Revelation Sources

Where am I getting my information for the book of Revelation? There are a variety of sources. The first is Dr. Charles Hill of Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida. He is pictured on the left. He has an MP3 series on the Book of Revelation that I found to be very helpful. I corresponded with him a few years ago asking for advice on commentaries of the book of Revelation that he found helpful. He mentioned several, including what has become my favorite commentary on Revelation, The New Internation Greek Testament Commentary, The Book of Revelation, by G. K. Beale. This 1245 page book gives lots of technical and literary background of the book of Revelation. It is the most detailed commentary on Revelation I have found. Between Dr. Hill and G. K. Beal's book, I get 90% of my information. Both Charles Hill and G. K. Beal take an "Idealistic" view of Revelation, where Revelation is providing visions of history throughout the church era from Christ's first advent to Christ's second coming. The series of seals, trumpets, bowls, etc., are seen as recaptulating views of the same period from Christ's first advent to the final judgment, the same period of time in which the tribulation and the millennium occur. The insight of recapitualation along with the simultaneous occurances of the tribulation and the millennium was a major "aha" in my study of Revelation, along with understanding that John actually sees what he reports in his visions (for instance, he sees locusts when he writes about locusts, not Apache helicopters that he could only describe as locusts), and the figurative rich imagery, including the numbers, that allude to the Old Testament passages. Suddenly Revelation made a lot of sense.

There are other many good sources of information on the book of Revelation. Dr. Dan Doriani (left) gives a good rapid overview of Revelation in his Covenant Seminary course, Hebrews to Revelation (in MP3 with lecture notes).

Dr. Kim Riddlebarger (The White Horse Inn, Christ Reformed Church) has a great blog, The Riddleblog, in which he has a sermon series on Revelation and discusses eschatology.

There are many other excellent books and resources on Revelation. I'll mention some more in the future.