A Deeper Dive Into the Book of Revelation - Part 7
“[This is] the revelation of Jesus Christ [His unveiling of the divine mysteries]. God gave it to Him to disclose and make known to His bond servants certain things which must shortly and speedily come to pass in their entirety. And He sent and communicated it through His angel (messenger) to His bond servant John”—Revelation 1:1 (AMPC)
1st Key: The Book is About Future Events
The first verse of the book makes it very clear that its purpose is to disclose and make known “certain things which must shortly and speedily come to pass.” It is about future events. It is not about events of the past.
This is important to understand. The book of Revelation does not describe events of the past. It is only about future events from the time that John had his experience and wrote the book.
This understanding immediately invalidates some misinterpretations of the book.
For example, since this book is about future events from the time of John’s experience, the woman and the child in Revelation chapter 12 cannot represent Mary and the baby Jesus. That would describe a past event. That interpretation falls apart anyway under close examination because the things that happen to the woman and the child in Revelation 12 never happened to Mary and the baby Jesus.
Similarly, the woman fleeing into the wilderness in Revelation 12:6 cannot represent Israel’s journey in the wilderness from the book of Exodus because that would describe an event in the past. That interpretation also quickly falls apart when we see that the woman is in the wilderness only for 1,260 days, not 40 years, as Israel was.
2nd Key - Understanding of the Book is Not Given to Every Believer
The book of Revelation is unique. Many of the books of the New Testament were written to a particular church, like the church of the Thessalonians, or they were written to all of the believers in particular geographical areas, like the Romans or the Galatians. Revelation is the *only *book in the Bible that is written to a remnant group within the Church as a whole.
The first verse of the book tells us that it is only written to the bond servants of Jesus Christ.
“[This is] the revelation of Jesus Christ [His unveiling of the divine mysteries]. God gave it to Him to disclose and make known to His bond servants certain things …” (AMPC)
The Bible describes two different kinds of servants. There are hired servants, who serve the master for their own benefit; and there are bond servants, who are motivated to serve out of the love they have for their master.
The word used in the original language of Revelation 1:1 is *doulos *, which describes a bond servant whose life is totally devoted to serving his master.
Thayer’s Greek Lexicon defines the bond servant as “one who gives himself up wholly to another’s will” and someone who is “devoted to another to the disregard of one’s own interests.”
So, if a believer cannot understand the mysteries of the book of Revelation, it may have nothing to do with their intelligence, or whether they attended Bible School or not. It may be that something is lacking in their commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ. Not every believer will understand this book, no matter how hard they may try.
Jesus tells us very clearly that the mysteries of God are not shared with everyone. He only shares His secrets with certain people.
We guard our personal secrets in the same way, don’t we? Do you share your secrets with everyone you know, or with only the people closest to you—the people that you know you can really trust?
Here is how Jesus explains it in Matthew 13:9-17:
“He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”
And the disciples came and said to Him, “Why do You speak to them in parables?”
He answered and said to them, “Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For whoever has, to him more will be given, and he will have abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. Therefore I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is fulfilled, which says:
‘Hearing you will hear and shall not understand, And seeing you will see and not perceive; For the hearts of this people have grown dull. Their ears are hard of hearing, And their eyes they have closed, Lest they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, Lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, So that I should heal them.’
But blessed are your eyes for they see, and your ears for they hear; for assuredly, I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.” (NKJV)
In his maturity, Paul realized that he could only share the deep “treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3) that are hidden in the heart of God with mature disciples. He could not share them with everyone in the Church.
“However, we speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory, which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
“But as it is written:
‘Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.’
“But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.
“These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.”—1 Corinthians 2:6-14 (NKJV)
The writer of Hebrews lamented the immature spiritual condition of many believers because it meant that he could not share with them the deep, hidden wisdom of God that is only shared with the mature disciples of Jesus Christ.
“Concerning this we have much to say which is hard to explain, since you have become dull in your [spiritual] hearing and sluggish [even slothful in achieving spiritual insight].
“For even though by this time you ought to be teaching others, you actually need someone to teach you over again the very first principles of God’s Word. You have come to need milk, not solid food.
“For everyone who continues to feed on milk is obviously inexperienced and unskilled in the doctrine of righteousness (of conformity to the divine will in purpose, thought, and action), for he is a mere infant [not able to talk yet]!
“But solid food is for full-grown men, for those whose senses and mental faculties are trained by practice to discriminate and distinguish between what is morally good and noble and what is evil and contrary either to divine or human law.”—Hebrews 5:11-14 (AMPC)
We must cooperate with God to become His mature bond servants or we will miss many of the hidden treasures of wisdom and knowledge that He wants to share with us.
“I have much more to say to you. It is more than you can handle right now.”—John 16:12 (NIRV)
“None of the wicked will understand, but those skilled in wisdom will understand.”—Daniel 12:10 (CEB)
I have written more about the bond servant commitment in my series Simple Keys to Understanding the Book of Revelation.
