Without a doubt, Revelation is one of the most puzzling chapters in all of the Bible. There is little chance that every question can be adequately answered in such an abbreviated commentary, but I will do my best to give a general understanding of this very puzzling chapter. Revelation 20:1-6 (The Binding of Satan; the…
Fortunately, Revelation 18 does not need much explanation. Most of what is said in chapter 18 repeats the things said in the previous 17 chapters. Revelation 18:1-8—The Call to Come Out of Babylon Verses 1-8, the declaration that Babylon the Great has fallen, echoes many passages in the Old Testament (Isaiah 13:1-14:23; 21:1-10; Jeremiah 25:12-38;…
Chapters 17-19:10 form somewhat of a parenthesis to the basic action of Revelation. Now that Babylon has been split apart in chapter 16, John takes a timeout to tell just exactly who this Babylon the Great really is: who is the great prostitute? Before we get into the details of chapter 17, we will present…
In my previous post, I discussed Jerry Coyne’s dismissive book review of a new book from BioLogos entitled, How I Changed My Mind About Evolution: Evangelicals Reflect on Faith and Science. What was fascinating about it was that Coyne admitted he hadn’t even read it. So in reality, his book review was a review of…
The other day I came across a short book review by Jerry Coyne, the well-known atheist and biology professor at the University of Chicago. It was entitled, “The Intellectual Vacuity of Theistic Evolution: A New Book from BioLogos.” Just this past May, Coyne published the book, Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible. I…
In Revelation 16, we have the seven bowls of God’s wrath—these are very similar to the seven seals and the seven trumpets. The only thing to point out here is that the seven seals affected ¼ of creation, the seven trumpets affected 1/3 of creation, the seven thunders (which were passed over) would have undoubtedly…
Before we get into Revelation 15-16, I want to emphasize something about the two beasts from Revelation 13 that I should have earlier. Over the past 100 years or so, particularly within Evangelical-Dispensationalist circles, there has been somewhat of an obsession of trying to figure out who the beast is. This obsession is based on…
Back in Revelation 6, with the breaking of the fifth seal, we were introduced to the martyred saints under the Altar of Souls. They were told to wait until the full number are killed. Then in Revelation 7, we saw the full number of saints who made it through the great tribulation—the 144,000/Great Multitude. They…
At the end of Revelation 12, after we are told that the dragon went off to make war against the rest of the woman’s offspring, the chapter ends with the dragon standing on the shore of the sea. No, it is not the Mediterranean Sea. It is none other than the Sea of Chaos—the mythical…
I best some of you were wondering when I would get around to tackling the second half of Revelation. Well, here it is. Revelation 12 marks the beginning of another major section of Revelation. When one compares it to chapters 4-11, one should notice a number of things. First, the basic unfolding of events falls into…