What the Book of Revelation Really Says (Excerpt from the New Book)
Welcome to another Thursday UNFILTERED substack article, the only substack newsletter that wants you to know that last week the pastor preached about “getting used to change,” so that’s all there was in the offering plate.
Happy new year!
I hope 2025 is starting out well for you.
I’ve been busy releasing new episodes for the Insurgence podcast and the Christ is All podcast. If you’re not already subscribed, I invite you to. They appear on all podcast apps.
As promised last year, I’m posting another except from my soon-to-release book. (I sent the first excerpt in November. It’s called “Reaching the Skeptics,” and it can be found on the blog – frankviola DOT org.)
The Untold Story of the New Testament Church: Revised and Expanded is due to release early March 2025. Again, please do NOT pre-order the book. Wait until release week.
We have some great bonuses for everyone who orders it during release week. Plus Amazon sometimes loses pre-orders. This happened with some of my other books.
Throughout the book, all 27 books of the New Testament are given a summary along with full details in their chronological sequence. Those are part of the flowing narrative.
What follows is part of The Untold Story’s summary of the book of Revelation.
As in my last excerpt from the book, the footnotes have been removed. The excerpt only contains the note numbers. The footnotes provide authoritative sources and add further details.
The text is also formatted for my blog. It looks much better in the book.
You don’t want to miss next week’s article. It’s going to address a topic that many Christians are confused about.
Here’s the short excerpt.
Contextual Summary: On the isle of Patmos, John is given a dramatic vision of Jesus Christ and the future purpose of God.
The Lord Jesus tells John to write down the vision in a book and send it to the seven kingdom communities in Roman Asia (1:10-11).
We call this book “The Revelation of Jesus Christ,” and it encompasses the things that John has “seen, and the things which are, and the things which will happen hereafter.”[254]
The letter is to be read aloud by a disciple to an audience of other disciples.[255]
The entire book of Revelation, including the judgments of seals, trumpets, and plagues,[256] echoes material found throughout the Old Testament.[257] Revelation presents Jesus Christ as the One who turns the kingdoms of this world into His own kingdom.[258] The book is a magisterial unveiling of Christ’s absolute authority over creation and the forces that oppose God’s kingdom.
The Dragon, Serpent, and Beast (the anti-trinity) will be overcome in a blistering defeat, and Jesus—the risen, enthroned Lord—will return to earth in triumph. John calls the churches back to being faithful witnesses to God’s kingdom, even to the point of martyrdom. In this regard, Revelation was written to teach Christians how to be dissidents in a world deeply influenced by Babylon.[259]
Chapters 21 and 22 remarkably mirror Genesis chapters 1 and 2.[260] All of the themes found in the first two chapters of Genesis have now been fully developed and find their consummation in the last two chapters of Revelation. The Bible ends where it began. Eden is restored, and the fullness of God’s kingdom has arrived on earth.[261]
The timeless message of Revelation is that God’s eternal kingdom, while now hidden, opposes all forms of idolatry and human-made kingdoms based on power and exploitation. The book borrows heavily from the Hebrew Scriptures and offers hope that no matter how bad the world becomes, the living God remains on the throne, and He will set all things right in the end.[262]