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Begin Typing VigilThe Book of Revelation is unique as far as the NT is concerned, and has few points of affnity with other NT writings, but it is by no means unique in Jewish or Jewish-Christian literature. It is the blossom and fruit of the great apocalyptic movement which grew up in the century before and the century after Christ. No one can hope to understand the book till he has made himself familiar with this movement, and the student is recommended to approach the study of it by reading carefully. What Daniel is to the OT and Enoch and 4 Ezra are to later Jewish literature, the Book of Revelation is to the NT. Until the significance of the apocalyptic movement is properly appreciated, Revelation will remain a sphinx riddle to the modern reader, and the value of its message will be completely missed.
Many methods of interpretation have been suggested. One school of interpreters (generally known as the Futurists) maintains that the prophecies of the book still refer to the future, and we must wait for the end of the world before they will be realised. Such a theory, however, cannot be maintained in face of the writer's own explicit statement that his utterances must shortly come to pass (1:1). He did not place the fulfilment of his prophecies in the dim and distant future: he looked for their realisation in his own day.
Another view regards the book as a diagram of history from the writer's own time to the end of the world. Part of it, therefore, has been fulfilled; part is now in course of fulfilment; part still belongs to the future. This is known as the historical method of interpretation. This theory is open to the same objections as the Futurist, and it has the additional difficulty to meet that though history has now gone on for nearly 2000 years, it is impossible to find the faintest trace of its outline in the Book of Revelation.
The true theory is known as the Preterist, and maintains that the writer had solely the needs of his own age in view when he wrote the book. The drama belongs entirely to the past. The vision of the author never extended beyond the first century. The Apocalypse was an attempt to solve the problems which faced the Early Church. Like all other apocalyptic writers, the author of Revelation could see no escape from the difficulties of the hour, except by a Divine intervention which would mean the end of the age.
The book was written to meet an extremely grave situation. Persecution had broken out on all sides. The writer himself had been exiled to Patmos. Though the name of only one martyr (Antipas) is given (2:13), there is every indication that martyrdoms were of frequent occurrence. At the opening of the fifth seal, for instance, the writer sees 'underneath the altar the souls of them that had been slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held' (6:9). A systematic attempt was being made to establish Caesar-worship on an extensive scale. An edict was issued that 'as many as should not worship the image of the beast should be killed' (13:15). The devotees of the cult of Caesar wore a special mark 'on their right hand or upon their forehead.' and all who had not received the 'mark of the beast,' as it was called, were boycotted in the markets and ostracised in social life. This clash between Christianity and Caesar-worship entailed untold sufferings upon the followers of Christ. To profess the Christian faith meant the risk of martyrdom and the certainty of petty persecution in the ordinary avocations of life. The strain had become well-nigh intolerable, and a wholesale sacrifice of life seemed inevitable if Christianity was to maintain its integrity. It was no wonder that large numbers of Christians grew weak in the faith and compromised their religion.
It was to meet this situation that the Book of Revelation was written. The writer had inherited from the past three great ideas: 1. Like all Christians of the time he believed in the near return of Christ, 2. Like all apocalyptic writers he held that before the end God would intervene in human history to vindicate truth and righteousness and save His people from their foes, 3. This intervention would mean a day of judgment for the world, the destruction of Antichrist, and the establishment of a kingdom of saints. In the Book of Revelation the three great ideas are applied to the crisis which confronted the Church in the first century. The prospect seemed so hopeless that no human way of escape appeared possible. Faith, therefore, demanded that God should act, and in the first century Divine action could only follow the lines wlhich had been laid down in apocalyptic literature. The Book of Revelation is right in assuming that God must come to the rescue of His people; it is wrong only when it attempts to describe the mode in which the deliverance must arrive. Its lurid pictures of the outpouring of God's wrath were not realised, but its promise of Divine succour and help for the stricken Church was abundantly fulfilled.
This timeline combines the three Synoptic Gospels, Acts, and the five Johnannine works.