[Greg Albrecht in his book REVELATION REVOLUTION, has looked at Bible's Revelation with the purpose of gleaning what God is telling everyone who has inhabited the earth between His ascension and His Second Coming, rather than going to it as a Prediction Handbook (like say, Nostradamus’s book ‘The Prophecies’).]
God’s Throne Room (in Chapter 4 of Revelation) shifts our focus from the earthly religious imperfections in chapters 2 and 3 to heavenly perfection. It redirects our horizontal vision preoccupied with here and now to the vertical dimension of eternity and heaven above. The scroll with seven seals in God’s hand represents the will of God for his children -- the inheritance of the saints, the kingdom of heaven, given as a gift by God’s grace because of the death of the Lamb of God. Only one person is qualified to open the seals and reveal the purposes of God.
The scroll is opened only when all the seven seals are broken, but as Jesus begins to break the seals (in chapter 6 of Revelation) something happens. Four Horsemen corresponding to the first 4 seals are symbolic of God’s avenging judgment (Zec 1:8;6:1-3).
When the fifth seal is opened, we see the brutal reality of death by martyrdom suffered by Christians. More people have died in the 20th century for being Christians than in the 19 centuries put together. When the sixth seal is opened, there is a gigantic cosmological upheaval (great earthquake, sun becoming dark, moon turning into blood and stars falling). If we interpret keeping the literary genre used to write Revelation, this upheaval could be describing a spiritual upheaval. Founding of the church on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1-21; Joel 2:38-32) was a new beginning – a sign of the beginning of the end for suffering and inhumanity.
The Bible says that Christians will be ‘caught up’ (raptured) in the air, at the second coming of Jesus Christ. It does not talk about Jesus coming twice again with a period of tribulation in between. The dispensational Rapture, appeals to the human desire to avoid pain and suffering. While the Bible tells us that God loves us and protects us, nowhere does it teach that Christians will not suffer with non-Christians or that we will saved from physical suffering in some super-natural way.
Suddenly (in chapter 7 of Revelation) everything is put on hold until a very important piece of business is taken care of. The servants of God must be ‘sealed’ by the blood of the Lamb and protected by grace. One hundred and forty four thousand, 12000 from each of the tribes of Israel, that are sealed could be a symbolic number representing the spiritual Israel, the universal church. The great multitude that no one could count could represent another view of God’s faithful who come out of great tribulation. Even in spite of the overwhelming situations that we endure and sometimes cause, that we wonder if we or anybody could be saved by God, the message is that God not only saves a specific group like the 144,000 but also saves a huge group like the great multitude.
For a short time after the opening of the seventh seal (in chapter 8 of Revelation) nothing happens while the prayers of the saints ascend to God. This could be a window into how prayer “works” in God’s time. The angel takes the collected prayers of the saints and hurls them to the earth symbolizing God’s answer and resulting in divine judgment upon all wickedness perpetrated on God’s people. Jesus Christ, the slain Lamb has opened the scroll and judgment has begun. Seven angels sound a series of seven trumpets. Hail and fire, sea turning blood, falling star poisoning a third of all fresh water, and darkening of sun, moon and stars that accompany the first 4 trumpets are all symbolic. Each trumpet signals a different disaster sent to drive an unrepentant humanity to its knees.
The fifth trumpet (in chapter 9 of Revelation) together with the first “woe” brings stinging locusts from a bottomless pit to torment the earth’s inhabitants. The sixth trumpet together with the second “woe” unleashes an army of two hundred million horsemen killing a third of the world’s population. Regardless of ‘when’ the woes, judgments and plagues come, Jesus tells us that in spite of the consequences there are those who refuse to accept Him as Lord.
In the interlude between the sixth and seventh trumpets (in chapter 10 of Revelation), John is given a vision of an angel descending from heaven and planting his right foot on the sea and left foot on the land, depicting God’s power over all things. He is accompanied by seven thunder-like messages but John is instructed not to publish them. This reminds us that some of God’s work are simply not revealed to us and we must be content with an incomplete understanding (including exact meanings for every symbol and metaphor).
Two witnesses (in chapter 11 of Revelation) who are given authority to prophesy for one thousand two hundred and sixty days has been the subject of much speculation. When they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up from the bottomless pit makes war on them and conquers them and kills them. After lying dead for three and a half days, the two witnesses are called up to heaven. The period of their ministry mirrors the duration of the ministry of Jesus on the earth, and their death and resurrection mirrors the death and resurrection of Jesus. They remind us that accepting suffering in the name of Christ will conquer evil.
When the seventh trumpet sounds, the kingdom of the world becomes the kingdom of God. Then God’s temple in heaven is opened. A literal interpretation of Revelation has insisted upon a series of event that culminate in the rebuilding of a literal temple in Jerusalem. The book of Revelation, on the other hand, emphasizes Jesus, the new covenant and the new Jerusalem above.
In the first eleven chapters, Revelation shows who is in control of the great themes of human history. The major events, trends and movements of history are never out of the supervision of Jesus Christ. The disasters that confuse us and disorient us and leave us asking ‘why?’, never come as a surprise to God. There are times when it seems that God is not acting but He is still on His throne, deeply involved in human events and lives.
