I had mentioned that when I had read the Bible through, I choose not to read Revelation, I did not explain why. Many years ago, when I was 12 years old, I felt the call of the Lord on my heart and believed that call was to be a preacher. I began to set up my High School classes to help me along that path and I began studying Revelation. That was like giving whiskey to a newborn baby, not wise in the lest. My first class towards becoming a preacher was a summer school speech class and for my first speech I gave a sermon, the teacher video taped it and I was humiliated when the tape was played back. Meanwhile, at home I had begun studying the fifth chapter of Revelation and got the distinct mental picture of all of us standing around the throne just waiting for the opportunity to sing the Praises of our God, that picture just didn't sit well with me. I reasoned that if that was what Heaven was all about then I didn't want any part of it. Add my humiliation and youth, then some one handed me a beer about two weeks later and I ran from God as hard and as fast as I could. For the next 7 years I hardly drew a sober breath and even after God had rescued me from my alcoholism I still was apprehensive about approaching Him and delved into many “mystery” religions and philosophy’s. Our God is so patient, He slowly drew me back to Him. Today I am willing to stand around the throne room and yell Hosanna to the Highest until I no longer have a voice. That being said I have still been apprehensive about reading this book until last week and I want to share some thoughts with you all and please may I have some feed back.
My first thought was that just like the prophesy’s in the old Testament there doesn't seem to be a clear cut order. What I mean is in Jeremiahs and Ezekiel s, as well as the other prophesy's they appear on the surface to be speaking to Israel about their current and future situation, however we now know that some of it was also about the Christ and not Israels sin. In this reading of Revelation it seemed the vision was speaking to times past, times present and times future. In my thinking this would be more consistent with the way God has spoke in prophecy in the Old Testament. That the book is not exclusively about the future.
My second thought is that, God is in a war. Now what kind of a Commander would God be if he made available to anyone including His enemy His battle plan in plain, simple, easy to understand language, that would be foolish and God is not a fool. No the wise thing would be to write a document that could be circulated amongst His troops that would be coded in such a way that the enemy would be unable to decode it and maybe even be a distraction or even a way to set up the enemy to get them to fall into the traps set for them. That would make more sense. In order for the document to work it would have to be believable by the enemy and one of the best ways to do that would be to make sure that His own troops found encouragement and strength in it. So is it a prophecy in the strictest sense? I don't know what do you think?
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