STOP Freaking Out: They Taught You The Apocalypse Wrong!

You have probably been taught Revelation the wrong way your entire life. Someone handed you years ago a timeline, they gave you a chart, or maybe mapped out the tribulation, and you walked away more confused and more scared than when you started. And it all comes down to a misunderstanding of one word. One Greek word in the very first verse of the entire book changes how we read the book from here on. If Revelation has ever been confusing to you, you've missed the point. If you've ever been scared of Revelation, you've missed the point. If you've ever given up on the book, you've missed the point. By the time we're done today, this book is going to stop feeling like a horror movie and start feeling like a message that applies to your life today. Welcome back to Get Into the Word. My name is Robbie Gallaty, and I wanna thank you for your support for our channel. It's really amazing and encouraging to hear from you. Each week, many of you have been signing in and writing comments. Thank you for those. If you haven't subscribed to the channel, do me a favor right now and hit that subscribe button. And if it's helped you in any way at the end, would you share it with a friend and like it?

Even leave a comment. I try to answer all of those in the first days of release. The book of Revelation is an interesting book. It opens with these words, Revelation chapter one, verse one. The revelation of Jesus Christ that God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place in 2,000 years from, no, what must soon take place. The key word here is revelation in the original Greek. It's the actual word that means apocalypsis. This is where we get the English word apocalypse. Now, stop and think a moment what happens the moment someone says apocalypse. You start to think of words like explosion, fire, earthquakes, the end of the world, civilization crumbling to its knees. You picture Kevin Bacon or Julia Roberts running from something in the dark. You picture Kirk Cameron from the Left Behind series over here in your mind of the world coming to an end. But here's what the word actually meant in the first century. Are you ready for this? The word revelation means uncover. The word apocalyptus means to reveal. When a first century believer heard the word apocalypsis, they didn't panic. They actually rejoiced. Why? Because they said to themselves, let's go, bring it on. Why?

Because the word literally means God is unveiling something to them. God is going to reveal something to them. He's gonna take the lid off of something that was hidden otherwise. I have two teenage boys, and when they were younger, they used to love playing something called the Oculus Quest. I think they changed the name to MetaQuest now. If you're unfamiliar with this, it is a virtual reality headset. You put on big goggles, and you're immediately transported into a different world. You don't leave the world you're at, but through looking in the goggles, you see things that aren't physically in front of you. It's pretty freaky if you haven't done it. From my perspective, watching them, they look ridiculous. They're waving their hands in the air, they're moving their feet at nothing, seemingly in the distance. But from their perspective, they're in an entirely, completely different reality. That's the closest thing I can give you to what John was doing when he wrote the book of Revelation. He was, in a sense, putting on, don't miss this, a different set of glasses. We'll call them God glasses, to see what was actually happening behind the curtain of present reality. Jesus had allowed him to see in the invisible realm

from the natural, visible realm. Here's a better way to think about it. Go back to Christmas morning for a moment. Mom and dad stayed up till 2 a.m., trying to wrap presents the previous night before placing them under the tree for you. Your kids come down and start shaking boxes, counting them, comparing sizes. At least that's what my sister and I did. The suspense is almost unbearable. And then the bows of the presents are ripped off. The wrapping paper hits the floor. The boxes are torn open. And what was inside is what, finally, revealed. That is an apocalypse. It's not doom or gloom. It's not destruction. It's a revealing of what was already there to begin with, but you weren't able to see it with regular glasses. You had to put on the God glasses. So here's what I need you to hear. Revelation is not a book about destruction. I mean, there has destruction in it and things that are going to be a demise and things that are going to fall apart, of course, but it's a book about disclosure. It's the apocalypse of Jesus Christ by Jesus Christ about Jesus Christ. It's revealing the kingdom. that is hidden to the natural eyes of unbelievers.

And once you see that coming close, you cannot go back to reading the book the old way. Let me show you what changes when you see this. Let's look at John, what he's saying in Revelation 1, verse 3 and following. Watch what he says. Blessed is the one who reads this prophecy or reads aloud the words of this prophecy. And blessed are those who hear the words of this prophecy and keep what is written in it because the time is 2,000 years from here. Is that what it says? No, I'm making a joke because you have to make a joke at times. You'll cry from some of the things you see online. The time is near. There is a blessing attached to reading this book. So let me ask you some diagnostic questions to help you navigate the book before we really get into it. When you read Revelation personally, are you consumed with pinpointing the exact timeline of the tribulation? If so, you've missed the point. Are you obsessed with the battle of Armageddon and who's the armies that are fighting and what they represent? If you did, you missed the point. Are you fixated almost entirely with predicting dates of Christ's return? When is Jesus going to come back?

It's one of my favorites. I found this, an original copy. 88 reasons why the rapture will be in 1988. And if that wasn't right, and I think he missed it, Edgar Wisnett, he actually came out with another book, The Rapture Report. I love what he did here. He just decided to put all the dates, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92. If you've done that up to this point, you're not alone. I was there with you. I feel your pain. But that is exactly how I used to read the book. I remember being disillusioned when I first learned this. I thought, wow, this can't be right. I had been told in church publicly through the years that Revelation was about this or that. I even went to seminary and learned some of these things. But as my anxiety increased, starting to study the book and realizing, man, I'm in trouble here. I'm about to preach this book. I went to my wife, Candy, six months into my preparation. And I said, babe, I don't think I can preach this book. She said, why? I said, my entire perspective of everything that I've been taught is different.

Her response to me really helped me. She said, Robbie, if that's what the book says and you believe that, you need to share it with conviction to our people, even if it's different from everything you've been taught. And I'm so glad I did. Did people leave my church over this new perspective? Sure, they did. Some people left. But those were minimal in comparison to the people who stood in line week after week with tears in their eyes, saying words like, Pastor Robbie, for the first time, I'm not scared of God anymore. I'm not scared of the end times or even the Bible itself. Friends, if you get nothing else, get this right now. Revelation is a discipleship manual. If you go into it believing it's an encouragement for believers who are being persecuted for their faith, then you've found the point. If you read it and receive hope to press on in spite of difficulty, you found the point. If you read it and fall to your knees in worship because now you understand more deeply who Jesus Christ is, then you've found the point. The first century believers in Asia Minor were surrounded every single day

by images of Rome's power, statues, false gods, temples, festivals, architecture that screamed one message. Rome is in control. Every stone, every coin they used, every ritual said the same thing. Caesar is Lord. John writes back from the island of Patmos and he says something different. He says, let me show you what it looks like from heaven's perspective. Let me give you counter images. Let me pull the curtain back so you can really see what is behind the scenes. Apocalyptic literature doesn't scare you. It actually steadies you. It encourages you to endure your trials in light of the present and future unseen realities of this world. What does this have to do with my own present day life? Well, I'm glad you asked. Once you put on, listen to me, once you put on God's glasses, you start seeing the world through heaven's perspective and you start looking at things entirely different. You look at your trials different. You look at circumstances different. The news looks different. And here's what I want you to see next. Because the images John uses in Revelation weren't random, every single one of them was sending a specific message

to a specific audience. And if we don't understand that, we'll keep misreading Revelation wrong forever. Revelation is a wild book on the surface. You've got a man in a white robe with a face shining like the sun and fire coming out of his eyes. Four horsemen trampling the earth. You learn about sea beasts with 10 horns and seven heads. A red dragon. a slain lamb with seven eyes and seven horns, a woman clothed with the sun. And if you come to these images with a 21st century Western eyesight, then you've completely missed the point. You're completely lost in the book, like some of you have been for your entire Christian life. But here's the genius of what John did. You're gonna love this. Apocalyptic images go beyond the intellect. They go beyond the mind. They go straight past to the imagination and into your emotions. Images are memorable, and that's why the Hebrew culture used them. They didn't use bullet points and treatises and theological explanations. They used images. Friends, this is why Jesus taught in parables the way he did.

Jesus didn't hand out an outline or give a bullet point explanation of the kingdom of heaven. Jesus didn't even write a book. He didn't write a theological treatise. He told stories. And stories lodged themselves into the minds of us here as then and to the listeners today for the rest of our lives. I want us to play a game for a moment. Do me a favor and close your eyes for just a second. Not if you're driving, so don't do that. But if you're not driving, close your eyes. I'm going to describe something to you, and I want you to imagine it, visualize it in your mind. Close your eyes. Picture what I say. An older man, he's standing there with a stern look on his face, a white hat with stars on it. He has a fiery red tie. His right hand like a dagger pointed straight at you. And his message is simple. We need you. Who did you just see? Open your eyes. What you saw was Uncle Sam. You didn't need me to tell you that. The image did the work for you. Here's another one.

Close your eyes for a moment. Picture a comet streaking toward earth, a blue and red flaming tail behind it. Inside, a double-sided dagger surrounded by three different stars. If you're from Middle Tennessee, you know exactly what I'm describing. It's the Tennessee Titans logo. Tighten up for those Titans fans. Now, someone from first century Rome would have had no idea what any of those images were. And guess what? We have no idea what the images back then meant. Why? Because we don't know the culture. That's why we have to learn what the symbolism means for the people that it was written to. And that's exactly what John is doing in Revelation. Friends, John is not writing gibberish. He's writing in a code, a code that every believer in the seven churches of Asia Minor understood completely. You see, the symbols he used came directly from the Old Testament. Daniel, Ezekiel, Isaiah, Zechariah. I said this before, but in the 404 verses of Revelation, there are over 500 references to the Old Testament. That's more than one reference per verse. These weren't new ideas. They were a language his audience already spoke.

So here's what I want you to walk away with today. I want you to understand Revelation is not a horror movie. Some people in the comments said, I didn't think of it like that to begin with. Well, you're in the minority. It's not a doomsday calendar. It's not an ancient newspaper with tomorrow's headlines. Revelation is a revelation, a curtain that's being pulled back, an invitation to see the world the way Jesus sees it. The book of Revelation contrasts the kingdom of the world with the kingdom of heaven, and here's the good news. If you're in the kingdom of heaven, you don't have to worry about anything. Why? Because we already know how the story ends. Our King Jesus, amen, conquered death, hell, Satan, demons, and the grave, and we win in the end. Those first century believers were being thrown to the lions. They were being burned at the stakes. They're being exiled to islands for their faith, and John writes to them, and he says, listen, do not be afraid. Look past what your eyes are afraid of. Look past what you can see in the visual realm. Look to the one who is on the throne, not Caesar as Lord, but Jesus as Lord. Put on God's glasses and see what's really there. King Jesus is ruling and reigning, and we win in the end,

and the same invitation is extended to you today. If you've never surrendered your life to Jesus Christ, here's what I want you to know. When you do that, he doesn't judge you for your past. He forgives it. He meets you where you are, but he doesn't leave you where you were. He pulls back the curtain of reality into a new reality, and he welcomes you into his kingdom, and in that kingdom, you never have to be afraid of the word apocalypse ever again. Why? Because you know it always means good news. If this video has helped you see something new in God's word, please do me a favor and like the video, share it with someone who needs it. Again, if you haven't subscribed to the channel, please do so, you don't wanna miss. Another episode, we are just getting started. There's so much more to get into. Until next time, get into the word until the word gets into you.