02: Revelation Outline

A Study of Revelation

David Brandt Berg

1981-04-01

You’ll find the book of Revelation is divided into three divisions of seven chapters each—plus one. The book has 22 chapters, and the 21 chapters have three divisions of seven chapters each, plus a glorious and beautiful 22nd chapter about heaven that’s in a class all by itself.

Each group of chapters, each seven of chapters, has to do with a different subject, and I’m just giving you a general overall title or subject matter for each of these. The first seven chapters are the introduction to the real nitty-gritty of the book, a general introduction to the endtime, because the first seven chapters cover the entire history of man from John’s day, the man who got this revelation from the Lord.—The apostle John, John the Beloved, John the Revelator, the author of the Gospel of John, that great old warrior of the faith, that dear old saint of God who lived to the nineties and was getting this revelation on the Island of Patmos as an exile.

The Romans had tried to kill him, boil him in oil and so on, but he wouldn’t boil, so they sent him to the Island of Patmos. They tried to get him away where he couldn’t do any damage, where he couldn’t reach any people, where there weren’t any people to preach his gospel of love to, there weren’t any people he could subvert with this underground Gospel that threatened to destroy the Roman Empire.

So he just sat down and got a book from the Lord which not only reached a handful of farmers on the Isle of Patmos, but all of Asia and all of Europe and all of Africa, and finally the whole world, and has been read by billions of people.

The Romans exiled him to the Isle of Patmos to try to keep his mouth shut and to try to keep his message away from the people, but in so doing they just helped the plan of God, and he was better able to listen to God and get these marvelous revelations. And here we are 2000 years later, studying the words that he received on that island which have spread around the world for 2000 years.

When the Devil tries to shut up the prophets of God, if you just give him enough rope, he’ll hang himself! They thought they were banishing John, exiling him to a place where he couldn’t preach anymore, but God gave him such a revelation there that he’s never stopped preaching since.

His mouth has been opened in this book ever since. He’s kept preaching his gospel of this Revelation ever since. We’ll get into the word-by-word, verse-by-verse, chapter-by-chapter study a little bit later; first we’re trying to give you a general synopsis. That’s a Greek word which literally means a bird’s-eye view of the whole book.

So the first seven chapters is a sort of review or a synopsis of the history of man from John’s day to the end.

In the second seven chapters, instead of just flying across the whole history of man for the past 2000 years, (which he was predicting in these first seven chapters, and it’s all been fulfilled or is being fulfilled)—we circle around and we fly a little bit closer to the endtime, the very end of these 2000 years of history which John in predicting by the Spirit of God.

In the first seven chapters, we also have what are known as the seven seals. The Lord Himself, the Lamb, receives this book of seven seals, a scroll with seven seals. He breaks open each seal and as He does, a different period of history happens, a different event in history occurs, and we’ll study that in detail later.

We find the second seven chapters, from the eighth through the fourteenth, have to do with a famous and very important final period of man’s history known as the reign of the Antichrist and the Great Tribulation period, and it ends with the marvelous coming of Christ and the Rapture of His saints in chapter 14. In the second seven chapters are the seven great Trumpets of Tribulation, the Tribulation Trumpets of the second seven chapters, and all the terrible things that happen during the Great Tribulation period.

Finally the third seven chapters, chapter 15 through 21 plus 22, is a terrible picture, as well as a beautiful picture of the endtime. First has to come the bad news and then comes the good news, because the worse it gets, the better it’s going to get. And the sooner it gets worse, the sooner it’s going to get better.

So in those last seven chapters, plus one, we find a detailed description of this end period, including some more details about the wrath of God and the great destruction of Babylon, the world system, and the final great Battle of Armageddon in which the forces of God fight against the forces of Satan and defeat him and his Antichrist Devil-man and his False Prophet and his whole kingdom. They gain a glorious victory as Jesus comes back again, this time with His followers on great white horses to charge through the skies to conquer the forces of the Enemy, to set up His kingdom here on earth.

This is followed by the marvelous, beautiful, heavenly kingdom of Jesus Christ on earth, heaven on earth, called the Millennium because it lasts a thousand years on the earth as it should have been, like the Garden of Eden restored again. No more pollution, no more evil curse, and almost no more death. If anybody dies at even a hundred years of age they’ll think he’s just a child (Isaiah 65:20). People will be long-lived like they were before the Flood, when they lived to be nearly a thousand years of age. People will live again like that during the Millennium.

These people are the ones who have managed to survive the wrath of God. He’s merciful enough to let them survive it, and they live through the Battle of Armageddon. The Lord had mercy, and the survivors are going to live on into the Millennium, that thousand-year period at the end.

We will then be in our spiritual, supernatural, heavenly bodies. We won’t even need “Star Trek” transporters or spaceships, and thank God there won’t be any “Star Wars.” Because right there in the middle of the Antichrist’s reign there’s a big star war in which Satan is cast out of heaven with all his angels. This is what starts the Tribulation as he possesses this Devil-man Antichrist.

After it’s all over, after the wrath of God and the Battle of Armageddon, before which we were caught up to be with Jesus in the air and the great Marriage Supper of the Lamb, we’re going to return with Jesus to conquer the earth and set up the kingdom of Jesus Christ for a thousand years over the unsaved who remain, those who survive the Tribulation, the wrath of God, and the Battle of Armageddon.

They must be pretty tough or they must live a pretty charmed life, or the Lord must be extra merciful to them for them to live through all that. But if they didn’t, there wouldn’t be anybody left but us Christians, the saved. There wouldn’t be any of the world to rule over and to teach and train and show how the world should have been and how it should have been run, to be an example to the universe of what kind of government man could have had if he’d just obeyed God and if Adam hadn’t disobeyed and eaten of that tree that God told him not to.

So this book carries us right on then through that great Millennial period and the final war of all, the Battle of Gog and Magog when Satan is loosed out of the pit of hell for just a little while to again go out and deceive the wicked people of the earth, the unbelievers, just to show that even though mercy be showed unto the wicked, yet they will not learn righteousness.

Even after a thousand-year reign of Jesus Christ in person with His followers as His personal officers and police and guardian angels, they will again rebel against the Lord Jesus Christ and His church, His people ruling the earth, and God will have to destroy them all by fire, including the earth itself and the heavens, the atmospheric heavens.

They’ll roll away in a big ball of fire like a scroll, and the earth will be completely burned up, burned over. Not the ball itself; it’ll remain. God didn’t intend to let the earth itself be destroyed, not the planet but the surface of the earth, in order to purify it, to wipe out all the wicked, wipe out all the pollution, wipe out everything that was bad or evil that still remained during the Millennium because of the wicked, and then He creates a New Heaven and a New Earth.

So that’s how this marvelous book goes. The first seven chapters are a synopsis or a preview of the whole world’s history from the time of John to the end. Second seven chapters, we come in for a close look at the last seven years and the last seven trumpets of the Tribulation period. Third seven chapters, the horrible end of it all, the wrath of God, the Battle of Armageddon, the Millennium, the Battle of Gog and Magog for a while, and then a New Heaven and a New Earth wherein dwelleth righteousness only (2 Peter 3:13). Those are the three sevens of chapters of the book of Revelation.

Here’s a brief rundown of the contents of each chapter:

Chapter 1: The introduction to things shortly to come to pass.

Chapters 2 and 3: Letters to the churches, churches that existed in that day, in Asia, as well as types of churches to come and church periods to come.

Chapters 4 and 5: The throne scene, with the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, upon the throne in heaven, who opens the seven-sealed Book of the Future.

Chapter 6: The opening of the first six seals and a preview of the whole contents of history to the end.

Chapter 7: The sealing of the saints, the sparing and sealing and protection of the final saints before the Tribulation days, the endtime.

Chapters 8 and 9: The Tribulation Trumpets, the seven great trumpets of the Tribulation, and the angels of God are warned only to hurt the unsealed, only to wreak the judgments of God upon those who do not have the seal of God in their foreheads but have taken the seal of the Antichrist instead, the Mark of the Beast.

Chapter 10 is a grand announcement that the end is coming soon.

Chapter 11: The two witnesses of the Tribulation and their rapture, some of the details of the endtime, and of the Tribulation.

Chapter 12: The church in Tribulation; the dragon wars with the church.

Chapter 13: The Great Red Beast of Tribulation, the Antichrist government.

Chapter 14: The Rapture of the Church, God’s children, and the wrath of God after the Gospel has been preached in all the world and the destruction of Babylon, the great world system.

Chapters 15–16: The wrath of God, with the angels of wrath and the vials of wrath.

Chapter 17: The picture of Babylon and the Beast, the world system and its worship of materialism and its beastly government of the Antichrist and the Devil himself.

Chapter 18: The destruction of Babylon in one hour. The great world commercial system, the great world materialistic system, is going to be destroyed in one hour according to the Word of God, in one day and one hour of that day. The merchants of the rest of the earth are going to stand afar off in ships and lament and weep over the destruction of all their treasures.

Chapter 19: Armageddon, that final great battle of this time period of earth and the marvelous victory of Jesus Christ over Satan and his Devil-man and his False Prophet.

Chapter 20: The Millennium and the Battle of Gog and Magog following it, in which Satan and all of his hosts and the wicked are wiped out.

Chapters 21 and 22: These are really the only detailed specific description in the whole Bible of what heaven is like, and to your surprise, you find out that heaven is on earth—a new earth, even more beautiful than the first one. There will be no more sea; there will be beautiful rolling green pasture and farmlands and trees and flowers, and no deadly insects or reptiles or pests or vipers or anything that would hurt in the whole creation. Nothing deadly, nothing harmful; everything beautiful, no Curse.

Copyright © 1981 The Family International.