Revelation 4 - Introduction

CHAPTER IV.

Chapter four begins a new section of Revelation. This section terminates with chapter eleven which reaches the climax at that point with the sounding of the seventh trumpet and the judgments upon the first great persecutor of the Christian church. Some interpreters carry the seventh trumpet on into the subsequent Chapter s and make it include the seven vials; but such a view is unwarranted and not based upon the text. Chapter s four and eleven inclusive, constitute a section with a definite objective.

It is necessary at this point to consider a scheme of interpretation imposed upon these Chapter s and including subsequent Chapter s to the nineteenth. Much is being written and spoken on the book of Revelation, most of it unwarranted by the plain facts in the book itself. The Premillennial teaching in conferences, schools, classes, and publications seeks to inculcate a peculiar view of Revelation. We have been told that the seven churches of Asia prefigure seven periods of history from Christ's day till the end of the age. That Laodicea, the apostate church, represents the age before Christ's advent, and that we are now in that period. Coming to this fourth chapter we are told that Chapter s four to eighteen inclusive, describe, what the Premillennialists call the Tribulation period, supposed to be seven years.

At the beginning of the fourth chapter, that is previous to the Tribulation, Christ will descend into the atmospheric heavens, then will occur the Rapture, all the righteous dead will be resurrected, and ascend into the air and remain with Christ in the air during those seven years. This period will be a time of tribulation on earth, for the unbelieving Jews and the wicked that remain; and that these Chapter s, four to eighteen inclusive, describe that period, with all the judgments that will be poured out upon the earth. The reasons assigned for this view are:.

1. That the word church is not found in these Chapter s and therefore the church cannot be on earth during this time.

2. It fits the scheme by standing between Laodicea in the third chapter, which they conceive as an apostate age, and the nineteenth chapter which they interpret as the Second Coming.

3. Thus we get a program of the ages, and if this is not the scheme intended, then we have no such program.

As to these arguments, we remark that while the word church is not found in these Chapter s, the church is found as we shall see when we come to study them. The word God is not found in Esther, but who would say that there was no God in the time of Esther or in the events of Esther's history, for God is through and through the book in all the providences recorded.

As to a chart of the ages down to the end of the world, we have no such chart in detail, and if Revelation be such, it is quite exceptional in the analogy of prophecy.

While we have some hints given as to the course of future ages, we have not so much of a chart nor the kind of a chart that the Premillennialist asserts. But moreover in these Chapter s we find Jerusalem, and the temple, and the altar, and the destruction of Jerusalem and the Jewish state as the first great persecutor of Christianity. That event was future to John and the people to whom he wrote, but is past to us.

Again we find in these Chapter s the overthrow of old pagan Rome, called the city that sat on seven hills, the second great persecutor of the Christian church. This is so plain that no man can miss it unless he closes his eyes or wears colored spectacles. John describes that Roman empire as far as his own time by five kings that had fallen, one that is, and one yet to come; clearly the Caesar dynasty up to John's time or to the fall of Jerusalem.

Now if the destruction of Jerusalem and the fall of Rome are in these Chapter s, they are not the description of some period yet to come, and the whole scheme that would put these Chapter s thousands of years after the days of Jerusalem and Rome is wholly fictitious.

We need to hold the above facts clearly in mind as we pursue the study of this book. To hold the salient features as indicated will save one from being warped in a general estimate of the book of Revelation.