Revelation: A book of hope through relationship
This series is being re-numbered, and several articles ready to be published as well.
**If you’d ike to skip ahead, you can jump straight to the articles in this series.** `Jump to the articles`
The Book of Revelation is probably the most well-known and also the least read book on the Bible. Well, relative to how well known it is, anyway. There’s so much speculation about it. Much is fiction so fantastic as to be unbelievable – and yet the books sell.
There’s also a lot of fear over Revelation. And yet, it’s a book of great hope. But we have to read it and take the time to understand it to realize that.
I’m working on it for a class I teach at church. People are so into it – so many question and comments – plus we only get about an hour before service, so it’s going slow. The joke is we hope we finish before the rapture.
So far, I’m writing just to keep ahead of where we are. It has to be that way in order to keep things going smoothly with the recent discussions. Besides, it keep me from getting overwhelmed and too focused on just this book.
Anyway – I pray it helps, and that we don’t take too long and make you wait too much.
There are 50+ Passage Headings in the NIV translation. It would be awesome to use them as the names of the articles – but many of the passages are so packed with symbolism and Old Testament References to be able to write just one article for each passage.
So – the plan is to write up Chapter 1 by topic, rather than passage headings. Then starting with “To the Church in Ephesus”, the plan is to identify them with a 2-part number. For instance everything in Chapter 1 will be 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 – then in Chapter 2 it’ll be 2.1, 2.2, 2.3 etc.
That way, everything will be sequenced and you can sort either by ascending order to get the articles as presented in the book – or in descending order to get the newest ones first if you’re reading along while I’m writing.
Revelation: A book of hope through relationship, is a Bible study series that gives a view of Revelation without all the normal distractions, such as what’s the cause of each disaster?
Rather, we look at Revelation as a book of hope through relationship with each other and God.
We see that illustrated in the adjacent image.
It was done by MS Copilot based on my request: I’d like to get an image for the category page: Revelation: A book of hope through relationship. Can you do a watercolor with God looking down at two groups of people. One is looking to God for hope under a sunny sky – the other is looking away from God under a dark cloudy sky – while God is reaching out to both groups, inviting all to be with Him.
Here’s it’s response, describing what you see in the image:
It visually echoes the homepage’s symbolic contrast. God is centered in the sky, arms outstretched toward two distinct groups: one bathed in sunlight, looking up in hope; the other under stormy clouds, turned away—yet still within reach of His invitation. The transition from light to dark across the canvas reinforces the theme of divine pursuit and choice.
Articles in this series
Revelation – The seven churches – Who or what are they?
The Trinity in Revelation—Even If the Word Isn’t There
