Hi, my name is Dr. Ryan Dellamater and I'm the pastor of Ocean Water Church. You know, I've studied the Bible for over 30 years of my life and I'm thrilled that I get to lead Ocean Water Church. We meet at Sir Coffee the second Friday of each month from 6 to 10 p.m. We have worship and tacos and teaching. Next time we're going to get together is on Friday, September 8th. I hope that you'll join us.
Now, this school year I'll be teaching through the book of Revelation, which is the last book in the Bible. And it's obviously a book that's very mysterious to some and very important to many. We plan on learning a lot and we'll be challenging ourselves to rethink our assumptions and to look at this book in a fresh way. Is this book a picture of Jesus or a manual for the apocalypse? Well, first let's talk about interpretation.
It's almost impossible to interpret the Bible without some preconceived notion of what the text means. And it's not different in the book of Revelation. Everyone comes to the Bible with something already in their mind. Now, of course, the more popular way to understand the book of Revelation is that it's telling us about the future and maybe even our future. And that's what's called actually the futurist perspective.
Now, others look at events through history as a fulfillment of this revelation, sort of the newspaper in one hand, the Bible in the other. Now, another way to approach the book of Revelation is not to think that it's speaking of something that has been or will be fulfilled, but instead understanding it as a picture, telling truths that can be applied to any situation.
However, the way that I want us to look at this is a different way of understanding this book and its approach that I become persuaded to believe. And the approach that I'll be talking about in this entire year is that the teachings of the book of Revelation were written for the followers of Jesus who lived in the first century. This is called the preterist perspective.
Now, from the Latin word, which means before, and specifically I think that there's a lot of imagery that we're going to find throughout this book of Revelation. It's really an elaboration on what Jesus taught in the Olivet Discourse that's found in Matthew chapter 24, which I'm going to spend 35 different teachings going through this book, and it parallels what's written in Mark and Luke. And here it is in a nutshell.
It's that God's judgment was to come upon the nation of Israel and that that would culminate in the destruction of the temple. Now, sadly, history confirms Jesus' words as the Jewish people and the Romans engaged in a brutal war at the end of the 60s. Not the 1960s, the year 60. A war that ended with the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple.
Now, Jesus specifically said, the days are coming upon you when your enemies will build up earthworks all around you and encircle you and come at you from every direction. They will bring you crashing to the ground, you and your children within you, and they won't leave one single stone on another because you didn't know the moment when God was visiting you. Now, let's unpack this a little bit. It was 40 years before 70, before the temple was destroyed.
Now, John the Baptist, Jesus of the disciples, called upon Israel to repent, to be faithful to God and the covenant that God had made with them. Now, the Jesus movement, not the movie, the Jesus revolution, but the Jesus movement, the original, was led by the apostles, very popular in the first century. In fact, many thousands of Jewish people did repent and become faithful followers of Jesus.
However, a majority of the leadership of Israel, and I want to be clear, what I'm talking about when I talk about the leadership of Israel, I'm mostly talking about the Sadducees who were in charge of the temple. Now, many of the chief priests were Sadducees and they rejected Jesus. Not only did they reject his message of repentance, but they rejected Jesus as their king.
Now, in fact, after they had turned Jesus over to the Romans, they publicly pledged their allegiance to the Roman Empire over him. Now, the chief priests said to Pilate about Jesus, he said, crucify him. And that's what they wanted and that's what they declared. And we have no other king but Caesar. So instead of choosing the king that God had sent them, the Messiah that God had sent them, they had chosen the kingdom of this world over the kingdom of God. They had chosen the Roman Empire.
Now, again, for decades following this, the apostles testified to the resurrection of Jesus and they continued to call upon the nation of Israel and the leadership of Israel to repent. But again, the majority did not. And this is all while God was doing great things among the faithful remnant of Israel, allowing them to spread the message to the rest of the Roman Empire. This is how the original church spread out from Jesus' few followers at the beginning.
And many non-Jews came to the faith and as a result, it didn't matter. The majority of Israel or at least a very active minority continued to trust in the kingdom of this world and its method of conquering, just like many do today. And what is that? It's violence. It says, therefore, when the Jewish rebels revolted against the Roman Empire in 66, they revolted violently and they started a war, just like many people do today. But this simply solidified that Israel as a nation had not trusted God.
And the message of the kingdom of God proclaimed by Jesus, their continued rejection of Jesus, and their insistence on overcoming the Romans through violence, forced God's hand. And it was time for judgment. Now when we talk about judgment coming from God, we have to keep in mind that God is love. And so it is not God doing the direct action, but he respects the free will of the people and he does not involve himself in protecting them. That's hands off.
God gives us the ability to choose what we want to do. And so when the Jewish people revolted against the Roman Empire, God's protection and favor was no longer there. Now as a result, the status quo of Israel and the status quo of the religion of Judaism, which now no longer had a temple and its priesthood, that status quo was torn down, both figuratively and literally with the temple being completely destroyed. So Jesus knew that this would be the inevitable result.
So when he came to Jerusalem that final time before his crucifixion, Luke reports to us saying, Jesus saw the city and he wept over it. What does this mean? Well, it's not as if God had not warned the people. He had done a lot of warning. He had warned them through Jesus and the apostles with, in fact, I think the book of Revelation being the final word on the subject.
So what that means is I tend to think that at least the core of the book of Revelation was already written or at least orally transmitted in the 60s before the temple was destroyed. And so therefore when the brighter of the book of John wrote about Jesus' coming, it's a coming in judgment that would soon take place in the city of Jerusalem.
Now remember, John wrote, he said, behold, he is coming with the clouds and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him and all the tribes of the land will mourn over him. Now similarly, Jesus said, behold, I am coming quickly and my reward is with me to render to every man according to what he has done. So it presents Jesus as a judge.
Now again, I think the book of Revelation is an apocalyptic account of what happened in the 60s of that first century that we're seeing from the perspective of heaven, the judgment that fell on Israel and the Roman Empire, both the Jewish people and the Roman Empire were judged and were to receive the consequences for their part in rejecting Jesus and his message of repentance. So to answer the question, was Revelation already fulfilled? I think for the most part, yes.
It is actually using imagery and apocalyptic language to speak about what was going on in the first century within their specific historical context. Now I'd love for you to follow along this whole series. Today's just an overview. We're going to be exploring this in 35 more messages this entire school year. And I'd like you to follow along. You can follow us on YouTube at our Ocean Water channel, also on Facebook, on our website and on Instagram.
And I always hope and pray that every time you open God's word, that God will speak to you. I read my Bible every single day, just like I have tried to for the last 30 years of my life. When I open it up, I ask for God to speak to me. And I pray every day that God will guide me. And I hope that you'll do the same as we go through this book together. Thanks so much for tuning in. And until next time, I hope you have a beautiful day.