Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

John, may be the apostle, wrote the book of revelation on the island of Patmos.

It was a tiny prison island, kind of like Alcatraz.

The church was still undergoing lots of persecution at the time and in fact church history tells us Rome first tried to burn John alive in oil, but he survived and since they couldn't figure out to kill him, they exiled him to Patmos. This letter he wrote is a

singular revelation, not plural, not revelations. John tells us in verse one that this is

the revelation of Jesus. Some believe that means the book is revealing Jesus to us, and others believe that means

Jesus is the one doing the revealing, while some others think it could actually be both, because if Jesus is

revealing something to his people, his body, then that also tells us more about Jesus himself.

So as we read this book, just like with all our books from day one in Genesis one, we're going to look

for Jesus and what we learn about him. And by the way, first three says we'll be

blessed if we read this book aloud and pay attention to it. That is the first of seven

blessed R statements in this book. Be on the lookout for them. They're called the

seven beatitudes of revelation. John wrote this letter to seven churches, some of

whom we've met already, and his message is first and foremost to them in their

immediate context. Jewish teaching and culture love

numbers and symbols. So while this book still has a lot to offer modern readers, most

scholars warn against trying to treat it like a combination lock where you can connect the numbers in just the right way to unlock some kind of secret hidden information about the future.

The stated purpose of this book is to reveal something. When you're trying to reveal something to your reader, you don't hide it and bury it in code. That means

you can take a deep breath because the pressure is off for you to figure out how and

when the world ends over the course of the next four days reading.

I also want to encourage you to watch the video

overviews we linked to in the show notes. In case you missed the one from

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