Revelation 1:1-2 New International Version (NIV) “1 The revelation from Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, 2 who testifies to everything he saw—that is, the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ.”
What makes the Bible difficult to understand at times is that the stories are so phenomenal and outside the realm of our experiences, written by authors of a different time and place. Imagine poor John writing Revelation. Is there any book that is more confusing and hard to follow? its imagery is incredible in the author attempting to describe the future events revealed to him.
If Jesus returned today, John’s vision at the time of recording the events would be 2,000 years early. Of course, we don’t know when the Second Coming will occur, but it might be today, 100 or 1,000 or a million years from now. Put yourself in his shoes in trying to convey what he saw.
Just turn back your memory from only 35 years ago to an era before personal computers, fax machines, cell phones, the internet, AIDS, smart TVs, cruise missiles, ISIS, sexual identity, demise of the Soviet Union, landing a spacecraft on a meteor, and thousands of other examples. If only 35 years ago you had to write about what 2019 would be like, how would you have done? Now imagine the same exercise and attempting to describe the year 4019, even if you had a video showing you examples of things that you’d never seen or could visualize. Would a reader in 4019 understand what you wrote in 2019 about it?
Nonetheless, should we avoid reading and attempting to understand Revelation? Of course not! It’ll still give us valuable information about the world that has yet to come, and the arrival of Jesus Christ as the King. The third verse of Revelation 1 says it all: “Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near.”