The heart

And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain

Revelation 5:6

On September 23, 2017 a great sign was seen in the heavens, the sign of Revelation 12. This sign forms the very center of the book of Revelation. The center is the place from which God builds everything, plants, trees, flowers, animals, humans. The center of Revelation 12, seen in the sky of September 2017 is where and when the Endtime started. From there all other events have taken place or will take place. The sign concerned 'a woman, clothed with the sun, with the moon at her feet and with a crown of twelve stars. She is with child and is in labor pains. A second sign consists of an enormous red dragon with 7 crowned heads and ten horns, standing before the woman in order to devour her child, once it will be born. Before we embark on an explanation of this heart of the book, we name five important elements that one has to recognize for a right understanding of the book.

(1) Most of the book of Revelation concerns a period in time that at the moment of writing these lines is still future. Jesus Himself showed us the layout of the book, when He gave John his assignment: ^'Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter.' (Rev.1:19) Jesus gave us a threefold division of the book: (1) Things which thou hast seen, (2) things which are and (3) things which shall be hereafter.

The first part is very short and concerns John's vision of Jesus in glory in the first chapter of Revelation.

The second part of Revelation concerns that which existed while the book was written. Looking at chapters 2 and 3 of Revelation, this is the period of the church. In retrospect, it is obvious that the phases that the church has gone through the past 2000 years, are similar to the descriptions which Jesus gave of the 7 churches, that existed then in Asia.

The third part of the book concerns the future. Looking at the word 'hereafter', which the Lord uses to define the third part, we find it twice at the beginning of Revelation 4, after the description of church history is finished 'After this, I looked....I will shew thee things which must be hereafter' 

So the third part concerns what is yet future. That will start after the church period has come to a close, in the rapture of the church. The rapture of the church is the only possibility for the church period to come to an end. It won't be because of mass falling away or mass executions of all Christians on earth, which is something God wouldn't allow. For Christ has promised: '...upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. (Mathew 16:18). 'This rock' is the confession, uttered by Peter shortly before, in which he confesses Jesus as 'the Christ, the Son of the living God'. The rock is not Peter himself or those who say they replace him. For the name of Peter means 'stone', which is only a small part of a rock.

The consequence of the division of Revelation, given by the Lord Himself, is that most of what we read after Revelation 4:1 is still future. While writing these lines, it must be future for the church is still on earth. But the moment will undoubtedly come that also these prophecies will shift into history.

(2) That Revelation 4:1 brings us at the start of the future, a period that will begin after the rapture of the church, does not imply that everything we read in Revelation 4 - 22 must automatically be future. It cannot be. For at the center of Revelation we find the picture of the Ark of the covenant in heaven (11:19), which was placed in heaven long ago, just before the first destruction of Jerusalem. We read about the woman, bringing forth the Man Child, Christ, which had already happened at the writing of the book. And we are impressed by an enormous red dragon with seven heads, of which Revelation 17:10 says that 'five of them are fallen - while John received his vision. These were the empires preceding the Roman empire. This shows us that some parts of Revelation 4-22 are also history. But which parts are history and which are future?

Here we point at the two different types of text in the book of Revelation. There is the main text, the story line of the future, starting in heaven, with the Lamb taking the scroll and opening the seven seals, the last of which leads to seven trumpets. The last trumpet leads to seven vials. The last vial ends with Jesus, coming on a white horse to exert his power as the Son of man, coming with the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory.

But there are also other texts, interwoven into the main text. These intermezzo's are Revelation 7, with the 144.000 out of Israel and the innumerable multitude out of all nations, Revelation 10-11 describing a strong angel coming from heaven and the two witnesses in Jerusalem, Revelation 12, the central chapter with the sign of the woman and the great dragon, Revelation 13, 14 about the two Endtime beasts and the serious warnings from God to remain free from them, Revelation 17, 18 about 'Babylon the Great' in her different forms. These intermittent parts all lead up to the great climax of the Endtime but they start far back in history, sometimes as far back in history as 600 BC, which we will show in the exposition of these chapters.

(3) The change in verb-tense that John uses, is often an indication that the chronology is broken and that we are placed further in time or back in time. The past tense is most often used by John. It shows us that to God all future events are just as certain as past events. From his eternity, He oversees all of time from creation to the apocalypse.

Sometimes the present tense is used in which case it indicates normal behavior of an entity. This is specifically the case with the beast out of the earth in Revelation 13.

In many translations these Greek verb-tenses are not seen and when they are, they sometimes are not consistently followed. Therefore one always has to look at the Greek text in order to be quite certain about the verb tense that is being used.

(4) At the start of this page, we already stated that God starts things from the center. It was the sign of Revelation 12, actually appearing in the sky of September 2017, that has brought us to the understanding that everything in Revelation comes forth from Revelation 12. It had to, because only there we find the birth, the suffering and the glorification of Christ, which laid the foundation for all we find in Revelation. Without Christ's work on earth, there would have been no Endtime and no salvation, as is vividly described in Revelation 5:' And I wept much, because no man was found worthy to open and to read the book, neither to look thereon.' (Rev.5:3)

(5) We assume that certain passages of Revelation coincide but not in the way that many expositors have suggested, that the trumpets and the vials should somehow play out synchronous. To one that takes the text of Revelation serious, that is impossible for the seven trumpets will start blowing after the opening of the last seal. And the seven vials will be poured out after the blowing of the seventh trumpet. Moreover there are insurmountable differences between the events of the seals, the events of the trumpets and the events of the vials. They can never be applicable to the same events. The argument that seals, trumpets and vials would show the same events from different perspectives does not apply because they are all described in the same very literal, down to earth and realistic way. Therefore we strongly reject the teaching that seals, trumpets and vials concern the same events.

What however might give us different angles from which the same events are shown are the intermezzo's or the parenthetical parts of Revelation. Large parts of Revelation interrupt the main story in order to explain the background of what is happening. This happens between seals 6 and 7 (Chapter 7), between trumpets 6 and 7 (Chapters 10 - 14) and after the 7th vial (Chapters 17, 18). We indeed see significant correlations between the main story of seals-trumpets-vials-2nd coming on one hand and the intermediate, historical and explanatory accounts in Revelation on the other.

We will now look at the center of Revelation as the place to start, the great signs in heaven of Revelation 12, the woman and the dragon. In order to understand the Biblical meaning of both signs, one has to start reading at the end of chapter 11, from verse 19, where we find a significant object, that played a key role in the history of Israel, God's chosen people, that brought forth the Messiah. In God's heavenly temple the ark of God's covenant with Israel is seen. Until the first destruction of Jerusalem around 600 BC, the ark of the covenant had been in the temple. But after centuries of intense disobedience by Israel, Ezekiel describes how the glory of God departed from the temple in the years before Jerusalem's fall. God's glory left the temple and moved to the mount of Olives (Ezek.10:18, 11:23).

Centuries later, Jesus resided on this mountain when He visited Jerusalem (Luke 21:37). It is as if He incorporated the glory of God, which He indeed did for it is his eternal Nature to do so: 'Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his Person.' (Hebrews 1:3) It was from this mountain of Olives, that Christ ascended to heaven (Acts 1:9-12), back to where He came from (John 16:28). Since then God's glory also returned to heaven. Since the destruction of the temple around 600 BC by the armies of Nebuchadnezzar, nobody knows where the ark resides. According to revelation 11:19, it resides in heaven, together with God's glory, in his heavenly temple. This situation is not in accordance with God's holy will. Therefore flashes of lightning, are mentioned, together with rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake and a severe hailstorm. At the return of Jesus, the forced separation between God and his people will be brought to an end. However it will be accompanied by severe judgments. These are the judgments of the Endtime, which for a large part concerns God's people of Israel. The book of Jeremiah therefore calls the Endtime 'Jacob's trouble' (Jer.30:7).

Revelation 11:19 is key in understanding Revelation 12 and 13. We have established that it demonstrates the situation that arose by disobedience of Israel. The Ark of the covenant was relocated to heaven the temple and the city were destroyed and the people went into exile. All of this happened around 600 BC by the Babylonian armies of Nebuchadnezzar. The placement of the Ark in heaven started a long period of thousands of years in which God gave the rule on earth over the the world empire, which is most directly controlled by 'the dragon', satan. The woman,  the channel through which Christ entered this world, is constantly being attacked by the dragon, first in order to devour her Child and when this Child is born and caught up to God, to destroy the woman herself. For the dragon is well known with the prophetic utterances of God, with at the center that terrible verdict in the garden of Eden - 'And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.' (Gen.3:15)

With the knowledge that the rule of the empire started with the destruction of Jerusalem, around 600 BC, and that the dragon is in pursuit of the woman, we have the clue for understanding the 7 heads of the dragon, the controller of the empire. The seven heads represent all empires from 600 BC until the apocalypse that have affairs with 'the woman', God's people, Israel. Therefore the stars that are cast to the earth by the dragon's tail have nothing to do with the fall of angels. They are the faithful in Israel that are attacked by the empire. We will dive deeper into this when discussing Revelation 12 and 13. Revelation 12 is history in a nutshell. The tail's impact on the stars shows us the constant attacks of the empire of those in Israel that want to serve the Lord. These attacks continue until the birth of Christ, his redemptive work and his return to God. Then the attacks of the dragon on God's people intensify. They become so intense that she has to flee. This is wat Jewish Christians actually did when the Roman armies besieged Jerusalem, in obedience to Christ's warnings: 'And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. Then let them which are in Judea flee to the mountains' (Luk 21:20,21)

Suddenly a war in heaven starts. Do we have any clue about the timing of this war? Some point back to a time that would have preceded Genesis but the Bible nowhere teaches us that such a period ever existed, even less that satan has ever led a revolt of one third of the angels. The timing in Revelation 12 (in past tense, like all the rest - no break of chronology) indicates that the moment of this war, is somewhere after the flight of the woman to the desert (the exile of Israel after the first century) and before or at the time of a renewed flight. In our days we see a renewed flight of God's people under the most confusing of circumstances. After 2000 years of population movements and the influence of Islam in the Middle East, no one knows who is who anymore. Looking at the people that are severely attacked and that are constantly fleeing since the Nakba of 1948, we assume that God's people consists of Palestinians and not of so called Jews that constitute the state of Israel. Besides the fleeing of the woman in Revelation 12, there are many indications in old testament prophecy that the Palestinians are Israel and that 'Israel' is a 'great delusion', especially for evangelical Christians.

Another indication that the war in heaven arises shortly before the start of the Endtime is what is displayed in the Revelation-12 sign in the heavens since September 23, 2017. We see how this war is outplayed in the stars and ends in the fall of satan from heaven, typified in the fall of 12P/Pons-Brooks (since July 2023 called 'the Devil's Comet) from high in the North to deep in the South from July 2023 until July 2024. This was also the period during which the great attack on the Palestinian people started (October 7, 2023).

That the fall of the Devil is to be placed shortly before the start of the Endtime is also indicated by parts of the Exclamation at his fall, like 'Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ' - we are on the threshold of the Millennial kingdom. and 'Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knows that he hath but a short time.' (Rev.12:10-12) - The great tribulation is about to start.

The exclamation of Revelation 12:10-12 is at the center of this central chapter and at the center of the center is the text: 'they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb' (Rev.12:11a). The Lamb is always at the center of things, as it is in God's throne, so it is in history. We assume that this exclamation is nothing else than the rapture of the church. 'Now is come salvation' - finally the faithful of the past 2000 years of church history reach their totality of their salvation: their glorification and ascension to heaven. '...and strength...' the enormous power of the Lord Almighty in the resurrection of the dead in Christ, which will also happen at the rapture (1 Thess.4:16). '...and the kingdom of our God...' God on his throne in heaven will after the rapture of the church be encircled by his elders - as a true king - just before laying his hands on disputed territory: earth. '...and the power of his Christ...' Shortly after the rapture of the church, Christ, the Lamb, will take the scroll, open the seals and subject the earth to his total domination. The placement of the saints on heavenly thrones has become possible because the accuser is cast down. The heaven is cleaned for receiving the guests from earth that were themselves cleansed by the blood of the Lamb. Within short the church will consist of dwellers in heaven, partakers of eternal joy and bliss.

The church being in heaven, all the dragon can do is persecute the people that brought forth the Christ. The fall of the dragon is directly followed by the persecution of the woman. Then God intervenes on behalf of the woman and she is brought into safety. Their are multiple indications in scripture that this coincides with the white horse of Revelation 6, which goes forth when the Lamb opens the first seal of the scroll.

Then the dragon will start to wage war on 'the remnant of her seed'. Here we have the second point of correlation between Revelation 12 and Revelation 6: the red horse of the second seal, which will prove to become nothing less than the third world war. It is the point of which Jesus says: 'For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.' (Mathew 24:7)

This also coincides with the coming to power by the beast out of the sea: 'And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months.' (Rev.13:5) Eventually this will lead to the beast being in full control of the planet.

It is not said that the 'power over all tribes, peoples, languages and nations' will last for 42 months. It is just the power to 'act' that will last 42 months, actions that will lead up to this totalitarian rule and which are necessary to cling to this rule once events turn against the empire.

So, with the red horse, we are at the start of the great tribulation of 3.5 years. The red horse is the beast out of the sea instigating wars, famine and installing total tyranny in the West (quarter of the earth - Revelation 6:8) through the change of law. But the first thing that is said of the beast is 'a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies'. The blasphemy of the beast will be his act of setting himself in the temple, claiming to be God. It is 'the abomination of desolation', spoken of by Daniel and by the Lord, at the midpoint of the last week of Daniel's 70 weeks. So here we have a central event that connects multiple parts of scripture: Daniel 9:27, Mathew 24:7, Mathew 24:15, Revelation 12:17, Revelation 13:5, 2 Thessalonians 2:4. And we could add even more parts of scripture to this list.

Then follow the seals 3-6, which are in chronological order, showing the total devastation and tyranny that comes down upon humanity, ending with an act of God in an enormous earthquake, probably triggered by events in space The sun will be darkened, and the moon will turn red (which is impossible when the darkening of the sun would be an eclipse) and showers of meteorites will come down.

Revelation 7 fits in the chronological line of the book in the sealing of the 144.000 out of Israel. The angels holding the four winds are told to wait bringing more harm to sea and earth from above until the sealing of the servants is accomplished. This harm from above is seen in the first four trumpets of Revelation 8. However, Revelation 7 does break with the chronology in the report on the great innumerable multitude of all nations, which is seen at their entering of the millennial kingdom, something to take place a few years after the great earthquake of the sixth seal with which Revelation 6 ended. They 'came out of the great tribulation' (which is seen in the past). Then the present tense is used: 'they are before the throne of God...' Then the future tense is used: 'they shall hunger no more...' As stated above, a change in verb tense denotes a disruption of chronology.

Revelation 8 and 9 are again in chronological order. They describe the first six trumpets, that follow the opening of the seventh and last seal at the start of chapter 8. It must however be said that there is quite some difference between the first four trumpets and trumpets 5 and 6. The first four are judgments from above, probably ignited by comets out of space entering earth's atmosphere, creating enormous havoc. They rapidly follow upon each other. After the first four trumpets elapse a few months before trumpets 5 and 6 are blown. This is indicated by the loud calling of the eagle at the end of trumpet 4: “Woe! Woe! Woe to the inhabitants of the earth." (Rev.8:13) More arguments are given in Chart of Endtime. Instead of direct judgments from God, trumpets 5 and 6 will consist of terror that will be unleashed by the rulers of the earth upon their fellow men. Looking at the length of periods, indicated in the descriptions of trumpets 5 and 6, they will take one and a half years. See also in Chart of Endtime.

In Revelation 10 we see the mighty angel coming from heaven with the little scroll, held open in his hand. We hear him heralding the end of the Endtime - after one and a half years of worldwide horror by the last empire. That the Endtime is coming to an end is made clear by the short sentence: "There will be no more delay!". Then the angel announces the seventh trumpet and the following unraveling of Old Testament prophecy in 'the mystery of God will be accomplished, just as he announced to his servants the prophets' (Rev.10:7). For a long time Old Testament prophecy has been a mystery, as was said to Daniel: But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book'. (Daniel 12:4)

The coming down of the mighty angel is the last part of the chronological order shortly before the end of the 3.5 years Endtime. The end of Revelation 10 indicates a return to the start of the Endtime, in order to illuminate a new aspect of the Endtime: the place and role of Israel. This new aspect was already indicated with the 'small opened scroll' in the hand of the angel, indicating God's servants, the prophets. Old Testament prophecy has Israel at its center and it has been proclaimed centuries before the coming of Christ. The small scroll of Israel has to be distinguished from the scroll that was opened by the Lamb in heaven in Revelation 6-8, the totality of Endtime for the complete creation. That a new way of looking at the Endtime will start with Revelation 11 is also indicated in the last verse of Revelation 10: Then I was told, “You must prophesy again about many peoples, nations, languages and kings.” In the beginning of Revelation 11 we also see a change in verb tense. Suddenly the future tense is used: '...the court ... it is given unto the Gentiles: and the holy city shall they tread under foot 42 months. And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth.' (Rev.11:2,3)

Chapter 11 gives a description of the 3.5 years Endtime from the perspective of testimony going out from two witnesses in Israel, especially their end as martyrs, and it leads up to the sounding of the 7th trumpet that was announced as very near by the mighty angel of Chapter 10. Directly after the sounding of the 7th trumpet, the vials will be poured out. But then Revelation stops the chronological main story and again introduces new perspectives on the Endtime: Endtime as culmination of Israel's history in its relationship to the world empire, that is controlled by satan (Revelation 12), as described above.

In Revelation 13, this is followed by the perspective of Endtime as an absolute execution of power by the last empire, the USA (the beast out of the sea), and its most important ally in the Middle East, the idolatrous Zionist state of Israel (the beast out of the earth), which is ruled by people that have no true ancestral bonds with Israel. The descriptions of both beasts of Revelation start more than a century back in history, as we intend to show.

Chapter 14 again describes the whole of the 3.5 year Endtime, this time from the viewpoint of God's countermeasures, in the 144.000 witnesses, the messages of angels, the message of the Spirit and the harvesting of everything coming out of the Endtime, either good or bad. The harvest of the most evil characters, brought forth by humanity is described as the treading of a wine press in and around Jerusalem at the return of the Lord, bringing death upon all armies and political powers of the empire and its allies.

With Chapter 15 we are just before the start of the outpouring upon the earth of the seven vials with the wrath of God. Those that were killed by the beast are seen in heaven, as the victorious ones, standing upon the sea of glass, mixed with fire. The vials are given to the angels and the pouring out of the vials is described in Revelation 16. We estimate this to take a few months. As with the first four trumpet judgments, they come from God and God acts swiftly in his judgments: 'For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime.' (Psalm 30:5) Just like Revelation 14, chapter 16 leads up to the final judgment of God in the second coming of Jesus Christ. His coming will be accompanied by the outpouring of vial 7, the worldwide earthquake and the enormous hail that will destroy everything.

Just before the absolute climax, the return of Jesus Christ in total triumph, another long intermezzo starts, that gives insight in the intermingling of two historical powers in the Endtime, the apostate church and the empire. Their historical development is seen in Revelation 17 and 18. The description of the empire as the beast that is controlled by the prostitute (apostate Christianity) again leads us back to around 600 BC, when the power to rule the earth was taken from Israel (that had totally and utterly failed) and given to the empire, with the Babylonian empire that destroyed Jerusalem as its first head. We now live in the days of the seventh head and 'the eighth', which is the worldwide influence of the USA. The period in time from which Revelation 17 is described are the glory days of the Roman Catholic church. The beast and its vassals (the ten horns, Europe's national powers) would however end the reign of the Roman Catholic Church (Rev.17:16), which actually happened in in the late 1700's, by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars.

Revelation 18 shows total destruction of the empire, the beast out of the sea (the USA), which is seen as a worldwide economic power, the heir of the Roman Catholic Church of the Middle Ages which itself was the heir of the old empires, starting with the Babylonian empire. In short: the USA as Babylon the great.

Christianity was never totally disposed of. It was very useful as an outward facade to hide the interior motives of the empire and its vassals. Therefore the title of 'Mystery Babylon the Great', with which Roman Catholicism was characterized, had gone over the the world empire, embedded in the USA. The USA is the Endtime beast, the political world-power (great city) that clothes itself with the best of motives and intentions but acts like the worst of despots in history, waging wars against numerous countries and their governments in order to gain world influence. This is the situation described in Revelation 18, the world empire seen as the center of economic power, under the name of Babylon the Great, having taken over the power that once resided in papal Rome.

In Revelation 19 we see the end of Babylon the great, followed by the new power, the true church and body and bride of Christ in heavenly beauty, ready to follow her Bridegroom, Christ in his ride to total victory. That ride is seen as the great climax of the book: the white horse will come down from heaven and Him that sits upon it will destroy all armies and political powers of the world.

After the great finale of the Endtime, Revelation 20 describes us what will happen thereafter, the judgment upon satan, the resurrection of all martyrs, the millennial kingdom, the last war at the end of the millennial kingdom, when satan will be loosed for a short while, the end of satan in the lake of fire, the resurrection of the dead and their destiny in the lake of fire if they are not to be found in the book of life of the Lamb that was slain.

Revelation 21 starts with eternity, a new heaven and a new earth and the new Jerusalem coming down from heaven as center of it all, God and the Lamb being her lamp and her glory and her life but also the lake of fire as eternal residence of those that chose evil above good. Then the description goes back in time, to the millennial kingdom, which can be seen by the change in verb-tense (from the future tense to past tense) and by the angel interrupting the vision in order to direct the attention of John to a new perspective. It is the perspective of the New Jerusalem as center of the millennial kingdom like it will be the center of the new universe.

The book ends with the absolute certainty of the fulfillment of every detail of it in the return of Jesus Christ. Amen, come Lord Jesus!

Still to make:

Schedule with chapters 1 - 22 and timeline and where they begin and end.