Why Study Revelation?

For some of you, that mean seem like a strange question. It shows us what will happen in the end times, right? Of course we should study it, because then we will know what to expect!
 
If you join one of the Bible studies, you will be surprised to find out that “end times prophecy” is NOT going to be the lens through which we read Revelation. The way most modern American Christians read it actually isn’t the way the Church in ages past generally understood it. Other lenses have been used (“end times” is one of the four common lenses), and we are going to use one of those other lenses—one that understands it as a prophetic description of something that happened to the Church about 40 years after the ascension of Christ. In other words, our primary mode of interpretation will be looking backward to history, not forward to the end times.
 
This may stir some of you to re-ask the initial question. If it already happened, then why read it?
 
The answer to this question is simple: God is consistent, and people are repetitive. The same things confront the Church, over and over. And God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow (the Alpha and Omega). Even though most of what Revelation describes happened nearly 2000 years ago, we should expect to see it repeated. In other words, even if Revelation isn’t primarily about the end times, it will still teach us a lot about what to expect in them. And more importantly, it will show us a great deal about our current moment, and what God might be doing in it.
 
I hope that your appetite is whetted! We are leaping into the study next week. Unlike other studies, we are providing an introduction and weekly reading guides. These will be distributed by the leaders of the study, so make certain you let the leaders know if you will be joining in.
 
In Christ, the Alpha and Omega,
 
Steven+