REVELATION IS HISTORY
So much has been written about the book of Revelation. Even in the Churches of God the wildest speculations abound. Many of these ideas are far-fetched and yet they keep on being taught year after year.
While the prophecies in Revelation are mostly given in figurative language, the explanations are generally straightforward and logical. But instead of seeing the obvious, people seek after the weird and fanciful.
Revelation simply gives us an overview of the major historical events involving God's people from the commencement of the Church at Christ's first coming until the time of His second coming and Millennial reign.
In 16th century Europe the world-changing Protestant Reformation began, largely as a result of the widespread availability of the Holy Scriptures made possible by the invention of the printing press. The tumultuous changes of those years also had ongoing consequences for the Churches of God.
In the original introduction to the 1611 King James Bible, we see that the Protestant translators correctly and unashamedly identified "that man of sinne" (II Thes 2) as the office of the Papacy, i.e. the head of the Catholic Church. The Protestants commonly applied the Biblical "day for a year" principle (Num 14:34, Eze 4:6) to the prophecies of Revelation 12 and 13, explaining them as the Catholic Church treading down dissenting Christians for 1260 years. The "woman sitting on a scarlet beast" in Revelation 17 was also thought to represent the Roman church.
In response to beliefs such as these, the Catholics instigated the Counter-Reformation in an effort to dispel the new teachings.
This of necessity involved alternative explanations of prophecies.
The main thrust of the Catholic counter argument was that the time related prophecies of the book of Revelation were not talking about years, but rather about days. One such theory placed all the prophesied events in the first century or two after Christ, a theory now known as "Preterism". Another Catholic theory placed most of the events of the book of Revelation way off into the future. This school of thought is today referred to as "Futurism".
A third school of prophetic interpretation, "Historicism", was adhered to by both Protestant Reformers and Sabbath keeping Christians, who saw that this theory provided a logical historical overview of God's work with mankind.
For example, the seven trumpets of Revelation 8 to 11 were understood by them as seven major events in history, from the first coming of Christ until His return. They were considered to foretell such things as the 70AD destruction of Jerusalem, the fall of pagan Rome, the "Christianisation" of the Roman Empire, the Dark Ages and the Crusades. As explained on the page "THE HISTORICAL SEVENTH SEAL - THE SEVEN TRUMPETS", some of these were indeed correct.
In the 20th century, however, under the leadership of Herbert W Armstrong (HWA) and others, many Futurist interpretations of prophecies in the book of Revelation made their way into the Churches of God.
It is true that the prophecies involving the Church eras of Revelation 2 and 3 were recognised by HWA as history. Other prophecies from Revelation, however, such as "the two witnesses", "the 200 million man army", "Armageddon", "the seven trumpets", "the seven last plagues", "Babylon is fallen", the final "Beast" power of Revelation 13 and 17, and many other related Biblical prophecies such as the Olivet Prophecy’s "great tribulation" and the "ten toes" of the Daniel 2 statue, were all assigned by him a place in the future. Unfortunately, we still carry this baggage with us today.
To understand the Historicist framework of prophecy, it is essential to have a good knowledge of Bible chronology. God is the Master Mathematician and He does things "properly and in order" (I Cor 14:40). He is the ruler of the pages of history and has foretold this history in very figurative language in the pages of Scripture, using many numbers and timelines.
Regrettably however, the Churches of God rarely factor sound Bible chronology into their explanations.
As complicated as Revelation at first appears, it is in essence simply a description of the 2000 years of history between Christ's first coming and His second coming. Its focus is primarily on three things:
1) the people who have entered into the New Covenant with God, i.e. His Church, described mainly in chapters 2, 3, 7, 12, 14 and 19-22.
2) the people who still hold to the Old Covenant with God, i.e. the Jews, and their Holy City, Jerusalem, described mainly in chapters 4-6 and 8-11.
3) the Gentile powers that opposed both these groups and occupied Jerusalem for almost the entirety of the 2000 year period, as described mainly in chapters 13 and 15-18.
Hopefully the pages on this website regarding the book of Revelation will be enlightening.