Revelation 1:1-3 (9 Lies Christians Believe About The Timing Of Revelation)

Watch this blog on this week’s episode of The PRODCAST.

INTRODUCTION

Last week, we lit the fuse on Revelation 1:1 and blew the roof off every false idea you've ever heard about the apocalypse. We crushed the Hollywood garbage. We buried the dispensational fear factory. And we resurrected the biblical definition of apocalypse—not doom, not chaos, but unveiling. Revelation isn't about confusion—it's about clarity. It's not a horror story. It's a war report. A victory song. A covenantal transition so big, so earth-shattering, that only Jesus Himself could pull back the curtain.

We saw that this Revelation wasn't a riddle for the 21st century—it was a blazing letter of hope for the first-century Church, standing in the smoking shadow of a collapsing temple, wondering, "Did we get this right? Is Jesus really reigning?"

And the answer was a thunderous, heaven-shaking YES.

God gave this Revelation to Jesus. Jesus gave it to His angel. The angel delivered it to John. And John handed it straight to the saints—not to confuse them, but to strengthen them. Not to stall them—but to send them. This is the King's battle plan. His courtroom decree. His coronation scroll of judgment and joy.

And He said—these things must soon take place. Not "someday." Not "maybe." But now.

The Old World was dying. The New Kingdom was rising. And Revelation was the trumpet blast announcing that the Lion of Judah had taken His throne. So if you missed that episode, stop what you're doing and go catch up—because once you see what this book actually is about, you'll never unsee it.

Now, today, we are going to be inching forward, making sure we cover concepts that are important for understanding this book, and also doing our best to make this interesting, eye-opening, encouraging, and filled with stirring application so that you can see how this book is relevant to your life! To do that, we are going to jump into Revelation 1:1-3 today, and we are going to see 9 reasons why this book cannot be talking about the future of the world and 1 reason why it is speaking about things going on in the first century! This episode will be dense. It will be helpful. And in the end, I am praying it will fire you up and get you ready to labor, work, and build in Jesus' Kingdom! 

So, with that, let us read our text and then jump right in! Revelation 1:1-3 says this:

"1 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, 2 who testified to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw. 3 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." - Revelation 1:1-3

PART 1: A COMMON SENSE VIEW

Revelation 1:1-3 doesn't need a decoder ring or a PhD in Greek to understand it. It just needs some good old-fashioned common sense. John says these things 'must soon take place' and that 'the time is near.' That's not apocalyptic jazz hands—it's a stopwatch. If someone tells you something is near and must happen soon, you don't assume they mean in a few thousand years. You presume they mean now. John didn't say 'eventually.' He said, 'Soon.' And soon means soon. You can't build a theology on word-bending hermeneutics and time-delay semantics.

That's not only confusing. It destroys the book's actual literature—which means precisely what it says! 

Think about it this way: If your boss says, "Hey, we need to have a meeting. Something is about to happen to the market that we need to be aware of," you don't interpret that to mean in 2,000 years. You start paying attention now.

John isn't writing to people in the 21st century about barcodes and microchips. He's writing to seven real churches in the first century, many of which were bleeding and dying, and asking, "Where is the justice? When is Jesus coming in power?"

And the answer is now. Soon. Quickly. Because the Old Covenant world is about to collapse, and the New Kingdom is about to rise.

John's message is urgent, not abstract. Immediate, not indefinite. So what does it mean?

It means the time was near, the temple was about to fall, and Jesus came in judgment. The Book of Revelation is not a blueprint for the end of the world—it's a war plan for Christ's victory in history.

Once you see that, everything else starts making sense. 

But the sad reality is that so few people actually see this. Because so many have been taught the futurist lie, the vast majority of the Christian Church today is confused by this message. So, in what follows, I want to untangle the confusion. I want to talk about several wrong views about what John means by "soon," "quick," and "near," and then I want to end by proving once and for all that this book can only be understood as happening in the first century. 

If 'soon' doesn't mean soon, then nothing in Scripture does. And, with that, let us jump in by looking at the errant views in: 

PART 2: 9 LIES ABOUT THE TIMING

LIE 1: JOHN WAS MISTAKEN

Was the Apostle John wrong about the timing of Revelation? That is the first—and most blasphemous—falsehood we must drag into the light.

According to many modern commentators, John was just… mistaken. He was sincere, perhaps. Passionate, sure. But ultimately wrong. Off by a couple thousand years. Enthusiastic in his eschatology but misguided in his math.

M. Eugene Boring—yes, that's his actual name—has no problem telling us bluntly: "Was John wrong? Yes." Harrington nods in agreement and adds that John thought the end was right around the corner, but we now know better. Barr says Revelation "failed rather spectacularly" in its promise. And Buchanan, with all the subtlety of a jackhammer, concludes: "John made a mistake. That's all there is to it."

Stop right there.

Because if that's all there is to it, then we have a problem far more significant than prophetic misunderstanding. We have a Bible that bleeds error. We have a Spirit who whispered lies. We have an apostle who claimed divine Revelation but delivered divine disappointment.

And yet, this view is still paraded around seminaries, Bible commentaries, and pulpits as if it were somehow humble, honest, and courageous to say, "Yes, John was wrong" or, at the very least, ignorant. It is as if theological bravery means throwing the Apostle under the bus to preserve a futurist system that is choking on its own delay.

But let me make something clear: if John was wrong, Jesus was wrong. Because John didn't speak from a personal hunch or cultural panic. Revelation 1:1 says, "The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants the things which must soon take place." That's not John's opinion. That's divine commissioning. That's a Trinitarian transmission: from the Father to the Son, through the angel, to John, for the Church.

If we're going to say that the prophecies of Revelation failed, we're not blaming John—we're accusing God. But the truth is even sharper: John wasn't mistaken. The problem isn't with John's timeline. The problem is with our assumptions.

You see, the entire edifice of this "John was wrong" view stands on a faulty foundation: the assumption that Revelation is talking about our future, that "soon" must mean "not yet," and "near" must mean "eventually." And when that doesn't work, these scholars would rather throw the Apostle under the chariot wheels than throw out their dispensational chart.

But Revelation is not about a nuclear World War III, a future antichrist, or barcodes on your forehead. It's about the imminent collapse of the Old Covenant world, the destruction of Jerusalem, the divine divorce of apostate Israel, and the coronation of Christ as the reigning King over the nations.

John was writing on the cusp of history's most remarkable covenantal transition. And he wasn't confused. He wasn't reaching. He wasn't mistaken.

He was preaching to a persecuted church, to a people under pressure, to a body of believers on the brink of tribulation. He told them—repeatedly and emphatically—that the events he was shown were about to happen. "The time is near"(1:3). "Behold, He is coming quickly" (22:7). "Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near"(22:10). That's not vague. That's not hopeful. That's not mistaken, it’s inspired.

If Revelation was written in AD 95, as the futurists claim, then John really was wrong. Because none of those things happened "soon" in any meaningful sense. But if—as every piece of internal evidence suggests—the book was written in the late 60s, just before the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, then John wasn't just accurate—he was prophetically perfect.

So, let's be clear: the only error here is the view that dares to question the truthfulness of God's Word in order to salvage a failed eschatology. If you have to crucify the Apostle John to keep your Left Behind fantasy alive, then you've already left the Bible behind.

We will not join the chorus of cowards who say, "Yes, John was wrong." We will say with boldness: "John was right, the time was near, and the King has come in judgment." The temple fell. The age ended. The Bride endured.

The book of Revelation stands not as a record of delay but as a victory banner raised over the ruins of the Old Covenant. The futurists have spent centuries trying to fix what isn't broken. And we're here to tell them: John was not mistaken. You are.

LIE 2: JOHN WAS BEING AMBIGUOUS

Did John cloak the timing of Revelation in hazy, prophetic vagueness?

If the first false view charges John with being wrong, this second view tries to be more charitable. It says, "No, no, John wasn't in error... He was just ambiguous." Mysterious. Symbolic. Using prophetic language that wasn't meant to be precise—just evocative.

This is the dodge of choice for those who flinch at calling an apostle mistaken but still can't square "the time is near" with their unshakable loyalty to a yet-future fulfillment. So, they shift tactics. They say, "Prophets didn't speak in calendars. They spoke in poetry."

One scholar in this camp, Scot McKnight, puts it like this: "Prophetic knowledge is not erroneous knowledge—it's just... different." He calls it "limited," "ignorant," and "ambiguous," but hey—not wrong! Apparently, when prophets said things were near, they didn't mean actually near. They just meant... urgent. Ish.

And so the argument goes: John sounded urgent, but that's just how prophets talk. They're dramatic. They're intense. They get people ready. But they aren't aiming to give precise timing. That sounds spiritual. It even sounds plausible. Until you actually read Revelation.

Because here's the problem: John isn't ambiguous. Not even a little. He opens the book with precision and clarity: "The Revelation of Jesus Christ... to show His servants the things which must soon take place" (1:1). Then, just to make sure you didn't miss it, he follows with "the time is near" (1:3). And he ends the book with the same refrain: "These words are faithful and true... the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, sent His angel to show His bond-servants the things which must soon take place" (22:6)... "Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near" (22:10).

He's not faking it. He's not speaking in riddles. He's shouting from the rooftop: The time is near. The events are soon. The fulfillment is imminent. Not morally. Not metaphorically. Not ambiguously. Literally!

This wasn't a vague summons to stay on your toes for two thousand years. It was a concrete declaration to the persecuted first-century Church that the storm of judgment was thundering at the gates. It was the unraveling of the Old Covenant world. The harlot was Jerusalem. The Beast was Rome. The great tribulation was the one Jesus already said would come upon that generation (Matt. 24:34).

John's words were as clear as they were terrifying. He didn't hint at nearness. He declared it with the precision of a covenant lawsuit. He was not functioning like a foggy prophet of mystery but like a herald of imminent judgment.

To say otherwise is not to honor the prophetic tradition—it is to gut it of its power. To neuter it. To reduce it to empty posturing and spiritualized fluff.

Let's make something plain: the Book of Revelation is not a theological mood board. It's not a kaleidoscope of vague ideas meant to keep you in suspense. It is a covenantal indictment, wrapped in apocalyptic glory, declaring with thunderous certainty that the old world was about to burn and the new Kingdom was about to rise.

If John wanted to be ambiguous, he could have said something like, "No one knows the day or the hour" or "The timing is uncertain." But he didn't. Instead, he used phrases like "must soon take place," "the time is near," and "I am coming quickly." And those aren't symbolic. They're temporal. They are time stamps. And they matter.

Because if we don't take those time indicators seriously, we've effectively told our people that the Bible doesn't mean what it says when it says it. And from there, all authority unravels.

So no—John wasn't vague. He wasn't cryptic. He wasn't shrouded in prophetic fog. He was a firebrand. A herald of judgment. A mouthpiece of the King of kings, sounding the trumpet blast of covenant vengeance. And those who pretend otherwise aren't clarifying Revelation. They're muffling it.

LIE 3: REVELATION WAS MEANT TO BE MOTIVATIONAL

Was John only trying to stir our emotions—not describe real, imminent events?

We've seen the claims that John was wrong and then that he was merely vague. But now we arrive at an even more patronizing view: the idea that John wasn't trying to predict anything—he was just trying to motivate.

According to this view, John didn't mean soon literally, and he wasn't speaking ambiguously either. He just wanted to inject some drama, raise the emotional stakes, and get the early Church to sit up straighter, worship louder, and cling tighter to Jesus—even if the actual events he described weren't meant to happen in their lifetime or ours. This is the "Revelation as religious theater" theory.

Michaels, one of its proponents, says this:

"The conviction that the end of the world is near is what makes the book of Revelation larger than life... It infuses the imagery with sharpness and rich color."

In other words, urgency is a device, not a deadline, a literary technique, or a timeline.

Another scholar, Resseguie, goes further. He says John is building a kind of artistic "tension." And Maier joins the chorus, quipping that Jesus in Revelation is "like Godot... just around a corner that's never turned."

Now, just take a second and notice what they have done. They've just reduced the most theologically dense, symbolically rich, and eschatologically precise book of the New Testament to a kind of holy fable—a dramatization, a motivational myth—something like a biblical play performed to stir the emotions—not a prophetic message meant to interpret redemptive history.

This view is disrespectful to the text. Imagine you're a Christian in Smyrna. You've buried two elders who were killed because they loved Jesus. Rome is tightening its noose to make peace with the Jews. The apostate Judea’s are dragging your people out of your church services and parading them before tribunals. Your young are being hauled off to prison. And you open a letter from the last living apostle—John himself—saying, "The time is near. Blessed is the one who reads and hears the words of this prophecy."

When you read that, you would have been immediately encouraged. You may have said: “Oh, thank God! The tribulation is almost over!” But according to this lie, that John never intended his words to be specific about the timeline, all he would be doing was peddling cheerful vagaries to give the Church the kick in the tunic they needed to keep on going. It would be John ignoring His own world and their own context to give them Hallmarkish, milquetoasted, vanilla, nothings.

This cannot be what John was doing! The urgency of the book of Revelation is rooted in reality. It is grounded in time-bound history. The storm clouds weren't imagined—they were forming. The judgment wasn't emotional—it was imminent. The King wasn't "around some cosmic corner"—He was at the gates of Jerusalem, ready to render a verdict and burn the city that had crucified Him.

This book didn't exist to color the walls of Christian imagination. It existed to fortify the Church for real events—the kind you could mark on a calendar, the kind that left cities in ashes and saints in victory.

And let's just say the obvious: if John's timing statements were nothing but mood-setting and motivational fodder, they lose all their motivational power anyway. Because we're now 2,000 years in, and the edge has dulled. The color has faded. The urgency has rusted. What was once called "soon" is now "someday" or even “at some point.” That's not motivation—that's disillusionment. That's a cracked trumpet.

No, the Book of Revelation is not like Waiting for Godot. It is not emotional hype. It is not a symbolic delay. It is a covenant lawsuit. A declaration of imminent judgment on a city that killed the prophets crucified the Son and persecuted His Bride.

When John wrote, "the time is near," he meant it. And the blood that ran through the streets of Jerusalem in AD 70 proves it.

LIE 4: THE EVENTS UNFOLD RAPIDLY… ONCE THEY FINALLY BEGIN

Did John mean that Revelation's prophecies would happen quickly—but not soon?

Now, we come to a view that pretends to honor the text while quietly sawing off its legs. This is the sleight-of-hand interpretation—the "gotcha Greek" approach.

Here's how it goes: When John says that the events of Revelation "must soon take place" (Revelation 1:1), he doesn't mean soon at all. What he really means—according to dispensationalists like John Walvoord and Charles Ryrie—is that the events will happen quickly once they begin.

So not "soon," in relation to John or to the people he is writing to in order to encourage. No… Just… "quickly” once the dominoes start to fall. In other words: "Don't expect this stuff to happen anytime close. But once it does, it'll happen fast."

Let's expose how ridiculous this is.

Imagine a husband texting his wife, "Honey, I'll go to the grocery store soon. I can get in and out in no time!" I am assuming she smiles. She realizes that she does not need to drag the whole family out and that the husband has got it! So, she begins making plans for dinner. She waits. And then when he finally comes home empty handed, she is not only confused, but a little aggravated. Imagine, if in that moment he said: “Oh honey! You must have misunderstood. I was not promising to go today… I was just saying when I do, it will be in world record time.”

Now imagine John made that kind of argument to us, and expected us to still be waiting 2000 years for any eschatological kinetic energy to muster an inch of movement.

I think it goes without saying, that everyone knows—this view is nonsensical. "Soon" and "quick" are only meaningful together if the action actually happens in the near term. If it doesn't happen for years—or in Revelation's case, two thousand years—then your words weren't quick; they were lies. And your wife isn't going to feel reassured. She's going to feel like you’re an idiot.

Now apply that same logic to Revelation. How can men call themselves scholars and come to these kind of hare-brained conclusions? If John was telling persecuted Christians that judgment and vindication would come soon, and what he meant was, "not in your lifetime, or your children's lifetime, or your great-grandchildren's lifetime—but one day, somewhere over the rainbow, things will really get to movin"… he would not be comforting them but utterly confusing them.

Let's go further: if John meant that the judgment would be fast but not near, then why layer it with other words like "the time is near" (1:3), "do not seal up the prophecy" (22:10), or "Yes, I am coming quickly" (22:7)? Either Jesus means these things literally, or he like yanking our chain! It is obvious which Jesus means and doesn’t here.\

LIE 5: JOHN IS SPEAKING OF GOD'S TIME

Did John mean 'soon' in God's eternal clock—but not ours?

Here the most pious-sounding lie escapes the futurists lips. And it is certainly one of their go to apologetics.

This view doesn't claim John was wrong. It doesn't claim he was vague. It doesn't claim he was trying to be motivational. No—this one is wrapped in Scripture itself. It quotes 2 Peter 3:8 like a magical incantation: "With the Lord, one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day."

And from that verse alone, misinterpreted no doubt, a whole magical fix to the problem of hermeneutics was born!

The argument goes like this: "When John says 'soon,' he means soon to God, not soon to us. God is outside of time, after all. He's eternal, infinite, and sovereign over chronology. So 'near' and 'quickly' don't actually refer to earthly timing—they're divine approximations."

And when we hear this kind of mush-mouthed theologizing, cloaked in a veneer of Biblicism, we think, well that is true. I mean, Peter does say that, right? And maybe that will satisfy you until you realize that this book was not addressed to God, it was addressed to seven local churches, who just so happen to operate in the time bound world of man.

Let's look at it clearly.

If "soon" really means "not soon to you, but soon to God,"—then every time the Bible tells us anything is near, we can have no idea what it means. Every time it urges obedience, promises justice, warns of wrath, or proclaims victory, we're left asking, "But is that my time or the Lord’s? When it says, “today is the day for obedience” does that mean I am not responsible to obey for a thousand years? When it says that God created the world in six days, can I skirt around that fact and add a 8-10 zeros to that to make it fit with science? Obviously not! That's not reverence and fidelity to the text. That's relativism, making words mean whatever we want them to mean to preserve our petty theological systems!

And it contradicts how language naturally works for us humans, how prophecy is delivered to nations and peoples, and what John was actually doing in writing to these churches. He literally was not saying: “Hey guys, here’s the deal, since God is outside of time, every single time marker I give you is now meaningless.” And, he certainly was not saying: “Hey every time I say day, just go ahead and assume that means a thousand years, and every time I say a thousand years, just remember I am talking about a day.” If that were the case, what would we do with the millennial reign of Christ? Is it only a one day reign, since a thousand years are like unto a day? It is madness!

And now, we need to show how this view, on an exegetical basis, strikes out!

Strike One: 2 Peter 3:8 is about God—not man.

Peter responds to mockers who ask, "Where is the promise of His coming?" (2 Peter 3:4). And, he reminds them that God doesn't forget His promises, even when time passes. He is faithful. That is the point. He is not saying "God's promises cannot be tracked in space and time or with “human clocks." He is saying, "Don't think what you perceive as delay means neglect or apathy on the part of God.” Why? Because God is patient, not absent. This is what Peter is getting after in his epistle.

But, that is not the point John is driving to in the book of Revelation, which isn't about God's patience for sinners, but His imminent wrath upon Jerusalem! It's about God's impending judgment. And it is here where we see the point. For the elect, God is patient and long-suffering. But to those who break covenant with Him, kill His one and only Son, and murder His Church. There is no patience. Only an imminent, expedient, outpouring of His wrath!

Strike Two: John never appeals to God's timelessness.

Unlike Peter, not once does John say, "These things are near… but only in the eternal mind of God." On the contrary, John is very clear that he is writing to real churches, in real cities, facing real persecution, and he is telling them to hold fast because real judgment is coming—soon.

This is why John says, in Revelation 1:3: "Blessed is the one who reads and hears… for the time is near." We have to remember that John dropped this letter off at the first century post office and was expecting a very particular person and group of people to be reading. He is promising that they will be blessed when they read it and understand that their moment of trial is quickly coming to an end. Not 21st century Christians whose biggest problem is that their chai latte was a little on the cool side and they don’t have time to go back through the drive through.

Strike Three: God's time doesn't void human understanding.

This is the third strike on this view. Sure, God sees all of time at once. That is true! But He condescends to speak to us in our language and in ways that our minds can understand! The entire Bible is written in human grammar, not some 20th dimension tesseract that we cannot possibly comprehend, because it is above our finitudinal capacity to grasp! If "soon" doesn't mean soon, then "resurrection" doesn't mean resurrection, "covenant" doesn't mean covenant, and "Christ" doesn't mean Christ and on and on we can go.

Language itself collapses under that kind of theology. In saving their futurism, they lose all Biblical orthodoxy into linguistic relativism. The cost is not worth the damning reward!

Let me put it in even plainer terms:

If you tell your son, "I'll be home soon," and you show up fifteen years later, he's not going to admire your sovereignty over time. He's going to ask why you lied and abandoned him. And no amount of theological jargoning is going to cover over your sin!

When God says, "The time is near," you don't get to respond with, "Well, that depends on your metaphysical philosophy of temporal duration."

No! The time was near. The meaning is clear! The events were fulfilled!

Revelation doesn't teach that time is meaningless. It teaches that God's Word is reliable. That His judgments are not only certain but imminent. That His justice doesn't dawdle. And that when He says soon—He means it. Don't let the pseudo-piety of a fool bewitch you. It's just another way to delay what God already accomplished!

LIE 6: THE EVENTS ARE ALWAYS IMMINENT

Were the prophecies of Revelation never meant to be fulfilled? Only to feel like it?

If the last view tried to hide the delay of Revelation in the vault of God's eternal timeline, this one tries to make the delay a permanent feature. This is the "perpetual imminence" view—the idea that the events of Revelation are always just around the corner, perpetually pending, but never actually arriving.

It's the theological version of a dangling carrot—a prophecy that never pounces, a judgment that always threatens but never falls.

Robert Mounce, a key proponent of this view, claims that the phrase "must soon take place" should be taken not chronologically but morally. It's not about timing—it's about tone. God, we are told by Mounce, simply wants every generation to feel like the end is near. Metzger follows this line and calls it "moral imminence." He says every generation ought to behave as if it could be the last—because, in theory, it might be.

So, according this view, John wasn't actually saying the end was coming soon. He was saying, "You must always be living like it is," which like the other views is fraught with logical problems. Let me give you an example.

This would be like turning on the evening news and seeing a meteorologist looking very tense and foreboding, saying right into the camera: "A massive storm is brewing. I believe it is possible for this one to become a category 5 storm, which could cause massive devastation. If you are listening to this broadcast, you will likely need to take every precaution, and some of you will need to evacuate your homes and flee immediately for safety."

What would you do if you heard such a message? You would do what I would do. You would have a moment of panic. Then you would pull yourself together and start packing essentials, loading the car, maybe boarding up the windows and doors, and then leaving as quickly as you could to avoid the disaster. But what happens if the weather event does not come and all you have is blue skies. Imagine if three days passed, a week even, and all you saw were birds chirping and squirrels playing. Then a month, two months, without even dark clouds or lightening? What would you do?

I tell you what I would do. I would call the local station and ask, "What happened?" How could you predict such a calamity and nothing end up happening?

What would you say if that meteorologist, straight faced and cock-sure, said to you: "Oh boy! You apparently have misunderstood me. I didn't mean an actual storm was coming. I just meant… life's unpredictable, and you should always live ready for whatever happens. So that when or if a storm ever comes, then you will be ready!"

If you were like me, you would want to yank that man through the phone he was speaking into! And guess what, the same is true of John. If he behaved that way with even more important news, how could we ever trust him? If Revelation was just saying, "You know, live like the end might happen any second" while knowing it may drag out for thousands of years, then that would not be moral urgency—that would be theological gaslighting.

That would neuter every time-based statement in the book. It would converts every prophecy into posturing, reality into ritual, and urgency into an emotional placebo.

And here's what makes this view even worse: it contradicts Daniel. In Daniel 12:4, the prophet is told: "Seal up the words of the scroll, for the time is not yet." But in Revelation 22:10, John is told the exact opposite: "Do not seal up the words of this prophecy, for the time is near."

You don't seal the book if the events are centuries away. You only unseal it when the events are right at hand. Which tells us that this book was not meant to describe events long into the future. But near term things that would happen in the first century! John was not telling everyone at all times to live every day like it could be your last. He was pointing to what Jesus actually did to people who broke covenant with God in the first century!

That is the 6th lie.

LIE 7: THE EVENTS ARE NOT IMMINENT BUT CERTAIN

Was John only emphasizing the certainty of Revelation's prophecies, not their timing?

This is the respectable man's dodge. This view is espoused by the kind of man who likes to appear reasonable without saying anything definitively. This view doesn't accuse John of error. It doesn't suggest he was vague. It doesn't twist language or smuggle in Greek wordplay. This one wears a theological tie and carries a tone of safety. This is the view that says: "Don't worry about the when. John just wanted us to know that these events would definitely happen. Not necessarily soon. But surely."

In other words, "Revelation isn't about timing—it's about confidence."

Smalley puts it this way:

"This phrase indicates the sure accomplishment of God's purposes rather than a hasty consummation of history."

Brighton echoes the same thought:

"The events described will certainly take place… It is necessary that these events take place."

So apparently, when John said "must soon take place," what he really meant was: "will take place eventually—don't worry about the details."

But let's be honest: this view is simply a sanitized version of imminent delay. It puts a doctrinal bow on the same basic problem: a refusal to believe John meant what he said, when he said it, and to whom he said it.

Let me break it down: if John wanted to emphasize certainty alone, he had options. He could've written, "These are the things which must happen." Full stop. He could've added an "amen." He could've doubled down with a formula like Jesus uses in John's Gospel—"Truly, truly I say to you…"

But he didn't. He added a time signature that he was not required to add! He said things like

• "These are the things which must soon take place."

• "For the time is near."

• "Do not seal up the words of this prophecy."

• "Behold, I am coming quickly."

Which undeniably means that He did!! 

To say otherwise would be like a fire marshal saying, 'This building must be torn down,' and when you ask him when it needs to be scheduled, he just shrugs and says, 'I don’t know… Eventually. But who could ever know, am I right?”

That kind of statement would be worthless! But, sadly, that is what many are in essence saying when they approach this book! “Sure, this will happen! But who could ever really know the when?” WE CAN!!! Because Jesus cast all of this in urgent time frame references! This is not a crap shoot. It is actually knowable and objective!

And if you try to mute the timing language and reduce it to general certainty, you're not interpreting Revelation—all you are doing is rewriting this book to fit your noncommittal approach to Biblical prophecy.

LIE 8: JOHN SPEAKS FROM THE FUTURE

Was John transported into the future—and only then did he say the events were 'soon'?

Now, we enter the realm of chronological contortion. This is where eschatological desperation puts on a lab coat, plugs in the flux capacitor, and tries to fix Revelation with some kind of sci-fi enhanced time travel.

This view—seriously proposed by some—is that John was telling the truth when he said the events would happen "soon," but here's the catch: he wasn't speaking from his own time. According to this theory, John was supernaturally projected into the far future, to a moment just before the end, and then, from that vantage point, he declared, "The time is near."

Yes, really. This is the "Apostle Marty-McFly" theory: where John hopped into a visionary DeLorean, punched in the year 20XX, took a joyride into our time, with all of its strange signs and symbols, and then went home to write it down in his primitive ancient way of describing modern events.

And to that I would say: really? That's not a biblical interpretation. That's just a cheap knock off of back-to-the-future rebranded to sound Biblically feasible.

Beasley-Murray tries to defend this view by saying:

"In his vision, John stands near the close of the period of messianic judgments."

In case you missed it, that's just a fancy way of saying that John isn't talking to his audience. He's talking to a future generation, from a future position, about messianic judgments that they will face in their indeterminate day. This makes Revelation not a pastoral letter… but a time capsule. It makes it a mystery buried for millennia. Irrelevant to every Christian who has ever lived, until finally it comes down to the one generation it applies to.

But here's the glaring problem: John makes all his declarations of nearness before he's ever "in the Spirit." Sure. You can claim that all of the book of Revelation is John taking a visionary joy ride to the modern world. BUT, all of the time frame references occur in the parts of the book that are not visionary!! Before he sees heaven opened (Rev. 4:1). Before he's caught up in any vision. He writes:

"The Revelation of Jesus Christ… to show His servants what must soon take place" (1:1)

"Blessed is the one who reads… for the time is near" (1:3)

If there were any part of this book, that futurists agree was written to the 7 ancient churches in Asia Minor it is first 3 chapters, which are the very chapters that define the books time signature! The orientation to time is not coming from some mystical time loop in the clouds. It is coming from a real man, writing from the isle of Patmos, to the real churches in Asia Minor, about real events they are facing like: persecution, martyrdom, being killed by both synagogues and Caesars.

What good would it do for John to tell them, "Deliverance is happening soon… But not for you… And not technically soon… I just mean in 2000 years its going to be soon for someone.” Why even write such a ridiculous statement? That would not be comfort. That would be an insensitive and very cruel joke.

AND… let's state the obvious here: if John wanted us to know that he was seeing the end of the world from a future vantage point, he could've just said it. He could have said: "I was taken by the Spirit to the end of days, the final moments of world history, and from there, I saw what would soon occur."

But he doesn't do that! He says, from where I am standing in the AD 60’s, the time is near. The judgment is coming soon. Jesus will be returning quickly!

To believe otherwise, you have to think John was handed a vision, projected forward thousands of years, wrote down a message for a world that wouldn't exist for millennia, and then sent that message back to churches who couldn't possibly understand it, apply it, or survive until it.

So yes—it's like saying John took a prophetic DeLorean into the future, found himself in our century, shouted "Great Scott!" when he saw the signs of the end, and then raced back to the first century to tell the Ephesians what was about to happen... to us.

No, thank you. We don't need that kind of malarkey to make sense of what is already sensical. We just need humility to abandon our preconceived notions and stop making the text try to fit our futurist fantasies.

That is lie 8.

LIE 9: THE EVENTS WERE INAUGURATED BUT NOT COMPLETED

Did Revelation's prophecies begin in the first century—but still await some distant final fulfillment?

This is the final boss, the scholarly halfway house, the theological friend zone, and the eschatological hedge fund for those who want to give a nod to the obvious first century fulfillment, without paying the cost of actually being consistently a preterist.

It's the view that says:

"Yes, Revelation BEGAN to be fulfilled in the first century... BUT it's not truly fulfilled. It's still unfolding—gradually, symbolically, over centuries."

Now, this view entirely rests on that now-famous phrase coined by Herman Ridderbos, which is the: "Already and not yet," which posits that some events in the Bible can have a dual fulfillment. One fulfillment at the time they were given, and another fulfillment later into the future.

Now, to be fair, in this phrase Ridderbos gave the Church a helpful category that sometimes is helpful, in the same way sometimes a hammer is the right tool, and other times it isn’t. If you are nailing a ten penny nail into something, the hammer is great. If you are trying to clean delicate glassware, the hammer would be a ridiculous tool.

And yet, somehow, this phrase gets thrown around like a Swiss Army knife, magically solving any and every difficult text with a simple: “Already and not yet” moniker! This category has become the duct tape of biblical interpretation, meaning if you can’t “Already and not yet it” then it can’t be fixed… Or something like that.

This phrase is seemingly slapped onto every prophecy, every passage, every hard-to-swallow eschatological text, as if it's some kind of divine universal solvent. Revelation? Already and not yet. Matthew 24? Already and not yet. Isaiah 65? Already and not yet. Your great-grandmother's dreams of revival? Already and not yet.

It's become a lazy theological reflex, a way for the exegetical three toed sloths to say, "Yes, it surely happened," and also, "but not in full"—without having to do any of the Biblical heavy lifting to substantiate such a claim! It has become a fix all that never needs to be proven, a sacred cow that never ought to be challenged, and a synonym for common sense in Biblical studies.

But here's the issue: Scripture does not give us a license to assign dual fulfillments whenever we like. You see, when the Bible wants us to see two fulfillments, it does this really helpful thing called: “telling us.”

Take Isaiah 7 for instance. The prophet declares that a young maiden will bear a son, and before that child knows right from wrong, Ahaz (the king alive in Isaiah’s day) will see deliverance from Syria. That's the near-term fulfillment that actually happened. But then, by the Spirit of God, 700 years later, Matthew tells us this prophecy has more than a near term fulfillment. That it also points to Christ's virgin birth (Matt. 1:23), which is wonderful and praise God for Scripture alerting us to this!

And that gets us to the point. How do we know it was a dual fulfillment? Because God told us. The same Spirit who spoke through Isaiah confirmed the deeper, final fulfillment in Jesus.

But when you take the "already/not yet" model and start rubber-stamping it onto every eschatological passage without any textual warrant, you're not interpreting Scripture anymore. You're manufacturing theological comfort zones so that passages cannot challenge your view. So long as you give the disclaimer, “well this is one of those ‘already / not yet’ passages” then you are fine to hold your errant view uncritically without much resistance.

But, here's the fatal flaw to this point: since the canon is closed, and since Revelation is likely the last book written, we don't get any future divine communications confirming that its passages will have another future fulfillment. Which means that’s it. The line is drawn. You either have scriptural evidence of dual fulfillment… or you have a system of guessing and supposings.

And that brings us to the real irony: this view pretends to honor the first-century context. It nods at the destruction of the temple and references AD 70. But then it pulls the rug out by saying, "Of course, that wasn't the real fulfillment… just the initial one."

It’s like sitting in the doctor’s office and hearing these words:

“You have a serious, irreversible condition. You don’t have long.”

You go home devastated. You hug your wife tighter. You write your will. You cancel plans. You prepare your soul for the end. Because when someone says you don’t have long, you assume the end is near.

But then you show up for your next appointment, and the doctor clarifies:

“Oh! Sorry if that was unclear. What you have is Type 2 diabetes. Yes, it’s serious. Yes, it’s chronic. But with diet and exercise, you’ll likely live a long, mostly normal life. It’s not that death is coming soon—it’s just... technically already at work.”

Now imagine the emotional betrayal you would feel. Because what you prepared for was a terminal crisis—not a manageable medical condition that is serious but not terminal. You rearranged your life for a death sentence that turned out to be more like a dietary inconvenience.

And that’s exactly what the “already and not yet” view does to the book of Revelation. It treats it like theological diabetes. It says the Old Covenant system was diagnosed in the first century, but it wouldn’t really die—not yet. It will have an already effect… But just wait until you see what eventually happens in the future when it moves into the feet, becomes gangrene, or dementia!

But that’s not what John is describing at all. He is not talking about a condition that begins in the first century but will get progressively worse over time. He isn’t warning the Church about long-term covenantal instability that gets incrementally more painful. He’s announcing immediate covenantal collapse. He isn’t diagnosing a progressive disorder that needs lifestyle changes. He’s shouting about a terminal cancer that’s about to kill the patient, the first century Jews.

In that sense, the Jews weren’t spiritually pre-diabetic—they were already on the gurney, with the axe at the root of their gangrenous limbs, ready to sever them from being the people of God (Luke 3:9). And the message of Revelation is not, “This might kill them someday.” It’s, “The death sentence has already been issued, and the judgment already came” Those Jews were cut out of the covenant with God and the church was grafted in. That already happened and does not need any kind of “not yet” future fulfillment!

That is the 9th and final lie I will be exploring that Christians have believed about the timing of the events of Revelation. Now that we have detailed the wrong views let us end by looking at the right view. And we will do that in: 

PART 3: THE RIGHT VIEW

The conclusion that you are probably feeling right now is that if Revelation doesn't mean what it says it means—then no one can ever truly know what it means. And if God says 'soon' and doesn't really mean it, then we cannot know what God means, or ever have any certainty that we have understood Scripture. Not just Revelation, but all of it! Either God is truthful, or He is a liar. This is the paradox we are down to. Can you trust His Words as being true or not? Did He write them to leave you in endless confusion and speculation or not?

And, after looking at all the theological dodging, Greek redefining, and timeline-twisting, we finally arrive at the most obvious, most biblically faithful, and most hermeneutically consistent view. That Revelation was written to John's generation about events that were about to happen soon to them. That is the right view, and that is the view we will look at now.

As Carrington put it plainly:

"When the Revelation was written, it was naturally accepted as an account of current events and of events 'shortly to come to pass'; that is how it describes itself, and that is how it was naturally taken."

This is the plain, obvious, unavoidable truth. Revelation opens by saying:

"The Revelation of Jesus Christ… to show His servants the things that must soon take place" (Rev. 1:1).

And it ends by saying:

"These words are faithful and true… the things that must soon take place… Behold, I am coming quickly" (Rev. 22:6–7).

The Greek word tachos doesn't mean "eventually," "possibly," or "over the next few millennia." It means immediately, without delay. Kurt Aland affirms this, saying:

"The word tachu means: I am coming now. Immediately."

And the word eggus—used in 1:3 and 22:10—means near in time. Not "inevitable." Not "possible." But proximate. Pressing. Looming.

What we are seeing is not linguistic spandex that you can squeeze anything into. It's defined and has semantical limits to how far the meaning can be stretched. And it aint that far!

Notice how often proximate words, which mean near, close, soon, quick, show up in the book of Revelation!

• "The time is near" (1:3)

• "There shall be delay no longer" (10:6)

• "A little while longer" (6:11)

• "A short time" (12:12)

• "Behold, I am coming quickly" (3:11; 22:7, 12, 20)

More than any other book, this book is doing everything it possibly can to limit your vision to the first century. And yet, this is the book so many have tried to uncle rico football toss into the future!

John was not vague and did not play word games. He was a herald of imminent judgment, writing as a "fellow partaker in the tribulation" (Rev. 1:9), warning churches under real persecution about events that were about to explode in their world.

To those enduring tribulation, Revelation didn't say, "Someday God will act." Instead, it said, “Hold on. Just a little while longer. He is coming.” Don’t be afraid, your time of suffering is almost over. I mean, isn’t this why Jesus said to the martyrs under the throne in Revelation 6:11, “that they should rest for a little while longer,” until their number was complete and the judgment was unleashed?

And what judgment was coming? Not the end of the physical cosmos, but the end of the Old Covenant age. The temple. The city that stoned the prophets. The sacrificial system that had become obsolete (Heb. 8:13). The harlot Jerusalem who rode the beast Rome.

The judgment of Jerusalem in AD 70 was not a footnote in redemptive history—it was the main event. Jesus prophesied it in the Olivet Discourse (Matt. 24:34). Revelation describes it in symbolic majesty. And it was fulfilled fully when Rome torched the temple, slaughtered the priesthood, and scattered the apostate nation. The shadow had been put away so that Christ and all His fullness could come!

Revelation isn't waiting to be fulfilled. It is the holy record of what already is!

We don't need more charts—we need more courage to believe what it says. The war's over. Stop acting like victims and act like the "More than conquering victors" Christ has called us to be! Remember this: Christ is on the throne. The Kingdom is advancing. The Bride is being gathered. The dragon has been thrown down. And the only enemy left to defeat is death itself (1 Cor. 15:26).

And that is where I would like to take what we have learned and apply it in our: 

CONCLUSION

So now, friend… what do we do with this? Well, we need to stop waiting for permission. We stop living like second-class citizens in our King's world. We need to plant. We must build. We ought to raise our children and deposit this same fire in their bones. We outta show up to worship like we're meeting with the reigning King. We need to pray like our prayers are firing shots and big artillery down range. We need to preach like heaven is invading earth and our sermons are shaking the kingdom of darkness into ruin—because it is. We need to come with appetites ready to feast at the Lord’s Table, to eat the body and blood of Christ, to be nourished for the battle ahead!

Revelation is not telling you to wait for clearance to land—you're already on the battlefield. Stop circling the runway. Start conquering with boots on the ground! That is your mission!

And with that, the only question left is not, "Will Revelation ever come true?"

It already has.

The question now is: will we live like it?

After everything we've seen—after every excuse exposed, every false view shattered, every delay dismantled, every misinterpretation dragged into the light—here's where we land:

The time was near. The judgment did come. And the King already triumphed.

The harlot was judged. The temple fell. The Old Covenant collapsed in the ash and fire of AD 70. And Jesus Christ—the faithful Witness, the firstborn from the dead, the ruler of the kings of the earth—stood, not as a soon-coming stranger, but as a present and reigning King.

The book of Revelation is not like the DMV, where you waste all of your time waiting to be called a long time into the future. It is a command center, a war room, an officers tent in the middle of the skirmish where the plans have been drawn up and now us soldiers get to execute! Revelation is not about the defeat of Jesus and His Church, but His covenantal coronation and His equipping her to be the mother and royal queen over all the earth! 

It's the announcement that Christ has taken His throne, shattered His enemies, vindicated His martyrs, and begun the long march of kingdom increase that will not stop until every enemy is beneath His feet and the world shines with the knowledge of the Lord.

And that changes everything.

This means we shouldn’t be huddled away in the shadows, hoping things don't get worse. We are citizens of a kingdom that has already come—and continues to go and cannot lose now, nor ever will! 

So what do we do?

We build things.

We go to Church and take the Lord's table! 

We plant new church churches.

We serve in our churches

We raise families, have God-glorifying marriages with pure sexual intimacy that tells the story of the Gospel of God, have as many babies as the Lord and wisdom allow us, catechize them, participate in family worship with them, and populate the earth with His image bearers! 

We disciple the nations to join us.

We run for public office so that Christians set the trajectory of local, state, and federal government. 

We start Christian companies that exude the character and integrity of Christ and bring righteous technologies, trades, and services into the marketplace! 

We proclaim the gospel in everything we do. Whether we eat or drink we do everything to the glory of God. And in that, we shape culture. We reclaim education, media, politics, economics, and every inch of earth that belongs to Christ until the entire earth looks like Christ.

And why can we do this, and why must we do it? Because, brothers and sisters, we're not in Revelation 6, where God is attacking the Old Covenant apostates. We are in Revelation 22, where He has appointed us!!! We have been tasked to feed the nations with the good food God has entrusted us to give them! What is that food? It is the Word, Prayer, and Sacraments! It is Lord's Day services! We are the New Jerusalem! We are the garden pool, whereby the River of Living Water flows out and into the world! We are the keeper of the gates, and we beckon the nations to come in and join us! 

So, because of that, stop living like you're on the losing team.

Stop talking like evil gets the last word.

Stop wringing your hands like the sky is falling.

The sky already fell—on apostate Jerusalem. And now the stone cut without hands is growing into a mountain that fills the whole world.

This is not the age of fear.

This is the age of dominion.

Christ doesn't need to be enthroned. He is.

And your job isn't to speculate. It's to build.

So go.

Don't whisper your faith. Trumpet it.

Don't apologize for the Kingdom. Advance it.

Don't wait for permission. Act like you've been sent because you have.

And remember the King is not coming to reign— He already reigns.

This is not the dress rehearsal. This is the main event!

So saddle up. Get to work. And remember:

To walk with a humble swagger because you are a child of the King! Go build a family, a church, a school, a business, a legacy that says to the world: Our King reigns here and not you! 

And, until next time, God richly bless you, and we will see you again next time on the PRODCAST. Now, get out of here!