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by Rev. Dr. David R. Mains
Text: Revelation 1:1-20 
Subject: Those strange apocalyptic writings.
Desired Response: Need to explore them.
How To: 10 guidelines to help. 7 passages to read from
Daniel and Revelation.
How Long: One week of assignments in the Journal.
Sermon in a Sentence: To understand the breadth of God’s Word, we need to explore “those strange apocalyptic writings.”
In spite of predictions by some that books will become a thing of the past, they continue to sell very well. In fact, go to Borders, Barnes & Noble, B. Dalton, Kroch’s and Brentano’s (use bookstores in your area), and there are so many choices that you have to know at least a little about how books are categorized or you’ll be overwhelmed.
To be quite basic, there’s a difference between fiction and nonfiction. And you won’t find children’s books mixed in with those for adult readers. Histories and sports volumes aren’t intermingled. There’s a separate travel section and also one for religions, which has its own obvious divisions, much like there are many different kinds of books about cooking. In short, to find a volume that appeals to you, you want to at least head in a certain general direction.
The best-selling book of all times is a little like this, in that it divides into various sections. These aren’t labeled romance, humor and military. The Bible does contain certain passages about romance and war, and there are a few rather humorous verses, but basically the Bible is about spiritual matters.
Within this broad topic, however, it too has distinct divisions. For example, there’s what’s called the Old Testament and the New Testament, the former being about events prior to the appearance of the long-awaited Jewish messiah. That word “messiah” is Hebrew, and it means “the anointed of God.” The same word in the Greek language is “Christ.” The actual name of this Christ, or this messiah, the anointed of God, is then revealed in the New Testament to be Jesus, from Nazareth in Galilee.
The Old Testament divides into three major sections – history, poetry and prophecy.
The first 17 books are all Jewish histories. That’s Genesis all the way through the book of Esther.
Next, there are five books of Jewish poetry – Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Solomon. (graphic) When we hear the word “poetry”, most of us think of rhyming words. Hebrew poetry, however, is more parallelism, or the repetition of similar ideas. An example would be the psalms, which we would probably call written prayers that, unlike the way we pray, repeat each idea twice. My point is, the psalms certainly don’t read like the earlier books of history, and shouldn’t be expected to be studied in the same way.
The last of the three major Old Testament divisions is prophecy. Once again, these account for 17 books, starting with Isaiah and continuing through to Malachi. (graphic) Given a chance, you would probably rename this grouping “sermons,” and that’s helpful because we tend to think of prophets as individuals who predict the future. Some of these Old Testament preachers did, but as a group they were more forth-tellers, “Thus sayeth the Lord,” than they were foretellers.
Once again, you don’t listen to a sermon with the same set of expectations as you would when attending a history lesson about a nation’s kings. Hearing the works of a poet would also change the way you listened to them being read. So these three divisions – history, poetry and prophecy – set off the kinds of written material found in the Old Testament.
The New Testament also has three basic divisions. The first five New Testament books are history, with the first four being a special kind. They’re short biographies about Jesus. Book number five is Acts, which is the history of the early church.
Next in the New Testament is what normal people would call letters … correspondence … snail mail. Bible scholars refer to these as epistles. They’re written by different authors, the main one being Paul, and his all come first. They start with his letters to churches – Rome, Corinth, Galatia, and so on. Then to individuals – Timothy, Titus and Philemon. After that come letters from other important New Testament leaders like Peter and John.
Following these letters there is one more book. It’s markedly different from the others. We call it Revelation … the Revelation of Jesus Christ. Going back to the Greek, it’s “apokalypsis.” We say “apocalypse,” which refers to writings that unveil truths lying beyond one’s normal way of knowing. So this apocalypse, or Revelation, reveals the true meaning of world events and their outcome, even the heavenly perspective behind what is to take place.
Apocalyptic materials are a genre unto themselves. They can’t be read like history or letters or sermons or poetry. They belong to a category all their own, and must be approached as such.
Allow me to illustrate. Today we have many literature categories that would not have been familiar to people in earlier times. A case in point would be what we commonly refer to today as detective stories. Film documentaries are another relatively new form of communication, as are Web sites, cartoon strips, horror flicks, sitcoms, Harlequin romances and such.
Now, what I’m saying is that in a reverse sense, the early Christians understood apocalyptic writings much better than we do. We’re not used to them, but they were. These “revelations” came out of desperate times when there was a need for encouragement. However, the writers and readers had to almost communicate in code, because their very lives were in danger.
The truth is, living was extremely difficult for the Jews between when the Old Testament was completed and the coming of the Christ. That’s the period when quite a few of these apocalyptic writers surfaced, which is understandable, because we’re talking somewhere around 450 tough years between Malachi – the last of the biblical prophets – and the birth of Jesus.
To gain an audience, it was common for such writers to take on the name of a famous person from the past such as Enoch, or Elijah, or Ezra. None of these writings from what’s called the Intertestamental Period, or the years between the Testaments, are included in the Protestant Bibles. In the apocryphal books of the Roman Catholic Bible, one is apocalyptic in nature. It’s called 2nd Esdras.
Now it’s fair to say that all apocalyptic writers model their work in one way or another on the prophet Daniel. He is the prototype. Others borrow his themes and symbols. Restated, you can’t really grasp their messages without at least a working knowledge of Daniel’s writings. That’s true when looking at Revelation as well.
“Why all this background?”, you may be wondering. “What you’re saying sounds more like a lecture for a Bible college or seminary class than it does a Sunday-morning sermon.”
Well, here’s the point. To understand the breadth of God’s Word, we need to explore “these strange apocalyptic writings.” Not the ones outside of Scripture. What I said was that this was necessary to understand the breadth of God’s Word. Shall I say that again? To understand the breadth of God’s Word, we need to explore “these strange apocalyptic writings.” The ones that are in our Bible.
Today marks the start of what we’re calling a 50-Day Spiritual Adventure titled The Remarkable Revelation. This is Sunday One of Eight that will bracket the seven weeks in between. Seven weeks of seven days equals 49 days. Add one extra Sunday and you have the 50 days of this Spiritual Adventure.
According to the dictionary, an adventure is a hazardous or exciting experience. So we’re not going on a religious pleasure cruise. In my mind, this is a time set aside for accelerated, measurable and lasting spiritual growth. That’s what will mark your life if you participate fully. Just listening to a sermon once a week isn’t going to do it for you.
Each day of this time set aside for life-transforming changes, adventure participants have special work to do. This week I want you to start to familiarize yourself with some rather difficult chapters in Scripture. There are seven of them, to be exact … three chapters in Revelation, and four chapters out of Daniel.
End of Short Preview for Sermon #1 | 
