Revelation - Introduction(2)

Approach

The most important aspect of the approach I will take is that God gives us His word primarily to elicit a response from us. Most commonly this is for people to repent and believe, to put their trust in Christ (Acts 2:38). It is also for our equipping and encouragement (2 Tim 3:16,17). God does not give His word in order to encourage idle speculation. So God has given this book in order to help us be better disciples of Christ and to know Him better.

There are essentially four major views of Revelation:

Preterist

This views the book as applying purely to the immediate historical situation. This view sees the fall of Babylon as referring to the fall of Jerusalem (and so more or less requires an early date, unless it is taken as looking back at events).

While understanding the current situation is vital to understanding Revelation, there is a common pattern in Biblical prophecy of there being an immediate partial or indicative fulfilment, but a looking forward to a much greater one. Isaiah and the Messianic prophecies are the best example of this. So the preterist view seems to be at odds with this Biblical pattern. It also seems rather difficult to assign all the prophecies in Revelation to first century events, not to mention the identifying of Babylon with Jerusalem.

There is also a partial-preterist view that allows for some events to be looking forward to the future.

Historicist

This sees Revelation as predicting the course of human history, in particular the church. There are enormous problems with trying to see Revelation as predicting events in history as one is so prone to interpreting things in terms of events of one’s own lifetime.

Idealist

This sees Revelation as having no direct relation to actual history, but rather giving a general picture of the battle between good and evil. There is an awful lot to be said for this approach. Christians throughout the ages, and throughout the world have gone through times of great persecution, and Christians going through these events need all the encouragement and teaching that they can get. It should be noted that historicists see value in the idealist approach as well.

Futurist

They sees Revelation as speaking of the very end times. Dispenationalist historicists see chapter 6-19 as referring to events of the tribulation, after the pre-tribulation rapture.