Week 2 in Review

Well, we’re two weeks into our reading challenge, or if you prefer 1/6th of the way through it. I hope you’ve been as blessed by it as I have so far. If you’re struggling, pray and ask God to help you, connect with a brother or sister that’s also doing the plan, or post questions and comments on the blog here!

Speaking of struggling, we’ve done a fair bit of reading in Revelation this past week, I myself have struggled with reading Revelation and I think it’s a part of the Bible that many Christians struggle with.

And so, let’s go through a few things to try and help that!

First, there’s a big word that’s regularly thrown around when talking about Revelation, Eschatology. Eschatology = the study of, or belief about the end times.

Within the church, there are three main views of eschatology, they all have good points and faithful Christians that believe them, which view you believe helps to make a framework through which you read and understand Revelation. So let’s take a brief look at them as described on the Desiring God website. (side note, the thousand-year reign is generally not thought to be a literal thousand years but symbolic of a very long time)

Premillennialism = The return of Christ happens before the thousand-year reign of Christ, which is a reign of the risen Christ on the earth.

Amillennialism = The return of Christ happens after the thousand-year reign, a reign that occurs in heaven, in the intermediate state, and not upon the earth. Those who have died in faith and entered into the presence of Christ share his rule and reign during the current church age in which we now live.

Postmillennialism = The return of Christ happens after the thousand-year reign, which corresponds to the Christian age, and the reign of Christ from heaven leads the church to triumph by and through the gospel to such an extent that the Great Commission will be successfully fulfilled, and the Christian faith will pervade all the cultures of all the nations of men. All of Christ’s enemies will be subdued in this way, with the exception of death, which he will destroy by his coming to the earth after the thousand-year reign in heaven.

I have heard Christians say, and have myself believed that it would be easier to just not study Revelation because it can be confusing and can create conflict.

The issue with this thought is that it is a part of God’s word, if God didn’t want us to study and know Revelation he would not have sent an angel to his servant John to have it written and included in the Bible.

Also, there’s a promise there in the beginning of Revelation 1:3 says, “Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear the words of this prophecy and keep what is written in it, because the time is near.” I don’t know about you, but that makes me want to pay attention to this.

I’m not going to lie, as I am reading through Revelation I’m not understanding everything, in fact there’s a lot that I don’t, but I’m starting to see a great picture of the power and sovereignty of our God, and that’s well worth some confusion.