Revelation: Progress Assessment
May 28, 2011Let’s summarize the information we’ve gathered so far. We found three keys to understanding the prophecy:
1) The book of Revelation contains exotic, symbolic descriptions intended to represent things that are real, which the original recipients of the prophecy should have been able to interpret correctly.
2) The events described would happen soon. Not 2000 years later, and not even 400 years later, but much sooner.
3) The purpose of the prophecy was to encourage the church to persevere, to endure, and to overcome the intense persecution of the Roman Empire.
We also identified some of the key actors in the drama of Revelation:
2) The first beast is the Roman Empire.
3) The second beast is the cult of emperor worship.
4) The prostitute is the city of Rome.
Furthermore, we identified the meaning of the 1260 days: namely, the period of time during which Satan used the Roman Empire in a failed attempt to destroy the church.
And we identified the thousand year reign as roughly the period between the fall of the Roman Empire and the final judgment.
All of the above was revealed right in the text of Revelation.
That should suffice as a framework for understanding the rest of the prophecy. Having covered the basics of chapter 1 in the introduction, we will proceed next into chapters 2 and 3.
Christian Unity 
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