Revelation: Buckle Your Seatbelts Folks!

Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written in it; for the time is near. Revelation 1:3

Revelation was the one book that I was always scared of. It has dragons and beasts and fire and seals and scrolls and pits and all kinds of mayhem and destruction.

But the real thing that scared me was that I didn’t understand it.

What is all this stuff anyways? What does it all mean? Is it just allegory or is it literal? Who are the two witnesses? Who or what is the dreaded “Anti-Christ”. Whenever I heard sermons on it growing up (very very rarely) it didn’t make any sense. At most, pastors would just hint at random verses in Revelation when they did their Easter fire and brimstone messages to try to get folks to come to the altar.

Read “manipulate” when I said “try to get”.

From my vantage point I always saw this book as more curse than blessing. How are you gonna scare folks into salvation? Isn’t fear the opposite of faith?

Yes it very may well be; however, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

As I have grown in my limited understanding of the Bible all of my studies have pointed me to the need to study this amazing book. The more that I studied His awesome power in Genesis and Exodus, His awesome love in the Gospels, and His awesome wrath and mercy in the prophet books; the more that all of my studies were pointing me here toward Revelation.

So here we are.

I’m looking forward to this journey because I finally believe what the Bible says. Time and time again over the past several years the Bible has proven to be both literally and figuratively true in my life.

I thank Jesus that He opens this book by saying that we will be blessed if we read it.

We need it.

I’m looking forward to the blessing, but more importantly I am looking forward to all of the wonderful and fascinating places that God will take us along this journey.

So here we are, finally, doing an intense study of Revelation.

Buckle your seatbelts… It will be wild ride.