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The Revelation of Jesus Christ

When John was imprisoned for his faith on the island of Patmos around the year 90, he
received an extraordinary vision in which God, gave the church information about
things that were going to happen in the future. About that vision John himself wrote:
1Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants what must
soon come to pass, and He sent it by His angel and made it known to His servant
John.” (Revelation 1:1)
Often, we speak of the Revelation of John, but John himself speaks of the Revelation of
Jesus Christ. The writing is counted among the most difficult of the Bible.
The events that Revelation describes may be difficult to understand, yet there is very
little in this prophecy that is not also found elsewhere in the Bible. It is not that many
of those texts are usually known to be ‘easy’. In short, the book you are about to begin,
is the work of years to make that what is difficult, easy. But you, the reader, have been
warned. The book you now hold in your hands is thick and the subject matter is heavy.
So, know what you are getting into. But it is well worth the effort.
In Revelation we quickly think of the judgments that precede the return of Christ, but
John also sees God's throne in heaven and what he writes about that learns us a lot of
what the Torah says about the tabernacle. Almost casually, much becomes clear about
the relationship between God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Such topics as
the future of the church, the rapture, the restoration of Israel, the significance of the
Jewish sacrifices and feasts, the course of the Great Tribulation, the role of the Antichrist,
the Millennial Kingdom, the new Jerusalem and much more will come to pass.
It is no exaggeration to say that good knowledge of the Revelation, as we pursue it here,
enables a better understanding of all the major topics in the whole Bible.
Yet the Revelation seems only reluctantly to reveal its message. The church's road with
the book has been a bumpy one. To her, the message often seemed more of a mystery
than a revelation. For many a believer, the book has something of the sphinx from the
story of the Greek Oedipus: a monster that killed any passerby who could not solve its
riddle. This is unfortunate. The weight that God gives to this prophecy is particularly
high. Jesus ends the book with the words:

18For I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone
adds anything to these, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this
book. 19And if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God
will take away his part from the book of life, and from the holy city, from the things


that are written in this book. 20He Who testifies of these things says, yes, I am coming
soon. Amen. Behold Yes, come, Lord Jesus (Revelation 22:18-20).
Revelation may be one of the most difficult parts of the Bible, but those who don’t give
up will find out that it is well worth the effort. And what is better, than to begin this
study with the words in mind, with which John begins the prophecy?
is the one who reads, and those who hear the ” Blessed words of the prophecy and
keep the things which are written in it; for the time is near.”




Prolegomena
Those who write a book on a subject such as this, will have to account for their egetical
choices. In theology this is called prolegomena, which means as much as “the things to
be said in advance”.

My fascination with The Revelation began with the text from chapter one, that God
blesses people who read this prophecy. My first thought was: I want that blessing! The
second thought was: if God wants to bless people when they read this book, it cannot be
His ‘fault’ that almost no one seems to understand what the text says!
My egetical choices at the beginning of the study of this subject were influenced by
evangelical thought and the principial of the Reformation 'Sola Scriptura'. But I did not
know that at the time as a fresh-faced twenty-something year old reader. Like church
father Justinus Martyr (Martyr 100-165) I learned later, I believed that Scripture could be
read as an individual. This, according to Justinus, required little more than common
sense and good reading skills. I do agree with Justinus. After all, if we first had to be
schooled in a particular way of thinking or theology, before we could read the Bible,
then that would make God's Word a book for insiders. That kind of insider knowledge
characterized the Roman Church of the Middle Ages and idolatry throughout the
centuries. That is not how the Bible is meant to be. God gives His message for all people
and not just for an elite of highly-spirituad people.
I therefore hoped, to quote Justinus, that I had average common sense and that if I
started reading Revelation, its message would soon become clear.
That hope was soon put to the test. After reading the text, I understood less than nothing
about it. There was therefore nothing to do but to read it again, and again, and
again, and so on. I memorized pieces, pondered them, read them and reread them again
and again and again and did not give up. Some pieces I must surely have read more than
a hundred times. Thus, every day, accompanied by my notebook, I crawled for months
while reading, foot by foot, verse by verse, further and further through the vision.
In doing so, I must honestly admit that I have often sat for days with my hands to the
sky and glassy-eyed eyes looking at the text with a look of, “what is this supposed to
mean?”

I will not exaggerate here the number of times I experienced that God gave me the
explanation afterwards, so as not to give the impression that everything in this book is
inspired and therefore the end of all contradiction, but His answers to my prayers have
often encouraged me.

Another premise I had was that the text of the Bible is good as it is. There are no contradictions,
no errors in prophecy and no pieces of information missing. The reader's job
is to understand the prophecy, and the solution to that is in the text. The main challenge
is not to miss it.

A third premise that also comes close to this is that because God has given the Bible, it
means that the text, is reliable and sufficient. This means that the Bible contains enough
information. If there are supposed to be other sources outside the Bible that are needed
to understand, it would never be possible to say anything about any subject in the Bible
with certainty. This is because you would never know if there is another book or scripture
somewhere that is needed to ‘really’ understand the Bible.

A fourth starting point concerns how literally the text of Revelation should be read.
It is sometimes said that the Bible should be read and understood spiritually. What that
exactly means I have never quite understood. Personally, I assume that texts should be
read as literally as possible. In reading Revelation (as well as the rest of the Bible) I apply the
rule that what does not have to be a symbol, it is not.

For example, in chapter thirteen, it says that the beast has forty power for-two months
over all the earth. The text then says three things: there is a beast, that beast has power,
and he has it for forty-two months.
If all these things were to be interpreted spiritually or symbolically, you could go either
way with this text. Then you cannot know whether this beast is something, someone or
a system, whether its power is real or not, and whether its power will last forty-two
months or maybe forty-two days, weeks or years. We won't get much knowledge out of
that. If we assume that the text should be read as literally as possible, the meaning is much
more limited. Everyone agrees that no real beast (animal) exists or can exist that can have
power over all the people on earth. This means that this beast must be a symbol for
something or someone. There is no reason to view the power mentioned in this sample
text symbolically. Symbolic power is no power.

That the beast will have power for a period of forty-two months, therefore, can be
understood literally. A month is a commonly recognized period. There is no reason in
that text why we should assume that the month should be symbolic. As long as this
forty-two-month period does not conflict with any other period or text, it is good to
assume that this mentioned time is a period of (approximately) three and a half years.
In my study, I came to the following conclusion: usually the main characters are described
symbolically and what they do and how long it takes are described literally.
What has often fascinated me is how ‘compact’ the text is. Revelation seems like a
minimalist work of art. There is not a word too many in the text. Almost every sentence is bursting with information that demands explanation. It sounds a bit dramatic, and it
doesn't apply to the entire text, but often I have felt that if there were even one sentence
less in it, the prophecy would no longer be explainable.
Back in the 1980s I began my search, with no reference books, no knowledge of apocalyptic
literature and without knowledge of the (often wrongly exaggerated amount of) different
views of the Revelation, but confident that God has given a message that should be
understandable. Furthermore, I had a good concordance, a Bible encyclopedia, a dictionary,
the Online Bible and a word processor. With these simple principles and resources,
I kept making progress in understanding the text. My method was somewhat
like what Paul said in another context:

I took pride (…) not to build on the foundation of another, 21but to act according
to that which is written. (Romans 15:20-21)

Gradually I recognized structures, connections and meanings. My assumptions proved
to have been correct. The Bible has everything on board to make Revelation understandable.
After a year, I realized that I had found answers to most of the questions that had
arisen... At least, in my boundless naivety, that's what I thought at the time.

Gradually, to this day (late 2025), every time I read Revelation, new questions arise and,
fortunately, new answers as well. In this way, this document grew like an unrestrained
vine climbing a church tower. The book you are now reading did not care about my
intention to remain concise. This growth continued, so much so that I no longer dared
to read my own text to correct it because I was afraid of the pages that would grow as a
result. Sometimes I think that not only every verse, but even every sentence mentions
several things that are worth investigating.

The tricky thing about all this is that this book has become far too thick for modern
believers. I try to convince myself that the size will not be a problem for people who
understand the seriousness of the subject, but I am not very confident that there are
many such people.

One problem I ran into while writing, was that things that happened at different times
in the prophecy are often described differently. This leads to arguments for te exegesis
of the text later in the book. One could solve this by referring later in the text to things
that were discussed earlier. This, in turn, is inconvenient for people who do not read
the book from front to back and do not feel like looking up different issues for explanations.
So certain important issues are sometimes repeated a bit more often.
To alleviate somewhat the problem of the size of this book, I have written a brief summary
of the events that will take place during the Great Tribulation, in the booklet: The
Great Apocalypse, What Does the Bible Say about the end of the present age? (in Dutch
2025) This is written primarily for the generation that will be living in that horrific Great Tribulation and then will not have the time to examine the prophecies about
what will happen in their time.
A final point that we cannot avoid in a book like this is the assumption that there are
very many opinions about the Revelation. Although that number is not very much, I
will still pay attention to it. I will do so in an appendix. Knowledge of these matters is
especially fascinating for those with more theological interests.

Only many years later, I studied on a theological collage, to delve more deeply into the
theological ‘craft’. The way of discussing the text is by placing the paragraph and then work it through verse by verse. Sometimes it may be necessary to scroll back a bit to pick up the context.
Now is the time to examine the prophecy. Let this gift of God to the church in these last
days be given the place it should have had much earlier.



Reading tips

This book about Revelation covers numerous fascinating biblical topics. Although virtually everything is equally important, I do have a few recommendations.

The description of Christ in chapter one is extraordinary.

Chapters two and three deal with the seven phases of the church throughout the centuries.
Since most of these phases are now behind us, we can also test the content of this
prophecy. This has led to some 180 pages of church history mirrored in the text of seven
letters that together take up only two pages in the Bible.

A common thread running through Revelation is God's heavenly throne, of which the
tabernacle was the earthly counterpart. This is discussed in detail, especially in chapters
four, five, eight, and eleven.

The New Jerusalem in chapters twenty-one and twenty-two is also beautiful.

The part that will appeal most to the imagination, and which I would recommend
starting with, is the one about the sixth trumpet. The text about this trumpet covers
only one and a half pages in the prophecy, but it gives us so much information that it
takes about 140 pages to work it out.

The sixth trumpet is described from chapter nine, verse thirteen, to chapter eleven.
Here, the months and days mentioned in Revelation, Ezekiel, and Daniel are discussed.
With these time references, we get an overview of the structure of the Tribulation,
when the described events will take place, what the role of the biblical feasts is during
the Tribulation and even part of the time afterwards. We discover when the temple will
be rebuilt; in what season of the year the rapture of the church will take place; why
certain years are potentially more likely for the rapture to happen and even that the
Tribulation will not begin at the same time for Israel and the rest of the world.
It involves a lot of calculations, but for that reason it is also verifiable: highly recommended.

Finally, this entire document can be consulted as a reference work. However, that is not
its intended purpose. It is a continuous “story” from the resurrection to the second
coming and beyond. There are also frequent references to previously described matters.
If you do not want to or are unable to read it in its entirety, I would recommend
reading as much as possible of the various parts of the structure. For example, read the
calling of John as a whole or the seven letters, the throne in heaven, the seven seals and
the seven trumpets, the signs in heaven from chapter twelve to chapter fifteen verse
five. And so on. ×