Mysteries of the Book of Revelation: Revealed by the Revealer

By Michael Considine

Unsealing the Hidden Truths of the Book of Revelation

I don't know why the mysteries of Revelation were revealed to me, but when I looked up the word in Strong's Concordance, I got an insight into my question. Item 3466, "mysteries," musterion [moos-tay-ree-on], in New Testament Greek denotes that which,

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trilogy Christian Publishing
• Release date: Jun 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685563677

Michael Considine

I was raised on the East Coast and, in 1981, moved to California and currently reside in the western region of the US. My journey began in 1985 when I experienced an earthquake in Mexico, which led me to read the Bible and accept the Lord. Since that time, I have studied the book of Revelation in depth. Consequently, I have been teaching home Bible studies, speaking at men's conferences, and writing this book. My goal is to share the Spirit-inspired interpretation of the book of Revelation to the many.

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Mysteries of the Book of Revelation

Revealed by the Revealer

by M. Considine

Mysteries of the Book of Revelation: Revealed by the Revealer

Trilogy Christian Publishers A Wholly Owned Subsidiary of Trinity Broadcasting Network

2442 Michelle Drive Tustin, CA 92780

Copyright © 2022 by M. Considine

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible. Public domain. Scripture quotations marked AMPCE are taken from the Amplified Bible, Copyright © 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. Scripture quotations marked AMP are taken from the Amplified® Bible (AMP), Copyright © 2015 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. www.Lockman.org. Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible® (NASB), Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. www.Lockman.org. Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken 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 marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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ISBN: 978-1-64773-271-4

E-ISBN: 978-1-64773-272-1

Introduction

My coming out or revelation to the Lord was no walk in the park. I would have to say it definitely was a shake, rattle, and roll and duck-or-tuck experience. I will state plainly now it happened during my honeymoon on September 17, 1985, at 7:19 a.m. in Mexico. I was caught in an 8.2 earthquake with an aftershock of about 7.3 a day or so later.

Talk about you know what scared out of oneself! I would be the poster child for that, except I was twenty-nine years old.

This earthshaking event started me on a path to open the book of Revelation about a month back home in Los Angeles, early Saturday morning after Friday-night partying, getting high with friends when my wife Gloria and I were reminiscing about our honeymoon experience, that earthquake.

I still remember Gloria’s roommate responding to our personal experience account of those events, Look what is happening in the world today: it’s in the book of Revelation. My reply to that was, California stops selling beer in a half hour. I said I was making the last run before they closed and asked what everyone wanted.

The next morning, Saturday, when I got up, Gloria was still sleeping; I felt compelled to go into the bookcase and grab her Bible, and I opened it for the first time and read the whole book of Revelation while she was still sleeping.

I got scared again after reading that Word; I told myself that the way I was living, I deserved to receive everything this book described. The Holy Spirit set that hook just like a fisherman sets the hook on a catch, and I got reeled in.

In my first year, I read through the New Testament every month and the Old Testament two or three times that year. I have been studying the original language ever since those early years of my walk.

So, about my second year after my revelation moment, I had another one of those moments when I asked my wife for the bank statements for the past year. I did this to see where we were spending our money in preparation for doing our taxes. I found out that I spent over $500.00 on Christian books about the Bible, written by other people. I then said to myself, No more. I am not going to spend this type of money on books. All I need is my Bible and my concordance, and the Bible is a commentary within itself.

This was all happening back in the first few years after our honeymoon ride in Mexico.

So, let us jump ahead right before 9/11 happened. When I started driving cross-country, my wife, Gloria, sent me off with the Bible on cassettes. That started my road-trip adventure of driving for the next twenty years. The last eleven years in a box truck were going on the Interstate-5 corridor from Los Angeles to Seattle and the Interstate-10 route from home, Los Angeles, to Florida.

My wife was a full-time city clerk in California, and I spent, on average, 250–270 days of those eleven years overnight on the road before we both retired at the end of the year in 2016. During those years, I estimated I listened to or read my favorite book of the Bible over 600 times while living on the road.

To me, it was a natural progression in my walk in Christ to write a commentary on the book of Revelation when I decided to retire. My plan on my commentary was to consolidate all the knowledge I have accumulated in thirty-six years of sitting under teachers of eschatology (end times).

The night before I was going to start this endeavor, I read chapter one. The following morning, I spent a tithe of time worshiping because I wanted the Holy Spirit to be involved in this endeavor. I had no idea what the Revealer of truth had in store for me.

During the first morning, what I thought I was going to write about was not even remotely close to what transpired in the months that followed. It became apparent: my plans never unfolded. But for what happened, I am forever grateful. Having become a believer, I have been completely changed as a new creature conformed in His image and likeness.

It came to the point that I couldn’t wait to go to bed at night so that I could wake up in the morning because the Holy Spirit was literally meeting me there, in my living room, which I turned into an office to worship, study, and research. In my writing, I guess I was the one tapping the keys, but these sure weren’t my thoughts that were put down in words.

My time each morning in worship increased to several hours—more than when I first started—and, in the mining of the Word, became a joyful time of my waking hours.

During that time, I was going to a local church where I retired, attending a men’s Bible study early every Tuesday morning. I will state right here: it was that men’s study that was the deepest study of God’s Word that I have got involved in and got me rolling to start my own commentary on Revelation because the study they were doing was on the book of Revelation.

A year later, they asked me to be a part of the men’s ministry committee and teach on Revelation at a men’s retreat. I then followed it up with having a weekly Bible study on Revelation at my home, which people from four different local churches attended.

In the year after I retired and started writing on the book of Revelation, I have made several updates to where I finally made my final manuscript to present to the publisher, which they accepted.

I still believe in my heart today, as when I first started this commentary, that it came from God directly.

On July 21, 2021, I dropped my wife at the airport, where she was going to visit her sisters and their families up in the Northwest for the next two months.

Being married for thirty-six years, I was looking forward to the time alone. She was looking forward to a vacation with her family, which had been pretty much an annual event.

But with the COVID-19 virus, it was close to two years that occurred the last time.

I started going to a local church in northern Arizona where we were RVing. We started doing the RV lifestyle at the beginning of the outbreak a year prior.

I got into a secret place with the Lord where my worship time increased to most of my waking hours each day.

During that time, Gloria was away with her family. I coupled that time with different levels of fasting. And what happened was that the Spirit brought me to a different height of my walk in Christ. The more I surrendered, the closer I was drawn to Him. Just as when Solomon got the musicians and singers to lift their voices along with worship in dedicating the first temple and God’s presence manifested in the form of a cloud where the priest couldn’t stand by reason of the glory of the Lord, filling the house of God.

During that season, I was in worship and fasting. There was a three-day period I couldn’t wait to wake up so that I could start worshiping Him for the beauty of His holiness. I was already past the gates of thanksgiving and had been through the courts of praise.

That third day, when I started my day in worship, my spirit already brought me into His presence. In fact, when I glanced at the clock after I took a sip of tea, an hour and a half had passed. There was no period of dryness or fleshliness at the beginning of my worship. Like at a time in the past, my mind would daydream or just wonder off when I usually started my worship.

I guess I could say I was allowed to touch heaven or get closer to touching heaven where it was as sweet as honey. But when I did come back down to earth, if I could describe it that way, it was no fun; it was bitter—it wasn’t even bittersweet. It was coming back to reality.

I actually started crying because I wanted to be back up there after I was in this bitter environment called the earth.

Since that encounter, the details or focus in reading/studying the Word, and I would have to say all aspects of my life, have changed. My vision of my purpose, calling, goals, walk has been so refined and narrowed in scope, and my understanding of earthly things and spiritual things so broadened that I can’t explain it. But there is an urgency driving me because the last hour where the bride is about to give birth is fast approaching.

Since the summer of 2021, I have finished the updates of my commentary, became a full-time volunteer at Teen Challenge in Tucson, Arizona, and signed a book deal with Trilogy Publishing.

So, I hope all reach the full potential of their calling and operate their walk to the fullness of the talents that our Lord has given to each of us because the fullness of the gentile is coming to a close.

Thank You!

Revelation. Chapter One

The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John (verse 1; hereinafter, unless otherwise indicated, quotations are from the book of Revelation; chapters of the book match chapters in Revelation).

We read here a divine order from God the Father to Jesus Christ, His Son, who sent an angel to deliver the revelation of the word to John. In this edict, John represents the fourth part of this divine order, which started in heaven and made its way down to the earth. John represents the church on the earth in this initial revelation of Jesus Christ. In the Bible, the earth is symbolized by the number four. This number, four, is represented in several different ways in God’s creation. One example is the four great elements of the universe: earth, fire, air, and water, as well as the directions of north, south, east, and west. It is also illustrated in the four seasons: spring, summer, fall, and winter. Another example would be four parts of a day: morning, noon, evening, and night.

This was not the first time an angel was sent as an intermediary between God and man. Gideon had an angel of the Lord instruct him (Judges 6). Daniel had many visits from angels. There are many other accounts throughout the Bible of individuals having messengers (angels) appear to them with revelations from God.

Who bare record of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw (verse 2).

John is stating that the book of Revelation is coming straight from Jesus Christ and has been given to Him by God. Jesus Christ had an angel deliver God’s word to John. John did not get the accumulation of these twenty-two chapters of Revelation from stories, sitting around a campfire, or from oral history passed down through generations. Not only was John revealed this book straight from the throne of the Creator Himself, but he was also an eyewitness to Jesus’s earthly ministry.

In fact, John, in the opening sentences of his Gospel, writes, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (John 1:1). Isaiah 9:6 states, For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. The same was at the beginning with God: All things were made by him and came into existence through Him; and without Him was not even one thing made that has come into being (John 1:3, AMPCE). John was a true witness from the beginning of Jesus’s earthly ministry and, in turn, a chosen one to receive this revelation from Jesus Christ.

Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand (verse 3).

This is the only book in the Bible that has a specific blessing to the reader and the hearer, but with the condition that they keep and practice what they have read or heard. This is true of the Bible itself. It is a wise servant who hears the Word, which a foolish servant also hears. What makes the difference between the two servants is that the wise servant is a doer of the Word and the foolish servant is just a hearer and not a doer of the Word (Matthew 7:24–27, Luke 6:47–49). So we need to keep those things that are written therein.

John to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace be unto you, and peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to come; and from the seven Spirits which are before his throne (verse 4).

In Isaiah 11:2, it states: "And the spirit of the

Lord

shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the

Lord

. Could this be describing what the characteristics of the seven spirits are? I also believe these seven spirits before the throne were represented as the candlesticks that Moses was told to make, among many other articles, in building the first tabernacle (Exodus 25:31–40, 37:17–24). Exodus 25:40 states, And look that thou make them after their pattern, which was shewed thee in the mount." Moses was told that the tabernacle and items in it were to be a pattern or shadow of what was up in God’s throne room in heaven. In the book of Hebrews, the writer confirms this:

Who serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things, as Moses was admonished of God when he was about to make the tabernacle: for, See, saith he, that thou make all things according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount.

Hebrews 8:5

Also, I want to expound on the phrase which is, which was, and which is to come. This is another way of mentioning the past, present, and future in reference to who God is. Not only this phrase is repeated several times in the verses ahead: there are many similar types of phrases, all describing attributes of God. For instance: Who was, who is, and who is to come, or I am the Alpha and Omega, The beginning, and the end, and The first and the last. I will go into more detail on these phrases in my comments to verse 8.

"And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from