The book of Revelation is an incredible book and a book that most people avoid.  Why do you think that is? Think about it in your own life, if you were to read only one book in the Bible to encourage you to worship God and to lift you up, which one would you choose?

I know that most Christians believe that Revelation is a weird anomaly at the end of the Bible, a book that is one of a kind, but Revelation sits securely in a very common genre of its time. That genre is called Apocalyptic literature

If you were going to write a book and you were writing the last chapter, how would you finish it? You had journeyed through the birth of your main character and the audience had watched as his life had gone through some horrific trials, he had been in situations that he needed help and at the right time someone came to rescue him.

Revelation is a political statement of great proportions. The Roman Empire of the 1st Century would not have taken lightly the political implications of this text. Now I am not going to get into the Eschatological debates of whether this book is to be read as Futurist, Preterist, Historicist or Spiritual. For me the book of Revelation is a diamond, the more I read it the more I am aware how multi-faceted and multi-sided it is.

The last thing I want to highlight in our study of the book of Revelation is the two sides within the text. For the original audience, they would have heard the prophetic declaration as a message of hope, that even though on this earth everything is going badly, in the end, God’s final redemptive plan is on track and all things are going to work out for good!

I am passionate about the understanding that what you believe will happen in the end, will either motivate you for the Church today or distract you from another mission. Let me explain, if you believe that heaven and hell are real places and that there is only one way to go to one and escape the other, then your belief will be reflected in your actions in evangelism.