Commentary on Revelation: From The Baker Illustrated Bible Commentary

By Max J. Lee

Comprehensive, accessible, and fully illustrated--this commentary on Revelation is a must-have resource.

You want a deeper understanding of the Scriptures, but the notes in your study Bible don't give you enough depth or insight. This commentary was created with you in mind.

Each volume of The Baker Illustrated Bible Commentary is a nontechnical, section-by-section commentary on one book or section of the Bible that provides reliable and readable interpretations of the Scriptures from leading evangelical scholars. This information-packed commentary will help you gain a deeper understanding of the Bible in your own personal study or in preparation for teaching. It tackles problematic questions, calls attention to the spiritual and personal aspects of the biblical message, and brings out important points of biblical theology, making it invaluable to anyone seeking to get the most out of their Bible study.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
• Release date: Oct 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781493424801

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© 2012 by Baker Publishing Group

Published by Baker Books

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P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

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Ebook short created 2019

Previously published in The Baker Illustrated Bible Commentary edited by Gary M. Burge and Andrew E. Hill in 2012

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ISBN 978-1-4934-2480-1

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Scripture quotations labeled ESV from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ESV Text Edition: 2007

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Scripture quotations labeled NRSV are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations labeled RSV are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Abbreviations

Introduction

Commentary

1. Heaven as the Throne Room and the Royal Court of God (1:1–3:22)

A. Prologue: An Apocalypse from God and a Letter from John (1:1–6)

B. The Epiphany of the Glorious Son (1:7–20)

C. The Seven Churches before the Divine Judge (2:1–3:22)

2. Heaven as the Eschatological Temple and the Theater for Cosmic Warfare (4:1–19:21)

A. The Heavenly Liturgy Begins (4:1–5:15)

B. The Seven Seals: Where Is God When His People Suffer? (6:1–8:1)

C. The Seven Trumpets: Why History Belongs to the Intercessors (8:2–11:19)

D. The Empire Unveiled as an Agent of Satan (12:1–15:4)

E. The Seven Bowls: Why God Delays Ultimate Justice until the End (15:5–16:21)

F. The End of the Empire (17:1–19:10)

G. The Return of the King (19:11–21)

3. Heaven as a New City and the Earth as a New Eden (20:1–22:21)

A. The Vindication of God and His People (20:1–15)

B. Eternity (21:1–22:5)

C. Benediction (22:6–21)

Time Lines

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Abbreviations

Revelation

Max J. Lee

Introduction

No other book has stirred the imagination and emotions of its readers as much as the Apocalypse of John. It has been the source of inspiration for classic works of literature like Milton’s Paradise Lost and Dante’s Divine Comedy, for timeless symphonies like Handel’s Messiah, for masterpieces of art like Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel fresco The Last Judgment, and for such adored hymns as Holy, Holy, Holy, Crown Him with Many Crowns, and Come, Thou Almighty King. Imagine, if you will, the rise of the curtain to an epic drama. The eternal God of the universe rips open the sky. An angel of the Lord flies down and sweeps you up to the highest part of the cosmos. This same angel gives you a personal tour of the heavens. You hear a litany of saints sing until the foundations of the earth shake. At their song’s zenith, God appears on a fiery chariot and unveils to you the intimate details of his divine plan for all humanity. If you can envision these scenes, then you can grasp something of the power and grandeur of Revelation.

Revelation is also one of the most controversial texts of the New Testament. Ever since the publication of Hal Lindsey and Carole Carlson’s Late Great Planet Earth (1970), Revelation has been wrongly read as a horoscope to the future. Lindsey popularized a (dispensationalist) way of reading Revelation in the twentieth century that continues to have a cultural influence on American evangelicalism today. Typically this method attempts to connect the narrative episodes in the biblical texts with the real-time events reported by the local news. Many, for instance, have tried to identify the beast (Rev. 13:1–10) with the world leaders of their day. Their guesses have ranged from the pope to Nazi Germany’s Adolf Hitler to every modern US president. The ten horns of the beast have been likened to the United Nations and the European League (17:7–14), the number 666 to a barcode tattooed on the forehead or hand and used like a credit card (13:17–18), and the natural catastrophes of the seven seals, trumpets, and bowls to global warming (6:12–14; 8:7–12; 16:3–12). All these connections are fallacious. None are based on a historically informed reading of the biblical text. Yet these ideas endure and never seem to be left behind.

Interpretative Approaches to Revelation

The method of reading the Bible in one hand and the daily newspaper in the other is the poorer representative of the futurist approach. Futurists believe that most of the visions in Revelation (especially Revelation 4–22) point to events in the future that directly precede the second coming of Christ. Some like Lindsey think that from its pages a road map to the future can be charted out. Other nondispensational futurists are critical of correlating biblical prophecy with the evening news but still believe that Revelation mainly describes events that will occur at Jesus’s impending return. But Christian interpreters throughout the centuries have exercised other approaches. The preterist approach (from the Latin word praeteritus, meaning past or gone by)