Shedding Fear: What I Learned After 9 Months in Revelation
After completing a 9-month, mostly 6-days-a-week study of the book of Revelation, I now have a new perspective on it. I now see Revelation as a book full of hope and encouragement.
I know most people don’t think of Revelation that way. In fact, during one of my study sessions, I heard someone say that reading the book of Revelation is easy; it’s understanding it that’s the problem. At first, I laughed and thought, “Well, they aren’t wrong.” But the more I thought about that comment, the more it bothered me.
Overcoming Fear of the End Times
Before I began my study, I was terrified to read Revelation because of the information I was sure was in there. Not that I had ever, not once, read it. But I’ve been in church for some time, and I spend a fair amount of time learning with others through social media videos. I’d venture to say that over the past handful of years, interest in any and all things end-of-times has accelerated, and not always in a good way. Many videos, posts, studies, and even sermons about Revelation have been fear-based.
The fear felt isolating because of shame; I figured I was the problem. Maybe I just wasn’t gifted or smart enough to understand. In spite of that, I tried to push through and follow along with so many different Revelation studies. Sadly, they usually left me feeling more confused, hopeless, and overwhelmed. It truly felt like each effort helped the fear dig in deeper. In over 30 years of being a Christian, I didn’t stick through to the end with a single Revelation teaching.
Until one day God answered my prayer, and I found a Bible study on Revelation that spoke to my soul. It was early in this study that I heard the above quote. Many times I’ve rolled it around in my mind. I even spent time journaling about all the misconceptions I had about the end of times that were propelling my fears and keeping me from gaining true understanding.
Truths to Remember When Studying Revelation
Like always, I figured if I had been struggling with these issues, someone out there is dealing with them too. If that is you, I’d like to share a few of the truths I learned that gave me clarity, a new perspective, and extinguished the flame of burning fear I felt for the future. Now, I realize these truths I am sharing aren’t “new ideas,” and they aren’t exclusive to Revelation, as they apply to every book in the Bible.
Four Truths Revealed
Revelation is different—but not forbidden.
Actions have real, eternal consequences.
God doesn't waste words—He means what He says.
Understanding Revelation is for every believer.
The Book of Revelation is Different
There is no denying it; the book of Revelation is different from any other book in the Bible.
Aside from fear, many will not read Revelation because they believe it is a closed book that we are forbidden to understand. Others feel it has many interpretations, making it confusing.
But those misconceptions aren’t the things that make Revelation different.
The book of Revelation is different because it is an entire book devoted to the future. It is a future that affects all of creation, not just those alive here and now. No other book in the Bible deals entirely with the end-of-times.
How The Whole Bible Unlocks Revelation
That said, not a single book in the Bible is a stand-alone book. When reading Hebrews, it helps to have knowledge of the book of Leviticus. Studying Isaiah helps us understand the book of Romans. Understanding James helps us put together the many pieces of Proverbs.
It is incredibly difficult to understand Revelation if you do not use the other 65 books to grasp or pull together the revealed bits and pieces God has already provided. I can‘t stress this enough, we also have to use the entire Bible as a whole to understand what our future holds. No matter what we are studying, God gives us progressive truth. That means God doesn’t give us everything all at once but builds on His truth to reveal more of the picture as He determines we are ready.
Friend, there is not a single TV series or book that you can start wherever you please and understand the ins and outs of what is happening, why, who, etc. We need to take the time to go back to the beginning and understand what has led up to the spot we are at now.
The Bible is no different, and we need to stop treating it like it is and then complaining when we find it hard to understand. We need to stop thinking we can read a paragraph out of this book and a line out of that book and it will all make sense. It won't. That is like eavesdropping on snippets of conversations and thinking you have the whole story. You don't.
You don’t have to be a biblical scholar to gain knowledge of Revelation, but, more so than any other book in the Bible, you need to take the entire Bible into consideration and allow it to explain itself.
Actions, Consequences, and God’s Unchanging Justice
Sadly, many read Revelation and see God as an angry, vengeful, and cruel God. They wonder how a so-called good God can justify the horrible things that are to come. They feel He is totally unfair to create us with weakness and a desire to sin and then send people to hell for being who He created them to be.
Those thoughts are wrong on so many levels.
Let’s start with this: God doesn’t want a single soul to go to hell. That has never been his desire. He created us out of love, not boredom or a desire to use us as chess pieces. He loves us so much that he has given us many warnings (an entire Bible full of examples) of what happens when we choose wrongly. There isn’t a book in the Bible that doesn’t demonstrate this truth.
It was hard for me to read about the upcoming events from Revelation. My heart hurts for what people will have to go through. But we must keep in mind that each person has been given a free will to make choices, and our actions have consequences for which God holds us accountable (good and bad).
Think of it this way: little kids love to stretch their boundaries. When you tell them they cannot do something like climb around on the kitchen table, they will stare you in the eyes and do it anyway. For a little 3-foot tot, the fall down would probably result in getting hurt.
What do you do as a parent? You know very well what could happen. Do you get them down and correct them for disobeying or ignore them and hope they get down before getting hurt or breaking something? Do you throw out your table so they aren’t tempted to disobey?
Part of being a good parent is to correct and discipline when needed, not out of spite or control but out of love. You can and should warn and advise what will happen if your child chooses disobedience. But they must make the choice and learn to deal with the consequences.
God corrects and disciplines those he loves (Hebrews 12:6). As parents, we make decisions every day to protect and guide our children. They may not see it that way, but it doesn’t change the facts. Why would we think God should treat us differently? It would actually be unfair and unloving of God not to hold us accountable for the choices we make when He has clearly laid out what is acceptable and what is not.
God Doesn’t Waste Words or Speak Without Purpose
God does exactly as He says and never speaks without a purpose. God always means what he says and says what he means.
We make God's Word, especially Revelation, so much harder to understand than it actually is. There are things in the Bible that we take literally, and there are things that are to be taken as symbolism. A common complaint about Revelation is that Christians don’t always know the difference. But if we slow down and carefully study, the “helper words” used can help us determine if something is literal or figurative (words such as like, such as, similar to, etc.). And then there are some things that God doesn’t clearly explain and we have to take it on faith as it is written and not worry about it so much.
John's testimony of what he saw and heard was explained in words that John was familiar with but also words or descriptions that would remain through time.
Today, we have technology and weapons that would have blown John's mind. The internet, AI, tanks, drones, etc. would not have been words that would have been understood 100 years ago (let alone in John’s time) but today are common. We expect people to use those types of words when talking about war because it makes sense to us today. Yet, they would have meant nothing to John.
For example, in Revelation 9:7, John describes a demonic horde he saw and equated to locusts resembling horses headed into battle. There is a huge debate about the identity of those locusts. Perhaps they are drones or maybe they are a special breed of actual locusts that are created for such a time as this...who knows?
What matters isn't exactly what these locusts turn out to be, but the fact that they will be evil and without mercy as they are assigned to hurt men for 5 long months (Revelation 9:1-11). That is the point of those verses, not so that we have something else from Scripture to debate. Sometimes we can get so caught up in searching for hidden meanings or trying to force things to make sense with our current logic and understanding that we tend to lose sight of the forest because of the trees.
I’ve heard some criticize John for his word choices/descriptions. That is so silly. John recorded his testimony as God instructed; no more, no less. John was there when Jesus said no one is to add to or take away from Scripture (Revelation 22:18-19). There is no way he would mess that up. So we know God knew and approved of John’s word choices. They weren’t random ramblings of a man’s vain imagination.
It helps to understand Revelation to realize it was written for all men for all time; past, present, and future.
God saying exactly what he means and meaning exactly what he says has been proven true throughout time, which tells us we can expect it to continue that way. Don’t try to read more into God’s Word than what is there, and don’t try to excuse or explain away what you don’t understand. We have to be careful to study Scripture the way it is given and not read more into it. If we do, we add and take away from it, and God has clearly given us a warning to guard against such things. (Revelation 22:18-19)
Revelation Is For All Believers
The gift of biblical understanding is for every child of God. Understanding the book of Revelation is a gift as well. With the help of the Holy Spirit, we can all understand it. God would not have put a book so vital to our future in His Bible if He didn’t intend us to read, study, understand, and anticipate the upcoming events as revealed in Revelation.
I didn’t go near the book of Revelation out of fear and intimidation. I was positive I could never keep the storyline straight or understand the complexities involved. To a lesser extent, I didn’t want to look like a fool if I interpreted Revelation wrong. Over the years, I have heard so many opinions about Revelation, yet nobody seemed to agree. I figured if the “experts” couldn’t agree, how was I ever going to get it right? I presumed that Revelation was part of a prophetic gift that I had not been given, and we needed someone who had that gift to explain it to the rest of us.
I was wrong. Nowhere in Scripture does it say that only someone with a particular type of gift, prophetic or otherwise, can understand the book of Revelation. God has given it to all men for all time.
Hope for the Future, Strength for Today
Friend, I pray that we never forget that the book of Revelation has been given to us by a kind, good, generous, compassionate, and loving God who does not want us to be unprepared and without oil in our lamps (Matthew 25:1-13). It’s God’s desire that we are as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves (Matthew 10:16).
He absolutely wants us to have knowledge and wisdom about future events, but more importantly, God wants us to know, lean into, and obey Jesus every day as if it is our last day on earth. Because even with gained knowledge from studying the book of Revelation, nobody knows when Jesus is coming back; only our Heavenly Father knows.
If Revelation has intimidated you like it once did me, I hope this encourages you to pick it up again. Read it with fresh eyes, ask the Holy Spirit to guide you, and remember—it’s not meant to confuse or scare you. It’s meant to prepare you and draw you closer to the heart of Jesus.
*In this post I mention the Revelation Bible study that proved to be life-changing for me. I have linked it below if you would like to look into this powerful teaching on Revelation, or any other book of the Bible. Lima First Missionary Church with Pastor Timothy White. https://www.youtube.com/@LimaFirstMissionaryChurch/featured
