How Should We Read the Book of Revelation

Revelation becomes readable when you take its questions in the right order. First ask what kind of writing it is. Then ask where each picture comes from, beginning with the rest of Revelation and the Old Testament. Then ask what the first hearers needed from it. Only after those three steps are you ready for the debates about the end times. This guide teaches that order one step at a time. You can work through it alone in one long sitting, or with a group over two or three meetings, giving one meeting to the first three steps and the rest to the practice and the questions.

The method comes largely from a Jude 3 Project conversation in which Lisa Fields, the founder and president of Jude 3 Project, talked through the book with New Testament scholar Dr. Craig Keener, who did his PhD at Duke University in New Testament and has written a commentary on Revelation. Lisa introduced Revelation as “the book that people are scared of. It’s like the book that people are scared to touch.” Most of that fear comes from reading the steps out of order and starting with the timeline.

Why the order matters

Most confusion about Revelation has one cause. Readers meet a strange image, such as a beast with horns, a sealed scroll or a city measured in thousands of furlongs, and their first question is when it happens or who it is now. That question skips the steps that tell you what the image means. Keener observed that readers get hung up on what a given horn is, while “the message of the book is alive.”

A comparison helps here, though only part of the way. A newspaper political cartoon uses symbols its first readers recognize instantly: an animal for a nation, a figure for a party. A reader decades later needs the background explained, and anyone who skips that background will misread the cartoon. Revelation works in a similar way, because its symbols assumed shared knowledge. The comparison fails in one important place. A cartoon is a human opinion about its own moment. Revelation calls itself prophecy and speaks about God’s final purposes, including the return of Christ. Keep the point about background and drop the rest of the comparison.

Step one: name what kind of book you are holding

Read Revelation 1:1-4 before anything else. Notice three things the opening tells you about itself.

• It is a vision, something John was shown and “signified” by an angel (1:1).
• It is prophecy, meant to be read aloud and obeyed: “Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand” (Revelation 1:3).
• It is a letter, addressed to seven named churches in Asia with a greeting of grace and peace (1:4).

Each label changes how you read. A vision speaks in pictures. Prophecy calls for a response, which is why 1:3 blesses the people who keep the words and not merely the people who decode them. A letter has first recipients who were expected to understand it. Keener explained that a messenger would have carried the book around the circuit of the seven churches, starting at Ephesus, so congregations heard it read out loud. Whatever the book means, it had to mean something to them.

Observation task: Before reading further, write one sentence that names the genre in your own words. Return to that sentence whenever an image starts to pull you toward a headline.

Step two: let Revelation explain itself

The first place to look for the meaning of a symbol is the rest of the book. Keener put it this way: with most of Revelation’s imagery, “there are allusions to the Old Testament, or there are things you can figure out by reading the rest of Revelation.”

Revelation sometimes explains its own symbols outright. At the end of chapter 1, John sees stars and lampstands, and the text interprets them immediately: “The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches: and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven churches” (Revelation 1:20). At other times the text signals that it is speaking figuratively. Revelation 11:8 describes “the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.” Keener pointed out that, “Geographically, those aren’t all the same place, but they all stand for cities under judgment.” The word “spiritually” is the book telling you how to read it.

A second habit follows from this one: be consistent. Keener’s example was the 144,000 of Revelation 7 and 14. Some readers take the number literally and treat the description of the group, male Jewish virgins, as figurative. His response: “you need to be consistent. You either take the whole thing literally, or you take the whole thing figuratively.” He is fair about where that leads. He said a fully literal reading, which would make the group Jewish believers in Jesus from the final generation, is “that’s a plausible interpretation,” although he himself reads the passage figuratively, and he added that “there are things where I could be wrong.” The rule does not settle every passage. It rules out choosing literal or figurative one detail at a time to reach a conclusion you already wanted.

Watch for one more pattern: John hears one thing and then sees another. In Revelation 5:5 an elder announces “the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root of David, hath prevailed,” and in the next verse John sees a Lamb “as it had been slain” (5:6). Keener noted that the same thing happens in chapter 7. John “hears about 144,000, and he turns, and what he sees is this multitude clothed in white.” When the book sets a heard image beside a seen image, read the two together. Each one interprets the other.

Step three: trace the picture back into the Old Testament

Revelation rarely invents a symbol from nothing. Keener summarized its method: “it appropriates Old Testament imagery, but in light of Christ.” The lion in chapter 5 comes from Jacob’s blessing, “Judah is a lion’s whelp” (Genesis 49:9), which shaped the hope for a conquering king from Judah. The beast from the sea in Revelation 13 draws on Daniel 7, where “four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another” (Daniel 7:3), and Daniel’s own interpretation says the beasts “are four kings, which shall arise out of the earth” (7:17). Before you guess what a beast stands for today, read what the earlier prophet said his beasts stood for.

Small details carry background as well. Keener explained that the souls under the altar in Revelation 6:9 are placed there because “that’s where the blood of sacrifices was poured out in Leviticus.” The picture presents martyrs as sharing in sacrifice. The new Jerusalem in chapter 21 has equal length, width and height. Keener said that “in Greek, the new Jerusalem is shaped like a cube, like the Holy of Holies in the Old Testament.” The whole city becomes the place where God dwells. He also noted that a wall of about 200 feet would not fit a city some 1,500 miles high if you treated the measurements as engineering. The twelves and the 144 point somewhere else: “the numbers get reused. This is the city of God for the people of God.”

Keener’s summary covers all of these cases: “you’ve got a lot of figurative language, just like you do in Old Testament prophecy and poetry.” If you already know how to read Isaiah’s poetry, you have more preparation for Revelation than you might think.

Step four: ask what the first hearers needed

A few details call for knowledge of the first-century world. Keener’s example was the portrayal of cities as women, Babylon as a prostitute and the new Jerusalem as a bride. He explained that this is a convention of the period, since “cities portray themselves as women on their coins.” Discussing another riddle in the book, he said that John’s wording “may be a way of communicating in terms they understood.”

This step also brings the book’s purpose into view. Keener described the seven churches as being in different situations. Some were suffering, and at least one believer in Pergamum had been killed (2:13). Others were compromising with the world around them. The same vision gave courage to some churches and warned others. When you have worked out what an image meant, ask a further question: was this picture meant to steady a frightened church or to wake a comfortable one?

Step five: now bring the end-times questions

Once the first four steps are done, the timing questions have a proper place. Revelation clearly looks ahead to Christ’s return, judgment and a new creation. Christians differ on how much of the book describes the past, the present and the future, and on how to read the thousand years in chapter 20. Keener surveyed the main approaches and said that most evangelical scholars combine them, with some of the book already fulfilled and some still to come. The disagreement is over the proportions. He holds his own view on the millennium as one scholar among several. Jude 3 Project does not take a house position on these questions, and faithful readers land in different places.

The most common mistake at this stage is to treat the book as a code for this year’s news. Keener pointed to a long record of failed matches. He recalled that people pinned the antichrist label on Ronald Wilson Reagan because of the six letters in each name, and that others attached it to candidates from the other party. The New Testament speaks of many antichrists across history (1 John 2:18). Keener also observed that because no one knows the day or the hour, “So Satan’s always gonna have an antichrist in waiting.” This explains why every generation finds a match. The pattern of evil empire repeats, so a match with today’s headlines proves very little. Steps one through four guard against the mistake because they tie each image to something the first hearers could already understand.

Practice: read Revelation 7 in order

This exercise takes about 40 minutes. Read Revelation 7:1-17 aloud. A group can take turns reading. Then work through the steps in writing, without opening a commentary or a news site.

1. Genre. Which verses are things John hears, and which are things he sees? Mark them.
2. The book itself. Compare 7:4 (“an hundred and forty and four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel”) with 7:9 (“a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues”). Then read 14:1-5. Write down two possible ways to relate the groups, and apply the consistency rule to each.
3. The Old Testament. Read Revelation 7:17 and then Isaiah 25:8, where “the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces.” Keener also linked the springs of water to Isaiah 49:10. Write down who receives the promise in Isaiah and who receives it in Revelation 7.
4. First hearers. Picture a believer in Smyrna, which was poor and under pressure (2:9). What would this chapter have told that person?
5. Only now, the future. Write the end-times question this chapter raises for you. Note which reading from step 2 your question depends on.

If you lead a group, do not try to settle the identity of the 144,000. Success means that every participant can state two readings fairly and say what in the text supports each one. When someone jumps to a current event, ask which step was skipped. That question corrects the method without embarrassing the person.

Questions for discussion

1. Before this study, which step did you usually begin with when you read Revelation? Where did you learn that habit?
2. Revelation 1:3 blesses those who “keep” the words of the book. How does reading for obedience change what you pay attention to, compared with reading for prediction?
3. Revelation 1:20 and 11:8 interpret their own images. Can you find another passage where the book explains a symbol, and what does that suggest about how the rest should be read?
4. Pick one image and compare a literal reading with a figurative one. Under the consistency rule, what does each reading commit you to?
5. Keener was willing to say a reading he does not hold is plausible and that he could be wrong. Which questions in Revelation call for that kind of humility, and which ones does the text answer plainly?
6. Why do matches between Revelation and current events feel so convincing? What would a match need to show before it deserved your trust?
7. After working through chapter 7, which part of it would you most want a suffering friend to hear, and why?

Carrying the method forward

Write the five steps on a card and keep it in your Bible at Revelation 1: genre, the book itself, the Old Testament, the first hearers, and then the future. This week, choose one passage that has always confused you, perhaps chapter 12 or chapter 21. Work through the card in order before you form an opinion. Pay attention to how many of your questions are answered before you reach the fifth step.