Posted by Miller on 10/13/2009, 11:15 am
Decoding Revelation
Revelation is a coded book. It was written for Christians so that only they could understand it. Those who do not have the Holy Spirit are bewildered by the imagery in this book of the Bible. Even as Christians we have difficulty when approaching Revelation. How do we understand its code? The Bible interprets itself so we can understand Revelation by looking to other portions of the Bible for clues to its interpretation. When we study one portion of the Bible, we can find the same truth in another portion that sheds light on what we are studying. Since Revelation is a coded book, we won't understand it without the help of God's Spirit who inspired it, plus a child-like approach to His Word. We must have God's Spirit and an understanding of the Scriptures to comprehend Revelation. Revelation was written symbolically; a great deal of it is not literal. If we don't understand that Revelation is speaking of spiritual things, then we're going to misinterpret it. We'll end up looking for literal frogs and heads and horns and an actual beast.
To illustrate a portion of the code that almost all Christians are familiar with, consider the usage of the term "lamb." We know when the Scripture refers to "the Lamb," it is symbolically referring to Jesus and His sacrificial death on the cross as He was "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" (Revelation 13:8). It is not referring to a literal lamb, the offspring of a sheep. So for us to understand the symbolism of the "beast," we must go to the Scripture for that definition. A modern-day analogy is that we could not operate a computer unless we understood computer language. We must get a Bible definition of "beast" and the Bible definition of "mark" to understand the mark of the beast.
"And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and I saw a beast rise up and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy" (Revelation 13:1).
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