Dr. Manny Arango (0:00)

Hey, Bible nerds. This is Dr. Manny Arango, and I'm your host for the Bible department podcast powered by Arma. This podcast follows a Bible reading plan we created to help you read the entire Bible in a year. You can head to the show notes or thebibledepartment.com to download our reading plan and join the journey. To all my fellow pastors, I've got a question for you. Does your city know that your church exists? Listen, I get it. You're preaching, you're leading, you're discipling, you're doing ministry. We are in the same boat. And let's be honest, social media and marketing, not your strong suit. Not mine either. And that's probably the last thing on your mind. And that's why we chose to partner with Church Candy Marketing for our church. Plant the garden. We out here, y'all. They help churches get more actual guests walking through the doors on Sunday without your eye having to stress over ads or algorithms or trying to crack the social media code. Right now, Church Candy is helping nearly 400 churches reach their communities with simple invite ads. And it works. It's super effective. I can tell you from firsthand experience. So if you're tired of being your city's best kept secret, how about you do this? Go to churchcandy.com Manny and book a free consultation book a discovery call. Their team will break it all down and show you how to start seeing new faces at your church this Sunday. I'm in the trenches with you, trying to grow the church. And how about we just start a whole campaign? No more empty churches. So let's partner with Church Candy and get our churches full for the glory of Jesus. Let's go. I am pumped. Okay. I love the book of Revelation. Pretty sure we're on day 76, so if you're on a streak, guess what? I'm proud of you. Day 76. I don't even know how many days we got left. I'm terrible at math. Good at theology, though. Okay? That's what matters. Hey, if you haven't done the reading today, go do the reading. We're in Revelation, chapter 1, 2, and 3. 3. We've broken up the book of Revelation. Some days are going to be more reading than other days, but we broke it up to kind of, you know, go with the natural flow of the book. We try to do that as much as possible on this reading plan. Sorry if some days it feels a little wonky, but for the most part, we really try to, like, keep the days we kind of break up the days based on how it's actually broken up in the text. So Revelation chapter one, two, and three. Hey, if you've done the reading, let's dive in. We got a lot of content to cover today. You know what we do? We always go context clues first. So let me give context. I'm gonna give context for Revelation chapter 1, 2, and 3, but I'm also just gonna give context for the book of Revelation in general. So let's dive in. The first thing that we have to be aware of is that Revelation is apocalyptic literature. Now, the word apocalypse, this word, if there's a word that gets misunderstood more than almost like any other word, just in wider culture, it is the word apocalypse. It's funny. I was watching Umbrella Academy. I don't know if anybody's ever watched Umbrella Academy on Netflix. It's a pretty good show. And watching Umbrella Academy, and the word apocalypse gets dropped over and over and over and over and over again. And every single time the word apocalypse gets used, it's used as, like an end of the world event, an event that leads to the destruction of the earth. Me and my wife, we like post apocalyptic kind of genres of movies and dystopian movies that are a little like post apocalyptic. And in wider culture, just in secular culture, apocalyptic means some kind of event that leads to the end of the earth or the end of humanity. And the reality is that that's not what apocalypse means, like, at all. Okay? This is a Greek word that means unveiling. It means to have your eyes opened, which is why when the apocalypse gets translated into English, it's revelation. So that's what an apocalypse is. It's a revelation that I was blind, but now I can see that I lacked understanding, but now I have understanding. So an apocalypse is not the end of the world. An apocalypse is an event whereby the curtain gets drawn back and you can actually see reality. Actually, I'll give you a good example of an apocalypse. Second Kings, chapter 6, verse 8 to 17 is a great example of an apocalypse. All right? So what happens is Elisha is in a city called Dothan, and he keeps prophesying. And the king of Aram is really, really upset about this. Okay? And so it says this in verse 15, the second kings, chapter 6, when the servant of Elisha, okay, got up and went out early the next morning, an army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city that Elisha and his servant were in. Oh, no, my lord. So the servant's freaking out. What shall we do? The servant Asked, the prophet said this. Don't be afraid. Those who are with us are more than those who are with them. Obviously, the servant is confused about this, because all he can see with his natural eyes are the physical horses and chariots. Here's what Elisha prays in verse 17. And here it is our prayers. We go into an apocalyptic book. Here's Elijah's prayer. Open his eyes, Lord, that he may see. Then the Lord opened the servant's eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. So there are human chariots. There's a human army. But surrounding that human army is an army of the angelic host of heaven. Oh, man. And Elisha was the only one who could perceive it. He was the only one who could see it. But he prays for his servant to have an apocalypse, to have an unveiling, to actually see the full picture of what's going on. And this is what happens in the book of Revelation. Christians are being persecuted like never before throughout the Roman Empire. The emperor, his name is Domitian, he believed that because the Romans destroyed the temple in 70 AD that Yahweh had actually caused Mount Vesuvius to erupt, destroying parts of the Roman Empire. And he said that Christians were responsible. And so he starts this programmatic execution of Christians. They are under severe persecution because they don't worship the emperor. And John says, ah, but I got a revelation. I was transported to heaven and I received an unveiling. I got an apocalypse. I got a revelation, and guess what happened when I went to heaven? It feels like Domitian is in control. It feels like the Roman Empire is in control. But guess what I saw when the spirit of the Lord opened my eyes? I saw that Domitian was not on the throne of heaven. I saw that God was on the throne. I saw that the Lamb was on the throne, man. It may not feel like God is in control of this circumstance, but I promise you that God is on the throne. And so the entire movement, the entire thrust, the entire theme of the book of Revelation is to reveal to persecuted Christians that Jesus is indeed in charge and enthroned that Jesus is Lord, even though it feels like Caesar is in charge, that they need an apocalypse, they need their eyes to be opened to the truth, that there's more happening than that meets the eye, that it looks like the Roman Empire is going to win. It looks like every Caesar is going to be victorious over Jesus and over his church. But the reality is that the Enemy is not victorious. Satan is not victorious. The powers, the evil powers of this age are not victorious. Jesus is ultimately victorious. And we need an apocalypse to be able to see that. That is not readily apparent when we look at life. It can often seem like human rulers and things that are visible to the eye are in charge. But John offers an apocalypse so that we can see not the future destruction of the earth, but to see the present power of God right now. That's what revelation is actually all about. All right, now, next question we have to ask is what is apocalyptic literature? So we defined what the apocalypse is. The apocalypse is not some earth ending humanity ending event at the end of time. It's not what the apocalypse is. It's an unveiling. It's a revealing. Now, what is apocalyptic literature? Okay, apocalyptic literature is Jewish in and out. This is Jewish literature that relies on images and symbols to provide hope in the midst of persecution. It is apocalyptic literature is Jewish literature that heavily relies on images and symbols to provide hope in the midst of persecution. It's not prophecy about the end of the world. It is not to be taken literally. It's symbols and images to. To provide hope to people who would read it. So I want to just give this rule right here. You've probably heard this on the ARMA platform a ton. It cannot mean to us what it did not mean to them. Okay, so the book of Revelation doesn't. That rule doesn't change just because we're reading a book that gets misinterpreted a lot. All right, so that's our context clue. Let's kind of move into a bit of a nerdy nugget, because if. If I don't stop myself, I'll just keep talking about that over and over and over and over and over again. Bible nerds, I have an announcement. My brand new book, Crushing Chaos, releases may of 2025 in pre. Orders are officially open. When I began to learn Genesis in its proper context, I learned that the creation account is not primarily about God creating something out of nothing, but rather God bringing divine order to the chaos of the cosmos. That one nugget was a game changer for me because I've been preaching to all the kids in my youth group that peace was a solution for their anxiety. But really God's solution to chaos is never peace, but rather order. Peace isn't something that you stumble into. It's something that you intentionally step into and that starts with aligning your life with God's order. Order. I think that this book is a Game changer. It's nerdy, it's practical, it provides a very contextual understanding of the Book of Genesis. And if you grab a copy, you'll learn why there's a huge dragon on the COVID Head to the link in the show notes to pre order. Or head to crushing chaos.com to see the really dope trailer that we made for this book. I think it's time for you to crush the chaos in your life. And that starts with grabbing a copy of this book. Now back to the podcast. There are four main ways to read the Book of Revelation. Now I'm going to show my hand and tell you which way I agree with. Okay, Number one is a historical view. Number two is a preist view. Number three is a futurist view. And number four is an idealist view. So historical. When you look at a historical view or historical hermeneutic or a historical interpretation of the Book of Revelation, then you can. People who like that view see that the Book of Revelation is being unfolded in every historical time period of the church. So they'll look at like one of the seven churches that John writes a letter to and say, man, that was fulfilled in the Reformation. Okay? So they're looking back at history and saying, hey, like you could see like this 300 year period, God did this. And it was kind of laid out in the Book of Revelation. Preterist. Preterist view believes that most of the prophecies in the Book of Revelation happened in the first hundred years of the church, okay? So that by the time we get to 100, maybe 125 AD that most of this stuff is fulfilled already. That again, the readers would have immediately understood what this stuff means. They would not have been applying this to the future. They would have been applying this to their current circumstance. Number three is the futurist view, okay? This is kind of, you know, a dispensationalist view. This is like hashtag the Left behind people. This is, you know, John saw a locust, but what he really saw was a helicopter and it was Desert Storm, but he didn't have no words to describe a helicopter, so he just was talking about locusts. And that's just the words he had. If you can tell, I don't agree with that interpretation of the Book of Revelation. And then an idealist interpretation of the Book of Revelation would be more of like an allegorical or a spiritual application to the Book of Revelation. All right, so let me let the cat out of the bag. I lean heavily preterist. Okay? Heavily Heavily, heavily preterist. I think that if John is writing this letter to persecuted believers that he loves, that he cares about, that he's giving them hope and encouragement. And what actually helps us to understand the Book of Revelation is understanding how to interpret apocalyptic literature. So let's get into our nerdy nugget. I'm going to have to explain to you how the opening of the Olympic Games worked. Now, John is writing from Ephesus, and the first church in the seven churches that he writes to is Ephesus. Ephesus is the second most important city in the Roman Empire. And so Ephesus also was the home of the largest gymnasium in the Roman Empire. And so if I kind of outline how the Olympic Games worked, like the opening ceremony for the Olympic Games, like the same Olympic Games we compete in today, those Olympic Games have been happening for thousands of years. And I bet if I kind of outline to you how these Olympic Games kind of rolled out, you'd immediately see some similarities. Here we go. Here's how the Olympic Games during Domitian's rule kind of worked. The first thing that happened was called the presentation of the Emperor. The emperor would enter into the arena to the acclaim of the crowd. Okay, number two, a herald would kind of give announcements, but he would be announcing all the achievements of Caesar. Number three, Caesar would start making some pronouncements. He would say, hey, to this city or to this region, I've heard that you've done a good job with these things, but I think you could do better in these areas. And this is what I'm going to do if you don't do better in those areas. Okay, that was number three. Kind of like a State of the Union address, but also a challenge. Number four, most people don't know this, but there were 24 legal religions in the Roman Empire, which means there were 24 priests that all represented those religions. Okay. And so the next thing that would happen is there was an imperial song that would be sang, and it would be led by a chorus of 24 elders. Then number five, another herald would open the scrolls to officially open the Games. And then six, you would get chariot races. And from everything we know from history, there was always four horses in the chariot race. This initial chariot race was not a competitive activity. It was more of a ceremonial activity. And we always would have a black horse, a white horse, a red horse, and then a pale or spotted horse. And then seventh, the seventh thing that would happen to commence the Games would be the trumpet would sound and the Games would Begin now. If you're familiar at all with the Book of Revelation, guess what you'll realize is that all John does is he takes the opening program or the opening format for the ceremony of the Olympic Games and formats the first seven chapters of his book in an outline that is completely consistent with. With the opening of the Olympic Games. So the presentation of the emperor, that's the first half of chapter one of Revelation. The herald that gives announcements and achievements of the emperor of Caesar, that's the second half of the first chapter of Revelation, Caesar's pronouncements where he says, hey, to this city. You did a good job with your economy, but your roads need to be better. You don't kind of improve this, we're not going to give you any more funding. That, that is the seven letters to the seven churches. That is Revelation chapter two and three. Fourth, the chorus of 24 priests all wearing white robes. In order to go to the Olympic Games, you had to wear all white and you had to sing the imperial songs. This is Revelation chapter 4. Revelation chapter 5 is, matches the fifth part of the opening Games, Olympic Games, where a herald would open the scrolls to officially open the Games. Then six, you get chariot races. This is what we get in Revelation chapter 6 with a black horse, a white horse, a red horse, and a pale and spotted horse. And then finally in Revelation chapter seven, we get trumpets. And we're going to talk about the trumpets, the seals and the bowls when we get, you know, in a couple of days. But you can totally see how the original audience that got the book of Revelation is not thinking, oh, yeah, John's trying to tell us about the end of the world. No, John's trying to get them to be faithful in the midst of persecution. So why does John this. Now we're going to move into our hashtag, Thomas Truth. Why does John use the Olympics? Why use the Olympics as his dominant metaphor for what's happening? Well, it's because everyone in the ancient world believed that if you ran in the Olympics or competed in the Olympics, you weren't representing your own gifts or your own talents. You're representing the strength of the God that you are running on behalf of. So in today's Olympics, you run to represent your country, to represent your nation, but in the original Olympics, you are running to represent the God of your city, the God of your region. And so here's what John is saying. He's saying, hey, guys, you need to run this race called life in such a way that you represent Yahweh well, that you represent Jesus well. You need to be faithful in the midst of persecution. And you need to run your race. You need to run your race in the arena of life so that God will be displayed. So that God. So that the empire will get an apocalypse, so the empire will get a revelation of the person of Jesus. I want to leave our time today, our timeless truth. I just want to read Hebrews, chapter 12 and 1 Corinthians, chapter 9 to you. Hebrews chapter 12 says this. Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, I want you to think about the Olympic Games. Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance. I know there's persecution, but I need you to persevere. Run with perseverance. The race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus. When we look at the throne. Domitian's not on it. I need you to fix your eyes on the person of Jesus. I need you to have an apocalypse. Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and the perfecter of our faith. For the joy set before him. He endured the cross scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners. So that you will not grow weary and lose heart, I need you to run this race. Don't lose. Don't lose heart. Don't get weary. Don't give up. 1 Corinthians, chapter 9, verse 24 says this. Do you not know that in a race that all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the Games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore, I do not run like someone running aimlessly. I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave, so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize. Our timeless truth is that we are running a race and that we represent God and that we are putting God on display. We may not be persecuted, but the same message that John gives in the Book of Revelation by formatting this book based on the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, actually tells us that the same way the Christians in the first century were running a race for the entire empire to see, we are also running a race for everyone in our world to see whether they know Jesus or not they see us. And they should see him when they see us. So let's run our race. Well, all right. That was day 76. I'll see you right here tomorrow for day 77. Love you guys. Hey, if you're on a streak, don't break your streak. We're going to move Into Revelation chapter 4 and 5 tomorrow. I can't wait. I love you guys. Thanks so much for joining us on the Bible Department podcast. You can find us online and learn more about the show at thebibledepartment.com and on Instagram hebible department. If you enjoyed this episode and want to dive deeper into the Bible, you can get free access to our library of courses@thebibledepartment.com we'll see you back here tomorrow.