The written revelation of God ends with a book unlike any other book in Holy Scripture. Though the content is the same found throughout Scripture, the way it is communicated is vastly different. Instead of communicating in a didactic form like the other letters, this letter reads more like a cosmic drama. While there is nothing in Revelation that differs theologically from the rest of the New Testament, John is given elaborate picture language to communicate his message.

With over fifty years of Bible teaching, I’ve had the privilege of teaching through this book several times. Almost always, I hear the same response from God’s people who study it for the first time; they are afraid of this book. It is strange that a book ultimately designed to bring encouragement to God’s people, has produced fear and anxiety. But once they begin to understand its true message, they derive comfort rather than dread. It truly becomes a revelation of a Person rather than a book dealing with tank movements in the Middle East.

God gave to His beloved John the ultimate comfort by giving him a revelation of Jesus Christ unparalleled in the New Testament. To actual assemblies of believers in Asia Minor in the first century who were undergoing times of great affliction, this revelation was given as the ultimate means of providing strength and comfort. This underscores that an exalted revelation of the Person of Jesus Christ is God’s way of equipping His people for times of battle and intense warfare. That is why the last book of Holy Scripture is entitled the Revelation of Jesus Christ.

We will soon release a twenty-two-hour audio teaching about the book of Revelation. While I taught the series some years ago, we’ve renamed it “The Unveiling”. We feel that calling it “The Unveiling” is appropriate since that is exactly what this book is intended to do; to unveil the truth of Jesus Christ to God’s people, especially in times of suffering. Study Guides for students and teachers will allow people to dig deeper into the rich truth of Revelation.

As I listened again to the lectures in preparation for their release, I was struck again with the importance of knowing this book. This is especially true now when people are once again looking for the meaning of current events in the book of Revelation. I do not mean that the book of Revelation has no current application to our present time. It, along with the rest of Scripture, applies in every way. But many of God’s people have been influenced by a view of this book known as futurism, the view that most of this book still awaits future fulfillment. While it is true that there are things in this book that pertain to the future (such as the Second Coming of Jesus), this book had immediate relevance to the churches of Asia Minor to whom it is written. To grasp the significance of this book, we must approach it in the same way we do any other book of Scripture; we must start by first asking what the intended audience understood it to mean. Then we can focus on how it applies to us in our immediate world.

Answering the question, ‘What did this letter mean to those to whom it was first written?’ is key to understanding this book. Most people have been taught that when is the optimum word that one must ask when studying this book. They have learned to ask questions such as: “When will the Rapture of the Church occur?” or “When will the Great Tribulation begin?” But it’s not so much that this book lays out a road map for things happening on earth. Rather, it provides insight into why they are happening. The book of Revelation goes behind earthly occurrences and gives insight as to what is causing them.

Another key to understanding this book is to recognize how dependent Revelation is on the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) for its interpretation. It either quotes or frequently echoes the Old Testament throughout the book. Incidentally, that is why we don’t understand the Revelation. Since we don’t study the Hebrew Bible we are hampered in our understanding of the Revelation.

As we prepare to release “The Unveiling,” we are praying for a new hunger to study and understand it. We want to encourage you by reminding you that this letter called Revelation was just that—a letter that was written and read to Christian assemblies at their Lord’s Day gatherings. Sometimes we give people the impression that only scholars can understand it. But this letter was read to First Century believers, most of whom were illiterate. Yet, they were expected to understand it. It is called the Revelation specifically because it was written to reveal truth rather than hide it.