Wednesday Feb 21 until the Wed before Palm Sunday. 6pm in the Parish House from 6pm-7pm
Bring a sandwich and your Bibles. Please let Catherine know that you want to participate in this Bible study and that you plan to attend.
For those who are interested, The Very Rev. Michael Battle, author of Heaven on Earth: God’s Call to Community in the Book of Revelation, will be at St George’s in Fredericksburg on the weekend of February 17th-18th for “Practicing Heaven Here and Now: The Book of Revelation and a vison for live in our time, not the end time!” Catherine will be part of the panel discussion on Sunday afternoon from 2:30 to 4PM. For more information and to sign up, go to http://www.stgerogesepiscopal.net/lenten-weekend-2018.
A Brief Introduction to Revelation
The Book of Revelation is an example of apocalyptic literature, a type of Jewish-Christian writing that flourished especially between 250 BC and 150 AD. The chief example in the Old Testament is Daniel 7-12. In addition to Daniel and Revelation, scholars have found 14 Jewish and 23 Christian documents of this type. This genre of literature communicates about the End Time through visions and symbolic language.
1 The writer
Jesus Christ is the divine author of this “revelation” (1:1). He describes coming events to his servant John. John, son of Zebedee, was the “beloved disciple” who also wrote the Fourth Gospel and 1, 2 and 3 John. Most scholars believe John recorded these visions while imprisoned on the island of Patmos in the mid-90s A.D. (See the map above).
John calls this book a *prophecy. The *Lord told him to write it. ‘Write what you have seen. Write what is happening now. And write what is going to happen after these things’ (1:19). The *Lord told John to write about the present and the future. The book shows the events that will lead to the end of history.
Revelation is addressed specifically to seven first-century churches in the Roman province of Asia (now western Turkey), but the message is for all churches everywhere. (See the map above).
2 Date
The most likely date for this book was during the rule of Domitian. He was the king of Rome during the years AD 81 to 96.
3 Purpose
The word “Revelation” translates the Greek word apokalypsis, which means “disclosure” or “unveiling.”
Revelation unveils the unseen spiritual war in which the church is engaged: the cosmic conflict between God and his Christ on the one hand, and Satan and his evil allies (both demonic and human) on the other.
In this conflict, Jesus the Lamb has already won the decisive victory through his sacrificial death, but his church continues to be assaulted by the dragon, in its death-throes, through persecution (the beast), deceptive heresy (the false prophet), and the allure of material affluence and cultural approval (the prostitute).
By revealing the spiritual realities behind the church’s trials and temptations, and by affirming the certainty of Christ’s triumph in the new heaven and earth, the visions of Revelation fortify believers to endure suffering. The reader of Revelation is encouraged to stay pure from the defiling enticements of the present world order.
The main purpose of the book is to show how Jesus will come again. He will win the fight against the devil. Jesus will save his people. He is with them now. And he will be with them beyond the end of time
4 Outline
Revelation contains four series of seven messages or visions. These include letters to churches (chs. 2–3), seals on a scroll (4:1–8:1), trumpets (8:2–11:19), and bowls of wrath (chs. 15–16). There is a general movement from “the things that are” to “the things that are to take place after this.” Yet the visions sometimes return to subjects from the previous sections. The order in which John received the visions does not necessarily indicate the order of the events they symbolize