Unraveling Revelation

We move on from the letters to the churches in Asia as John is taken up to heaven to see the things that are to come. We discuss the significance of the open door, the connection between the appearance of God on His throne and the precious stones on the breastplate of the high priest, the identity of the twenty-four elders around the throne, and why the sea of glass before the throne is a callback...

Laodicea was known as a place where the water supply, which came to the town through six miles of aqueduct, was neither hot nor cold, which is how Jesus described that city’s church. Lukewarm water is an emetic, which is a nice way of saying it makes you vomit. We discuss the history of the city, it’s reputation as a place of commerce and banking known for producing an eye salve, and a school of s...

Philadelphia was one of the two churches in Revelation for which Jesus did not express a concern. As with Smyrna, the church of Philadelphia was oppressed by something Jesus called the “synagogue of Satan.” We discuss this group (and how the teaching has been misused over the years), the open door Jesus described, and the who, what, and when of the “hour of trial” that he said would soon test thos...

JESUS PROMISED those who “hold fast” in the church of Philadelphia that they would become pillars in the temple of God on which would be written “the name of my God and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem.” We discuss the historical background of that promise and explain why that would have made sense to readers of Revelation in John’s day.

JESUS DESCRIBED himself as the the one “who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars.” We discuss Jesus’ reasons for connecting himself to prophecies in Isaiah 11 and Zechariah 4, and why he said he would “come like a thief” against the church of Sardis.

WE MOVE to the fifth of the seven churches of Asia named in Revelation, Sardis. We explain how Jesus used that city’s infamous tendency to be overrun by enemies even though it was built with nearly impregnable natural defenses, and the city’s worship of the goddess Artemis, to chastise the church for being dead despite its reputation for being alive.

In his letter to Thyatira, Jesus condemned the self-proclaimed prophetess Jezebel, who’d led members of the church of Thyatira into sexual immorality and eating food sacrificed to idols. We discuss the mystery religions popular in that part of Asia Minor in John’s day and “the deep things of Satan” that had corrupted the church.

Thyatira was a town dominated by craftsmens’ guilds, and to have a career you needed to belong to a guild—and worship its patron deity. We discuss comparisons of Thyatira to the medieval church between 606 and 1517 AD.

Besides the Great Altar of Zeus, Pergamum was known for the Asclepion, a temple of healing devoted to the demigod Asclepius. We discuss the pagan rites of Pergamum and why the church there represents the history of the Christian church between 313 and 606 AD.

The third of the seven churches addressed by Jesus was called the place “where Satan dwells.” We discuss the great Altar of Zeus, the connection between Zeus and Satan, and the other pagan deities worshiped at Pergamum in John’s day.

Smyrna, the second of seven churches to receive a letter from Jesus in the Book of Revelation, was told it would be tested and suffer tribulation for ten days. We discuss the trials of Smyrna, which represents the church age between 100 and 312 AD, and the reminder that the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation is about the long war with Death.

The second of the seven churches addressed by Jesus was in the city of Smyrna. It was a wealthy city, but the Christian community there was poor, shut out of normal business activity because they refused to bow the knee to pagan gods and the Imperial cult—the worship of the emperors. We discuss two of the important deities venerated in Smyrna: Nemesis, the embodiment of divine retribution, and Rom...

Ephesus represents the first era of the church age, from the Resurrection through the early 2nd century. We discuss the focus of the early church’s lost love (God, one another, or both), and then we talk about the mysterious group called the Nicolaitans. The Nicolaitans were condemned by Jesus in his letters to Ephesus and Pergamum, but we don’t know much about them. They may have been a sect foun...

Ephesus was a world-class city in the first century, the most prominent in Western Asia Minor. We discuss the importance of the goddess Artemis, evidence of demonic activity during the apostolic age, and begin to analyze the letter from Jesus to the church in the city where John spent his last days.

The letters from Jesus to the seven churches not only described conditions among those bodies of believers at the end of the 1st century AD, they also outline the history of the Christian church from the Resurrection through today. Also: Why the temple of Apollo on the island of Patmos is significant.

Jesus dictated letters to the seven churches of Asia—but they were addressed to the angels of the churches. Traditionally, it’s been taught that the angels were bishops, human leaders of the Christian communities in what is now western Turkey. We suggest that the letters were actually sent to angels, just as the book says—supernatural entities who were perhaps responsible for overseeing and protec...

A brief outline of the Book of Revelation and how it’s been interpreted by Christians over the centuries.

John was the youngest of the apostles, the last one to die, and the only one we know of who wasn’t martyred for his faith. We summarize what we know about John, explain why we believe he was the author of Revelation, and discuss the odd rumor that John wouldn’t die until Jesus returned.

The political and social changes of the centuries before John wrote the book of Revelation turned the world of the apostles upside down. We summarize the political and social changes from Antiochus Ephiphanes to Domitian, including the 1st century myth of Nero Redivivus, the belief that Emperor Nero didn’t die in 68 AD and would return someday, possibly as the spirit inside another evil Roman empe...

Parallel scriptures in Matthew 24 and Luke 17 say the days of the coming of the Son of Man will be like the days of Noah and the days of Lot. We suggest it may have something to do with the ancient cult of the dead.

Genesis 6:1-4 records a strange incident in humanity’s distant past: Angels, called “sons of God,” saw that human women were desirable and chose to defy God by taking them as wives, producing the giant Nephilim. We explain why this was an actual event, and how the spirits of the Nephilim are prophesied to play a role in the end times as soldiers in the army of Antichrist.

The Garden of Eden was on the holy mountain of God (Ezekiel 28:13-14). Eden was at Jerusalem, and it’s where the battle of Armageddon will be fought.

Derek and Sharon Gilbert begin a new weekly program that analyzes end times prophecy in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. This week, we discuss a supernatural entity who may have rebelled even before the serpent in Eden—Leviathan.