REVELATION IS HISTORY
The book of Revelation is widely considered to be the most difficult in the Bible. In the Churches of God the wildest speculations abound with regard to its interpretation. And yet these ideas keep on being proclaimed year after year.
It is true that the prophecies in Revelation are mostly given in figurative language; however, the explanations are generally straightforward and logical.
This last book in the Bible simply gives us an overview of the major historical events involving God's people from the commencement of the Church age at Christ's first coming, until the time of His second coming and millennial reign.
In the 16th century, Europe experienced the world-changing Protestant Reformation. This came about 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 Church 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 2:3) as the office of the Papacy, i.e. the head of the Catholic Church. The Protestants also 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. Furthermore, they identified the "woman sitting on a scarlet beast" in Revelation 17 as that same Roman church.
In response to its loss of power and prestige, and to dispel the assertions made against it, the Catholics instigated the Counter-Reformation.
This of necessity required 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 theory placed all the prophesied events into the first century or two after Christ. This theory is now known as "Preterism". Another 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 realised that this method provides a logical, historical overview of God's work with mankind. In addition, it reflects Christ’s own words in Revelation 1:1 which state that this book concerns "things which must shortly come to pass", i.e. begin to come to pass.
For example, the seven trumpets of Revelation 8 to 11 were understood as a sequence of 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 interpretations were indeed correct.
In the 19th and 20th centuries however, under the flawed guidance of Seventh Day Adventist leader Ellen G White, Church of God (Seventh Day) leader Andrew N Dugger, and Worldwide Church of God leader Herbert W Armstrong, many Futurist interpretations of prophecies in the book of Revelation made their way into the Churches of God.
It is true that Armstrong recognised the prophecies concerning the Church eras, found in Revelation 2 and 3, as history. However, most of Revelation’s key topics, including "the seven seals", "the seven trumpets" and "the seven last plagues", covering well-known prophecies such as "the four horsemen of the apocalypse", "the two witnesses", "the 200 million man army", "the mark of the Beast" and "Armageddon", were assigned by him a place in the future. He did the same thing with "Babylon is fallen" and the final "Beast" power of Revelation 13 and 17, as well as the "great tribulation" of the Olivet Prophecy and the "ten toes" of the Daniel 2 statue. Unfortunately, we still carry this baggage with us today.
For more information, please read this very enlightening history of the origin of Futurism.
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, albeit in very figurative language, in the pages of Scripture with frequent use of 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 an account of the 2000 years of history between Christ's first coming and His second coming. Its focus is primarily on:
1) the people who have entered into the New Covenant with God, i.e. His Church, described mainly in chapters 1-3, 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, led by Satan, that have 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 examining the book of Revelation will be enlightening.