Well, we finally made it to the end of this book! Seems like it has been forever in some regards and in others, it seems like we started yesterday. I hope you have gotten a blessing from studying this magnificent book that God gave us to prepare us for the days ahead.

Revelation 19 could be entitled, The Return of the King. If you are a fan of JRR Tolkien’s series on The Lord of the Rings, (published in 1955), you know that the final book and movie in the series is about and is called, The Return of the King.

This week in our lesson, the world is on fire! Last week was a humdinger of a lesson and a humdinger of a chapter! Rev. 18 is a continuation of Rev. 17. It’s all about Babylon. Interestingly, when Sadaam Hussein was in power, he envisioned himself as the next King Nebuchadnezzar because Nebuchadnezzar was the last great king of Babylon.

You have probably heard the old idiom that says, everything’s coming to a head. That means that events have gone on for so long that they are coming to the point where they must be addressed. That is where we are as we head into Rev. 17-18. Sin has had its day and now justice is getting ready to be rained down upon the earth!

Lest we forget, we’ve had 7 seals opened and 7 trumpets have sounded. Back in Rev. 9, the 6th trumpet sounded and all kinds of weird, scary, catastrophic events occurred. Then, in Rev. 11, the 7th trumpet sounded and instead of that opening up the 7 bowls of wrath, we got a sneak peek into the coming reign of Jesus Christ.

As we head into Rev. 14 this week, it will look like people are in heaven, then back on earth, then in heaven again. This can be very confusing. We must keep in mind once again that everything in this book is not in chronological order.

As we get further into the book of Revelation, we get deeper into the hole of weirdness with Chapter 13. But I think you will see, when all is said and done that everything fits together. This is not really a long chapter, but it is one of the most difficult to understand.

On the end-time timeline, once we get to Rev. 11, we’re getting into the last 3 ½ years that Jesus referred to as the Great Tribulation in Matt. 24:21.  That particular time of tribulation follows the abomination of desolation that He spoke of in Matt. 24:15.  The 2 witnesses have been caught back up to heaven.  Six trumpets have now sounded, the 2nd woe is past and now the 7th trumpet has sounded.  At the end of Rev. 11, we find a familiar scene of worship going on in heaven.  We’ve seen this scene outlined before.

Revelation 10 is a strange chapter.  I say that tongue in cheek as pretty much everything we’ve read so far is strange!  At the end of Rev. 9, the 6th trumpet has sounded and although people of the earth know that God’s wrath is raining down upon them, we learn that “they did not repent of their murders nor of their sorceries nor of their immorality nor of their thefts”.  These are stiff-necked people! 

Make sure you get up and eat your Wheaties every day this week while you do your homework, because you’re going to need the energy.  As I told you last week, in my opinion, Rev. 9 is the most frightening chapter in all of Scripture.  There is no book and no movie that could ever come close to describing what humanity is going to have to suffer in these last 3 trumpets.  

This week we pick back up from chapter 6. Remember, we had a bit of an interlude in chapter 5 where we got to take a sneak peak into the throne room of heaven. The 6th seal was broken at the end of chapter 5. The final seal will be broken this week. From chapters 8 to 18, it’s all downhill in regards to the pain and anguish that will be poured out upon the earth. But then, when we get to chapter 19, we can have a celebration because Jesus returns! Oh what a day that will be! We have a ways to go before we get there and a lot happens in the next 10 chapters.

We ended the last lesson with the 6th seal being broken, and the earthquakes, blackened sun, blood moon, asteroids falling, heaven rolled up as a scroll, and great men of the earth hiding in caves. Good grief! I’m ready for a mental/emotional break and that is exactly what we get here in Rev. 7. Before the 7th seal is broken, we take an interlude. The 7th seal will not be broken until we get to Rev. 8. This interlude gives us a chance to take our breath before we get further into the specifics of the tribulation period.

Ah, chapter 6…..the beginning of the juicy stuff! This is the beginning of what others think about when they think about the book of Revelation. But, the “juicy” stuff will be the most tormenting and horrendous time the earth has ever known and will ever know. All hell is literally about to be released on the earth. I’m so glad we will not be here to witness this.

In chapter 4, John entered the throne room of heaven and he did his best to explain exactly what he witnessed. He painted an incredible picture for us. Thus far, we have seen Christ walking amongst the candlesticks, then we took a trip across Asia Minor to 7 churches and learned what was going well and what was not going quite so good in each of these churches. And somewhere between chapters 3 and 4, all true believers get raptured up to heaven.

Ah, the throne room of God! That’s where we are headed this week! This begins the last section of the book. Let’s look at the outline again that was given to us in Rev. 1:19:

This week, we’re going to finish up the last 3 letters to the 7 churches in Asia Minor. The next letter in this series goes to the church at Sardis. Sardis is about 50 miles east of Smyrna. We need to keep in mind that all of these letters were meant for the individual churches they were addressed to, for all the 1st century churches, for the Church corporately, for our churches locally, and for us individually. I think that pretty much covers all the bases.

We learned last week that John received his marching orders from the angel and that he was to write a letter to each of the 7 churches of Asia Minor.  Read Rev. 2 and 3.  Why these 7 churches?  Why not send a letter to the churches in Colossae or Corinth or Thessalonica or even Jerusalem?  We are not concretely told why.  However, we can surmise some of the reasons once we put all of them together.  

The book of Revelation is a message to the Church, not simply to a church. The non-believer could never understand this book because they weren’t meant to understand it. This book was written in apocalyptic language for believers only. There’s a lot of imagery in this book. John saw things far into the future and he explained them from his own point of reference, not fully knowing and understanding all that he saw. As a result of this, John uses the term “like” repeatedly to explain that he might not fully know what it was that he was witnessing, but it was “like” _______. This book is not the Revelation of John, but the Revelation of Jesus Christ.

Welcome to the book of Revelation! This is the only book that promises aspecial blessing if you read it, hear the words, and keep those things written inthis book. We know that every book of the Bible offers us a blessing, but

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