I want to take us back to a controversial, chaotic, and confusing time back in 2020 and

2021, the COVID pandemic. Now this is not primarily a question about that moment historically,

but rather an opportunity, Paul, for you to help us understand how to interpret and apply the book of

revelation to our everyday life. So here's the question from Zach. In some of the Christian

circles I was living in back during the COVID pandemic, I heard people say that the COVID

vaccine was a mark of the beast. Now, unrelated to what side you fall on in terms of lockdowns in the

vaccine rollout, I'm having a hard time understanding how something written in the book of

Revelations specifically had to do with a 2020 pandemic and pharmaceuticals. Now, especially

because a lot of the same people have made or are continuing to make correlations

to a wide variety of wars and political affairs and current social events.

What's the relationship between the Book of Revelation and all of these things?

Well, again, I think it's a really, really important question.

It is because Revelation, the book of Revelation is probably the best case study

on our difficulty in handling properly God's Word.

And out of Revelation, every generation comes rather weird applications that actually don't come out of the book at all.

So let me do a little course in understanding revelation here. First, there are two places to begin

with understanding what this book is about. The first is the first five words of the book,

the revelation of Jesus Christ.

What revelation is about is Jesus.

Let me say that again.

It's about Jesus.

Here we are told what this book is about

...