What if the book of Revelation isn't actually about predicting the future? In this Week 1 sermon from our new series on Revelation, Pastor Tony walks through what John was really writing, who he was writing to, and why most of what we've been taught about end times misses the heart of the book entirely.

The book of Revelation is the most often-read and most-misunderstood book of the Bible. For 2,000 years, Christians have tried to decode it — figuring out who the antichrist is, what the mark of the beast means, when Jesus will return. But Revelation was a letter before it was scripture. It was written to seven real churches under real pressure, in language they would have understood, full of Old Testament imagery (500+ references in 22 chapters).

In this message, Pastor Tony unpacks the Greek meaning of "apocalypse" (it doesn't mean what you think), walks through the four main ways Christians interpret Revelation (preterist, futurist, historicist, idealist), and gives four warnings to keep in mind before you read a single chapter. He pulls in Daniel 2 and Daniel 7 to show how John's original readers understood the imagery — and what we miss when we read it through a 21st-century lens.

The bottom line: what appears to be a warning about tomorrow is actually a picture of what today must be.

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