Are We Reading Revelation the Wrong Way?
Assumptions and 2 John
I love thought-provoking Bible study—especially when it challenges how I read a book like Revelation. It challenges my assumptions and forces me to return to what exactly the Bible actually says, as well as to how the early believers understood the books we so casually take for granted.
Last night’s study was the book of 2 John, which upended so many assumptions. But I’m thankful. I always remember my mother’s warning about assumed knowledge. She often told me, or wrote the equation out and made me read it:
Assume: ass = u + me
And here is what I had been assuming: Along with many other Bible teachers, I thought that ALL of the books of the New Testament were written before the fall of the Second Temple in 70 AD based on the “fact” that its destruction is never mentioned.
I now believe I was wrong.
The Church Fathers and Revelation’s Date
Many Christians speak confidently about the New Testament — yet ignore the earliest voices who preserved and defended it—the Church Fathers. Their writings are weighty, and the English translations are difficult to wade through. Yet the information preserved is priceless. They were second-century believers who stood remarkably close in time to the apostles themselves.
One of the most important among them was Irenaeus, who wrote around 180–185 CE. He came from Smyrna and had heard Polycarp preach. Polycarp, in turn, is thought to have been a disciple of John the Apostle.
That matters.
It means that Irenaeus was not engaging in distant speculation. Rather, he was transmitting testimony and interpretive understanding only one generation removed from John himself.
The Bible study I attended led me to dig deeper. In Against Heresies (50.30.3), Irenaeus writes regarding John’s vision on Patmos:
“His [John’s] vision occurred not so long ago, almost in our day, towards the end of Domitian’s reign.”
Domitian reigned from 81–96 AD. If Irenaeus is correct—and early Christian tradition overwhelmingly took him seriously—then Revelation was written AFTER the fall of the Second Temple.
Domitian and the Fall of the Temple
Since childhood, I have loved the book of Revelation. I can’t count how many times I’ve read it. I won’t say I completely understand it, but is it a book I love? Definitely.
I tell people, “Revelation is the best non-science fiction book I’ve ever read!” Now you know another secret about me, I do enjoy science fiction—but I love Revelation more. It reads like science fiction yet carries within it truth marked by challenges, encouragement, and hope.
Understanding this earliest external dating of Revelation—and who am I to argue with Irenaeus?—so much fell into place in my mind. Questions that I had carried for years began to resolve. I’m eager to reread the book with new eyes.
But I suspect I wouldn’t feel this deeply if I had never lived in Israel.
Here, even the so-called “secular” calendar revolves around biblical and post-biblical Jewish history. National holidays mark events recorded in Scripture or in the long memory of Jewish suffering and survival. The year is not structured primarily around seasons or civic anniversaries—but around redemption, exile, destruction, deliverance, and return.
As a result, Israelis don’t just study history in school; it is relived annually.
Every year, Tish b’Av—the ninth of Av—returns. It is a fast day commemorating the destruction of both Temples. Even if you aren’t fasting, the atmosphere shifts. Radios lower their tone. Conversations soften. There is more than a sense of loss—grief is a nuanced scent to the air we breathe.
The fall of the Second Temple is not a historical footnote. It is engraved into Jewish identity—the disaster of disasters. A national wound that resurfaces every year.
For religious Jews still longing for the Messiah, the hope of rebuilding the Third Temple remains a living one. Organizations are preparing vessels and garments. Discussions continue. Yet the rebuilding remains for “tomorrow.”
If this grief still echoes after two thousand years, what must it have felt like twenty-five years after the Second Temple fell?
A Different Way to Read Revelation
And that, I believe, is the audience to whom John wrote his Apocalypse. A church of shell-shocked Jewish and Gentile believers in Yeshua whose world had literally fallen apart—a world that had not yet stabilized and that hated them simply because they loved their God. A group of people clinging to the truth of their Savior because, like Peter so poignantly said, “To whom else can we go?”
I have heard many debates regarding why the book of Revelation was accepted into the Canon. But now it makes perfect sense to me. It would have been a spiritually challenging (first chapters) and comforting (later chapters) book that ministered to the wounded hearts and souls of a scattered church, Jews and Gentiles, wherever they were.
If there is another prophetic layer to the book, specifically relevant to today (2026), I don’t believe the original readers were acutely aware of it. What they found in Revelation was hope in their living God. For the Jewish believers, there was a strong reminder that the true Temple of God was yet to come—a glorious hope that promised a national redemption beyond imagining. A world with Eden reestablished. For the Gentile believers, there was the reminder that there were no other gods worth following, except this wonderful God of creation and their salvation, who saved them and who would prove victorious over every evil this world could dish out.
And for Jewish and Gentile believers alike, an assurance of a new heaven and a new earth where righteousness dwells. This was a hope that no one, not even the persecutions associated with Domitian, could take from them.
What about the prophecies?
I won’t say there is no prophetic layer to the book of Revelation. However, I think we need to handle that layer very carefully (something Irenaeus spends a lot of time talking about in his writings!). People were already misunderstanding the book in his time. Today, too many people have already gotten it VERY wrong.
Furthermore, I’ve met too many believers in Yeshua who seem to be obsessed with end times and trying to figure out who the antichrist is. Others are terrified of what is to come.
I am inclined to view the prophetic layer the way God advised Daniel to view his own visions in Daniel 12:4… “But you, Daniel, shut up these words and seal the book until the time of the end.”
As apocalyptic literature, I think John used that genre so as NOT to get into issues and politics, but to stay on track about God’s ultimate sovereignty and our hope in HIM through Yeshua.
Why This Matters Today
Whatever the future may hold, God holds the future. If Revelation was written into fresh grief, then perhaps it was never meant to be a timeline chart — but a lifeline.
As I’ve mourned and lamented the condition of the world today, Revelation reminds me that what I see is not the final word.
Genesis reminds me that God has the first word, “In the beginning, God….”
Revelation reminds that God has the last word, “The One giving testimony to these things says, “Yes! I am coming soon!”” (Revelation 22:20 TLV)
As John wrote: “Amen! Come, Lord Yeshua! May the grace of the Lord Yeshua be with all!” (Revelation 22:21 TLV).
Shortly before I planned to post this, I came across an amazing video with John Lennox discussing the book of Revelation in a refreshing new way. I hope you find it as encouraging as I did!
I’ve shared this song with you before, but I hope it’s an encouraging reminder: Yeshua is the one we can go to, and no one else offers His words of truth.
