One of the ideas in Dan Brown’s “The Lost Symbol” (Doubleday, 2009) and other books is that the Bible contains hidden messages. I can show you that this is true. Unlike Dan Brown’s fictional book, the Bible’s Book of Revelation is the key to unlocking these messages, messages that God has hidden for thousands of years.
Nearly 2,000 years ago, God sent his angel to John to give him a revelation that you can read in the last book of your Bible. Three verses in the first chapter of Revelation: 1:1, 1:3 and 1:11 are the key to revealing the hidden message within Revelation. Revelation 1:1 says that revelation tells us “…things that must soon come to pass.” Why soon? Revelation 1:3 focuses our attention on the words of the text. This is expanded upon in Revelation 22:18, where we are told not to add or delete any words. This focus on words leads us to ask how to achieve greater understanding without affecting the words. Finally, Revelation 1:11 says, “Write in a book what you seeThis is the spiritual ‘AH HA’. God has given us a timeline of the end time, but has sealed (hidden) it by showing John the timeline out of chronological order and telling him to write down what he sees. text describes what he saw next, not necessarily what will happen next, like a play with certain scenes out of order. But how would we know how to rearrange it to discover the real message? The answer is that Jesus told his disciples what would happen in true chronological order in the first three gospels Jesus shows us how to properly order and therefore interpret Revelation.
The order of the chapters of Revelation and the verse that tells us that these things will soon come to pass is what has confused scholars for centuries. The time “in short” depends on who the disclosure is addressed to. Once again, Jesus tells us whom he is ultimately addressing in Matthew 24:29-34, Mark 13:24-30, and Luke 21:25-32. These verses tell us that all the signs that Jesus is describing (which contains the chronology that shows us how to rearrange Revelation) will be completed within one generation. What Jesus described has not yet happened in the history of the world. These signs will happen “shortly” at the time of the end, “this”, generation. It seems that God did not want the true timeline to be known until the end of time, perhaps so that each generation would believe and look forward to the day of Christ’s return, even if it was actually going to be hundreds of years away. Going into the end times, I think he wants us to know the real story. Rearranging Revelation opens new doors to understand this important prophecy and Revelation opens our eyes to the meaning of other parts of the Bible that have been hidden by God until now.
Revelation tells us that international terror will lead to economic collapse and the rise of a world leader. He tells us why we are born. He tells us where you go when you die. He tells us why there is suffering in the world. He tells the end time generation what to expect and how to respond. He tells us when Jesus will return to earth. He tells us that we are children of God and our role when this world passes. All this and more. In short, the Gospels are the key to Revelation and Revelation is the key to the rest of the Bible. See for yourself the power of this hidden prophecy.