Monday, September 30, 2013

Assumptions

It's probably a good idea to start discussing the Book of Revelation by identifying the assumptions (presuppositions) I used during the major portion of my studies.  They are:

  1. The Book of Revelation is inspired Scripture and therefor like "All Scripture" it "is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work." (2 Tim 3:16-17, ESV).
  1. John the Apostle was the author of the book.
  2. The book was probably written around the mid-90s AD. I'm not dogmatic on this date and there are some people who I respect that argue that Revelation was written at a much earlier date.
  3. Although it is not an assumption, at this point it's probably a good idea to indicate that unless otherwise noted, I'll quote Scripture from the English Standard Version (ESV) Bible.

That's it. That's all of them.

Oh, I probably should say that when I started studying Revelation I began with a lot more presuppositions then I ended the study with. The assumptions that didn't make the cut kept getting in the way of me being able to understand the text. I may post more about this in the future but I think this is sufficient for now.


Of course, you are free to disagree with these assumptions and/or to have a point of view that others should have been included or even that some or all of these should have been excluded. That's fine, I'm just trying to define the view point I used to help me during my studies.

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