The Highway Forums General Discussion Theology Discussion Forum Your Eschatology?

We need to establish context before we can properly exegete any passage of scripture or even the whole book or letter we are exegeting.


The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show to His bond-servants, the things which must soon take place; and He sent and communicated it by His angel to His bond-servant John, who testified to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw. Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy, and heed the things which are written in it; for the time is near.

John to the seven churches that are in Asia: Grace to you and peace, from Him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven Spirits who are before His throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To Him who loves us and released us from our sins by His blood⁠— and He has made us to be a kingdom, priests to His God and Father⁠—to Him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen. Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him; and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him. So it is to be. Amen.

“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”

I, John, your brother and fellow partaker in the tribulation and kingdom and perseverance which are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. Revelation 1:1-9]

We see that what John is writing to those seven churches are events that are to soon take place because the time was near. It would be fruitless for him to warn those churches of things that are to take a place, a minimum of two millennia later.

He then gives another timestamp showing the things he was writing were to be fulfilled in the near future, AD 70.


And he said to me, “These words are faithful and true”; and the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, sent His angel to show to His bond-servants the things which must soon take place. “And behold, I am coming quickly. Blessed is he who heeds the words of the prophecy of this book.”[Revelation 22:6-7]

Now, don’t confuse me with a hyper-Preterist, as I don’t think everything has been fulfilled. But if you will read the Olivet Discourse in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, you will see that it was fulfilled in that generation, AD 70, and John’s Apocalypse is his writing of the Olivet Discourse in greater detail.