Revelation 1:1–3 Part 3 These things will Shortly Come to Pass

Rev­e­la­tion 1

¹The Rev­e­la­tion of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his ser­vants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and sig­ni­fied it by his angel unto his ser­vant John:

²Who bare record of the word of God, and of the tes­ti­mony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw.

³Blessed is he that read­eth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are writ­ten therein: for the time is at hand.

Now that we have an under­stand­ing of who Christ is as the Word of God, we are going to move on in our study of the first three verses in the book of Rev­e­la­tion. I believe it is impor­tant to leave no stone unturned, espe­cially when it comes to this book.

The book of Rev­e­la­tion is rid­dled with mystery.

This is why very few peo­ple can agree on every aspect of this book and what it is saying.

The por­tion of Rev­e­la­tion 1:1 that we will be going over today is a prime exam­ple of this.

We have to under­stand that God almighty makes His mys­ter­ies known to individuals.

The mys­ter­ies of God can­not be dis­cerned with human intel­lect. Just as sal­va­tion comes through Jesus Christ by way of the Spirit of God, so too does the knowl­edge of God.

We see here that God gave this Rev­e­la­tion unto John to show His ser­vants the things which must shortly come to pass.

Here is the point of study that we are going to focus on today. What does it mean that these things must shortly come to pass?

After all, most peo­ple would agree that much of the book of Rev­e­la­tion has not come to pass. Some peo­ple how­ever, because of verses like this believe that all of it has come to pass.

Why did the angel tell John that these things would shortly come to pass.

The word shortly is the word

G1722
ἐν
en
en
A pri­mary prepo­si­tion denot­ing (fixed) posi­tion (in place, time or state), and (by impli­ca­tion) instru­men­tal­ity (medi­ally or con­struc­tively), that is, a rela­tion of rest (inter­me­di­ate between G1519 and G1537); “in”, at, (up-) on, by, etc.: — about, after, against, + almost, X alto­gether, among, X as, at, before, between, (here-) by (+ all means), for (… sake of), + give self wholly to, (here-) in (-to, –wardly), X might­ily, (because) of, (up-) on, [open-] ly, X out­wardly, one, X quickly, X shortly, [speedi-] ly, X that, X there (-in, –on), through (-out), (un-) to(-ward), under, when, where (-with), while, with (-in). Often used in com­pounds, with sub­stan­tially the same import; rarely with verbs of motion, and then not to indi­cate direc­tion, except (ellip­ti­cally) by a sep­a­rate (and dif­fer­ent) prep.

The word shortly means pretty much what it says, so why does the angel sig­nify that these events would take place in a short period of time?

We are going to jump ahead a lit­tle bit in this one verse only.

This is going to go against what many would con­sider to be the typ­i­cal dis­pen­sa­tional point of view.

Please under­stand that I am not say­ing the book of Rev­e­la­tion has been entirely ful­filled. It def­i­nitely has been par­tially ful­filled and it did hap­pen right after John received the prophecy.

Daniel 12

¹And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the chil­dren of thy peo­ple: and there shall be a time of trou­ble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy peo­ple shall be deliv­ered, every one that shall be found writ­ten in the book.

²And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to ever­last­ing life, and some to shame and ever­last­ing contempt.

³And they that be wise shall shine as the bright­ness of the fir­ma­ment; and they that turn many to right­eous­ness as the stars for ever and ever.

⁴But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end: many shall run to and fro, and knowl­edge shall be increased.

⁵Then I Daniel looked, and, behold, there stood other two, the one on this side of the bank of the river, and the other on that side of the bank of the river.

⁶And one said to the man clothed in linen, which was upon the waters of the river, How long shall it be to the end of these wonders?

⁷And I heard the man clothed in linen, which was upon the waters of the river, when he held up his right hand and his left hand unto heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever that it shall be for a time, times, and an half; and when he shall have accom­plished to scat­ter the power of the holy peo­ple, all these things shall be finished.

⁸And I heard, but I under­stood not: then said I, O my Lord, what shall be the end of these things?

⁹And he said, Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.

¹⁰Many shall be puri­fied, and made white, and tried; but the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall under­stand; but the wise shall understand.

¹¹And from the time that the daily sac­ri­fice shall be taken away, and the abom­i­na­tion that maketh des­o­late set up, there shall be a thou­sand two hun­dred and ninety days.

¹²Blessed is he that wait­eth, and cometh to the thou­sand three hun­dred and five and thirty days.

¹³But go thou thy way till the end be: for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days.

This verse in Daniel is talk­ing about the ful­fill­ment of all prophecy. This is the sum­mary of the entire time line and accord­ing to this verse, the process was kicked off in or around 70 AD when the sac­ri­fice was taken away from the temple.

Matthew 24

¹And Jesus went out, and departed from the tem­ple: and his dis­ci­ples came to him for to shew him the build­ings of the temple.

²And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? ver­ily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.

The tem­ple was com­pletely destroyed in 70 AD but that was only one part of this two part prophecy. It said the sac­ri­fice would be taken away and then the abom­i­na­tion of des­o­la­tion would be set up.

What civ­i­liza­tion inhab­ited Jerusalem after it was laid des­o­late in 70 AD?

In 691 AD the new inhab­i­tants of Jerusalem set up their own tem­ple upon the tem­ple mount. This has stood upon the tem­ple mount now for well over 1000 years.

The rest of the prophecy in the book of Daniel is cen­tered around one equa­tion. One day is equaled to one year.

There are two num­bers given here and this is not the same 1260 days found in the book of Revelation.

This num­ber is 1290 and if the Dome of the Rock is the Abom­i­na­tion of Des­o­la­tion, then this date has already passed if the days equal years. This date came and went in 1981.

What about the sec­ond num­ber how­ever? The 1335 day has not passed. It is still in the future.

I want you to think about some­thing else. In Daniel it says there will be a time, times and half a time. The mod­ern dis­pen­sa­tion­al­ist point of view is that this is three and a half years. How­ever, think about the time of the 69 weeks. Then there were the times of 1290 and 1335. There is a gen­er­a­tion of 45 years between these two num­bers. If that time is cut in half, we are stand­ing at the door to what could be the return of Christ.

Remem­ber that no man knows the day or the hour, but it is inter­est­ing when you do the math.Even though the math comes up to 2003, if you draw the time line out the full length is is 2026. If this is the right time line, Jesus will return between 2003 and 2026.

I am not say­ing I know the day, but I do know if we are to fol­low the time line given in Daniel, these days def­i­nitely mean years.