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Lesson OneWhat Kind of Book Is Revelation?3 Activities1 Assessment
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Lesson TwoWhy Was Revelation Written?3 Activities1 Assessment
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Lesson ThreeRevelation Is Too Hard to Understand!3 Activities1 Assessment
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Lesson FourIsn’t Revelation a Depressing Book About Doom and Gloom?3 Activities1 Assessment
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Lesson FiveHow Should We Apply Revelation Today?3 Activities1 Assessment
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Course Wrap-UpCourse Completion1 Activity1 Assessment
Participants 264
Discussion Questions
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Why is it so important to understand what type of book Revelation is? How has what you’ve learned in this lecture changed your understanding of the book of Revelation?
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It is important to understand what type of book Revelation is because it will help us to read it in the way that the author intended it to be received and to help us respond to what we read more accurately.
I have learned from this lecture that the book of Revelation is not hard to understand. That there are different approaches to reading and studying this book
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It is important to understand what type of book Revelation is because it helps the reader get a good understanding of God’s Word and enables him or her to interpret it in such a way that anyone can understand it. From listening to this lecture, my understanding of Revelation has grown. I really appreciated how the professor broke it down into the categories and in order of how it is written.
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Knowing what kind of book Revelation is will help us better understand and interpret the words in the book. We often want to place Bible writings in our world, our context today. When we do that we don’t always understand the true intentions of the writer. We must look at the books of the Bible from that time period. I like how the lecturer mentioned the symbolism that was used was something the people of that day could relate to.
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You need to understand what type of book Revelation is so you can properly interpret its meaning the way the first century readers would, as these were the people it was written to. Not knowing the interpretation of the first century readers would cause us to misinterpret the meaning today.
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It will help us to understand it better and not misinterpret it.
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Why is Revelation’s first-century historical context important to understanding the book? How has your understanding of Revelation changed after learning more about its historical context?
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It was written like to help the reader understand their situation of his readers who were living under the shadow of the Roman Empire, and to help them address the problems and the crises they were facing in the first century.
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It is helpful to understand that the 7 churches were under persecution and oppression of the Roman Empire. Their understanding of the symbols and metaphors would result in real messages unveiled from John’s visions. As I read and try to process this information, there may be some advantage in knowing another purpose for the visions, symbols and metaphors that may have been protective to those receiving the letters. Open predictions about destruction of the Roman Empire may have put them all in danger.
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We always need to take into account when and why a book was written. What was the author’s intent? My understanding has changed because I now realize that people of the day would have likely understood some of the symbols that we struggle with.
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It is important to understand the historical context because then we can view the book of Revelations from a balanced perspective. After learning its historical context, it helped me not to skew towards focusing on the apocalypse nature of the book but see it as having a fore-telling prophetic message and also it was written to encourage the first-century readers living under Roman’s rule.
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Actually, for any book in the Bible, the historical context is important to understanding that book. This is because God inspired human authors to write Scripture, addressed to contemporaries of their time. Hence these people must have written out of the situations they were facing, and they used language that was understood in those days. For this reason, it is helpful to know the historical, cultural and linguistic backgrounds to interpret a book correctly.
I have always known something of the historical context of Revelation, so this lecture has not changed my view substantially. However, I want to caution that Revelation is more of an apocalypse than a letter, although it is indeed a letter. This is because an interpreter who overemphasizes the latter aspect may insist on interpreting all details as addressing events in the author’s time and refuse to accept the possibility of a fulfilment in a time future to the author. Moreover, even Paul did not write ALL his letters primarily to address current problems in his recipient church. A letter can have other agenda, let us remember.
#Revelation
