A Bird’s-eye View
REVELATION
A Bird’s-eye View
I see The Revelation as divided into seven parallel sections.
1) The letters to the churches—the Lord Jesus among the lampstands. Revelation 1:1 through 3:22
2) John is given a vision of heaven, and we are shown the scroll and seven seals. Revelation 4:1 through 7:17
3) Seven trumpets. Revelation 8:1-11:19
4) The dragon persecuting the woman and her Man-child. Revelation 12:1 through 14:20
5) Seven bowls. Revelation 15:1-16:21
6) The fall of Babylon. Revelation 17:1-19:21
7) The final overthrow of the enemy, the judgement, the new heaven and earth. Revelation 20:1-22:21
I say these are parallel sections because as I understand The Revelation, it communicates the story of Christ from His first appearing to His second coming in seven different ways, or from seven different perspectives. To me this is similar to the way the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) present the earthly life of the Lord Jesus. Each highlights some things the others do not, yet all communicate the same truth.
You have probably already observed that the number seven comes up frequently in The Revelation. Seven churches, seven seals, seven trumpets, seven bowls, and more.
In the Bible, seven signifies completion. In seven days, God created the heavens and the earth. The Lord chose seven churches to receive His letters. This helps us understand that these letters, while certainly addressed to specific fellowships of believers, have a message for the whole Church in every time until He returns. We will see this sort of symbolism throughout our study.
There are many examples of numbers that recur. Some are more obvious than others. Supporting my view that there are seven parallel sections to The Revelation is one such recurring number. As we will see in the third section (chapters 8-11) the main period of time discussed is 42 months according to (11:2) or 1260 days (11:3). We find this again in section 4 (chapters 12-14). In chapter 12, verse 6 speaks of 1260 days. Then in 12:14 we read of “a time, times, and half a time” which is three and a half years, or 1260 days, or 42 months.
If you do the math on this by calculating the number of days in 3.5 365-day years, you will discover that there are 1277 days. The discrepancy occurs because we are using the Gregorian calendar rather than the Jewish calendar. The Jewish calendar has 12 30-day months; 12x30=360 days per year, 360x3.5=1260 days, and 42x30=1260 days.
Inner consistency of this type is, I think, strong evidence for the sections of The Revelation covering the same time-frame.
Having presented this idea in brief overview, in the next segment we will begin to look at additional evidence that has brought me to view The Revelation as I do.
