would like you to remember today.
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  Your prayers are incense before the throne of God.
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  Speaker 2: Smell of frankincense. That smell of incense of deity. That that is the prayers of the saints.
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  Speaker 1: These 24 elders, the four creatures proclaimed that Jesus is worthy to take the scroll to open its seals because, k, here we go.
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  Speaker 2: He was slain on the cross. The gospel. And by his blood, he ransomed people for God from every tribe, language, and people, and nation. And he made them a king of priests for our God. Well, that's
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  Speaker 1: a clear presentation of the gospel, folks. You could probably memorize this entire section, but I think the first couple clauses here are a good memory verse. He's worthy because he was slain on
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  Speaker 2: the cross. And by his blood, he ransomed people for God. By his blood, he paid the price of our sin. He did that for people of every tribe, language, nation, and kingdom in the earth.
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  Speaker 1: And in doing so, made us a kingdom of priests for God. Once again, Jesus is worthy to take the scroll and to open up its seals for he was slain. By his blood, he ransomed people for God. John looked and heard around the throne and the living creatures, the elders and the many voices of many angels numbering myriads and myriads and thousands and thousands. And they're all saying in a loud voice, worthy is the lamb who is slain.
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  Oops.
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  Speaker 2: Can you say that? All of these who are worshiping God cried out that the
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  Speaker 1: lamb was worthy to receive power, wealth, wisdom, might, honor, glory, blessing. Then John heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea and all them them saying, to him who sits on the throne and to the lamb be blessing and honor and glory might forever and ever and the four living creatures said amen. The elders fell down and worshiped. This is a magnificent scene. You can easily take a person through this if you were witnessing to them and you could explain about Jesus dying and that his blood paid the penalty of our sin.
• 18:51
  So clearly laid out the gospel message. When you get done listening to these podcasts, if you're interested in finding out more about Revelation, you can certainly sit down and read the book of Revelation. I I dare say you will come away perplexed. It is very difficult to understand. That sentence is the understatement of the millennia.
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  But there are many resources out there to help you. It just kinda depends on where you are. So I'm gonna give you a spectrum of resources and you can decide where you are on that spectrum. We're gonna begin at one extreme end here, the spectrum. The definitive iconic work in interpreting the book of Revelation was written by doctor j Dwight Pentecost.
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  Speaker 2: His book is entitled things to come. He was
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  Speaker 1: a seminary professor at Dallas Theological Seminary. His book was published in 1965. This had as was his doctoral thesis, the one that got him his PhD. It was probably completed in about 1959 when he started teaching at the seminary. Friends, this is one heavy duty book.
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  It's 670 pages long and you have to have big chops to read this book. But realize this is a doctoral dissertation. You know, it's not like the stuff that are doctoral dissertations today where you go on AI, you plagiarize somebody's stuff and they give you a PhD for gender study or something.
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  Speaker 2: This is an incredible work. And because it's
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  Speaker 1: a doctoral dissertation which is being reviewed and evaluated by other PhD, it's it's it assumes you know a lot. Now I have to tell you,
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  Speaker 2: I have read this book.
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  Speaker 1: It is not easy. I'll say that. Now at the other end, the other extreme, there are very easy to read books. And again, the classic easy to read book was written by one of doctor Pentecost's students, a guy who was famous in his own right, and his name was Hal Lindsey. Hal Lindsey published his book in 1970.
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  He had gone to all the classes and had heard doctor Pentecost teach on the subject. But Hal Lindsey wanted to market a book for the masses, so he dumbed it down. That is a theological term, of course. Anyway, Hal Lindsey made it very simple. He turned it into a fictional prophecy.
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  The name of this book is called the late great planet Earth. Now the events are all correct but a lot of the people, most of the people
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  Speaker 2: are fictional characters. So this
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  Speaker 1: is a literary technique. It's it's common today to take historical events and then to write about it using fictional characters in order to explain what happened and the significance. It it makes a story interesting and it helps you to follow along the greater narrative. Today, the book is dated because it was from 1970, but it really did an important thing. It was published in 1970.
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  This is one of the resources that launched and sustained the Jesus movement during the nineteen seventies. You know, I can remember being in university and you could not go to a bookstore or a drugstore without seeing a rake a rack of paperback books, at least a dozen.
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  Speaker 2: Elle Lindsay's late great planet Earth It's very popular because everybody wanted to read it in order
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  Speaker 1: to help them to understand what they were not getting when they were reading revelation. In the same way, two guys, one pastor and one writer wrote what is called the Left Behind series. And that was pastor Tim Lahey and the other writer was Jerry Jenkins. By the way by the way, Jerry Jenkins is the father of Dallas Jenkins who is of course the man behind the chosen TV series. Alright.
• 23:02
  These two men, Lehay and Jenkins, wrote in a similar fashion as Hal Lindsey, but they wrote several books. So it's it's a whole series. As the plot works out, it's all correct with Revelation. But a lot of the characters, most of the characters are fictional. Again, but the events, we can all find them in the book of Revelation.
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  And the series is written in a way
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  Speaker 2: to be engaging. Left Behind series was published in year 2000. I know in
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  Speaker 1: my own family, my brother-in-law John was a man in his fifties and not much into reading or academics. Somebody gave him the first book of the Left Behind series. John read the first book and the Holy Spirit convicted him. He knew that if there was a God and if God was coming back, that John was going to be left behind. And that deep conviction overcame him and opened John's heart that he accepted Christ as savior.
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  I have good things
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  Speaker 2: to say about these books. I don't know where
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  Speaker 1: you are on the spectrum. You may be in the middle. You know, there are plenty of university excuse me, seminary professors, Hendrickson, many of them out there who have written books about Revelation that are not fictional characters. They're they're not as heavy duty as say doctor Pentecost or as he was affectionately known doctor p. So so there are things in the middle and that that are easier to read but, you know, not fictional in any way.
• 24:34
  You know, if you're looking for something in the middle, you know, can contact us. You can go on the website of gotquestions.org and tell them what you want. Tell them you'd like to get some recommendations for a book on Revelation and tell them where you are at, you know. What's your reading level? What's your schooling?
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  You know, what kind
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  Speaker 2: of experience do you have? And so Revelation is kinda one
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  Speaker 1: of those books if you just start with no history and no background and read the book, you'll walk away
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  Speaker 2: confused. So we would
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  Speaker 1: urge you to,
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  Speaker 2: you know, talk to people to find a
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  Speaker 1: place maybe where you could say, okay, this is a good place for me to start. I'm not going to go through revelation to tell you what it all means, as I said earlier, because no one can. But if you stick with me, I will talk about the narrative, the plot device, and the challenges you face when you study the book of revelation. By the
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  Speaker 2: way, almost everybody says the book of Revelations, plural. I will tell
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  Speaker 1: you I was corrected and reprimanded by doctor p himself because that's not what it says. It's singular, the book of Revelation. Alright. The remainder of these episodes present the
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  Speaker 2: challenges that I'd like to introduce to you so that you can
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  Speaker 1: think about before you sit down and really try to read through the book of Revelation.
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  Speaker 2: By the way, I would really recommend you go through it
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  Speaker 1: with somebody. I'll just say an interpreter has it. So we've gotten through the forward in
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  Speaker 2: the introduction. This is now part one, and the title of this section
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  Speaker 1: is the medium of communication. The Bible presents as many as five mediums of communication. The first medium is prose. Prose is just dull, boring, ordinary reading like a newspaper or a textbook. The second medium of communication, poetry, is found most often in the Old Testament.
• 26:38
  With poetry, you can do things that you cannot do with prose. You can convey imagery. You can convey emotion. But the challenge with poetry is that poetry is written for a particular language and culture. Once you try to translate poetry into a different language, the rhyming and the meter are lost.
• 27:02
  The translation of such poetry is then presented as prose And honestly, much of the meaning is lost unless you have study Bible with a bunch of notes. Now the other thing with poetry is that the author and the audience would have shared not only a similar language, but a similar culture. And that poetry depends on these common figures of speech in particular metaphors. Those metaphors and speeches figures of speech in that poetry like archaic Hebrew would have been understand by the people in that group, But they would not necessarily be understood twenty seven hundred years later by a people of a different language with a different culture. So again, we we really need that study Bible to help us with the medium of communication that we're gonna look at.
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  Obviously, Old Testament poetry here. Now the third medium that the Bible uses are types. Biblical types, typology. It could be a person, an event, an object, or a ceremony in the Old Testament that God intentionally used to foreshadow a greater reality and almost always fulfilled
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  Speaker 2: in Jesus Christ. Things happen in the old testament and they
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  Speaker 1: are particular to the people back then, but they are foreshadowing something in the New Testament as it is related to Christ. Maybe his birth, death, resurrection. Just think of the example of the the Exodus in fourteen forty six BC as the last of the 10 plagues is inflicted on Egypt, it is the death of the firstborn. The Hebrew people were told to go into their home to sacrifice a lamb, to put the blood of the lamb on their doorframe of the house, shut the door, and then eat the lamb. And when the angel of death went through the villages in
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  Speaker 2: town, it was God at work.
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  Speaker 1: Told that the angel of death would take the firstborn of all the humans and all the animals. But if there was blood from the lamb on the doorpost or the the doorframe, the angel of death would pass over. The lamb is what provided the blood so that they didn't get the punishment. Now, we fast forward. That was a type foreshadowing the death of Christ on
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  Speaker 2: the cross for us. Last prophet of the
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  Speaker 1: old testament, the prophet John, Not the apostle John, the prophet John, John the Baptist. He he understood that, and very early on, we see him standing there with his two young disciples, John and Andrew, who later became disciples of Jesus and the apostles, And he
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  Speaker 2: says to these two young guys as Jesus walks by,
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  Speaker 1: behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Just as the Passover lamb was sacrificed in the place of the Hebrews, the sacrificial lamb gave them life. So this man, Jesus, is going to die on a cross in a much bigger way and take away the penalty of our sins that we may have eternal life. So that's an example of a type. And yet the apostle John doesn't use
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  Speaker 2: prose, poetry, or types.
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  Speaker 1: In the book of Revelation, he uses a fourth method, and this is hard. He uses symbols. Chapter one verse one says, at least in English, that God made it known to John. Well, the underlying were Greek words here, he made it known, means he made it known by symbols or signs. And by the way, I said there were five.
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  I I do believe that parables is a fifth method of communication,
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  Speaker 2: but not not for this podcast. Now almost everything in Revelation is a symbol. There are no metaphors. There there is not anybody out
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: there who understands the symbols. Someone has to tell you what these symbols mean. At the beginning of the book of Revelation, Jesus explains some of the symbols. And later in the book, there's a heavenly guide or guides who who also explains some of the symbols. Now the heavenly figure who is taking John to observe all these things, okay.
• 31:23
  I'm not trying to be silly here. But if you think of the Christmas story and and Scrooge, he is visited by three spirits of Christmas. Christmas past, Christmas present, Christmas future. And they take him, if you will, not quite in bodily form. And so the first one takes him back in time.
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  The second one takes him into the home of the person who works for him and some other things. And then the the the last spirit, spirit of Christmas future takes him to the future after he is dead.
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  Speaker 2: And okay. That's just a story and it's fiction, but think of it as this is what happens to John. He is taken up in some kind of bodily form, spirit form, and
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  Speaker 1: he was shown all these things by by these heavenly guides. Now these heavenly guides, as they're explaining some of the symbols, that's good. But oftentimes, they
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: don't explain symbols. And as we're reading this, you know, it's back to my title, it's on the symbols. You know, we wish we had like the magic decoder ring or the enigma machine. Something to help us understand the symbols because we're not always told. But there are some helps.
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  Speaker 1: One help in interpreting the symbols of the old of Revelation is the Old
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  Speaker 2: Testament. There are many symbols that are explained in the Old Testament. When John uses them in Revelation, we can be confident they still have the same meaning. So that's a good reason
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  Speaker 1: to study the Old Testament so that we can
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  Speaker 2: understand pipes in the
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  Speaker 1: New Testament and also things like the symbols that we find in Revelation. As I said, the only other book that heavily uses symbols and that is the book of Daniel, it's in the Old Testament. There are two dreams of Nebuchadnezzar and they're all about symbols. The first symbol in the first stream is a statue, gold, silver, bronze, iron. Iron mixed with clay.
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  The second dream of Nebuchadnezzar, there's a giant tree
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  Speaker 2: which is a symbol for something. Nebuchadnezzar.
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  Speaker 1: We get to Daniel's first vision and we chapter seven, and we see four beasts coming out of the sea. The first is a lion with wings. He was given the heart of a man. The wings are ripped off, and the lion sat on
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  Speaker 2: his back. And of
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  Speaker 1: course, the lion is to represent Babylon, in particular, Nebuchadnezzar. The next beast comes out of the sea. It's raised up on one side. Three ribs are
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: in his mouth, and this is
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  Speaker 1: a bear. It represents the Medo Persian empire. The third beast is a leopard with four heads and four wings on its back. It represents the Greek empire after Alexander the great died. And then finally, the fourth beast is so terrifying and so frightening that Daniel can't even describe it very well, which of course is wrong.
• 34:30
  John uses or is given symbols to tell the stories, the narrative. This is the very medium of communication in Daniel. So when Daniel use it, John uses it. It's helpful sometimes as we look back to Daniel to understand the symbols of Revelation. There are other places that that can help us too, sometimes in in the Psalms.
• 34:51
  Let us start with an example. We're gonna start with Revelation chapter 13 of some symbols. Alright. There's been drama in chapter 12, and I'm gonna come back to chapter 12. I actually think chapter 12 is one of the most important things that you and I today need to read and understand, and that's the spiritual battle, but we'll get to that.
• 35:15
  So stuff is going on in chapter 12. Now we get to chapter 13. And we know there is a serpent.
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  Speaker 2: Satan is thrown down to earth. And he's gonna
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: make war against the other children of the lady, and he's angry. And in his anger, he raised up two beasts. Again, I'll go back and tell the story of the lady and and Satan. But the point is Satan is gonna make war against the lady's other children and he raises up two beasts. The first is the beast of the sea and the second is the beast of the land or the beast
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: of the earth. We're not told who they are. They are symbols.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: We can go back and find them in Daniel and in some places again in in Psalms. In the Old Testament, the sea always represents Gentile nations. Think of an ocean,
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: a sea. There is constant current.
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: There are constant storms. There is wind. The ocean is always turbulent. This is a good symbol to represent the Gentile nations. All you have to do is turn on TV, listen to the nightly news and you can see the turbulent Gentile nations.
• 36:23
  Still true today. We can say in Revelation chapter 13, the beast that comes out of the sea who will be a political figure and he's also referred to as the antichrist, king of fierce continents and the man of lawlessness. He will come out of
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: the Gentile nations. That second beast, again, is a symbol. The second beast is a beast of the land.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: In both Daniel and Psalm, Israel often is referred to as the beautiful land or. You know, back in eighteen hundreds, they used to give women names like Bula because it was beautiful. When my generation was born, they named all the girls Linda because it means beautiful. Alright. So the beast that comes out of the land, as we read this, is obviously a religious leader who builds an image of the beast of the sea and then he forces all the people of the world to take the mark of the beast and to worship the beast of the sea.
• 37:27
  Well, that beast of the land, that religious leader, because he comes out of the land, is from Israel.
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: So this would be some kind of Jew of some kind. We can see how we have to look at
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: the Old Testament to help us to interpret many of the symbols found in in Revelation. Now so far you're saying, okay, okay, I got this. I can do this. Except we get now to part two, the secondary gain issues. The term secondary gain is often used in medicine to describe some additional external advantages one receives from being sick or having certain symptoms that never go away.
• 38:11
  These external advantages could be receiving sympathy. Okay. So I wanna pretend I'm sick so I get sympathy. Maybe I can avoid responsibility. I I don't have to weed the garden.
• 38:24
  Maybe being sick will excuse my poor work performance or or my poor behavior. And a lot of times, continued symptoms, real or not, provide continuing unemployment benefits and you don't
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: have to work. That's secondary gain. This is the unvarnished truth.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: Religious scholars and churchmen of every type have conscious or unconscious secondary gain issues when they read the Bible. And there's no more apparent example here than in the book of Revelation. And the the most visible secondary gain issues always concern mother Mary and God's promises to the Jews. Alright. Now we're gonna go back to chapter 12.
• 39:08
  Chapter 12 is again, in my opinion, the heart of the book of Revelation. True. It's not the happy ending in chapter 22, but it explains what we need to know today. Now, it's in the middle of the book. I'm not saying that Revelation is a chiasm.
• 39:25
  It's not. But it's quite interesting that the most important thing that we can know from the book of Revelation is in the middle of the book,
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: and that's chapter 12. And here it is. We are in a spiritual battle. Rabbit trail.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: It was a was a book in an accompanying TV series. It was made by the Brits. It was called The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Now the plot device that moved the narrative along was the quest it takes place in the future, science fiction. It was a quest to know, that's this.
• 40:01
  What is the ultimate question of life, the universe, everything? That's a typical British thing. Well, spoiler alert. The answer it turns out after you get to the end is
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: the number 47. Well, you
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: have to understand British humor. It's a it really is a it's a funny series. You know, if you're snowed in someday and you got nothing to do, it's worth taking a day and watching the episodes. Alright. But there's a plot device, and this is a quest.
• 40:32
  And you can think of any other, you know, TV movie, you know, The Searchers, you know, with John Wayne. You know, there's always some plot device that moves the narrative. So here we are now, book of Revelation. The book of revelation tells us what the answer is to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything as we experience it. Not 47, it's wake up and smell the roses.
• 40:59
  This is a spiritual battle. And if you don't realize this, you're actually getting your
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: butt kicked and you don't know it.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: Most of us don't realize that we are
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: in a spiritual battle. We don't even realize that there is one,
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: let alone that we are in it. You know, the greatest deception they say that Satan ever did was to convince mankind that he does not exist. Okay. Cue the music or imagine by John Lennon. Below us no hell, above us only sky, imagine.
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: Alright. In this story, there's a dragon or a serpent and there's a lady.
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: So the dragon or serpent is a symbol, and it should be pretty easy for us to figure out because throughout the Old Testament, starting in the Garden of Eden, Satan appears either as a serpent, sometimes he's referred to as a dragon. Fortunately, in chapter 12, there are two visions and in the second visions, we are told clearly that this dragon is in fact Satan. Well, who is this woman? Alright. So there's two characters that are presented.
• 42:04
  They're symbols. The woman is described as clothed with the moon and the sun under her feet and on her head a crown of 12 stars. And she's pregnant and she's crying out. She then gives birth to a major male child. The dragon, the red dragon tries to devour the the child.
• 42:23
  He fails. At some point, the male child is taken up to into heaven and saved. The woman is taken to a place of safety and it's for a period of three and a half years, which we will see that term coming back over and over. Okay.
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: Right. Is
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: there any symbol in the Old Testament to help
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: us identify the woman? Well, there is.
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: If you go back to Genesis, the story of Joseph of the coat of many colors, Joseph has a couple of dreams. In one of his dreams, he dreams that the sun and the moon and 11 stars bow down to him. He makes the mistake of telling his brothers and his father. His father strongly rebukes him because they all understand that these symbols, the sun, the moon, the stars refer to his family. So if we wanna say that is all the Israelites there are at that time, those people.
• 43:20
  So Joseph is saying that all of his older brothers and his mother and his father are going to bow down to him and and they get angry with Joseph. And of course, that's eventually what does happen by the time we get to the end of the story. This symbol here in Joseph's dream, his mother and his father and his brothers, k, the sun, moon, and the stars, sometimes it's twelve, sometimes it's eleven. You know
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: what this is? This is an image of Israel. Because when Joseph had that dream, his mother, his father,
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: and his brothers, that that was it. That was Israel. So that is a symbol of Israel. So back to Revelation. If a woman who got the sun and moon below her feet and 12 stars above her head, she could be the nation of Israel.
• 44:08
  Okay. That kinda works out because out of the nation of Israel comes Jesus, the male child that Satan tries to destroy. Now we go to the second vision. And this time the dragon is going after the woman. Once again, she's rescued, she's taken to a place of safety for three and
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: a half years where she escapes a serpent. Now, this is the point
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: where the serpent gets angry and stomps off to make war against the rest of the woman's offspring in chapter 13. And of course, Satan does that by raising the beast of the sea and the beast of the land. Okay. Finally, we're at the secondary gain issue. Because your secondary gain issues will determine how you just interpreted the symbols that I gave you and and my interpretation.
• 44:56
  So there are certain churches, Roman Catholic church, covenant theology, Armenian, Methodist, you know, maybe some Calvinist, who believe and teach that God is done with the Jews. God has nothing more for the Jews. The Old Testament has been fulfilled. It's done. The only thing left for Jews is simply to become saved.
• 45:20
  Well, you know, I'm I'm gonna go back and suggest that we look at chapter nine in Daniel that there is actually seven more years for the Jews. But no, these churches can't have this. It is important for them that there is nothing left for the Jews prophetically. So this is an important important secondary gain issue that God is done with the Jews, which influences how they interpret chapter 12. For such a secondary gain issue, Israel excuse me, the woman cannot be Israel.
• 45:54
  The Catholics say, the woman is mother Mary. And then then you say, well, yeah, but it says the dragon went off to make war against the rest of her offspring. I I thought you said she was a perpetual virgin and had no children and that James and Jude were just cousins or something. Okay. Okay.
• 46:11
  It's not mother Mary. The the the symbol of the woman is a Catholic church. Well, if you're any other church, you would say, well, it's the Christian church. And the male child is symbolic of every Christian. You know, I don't know how they get these interpretations out of these symbols, but the point is it's an example of how they have secondary gain issues which colors and distorts their interpretation.
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: So we're gonna stop there. What biases, assumption, presumptions do you
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: have consciously or subconsciously that you bring to the table? Because that will color how you interpret these symbols and what you get out of this. You know, there are two places I'm gonna focus on in chapter seven just to kinda round this out where the Jews come up again.
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: Alright. We have three sets of seven judgments. In between each of the set of seven judgments, we have what some people call interludes. So the first seven is followed by an interlude in chapter seven. What these interludes do, if
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: you look at the narrative, is that after all kinds of these terrible things that are happening in the judgments, the interlude shows how God during this time is also taking care of saved people. Now in chapter seven, we finished the seal judgments. There there are
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: two visions. One is a vision of a 144,000 of Israel who are sealed. Okay. Okay. That is verses one through eight in chapter seven.
• 47:54
  Starting in nine, we see
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: another vision, and this time it is of a great multitude from every nation, every tongue, every people who are saved. The first vision says that a 140,000 from all the tribes in Israel were sealed and they were following Jesus. The second vision talks about a great multitude that are clearly gentiles who are saved. I mean, I think on its face you can say these are two different groups of people. But saying this leads to the secondary gain issues.
• 48:28
  For many churchmen, the first vision cannot be a 144,000 Jews. Remember, for them, God is done with the Jews. Now these people agree that the two separate there are two separate visions, but they would argue that the two separate visions describe the same group of people, Some of whom are gentiles and some of whom are messianic Jews. Well, I I guess I think
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: you can see just again
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: how important it is to know your biases and prejudice when you go into this stuff.
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna go off calendar here a little bit but down another rabbit trail. The early reformers, so I can bag on
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: the Catholic church and I'm not bagging on the Catholic church, I'm just saying this is
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: what they believe. Okay? Now same thing. We're gonna
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: talk about some early reformers and I got some things that are true about them and they're not positive but again they show the secondary gain. The early reformers, a lot of them were into covenant theology. This is now gonna be hard for me. Many of my Lutheran friends, my Presbyterian friends, Alicia. Okay.
• 49:35
  You know, the early reformers, I'm sorry. They did great. God used them to do great things. Right? But they were antisemitic.
• 49:43
  Ding ding ding. They were. And it is a fact. Martin Luther was an antisemitic and we know because we have it in his own handwriting. He did not like the Jews.
• 49:55
  Did Martin Luther's antisemitism color the formation of his and other reformers theology, especially when we look at something like Revelation? How about the Catholic church? You know, they've been calling for inquisitions that killed Jews for centuries. I mean, even during World War two, the papacy was not terribly sympathetic to the Jews during the holocaust. Although revisionist history, of course, is decided that's not so.
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: Friends, you you can't make the inquisition go away. You know, as one one cardinal said during an inquisition, kill them all. But but fathers, some of their Catholics, doesn't matter. Kill them all. God knows whose are his.
• 50:40
  I'm sorry. A lot
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: of antisemitics going on out there. Which colors how you interpret? I'm not saying being antisemitic is right or wrong. I'm just simply saying it colors how you interpret the symbols. I think it's fair game that religious leaders were antisemitic.
• 50:58
  It did color their theology and did color how they interpret revelation.
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: I'm not saying that Catholics are antisemitic
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: today. I'm not saying the covenant theology people today are antisemitic. But I think they have to be honest that what happened in the past did color what their church teaches in which they just blindly follow. I don't know where you are.
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: I want you to look and to think about the symbols. Because this whole book is about symbols and it always comes down to how do you interpret. What are your biases and assumption? Or better yet, what are
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: the biases and assumptions of your church or religious, you know, foundation?
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: Because they're at the table with you. I
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: suspect most of us until somebody calls us to our attention, it colors how we interpret the symbols. And that in turn determines what you're gonna get out of Revelation. As I said when
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: I started, it would not be easy. This would be difficult.
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: I'll leave that here. Yes. I'm using an example that will stir up a lot of people, but I'm doing it because I want you to think about it. Now you may think it all through and go, no. This guy's wrong.
• 52:19
  God is done with the juice. Fair enough. But just realize there's secondary gain issues. Alright. This leads us to our next episode and in our third challenge.
• 52:32
  That will be the schools of interpretation. Alright. We've been going on almost an hour. Let me close this with prayer. Gracious heavenly father, we thank you for your revelation.
• 52:44
  Father, you said we'd be blessed to hear it, to read it. Father, help us understand and help us to be certain that we will not take the market, not worship the beast. Lord, I thank you and praise you in Jesus' name. Amen.
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Bible in three d. We're so grateful for listeners like you. Your encouragement helps us create and share more transformative content that strengthens communities worldwide. If this episode inspired you, consider supporting our nonprofit mission with a donation at cogworksmedia.org. Also, be sure to check out our other podcast, Biblical Reflections, for more faith insights.
• 53:32
  God bless.