readrevelation.org

How grateful I am for you! I need people around me like you with an honest heart to know God. I pray for you and I hope you will pray for me during this journey we will take together through what I believe is the greatest storyland ever imagined. Here are tips to get the most out of our journey.

1. Get a notebook in which to answer the questions I pose and make notes about what you discover. Write out your feelings/thoughts, responses, or additional questions. Paraphrase or summarize the Bible passages in your own words.

2. Get a concordance and a Bible dictionary from any Christian book store. Make a habit of curiosity about the words of the Bible.

3. Always pray before opening the Bible. Pray for the Holy Spirit's guidance, for understanding, and for God's will to be done.

4. For this course, I invite you to read in a way that may at first seem shallow, and in the end will prove to have been very deep reading. Please try this. Please read as suggested even if you have read the passage many times in the past and you feel/think you already know it nearly by heart.

a. Read quickly. Do not stop to interpret. Do not try to pronounce unfamiliar words.

b. Read as you would a letter from a favorite friend. You are standing at the mailbox; you tear the letter open; you read quickly, reaching out to grasp the next sentence, eager to get to the next paragraph, but not really skipping any.

c. Read for connection with the mind that wrote it. Read to immerse your mind in the mind of God.

d. Feel free to use audio recordings of the Bible. You can borrow them at most libraries. In this way you can “read” while going about your chores, driving on the highways, or going to sleep at night.

e. Read from a variety of translations, perhaps a different version for each day of the week.

f. Set aside an hour each week to read the entire book of Revelation in one sitting. If you vary the environment for this reading, you may find surprising connections. Read outdoors. Read with friends. Read aloud in the shower. Read to children. Read on your knees before God.

5. Find someone with whom to share what you learn. This is a most important step. By this means, you open channels through which to receive more. You also connect yourself with the plan of God, to save people through simple, personal, individualized testimony.

In other words, I humbly request your deeply honest presence on this journey. We will always be doing these four things: Pray, Read, Reflect, Tell.

Admittedly this is an inductive way of approaching Bible study. Some are uncomfortable with it at first. I ask you to please stay with it, and I think you will find great blessing in it. You might want to look at the controls I have chosen for inductive reading of Revelation.

Here is a bit of assignment for those who really crave some deduction. In your first reading of Revelation and its companion book, Daniel, you could look for what the Bible itself says these four things represent: Candlesticks, Beasts, Horns, Water. Further, you might let numbers pile up and start meaning something: Two, Three, Four, Six, Seven, Ten, Twelve.

Remember: Pray, Read, Reflect, Tell