Bruce Gore Interview on the book of Revelation

Well, hello and welcome to the Reform Rookie video podcast. I'm doing a Zoom meeting today. My name is Anthony Eugenio, and I'll be your Reform Rookie host for this interview. The goal of this video cast is to take the rich truths of the Reform faith and help you see the beauty of them and to see God in a new and wonderful light.

And understanding these truths will help you, us, better understand and know the God of the Scriptures and to Him be the glory. And to that I also say Semper Reformation, which means always be reforming.

Introducing Bruce Gore and the Interview Topic

Well today, I'm very excited because I have a guest on board, Bruce Gore. I'm gonna call him Professor Bruce because he was at one point in time a professor at a college, and I'd just like to introduce him to you real quickly.

He's been a Christian for, oh gosh, well over 40 years. He was a professor, an adjunct faculty of Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington. He's also a practicing attorney, and I don't want you to hold that against him.

Professor Gore is a popular lecturer, teacher, and preacher for many years. He offers educational materials in Bible history and theology from the Reformed perspective. In fact, his book, The Historical and Chronological Context of the Bible, has helped many people understand the cultural background behind the accounts in the Bible.

Bruce is now retired, but continues to develop and upload material that helps many Bible-believing Christians like myself, to dive deeper into the things of God. So, welcome Bruce. Thank you for joining me on the show.

Well, thank you, Anthony. It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you. Oh, my pleasure. Thank you. So,.

The reason why I brought you on is because in my Bible study, we're doing a study on the book of Revelation, and you had done, are doing actually, a tremendous series on that, and I just can't wait to dive into that.

But before we do, what I normally like to do as a first-time guest, could you tell me how you came to be Reformed? But basically, what is your testimony into Reformed theology?

Bruce Gore’s Path from Baptist Dispensationalism to Reformed Theology

Sure. It's a, it's a question I like to answer because I grew up in a very different tradition. Okay. I grew up Baptist. I'm not unhappy about that. It was a great little rural Baptist church with a lot of great little Sunday school teachers and other experiences that were very formative in my, in my early years.

But it was certainly a very strongly dispensational background, and so I grew up with a, with a very distinct sense that I was living in the end times, that I'd probably never lived to be old enough to get married, you know, that the rapture was going to happen any minute now.

And, and so it does tend to affect your psychology just a little bit, you know, as you're growing up. But as it turns out, the rapture didn't happen, and I graduated from high school and wound up attending Woodworth University in Spokane.

And so that was, that was really the beginning of my exposure to something outside the world of my, you know, Baptist tradition. And even though I was there four years, I was still pretty much a confirmed, confirmed Baptist and dispensational person by the time I graduated.

But I had at least learned something I'd never suspected before, and that that was a person could actually be a Presbyterian and a Christian. I didn't know that, you see. I, I had grown up thinking if you were anything but a Baptist, you were best, you were suspected best.

And if you were a Presbyterian, you must be lost, you know. So that was, that was kind of my instruction. And so it was nice to be exposed to some remarkable, powerful men of God and women of God, really, at the, at the school that certainly did impact my perception, at least of that.

I've always been a bit of a talker, and I, in fact, when I graduated from, from college, I was already working in Christian radio, and I thought I'd probably be doing that for the duration. But as it turns out, after two or three years, there was a little Bible school that started here in Spokane.

At the time, it was called Inland Empire School of the Bible. It eventually was purchased by Moody Bible Institute, but that was years later. But anyway, it started, and I had enough of bluff and bravado in me.

I just walked in one day and, and asked if I could teach, you know. I had no credentials. I had no particular reason that they should take an interest in me. And, you know, the, the brass there at the school kind of rolled their eyes and thought, who does this kid think he is?

But they did offer me a job teaching speech, because I was in radio, and, and so I could at least teach speech and homiletics and that. So I bluffed my way into, into that job. And after about a year and a half, I was full-time, so I was able to morph into a full-time faculty member over about an 18-month period.

The irony was that one of the teaching assignments I was given at that school was to teach church history. I'd never taken a bit of interest in church history. In fact, I'd never taken a bit of interest in any history.

You know, as a kid, I, the, the history I took was always from teachers who weren't interested in the topic themselves. In high school, the, the history teacher was the football coach, and so all we learned about in, in history classes were different great football plays.

I mean, I remember that, you know, the pictures on the board of the X's and zeroes and how to run plays. And, and so I assumed that history was just kind of a rite of passage, but there was no particular reason to take an interest in it.

And so I was somewhat nonplussed when I was at the school and they said, okay, you're going to teach church history, about which I knew virtually nothing. And so I just kind of dove into it. It was my task and I started reading and, and what happened was that as I taught church history, really just starting from zero, I tripped across what's called the Protestant Reformation.

You know, I'd heard of it. I knew I was a Protestant, but I really didn't know why I was called a Protestant growing up. I didn't have.

Much.

Background on that. And so I, I discovered people like Martin Luther and John Calvin and John Knox and, and other characters who are important in history. And, and the more I looked at them, the more impressed I was.

It was like discovering a whole different world out there that I'd never really, even through college, never really been exposed to, because even in college I'd avoided history.

And.

So I started reading these guys and as I read them, it just hit me that this was a quality of insight and thought and understanding that was at the, at one of the same time completely different from something that I'd been exposed to.

I mean, these were people, obviously, that believed the Bible. I mean, in that sense, there was a great deal of common ground, but the, the style and the attitude by which they approached the topic, the great confidence they had, they didn't see the world as getting worse and worse.

They saw it, in fact, just the opposite. They saw that God was working in history and that, that they expected better things to happen in the future. And they expected for this work of Christ to go on, especially in Calvin, for a good long time.

And, and so, you know, really it didn't happen suddenly, but just over a period of time as I taught this year by year and kept dealing with these characters more and more and then broadened my understanding to other areas as well.

I just woke up one day and looked in the mirror and said, you know, kid, you're not a, you're not a dispensational anymore. You're not even a Baptist anymore. That I'd been pretty much converted just by reading these characters.

At some point along the way, I came across a guy named R .C. Sproul. I know you're probably pretty familiar with him. And, and he was very helpful in clarifying some of the kind of the loose ends. I actually met him personally back in 1976.

I went to the Ligonier Valley Study Center and spent a month there. And that was really helpful. And, but by then I was already kind of on a different path. And so, so anyway, that's the, that's the short version of it.

It happened when I was in my 20s, probably by the time I was 26, 27, I'd say I'd probably jump ship and wound up in the Reformed camp. And I was also very taken with history. In fact, I, when I was 28, I went out and got a master's degree in history from a local college called Eastern Washington University.

Just because I discovered that's what I should have been doing all along. I, you know, this kind of big shock that this was really the area that I was much more interested in than I ever suspected. That's kind of the short version of how it happened.

Yeah, that's a, that's a little act of God's providence getting you started with history. And then, because I, when you said that you didn't like history, listening to your lectures, you know, online, I'm saying, my goodness, how did he, how did he transition?

That, that's a work of God in your heart because the history that you teach and the things that you bring out is just excellent. So after you came to an understanding of Reformed theology, was that a shock to the people around you?

Did you get opposition? Did people, did, did you tell people you were a Calvinist? And what was their reaction and how did you work through that?

Conflict Over Calvinism, Covenant Theology, and Leaving the Bible School

Yeah.

Well, the school where I was teaching was definitely cut out of the kind of, I would say non-Calvinistic dispensational mold. I mean, they would, they might call themselves Calvinists, at least some of them, but not in any thoroughgoing sense of the rich Reformed tradition.

But it was actually more the sharp difference that I came to really appreciate between what was Reformed tradition in connection with eschatology and the views that were really required at the school.

I had to sign a doctrinal statement every year to keep my job there, affirming my conviction that I believe certain things that were all dispensational in character without mental reservation. Well, I was getting increasing mental reservation every year and I was getting more conflict of conscience every year, you know, as I, as I was signing such a document until finally in 1980.

I just couldn't do it anymore. I had to, and it was kind of an open secret really. I think people realized that I was kind of pointing my nose in a different direction here and they were tolerating me because I did well and I was well liked and so on, but I realized at a certain point it just couldn't go on this way.

So we had an amicable parting. I wrote a nice letter to the school and said I appreciated the years I'd been there and I was, I was really more committed to a kind of covenant theology approach to things and my views on dispensationalism had really been pretty much abandoned.

I'd really embraced more of an amillennial or postmillennial outlook in that regard. We all shook hands and shed a couple of tears and they actually made me the graduation speaker that year and that was my kind of swan song and I bounced around for a couple of years after that and then wound up going to law school.

So I, I was, that was kind of the new chapter in my life at that point.

What a great honor that is to be able to speak at the, at the university like that.

Yeah.

Yeah. So after, do you regret coming to Reformed? I don't know, maybe not, the regard is not the right word, but is, is there ever a pull back like, hmm, you know, maybe I should rethink some things or has it positively affected your life?

How Reformed Theology Changed His View of Christian Life and History

It has transformed my understanding of what it is to be a Christian, how to live as a Christian. I, I, you know, I, I think I was from my very earliest childhood memories, I had faith. I don't have any conversion story, you know, I mean, virtually.

From.

My most early memories. I've never had any doubt in all my life. I've never had any doubt that God is out there, that he's a reality to be reckoned with, that Jesus is his son, that we need to come to terms with Jesus if we want to get along well in eternity, you know.

So that was never a debate. It was never even a question. But what happened in terms of appreciating what it means to be a Christian, what it means to be a Christian living at a certain time in history, it, that was radically transformed.

I, I remember when I was in college going to a conference at the University of Idaho, in which the speaker was a character named Hal Lindsay, and you probably know that name, famous for the late great planet Earth.

And at that time, it was before he was really famous, but he was still with Campus Crusade for Christ, and he'd travel around, and he'd give lectures and stuff, and talk to college kids like me. And this was in a group of 500 people, 500 college students.

And his closing lecture or his talk was, was on the end of the world, you know, we're living in the end times, and he had a, quite a compelling case to make based on Ezekiel and Daniel and Revelation and other texts, you know, you're probably familiar with all of those.

And he, he said in this talk that he gave, this was in 1968, that he couldn't imagine that the return of Christ would take place any later than 1975. That he thought, he wasn't going to set a time or a day, he knew better than that, but he just couldn't imagine, given all that was happening in the world with Soviet Russia and the rise of China and blah, blah, blah, you know, all of this stuff, and he pieced it together, and it was pretty compelling to an impressionable college kid.

And he convinced me, at least for a moment, when I was a sophomore in college, that hey, you know, Jesus is, is, is going to return at or before 1975. And I tell you, I almost dropped out of college. I mean, why go to college if Jesus is coming back that soon?

We should be going out, you know, preaching on the street corners. It, it changes your whole view of how to live when you think that you're living in the end of the world, you know. Not just that Jesus might return soon, but that he's definitely going to, and that, and that therefore you need to make some changes.

Well, when I embraced reform thought, it had the, this, the same kind of revolutionary impact, but in the opposite direction. You know, my view from then till now has been that, hey, I think I want to live my life to do good things for my kids, my grandkids, my great-grandkids, my great-grandkids, and kids I'll never meet.

But I want to do things today that I believe.

Will.

Trickle down to their benefit generations from now. It gives, it gives, to me, it just was a an entirely different way of thinking about the meaning of what it is to live out a Christian life with an eye toward a long range perspective and hope for what God is doing in history.

So it was, it was a very, and I've never looked back. It's never been, I've, I've always felt like this was almost a second conversion, you know, to, to come to that understanding.

Sure, amen. I mean, I mean, eschatology matters and what you believe about these things is going to change the way you live, like you said. I'm just praying that the church in America sees what you're teaching and what the church has historically taught throughout the ages with regards to eschatology, because this rapture theology is really, I think, doing damage to, to not only our witness, but the the transformation in our country.

If you think that you're going to be pulled out at any minute, like you said, you know, why polish brass on a sinking ship?

Yeah, that's right.

Just, I might as well just coast until he comes back, you know, but when, when you realize that the work we do now is laying a foundation for future generations to stand on and, and we're actually part of something that's going to be built and, and it's going to glorify God in the end.

What a, what an incredible look forward that is, you know. Absolutely. So with that, thank you so much for that testimony. With that, this is why I, I, I sought you out on the internet and started watching your videos about the book of Revelation.

So what I'd like to do now is just talk a little bit about that book. So I know I was amazed and when you said that you memorized the whole book.

Memorizing Revelation and Adopting a Preterist Approach

Yeah. Yeah, I know. That was when I was young and foolish. How long did it take you to do that? Oh, it took about a year. I, I wasn't in a big hurry. I, I, you may have caught the story. I, I was on a wonderful vacation trip with my lovely wife and we were, this was in 1993 and we were on the deck.

Well, we were on a cruise ship in the Greek Isles and had just visited Patmos. And of course, it's a wonderful little place to visit and it's just rich with, they're very proud of the book of Revelation and they've never heard of Hal Lindsey Fairhotel.

But anyway, it, you know, I thought to myself, this was 1993. I'd been in the reformed world for, you know, some 20 years by then. But I was always afraid of Revelation. I didn't know what to do with it.

It was like, it was a part of a different book. And, and so I'd never really, I kind of avoided it in my Bible teaching and so on. And I thought to myself, you know, the only way to really wrap my head around this thing is to force myself to teach.

And I'm, I think I'll a year from now teach Revelation. Just jump in, you know, flail around and at least I can say I've been there, done that. And then I thought, well, maybe the, you know, the best way to tackle it would be to memorize it.

And, and that seems like kind of an auspicious thing to do, but my plan was just to memorize one verse per day and add it to what I already knew and just kind of have a discipline of, of adding one verse and kind of trying to think about the verse.

Not just learn, not just memorize it, but really try to digest it, you know, and, and so it's a, it's a learning technique. Took about a year and, and it was well worth it. It's, it's a wonderful exercise and, and, and then that following fall, a year from then, I did do teach Revelation first time through, that was in 94.

And, and,.

In the meantime, in prepping for it, I kind of came across the, the more, what's called preterist approach to it, which tries to see Revelation in terms of a context of first century events. And it really didn't take long to realize that's what's going on here.

Then all of these attempts to tie it into contemporary geopolitics and all of the, and it was freewheeling, really almost bizarre interpretive devices that are used to, to try to make sense out of the book.

It, to me, it was very, very comforting to say, hey, you know, there's actually a rational way to approach the book that has some objective interpretive standards to it. It makes the book of Revelation part of the Bible.

You can include it in the canon and, and that's been, that's been to me, really a useful exercise to just see it that way. It certainly has lessons for all Christians at all times in history. But step one is to see what did it mean to the original Christians who were the recipients of it originally, and then I can legitimately say, okay, now, how does it apply to me?

Right. So that's been my approach really since that time to this.

Two quick thoughts. First, I'm so grateful that you did decide to teach the book of Revelation and get into it the way you have. And second, memorizing the book has never been a thought that's entered my own mind.

I'm grateful that you have. So why do you think, why do you think the book is so misinterpreted? Is it, is it fear of the book of Revelation and not wanting to get into it or hearing so many things about it that, you know, there's just this trepidation?

Why do you think it's so misinterpreted?

Why Revelation Is So Often Misread

Well,.

I, I think the most obvious initial answer is just that it's a very strange book, you know, especially to someone reading it in the 20 or 21st century. You flip it open and you're confronted with, with really extravagant imagery, stars falling from heaven, the sky receding like a scroll, beasts rising out of the sea.

I mean, you know, it's, it's literature that that on the face of it is not very inviting, especially to us who are the recipients of a long kind of Western scientific tradition. We tend to read star falls from the sky and think immediately, wow, a star is going to fall from the sky.

Well, it didn't, it wouldn't take too many stars falling on earth to incinerate the earth. You know, it doesn't make sense to just take that as some sort of description of a scientific phenomenon. But when you realize virtually every image that's used in revelation, every image, I think of almost without exception is found somewhere else in the Bible.

There's really not much new in revelation. And that when you look for those images elsewhere in the Bible, invariably they are being used poetically. They're being used for dramatic effect. You know, David says, the Lord is my shepherd.

I shall not want, he says, he makes me lie down by still waters. We don't sweat a whole lot about, you know, some image in our mind that God dragged David out of his howl and you know, hauled him down to a pond and made him lie there in a bunch of wet grass.

I mean that, you know, nobody takes it that way. It would be absurd to do that. We know intuitively and immediately that that is poetry. But when we read revelation and hear about a star falling from the sky, we think that's got to be some kind of scientific phenomenon.

And the book of Revelation is just a wonderful, highly compacted.

Blizzard.

Of poetic imagery taken from all through the Bible, but it comes to us in such forceful whiz-bang, you know, style that I think people just get confused. They don't know what to do with it. And it's unfortunate because we deprive ourselves of a huge and wonderful, rich resource for building faith, for understanding all of history, first century, all of history, including our own day.

We see it all packaged there. But we have to see it first through the eyes of those who lived it first and then we can say, okay, now how do I take those ideas? And somehow, you know, in a reasonable and rational way, you know, put them to work in my own life.

Right. So if there was a key to understanding the book of Revelation, what would you say that is?

The Original Audience and the Interpretive Key to Revelation

I think to me the most critically important key is to ask in an honest way what is the most likely sense that the first century recipients of this letter, what is the sense they would have attached to what they read?

And that does many good things. For one thing, it's not a novel rule that only applies to Revelation. It's a rule that's supposed to apply to everything we read in the Bible. And in fact, it's a rule you're supposed to apply to this morning's newspaper or any other legitimate piece of human literature.

I'm supposed to ask what is the likely sense that the original author intended to communicate to the original audience? And I think that is a highly serviceable, you know, first rule. Now, it requires some homework.

It's not like you just immediately know that intuitively. Sometimes you have to do a little research to get to a legitimate understanding of the answer to that question. But if we start anywhere else, if we start with any other kind of paradigm or framework of an interpretive grid, we've just jumped into a sea of speculation, of subjectivism, of impressionism.

We've just taken leave of the interpretive senses that we're supposed to have when we read anything, the Bible or anything else. So I think that's the place to start. And it seems to me that once we do that and then say, okay, these first century people who heard this book, many of them were steeped in the Old Testament, knew it much better than most modern Christians do.

They recognized this imagery. They'd immediately see that a reference to a beast is actually kind of an allusion to what Daniel may have been talking about or or some image that you see with respect to a temple and water is really clearly the poetic imagery from Ezekiel.

I mean, you know, it begins to be a little more clear that these are not brand new images, that they're just being updated and reapplied in the context of what took place in the first century then.

It's funny because we would never do that with any of the Gospels or any of Paul. We would always say, okay, who is he speaking to? What are the things that he's addressing? How are the listeners going to hear what he's saying?

What's going on in their lives? Yet when it comes to the book of Revelation, it seems like that's jettisoned out the window and here's our opportunity to use autistic license and come up with some fantastic story.

I mean, it is a fantastic story and again listening to your teaching I'm growing to appreciate it more and more and more and we're just so excited just to let you know to go through this and listening to your teaching.

So now I know, typically there's four different approaches to the book of Revelations. There's the Historicist, Preterist, Futurist, and Idealist. Is that correct? That's my understanding. Yeah. Okay, and could you just give one or two sentences about each one?

Four Major Approaches to Revelation

Yeah, sure. So the one that's probably the prevailing view in especially American Evangelical Christian circles would be the Futurist view. And that is the result of the huge impact that the Scofield Reference Bible had on American Evangelical Christianity back in the early decades of the 20th century.

And that particular view, which was popularized by Scofield, but was not original with him, it really goes back to Brooks and to Darby and certain others, but it takes the view that Revelation is really describing events that are going to be all clustered together in the end times and usually it accompanies a dispensational scheme that there's going to be a rapture at some point, there's going to be a tribulation, it'll last seven years, it's the 70th week of Daniel, and that the events that are being described in Revelation are really just various ways of describing those events.

And in the case of Hal Lindsey, for example, and others, the bizarre imagery is understood in some cases as simply the attempt by a first century visionary to describe 21st century you might say photographs, you know, some guy in the first century looks at a helicopter and says, golly, that looks like a big locust, you know, and so they think that the plague of locusts must be helicopters, that kind of thing.

Not always quite that, you know, strange or irresponsible, but things like that. So that would be the futurist approach. And I think most people, if they don't know any better, haven't heard any different, would take Revelation that way.

And then they read it and they say, well, I can't make heads or tails out of this, so I better just go buy a book and let somebody tell me what all this stuff means. The historicist approach was probably the prevailing approach at the time of the Reformation.

And to the degree that we can ascertain any view of Revelation among the Reformers, they tended toward this historicist approach. Even my beloved Jonathan Edwards, who otherwise I think is just pure genius on virtually anything he touches, he took that view, you know.

I don't know what to make of that exactly, except that I think there was a strong conviction among the Reformers generally that the Pope was the Antichrist. And once you have that little linchpin, then you're kind of forced to use that as an interpretive key to everything else.

And so the historicist approach has been around. The Seventh-day Adventists continue to maintain that view, and some people still are convinced that the historicist view is the correct view. I think the problem with that is that it falls prey to the same problem as the futurist view.

You're just left in a sea of wild speculation. You can't find any two historicists who agree, you know, because you can just go anywhere with virtually anything. And while one person sees a certain image in Revelation as the rise of Islam, somebody else sees it as the rise of Communism, and somebody else sees it as the Catholic Church, and someone else sees it as something else, you know.

The problem is there's no objective frame of reference by which to have any kind of certainty. All you have are after-the-fact speculative hunches that this or that may mean this or that in terms of eventual history.

And that's not very satisfying to a student of the Scriptures. The idealist approach.

Is.

Taken by some that would say, well, the attempt to try to tie what's happening in Revelation to particular historical events is misguided. And that instead we should read the book just trying to distill from it.

What are the great principles that really apply virtually at all times in history? I mean, no matter when you're living, you can see an antichrist. Whenever you're living, you can see a beast coming out of the sea.

You can see a beast coming out of the earth. You can see this or that, you know, and it kind of makes the book really sort of a poetic description of what happens at all times in history. You change the date, you change the century, but the basic themes remain the same.

And I have some sympathy with that actually, because I think there's some truth to it. But I also think that until we've done the homework of seeing it in terms of how the original audience sees it, we're still left with a lot of speculation.

The preterist approach sees Revelation as fundamentally describing first century events. Preterism, first of all, something about that term. There are two kinds of preterists in the world. There are preterists who call themselves full preterists or consistent preterists or some other term like that.

And they would essentially take the view that Revelation, together with all prophetic material in the New Testament, points to a terminus date of 70 AD, and that includes the second coming of Christ. In that sense, I am not a preterist.

I believe that Revelation fundamentally describes events that took place in the first century. So I take a preterist approach to Revelation, but I do not embrace preterism, which is a slightly different thing.

So I'm fully convinced that though Revelation is describing events that took place in the first century substantially, we are still looking forward to the return of Christ. That he is going to, he's on the right hand of God, and he will come to judge the quick and the dead, and that that is still a future event.

So.

Just to make that point clear. But having said that, there are also two forms of a preterist approach to Revelation. And part of what's given the preterist approach to Revelation a bad name is that at least one major school of thought that takes a preterist approach to Revelation sees it as describing not the collapse of Jerusalem in 70 AD, but a collapse of Rome that never happened.

And so you have many who would be what you'd call broadly liberal or critical scholars who would agree fully that Revelation is describing events in the first century. It's apocalyptic literature that's trying to assess.

The.

Embattled church in its very early decades. And usually they tie this to a persecution of Christians taking place in the last decade of the first century, emperor named Domitian. And so they would take the position that that Revelation was written to encourage beleaguered Christians concerning the persecution they were enduring in and around the year 95 AD.

And that Revelation was predicting that in the not too far distant future the great harlot city to wit Rome was going to collapse and burn and come under God's judgment. Which then of course they quickly point out never happened.

Which leads to the inevitable conclusion Revelation's a great book to read but certainly got it wrong basically on everything, you know. So that's that's that view which has been taken by liberal scholars for a long time is sometimes thought by people to be the only preterist game in town.

It's so if you're a preterist or a liberal, you see. And and but there's another school of thought which would say no, no, no. Revelation was not generated in 95 AD based on the persecution launched by Domitian.

But the compelling in fact overwhelming evidence the internal evidence of the book argues that it was actually written under the reign of Nero anticipating the ferocious much much worse persecution launched by Nero in the mid 60s AD rather than the relatively brief persecution that only lasted a few months taking place under Domitian.

Well, the the only problem that people run into with that is that our friend Irenaeus who was a church father writing it about the year 180 dropped a somewhat ambiguous sentence into his writing that at least appears on the face of it to put the date for the generation of the book of Revelation in 95 AD.

That's kind of a technical point that may be beyond the scope of your interest, but it has it has been a point of discussion. I think there's been some great work to kind of correct that and explain what Irenaeus was probably getting at.

But be that as it may I think my view certainly and I think the view of excellent commentators has been that the book should be dated back to the earlier date the Nero persecution and that it really describes in phenomenal and almost breathtaking detail apocalypticly what in fact did happen including the cataclysmic destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD as advertised in the book of Revelation.

And so at that point it just seems like it's a compelling case that can be made for that particular view of its content.

So a historicist would basically take the things that are happening currently and apply the book of Revelation to it.

A few.

Okay.

Yeah, well a historicist would say that Revelation is describing 2 ,000 years of history. And so if you look at certain things in Revelation, you'll probably see the rise of Islam in let's say the 7th century AD.