The Bible starts off with a brace of teaching stories about how God began the world, how things went wrong and what the consequences were for life in our confusing, strife-torn world, and so prepare the ground for the unfolding story of what God is doing about it.
With Abraham, the story of God's long job with mankind really begins. Abraham was a man with whom God could communicate; so was his son Isaac, and his son Jacob. Jacob had twelve sons (the Patriarchs), each of whose families grew in time to become a tribe (the Twelve Tribes of Israel). While Jacob was still alive and the families were small, famine fetched them down to Egypt where they settled in the plain of Goshen. There "they were fruitful and increased abundantly." (Ex. 1:7) So the nation Israel began.
The world of the Old Testament took in Egypt in the south, Palestine in the middle (known as Canaan then), and in the north the strip of country that bends round north, east and south from the top of Canaan to the Persian Gulf. The communities of those times were all agricultural and their need of water dictated their settlement along the river banks. The big rivers were the Nile in the South and the Tigris-Euphrates in the North (the "Fertile Crescent"); they supported the big populations. In these two big 'population blobs' the empires of Bible times rose and fell: in the south Egypt, in the north Syria, Assyria, Babylon and Persia. (See Map)
In between ran the Jordan, a little river, supporting a population correspondingly small. Palestine was like a narrow corridor between the sea to the west and the desert to the east, which linked the two big population blobs.
Its importance in history was out of all proportion to its size. Whenever Egypt in the south grew strong, it had a crack at the wealthy empires in the north; whenever the empires in the north grew strong they had a crack at Egypt in the south. In the process the armies marched up and down the Canaan corridor. Poor Palestine was like a door mat for ever being trampled by the big boys north and south. When there was a war on, the cluster of little kingdoms in the corridor had to try and guess which was likely to win, and make friends with them so their armies would do as little damage as possible on the way through. Jewish statesmen (of whom Isaiah was one) had an unenviable task. In times of peace, of course, traders took their camel caravans up and down the corridor between the big empires. One way and another the little Jewish kingdom did not enjoy much privacy.
We left the twelve tribes of Israel down in Egypt. There, in time, they fell into slavery serving the Pharaoh as a slave labour force in his building projects. Moses became their liberator. His saga occupies the books of Exodus, Numbers and Deuteronomy (Leviticus is a recipe book, so to speak, for worship.) Under the shadow of great events, Moses led his people out into the desert area of the Sinai Peninsula, there, at Mt Sinai (Horeb) to engage them in a solemn covenant with Yahweh, their God. Eventually (they were a tough mob of desert gypsies, suitably armed by now), they came to the southern borders of their Promised land.
At this point Moses died and Joshua was appointed to lead them in their military campaign to occupy southern Palestine. The story of the spreading conquest occupies the books of Joshua and Judges. Soon they were in danger of losing touch with each other, for each tribe was busy with its own battles, and following Joshua's death no recognised leader was appointed in his place. This was a time when "there was no king in Israel and each man did what was right in his own eyes." Heroes like Gideon and Samson did exploits, but these were local affairs.
The strength of the tribes obviously lay in their unity, but they were falling apart. The man who stopped the rot was Samuel, a sort of priest-cum-prophet-cum-magistrate who went on circuit among the tribes, holding their responsibilities to Yahweh their God before their eyes. Finally he united them under the leadership of their first appointed king, Saul.
Saul proved to be a rather unsatisfactory choice, and before he died, Samuel appointed David to succeed him. David was a born leader - a brave fighter who inspired loyalty - a man of devout religious faith. Following Saul's death and a brief shemozzle with Saul's son Ishbosheth, the tribes rallied to David, reunited, cleaned up any remaining resistance, and established a firm kingdom with Jerusalem as its capital.
When David died, his son Solomon succeeded him. He had a passion for trade, ambitious building schemes and foreign women. Under his leadership the little kingdom achieved a fleeting magnificence. But he forced his people into labour squads and squandered the nation's wealth. When he died, Rehoboam, his son, chose to carry on the same way his father had done, but the people had had enough, and civil war erupted.
It ended with the two sides setting up independent kingdoms: in the south Judah (two tribes, Benjamin and Judah), and in the north Israel (the other ten tribes). Each had its own king thereafter, and each its own capital city - Jerusalem for Judah, Samaria for Israel. Israel's golden age was over. Their story, from Samuel to the break-up of the kingdom, is told in the two books of Samuel and I Kings 1-12. The two kingdoms never reunited. Sometimes they fought each other, with or without help from neighbouring kingdoms; sometimes they joined forces to fight a common foe.
While all this had been going on, empires in the north began to arise one after another, with the result that the two little Jewish kingdoms began to get kicked about as we saw in 'the interruption'.
The history of the two kingdoms is told in the books of Kings, from I Kings 12. The spotlight of attention shifts back and forth from one to the other, each king's accession to power being dated by the year of his rival's reign ... which can make the reading of the books of Kings confusing! The two books of Chronicles repeat most of this history, retold with morals which the priestly school wished to underline.
It is in this period of their history, near enough the eighth century before Jesus was born (i.e. the 700's BC), that the prophets, major and minor, appeared on the scene. Some like Elijah, Amos and Hosea had their ministries in the northern kingdom of Israel; others like Jeremiah and Isaiah, in the southern kingdom of Judah.
North of them both, Syria was the first empire to rise. The two kingdoms united to resist, more or less successfully. A little north and east of Syria, Assyria grew strong, dealt with Syria, and then "came down like a wolf on the fold," and finished off the northern kingdom of Israel. Samaria was captured, the inhabitants of the land carried off into slavery (so that all trace of them is lost), and the country was colonised with foreign immigrants (who became the ancestors of the Samaritans of whom we read in the Gospels).
Then the Babylonian empire arose, conquered Assyria, and set its sights on Egypt. Judah backed the wrong horse, and Jerusalem fell to the armies of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon. He carted off the cream of Judah's population into exile in Babylon, where they spent the best part of seventy years. When the next big empire, the Persian, swallowed up the Babylonians, Cyrus its king adopted what we would call an enlightened colonial policy and packed all the Jews off home, where it was to his advantage that they make the most of the land they loved. Nehemiah was appointed to be their governor, and he rallied the dispirited exiles to rebuild their city of Jerusalem and its Temple.
Another 400 years passed before Jesus was born, and their story is touched on in the Apocrypha. The Persian empire fell before the all-conquering Alexander from Greece, and for a while Judah was a Greek colony. When Alexander died, his empire was divided among his generals of whom one, Ptolemy, took over Egypt and Judah. For most of the third and second centuries B.C. wars were going on all round the Mediterranean basin, until finally the power of Rome began to loom on the horizon. During this period, the Jews enjoyed a short but stormy patch of political independence under the redoubtable Maccabee brothers. But in the end, Rome swallowed everything in its big maw, and when Jesus was born, Judah was one of its provinces - and a rather scruffy and discontented one at that!
So the curtain comes down on Act I and rises on Act II.
This is the story of Jesus, born during the reign of Herod, a puppet Jewish king for the Roman government, and crucified under the Roman Governor Pontius Pilate. As these notes are a mere sketch of history, we note only that Jesus was born, lived, died and rose again all within the brief space of thirty-three years or so. His story occupies the four gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
With the book of the Acts of the Apostles, Luke's sequel to his gospel, the curtain rises on Act III, It opens with the multilingual, multinational send-off to the Gospel which the outpouring of the Holy Spirit inspired on the day of Pentecost, when Jews from all over the Roman Empire were present for the feast in Jerusalem. Two subsequent explosions of persecution blew Christians all over the world. The first, a small one, was the Jewish persecution of Christians in Jerusalem which drove them out of the city; the second was the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. Sick to death of Jewish provocation, the Romans reduced Jerusalem to a shambles in a horrific blood bath, and threw them out of their country. Homeless they remained for nineteen centuries until the creation of the State of Israel in May 1948.
But by the end of the first century the missionary travels of the apostle Paul had founded a church that included Gentiles and was to become universal.
The final book of the Bible, the book of Revelation, was written to encourage Christians in their faith in view of the terrible persecution that was breaking out all over the Roman Empire under the Emperor Domitian. Because it promised the overthrow the Roman Empire it would have been regarded as treasonable stuff if it had been written in plain language, so John (whilst in exile on the island of Patmos) wrote it in a sort of code, built from images drawn mainly from the Old Testament. It is a powerful statement of Christ's reign over the whole of the world's life, which proceeds by means of a blend of judgments and mercies toward His final triumph over all the power of evil when the "kingdoms of this world become the Kingdom of our God and of His Christ."
Having sketched in the panorama of Bible history, we need to get its message.
The Bible begins simply and impressively, "In the beginning God ..." There follow timeless statements of truth in story form of the relations between God, man and the world which must be understood before the play can begin.
• The universe exists because God made it. It belongs to HIM, and it was created to fulfil HIS purpose.
• God Himself is not to be confused with His creation or anything in it. As an architect is not to be found in the buildings he designs but must be met as a person to be known, so God is not to be found in His creation but must be known in personal relationship.
• Man was created with a capacity for such personal relationship with his Maker.
• The point of contact was lost through the committing of the basic sin, which is idolatry. Man chose to seek his whole good, not in the Creator and a personal relationship of trust with Him, but in the creation and what he could get out of it by his own hand. He sought His good out of the garden, not from God. He "worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, Who is the only source of blessedness." (Romans 1:25) He chose "to be as God," determining for himself what was good for him.
• The basic sin leads to disobedience, pride, selfishness, conflict, pain and death. (Rebellious Adam, murderous Cain.)
• The result is a painful mess, and always will be. (The Flood, the Tower of Babel.)
• But God is committed to the task of curing the twist in man's nature, and restoring him to fellowship.
• He does it by absorbing the hurt of mankind's sin in His own pain and offering him the mercy of a new beginning at the heart of the disaster which sin brings about. (God's 'repentance' and the rainbow of promise after the deluge of destruction with the Covenant of promise made to Noah.)
The stage is now set for the play to begin. In all that follows God is to be seen at work. In all the day-to-day events of human life, God is Himself continuously active, like a hidden, underground resistance movement to the power of spreading evil. His influence within the process of history is seen sometimes in judgment, sometimes in mercy. The mysterious blend of both makes the warp and woof of history. History is not merely man's story: it is HIS-story.
We are now shown how, beginning with one man, Abraham, God draws out of human society a group responsive to His word and obedient to His call. As this group grows in conditions of slavery, He gives them a leader, Moses, who, under the shadow of cataclysmic events which disturb the whole order of nature, leads this people out into a period of isolation in the desert. There, God gives them a vivid and unforgettable experience of His power, His character and His will. Cut off from the rest of mankind for a while, they come face to face with God. He enters into a covenant, an agreement with them.
Mt Sinai (Jebel Musa)
The one party to the Covenant is God, the Lord of nature and of history (all the events of their deliverance from Egypt have shown Him to be that); the other party to the Covenant is this bunch of refugees out of which He will mould a nation. The terms of the Covenant make it clear that this is not just a bargain (you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours); God is the superior party, who has done great things for them and calls for a response.
God on His side pledges to love them faithfully (as indeed He loves all mankind). In return He asks Israel to acknowledge His adoption of them, and pledge herself to His service for the benefit of all mankind. Their service (Exodus 19:4-6) may be summed in three clauses. They are to ...
1. Receive and treasure a true knowledge of God.
2. Reflect this in their own way of life, both communally and individually.
3. Share this treasure with the world.
In brief, they are to know, show and share Him.
So prepared, they are launched into a country through which the world's traffic passes, in peace and war, so that there they may demonstrate God's purpose for human society and pass on their saving knowledge of Him to the rest of the world. That is why God put them in Canaan. Without having to move outside their own borders, they were in constant touch with the big world outside, and so could spread about their understanding of God and His will for the world. They were strategically situated to be a missionary nation. That indeed had been God's purpose for them from the beginning (Genesis 12:2-3): Abraham was promised, not only that God would bless and prosper his progeny (the 'top line' of the promise), but also that by means of them the whole world was to be blessed (the 'bottom line').
It should be noted that there was a reason for the long delay between the promise to Abraham and its fulfilment under Joshua; it is given in Genesis 15:13-16: "... they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full." The phrase means that a society reaches a point where it is so given over to evil that no possibility of repentance remains open to it. God required His chosen people to endure hardship until that point was reached, giving the Canaanites room and time for repentance. Until then it was not morally right to disinherit them.
To this little nation was given, through devout and sensitive men, a unique understanding of history and the power that moulds it. Time and again they cried aloud the vision they had of the true nature of God and of His will and purpose for mankind - a vision which always sprang from the revelation of Himself which He had made in the desert. In the light of it they saw the meaning of events in their own time, and glimpsed the redemption of the world through our Lord Jesus Christ toward which those events were moving.
But Israel failed in her side of the Covenant. She gave in to sensuality, greed, and self-importance. She mangled the worship of God, trod on the rights of men and fought the world instead of serving it. Judgment followed: first, she split herself apart in civil war; second, the northern kingdom of Israel was overwhelmed by the Assyrians; finally Judah fell before the might of Babylon. God's people found themselves prisoners back on the banks of the Euphrates where their long pilgrimage had, centuries before, begun with Abraham in Ur of the Chaldees. Israel was right back where she had started. God had judged her.
But true to His Covenant He showed her mercy. Having been given time to ponder her sins, she was given a second chance. Cyrus the Persian becomes an instrument in God's hand (though he doesn't know it - Isaiah 44:28-45:7) to restore His people to their homeland. Will they play their part now, where they failed before?
Alas, no. Israel failed again. Though her subject state reduced the temptation to power and prestige, she fell victim to the temptation of religious arrogance, and walled herself round in a spiritual ivory tower, keeping herself to her lily-white self instead of serving the world. Like the man in Jesus' parable, she buried her talent in the ground. The woes Jesus uttered against the Pharisees in Matthew 23 are God's indictment of the wretched parody of God's dream for her that she had become. She was finally rejected as no longer a serviceable channel for the Divine Remedy. The time had come for a new Covenant - not now with Israel as a nation, but with a new 'kingdom of priests,' as Jesus made quite clear in His parable of the murderous tenants of the vineyard. (Matthew 21:33-43; note especially v. 43. The vine was a national symbol, Isaiah 5:1-7)
But out of Israel's tragedy some real gain had come. Her story had taught humanity its need of God. And within the nation there still remained a minority (the 'remnant' Isaiah called them, 10:20) who kept the light of revelation burning. These handed down their vision in the pages of the Old Testament.
They had learned that the many can be saved only as the few suffer to be servants to the rest, that God can be grasped only by the hand that lets go of everything else, that man can be raised up only as God first reaches down, and that life is healed of its strife only as the cost of true and full forgiveness is willingly met.
So the world was readied for the Grand Deed of God: His entry into human life in the Person of His Son ... who suffered, the one for the many, who gave Himself up wholly to the will of His Father, who as Saviour of the world reached down in His passion and death below the deepest level of man's sin, there to lay hold of all who in their need will yield themselves to Him, and redeem them.
Once again God had acted in history with power and love to save. As God of old had acted to deliver His people out of the bondage of Egypt and bind them to Himself in a Covenant of Law, so now He had acted again to deliver His people out of the slavery of sin and bind them to Himself in a Covenant of love. This New Covenant Jesus established with the embryo Church in the Upper Room. (Matthew 26:28) What God did when He came among us in the person of His Son was to enter the realm of human life where all His judgments were abroad, and - not allowing Himself any immunity from them - absorbed all the wounding of all the sin of all mankind through all of time so as to put it away in His own pain. That is the meaning of the Cross. When He raised His Son and gave Him back to us, communicating His Spirit to us in the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost, He supplied conclusive evidence that His grace avails to put away all sin and renew us by His forgiveness. The divine remedy for sin had been provided.
With the gift of the Holy Spirit to make real Christ's indwelling in both the believer's and the believing community's life, the New Israel, the New People of God was born - the Church. The Church is called to the same task Israel had been given: to know God, to show Him forth in both individual and community life, and to spread that saving knowledge through the world through the preached Gospel. I Peter 2:9-10 defines the Church in the same terms in which Israel of old had been defined.
Two features of the book of Acts should be underlined:
It is written to a pattern of six panels, each marked by a repeating phrase which rings the changes on the statement, "... the word of God increased, and the number of the disciples multiplied." The pattern demonstrates how the Church fulfilled the commission given to her by the Risen Lord in Acts 1:8 : "You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be my witnesses in ...
1. Jerusalem and ...
2. in all Judæa and Samaria and ...
3. to the end of the earth.
The panels indicating each stage in the spreading progress of the Gospel are noted thus:
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Luke gives repeated examples of Gospel preaching, at least one in each of the six panels - now to Jews, now to Greeks, now to rulers. In Panel 1 no less than four examples are given, each briefer than the last, starting with Peter's preaching on the day of Pentecost, which occupies 24 verses, and ending with the statement of it given by the apostles to the Jewish Council, which occupies only three. (5:30-32) It was being honed down to its essentials: "The God of our fathers raised Jesus from the dead - whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him to his own right hand as Prince and Saviour that he might give repentance and forgiveness of sins to Israel. We are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him." Succeeding panels show its presentation being varied to match the varied audiences to whom it was preached.
There were two kinds of preaching in the early church: Kerygma and Didache, or proclamation and teaching. The Kerygma, the proclamation, was Gospel preaching for the unconverted; the Didache, the teaching, was the application of the Gospel to life for the converted. Kerygma made disciples, Didache matured them.
The Kerygma, though varied in presentation, was well defined. Its essential features were :
1. The note of fulfilment - the conviction Peter voiced on the day of Pentecost, that "this Jesus was delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God." (Acts 2:23) Its value lay simply in the fact that the whole weight of history confirmed the truth of the Gospel. All the ages bear a weight of testimony to the fact that in the story of the birth and life, and death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, there comes to fulfilment a thrust through history that is to be recognised as God's 'push' through all the ages.
2. In the person of Jesus, His Son, God took the stage of this world Himself. (Expanded below c.v.)
3. The response of repentance, faith, baptism and the Promise of the Spirit.
All that is asked of us is to repent of the sins by which we wound the only love that can relieve us of the guilt of them, and believe Him. In the light of the proof of love He has given, we may trust Him. We have but to commit ourselves in baptism to trust in His forgiving love, and we are gathered to His heart, made His true child, and given His own Spirit of love, goodness and truth to dwell in our heart, and keep us His forever.
4. The exaltation of Christ to Lordship.
No more costly, or more perfect, obedience was ever given to God than Jesus gave - to bear the pain of God which He suffers to forgive sins, and bring the truth of it before our eyes. And God rewarded Him for it ... by exalting Him to the highest station in the entire created universe, giving complete authority over all life into His hands. God has put Him in charge; the risen Christ is therefore Lord of the world. In His hands God has placed the reigns of history; the "Christ" (the Messiah) is guiding history to its planned climax, which will take place with His personal return to earth in power and great glory. "Christ having once been offered to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him." (Hebrews 9:28)
What we did
with Him shows us the truth about ourselves; what God did with
Him shows us the truth about God.
The two sides of the truth are encapsulated in Paul's statement in
Romans 4:25:
(a) "He was put to death for our offences ..."What we did was to get rid of Him ... which shows what is really wrong with us: we just do not want God in our lives ... at all - and we will go to any lengths to keep Him out, even to the extent of getting Him crucified.
(b) "He was raised for our justification."
What God did when we had killed Him was to raise Him up again. God reversed our human verdict on Him: we said "No" to Him; God said "Yes." God suffered Him to die (it was no accident) and then raised Him.
From God's side, the death and resurrection of Jesus means two things:
i.) The first is that when in our sinfulness, we strike our blow at God, He absorbs it, soaking up the hurt we inflict on Him. Jesus suffered what we did to Him to the point of accepting death at our hands. He "bore our sins." (That is what it means that "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures." I Corinthians 15:3)
Surprisingly, the Apostles never offered any explanation of the meaning of the Cross. All they give are the brute facts. We did Him to death, and He took it. That's it! That is how the apostles said it - as Peter did in 1 Peter 2:23-24: "When He was reviled, He did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten; He trusted God with the issue, and bore our sins, in His own person on the tree."
That is all an unbeliever needed to know about the death of Jesus to become a Christian. We can oppose Him and wound Him to death, and He will take it. It is proof that He loves us, because the proof of love is seen, not only in its capacity to give, but also in its capacity to suffer at our hands and not change. That is the first thing the death of Jesus tells us about God. "He was put to death for our offences."
ii.) The second thing is, "He was raised for our justification." We can be related rightly to God again (the old English word for 'justified' was 'rightwised'), despite the mischief we have done, because God raised Jesus from the dead. Again, no elaborate explanation of this is ever offered. All that is given are the facts: "we killed Him, God raised Him" - and we are expected to see what that means, without any theorising, because the meaning is staring us in the face ... We killed Him; God raised Him.
What does it mean that God did that?
That we killed Him is the most appalling thing that ever happened in the history of the world. We killed Him, "the visible manifestation of the invisible God" (Colossians 1:15, 19) - unjustly, viciously, in a way that put Him to the worst shame to which anyone can be put. God gave Himself to us in the person of His Son, and that was the best we could find to do with Him. Here is the way Peter told it: "Jesus you delivered up and denied in the presence of Pilate ... you denied the Holy and Righteous one, and asked for a murderer to be given to you. You killed the Author of Life." (Acts 3:13-15 and 26) There it is : the worst indictment ever delivered over the blackest crime ever committed ... against God!
How should God
respond to that? Should He not have finished us off?
What He in fact did was to raise Jesus up and give Him back to us ...
to do what? Haunt us? Be avenged on us? Put us all to a slow death
the way we had put Him to a slow death?
No. God gave Him back to bless us with His forgiving love - everlastingly. It is incredible. God does not draw the line anywhere in what He will take from us and forgive! He responded "by raising Jesus from the dead (we are witnesses to that) to bless you." said Peter. He said it to people in Jerusalem, among whom there were surely some who only six weeks earlier had shouted "Crucify Him." "God, having raised up His Servant (Jesus) sent Him to you first! ... to bless you ... in turning every one of you from your wickedness." It is incredible! What it means Paul explained in Acts 13:38-39: "Let it be known to you therefore brethren, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you ... and by Him, every one that believes is freed from everything you could not be freed from by the Law of Moses."
In Christ, God "bears our sins" - all our sins - all the sins of us all. But they are not "put away" from between Him and us until we repent of them, confess them, and trust Him with childlike simplicity for their forgiveness. Then He receives us back fully into His fellowship, and conveys His own Spirit to us. That is what the word 'Grace' means.
God says, "We, my Son and I, will bear your iniquity. We shall not count your trespasses against you. Never into all eternity will we hold them against you. Only repent of them, and trust Me for their forgiveness, and no condemnation will rest upon you, now or ever, for your sins."
The picture is simple and clear. In Jesus, God comes to us, His arms stretched out to us in loving appeal and with the promise of forgiveness, all the while we keep shooting arrows into Him. Our rain of arrows kills Him and He falls dead on the path. And what God does is raise Him up so He keeps right on coming, His arms outstretched still. "Trust me," He says, "and all is forgiven."
The sheer facts say it all. The Cross and the Resurrection of Jesus lay bare the heart of God.
That is the Kerygma - the good news that caught light on the Day of Pentecost and spread through the world like a prairie fire. That is the 'Gospel truth.'
The book of Acts writes the first chapter in the story of Christ's power to change human life through the service of the Church - to heal its wounds, to banish its fears, to conquer its sin. Beyond all argument, a community of men and women who are in a right relationship with God can change the course of history.
So the epilogue is written in the book of Revelation. D-Day has come and gone with our Lord's victory over sin and death; V-Day is assured. The war may seem prolonged, but the really decisive engagement has been fought and won. "To Him Who loves us and has freed us from our sins by His blood, and made us a Kingdom, priests to His God and Father, to Him be glory and dominion for ever. Amen."
The book of Revelation supplies what without it would be missing from the New Testament - a Christian philosophy of history. It borrows heavily from Old Testament imagery to spell out in a sort of picture code how the Ascended Christ rules the life of this world from His Father's throne - by a blend of judgments and mercies. Its plan is not linear, but concentric. It does not sketch in a sequential programme of history, so we can plot our position at any time on its time-line; rather it sketches in the moral and spiritual factors which govern historyin every age. It first presents a broad overview of those principles, then fills in deepening expositions of the way those principles apply in succeeding visions. But it does show how, as history unfolds, it proceeds toward a planned climax.
A full exposition of the book of Revelation is presently in preparation for inclusion in this web site.
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