Book of Revelation (2002) Part 3

I was tempted to say I haven’t done it yet.
We’ve still got most of the sessions ahead,

but I intend to do them all, God willing.
Now! I want to use the afternoons to deal

with the controversial issues about the book
of Revelation. So it’s going be a bit heavier

in the afternoons; we’re dealing with the
different ways in which people have treated

this book and why there is such confusion
as to how we understand and apply it. So I

don’t apologize, but we’re going to have
to use our minds quite a bit this afternoon

and think hard.
You know the most common comment I get after

I preach is, “Well, you certainly gave us
something to think about,” and it’s said

in a kind of mild tone of reproach, which
implies that people don’t come to church

to think. But the greatest unexplored territory
in the world is between your ears, and we

are exhorted to love God with all our minds.
Now unfortunately of course, the after-lunch

session is normally the teacher’s graveyard.
There’s something happens to our physical

metabolism after we’ve had a good lunch,
which makes it jolly difficult.

I was told that if everybody who goes to sleep
during sermons on just one Sunday in the whole

of America, if you took them all and laid
them on the ground in a straight line, head

to toe like this, they would all be very much
more comfortable. That’s what I was told.

It’s one of those facts which we ought to
know. Well, there it is. A friend of mine

was preaching in a country church in England
and his entire congregation was two, a farmer

and his wife. And during the sermon they both
went fast asleep. My friend didn’t know

what to do, so he thought, “Well, they must
be tired, so I’ll just creep out and go

home,” which he did.
But he met the farmer the next Thursday at

market and he went up to him and apologized
and said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know

whether to wake you up. But I thought you
needed a bit of sleep so I left you there.”

The farmer was quite angry. He said, “We
woke up at one o’clock in the morning and

didn’t know where we were, in a dark church.”
Oh well. If you go to sleep and I see you

doing this I will be very loving and assume
you’re praying for me. Now then, let me

introduce this first subject. I want to introduce
you to the different schools of interpretation

that have been applied to this book. Which
means that you can buy a book on Revelation

and then buy another, and they completely
contradict each other because there’ve been

so many different ways of approaching this
book.

Let me begin by illustrating this from the
letters which we studied in the first session

this morning.
These seven letters need to be applied, that’s

why they’re in the Bible. They’re not
just a little bit of history for us, obviously.

Why would God include in Scripture a little
bit of history that had no relevance to ourselves,

and where we are? But it’s in the application
of these letters that we run into differences

of application. It is obvious that these letters
were written to churches in the first century

AD in a place called Asia. But we need to
apply them to churches in America today. How

do we do that? Well now I want to mention
two ways in which it has been done by preachers

and by Bible scholars and Bible students - one
of which I can go along with, and the other

of which I simply cannot.
Let me deal negatively with the first one

that I don’t agree with. That is the theory
that these seven churches were prophetic in

the sense that they were each looking forward
to a period in Church history, and that between

these seven churches you cover the entire
history of the Church, from the first coming

of Jesus to the second, and they flow on one
from another. Therefore, the theory is that

the first century AD was the Ephesus period
of Church history. That moved on into the

Smyrna period of the second and the third
century when the Church was under the greatest

persecution.
That’s followed by the Pergamum period of

Church history when the emperor Constantine
was converted and the Church became officially

recognized and established, followed by the
Thyatira period, which is supposed to represent

the Middle Ages of the Church’s history.
And the Sardis church represents the Protestant

Reformation in the sixteenth century. Moving
on to the Philadelphia church, the missionary

church with open doors before it, and the
great missionary outreach in the nineteenth

and twentieth centuries, and means that we
are now living in the Laodicea period of Church

history, when every church is only lukewarm.
Now that’s the theory. Hands up if you’ve

heard preachers say that—so it’s well
known among you. I’m sorry, but I do not

believe it - for a very simple reason; the
entire Church today is not like Laodicea.

Some churches are, particularly those in the
Western world. But if I took you to Borneo

you wouldn’t find that, far from it. There’s
not a trace of lukewarm-ness in some of the

churches in the Third World. In other words,
it’s an artificial application of these

seven letters to assume that each represents
a period in time. There are some striking

parallels, but there are also some extraordinary
differences, and it ignores the fact that

there are variations between churches, even
in one city.

I believe I could probably take you to a church
in this city, Kansas City, which is like one

of the other six or all of the other six.
Some, indeed, I could take you to are a mixture

of two of them. But to say that we are all
in the church of Laodicea is a pretty damning

indictment, especially of the Third World
Church. As I speak to you, there are forty-five

new Christians in the world every minute I’m
talking to you. You can work out from that

how many new Christians there are every hour,
and every day, and every week. There are two

new churches every single week. The Church
has never grown so quickly as it is growing

right now. Over half the Christians who have
ever lived are alive today. It is an astonishing

growth, and now there are two-thirds of the
population professing to be Christian, if

not actually possessing the Holy Spirit.
So the Church is not Laodicean in many parts

of the world, it just doesn’t fit. And the
one big problem with this view is that it

makes six of these letters out of date for
the Church today. There’s no point in studying

the other six letters if we’re all in the
condition of Laodicea. I think I’ve said

enough to show that I believe this is an artificial
application of Scripture to say that each

church is prophetic and is meant to represent
one later period in Church history. I believe

the right application of these seven letters
is that they all apply to different churches

in space today, not to periods in time of
Church history, but all of these letters are

relevant to the Church today.
Some churches are exactly like one of these.

The church in Smyrna is almost an identikit
copy of the church that Jesus wrote to. But

I could take you around other churches and
show you some are very like Sardis, others

are like Philadelphia, and as I’ve said
already, some seem to be a mixture of two

or three. What we need to do is to read these
letters as if we are looking in a mirror.

Indeed, James says that reading the Word of
God is like looking in a mirror. But the danger

is that you forget what you saw when you move
away from the mirror. But these letters hold

up a mirror to the Church today and say, “Which
kind of Church are you?” Bear in mind that

the motivation behind Jesus writing these
letters was to get them ready for big trouble

that was shortly to come upon them.
That is why I am teaching the book of Revelation

wherever I get the opportunity. I believe
there is great pressure coming on the worldwide

Church. “We shall be hated by all nations,”
says Jesus, and I can see it coming very quickly.

And I am urgently trying to prepare the Church
for persecution. In the Western world, we’re

not used to that and we’re not ready for
it. But reading these letters tells us how

a church can get ready, above all, by seeing
that it’s not compromised either in belief

or behavior in any way that will allow that
church to be undermined by those outside.

Only holy, consistent, disciplined churches
will survive when the trouble really hits.

Now that introduces my major topic for this
first session this afternoon; schools of interpretation

they’re called. Groups of Bible teachers
and scholars gather around these schools which

have their own particular approach to the
book of Revelation. That is mainly because

the book of Revelation has so many predictions
in it about the future. I told you last night

that there are fifty-six separate predictions
about the future in this book. Over two-thirds

of the verses have a prediction in them. Now
the big question then arises, when will these

predictions be fulfilled? When will these
events happen? And the answer to that question,

a very simple question, nevertheless, has
become very complicated.

There are four different answers being given
to the question, when are the events we are

going to study tonight, in those middle chapters
- when is the Big Trouble going to happen?

Some say it has already happened; they’re
past. Some say they’re present, we’re

in the middle of them. Some say they are future,
they are yet to happen; and some say they

belong to no particular time at all, but are
applied to all time and to all situations.

I’m going to give you the technical names
of these different schools of interpretation

because you’ll come across them.
Already some of you have shown me books about

Revelation that you’ve bought, and you wonder
if they’re alright and whether you should

study them. You need to ask, which school
of interpretation does this commentator or

preacher belong to? Then you’ll be able
to understand how he’s handling the book.

These then are the four schools of interpretation
as far as Revelation goes. They’ve got technical

names, don’t be put off by that, but the
labels are useful. They are called the preterist

school, the historicist school, the futurist
school, and the idealist school. Very simply,

they are giving a different answer, each of
them, to when the predictions of Revelation

were, are, or will be fulfilled.
The preterist is a very simple approach. It

simply says these predictions were made to
Christians in the first century. They were

told, “These things will soon take place,”
therefore they must have happened shortly

after the book was written. Therefore they
were fulfilled in the time of the Roman Empire,

and therefore all the predictions in the middle
of the book of Revelation are already past

and history. They refer to the persecution
of the Church in the days of the Roman Empire.

We are reading of something that is already
behind us - which would be quite comforting

if it were true.
But that is the preterist approach, and therefore

says, “Don’t try and read anything into
these predictions that applies to contemporary

society. We can draw inspiration from past
crises and past events, but don’t think

you’ll have to experience them in any way.”
That’s the preterist approach; that it all

happened in the first century AD or soon afterwards.
In other words, they were all fulfilled in

the past.
I’m going to just state what they all hold,

and then we’ll evaluate each view and try
and see how much truth there is in each and

how much there may not be. The second school,
the historicist believes that the central

section of Revelation, from chapter four through
to chapter nineteen, is in fact an entire

history of the Christian Church; that in the
guise of symbols and pictures it’s giving

us an entire Church history from the first
century to the last. And therefore we’re

right in the middle of it, and there’s a
little argument as to whether we’re living

in chapter fifteen or chapter sixteen or chapter
seventeen. Those who take this view are a

little unsure.
But they say, “We’re right in the middle

of it,” that some have been fulfilled and
some are still to be fulfilled because it’s

the whole of Church history. If that were
not complicated enough, there is another version

of that. I’ve given you what is called the
linear version, which means simply that the

Church history is only gone through once from
chapter fourteen through to chapter nineteen.

But the most popular new idea that I find
so widespread among pastors today is called

the cyclic view of that historicist position.
That in fact the middle section of Revelation

goes through the whole of Church history seven
times over. It is called the theory of recapitulation.

I’m going to mention the main author of
it because I find that every pastor has this

book. A man called William Hendrickson has
written a commentary on Revelation called

More Than Conquerors. And he says that it’s
not just one Church history, it’s seven,

and you keep going back to the beginning of
the Church and coming to the end of the Church,

and going back to the beginning and come to
the end, seven times over, and he argues his

case. I’m afraid I have to say I’m not
convinced. But this is the kind of variety

of approach that we’re getting now, and
it leaves a lot of confusion.

The futurist position reads Revelation 4 to
19, takes it seriously and, indeed, literally.

Since hardly any of it has already happened,
believes that that whole middle section is

concerned with the future, the future to us;
that it hasn’t happened yet, but that it

will before Jesus returns. That’s the futurist
position. I hope I’m explaining all this

clearly. But it’s important that you’re
aware of so many different approaches because

we must learn Revelation, we must use it to
prepare for what is coming. But if we’re

confused about it, we’re not going to be
really able to do that. So that’s the futurist

position. The first century AD, or shortly
afterwards, the predictions are already past.

The whole of all the centuries AD from the
first advent to the last, the present, the

future, the last century AD, whether we’re
living in it or not we don’t know for sure,

but it will be future to us and the end, end,
end times.

Then there is the idealist position that says,
“You’re all wrong. Those don’t apply

particularly to a past generation or to the
present, or to the future; they apply to anyone

at any time.” This approach takes them all
very symbolically and very allegorically,

a kind of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress,
which is allegory of course; it never actually

happened. It’s a story with truth in it.
And they take Revelation like this, to mean

that it’s a picture of the eternal struggle
between good and evil and between God and

Satan. But the whole narrative contains the
truth that in the end, God wins over Satan.

But it therefore can be applied to any age,
anywhere, any time.

The word “idealist” of course is a Greek
word. It comes from the old platonic idea

that there is an ideal world, and that world
is more real than this one, and that in that

ideal world there is this eternal struggle
going on between good and evil. So it’s

not tying it to any particular period of time.
These then are the four major schools which

you’ll come across.
Let me take just one picture from the book

of Revelation and show how these four schools
would interpret that one picture. I’m sure

you’ve all heard of the Scarlet Woman. Towards
the end of that little section there’s a

vision of a horrible woman, a prostitute actually,
clothed in the colour of blood, that’s why

she’s called the Scarlet Woman. And she’s
riding on a dragon, and we know the dragon

is the serpent. So how would these four schools
of interpretation say what the Scarlet Woman

means? Who is it? The preterist school would
say that the Scarlet Woman was Rome, the power

of Rome.
Sure enough, in the chapter that talks about

the Scarlet Woman it says that she actually
sits on seven hills. Now of course, if you

know Rome at all, if you’ve been to Rome
you know it is founded on seven hills. So

people say, “Well it obviously is a reference
to Rome. The whole of this book is about the

persecution of Christians long ago in Rome
and the Scarlet Woman is Rome, the Imperial

Rome, the Emperor persecuting the Christian
Church.”

The historicist says, “Oh, no, no, no, the
Scarlet Woman is the Pope.” There’s just

a bit of sexual confusion here, but “the
Scarlet Woman is the Pope”. That was the

teaching of the Protestant reformers, Martin
Luther. Reading the middle section as covering

Church history, they said when she appears
that’s the time when the pope fought the

truth in the Protestants. So Martin Luther
had little hesitation in calling the Pope

the Scarlet Woman. It was a simple step from
the Imperial Rome to the Catholic Rome and

that’s how it came about. The Pope in Martin
Luther’s day responded and called Martin

Luther the scarlet woman. That mutual accusation
has continued till this day.

Tragically, that accusation stands behind
the troubles we have in our country in Northern

Ireland. This wrong identification of the
Scarlet Woman is still stirring up trouble

- bombs, and outrages, and violence in our
own country - and it’s still there. There

are still Protestants in Northern Ireland
who openly say, “Catholics,” and particularly

the Pope, “are the Scarlet Woman.” Actually,
when you read about the Scarlet Woman, she’s

not a religious character at all.
The futurist approach would take the Scarlet

Woman to represent a city, Babylon, which
will be the final world trade centre, a centre

of power and money and pleasure. Where money
and pleasure go together, prostitution becomes

the obvious picture or symbol for that, exchanging
money for pleasure. One partner in the arrangement

wants the money and the other wants the pleasure.
And that is why Babylon is represented here

as a Scarlet Woman who is a prostitute.
You know, when the World Trade Center towers

fell on September the 11th and I spoke about
that just five days later, to our surprise

there were ten thousand people demanded a
copy of that tape. We were kept pretty busy

sending them all out. And they’ve had the
most—had you heard it, Mike? Yes, the most

remarkable effect of that tape, we’ve had
many, many conversions. And one seventy-five

year old man in Australia ordered six copies
for his six grown-up children and sent it

to them and every one of them was converted
and came to the Lord. He died two months later

a happy man. He was the director, the headman
of Herbert Armstrong’s Worldwide Church

of God, “The Plain Truth” man.
I hope you know what’s happened to that

movement. They’ve turned right around to
the gospel, back to the Bible in just two

or three years. They’ve completely disassociated
themselves from the false teaching of Herbert

Armstrong. This has never happened in Church
history. But he was the Australian head of

the Worldwide Church of God, and, bless him,
he died knowing that all his six children

were the Lord’s. But that was just one of
the results.

We had people telephoning in tears repenting
of their sins because among other things I

said, “that all those who died in the towers
deserved to die,” and that sent a shockwave

everywhere. But I said, “That’s what Jesus
said.” When the Tower of Siloam fell in

Jesus’ day and many were killed people said,
“Were they worse sinners than anybody else?”

He said, “Not at all, and unless you repent
you will all likewise perish.” You see,

I deserved to die in the World Trade towers,
I just didn’t happen to be there at the

time. I don’t deserve to live. If God had
dealt with me in strict justice, you would

not have a preacher this afternoon. I’ve
news for you; there’d be nobody else in

this room either. It is of his mercy that
we’re not consumed.

We need… when any disaster comes, we need
to say, “I deserved to die in that disaster,

and I thank God I didn’t.” His mercy is
the reason. Well I mustn’t get into that

tape. How did I get into it? Well, many people
rang me up. After September 11th my phone

never stopped ringing and people said, “Is
this a fulfillment of Revelation 19,” - eighteen

and nineteen - where Babylon is fallen, and
the fires are seen by ships at sea of the

city going up in smoke. Well I’ll be showing
you a photograph of September the 11th tonight

or maybe tomorrow, and it really did remind
me immediately of the fall of Babylon, it’s

almost a description of it.
But actually, my answer to those who phoned

me was, “It’s not a fulfillment, it’s
a foreshadowing” - and therefore we need

to take serious notice of it. We mustn’t
get confused between fulfillments and foreshadowings.

There are going to be terrible events in the
future, but the Bible teaches that all of

them are foreshadowed now. And many people
mistake the foreshadowing for the fulfillment.

So whenever I teach on Revelation people bring
me loads of cuttings from the newspapers and

the magazines, “Is this it?” No, it’s
because all these events cast their shadow

before them. John himself said in one of his
letters, “We know that the Antichrist is

coming, but there are already many antichrists
in the world.”

People ask me, “Is Gaddafi the Antichrist,”
or they used to ask that. Now it’s, “Is

Saddam Hussein the Antichrist?” Listen,
there are many antichrists, but they’re

all foreshadowing the big one and he’s not
here yet. There will be one big False Prophet

at the end, but there are already many false
prophets in the world, foreshadowings. But

the big thing will be the fulfillment. I believe
September the 11th was a foreshadowing of

the fall of Babylon, the ultimate centre of
world trade - but not a fulfillment - though

I heard preachers say it was a fulfillment
and therefore we were right at the end of

time.
Let’s then evaluate this. The preterist

said it’s all behind us, but when you look
into the predictions, hardly any of them were

fulfilled in the days of the Roman Empire.
It just didn’t happen. And you’ve got

therefore to twist the predictions to make
them fit. I want you to pray that the Holy

Spirit will give you the discernment to know
when preachers are twisting Scripture to fit

what they want to say. It is very common indeed.
Years ago I made a solemn promise to the Lord.

I said, “Lord, I don’t want to be a popular
preacher, I don’t want a reputation, I want

to speak the truth out of your Word, whatever
the cost or consequence. Even if it runs against

opinion and tradition and there’s opposition,
I want to be someone you can trust to teach

your truth.” That is not a claim to be infallible,
I’m not. No Bible teacher is.

I beg you now, and I should have said this
earlier, but I’ll say it now. Check out

everything I say with your Bible. If you cannot
find for yourself in Scripture what I’m

teaching, forget it. For God’s sake, forget
it. I want to drive you to your Bible. I don’t

want anybody going away from these seminars
saying, “David Pawson teaches this, did

you know?” Check me out in the Bible before
you say that, and if you find it there for

yourself you don’t need to say I said it.
You can say, “The Bible says it,” and

that will give you the authority of God’s
Word behind you.

I once said to a Roman Catholic, “You know,
the one thing I admire about your church is

that you have only one infallible teacher
at a time.” I said, “We Protestants have

hundreds and we trot around giving our interpretations
as if it’s the last word.” Please, if

you think that’s what I’m here to do you’ve
misunderstood me altogether. I want to drive

you to your Bible, to check it out, to come
to your own convictions, to think for yourself.

Well now, just running through these. The
preterist is right, that it was written for

the first century AD to churches in the first
century AD, and that therefore we must interpret

it against that background. All that’s good,
but it limits these letters to history. Why

would God include those letters in his Scripture
for all time, unless they were directly relevant

to our needs? All Scripture is given by inspiration
of God and for our instruction. And as I’ve

said, many of the predictions of the future
were not fulfilled in the Roman Empire, so

the preterist approach will not fit the whole
book.

The historicist, quite frankly, is the one
that leaves me utterly confused. I’ve read

the linear historicist. One book I’ve got
at home takes the Cambridge twelve volumes

of the history of the world and prints those
on one side of the page and prints the book

of Revelation on the other and tries to make
it fit, century after century. And as I read

I just shook my head sadly. The parallels
were forced again and again. You can easily

twist Scripture to make it fit your theory.
But that is not the way to handle Scripture;

it’s reading things into Scripture rather
than out, and I find that approach quite unconvincing.

And the recapitulation or cyclic view, that
it goes through Church history seven times

over - I feel that the motivation for that
theory was to get rid of the millennium. Which

it effectively does, but more of that when
we discuss the millennium.

The futurist approach I have great sympathy
with and indeed, I will largely take that

position as regards the middle section, because
most of it has not happened on the scale that

is predicted, on a world scale. There have
been foreshadowings of it, but not the fulfillment

yet. That’s my approach there. And many
things are happening today which foreshadow

those final crises, but we’re not in the
Big Trouble yet. Thank God we’re not actually,

but we’re not there yet. So the futurist,
yes, I go a long way with it.

But those who take the futurist position,
if they’re not careful, make it all so entirely

future that it becomes irrelevant to the present
and therefore simply an intellectual hobby

to work out what’s going to happen in the
future. The foreshadowings of the future mean

that all these predictions are very relevant
to today because the way we react to the foreshadowings

is the way we will react to the fulfillment.
The way you react to false prophets now will

tell you how you will react to the False Prophet.
The way you think about antichrists now will

decide how you think about the Antichrist
when he comes. So these chapters are still

very relevant to the present even though they
are not yet fulfilled, but we are to react

to the foreshadowings.
The idealist makes the message relevant than

for all centuries, but frankly it means that
you must not take any of it literally. You

must take it all pretty well symbolically
and it rather tends to destroy the hope of

an end to the struggle between good and evil.
It tends to talk as if it will just go on

and on and on. Essentially, it is a Greek
way. Do you remember when I told you about

de-Greecing the Church? I think I’ll tell
you a little more about it this afternoon

because I want you to know what I mean. The
Greek thinking had a terrible way of separating

physical and spiritual things, sacred and
secular things, time and eternity. The Bible

does not separate these things, but it means
a division of life in very practical areas.

Let me mention one or two of them. The Jewish
prayer book has a lovely prayer to pray when

you go to the toilet—oh, you call it “restroom,”
don’t you? Alright, we call it “the loo,”

or whatever. But here is a prayer in the Jewish
family book of prayer for you to pray when

you go to the toilet. To the average Western
Christian who is so Greek thinking, this is

ridiculous, if not even blasphemous. But listen,
the God of Israel is as interested in what

you do in the toilet as what you do in Church,
or you haven’t understood it. Because he

made your body, he made your physical body,
he’s concerned about it. He loves your body

as well as your spirit and soul. That’s
terribly important.

Now as I travel around, I stay in many Christian
homes and therefore I use many Christian toilets.

Shall I tell you what they’re like? There’s
a pile of devotional books by the side of

the throne and there are texts on the wall
in nice frames with flowers. And neither the

texts on the wall nor the books by my side
have anything to do with why I’m in there.

They are all designed to keep me on a spiritual
high. You’re laughing at this, but I’m

very serious. The prayer the Jews use is,
“Lord, I thank you that my body’s working

properly, and I thank you that I feel better,
I feel relieved,” and you come out praising

the Lord. Isn’t that lovely? Do you know
when I speak to Jewish congregations and mention

that, they don’t even smile? Their reaction
is, “But of course, but of course.”

I was in a home for Sunday lunch. Father sat
here; mother sat there, two kids over the

other side. Lovely lunch, roast lamb and mint
sauce. When I smell that I’m a Pavlovian

dog, I start to drool. I sat down and the
father turned to me and said, “Would you

give thanks for us?” So I bowed my head
and I said, “Lord, I’m ready for this

and it’s ready for me, so thank you.”
And I opened my eyes and the parents looked

horrified. ‘We thought we had a man of God
come to lunch.’ The kids loved me. But to

me, with a hot meal all ready, it’s sacrilege
to pray a long prayer because God gave us

all things freely to enjoy. (25:06)
Are you beginning to get a flavour of this?

Our attitude to daily work has been profoundly
affected by Greek thinking that said work

is a necessary evil and the least you can
do the better; the more leisure you have,

the better. They used to buy slaves and get
the slave to do the work so that they could

enjoy their leisure. The attitude to work
in Greece was totally different to your Bible.

There’s no teaching about leisure in your
Bible. There is teaching about coming and

parting and resting a while, but there isn’t
any teaching about the vast leisure industry

today.
Work was intended by God and it really doesn’t

matter to God what work you do, provided it’s
not immoral or illegal. It’s your sacred

calling; it’s your holy vocation. God would
rather have a good taxi driver than a bad

missionary. We need to get back to what Martin
Luther once said. He said, “All work ranks

the same to God.” Now it is this separation
of the physical and the spiritual. It’s

profoundly affected Christians’ attitude
to sex, which God made long before sin got

into the world.
I was once asked to speak at an open-air meeting

in Canada in a place where they’d never
had permission to have a Christian meeting

before, in front of the Niagara Falls. Boy,
what a backcloth to speak against; and it

was broadcast to the whole of Canada and parts
of America. Three of us had to speak and they

put me on first. I got up and I said, “I’d
love to talk you about the man who made the

Niagara Falls, because I met him when I was
seventeen.” They looked at me sideways.

I said, “His name happens to be Jesus, and
without him nothing was made that has been

made, so he made that behind me.”
“But,” I said, “I don’t want to talk

about the falls, I want to talk about honeymoons.”
I said, “God enjoys sex.” Wow, there were

hundreds of church people there and they looked
as if they didn’t recall how they got into

this world, but there they were. I said, “I
don’t mean that he has a body and has physical

sex. I mean that he thought it up. And when
a couple made promises to stay faithful to

each other for the rest of their life, and
go away on their honeymoon and cement that

dedication with the exquisite pleasure that
God intended them to have, God is saying,

‘I did that, that’s my handiwork.’”
Well, the second speaker was a Catholic priest.

He got up and he said, “I don’t happen
to be married and I don’t think I ever will

be, but,” he said, “I want to talk to
you about honeymoons.” The third speaker

was a well-known Pentecostal pastor, the head
of 100 Huntley Street, the Christian television

centre in Toronto. He got up and he said,
“When I asked the Lord this morning what

I should talk about he said, ‘Tell them
about your honeymoon.’”

So, all three of us had been led to a message
on honeymoons. I only found out later that

Niagara is the honeymoon capital of Canada
almost, that all the hotels have bridal suites

for honeymoon couples. There must have been
hundreds of honeymoon couples listening to

us that day, a thousand even, it was a huge
crowd. I was so glad we all spoke about that,

because sex is not spelled s-i-n, it was only
spoiled when man rebelled against God. But

the Greeks could never think like that, ‘Sex
is physical, it can’t be spiritual’ — how

crazy.
Now that is what lies behind this idealist

approach and lies behind the spiritualizing
of Scripture. So often we take Scripture in

a spiritual, allegorical way. I’ll give
you an example. I’m really getting warmed

up on this, but I’ll have to stop shortly
and get back to Revelation. The book The Song

of Solomon, I never preached on it for years.
I didn’t dare, because apparently from the

commentaries I read it was all in a secret
code and nothing meant what it said. When

I read all the commentaries they all had a
different decoding system for the details

of that. And I remember one commentary left
me in a guilt complex.

The verse in chapter one that said, a girl
is saying, “My lover is nestling between

my breasts,” and the commentator said, “The
two breasts represent the Old and the New

Testament.” I said, “Help, Lord, help!
I’m a carnal man! When I read that verse

I don’t think of the Old and the New Testaments.”
Then you know, I was liberated when I realized

God means what he says, and breast means breast
and pomegranates mean pomegranates, and I

took the book at its face value. It’s a
wonderful story of human love that reflects

as an analogy—not an allegory, an analogy—of
divine love for me and I could say to my Lord,

“My beloved’s mine and I’m his.” You
see?

Now this allegorizing of Scripture, this reading
into it different meanings and then applying

it to spiritual issues, that started in Alexandria,
a Greek university city. I won’t name the

Church fathers who started it, but they seemed
to see all kinds of deep spiritual meanings

and they found it difficult to take the Bible
literally. My principle of approaching Scripture

is: take it in the plainest, simplest sense
unless it is clearly indicated otherwise.

Take it as it stands. Let God speak to you
in plain language. Use your common sense;

don’t look for highly profound spiritual
meanings, and I feel the idealist does that.

Now what do we learn from this evaluation?
The first thing we learn is that no one of

these four schools has got the key that unlocks
the whole thing. It is trying to force the

whole book into a straight jacket, to say
that one key will unlock the whole book. Secondly,

why can’t we use more than one approach
of interpretation? The texts have different

meanings and different applications, and this
requires greater flexibility. Thirdly, the

emphasis may switch from one of these interpretations
to another as we go through the book. And

therefore, lastly, parts of all can be helpful.
Let me now illustrate what I’m trying to

say by putting something else up on the screen.
Why not be more flexible and use all four

approaches as appropriate, where they are
appropriate? Here are the four schools. Here

are the different parts of revelation, the
three major parts. Chapters one to three,

chapters four to nineteen, and chapters twenty
to twenty-two, which are clearly different

sections, different phases of this revelation
to us.

Taking the preterist, remember that says it’s
all been fulfilled already long ago, it was

written to the first century churches in the
Roman Empire and that’s when it all happened.

Well chapters one to three, that’s a good
approach because that’s when the letters

were written. That’s when the churches existed.
But to try and force chapters four to nineteen

into that and say that’s all past doesn’t
work. And chapters twenty to twenty-two, nobody

ever tries to apply that to there because
it is so clearly future, the new heaven and

the new earth.
So that helps us with the first bit, but not

the second and the third. The historicist,
I have to say - and I hope you’ve realized

why - I don’t find it helpful there, there,
and certainly not there. It doesn’t apply

there because that’s after history has ended.
The futurist, I don’t find it helpful to

say that these churches represent future phases
of Church history, so I don’t use it there.

But it clearly is relevant to the middle section
and when we go back to that in our studies,

I will be taking the futurist view of the
events described. From the broken seals to

the blown trumpets and the poured-out bowls
that clearly applies, and obviously that clearly

applies there.
The idealist, the idea that this can be applied

at any time has some truth in it. When we
went through the letters to the seven churches

I was using this approach partly. I was saying
it applies to the first century, but also

those letters are relevant and appropriate
to any century. In chapters four to nineteen,

though I believe most of the events, if not
all of them, are future, the foreshadowing

of those events does mean that the predictions
are still relevant to our living today and

have been for two thousand years.
Of course it doesn’t apply to the new heaven

and the new earth, that is pure future and
it’s not here yet. The only reason we’re

told about it is to get excited about it and
look forward to it happening. So that’s

the approach I use. I’ve got commentaries
on Revelation from all these four schools,

but none of them has the whole truth and none
of them unlocks the whole book to me in a

common sense, sensible way.
Well now, that’s a pretty technical approach

and I apologize if it’s caused you to have
to think very hard. But I think my advice

now would be to forget them. You go back to
the book of Revelation with your common sense

and with the Holy Spirit and read it through,
perhaps as if you’ve read it for the first

time with the awe and the wonder of this unveiling,
this apocalypse, this revelation of what we

can look forward to, the bad things and beyond
them, the good things.

You know, Jesus took the long-term view and
that’s why he was able to go through the

crucifixion. His long-term view is summed
up in Hebrews 12, where it says that “for

the joy set before him” - not immediate
joy - “for the joy set before him he endured

the cross, despising the shame.” It was
a terrible experience to go through. He went

through hell for three hours; from midday
on the cross till three o’clock he went

through hell. Up to then his concern was entirely
for other people; the first three hours on

the cross he was praying for those who’d
crucified him, he was making arrangements

for his mother, he was concerned for the dying
thief alongside. For three hours, when the

suffering would not be as great as later,
he was concerned about other people.

But for the last three hours on the cross
his concern was his own experience. The first

thing he said was, “I’m thirsty.” Hell
is a very thirsty place. His second concern

was, “I’m alone. My God, my God, why have
you left me? Eloi Eloi lama sabachthani,”

even God had left him. In hell, God will have
left you. You can see he went through hell.

Hell is a very dark place, there’s no natural
light there because God is light. It was in

those three hours that he was in total darkness,
crying to God. But he went through hell on

your behalf so that you need never experience
it. That’s why at the last moment when God

said, “That’s enough.”
Do you know, crucifixion never killed anybody

in six hours. It takes two days minimum and
seven days about maximum. In the Philippines

to this day they celebrate Easter by nailing
church members to crosses and then pulling

the nails out later in the day and they become
“honoured” members of the church. Crucifixion

doesn’t kill in six hours, no, no. Jesus
said, “No man takes my life from me, I lay

it down of myself.” After six hours—three
hours in hellish experience God told him,

“That’s enough.” And he cried out in
relief, “It’s finished!” It’s over!

Then he prayed a prayer that he’d been taught
as a little boy at Mary’s knee. It’s I

think Psalm 30, verse six, somewhere in there.
Every Jewish boy is taught to pray when he

goes to sleep at night, “Into your hands
I commit my spirit.” As he died, that prayer

learned at his mother’s knee came back,
and as he fell asleep he said that prayer

and added one word, “Father, into your hands
I commit my spirit.” How was he able to

go through all that? He shrank from it; he
was under such strain and stress that blood

oozed from the pores of his forehead as they
can under extreme stress.

How did he go through all that? He went through
it all because of the joy set before him.

He could see beyond the present suffering
and he could see what God had in store for

him and it kept him going all the way through.
As we move later into studying the Big Trouble

– the big troubles, it’s a horrid list;
it’s bad, bad news. The only way that Christians

will get through it is the same way that Jesus
got through it, by looking beyond and looking

to see what God has prepared for us after
it’s all over. Hold in there.

I’m gonna stop there. We’ve had a pretty
tough thinking session and it will give you

a bit more break before the next session.
I could do with more than fifteen minutes

anyway. So alright, we’ll have a break.
And we meet again at what time? Come back

at three thirty and we’ll move on, good.