![Book of Revelation summary](https://mahasoe.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/IMG_20201116_194241-1024x683.jpg)
The book of Revelation (summary) implies being a revelation of the events that will attend the end of the age and the establishing of the Kingdom of God. In this blog, we discuss I, II, III John and the book of Revelation
Book of Revelation summary
The primary theology of the book, therefore, is its eschatology. It claims to be a prophecy of the things that must soon take place (Rev. 1:2-3), whose central event is the second coming of Jesus Christ (Rev. 1:7).
However, the interpretation of this book has been the most difficult and confusing of all the books of the New Testament. Out of the history of interpretation have emerged from several distinct approaches.
The easiest approach to the Revelation is to follow one’s own particular tradition as the true view and ignore all others (but intelligent interpreters must familiarize themselves with the various methods of interpretation that they may criticize and purify their own way).
Authorship and Date
![Authorship and Date](https://mahasoe.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/IMG_20201116_194300-1024x683.jpg)
As early as the middle of the 2nd Century, Revelation was ascribed to John, one of the apostles of Christ. But some did not agree and suggested that it was written by another person. Dionisius a 3rd Century Bishop of Alexandria claimed on three grounds that John, The Apostle, could not have written Revelation:
- The Author makes no claim to be an apostle or eyewitness and does not describe himself as the author of the fourth Gospel does.
- The conceptions and arrangement of the book are completely different from those of the fourth Gospel and I John.
- The Greek of the book differs drastically from the Greek of the fourth Gospel and I John. If then, John the apostle wrote the Gospel and I John, he could not have written Revelation.
The revelation was written in a time when the Christians of Asia Minor and probably other places as well, were being persecuted by the Roman Officials for their refusal to worship the Emperors, both the living and dead, as gods and to worship Roma, the personification of Rome, like a goddess.
John wrote from Patmos while he was in exile because of his Christian testimony. Most Scholars place its composition around 95 CE, the time when Emperor Domitian rules and regarding himself as a God.
Purpose
John writes this apocalypse for the Christians of his own time. His purpose was to sharpen the alternatives open to the Christians, to of worshipping either Caesar or God, of being completely loyal to the State or wholly devoted to Christianity.
Furthermore, he endeavored to make martyrdom, with its eternal rewards, so attractive, and worship of the Emperor, with its eternal punishments, so fearsome, that his readers would willingly accept death as martyrs, rather than be disloyal to almighty God by worshipping Roma and the Emperor.