The Book of Revelation Decoded: Your Guide to Understanding the End Times Through the Eyes of the Hebrew Prophets

By Rabbi Kirt A. Schneider

Understand the connection between the Old Testament and the end times, what to expect during the last days, and how to stand firm in Christ in the face of opposition.

Rabbi K. A. Schneider decodes the Book of Revelation, showing how the end-time events prophesied in the New Testament book correspond with the teachings of the Torah and the Hebrew prophets. You will discover how the Passover foreshadows the great tribulation, and what the Hebrew prophets reveal about the anti-Messiah, Armageddon, hell, the return of the Messiah, the millennial kingdom, heaven, and much more. As the world grows darker and darker, many people have a sense of impending doom. This book will teach you what to expect during the last days and how to stand firm in Christ even in the face of opposition.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Charisma House
• Release date: Mar 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9781629991108

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

THE REVELATION

ALL OVER THE world there is a sense of foreboding, a feeling that dark clouds are on the horizon. Like a murder of crows gathering overhead, the signs of trouble are not just looming; they continue to increase.

Terrorist attacks are becoming commonplace even in settings once thought off-limits for such atrocities. From mass shootings at the Grand Bassam beach resort in the Ivory Coast to trucks plowing through holiday crowds in France,¹ it seems no place is safe anymore. This is the new world war, fought not within continental boundaries but in shopping malls, train stations, movie theaters, and schools.

Meanwhile faith in the world’s major economies is at an all-time low, as dozens of nations stand on the brink of economic collapse. Britain’s decision to exit the European Union (EU) upset the continent’s already unstable markets, and the EU’s bailouts of member countries have caused increased political turmoil.² Like with the United States, the slowing of China’s once-explosive economic growth is creating more skepticism and fear than hope.³ Indeed, the global market is so volatile that former United Kingdom prime minister David Cameron declared at a recent G20 Summit, Red warning lights are flashing on the dashboard of the global economy. ⁴

Of course there have always been times of economic uncertainty and threats of wars, so what makes today any different from other seasons in history? One answer to this is the imminence of nuclear destruction, as the single push of a button could wreak global havoc. The Iran nuclear deal of 2015 simply added fuel to the fire of a Middle East arms race.⁵ Countries once weak and helpless against superpowers such as the United States and the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) now have their hands on nuclear weapons or at least have access to nuclear power.⁶ Some of the world’s most unpredictable dictators of recent years—from North Korea’s Kim Jong-un to former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—have made a point to flex their country’s nuclear muscles,⁷ and yet most have had in mind two main enemies: the United States and Israel.

I travel often to Israel and have talked with many in the land. Each time I visit, I ask them how they are feeling about their country’s morale—whether the average Israeli is hopeful or worried about the future. I have observed that until recently most Israelis possessed a remarkable sense of optimism and a strong belief that the Jewish people have always persevered no matter what obstacles or outside threats emerged. This has changed, however. The same people who were once upbeat about Israel’s future now seem gripped with fear. One tour guide I spoke with said he frequently has nightmares about his country. Why would I not when every nation surrounding us has their weapons’ sights set on us? he asked. We are staring down the barrel of their guns, and it’s just a matter of time before they will pull the trigger.

Such fear is not exclusive to Israel but now permeates the air around the world. In the United States at least eight out of ten people are fearful that a massive terrorist attack will take place on home soil in the near future.⁸ Roughly 70 percent of all Americans believe we are still in an economic recession, and at least half of all Americans believe their country’s greatest days are behind them.⁹ Regardless of how they feel about the past, most Americans seem to agree on one thing: more trouble lies ahead.

RECEIVING THE REVELATION

The Bible speaks at length of such mounting trouble in the Book of Revelation. The apostle John received a vision from God of the global calamity that would come in the last days, or what many refer to as the end times. He wrote down this vision under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, describing what he saw—from a climactic world war to cosmic signs of earth’s demise to strange creatures in heaven.

I doubt he knew his prophetic account would one day become one of the most controversial and misunderstood books of the Bible. Indeed, countless believers today avoid reading it because they think it is too difficult to understand, too scary, or worse still, completely irrelevant.

It is true that the Book of Revelation contains some difficult elements. But for too long it has been seen as a confusing, mysterious, unapproachable book only to be understood by biblical experts. In fact, I have heard many Bible teachers preface their teachings on Revelation by saying only mature believers can truly understand its words.

I do not believe that God intended for this book to be understood by only a few. I am confident He wants every believer to receive the revelation of Revelation, no matter what his or her level of spiritual maturity or scriptural expertise. Its message is far too important—and yes, relevant—for the times we live in to be ignored, and that is especially true for believers.

That is why I have written this book—to present the content of Revelation with such simplicity and clarity that anyone can understand it and, as a result, the times in which we live. Jesus said of the Book of Revelation, Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy and keep those things which are written in it, for the time is near (Rev. 1:3). This should let us know it is important to God that we understand the message given in this book.

In these pages we will examine the timeline of the main events discussed in the Book of Revelation and how they will unfold. My prayer is that knowing this will cause your expectation of Jesus’s return to grow stronger and make you more determined than ever to live a godly lifestyle in anticipation of Messiah’s coming.

Obviously there are parts of John’s book that continue to confound Bible scholars almost two thousand years after its writing. But I believe by simply examining Revelation with Scripture itself—by using the lens of the Hebrew prophets—we can understand God’s ultimate purpose for this crucial final book of the Bible: that it become a guide for the church in the last days to inspire, equip, and empower every believer. So whether you have studied God’s Word for five weeks or fifty years, I believe the book you are now holding can help you grow in your faith and stand boldly in Christ in the difficult days ahead.

THE END IS NEAR

As the signs of trouble increase around the world, many people are realizing that those sign-holding, megaphone-toting sidewalk prophets were right after all—the end is near. Their message, which most of the world ignored or mocked, is becoming reality. We truly are living in the last days.

How do we know this? How can I be so sure that such an overused prophecy has finally become truth? Won’t the world naturally restore things to order just as it always does? Indeed, many people believe that history is like a pendulum—when things swing too far to one extreme, the pendulum will inevitably swing the other direction to balance out everything. History proves that situations automatically fix themselves, they say.

This book will reveal that what we are experiencing today is not a pendulum effect. Immorality will not correct itself. Sin won’t suddenly change its course. The pride of humanity—which we can see in everything from today’s rise of atheism and secular humanism to our narcissistic, selfie-obsessed Western culture—will not willingly submit itself to defeat. No, nothing will happen that can reverse this progression of evil compounding evil. The global sense of impending doom will not pass. Indeed, things are about to go from bad to worse.

If that sounds too pessimistic for you or is too hard to believe, understand that Jesus warned us of this. More than two thousand years ago Yeshua HaMashiach, which is Hebrew for Jesus the Messiah, spoke in detail about what life would be like in the last days before He returned to earth. He outlined many of the events and situations that would compose what we refer to as the end times. The apostle Paul gave us more information about the end times in a few of his letters. And of course John, one of Jesus’s original disciples, penned the greatest body of literature on the end times in the Book of Revelation.

But these accounts were certainly not the first to address the end times. Hundreds, even thousands, of years before, the Hebrew prophets of old spoke in detail about the last days. Many believers think of Revelation as the only end-times book in the Bible, yet they forget there are at least one hundred fifty chapters throughout God’s Word in which the end times is the major topic.¹⁰ The Book of Revelation is only twenty-two chapters, which means at least one hundred twenty-eight additional chapters in the Bible do not just mention but discuss at length this pivotal time in history.

Often people do not realize how prominent the theme of the end times is in the Tanakh, which is the Hebrew Bible. The Tanakh is what believers know as the Old Testament and comprises three parts: the Torah (also known as the Five Books of Moses), Nevi’im (meaning prophets), and Ketuvim (writings). From the Tanakh’s very first book, B’resheet (Genesis), the end times are part of the biblical story. In fact, even Jacob mentioned the last days when he gathered his sons, who would become the twelve tribes of Israel, to bless them on his deathbed: Gather yourselves together, so that I may tell you what will befall you in the last days (Gen. 49:1). So from Genesis to Malachi we find God revealing His plan for the end times to the Hebrew prophets.

One of the magnificent elements of the believer’s Bible, then, is how the Old and New Testaments match up. This synchronization is both stunning and awe-inspiring. In Matthew 13:52 Yeshua said that every scribe—meaning a Jewish person in His day who knew the Torah and the prophets and who taught God’s people—who is discipled for the kingdom of heaven is like a man who is master of the household who brings out of his treasure new and old things.

That is exactly what I hope to do in this book—to bring forth the treasures from old and new things, from the ancient Hebrew Bible and from the New Testament, or what’s called the B’rit Hadashah. When we compare scriptures from these side by side, we find a remarkable synchronism of God’s plan spelled out in His Word. We also see that God is one and His Word is one—that the Bible is not two separate books but one continuous, progressive revelation that becomes clearer and clearer as time goes on. And when we interpret the Book of Revelation through the lens of the Hebrew prophets, using old and new to find treasures, we discover a new level of revelation.

A NEW EXPECTATION

Let’s return to the question of the times in which we live. How do we know the end is near? Why am I so certain of this?

One reason is that we live in an era that has recaptured the spirit of the apostles. The early church and its leaders lived with a perspective that it was not a matter of if Jesus returned, but when. The writers of the New Testament possessed a constant expectation that Yeshua would return in their lifetime. We can tell by their writings that Paul and Peter, for example, did not think Jesus would possibly return in their lifetime; they were convinced that He would return during their lives.

In 1 Corinthians 1:7–8 Paul wrote, You are not lacking in any gift while waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ. He will strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. And in 2 Peter 3:12 Peter encouraged the early church while [they were] waiting for and desiring the coming of the day of God. The Greek word used for waiting there is prosdokōntas, which means expecting. ¹¹ There was a communal sense of expectation shared among the early believers, and this unified them in a powerful way to live in constant preparation for the Messiah’s return.

Today there is a newfound sense of expectancy within the global church regarding the Lord’s return. Such awareness has not been at the forefront of the church for a long time. In fact, for almost seventeen hundred years, the church in general did not think much about the Messiah’s return. As a result, we find little mention of the topic in the writings of church leaders such as John Calvin, Martin Luther, and John Wesley. The reason behind this relative silence is simple: the church understood that for Jesus to return, Israel must be in its land, in accordance with the Hebrew prophecies.

When Rome first conquered the Judean region in 63 BC, most Jews were still centralized in the area. But when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and burned down the temple in 70 AD, the remaining Jews who were not killed were forced into slavery and exile. At that point messianic expectation immediately decreased—and remained as such until the miracle of May 14, 1948. That was the day the Jewish people were once again given their own land following the atrocities of the Holocaust, during which more than six million Jews were murdered. Israel went from being an ancient idea to an actual nation born in one day, fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy from more than twenty-seven hundred years earlier in which he asked, Who has ever heard of such things? Who has ever seen things like this? Can a country be born in a day or a nation be brought forth in a moment? (Isa. 66:8, NIV).

This was an unforgettable day for the Jewish people. Those scattered around the world immediately began returning to the homeland—what’s known as making aliyah in Hebrew—and fulfilling yet another prophecy, this time from Ezekiel 36:24: For I will take you from among the nations and gather you out of all countries and will bring you into your own land.

This prophetic fulfillment continues today. Of the 14.3 million Jews around the world, 6.4 million live in Israel.¹² In 2014 there were around 6.8 million Jews living in the United States, meaning there are almost as many Jews now in Israel as in America.¹³ Thousands more across the globe continue to make aliyah each year, which is why the Jewish population in Israel alone has grown almost 2 percent in the last year.

SIGNS OF THE TIMES

Israel becoming a nation with its own land in 1948 was truly miraculous. The same can be said for when the nation recaptured Jerusalem in June 1967 following another stunning victory in the Six-Day War, despite being heavily outnumbered and vastly inferior in terms of arms, resources, and technology. For the average Israeli, these events stir a sense of patriotism and inexpressible joy that stand in stark contrast to the hopelessness of almost two thousand years of exile.

Yet these events and the phenomenon of Jews returning to the homeland mean something more for believers around the world—Jewish or not. For those who believe in Yeshua HaMashiach (Jesus the Messiah), these developments are blatant signs that we are indeed approaching the end times and that our Lord is soon to return. As a result, interest in eschatology, which is the study of the end times, is at an all-time high since the apostles’ day. Jesus, Paul, John, and the Hebrew prophets all spelled out signs of the last days, yet these were all predicated upon Israel inhabiting the land. With that now being reality, I believe God is stirring His people worldwide to search the Scriptures and find His blueprints for the end times. He does not want us unprepared and overwhelmed when the events prophesied so long ago finally begin to unfold.

We will look at many of those events in this book. More specifically we will examine more than twenty different elements associated with the end times. These are crises, events, developments, people, places, or things that hold tremendous significance in the context of the last days. Among them are:

• The Great Tribulation (what Scripture also calls Jacob’s trouble)

• The rise of the Antichrist

• The mark of the beast

• The abomination of desolation God’s judgments and wrath (the seven seals, seven trumpets, and seven bowls)

• The Rapture

• Armageddon

• The return of Jesus the Messiah

• The marriage supper of the Lamb

• Israel’s salvation

• The ten lost tribes of Israel

• God’s rewards

• The judgment seats

• The first and second resurrections

• Hell

• The lake of fire

• The Book of Life

• The millennial reign of the Messiah

• Satan’s final assault

• The first heaven

• The new heaven and the new earth

Some of what I share on these topics will challenge your theology. Not only am I certain of this; I fully embrace it. I pray that you will wrestle with each topic and, more importantly, delve into Scripture in the same way I have. You may have been taught something different from what I will share in this book. For example, I do not think God will remove His church from the earth before the Tribulation begins because I strongly believe that the Passover in Exodus is the prototype through which we must interpret the end-time events in Revelation. (I will explain this later.)

My goal in writing this book is not to persuade you on theological issues. Instead I want to show as clearly as possible how the Old and New Testaments connect in relation to what they teach about the end times. I will do my best to let those scriptures speak for themselves and allow the power of God’s Word alone to increase your faith.

Admittedly, though, some parts of Revelation can be difficult to understand. Because of this you may be tempted at times to put down this book because you don’t understand what is being discussed. I will do my best to explain Revelation as simply as possible, but I want to strongly encourage you: don’t give up! Commit to reading through this entire book—including the sentences, paragraphs, or parts you do not understand on first pass. If you stick with it and persevere in reading through the difficult parts, I promise that although you may not understand every detail mentioned in the Book of Revelation, by the end of this book you will have a better grasp of John’s account. More importantly you will have gained greater revelation into God’s perspective for how we as believers can face the times ahead with hope and expectation.

We must be prepared with such hope and expectation because, as you will discover in this book, we are entering into the most difficult days in human history. What we today think of as humanity’s darkest moments—the Holocaust, World Wars I and II, the Black Death, the Crusades, the genocides of recent years—will pale in comparison with what is yet to come. Amid such extreme darkness and evil, a great deception will arise within the church, causing many believers to fall away from their faith. The world will witness the most miraculous, supernatural signs and wonders in history. And all throughout, the bride of Christ will be purified and made spotless so she finally can be joined with her Bridegroom, Jesus, upon His return.

We will not automatically arrive at this place, however. It takes preparation. It takes us committing to being ready for the Lord’s return at whatever hour. God wants to wake up His church so we can rise to face the difficult times that are ahead. Yeshua desires a bride who is ready and waiting, not one who is caught asleep during history’s most pivotal moments. As you read this book, I pray the Holy Spirit not only gives revelation and insight into His Word but also empowers you to stand strong for the coming days. May you be counted among those who, upon the Lord’s return, hear Him say, Well done, you good and faithful servant (Matt. 25:21).

CHAPTER 1

JACOB’S TROUBLE: FROM TURMOIL TO THE GREAT TRIBULATION

WHAT’S SO SPECIAL about Israel? Why so much fuss for thousands of years over such a tiny speck of land? And why has the existence of such a relatively small group of people in the earth caused so much conflict?

As a natural-born Jew I have asked myself these questions many times. Both my parents are Jewish, and I grew up in the Jewish suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, called Beachwood and Pepper Pike. Although Cleveland’s Jewish population does not compare to that of New York City, Los Angeles, or Miami, it is still relatively large. In fact, Beachwood was almost 95 percent Jewish when my family lived there. So during my early years most of my friends, classmates, and neighbors were—you guessed it—Jewish.

That did not stop me from eventually realizing