Stop Reading Revelation WRONG.... Like I Did For Years

Every single time a war breaks out in the Middle East, the book of Revelation shoots to the top of your YouTube algorithm. Iran fires missiles at Israel, America moves in with warships in the region, and suddenly, everybody's pastor, everybody's uncle, everybody's coworker becomes an end times expert. People start tagging passages, circling dates on a calendar, cross-referencing news headlines with chapter and verse from the Bible, fully convinced that they're able to crack the code finally for the first time. But here's what nobody tells you. The reason most people miss the entire point of Revelation isn't because they haven't studied the book enough. It's actually because they're using the wrong decoder to understand it. If there's only one video you're gonna watch in this entire series on the book of Revelation, this is the one. I'm gonna show you how to understand the book of Revelation and it's a secret that's been hidden in plain sight for 2,000 years, and once you see it, once you understand it, you will never read the book the same way again. In fact, you will never read the Bible the same way again. So stick with me to the end, this is gonna be a good one. So stick with me to the end, this is gonna be a good one. Welcome back to Get Into the Word.

My name is Robby Galati. Let me encourage you, if you haven't subscribed to the channel, do so right now. 85% of those who watch the video like yourself are not subscribed to the channel. This is a series you wanna lock in for as we navigate through the entire book of Revelation. Now let me just tell you up front, I need to be up front with you. I studied for two years before preaching through the book. I spent one whole year in deep research. I listened to three different lecture series, countless debates and interviews, and then finally studying over 15 books cover to cover and then preaching through the entire book verse by verse over the course of a year. If you're interested in going through those messages, I will leave a link below and you can look at particular passages or look up particular topics. I wanna tell you something else. I went into that study the same way many of you approach Revelation right now. I'm assuming if you're watching this, you're like I was, pre-tribulation, pre-millennial, dispensational. Now, for some of you, you're like, I don't even know what those terms even mean. Honestly, if you don't, you're probably in better shape. You don't have to unlearn a lot of the things that I had to unlearn

because as I put this book back into the first century context that it was written, everything started to change, and I wanna take you on that journey, but I need you to stay with me through this entire series. The first few videos that I lay out will set the foundation for all of the videos to come, so do not skip ahead. I know you're gonna want to, but stay with me. Let me begin by taking you back to a movie I grew up loving as a child, A Christmas Story. How many people remember Ralphie? Ralphie was the young boy who just wanted a Red Ryder BB gun. You remember the leg lamp on the table, but there's one scene that I think about that really helps us with the book of Revelation. Ralphie joins the Little Orphan Annie Secret Society fan club. Do you remember this? He gets a decoder in the mail. He's all excited. He runs into his room, locks the door, spins the dial, and decodes the secret message, and after a long buildup, all the anticipation, the drum roll, the message says, quote, "'Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.'" Do you remember that? It's a commercial. He was duped by a crummy commercial.

Now, here's the point. If you try to decode Revelation without the right glossary of terms or even misunderstanding the concepts, you're gonna end up in a very different place than John intended, and most Western Christians today are doing that exact thing, and they don't even know it. They're reading Revelation with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, or worse, the Bible in one hand and their Twitter feed in the other. They're looking for Iran. They're looking for Russia. They're trying to find China. They're looking for Gog and Magog. They're trying to find some global reset or a modern-day Antichrist figure, and they're coming to conclusions that would have been completely unrecognizable to the very people John wrote the book to. Remember this, and this is what you have to get. Revelation made complete sense to the first-century Christians who heard it. Let me say that again. Revelation made complete and perfect sense to the first-century Christians who heard it. How do I know that? Because every book before that did the same. John's audience, you have to remember, they weren't seminary professors.

They weren't theologians. They didn't have access to flip charts or overhead projectors or end times outlines. They were working class men and women like you and me in Asia Minor, modern day Turkey. They were living under Roman imperial persecution. They were meeting in secret in underground house churches. They were getting their teeth kicked in from persecution. They were watching their neighbors arrested for refusing to say Caesar is Lord. You see, they didn't need a book full of 21st century American geopolitical speculation. It's the last thing they needed. They needed encouragement. They needed to stay in the game, to not throw in the towel during the most brutal season of their lives. And this, my friends, is the point of Revelation. Revelation is not a scary book. It's an encouraging one for Christians. I even had someone stand in line after church one Sunday when I started preaching through the book. And they said, my dad was a pastor. I grew up in a pastor's home. My dad told me at a young age, you can read any book in your Bible. Stay away from Revelation. That will scare you. Really? Is that really what God intended

when he wrote this letter or gave this letter through John? Friends, when John wrote this letter, the people understood it perfectly. Not because they were smarter than us. No, it's very different. They had the right decoder to understand the message. So I know what you're thinking. What is the decoder? Well, it's not a ring you order from a fan club. It's not a flip chart with a timeline. It's something you already have access to. And I think it's gonna blow your mind when you see it because it thoroughly unlocks the book to you. The Old Testament is the decoder ring for the book of Revelation. And here's the evidence. And you need to follow me on this because the numbers alone are stunning. There are more than 500 Old Testament references or allusions in the 404 verses of the book of Revelation. Let me say it again. 500 or more allusions or references in 404 verses in the book of Revelation. That is more than one per verse. The book of Revelation is soaked. It's saturated in the Hebrew scriptures. The judgments and the plagues in the book of Revelation, where are they from? Well, they were borrowed directly from the Exodus account. The locusts, the blood, frogs, hail, fire.

You see, every Jewish believer who heard those words immediately knew what they meant because they understood the story of Moses and heard it their entire lives. The visions that John sees, well, the four living creatures, the wheels, the heavenly throne. You cannot miss those because they're from Ezekiel's vision in chapters one through 10. What about the beast that's rising from the sea? Well, that imagery comes straight out of the book of Daniel chapter seven. The new Jerusalem descending from heaven, well, that's from Ezekiel chapters 40 through 48 in his detailed vision where he's going to restore the temple. God's gonna restore the city. God's gonna have a river flowing from the sanctuary. What about this one, Robbie? The woman, the child, and the dragon in Revelation 12. That passage has confused Bible readers for centuries, but when you understand what the Bible writer is doing, he's actually bringing you back to Matthew chapter two to read the story of Herod slaughtering the children while Mary and Joseph flee to Egypt, and it starts to click. The woman is Israel, the child is Jesus, and the dragon that's trying to destroy him, it's the same one who's been in the story since the beginning of time.

Well, what about Balaam? He shows up in Revelation. Jezebel, she makes an appearance. Babylon comes back again, and then we see the tree of life from Genesis two making a big appearance in Revelation chapter 22. The last book of the Bible completes what the first book of the Bible started. Friends, this is not a coincidence. This is the architecture of the book. Now, here's the interpretive shift that changes everything, and I want you to really see this one. Don't miss this. Modern Christians read Revelation with their eyes on the future. First century Christians read Revelation with their eyes on the past, and they ask a different question. You see, when we open the book, we ask what happens next. Don't miss this. Is this Iran? Is this China? Is this a Middle Eastern country? Where does this fit in my present day timeline? The first century Christian, or the first century believer, asked a very different question. They asked, where have we seen this before? You see, that's one shift, past versus future.

that changes every interpretation you've ever made about this book. Every time tensions escalate in the Middle East, our inboxes fill up. My social media account fills up. People in the church today start pulling out flip charts and overhead projectors. I don't know if people still use those, but you remember those, do you? We hear about timelines and charts and color-coded dispensations. Books titled by the names of the Josiah Manifesto, the dragon's prophecy, signs and harbingers, they fly off the shelf. People read them. I remember years ago at my previous church, a man walked up to me after service one Sunday. I'm not making fun of this man because I think he had a heart for the Lord, but he said, pastor, the rapture could happen any day now. I said, oh, really? He said, did you know, I'm not making this up. He said, did you know a sycamore tree has been planted at the site of the Twin Towers? And that is God sending us a warning. He then handed me a stack of papers this thick. Now, I'm not mocking this man at all. I think he genuinely loved the Lord, but I have to ask the honest question. Is that how the followers of Jesus

were meant to read this book? Is that what John intended when he wrote the book of Revelation? Here's the line I want you to get if you get nothing else from this video, get this line. The Bible was written for us, but it was not written to us. The Bible was written for us. It was not written to us. The Bible is applied to every generation. Anybody can pick the Bible up, you and me, and apply it to our lives. But to understand any book of the Bible, we have to go back to its original context. We have to understand the original audience, and we have to ask first, what did it mean to them first? And when you do that, especially with the book of Revelation, you go back to the first century, here's what you find. John wasn't writing a prophecy chart. I know that's surprising. He was writing a discipleship manual for believers who were being tempted to quit. He was pulling the curtain back on the unseen realm of reality, the throne room of God, the Lamb who holds all authority, so that persecuted believers who were getting their teeth kicked in could look at their present situation

and say, we know how it ends. We don't have to be afraid. Now, follow me here on this part because I don't want you to miss this. When the disciples asked Jesus for a timeline about the end, do you remember what he said to them? Acts chapter one, verse six, they said, Lord, are you restoring the kingdom at this time? Is this the beginning of the end? And Jesus said, it is not for you to know the times or the periods that the Father has set by his own authority. But as for you, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth. Now, don't miss this. Jesus didn't say, here's the timeline, keep watching. He said, here's your assignment, go make disciples. You see, so many Christians are so consumed with the implications of Jesus' second coming that they completely miss the impact of his first. Jesus came to establish his kingdom through us while we're here today. And many of us are preoccupied with getting out of earth into heaven when God is trying to bring heaven to earth through you and me today. Don't you believe that? Don't you understand that? We have to get this. Look at the Lord's Prayer.

Remember what Jesus said in the Lord's Prayer. Let's look at Matthew 6, 9. Jesus teaches his disciples how to pray and embedded in the prayer is an insight about the kingdom. He says, our Father in heaven, your name be honored as holy. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, one day in the future after the rapture. Is that what he says? One day down the road in the millennial reign. No, what is he saying? Right now, today. Not after the rapture, not after the millennium, now, not tomorrow. Jesus is using here something fascinating. It's a literary technique in Hebrew, the language uses this, called a parallelism. A parallelism is where two lines of a verse are synonymous with one another. Two ideas, in a sense, are connected. I'll show you an example of this. Psalm 119 is a perfect example of this. Psalm 119, 105. And this is a very familiar passage to you. It says, your word is a lamp for my feet and a what? Light to my path. Lamp and light, if you look at the connection, are synonymous. Feet and path are synonymous.

Both lines, in a sense, are saying the same thing. Two different ways saying the same thing. The same structure is used in the Lord's Prayer. If you go back, here's what God's saying. Heaven and earth are connected. The kingdom of God and the will of God are connected. Jesus is saying, in a sense, when the kingdom's citizens on earth, you and me, believers, obey the will of God in our lives or trust the Lord and follow him, the kingdom of heaven comes on earth. When you and I submit to God's rule and reign over our lives, God begins to reign in our lives. When we pray, your kingdom come, we're not just asking God to perform redemptive acts in our midst right now, what we're asking God to do is to break into our lives and take control, to cause the blind to see, the lost to be saved, the lost to be found, and to use us in the process. You see, Jesus inaugurated the kingdom when he died on the cross and he rose from the dead. That's when the kingdom was inaugurated. Now, he will fully establish it when he comes back a second time, but in between those two moments, that's where you and I are today. And we're not supposed to be sitting down with our hands wringing together, waiting for a sycamore tree to be planted or a prophecy chart to collect dust

or wasting our life waiting for Jesus to return or the shoe to drop. No, we have a mission to make disciples in the meantime. So here's the question I wanna leave you with today. It's not how does it all finish? The question is, how are you going to finish? Don't be so consumed with how it all ends that you neglect what you're supposed to be doing right now. God has placed you in this moment in history, in the city you live in, in the exact neighborhood you reside in, in the exact workplace you have a job at for a reason. You see, the kingdom doesn't come after you leave. The kingdom comes through you while you're here on earth today. In the next video, I'm going to give you the full glossary of terms that you need to understand in order to understand the entire book of Revelation. And once you see it, it will take away completely the fear you've had over this book. And it will replace fear with perfect clarity. And after clarity will come courage. And that's what Revelation was always meant to produce. Not anxiety, not speculation, courage to stay faithful and keep going. Friends, if you've never given your life to Jesus Christ, I want you to know the kingdom has been building for 2,000 years and it isn't closed.

It's not too late. When you surrender your life to him, he doesn't just forgive your past. He gives you a role in the greatest mission in human history. And the question is, will you take it? If this video has helped you see something new in God's word, do me a favor. Would you share it with someone? Would you hit that like button that really helps us out? And if you haven't subscribed, shame on you. No, I'm playing. Seriously, subscribe to the channel. It really helps us get the word out and it keeps you from missing anything in the days ahead. Until next time, get into the word until the word gets into you.