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The Book of Revelation

01 Feb 2026 · this lesson on the church site

Taught by Dr. Keith Palmer, Grace Bible Church, Granbury, Texas — from the church’s Sunday School series on Revelation. These are lightly edited transcripts of the audio, posted for personal study; the teaching and its content belong to Dr. Palmer and Grace Bible Church. Listen to the originals and find his notes on the church website. Transcribed from the audio by AI. Edited only where the audio was unclear (all edits marked with *). Errors are possible — the recording is the authority.

Opening Remarks (00:00)

All right, would you turn with me in your Bible to the book of Revelation? Revelation. And again, I want to thank Carl. I had a chance to hear his first message, I think the second one. Not only does Carl do a great job filling in, but I guess he endured power failures and teaching with the lights off and all that. So again, I'm just so thankful for his endurance there. I've not heard his second message yet, so what I'm going to try to do here is compliment and supplement what he did. We'll review a little bit, but then I want to press into some areas beyond the wonderful messages he did for us in the book of Revelation.

So can I tell you a story? Way, way back, this is probably like junior high. Do you have a story about Revelation? What I mean is, do you remember when you discovered it in your Bible, and you're like, whoa, this is different? Do you have a story like that?

I was probably a junior high student. I was a church kid. I was not a Christian, but I was going to church. The church we went to did not really take a strong stand on eschatology, and so Revelation was one of those books we never got to. We never really went through it, other than, "Jesus is coming back and it'll all be okay." Well, that's true. But I remember as a young man, a junior high student, discovering this book and being intrigued by it. And again, I'm a pig and I'm not a Christian. I have no heart for Jesus. I'm a self-righteous altar boy at this time. Okay? But it was like, this is really interesting.

Then I remember in high school, as God started working on my heart, I heard expository teaching for the first time. Literally, it was the first message I ever recall hearing from a preacher where I could understand what the teacher was saying, and I could see that what he was saying was coming from the Bible. It was one of those revolutionary times. I remember going home and thinking, I want to figure out this book called Revelation.

Then, you know, my testimony. Years later, I actually became a Christian, and God radically changed the direction of my life, and I ended up going to seminary. And here I am now. This is one of those books that, aside from some casual devotional looks, I've never gone through, but I've always wanted to.

Approaching the Book with Caution (02:08)

One of the things I learned in seminary, and even just growing as a Christian, is that this is not a book you want to approach lightly. When godly men from millennia of church history disagree strongly, not just about a few verses here and there but about the overall presentation of the book, what it means, the timeline, and whatnot, I don't know about you, but that gives me great caution. I have commentators on my desk by guys who are way, way smarter than me, and I'm going, okay, well, if they're struggling, then we come to this study, I think, with a lot of humility in our hearts. I think we want to come with care.

I will beat the pulpit when I think it's clear what the text is saying, and there'll probably be some times I don't beat the pulpit because I'm going to say, here's what I think it means. I think this is the most faithful interpretation, but we may be wrong. So, with great excitement, I'm really, really, really excited about this, and also with some caution and a little bit of fear, maybe. Hopefully it's godly fear. I want to open the book of Revelation to you, and over the next months, look at this. We'll do a verse-by-verse study, certainly, but we also want to be mindful that I want to get through this in a reasonable amount of time so that you walk away having a sense of the book as a whole and not just the individual parts.

Again, I'm so thankful for Carl, who so ably introduced us to the book of Revelation. But how many have studied Revelation before in some capacity? Have you done it? Okay. I know Lee's done it several times before with the youth, and when we were talking in our planning session last fall, this is a book the youth wanted to do too. So, you guys, this is for you guys. This is for you, and we'll look at this together, and old people, you can be a part of it too. No worries.

Preparing to Study (04:10)

So if you haven't already done so, please turn with me in your Bible to the book of Revelation. What I want to do is give an overview. Again, I don't want to unnecessarily duplicate the excellent work Carl did, but I also want to press into some details. What I really want to do is try to give you a couple of tools today, because I think we need some important perspectives on the front end, so that as we get into it and read it, we have enough context and enough background to be able to read it intelligibly.

My challenge, and you know this when we go through a new book, is going to be to ask you each week to read the book of Revelation. If you want to read the whole thing every week, that's great, but at least read a chapter so you're going through it. I know you've got your Bible reading plan, and hopefully you're staying strong on that, but pull out the book of Revelation and begin to read through it. It's a big book, and we've got to get it into our heads. The best way to do that is to read it and reread it and saturate your mind so that you have a familiarity with it. What I want to do on Sundays is hopefully put some things together that you're already seeing in the book on your own because of your reading of it. Then you can check me too and say, "Pastor Keith, I was reading this and you said this," and we can do this together.

Background and Title (05:13)

Okay, so the Revelation of Jesus Christ. This is a study of the book of Revelation. First of all, I want to review some background, recommend some resources, and then we're going to survey the book from 30,000 feet today.

As you know, the title, if you look at Revelation 1:1, is a long title. Did you notice this? It's a long title. "The Revelation," and I know, just pull the car over right here, I know we're in Texas. I know we have this weird love to randomly pluralize things. Well, why do we say Kroger's and not Walmart? I don't know, but just notice it's the Revelation, not Revelations. Now, there are multiple prophecies, but the singularity here is important. This is not just about being a Southerner or not. It's the revelation of Jesus Christ. Why is it singular? It's singular because it's his unified message, and that's part of what we're supposed to see here: this message of Jesus starts with what's actually going on historically in the early church in the first century, when John is writing the vision he's received from Jesus through the angel, and it concludes with what?

Where does Revelation conclude? Have you read the book? Yes, the eternal state, the final judgment, the end. So it's important that we see this, even being picky about the language, as a unified whole. It starts in the first century and ends with the new heavens and the new earth. That's part of why there's the warning at the end of the book, where it says don't add or take away, because this is the final revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Verse 1 and the Source of the Revelation (08:18)

Okay, so: "The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his bond-servants the things which must soon take place; and he sent and communicated it by his angel to his bond-servant John." Right, that's a lot there, isn't it? And that's not even the end of the sentence; he's still going.

I appreciate that Carl talked about the word apocalyptic and the language behind the word revelation. Are we going to talk about zombies and all that? We'll get there. We'll talk about the zombie apocalypse at some point. But right now, that word revelation, as you know, is an unveiling, a revealing of sorts. That's what we're going to see, as Carl reminded us, of Jesus Christ himself. So just break this down: it is the revelation of Jesus Christ. This is his unveiling, this is his message, this is his final word, so to speak, to the church. And again, it starts in history in the first century and ends in the eternal state. So there's a finality to this, and there's a comprehensiveness to this.

I find this interesting. I don't know that I've ever really seen this before. It says "which God gave him." We're going to talk about the interplay between God the Father and God the Son. In fact, there are portions of this book where John is looking into the heavenly realm and he sees God the Father and God the Son interacting. We may even look back to places like Daniel and others, where the Ancient of Days and the Messiah and all those interactions come up. But the text says this revelation of Jesus Christ was given to Christ by God, and by context we take that as God the Father. And it says to show to his bond-servants, doulos, his slaves, his people, we might say, the things which must soon take place.

Interaction and the Book Speaking for Itself (10:25)

One of the things I'm going to stress over and over again, and I want your interaction, I want your feedback, I want your push back. You're not going to offend me by saying, "Hey, Pastor Keith, you said this, but this other guy, smart guy, smarter than you, in this book I'm reading says this. What do you think?" I want that interaction.

One of the things we're going to try to do, and I'm going to try very hard to do it, is let this book speak for itself. What that means is there may be some things where we go, "Man, I think it means this, but I'm not 100% sure," and I'm okay with that. I would rather have a humble tentativeness than be dogmatic and assertive where the evidence doesn't warrant it. If that makes you uncomfortable, let's talk. But one of the ways we're going to get through this is that we're going to let what we call the internal evidence of the book lead the way. That is, we're going to base our interpretation of this book as best we can on what the book itself claims.

You say, okay, great, how are we going to do that? Here is the first example. What does verse one actually say is the purpose of this book? This is the part where you talk. So just look there, Revelation 1:1, and tell me what you think. What is it? To show us the

Purpose of the Book (11:25)

Bond slaves, the doulos, the servants. Okay, to show us what? What's the word? Soon take place. There you go. There's more we're going to add to that, and Revelation is going to expand on it. But I want you to see right out of the gate, verse one, which Carl talked about: this is Jesus, who is given this revelation by his Father to give to his servants. It comes through an angel, who is sent to the apostle John, and John tells us what the book is about. So are there going to be some things we're not sure about? Yes, but we see here the purpose of the book. It's to tell the servants about the things which must soon take place.

Prophecy is foretelling, or forthtelling, right? It could be proclamation about known truths, or it could be information about the future. We see right here that at least some of this book is information intended to prepare us for what's coming. This is previews of coming attractions.

Back to the text: "The things which must soon take place, and he sent and communicated it by his angel." If you're familiar with the book, you'll see there are lots of instances of angels communicating the message. When we get to the letters to the seven churches in chapters 2 and 3, and then some of the heavenly visions afterward, you see that angels do a lot of the communicating. That's not surprising, because an angel is a messenger. That's what the word means. What is interesting is that Revelation involves a significant number of angels in bringing God's message. So he sent and communicated it by his angel to his bond servant John. It's like a chain: God the Father gives it to God the Son, who communicates it through his angel to John. Okay, do you get all that?

The Title (13:39)

We're still in verse one, but there's a lot of information here, as simple as it is, and that's going to help us navigate what this book is about. That's our title, and the title gives us all sorts of information. Who is the Revelation coming from? Who is it coming to? How did it get communicated? Who was the recipient, the one to write this vision down and preserve it for us?

It's interesting that sometimes prophecies are given and are to be hidden until an appointed time, whereas John is explicit here about his instructions. The point is to reveal this prophecy. That gives us a little bit in terms of the title right there.

The Author (13:39)

The author, as we see here, and as we also see in Revelation 1:4 and 1:9 and in Revelation 22:8, is clear from the internal evidence of the book. The human author who penned the contents of the vision given by Jesus through the angel is John. Now I know you're asking, which John? Is it First John, Second John, or Third John? It's a debate, right? But actually we don't have a lot of discrepancy here until much later in church history.

We know historically that John the Apostle was the son of Zebedee. You can cross-reference Matthew 10, where Jesus is discussing the twelve apostles. There are the sons of Zebedee, James and John. John the apostle wrote the Gospel of John. He wrote First, Second, and Third John. Those are not second cousins or something like that. That's the same author. And he also wrote the book of Revelation, and that was the testimony of the early church. Unanimously, the early church fathers agreed that this was the apostle John, including:

You remember, some of these church fathers probably actually knew John himself, and we'll talk about Polycarp and some other church writers later on. It wasn't until subsequent centuries that John's authorship was challenged. But this is the historical position of the church, and it reflects the internal evidence of the book itself.

Where John Was Writing (15:47)

Now, where was John writing when he received this vision? Patmos. Anybody been there? Okay, you've been there? I've not been there. Can I just go man on the street real quick? What's it like?

Oh, it was amazing. It was a cave, very small. It's about 13 miles, I think. And first there's a concrete bed where he supposedly slept, a place where he rested. And like a lot of historic sites in the Bible, as civilizations came and went, those original sites got built on top of, and other things got built on top of them, the Byzantine era and all that. But there was a fair amount of development there in the first century, when John was likely exiled there in the mid-90s AD. That's really good. Very cool. I think we need to go on a field trip. What do you guys think?

Visiting Patmos (16:50)

Patmos is about 40 miles off the coast of Turkey. It's beautiful here. This is a picture from my friend and colleague Todd Bolen, who teaches with me at The Master's University.

A Resource: BiblePlaces.com (17:54)

Todd has a great website. Do you guys know about Todd's ministry? It's called BiblePlaces.com. How many of you have discovered that? Todd is a wonderful photographer, and he has photographed thousands of biblically significant places. He's producing these like pictorial commentaries. Basically, they're pictures he has taken that go along with different books of the Bible and verses. You can literally use it as a commentary. As you're reading, say you go to Revelation 3:7 in his commentary, and he has pictures relevant to the verse you're reading. It's really helpful. Todd is a great expositor and a dear friend, but that's a resource that not a lot of people know about, and it's amazing. If you're a Bible teacher, or even if you're just going through your Bible on your own at home, pictures are worth a thousand words sometimes. So check out BiblePlaces.com.

This is one of his pictures of Patmos. Look at Revelation 1:9. John, penning this, says: "I, John, your brother and fellow partaker in the tribulation and kingdom and perseverance which are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus."

Where Patmos Is (19:02)

If you failed geography like I did, let's back up. Here's a shot of Western Europe. We can see Italy and then Greece, and some of the other countries. The little red dot, marked just like Google, is where our island, Patmos, is. This would be modern-day Turkey, what was called Asia Minor in your Bibles. If we zoom in a little more, here's the western coast of Turkey, about 40 miles off, and Greece is over here. You see some of the ancient cities here, like Thessalonica and others. If we zoom in even more, this is our island right here. Does that look about right? Okay, so that's where we're talking.

Why John Was on Patmos (20:04)

Again, what does the internal evidence give us? Going back to Revelation 1:9, he says he was on the island of Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. We take that to mean, and history backs this up, that John was banished there. You'd think, wow, going to a remote island and staying there would be amazing, right? But he wasn't on holiday. He wasn't on vacation. The Roman Empire used some of these little islands as places to send prisoners. I know Carl talked briefly about this last time, so that's probably what's going on.

Now, let's see how well you were paying attention. I know it's been a couple of weeks since Carl did his message. Who was the Roman emperor in power when this was happening? Let's bring him up here. There he is. Domitian. What do you know about him? Some of you are great at history. He was not a good guy.

Domitian (21:16)

Do you have some details to share, John?

Yes. A lot of these emperors had a real ego trip. They thought of themselves as deity. You remember your Greco-Roman mythology and whatnot. A lot of these emperors viewed themselves as gods, or connected to the gods in that way, and demanded worship. Then they persecuted people, as you mentioned, who did not choose to worship. That would most definitely include the Christians. We tend to think of Nero as the first Roman emperor who persecuted Christians, and he gets a lot of press behind some of those early New Testament letters. But Domitian, it's arguable from church history, was even more violent than Nero. I'm just reading some of the annals of history here, and there were some descriptions I couldn't read to you right now because they were so graphic. It reminds you of the old Ninevites, and even some of the things Jonah and Nahum and those prophets were seeing in their day in the Assyrian Empire.

So John claims to be on Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. It's like he was banished there. His departure to Patmos likely took place during the reign of the Roman emperor Domitian, who ruled from AD 81 to 96.

Dating the Book (22:25)

Interestingly, we have three church fathers, early Christian leaders who wrote documents that are preserved, so we have them available. If you've taken a church history or historical theology class, you may recognize these names:

All three agreed that John was banished to Patmos because of his testimony. All three mention Domitian as the emperor responsible. In fact, Tertullian's opinion was that it was John's testimony to Domitian himself that got him banished. That's a really interesting possibility.

This is what helps us date the book, and we also have manuscript evidence and other things that help confirm it. Because of Domitian's reign and the testimony of early church history, we believe this book was written toward the end of Domitian's rule, in the mid-90s, around AD 95 or 96.

Questions and Inspiration (23:31)

Let me pause here. I'm throwing a lot of data at you. Questions on this? Are you tracking? So far, so good.

Yes. So obviously the inspiration of the Word is through the Holy Spirit. Is there another part of that explaining that in this case, the inspiration comes from an angel directly?

Yeah, that's a good question. The question is about inspiration. If God the Father gives the revelation, and God the Son communicates it through his angel to John, how do we think about inspiration? We will see this more later on. Let me see if I can find it real quick. There are multiple places. It actually starts in the letters to the seven churches in chapters 2 and 3, where the angel tells John, "Pick up your pen and write this down." So we take that to mean it was a verbal revelation. I don't know if the angel sat there looking over his shoulder to make sure his grammar, syntax, and spelling were all correct, but the point seems to be that this was the main way it happened. Great question. Someone else?

The Purpose of Revelation (25:38)

Some of this is review from what Carl did, so I don't want to press in on a few more of these things right here. What's the purpose of this? We saw that the purpose goes back to Revelation 1:1. That very first verse hints at the idea that this revelation of Jesus was given so that the bond servants would know the things which must soon take place. Then in Revelation 1:3, adding to that, blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy, and heed the things which are written in it, for the time is near. So what does verse 3 do in terms of helping us understand the purpose? You've got to be prepared, right? He's not telling you, oh, this just gives you some information. He's giving you the information so that we will be prepared. And even more explicitly, there's a blessing attached here, isn't there? He says, blessed is the one who reads and hears the words of the prophecy and does what?

We're going to talk about eschatology and times. We're going to talk about hermeneutics, how we interpret the Bible. We're going to talk about all those things. But here's what I want you to see: this book is not irrelevant. I think a lot of Christians, because there's so much disagreement, and it is intimidating, and there's lots of symbolism, and it's hard to understand, it's easy to just look at this book and say, you know what, Jesus comes back and wins in the end, I'm going to go eat at Grumps today. That's great, except that this book will not allow us to take it so casually. That does not mean we're going to figure out every last little detail. No, probably not. But what I want to encourage you with is that, like all of God's inspired revelation, we believe in the perspicuity of Scripture. That is the clarity of Scripture, the understandability of Scripture. That's encouraging, because what Revelation 1:3 is saying is that there's a message here God has for us, both to understand and to obey. And how can we obey it if we can't understand it? So we hear it, we obey it, and there's a blessing attached to that, isn't there?

The urgency here is also important. What we're going to see is that this vision comes to John, the revelation comes, and there's an urgency in it. There's a "and then this is going to happen, and then this is going to happen." So we ought to look at this with anticipation, and even a sense of, I've got to know this so that I can be prepared. Are we going to exhaust every detail? No, we're not going to do that. But we need at least to get the big idea, because the time is near. There's a warning here, just like we saw in Psalm 2. We get one of the most graphic illustrations of judgment in the whole Bible in the book of Revelation. You say, why would God say that? Why would God tell us that? Because he doesn't want us to go through that. It's a warning, just like Psalm 2. So that gives us something of the purpose and the point here. There are lots of details to fill out, but just looking at the internal evidence, which is what the book itself teaches, we can see this is what we're looking at.

The Historical Context (28:52)

Now let's talk a little bit more about the historical context. In chapter 2 and chapter 3, Jesus gives a prophecy, a revelation of sorts, a message to seven churches. Not everybody agrees on this, but most people agree that these are seven actual historic churches that existed in the first century. We have ample evidence, both in the Bible and in Church history, for exactly what these churches were. We'll go through this. If you want the flyover, go back and listen to Don Dietrich's sermon that Carl mentioned, where he went over all these passages in one sermon several months ago. But we'll look at these. So that's the historic part: this vision, this revelation, starts in the first century with specific messages to seven key churches that were present in that day.

Now, thinking about the geography, we're talking again about a similar map. You can see this is kind of the end of Greece. This is Turkey. Here's Patmos, the little island. Those seven churches, the ruins of which exist to this day in most cases, are all here. You'll see Pergamum and Pergamas. Pergamas is the modern name; Pergamum is the ancient name. In case you see that spelling difference, that's why there are two different versions there. These are actual historic churches, and we're going to get specific messages to them. If you're interested, William Ramsay, the scholar, wrote Letters to the Seven Churches. It's a really interesting book. We'll talk about some resources along the way, but that's one of the most significant works on the history behind those seven churches.

The Outline of the Book (31:00)

Now let's zoom out. What I really want to spend time on in the last few minutes of class is the outline, the overview of the book, so that you don't get bogged down in all of the details, the bowls and judgments and, you know, weird scorpion things. You can get overwhelmed if you can't keep in mind how the book is organized. I'm leaning on John MacArthur's commentary here. I've adapted this outline from him, and I like it because it's very simple.

  1. Introduction: Revelation 1:1–20
  2. Letters to the seven historic churches: chapters 2–3
  3. Everything that takes place after: Revelation 4:1 onward - Chapters 4–5: a heavenly throne room - Chapters 6–18: the largest section of the book, the unfolding of tribulation - Chapter 19: the return of Christ - Chapter 20: the millennium, and then the final judgment in the latter half of the chapter - Chapters 21–22: the new heavens and the new earth

You say, where do you get that, Pastor Keith? Look at Revelation 4:1. Once the letters to the seven churches are completed, with the last message, to Laodicea, at the end of chapter 3, John says in chapter 4, verse 1: "After these things I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven, and the first voice which I had heard, like the sound of a trumpet speaking with me," and the angel says, "Come up here, and I will show you what must take place." Here's our phrase: after these things.

One of the things we're going to have to wrestle with, and I appreciate Carl's overview of hermeneutics, the rules we use to interpret the Bible, and his emphasis on letting the book speak for itself and looking at the internal evidence, is the timeline. There are godly men who think most of the events in the book of Revelation happened in the first century. There are godly men who think the book is some sort of secret decoder ring that unpacks the phases of church history, and you can Google search and find charts and maps on that. There are others who think it's more future. But looking at the internal evidence of the book, if this was written in 95 or 96 AD, what the angel says to John is that what happens in chapter 4 and following is things that take place after these things. Taking that in its normal sense, this is a future-looking prophecy. We'll talk a lot more about that as we go along.

I'm not using "tribulation" in the technical sense here in the outline. We'll talk about that later on. Tribulation just in the general sense means a time of great distress, great tribulation, great trouble, and we see bowls and seals and judgments and trumpets and all sorts of stuff there.

The Overview Chart (34:04)

Look at this. This is copyright free, so I'm able to give it to you. There's no PayPal donation you have to make or anything like that. What I like about it is that it simply gives you an overview of the book. It's not taking a stand on this interpretive issue, whether it's the preterist view or the futurist view. It just lays out the contents of the book for your navigational help. And you can see here why this is a challenging book.

The top part talks about the various chapters, chapter 1 through chapter 22, broken down into a series of visions. The book will say, and then John will say, and then I saw this vision. So there are different visions there. The section below breaks it down further. This is the part where we usually get lost. Letters to seven churches, throne room, and then the Lamb takes the scroll. Remember the song we sing, "Is he worthy?" That's some of the imagery there. Then we see a scroll with seven seals, and that's going to start right around here. We're going to see the unfolding of those seven seals really until the end of chapter 14. Then the seven bowls and the judgments that go with them in 15 and 16. Then some other scenes that are not minor, but not as connected:

So isn't that helpful, just to lay it out and see the big picture? When you're reading the book of Revelation, what's your assignment? Read the book of Revelation. There you go. You can keep this and figure it out. Okay, I'm in chapter 10 and I'm lost. I'm lost in chapter 10, Pastor Keith. So you bring up this chart, and you say, I'm in chapter 10, I'm in the sixth vision, I'm somewhere in the seven seals. Oh, there we go, and you're back.

Once we get past this part, in 19, 20, and 21, we see:

Hopefully that will give you navigation. This chart is not particular to any school of interpretation or any particular view. It's just trying to give us help with the contents. Any questions on that? You're tracking there? Hopefully that will help.

The Seven Seals (37:14)

Now, if you're in chapter 4, we see the throne room. Then if you look at chapter 5, this is where we're introduced to the book with the seven seals. You'll notice the scroll here takes up a large portion of the book. So don't get lost. Recognize that each of these seals gets opened, starting in chapter 6 with the first through sixth seals. Then, starting in chapter 7, there is this reference to the 144,000. And we'll talk about

Overview of the Book's Structure (38:14)

The seventh seal launches into the seven trumpets, so starting in Chapter 8, we hear those trumpets sounded in Chapters 8 and 9. Again, in Chapter 11, we're introduced to the two witnesses. You've got to keep up with the characters, right? The woman, the dragon, the two witnesses. Then finally, the seventh trumpet is sounded at the end of Chapter 11.

In Chapter 12, we're thinking about the dragon, the beast, the woman, and those sorts of things. We see those in Chapter 12 and Chapter 13:

You can see how this is going to work its way through the book.

Chapter 16 gets us to the bowl judgments, six bowls of wrath. Armageddon is put there in Revelation 16:13-16. We'll talk about that when we get there. Babylon is the discussion in Chapters 17 and 18, and we'll talk about what Babylon is. Then, moving into Chapter 19, the scene changes. We look back to the marriage supper of the Lamb, the return of Christ, and the subsequent events that are going to happen there.

Hopefully that gives you enough as you're reading to say, "I kind of know how the book is laid out." I don't know what every detail means yet, but at least you have the contents. The main way we're going to interpret this is to let the book speak for itself, and to let the internal evidence do most of the convincing.

How We Will Approach the Study (39:15)

Leaning on what Carl told us a few weeks ago, I want to reiterate that we're going to come to this book:

We're not going to start a fight. We're not going to throw rocks at other Christians who hold different views. We want to come to this book eagerly to learn what God has for us. We've already seen the purpose: a blessing to be prepared for the days ahead. We can't heed it if we don't know what it means, so we've got to take the time to study. Maybe not every detail can be confirmed for certain, but there's a lot here we can agree on, and those are the things we really need to major on as we look ahead.

When we think about the topic of hermeneutics, I want to reiterate that we are going to interpret this book exegetically. Carl mentioned that word. Exegesis is the idea of drawing out the meaning. We all know it's easy to go to the Bible looking for a verse that supports what we think and what we want, but that's not how we study the Bible. We study it exegetically, asking:

This letter no doubt went to those seven churches and beyond. Those early church members had to read it and make sense of it. How would they have understood it? That is what we call a normative hermeneutic. We're going to let the book speak for itself and interpret it in its context as best we can. We'll strive to understand it the way the original author meant it and the way the original audience would have understood it. We're also going to try to apply a consistent hermeneutic, which just means rules of interpretation.

A normative hermeneutic doesn't mean there isn't symbolic language. We'll talk about what a normative hermeneutic means when we come to symbolism. But what we're going to try to do is be consistent and let the book speak for itself in its context, the way the author meant it and the way the original audience would have understood it.

My name's Keith, and I will be your tour guide. Deep breath. Are you ready? Your seat belt's fastened? The book of Revelation, guys. This is going to be fun. I hope we can dialogue a bunch along the way. The time is near, and we want to be prepared for that.

Closing Prayer (42:28)

Father, thank you for the journey we start today, and really the journey Carl helped us to start a few weeks back. We are so eager and thankful that we can study this together. We look at this as an opportunity, first of all, to grow in our humility, that there are things we're not going to figure out, and that's okay. We want to grow more dependent on you, more leaning on you, and thankful for what we do know and understand.

At the same time, Father, we believe in the perspicuity of Scripture. You didn't write this so that we couldn't understand it. You didn't write it to hide things from us. In fact, the word itself means you're unveiling it, revealing it to us. So we look to this with the expectation that you have a message here that is understandable, that we can heed, because that time is near, and that we can be recipients of the blessing the book promises.

Help us grow in our humility in this, and also help us grow in our exegetical skills. It's always easier to learn a skill when we can apply the tools to an actual project. We want to grow in our ability to interpret the Bible faithfully by wrestling through a more difficult book like Revelation. Thank you that we can take this journey together. We believe that in the company of brothers and sisters, we can learn better together. So will you build us up and strengthen us?

Most of all, Father, we want to look more like Christ. We want to be looking toward his return, and we want to be more motivated to share your gospel so that we can bring many people with us because of the time we spend in this book. So we ask that you would go ahead of us and give us insight, blessing, and wisdom as we embark on the journey together. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

* = the audio was unclear here and the words were reconstructed from context. Scripture read aloud is in red.

Taught by Dr. Keith Palmer, Grace Bible Church, Granbury, Texas — from the church’s Sunday School series on Revelation. These are lightly edited transcripts of the audio, posted for personal study; the teaching and its content belong to Dr. Palmer and Grace Bible Church. Listen to the originals and find his notes on the church website. Transcribed from the audio by AI. Edited only where the audio was unclear (all edits marked with *). Errors are possible — the recording is the authority.

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