Is REVELATION Relevant Today?

By Michael Griego on March 21, 2026 • ( 0 )

Yes and No. The BOOK of REVELATION is highly relevant but is still widely misunderstood. But it is not being played out in the conflict with Iran. So why still the last days madness? Here’s why. ◊

There’s another book of the Bible, this time the BOOK of REVELATION, that is often talked about but widely misunderstood.

Today many will bring it up regarding fear of global destruction or a final world war breaking out of the Middle East.

Depending on who you ask, the recurring point of contention is around the nation of Israel and its enemies (Russia, Iran, or China?). This then brings up the so-called apocalyptic Battle of Armageddon, which comes before, after, or in the middle of 7-years of Tribulation (really bad years) culminating with the rise of a beast-like bad person, the Antichrist (designated by the number 666) tagging people with some technology mark. But he will be destroyed by Jesus, who returns back to earth (either before, during, or after Armageddon) to save us, judge us, or rule over everyone from the city of Jerusalem for 1,000 years. From a rebuilt Jewish Temple. But true Christians get removed from earth and go directly to heaven, before the Tribulation period, by way of the Rapture (everyone else is left behind). Also, during all of this, 166,000 Jews get converted to Christianity, and two-thirds of all Jews die.

Sound familiar? No? How about some of it?

Sound ridiculous? Yes? But you don’t believe all of it presented that way?

Is this in the Bible? No.

So where does all of this come from? It’s a long story.

The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism
In his fair, objective, and comprehensive book, the Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism – How the Evangelical Battle Over the End Times Shaped a Nation, Daniel Hummel presents the details of a long story played out over the past 200 years in England and America that helps bring sanity to a topic that drives great confusion.^¹He helped fully connect the dots for me on this topic of contention since I first became a Christian at as a young teenager.

Like many Christians, I had never heard the term “dispensationalism.” One night I heard a preacher say that I was a sinner and that Jesus still loved me and died and rose for me and that He was coming back to take believers to heaven. That was good enough for me. I “accepted Jesus” into my heart that night and was good to go.

While still a young Christian, someone gave me a little book to read entitled The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey.^² I devoured it and learned so much about the Bible and end times. I learned that the Antichrist was probably alive and ready to take over the world deceitfully, and that Jesus was coming back to earth by 1988. That was because Israel became a nation in 1948 and somewhere in the Bible Jesus said he would come back within a generation of that event – since a generation was 40 years in Bible times. In this book, I also learned that Israel’s enemies, probably Russian, was going to attack Israel with helicopter gunships and an army of 200 million soldiers (many on horseback), and with the Antichrist start WWIII or the Battle of Armageddon. But we Christians wouldn’t have to worry about it since we would be taken up in the clouds with Jesus in the Rapture. But then he’d return and rule the earth for 1,000 years. And then, Satan would be let out of prison, and he’d fight with Jesus, but Jesus wins and casts Satan into the lake of fire.

Sounded good to me.

Nevertheless, I hedged my bets and went to college, got married, and went to business school and started a family and career. By my mid-30s I still believed it all, even though nothing was happening as predicted in the Bible by Hal Lindsey and many pastors I listened to.

But then I started studying the Bible myself, not just books about the Bible. I started reading multiple commentaries and realized that people have varying opinions on these types of topics. In my 40s, I started teaching Bible Study classes at my church. When I was asked to teach a 1-year pre-planned lesson on the BOOK of REVELATION, I realized the lesson (by Precepts Ministries) was teaching it from a dispensationalist point of view. After deep research on my own, I came to realize that I could not teach continue to teach this class as designed.

I started to “dismantle” my own dispensationalist beliefs. I took my class of several dozen adult students along with me. I only lost a handful of students who couldn’t let go of their dispensationalist precepts.

For the past 20 plus years I have been delicately trying to help people read the Bible and engage in the world, not merely check out and believe we have no stake in this city, state, nation, world, culturally and spiritually. We do. In fact, our American nation has been weakened and culturally destroyed because Christians have not engaged because there is bit of “it’s not really my long-term problem” kind of thinking. Not all, but just a subtle undertone of disengagement.

What I’ve learned in The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism, is that there were well-intended but debatable dispensational concept elements originating with John Nelson Darby and the Plymouth Brethren in England. There came a slow infusion of their ideas through disciples in the US in the mid-to-late 19th century, and an inflection point in 1909 with the Oxford Press publication of the Scofield Reference Bible in the US. This Bible contained notes reflecting the full teaching of original Dispensationalism.

As American Bible Seminaries and Bible College emerged in the early-to-mid 20th century – Moody Bible Institute, Westminster, Dallas Theological Seminary, Biola/Talbot Seminary and many others – there came to be quite a theological debate over growing evangelical Christianity and end times eschatology. Every pastor and school had an opinion, for or against, Dispensationalism, and what became its very many strains and schema variations.

By the time The Late Great Planet Earth came out in 1970, the American Christian church and academic and political world had settled into varying camps of liberal and conservative views of end times. With few footnotes, little academic support, superficial scriptural exegesis, Hal Lindsey’s book was not an intellectual treatise. Rather, it was a cool, culturally hip phenomenon that caught big with the rebellious Baby Boomer generation and moved well with the Cold War fears of a nation that was restless and more open to experimental spiritual ideas and contemporary references.

Lindsey sold over 10 million copies over the next decade. He’d sell 28 million by the year 2000. He started a movement of end times hoopla in books, movies, and music across our culture. There have been many copycats of Hal Lindsey over the past decades.

The Dispensational scheme is now never the same with whoever you speak with about these things. And no one can support it scripturally. Culturally and socially, many Christians believe portions of Dispensationalist or Futurist thinking (new term used currently). It’s because they’ve never dug deeper.

Intellectually and theologically, the academic world gave up on Dispensationalism by the end of the 1990s.³

So, What About the BOOK of REVELATION?
Now you may be wondering: If the BOOK of REVELATION is not about modern end times, then what is it about? As with other prophetic books of the Old Testament, this book needs to be studied in context of its time and circumstance.

Don’t be confused.

In summary, see Revelation, written in mid-AD 60s, as the fulfillment of the prophetic words of Jesus in Matthew 24, which enact the condemnation of the nation of Israel for their sins of great disobedience in rejecting their Messiah, Jesus.

Revelation reads like a legal indictment against guilty Israel. Like a cosmic court setting with faithful witnesses standing against the accused, seeking justice and vindication. There is condemnation, then judgment, and then final execution of that judgment. God meted out that judgment in AD 70 by way of the Roman army resulting in complete destruction of the nation of Israel, the temple, and city of Jerusalem. The number of a man, 666, is a reference to Nero, the Roman emperor.

Finally, the 70 weeks/years (490 years) of Daniel is continuous; there is no 2,000-year gap that takes us to modern day America, or Israel. The Battle of Armageddon makes sense in light of the historical context of the amazing battle won by the Jews against its enemies in Ezekiel 38 and 39.

Yes, the BOOK of REVELATION documents and predicts the end of the Jewish era of the first covenant; it is not the end of the world. There is no more favoritism of Jews over Gentiles. God loves the Jews like He loves the Gentiles. Indeed, the plan for salvation via the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is now for all mankind.

The Apostle Paul makes this very clear in his teaching epistles. in ACTS Luke supports the growth and struggles (against the Jews) of the early Christian church. And then in REVELATION John projects the culmination of the Old Covenant and the transition to the New Covenant.

See the Scriptures directly to illuminate Scripture. Don’t depend on cultural trends and clever pundits that sway whole generations.

Have you ever studied Revelation without a Dispensationalist bias?
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The revelation from Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who testifies to everything he saw—that is, the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near. – Revelation 1:1-3

¹The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism – How the Evangelical Battle Over the End Times Shaped a Nation, by Daniel Hummel, William B Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2023.

²The Late Great Planet Earth, by Hal Lindsey, Zondervan Publishing, New York, 1970.

³Ibid, Hummel, pp. 301-302.