点击此处下载中文图表。

NOTE: I have written up a detailed account, complete with pictures, on my VISION page how the apostle John has the Earth hosting a supercontinent during the bowls.

HOW TO TACKLE THE APOCALYPSE

1. Distinguish between the literal and the figurative.

Based on the translation of the ESV, regarding imagery and figurative language, the word “like” is employed 62 times and the word “as” is employed 12 times.  This means that the product of the figurative language is not literal, but figurative.  It’s simply using concepts to describe the situation.  The concept of “blood” appears in the second and third bowls.  (See Revelation 16:3-4.)  In the second bowl, blood is figurative, as in “. . . it became like the blood of a corpse (ESV, Revelation 16:3)”, and in the third bowl, blood is literal, as in “. . . and they became blood (Revelation 16:4)”.  Distinguishing between the literal and the figurative will greatly help the audience understand the meaning and purpose of various judgments.

2. Distinguish between the science and the supernatural.

There are huge differences between scientific judgments and supernatural judgments in the Apocalypse.  Viruses do not know how to distinguish between the rich, the powerful, the poor or less influential.  In another words, viruses do not discriminate.  However, in the first bowl (Revelation 16:2), a painful sore came upon all who took the mark of the beast.  You cannot say all across the globe had taken the mark of the beast.  Neither can you say that all those who did not take the mark of the beast will have died because there will be youngsters alive, say aged 1 or 3 who won’t understand the difference between right and wrong.  Further Revelation 18:4 addresses the saved.  This painful sore will have supernatural elements to it.  For anyone who wants to argue that in the first bowl, all across the globe will be lost, there are other completely supernatural events like the fifth trumpet in Revelation 9:1-11, where those who do not have the seal of God are stung by locust like creatures.  In the second bowl (Revelation 16:3), all living creatures in the oceans died.  This is pure science with no added element of the supernatural.  Further, in the fourth seal, one quarter of the earth’s population dies without anything said regarding the supernatural.  That is simply science.

3. Distinguish between scenes in heaven and scenes on Earth.

4. Distinguish between events on the timeline in the Apocalypse and events not clearly on the timeline in the Apocalypse.

What opens up the Apocalypse so easily is that there is a timeline, whereas there is not a clear timeline in the book of Daniel.  The seals come before the trumpets, and the bowls take place after the trumpets and sickles.  Even though the sixth seal covers the most time of any of the judgments, there are aspects of the sixth seal that would take place after the fifth seal.  For the most part, the events are very orderly.  However, Revelation 12 brings in some new concepts without a clear marker on the timeline.  So when teaching through Revelation 12, you would want to be careful what you do with the events in Revelation 12 as it pertains to the timeline.

On Structuring the Apocalypse

The structure of the Apocalypse needs to revolve around the Woes.  Due to the use of the first woe surfacing only in the time of the fifth trumpet, it proves that the woes are time periods, not judgments.  The fifth trumpet is just that, the fifth trumpet.  Yet the first woe takes place at the exact same time, leaving zero wiggle room for anything else to take place, proving the woes are time periods, not judgments.  So you have the pre-Woe era, Woe One, Woe Two, Woe Three, and the post-Woe eras.

也可以加我的微信，我微信就是deyi1000，中文名是游德义，你就说跟新以色列有关系