Revelation.
And I'll just put a disclaimer out there.
I don't know how far we're going to get tonight,
probably not far, but as I was telling Michael
and talking to him before service,
the good thing is we don't have a deadline on this study.
So we can just take as long as we need.
It takes multiple years.
Well, then we get to spend multiple years
studying God's Word together and that'll be great.
So, Revelation, and as we get started,
you remember last week we were talking about
how we interpret Revelation,
and we were saying that the genre matters, right?
You have to really pay attention to the genre
in order to make sense of what you're reading.
You have to understand that it's a letter,
that it is prophecy, and that it is apocalyptic.
When you remember those things,
you realize that Revelation is not a puzzle book
that we have to decode.
Remember, it's a picture book,
and we just get to behold it,
and it's telling a story, and it's God's story,
and it's beautiful, and so that's really cool.
And tonight, we're going to talk about something
along the same lines, which is,
well, how do we approach Revelation, right?
We understand that it's a certain genre,
and that's going to influence how we interpret it,
but when we come to it, you might be surprised to learn
not everybody agrees on what's in Revelation, right?
And it kind of reminded me,
and I know this is a little silly,
but Judah is currently making his way
through Disney movies that I enjoyed as a kid,
and so it's cool getting to rewatch them with him,
except the Lion King, which has become one of his favorites,
and that's what really will tear you up as a father,
so I can't watch certain scenes in that,
but there is this interesting scene.
If you've seen the Lion King, you remember the part
where you've got Simba and Timon and Pumbaa,
and they're laying on their backs,
they're looking at the stars, right?
And they start asking the question,
hey, what do you think those are up there, all right?
So they're all seeing the exact same thing,
stars in the sky, and Timon, of course,
he answers all companies, like, well, obviously,
it's fireflies, and they got stuck
in that blueish-black thing up there,
but that's what they are, and it made sense to him, right?
He knows that fireflies make light,
and so he thought, okay, they're stuck up there in the sky.
And then Pumbaa was like, oh, well,
I always thought it was balls of burning gas
billions of miles away, which is hilarious,
because he's made to be like kind of the dumb one,
but he gives the right answer,
and Timon makes fun of him for that.
And then they press Simba, right?
And you remember what he says, he's like, well, you know,
someone told me long ago that it's the great kings
of the past who were up there looking down on us, right?
And so I thought that was interesting.
They're seeing the exact same thing.
They're all seeing lights in the sky,
but each one of them have a different understanding
of what those lights are, right?
One thinks it's fireflies,
and I think it's balls of burning gas,
and other thinks that it's gonna be
the great kings of the past looking down.
And I thought, well, that's a pretty good,
you know, introduction to revelation,
because there are many things in revelation
where you're gonna read them,
and your natural instinct is gonna be,
I know what that is, I've heard that before,
someone's told me that, I know what it is.
I see 666, I know what it is.
I see the seven seals, I know what it is.
But even though you think you know what it is,
someone over here says, actually, I think it's this.
And so there are a lot of different schools
of understanding and interpretation and approaches
to revelation, some that you might be aware of,
some that you might not.
And I think it's good to kind of talk about these
because here's the important thing, right?
We need to have a spirit of teachability
in the church today, which is something
that we lack tremendously, right?
We're living in the age of the expert,
and so because someone has heard their preacher say it before,
or they heard this growing up, or they Googled it,
and they just happened to click on the first link,
and they listened to that teacher,
they think they know the right answer, right?
We're living in the age of the expert,
you can just Google anything.
And so no one, almost no one,
has a spirit of teachability anymore in the church.
And the Bible says in James 3, 17,
that the wisdom from above, which is godly wisdom,
is open to reason, meaning it's open to discussion,
to having a conversation about things
and to hearing solid arguments.
Not only that, but Paul tells Timothy in 2 Timothy 2,24,
that a servant of the Lord,
anybody a servant of the Lord in here?
Yeah, a servant of the Lord must be teachable.
Now, that's hard for a lot of us, isn't it?
Because we've made up our minds a long time ago, haven't we?
And I think it's good to remind ourselves,
we're not God, and we could be wrong, right?
And I think the more that you walk with the Lord,
and immerse yourself in His word,
and you are experiencing His grace,
the more it makes this teachable spirit in you.
Because you should never just make up your mind on something
and say, I'm totally closed off to this,
and I'm not even gonna have a discussion about it,
because that's not the godly wisdom from above.
The Bible says it's open to reason.
If you are not even willing to change your mind on something,
it kinda seems like that's a pride issue, right?
So for instance, there have been plenty of times
in my walk with Christ,
where I held to certain theological beliefs,
and I was sure they were right.
And the more I walked with the Lord, I changed my mind.
Didn't think I ever would, but I did.
We're gonna talk, probably, I don't know when,
I was gonna say next week, but in a few weeks, maybe,
we're gonna talk about some other things
to go with Revelation, about ideas related to the millennium
and things like that, and there's all this pre-mill,
post-mill, ah-mill, dispensation,
all this kinda stuff, right?
There's pretty much four main views.
Well, I'll tell you right now,
I've held to at least three or four at some point
in my walk with Christ.
And at any given point, I could go back
between one or two of them.
They're so close that I think either one
could really be right, I don't know.
The point is that as we come to a book like Revelation
that is so disputed and has so many different understandings,
we need to come with humility and have a teachable spirit
and say, I might be wrong, and that's okay, right?
I don't need to be right on everything.
I can change my mind if I find that the word of God
is saying that my beliefs are not in line with it,
I need to be willing to align myself with God's word, right?
And so I think that's important to say at the start,
and I would also caution you with three things.
Number one is that everybody has a reason
for believing what they believe, right?
Even the most ridiculous idea,
and you can think of a few and you're like,
well, that's ridiculous.
Everybody has a reason for believing what they believe.
And I've learned this the hard way.
I've learned this through study
because when I first became a Christian
and I quickly joined a Baptist church,
I started noticing that there was a common thing
within Baptist circles, I'm not saying it happens here,
but in Baptist circles, where you just dismiss infant baptism.
Oh, it's not in the Bible,
and you don't see that in the New Testament.
What are they thinking, right?
It's easy to stroll me in that position
and go, what a ridiculous belief.
It's probably because you never studied it, right?
And so I was like, well, I'm not gonna do that.
And so I went and I read like every book I could find
on infant baptism, I listened to lectures,
I listened to sermons, I listened to podcasts,
and I started realizing I still disagree with the position,
but I understand where they're coming from.
And it's not a simple wave of the hand.
They have no case.
They've got a very, very strong case for infant baptism.
Again, I still think it fails,
and I think that believers' baptism is more biblical,
but they have a reason for believing what they believe.
So if you disagree with me on revelation,
if I disagree with you, can we just all understand
we all have our reasons for believing what we believe?
Not only that, the other thing I would caution you with
is that you should never say I disagree
until you can honestly say I understand.
So again, this happens all the time.
People dismiss infant baptism.
Oh, I disagree with that.
Do you understand why they hold to that in the first place?
It's good to have that conversation.
You know, you might disagree with me on the millennium
or how to approach revelation.
You might disagree with me on certain aspects of theology,
but don't make a straw man out of that position.
Do your research, find out why I believe what I believe,
and then if you still disagree,
at least you can say you understand, right?
That's a humble approach, is it not?
And then that's the last thing I would say is
don't straw man other people's positions.
That's very intellectually dishonest, that's very weak.
It's very insecure, and I would say arrogant,
because anyone can make a straw man out of any position, right?
Easy to knock down and just dismiss.
You should always try to steal man anyone else's position
and make it the strongest it possibly can be.
And that way when you engage with it,
it's actually on an honest level.
So that's what we need to remember
as we approach revelation,
because whether you believe it or not,
whether you know it or not,
these are the main approaches to the book of Revelation, okay?
And this isn't quite the chart you have
in your hands right now, but I just wanted to show you,
kind of just to give you an idea of what these are, right?
So we're approaching Revelation,
and you think, oh, it's very straightforward.
Well, and the words of Lee Corso, not so fast, sweetheart.
So you have the Preter's view,
and if you want just a very simple diagram
of the Preter's view,
they would say that after the crucifixion
of Jesus' resurrection,
let's imagine that this is church history, right?
Well, they would say that almost all of the book
of Revelation is fulfilled right here in AD 70.
So you're thinking, and you've heard,
and you might believe,
well, Revelation is a book about the future
and all the things that are to come
in thousands and thousands of years
or hundreds of years or however much,
but there's a very large portion of believers today
who believe that everything in Revelation,
apart from maybe one or two chapters,
was entirely fulfilled before AD 70 or around AD 70
with, anybody know what happens in AD 70 besides Joseph?
Temple was destroyed, it's the fall of Jerusalem.
And so that's the Preter's view.
So they look at Revelation,
they say pretty much everything, first century.
Then you have the futurist view,
which is primarily the view that the majority
of the church holds today and has held
since about the late 19th century
and into the 20th century.
And they would say, well, if this is church history,
that the majority of Revelation is fulfilled
at some point in the future, really distant future,
it could be after a rapture per se,
and before the second coming of Christ
with maybe some stuff continuing after,
but the futurist would look at Revelation
and you can see they're totally opposite
from the Preterist, right?
They say everything is gonna take place
at some point in the distant future.
Well, then you've got the historicists
and they, I'm gonna run out of ink with this one,
they say that the book of Revelation
is actually fulfilled throughout all of church history
with very specific events.
So they see events written about in Revelation
and they will say that corresponds to historical events
that happened throughout history.
Even things like the French Revolution and stuff like that,
they'll say that's written about in Revelation
and it's fulfilled throughout the history of church.
And then you have the idealist view,
which they would say that the majority of Revelation
is actually all of Revelation is a symbolic book,
that everything within Revelation
needs to be taken as a representation
and as something symbolic.
And so they would see fulfillment happening
in kind of patterns throughout history.
So it's just occurrences of the same thing
over and over again throughout all of history.
Now those are the major views
and maybe you look at this and you go,
okay, I see where I fall.
I know which one I already believe in.
And I think there are probably people in this very room
who hold to more different views than you in this room.
So you might have some futurists in here,
you might have some preterists in here, idealists,
whatever the case, but understand,
they still believe that Jesus is the Christ
and that salvation is through Christ and Christ the what.
But here's my question, all right?
And just to show you how this plays out
with the book of Revelation
and to show you why it's so significant,
that's why we're gonna get into that chart
is because when you come to Revelation
and you see certain things, you have to understand
it's not always as cut and dry
as we try to make it out to be, right?
We look at certain things and you might think,
well, I know what that means,
but there's someone else who's gonna totally disagree with that.
So I wanted to put a number of instances of famous things
that occur in Revelation.
I could have picked a whole bunch of stuff,
but I just, I picked four things
and I thought it'd be interesting to see,
well, what do the different approaches make
of these things, right?
So we wanna start, you start with the preterist, right?
Remember, preterist, pretty much everything
is fulfilled in the first century leading up to AD 70.
So you come to the seven churches, right?
You have Revelation chapters two and three,
John's addressing the seven churches.
What do you think the preterist believes
about the seven churches?
What's gonna be his interpretation of the seven churches?
That's right, that's exactly right.
So literal and first century.
So literal first century, that's what you have
with the preterist view there of the seven churches.
And that makes a lot of sense
because John was writing to seven real churches at the time,
but you go to the futurist and remember,
the futurist says, well, everything is gonna happen
in the future, so they come to the seven churches.
What do you do with that?
What do you think the futurist makes
of the seven churches in Revelation?
Yes, beautiful.
So they acknowledge that there were seven real churches
by those names in the first century,
but they say that it represents seven periods in time
throughout church history that the church is gonna go through.
So for instance, if you just wanna hear an example
of what this sounds like,
they'll say the Ephesian church, remember?
You have abandoned your first love.
They say, well, that corresponds to the nature of the church
pretty much from 8070 to about 8170
when the church right after the fall of Jerusalem
abandoned their first love
and there was a lot of stuff going on then.
Then you have the church in Smyrna,
which was the persecuted church.
And they'll say, well, that happened immediately after
that 8170, pretty much leading up to Constantine
because there was a lot of persecution at that time
and a lot of things were going on.
So that was the persecuted church.
You had Pergamum or Pergamus, the compromising church.
They'll say that was pretty much from the time of Constantine
up until when Boniface III was crowned
the universal bishop when the church was making
all sorts of compromises.
Thyatira, the worldly church,
they say that that extends from the period of 8600
to about the Reformation time somewhere in there.
Sardis, which is the dead church,
they say took place during the time of the Reformation.
And Philadelphia, the overwhelmed church,
the church that had a lot going on,
but had an opportunity for evangelism
and a lot of good works.
They say that that took place between AD 1750 and the 1900s.
And then the Laodicean church, or the nauseating church,
is the church today.
So that's what they believe.
Actually, you can put this for the historicists.
They pretty much believe and on board with the same thing
that they believe that the seven churches
represent seven ages throughout,
or seven periods of time throughout church history
that the church must go through.
Now, a couple of things could be said there.
What would you say to that?
If that's maybe your first time hearing it,
what are your initial thoughts and responses?
Okay, why are they specified
as being a geographical location?
Again, trying to still man the futurist position,
they would say we acknowledge
that they were real geographical locations,
but the problems going on in those churches
were also going to be predominant
within a certain period within church history.
So it corresponds.
And so we acknowledge the church is going through this,
but the church at large
is gonna go through this at another time.
Anybody else?
Responses to this.
See what I did?
Yeah.
No?
Who was there?
I'm not sure.
Scri pride.
I thought this was for this hour,
but then I was left as the recipient two weeks before,
so I keep second.
Yeah, so I think in trying to again answer, so just to show my hand, I'm not a futurist,
I don't hold this position, but I think they would respond and say that revelation being
a symbolic book, the nature of the book itself gives way to a symbolic interpretation or
at least some sort of correspondence that could play itself out within church history.
I think a couple things that come to my mind is, you know, you end up with a person who's
having to make the dates, right?
So it's not something given by God.
You have human beings who are sinful and fallible who are having to look at history and go,
okay, where do we set these dates to correspond with the church?
That would be number one for me.
Number two would be calling the Reformation the dead church.
They say that Sardis, the dead church, took place during the time of the Reformation.
And that was when the church was coming alive.
That's when the gospel was rediscovered.
That's when there was great revival and there was great preaching going on and all this
kind of stuff.
I mean, you had Knox and Luther and Zwingli and all these great men of God who were doing
these amazing works and the church was alive and well.
So I have a problem with that.
But the other interesting thing to know about this position is that, and this is interesting,
you can go back and look at this throughout the writings of church history.
Every person who's trying to do this at any point in church history always puts the present
day church as the Laodicean church.
And so one of the very first times that this was written about in the 1700s, they said
that the church at that time was the Laodicean church.
But now when people look at this position today, they say that we're the Laodicean church.
And so it's always moving back.
It's always stretching.
You're always having to reimagine things.
And then finally, you have to get back to authorial intent.
You have to ask yourself, and the answer may be yes.
Again, it's a valid position for some.
But you have to ask yourself, what was the authorial intent?
When God inspired John and when God gave this revelation to Jesus to give to the saints,
did he in any way intend to represent these seven real churches as seven symbolic ages
throughout church history?
Seems unlikely to me, but you might come to a different conclusion, but that's at least
that position.
And the seven churches aren't as cut and dry as we thought, right?
Like, you look at that and you think, okay, I know what it's talking about, but other
people might disagree with you.
And then you have the idealist position, which they would say that it's every church, I'm
really going to run out of room, so every church, every way.
That pretty much the problems that were existing within the churches at that time in the first
century are the same problems that all churches at all times deal with throughout all of history.
And I think that's another solid response to this seven periods thing, because think
about the persecuted church, right?
The Smyrnyn church.
Well, they said that that period was right after the first century, and that period represented
the persecuted church.
My main problem with that is that the 20th century had more Christian martyrs than the
previous 19th centuries combined.
Shouldn't that be the Smyrnyn church?
And yet, many people who hold this position would say that's the evangelistic church,
that's the Philadelphian church.
And so it's better, I think, to say, and more appropriate to recognize that the seven churches
were real churches who had real problems, but the problems that they faced were the
same problems we face today.
Like Ephesus, we still leave our first love, and we abandon Jesus all the time.
Prone to wonder, Lord, I feel it.
You have the Smyrnyn church who, again, persecuted.
We have Christian martyrs today who are being persecuted more than any other time in history.
You have like Pergamum and some of these other ones, Thyatira, we're compromising.
We can become worldly like Sardis.
We can become dead like Philadelphia.
We might be overwhelmed, but we still have great opportunity for evangelism like Laodicea.
Sometimes we're nauseating.
Are we not?
And Jesus just won't spit us out of His mouth because we're making all sorts of compromises
and we're lukewarm.
And so I think it's a good interpretation to recognize these were real churches, but
the messages to these seven churches have relevance for the church at all points in
all human history.
And I just think that's a fair way to say that.
So then let me just, we'll go quickly through some of these.
The seven seals, right?
You have the seven seals in Revelation you read in chapter six and you can go back and
study some of these.
You have a rider on a white horse and a red horse and there's black and all this kind
of stuff and death and destruction.
And there's these seven seals being opened and it's like, okay, what do these mean?
Well, if you ask, for instance, the Futures, what do you think the Futures is going to
say?
Happens in the future.
These are events that are going to happen in the future.
And specifically, it can be different.
Many people in this camp would say that the seven seals are going to be opened during
the seven year tribulation period or at least the six seals will.
And the seventh seal is going to be when Christ returns and there's going to be the millennium
kingdom and all this kind of stuff.
Or they might push it further back some Futures and say that this would be the very end when
the kingdom is consummated and all that kind of stuff.
So there are variations within it.
And they would put this at some point in the future probably after the rapture, right?
What do you think the Preterist says about this?
It's already happened.
Do you know when it happened?
What it corresponds to?
The Jewish Wars of the first century.
Remember around the fall of Jerusalem, Rome and the Jews were really going at it and there
was a lot of Jewish persecution and Rome was on the move and all this kind of stuff.
And so it's interesting.
I actually wanted to read this to you.
This is a Preterist interpretation of the seven seals.
So he says, the rider on the white horse who was bent on conquest represents the victorious
Roman march toward Jerusalem to engage in the Jewish war in the spring of AD 67.
He actually dates it.
The rider on the red horse who takes the peace from the earth.
He is a representation of the famous Pax Romana being eradicated.
You know Pax Romana was the Roman peace that they had for so long.
But when the Jewish Wars happened, well that peace was gone.
The riders on the black and pale horses represent famine and death issuing from the Jewish War.
The fifth seal, which is the martyrs crying out, how long, oh Lord, how long they say
it represents God's people being persecuted during that time of the Jewish Wars.
And then finally the sixth seal with every mountain is moving away.
He says, alludes to Roman legions, construction crews removing mountainous impediments to
the progress of the massive army into their building banks at the tops of their protective
walls surrounding the Jewish cities.
You remember there's also that famous prophecy there in Revelation chapter six around this
seal where it says, on that day when his face is shown and the judgment comes, all this
kind of stuff, that people will say to the mountains, fall on us, hide us from him who
is coming, right?
And they say that actually corresponds to people in the Jewish Wars who ran to the mountains
for hiding places during the time of persecution.
So again, pretty interesting, right?
It's something you look at and you're like, definitely takes place in the future and then
you read this and you're like, well this guy has a strong solid argument for taking place
in the first century.
I'm not a preterist by the way, I do reject that and I don't think that's what that refers
to but it is a legitimate view and if you are a preterist you've got a strong case for
it.
The historian says that they are events to take place in human history.
So events in history and they correspond to very specific events.
That's the other thing with historicism.
You have to remember it's not just events throughout history, it's specific events throughout
history.
And then finally with the idealist they would say that it represents events in history and
I don't have room to write this down here but basically everything with the idealist
is about the perpetual fight between good and evil.
So they would look at the seals and they would say this is what you expect when man is against
God and when man is against man and these are just symbolic representations of the effects
of that enmity between God and man and then man and man.
So let's get to a very interesting one.
666 and the beast, what does it mean?
Any cries?
Okay, yeah, that's one possibility.
If you're a preterist and you see 666 and the beast, who are you accusing?
Here, why is that young Joseph, our resident theologian and 666?
Dependent.
You getting close?
Yeah, you're on it.
No, you were closer with Greg.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay, tag me in.
Got it.
So yeah, Joseph's right.
The preterist would say that the number 666 corresponds to Nero, Nero 1st century Roman
emperor who hated Christians, hated Jews, was highly persecuting both of those groups.
And interesting, if you look at the name Nero, right, and you write it in a certain way if
his name is Nero Caesar and you add up those numbers, so basically to explain this, before
there was the Arabic number system like we have today, 1, 2, 3, 4, letters used to hold
a numeric value, and specifically like Hebrew and Aramaic letters.
So if you take Nero Caesar and you transliterate it from the Greek into Hebrew or Aramaic,
the value of his name adds up to 666.
It does.
Now there's a lot to be said there.
One thing in particular is that it's Greek to Hebrew, but he was the Roman emperor, which
means most of the time his name would appear in Latin.
And if you add up the numerical value, so if you transliterate from Latin to Hebrew or
Aramaic, the numerical value is 616.
So that really holds water.
You kind of, you lose out on that right there.
The other thing about this is that no one can agree on what the title actually was.
Was it Caesar Nero, Nero Caesar?
There's all, there's sorts of titles and names that Nero went by.
And so you have to choose a very specific title in a very specific language and then
transliterate that back into a very specific language in order to get 666.
And you have to ask yourself, if you're John and you're writing to seven churches, remember
it's a letter, he's writing to seven literal churches, you're writing this and all these
churches are Gentile churches.
That's something we'll get into later.
They're not primarily Jewish churches.
These are Gentile churches.
Do you think these Gentile churches, seeing the number 666 would have immediately thought
to themselves, okay, Nero's a pretty bad guy.
We can maybe target him for this.
Let's put his name in a very specific title in Greek and then let's find someone who knows
how to speak Hebrew and Aramaic and let's get them to transliterate it back for us and
then let's see if it adds up to 666 or 616, you know, whatever the case may be.
There's just a lot of steps that I don't think the first century readers receiving this
letter would have gone through in order to try to figure out who this is.
So, but that is the Preter's view.
They say that it is Nero and that he is the representation of the 666 and the beast for
all they did.
What do you think the futurist says?
Coming in the future, Antichrist, right?
He's going to be the Antichrist.
There's just way too many views within the futurist.
Like futurist is this kind of like, there's so many different aspects of it, people who
hold different variations of it.
But essentially they would say that the beast is the Antichrist.
He represents a very specific person who is to come at some point in the future and 666
probably in some way corresponds to his name in some capacity and that the mark of the
beast typically, I've seen variations, but typically it's technology.
It's going to be some form of technology that's advanced that we receive a mark.
People thought it was barcodes.
When barcodes first started coming out, they thought it was the mark of the beast.
Other people think that there's going to be a future technology that people will have
implanted in their heads or their wrists or their hands that will be the mark of the beast
and show your allegiance to the Antichrist who is to come.
So that's what the futurist says.
What do you think the historist says?
Did what now?
Oh yeah, you've got something on there, don't you?
All right, so this one's fun, right?
The Historicist, if you have this title, Vicarious Philly Day, which means the vice-regent
of the Son of God, you know who holds that title?
That's the Pope.
Papa Pope.
And so the Historicist, so basically the reason I had that title in there is because if you
add up the numerical value of that title, it adds up to 666.
So they try to do the same thing with this title that the futurist does with Nero.
And so they look at the Pope's title and they say that adds up to 666.
The Pope is the Antichrist.
He is the beast who is to come.
Now a lot of things to say there.
The Pope has a lot of different titles.
It kind of goes back to the Nero thing where you could pick almost any title.
You could probably rearrange my title with some form of my name and it'll equal 666.
I don't think I'm the Antichrist.
I hope I'm not.
I told Jordan one time when I was like 10 years old, I had this thought.
I was like, oh man, what if I'm the Antichrist?
I wasn't even a Christian, but I was just the YMCA and they had showed us the left behind
series.
I'm like, that's not me.
That'd be terrible.
I don't think any other people worry about that on a regular basis, but anyways.
So I think you can do this with pretty much any title and name.
You can make it into 666 if you wanted to.
The other thing to mention about this is like, is the Pope the Antichrist?
He is a Antichrist for sure.
So that's what we'll say.
We'll just leave it at that.
He's probably not the bad, big bad Antichrist.
Is he a Antichrist?
100%.
Absolutely.
He's the Antichrist John and what you look at in the Antichrist.
You are to come.
The Spirit that is within them, for sure.
He is an Antichrist, but not the Antichrist.
And then you have the idealist.
What do you think the idealist says?
They keep popping up.
Yeah, pretty much.
So it's really kind of hard to summarize this, but I think one way is man in sin.
So they look at 666.
And we said this last week, what is the number of completeness in the Bible?
Or perfect?
7, right?
It's 7.
6 falls just short of that, does it not?
And so they look at this and they say 666 is deficiency.
It's incompleteness.
It's imperfection, which is a sign of sin.
And it really, 6 unfortunately corresponds to man in the Bible.
The man was made on the sixth day.
Man works for six days.
There's a lot of man in 6's in the Bible.
And so they would say that 666 is a general representation of mankind in sin and that
we cause a lot of harm in this world.
It's a pretty good idea.
They're not wrong.
So there's a lot more that we could say about that, but we will continue for now.
Let's go through this last one very quickly.
Babylon, the Preterist.
Anybody know what he says about Babylon?
The whore of a city that is called in Revelation?
Rome.
Okay.
Actually, no.
That's not.
So there are multiple versions of Preterist.
So I'll put it up there because there are some Preterists who will say Rome, but there's
another view.
Anybody else know what the other view is?
Jerusalem.
That's a more common view is that Jerusalem is actually Babylon, the city that was unfaithful
to the Lord, the city that played the whore to the Lord.
And so you look at this and you're immediately thinking maybe literal Babylon, maybe Rome,
maybe some great, you know, something to come.
Actually they'd say it's just Jerusalem.
It was an unfaithful city to the Lord and that's why it was destroyed in the end in
8070, at least that's what they say.
So Babylon for the Futurist, what do they say?
New coming of Babylon.
That's right.
The literal Babylon, that the actual city of Babylon will rise to prominence again and
exert some sort of impact and influence over the world.
The Historicists, what do they say?
Who's Babylon for the Historicists?
Yes, very good.
The Historicists, they just do not like Catholicism.
So let's call that what it is.
So yeah, Rome or the Roman Church, you can put the Roman Church, that's who they believe
Babylon is because Catholics have been widely adulterous to the Lord and played the whore
and gone astray and all this kind of stuff.
And so yeah, they just say, well, Babylon is Rome and the idealist, anybody know what
the idealist would say?
Or have been many?
Okay.
They're going to make it more symbolic throughout all time.
So they would say that Babylon represents, going to have to get down, the world in the
church.
That whenever the world infects the church and corrupts the church, they have become
a Babylon and they have played the whore to the Lord.
So as we conclude, we got through it, right?
Just a couple things to take note of.
We just wanted to do this to show you that you see these things that seem common and
understandable in Revelation and we just need to have the humility to understand.
Not everybody agrees and that there are people who have different views and they have reasons
for their views and we need to engage with them honestly and not just straw man them
and dismiss them.
So my question is, which one of these is right?
We need an approach, right?
We're going to be studying Revelation for, I don't know how long.
We need an approach.
Which one of these is right?
Very good.
I want to say it's going to be our approach for Revelation.
So again, as we go throughout it, I will acknowledge these views and I'll give credence
to them and say these people believe this.
But in general, our approach is going to be kind of what Nick was hitting out there, that
like you look at this and you go, well, I could see a lot of different truth aspects
in a lot of these approaches, right?
Like the Preterist takes seriously the first century reality of the writing.
The Futurist recognizes that there are things to come in the future that we need to anticipate.
The Historist recognizes that these events that happen in Revelation can be seen throughout
the history of the church and the Idealist recognizes that a lot of these things are
symbolic and a lot of these things are repetitive.
And so what we want to adopt is what's called the eclectic approach.
And that's what we're going to go with is the eclectic approach, which basically tries
to take the best of each one of these and combine them into one approach.
So you give credence to the historical reality of the first century church.
You recognize that there are things to come.
You recognize that history does show a lot of these things to take place.
But most importantly, and I think the Idealist has a very strong case, which is why it's
so prominent in the eclectic view, is that there are many symbols that represent something
else in Revelation, but they're also very literal things as well.
But the Idealist recognizes the cyclical pattern of Revelation.
So you look at things that happen, you're like, this might not be a set of chronological
things to happen.
This might not be a chronology.
It might just be telling us like three or four different.
They might be saying the same thing in three or four different ways and showing us that
history is cyclical, that the church is being persecuted all the time, that we are going
worldly at all times, we're compromising all the time, that these things happen in cycles.
And so we need to remember that.
And I think that's a good approach to have is just to recognize the best of what everybody
else has to offer and say, let's put that together and make a solid approach of it.
And so my very last thing then is going to be, how do we approach Revelation?
Here's what I want you to remember.
Humbly, we approach Revelation humbly dependent on the Holy Spirit while maintaining a teachable
spirit.
It means you can have your view, I can have my view, but let's have a discussion about
it.
Let's just have an open, honest discussion and have a teachable spirit.
You could convince me to change my view.
I'm okay with that.
If it's more biblical, I'm totally fine with it.
I hope that you feel the same.
You might have your beliefs now, but if you find that the Bible starts leading you in
another direction, are you willing to change your view?
Are you open to reason?
Are you teachable?
Those are some of the main things we want to take away.
And I think next week we'll get into all the fun stuff about the millennium.
And again, teachable spirit, I might reiterate that next week.
Teachable spirit, we can disagree, we believe in Christ.
Amen.
All right, Michael, how about closing us in prayer?
Thank you.