Blessed: Time, Symbolism, and Imagery in Revelation with Greg Beale (Episode 10)

June 29, 2022 by: Nancy Guthrie

This article is part of the Blessed: Conversations on the Book of Revelation with Nancy Guthrie series.

Already, and Not Yet

In this episode, Nancy Guthrie is joined by Greg Beale to discuss questions related to the sometimes difficult symbolism and imagery of the book of Revelation.

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | RSS

Blessed

Blessed

Nancy Guthrie

Blessed, by bestselling author and speaker Nancy Guthrie, gives individuals and small groups a friendly, theologically reliable, and robust guide to understanding the book of Revelation.

Topics Addressed in This Interview:

01:15 - Premillennialism, Amillennialism, or Already, and Not Yet Millennialism?

Nancy Guthrie
My guest today is Dr. G. K. (Greg) Beale. Dr. Beale, I’ve been so looking forward to having this conversation with you. Thank you for being willing to talk with us and have a conversation about Revelation.

Greg Beale
My pleasure.

Nancy Guthrie
It’s one of your favorite topics, isn’t it?

Greg Beale
It is.

Nancy Guthrie
Is your commentary on Revelation—you’ve got the big commentary, and then you’ve got what you call the shorter commentary that is still seven hundred paper—would that commentary on Revelation be your biggest book?

Greg Beale
The big commentary would be. I do have a New Testament biblical theology that was around maybe 1,100 pages.

Nancy Guthrie
It’s interesting because as I’ve talked to different people while working on this Revelation project, we always compare sources, and Beale is always on the list. It certainly has been for me! Dr. Beale is now a New Testament professor at Reformed Theological Seminary here in Dallas. He’s taught at Westminster Theological Seminary, Wheaton College Graduate School, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and Grove City College. You mentioned your book, A New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New, and probably apart from your Revelation commentary, that’s probably your book that’s been most profoundly helpful to me. It’s interesting to me, in terms of talking about Revelation, as I look where you went to school—you’ve got a PhD from Cambridge, but you graduated from Dallas Theological Seminary in 1976. I’m not sure that I knew that about you, but as I think about talking to you about Revelation, I find that completely fascinating. Listeners, if you wonder why I find that fascinating, maybe Dr. Beale can enlighten you in terms of Dallas Seminary and its history in terms of its interpretation of Revelation. I just wonder, how has that shaped how you approach the book of Revelation?

Greg Beale
First of all, I think I should say that was a very unique time when I went. The professors there were very good—S. Lewis Johnson, Bruce Waltke, Haddon Robinson, Allen Ross (he was younger at the time and now teaches at a theological seminary in Alabama—Beeson School of Divinity) Edwin Bloom—a lot of unique people were there at the time. They were very good. I really learned to trust in the Bible there. Of course, I did before I went there, but I really learned the doctrine of inerrancy there. I learned how to exegete there. Halfway through I became what I would call Reformed soteriologically, which meant that I believe that it’s only by the grace of God that you’re saved and that one is elected (that sort of thing). But I did not become Reformed in terms of eschatology. At the time at Dallas Seminary, if you taught there and were a student there, you had to believe in the notion that there was going to be a 1,000 year reign of Christ at the end when God would deal with Israel again. The Church Age was a parenthesis, and once the church is raptured then God will deal with Israel, Christ will come back, and there will be this 1,000 year reign. I did believe that and, in fact, I taught that early on in Bible studies when I was at Dallas seminary. Halfway through and toward the end, I began to study a lot of the Old and the New. I began to see that the kingdom prophecies in the Gospels were beginning fulfillments. Whereas I was taught that that fulfillment was put off until after the church was raptured and God began to deal with Israel and set up his kingdom. So, it would be fulfilled in a future millennium. But I began to see those prophecies as being fulfilled, so I came to a position that some would call historical premillennialism, which is that the church and Israel are not necessarily separate, that the kingdom began with the first coming of Christ. It was a position popularized to a great extent in biblical circles by George Eldon Ladd—historic premillennialism. So, I got under the wire and was able to graduate because I was still pre-millennial. And then a few years later I began to see, Hmmm . . . could this idea of the kingdom and the Church Age be true of Revelation 20? I began to think yes. That caused me to come into a position historically known as amillennialism. I don’t like that term because the alpha means no. It’s an alpha primitive—no millennium. I believe there’s a millennium, I just believe it’s spiritual and beginning now. It’s not something put off until the end that’s purely physical. That’s sort of the shorthand. I didn’t really have a lot of in-depth interpretative evidence for that view until I began to teach on the book of Revelation. During my first or second year of college I was teaching, and then I began the commentary, and then I became more entrenched in that view. I don’t call my view amillennialism; I call it “already, and not yet millennialism.” That’s my view. Or, “inaugurated millennialism.”

Nancy Guthrie
If somebody presses you, will you say, Okay, yes. I fall in the category of amillennial, but you just prefer to call it the already and not yet?

Greg Beale
Exactly. I would say historically, yes, it’s what I am, but it’s an unfortunate term.

07:25 - The Psychology of Revelation

Nancy Guthrie
As I was working on Blessed: Experiencing the Promise of the Book of Revelation, I was wanting to create a resource for, for example, small groups who want to study the book of Revelation. I remember when I interviewed you about Revelation probably six or seven years ago, you made the statement that if you ask people in the pew, What’s the one book you want to study? they all want to study Revelation. But if you ask pastors what they don’t want to teach, it’s Revelation. I also think that people tend to avoid Revelation because they’re afraid they can’t understand it. They know that there are all of these different views and that a lot of people find it confusing. In our day and age when there is so much division in the church and so many things, it seems, to argue about, I think that a lot of people don’t want to go to Bible study and argue, and so maybe they don’t want to choose the book of Revelation. And yet, I wanted to create a resource for people to study the book of Revelation, first of all, because we want everything God has to say to us. We don’t want there to be any part of the Bible that we say, I don’t need to know that. And whereas so many people think of Revelation as something solely about the future and solely about the return of Christ, it seems to me that Revelation is so much about how you and I are to live right now as we wait for Christ to come and establish his kingdom in all of its fullness. It’s so much about right now. It’s this call to patient endurance and to refuse to compromise with the world as we wait.

Greg Beale
I like to call the book of Revelation not just a futurology, but it’s a redemptive, historical, psychology—a psychological framework within which the church is to think.

Nancy Guthrie
Tell me more about what you mean.

Greg Beale
What I mean is that, yes, this book throughout has references to the future. There’s no doubt about that. But throughout it also has references to the present, to exactly what you were talking about—how the Christian is to be faithful in the midst of an ungodly world that is pressuring it to conform. For example, in Revelation 2 a woman by the name of Jezebel—who’s either a woman or the leader of a movement that’s called the Jezebel Movement; probably an individual prophetess—she’s leading people astray by causing them to eat food sacrificed to idols and to fornicate. Well, the fornicate is probably figurative there. It means to come into an intimate, illicit relationship with idols in the book of Revelation, and actually in the Old Testament. So, why do I bring that up? Because in chapter 17 there’s a lot about the future and the destruction of Babylon the great. She’s presented as a whore there. If you look carefully at how she is presented, she is depicted according to the outlines of Jezebel, the false prophetess in the Old Testament, the wife of Ahab. What are we saying? Jezebel has infiltrated the church in Thyatira, and what that means is Babylon the great has been infiltrated. The world has been infiltrated. Already we see in the letters that what is to be future—the existence of Babylon the great—is already something that is present. That reminds me, too, of just a little issue that I have. Again and again, when you find people preaching on the book of Revelation, it’s the letters. I’m doing a sermon series on Revelation. Chapters 1–3. As you say—and I’m speaking to pastors here—they’re afraid to go further. This is so much like Paul, for example, the letters. So I’m really happy you wrote a commentary on the whole book, which is an encouragement for people to read and study the whole book.

11:49 - Revealing Assumed Dispensationalism When Teaching Revelation

Nancy Guthrie
I hope they will. As I think about those who might be leading a group through the book of Revelation, I think they may have a fear—and maybe I think this because I have the same fear. I think it’s something that maybe you have dealt with a lot, so maybe you can give us some input on it. That is, my assumption is that there are a lot of people who have been shaped by dispensational, premillennial ideas. They might not have even heard the term “dispensational.” If you ask them, Are you dispensational?, they wouldn’t even necessarily know what you’re talking about. But if they’re like me, I can remember seeing The Late, Great Planet Earth book when it appeared at our house, and seeing A Thief in the Night numerous times. I grew up in a ministry and in a church. Once again, I never heard the word dispensational, but it was just the generally assumed, faithful way of understanding and reading the Bible. You talked about your time at Dallas Seminary, how you really came to accept the inerrancy and authority of the Bible, and that was the big strength of it. But I think for a lot of that era my assumption was that anybody who takes the Bible seriously believes this way, and anyone who doesn’t believe this way is liberal and doesn’t take the Bible seriously. As we prepare to teach through Revelation, I think we have to assume there are people in our group that we’re teaching that have built their assumptions about the book of Revelation based on a similar kind of history to what I’ve described.

Greg Beale
Without understanding what theological framework they’re really holding.

Nancy Guthrie
How have you dealt with that? I know you’ve been in some dispensational settings where you’ve been teaching. Are there particular aspects of Revelation that are going to come up that you’re going to have to deal with with someone in the group who has deeply-held dispensational beliefs?

Greg Beale
I think first of all, if we’re speaking of a pastor who’s preaching or teaching a Sunday school series, or speaking of someone who teaches Bible studies (and it’s someone who does it a lot), I think when you’re in other parts of the New Testament it’s really important to talk about what I call inaugurated eschatology—that the latter days have begun. You go back to the Old Testament and ask, What were the latter days about? Among the high points were that the kingdom was to begin. The Messiah would come and he would rule over a kingdom, and there would be a new creation. Explain these things, because the traditional framework of dispensationalism would say that the kingdom hasn’t been inaugurated, but if you can see it elsewhere in the New Testament. And especially, when you see in the New Testament that what was prophesied about Israel is fulfilled in the church. You see Old Testament quotations with Jesus, and they’re seen as fulfilled and applied to and in the church. That’s important if you’re in an ongoing ministry of teaching, whether Bible studies or pastor. Then, when you get to the book of Revelation, you can begin to interpret it in that context and say this is no different. For example take Revelation 1:6: “He made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God.” That’s repeated in Revelation 5:10, and in the millennial passage in Revelation 20:4,6. What does that mean? It’s very clear that the church (in Rev. 1:6 and Rev. 5:10) is already come to be what Israel was supposed to be, because that is an allusion—everyone admits—to Exodus 19:6. And Israel never fulfilled that. They never were a kingdom and priests. They couldn’t do it on their own and God didn’t give them the grace to do it. And finally, that phrase there is “He made them.” In fact, my wife was pointing this out to me: Look at that phrase: He made them. They couldn’t be that otherwise. He made them to be a kingdom and priests. The church has taken on the commission of Israel. That’s repeated in Revelation 5:10 and in the millennial passage. At the very least we can say that what the millennium is talking about—believers reigning as kings and priests—has begun in the first century.

Nancy Guthrie
One thing we need to do is, in our broader teaching when we’re not even to Revelation yet, is that we need to be making sure people understand this inaugurated eschatology—that when the King came into creation in his first coming and said, “The Kingdom of God is at hand,” there we see the beginning of the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies.

Greg Beale
You begin to prepare people. If they can see this is the broader teaching of the New Testament. One could still say, Well, Revelation is different. It’s at the very end. It’s just giving us only the future. But what I’ve just said shows well, no, early on the church is a kingdom of priests (twice) and even later on in the millennium it is to be. So, even if you take that as future, you still have to see it as having begun. So, I think it’s really key to set the framework in that way.

17:48 - Are the Events of Revelation Chronological?

Nancy Guthrie
I imagine another key thing you’re going to have to deal with is whether or not, as you read through the book of Revelation, that we’re reading a chronological depiction of events in the future, or if we’re reading something that’s very different—we’ll use the word recapitulation. Or, we might just ask, Are we seeing some repeated cycles that actually cover the period of time of the incarnation through the life, death, resurrection, ascension of Jesus and beyond? How would you put that? Think in terms of that skeptic, perhaps with a dispensational mindset—how are we going to communicate this to them?

Greg Beale
You find that these visions are typically introduced by, “After these things, I saw . . . .” You’ll often have a new series of visions introduced that way. You’ll see the judgment of the seals, and then you begin to get “After these things, I saw . . .” with the trumpets. The trumpets come in time after the seals. Then, later in the book you get the bowls, so they must come in time after the trumpets. Many see that as a chronology of the future. The problem with that, as I began to look into it, is that “After these things, I saw . . .” Is just talking about the order of visions that John saw, not the order of the history of how those visions would occur. That’s really important. If I had a dream last night and I was reporting it to you, I would say, Well, in high school this happened. Then, in grade school, this happened. Then, in college, this happened. I remember when I was in Kindergarten, this happened. I’m recounting my visions in a topical order, not chronologically, in order to make a particular point. Maybe I’m going from most important to least important or whatever. That, I think, is what John is doing. For example, Revelation 4:1 says, “After these things, I saw . . . .” Many people will say that’s after the Church Age. In other words, what John’s about to see in chapters 4, 5, and following is after the events of the Church Age. No, because Revelation 1–3 is really a big, huge vision of the Son of Man who is speaking to the churches. After that vision, I saw another vision. Chapter 4 and following isn’t the events that are about to be seen are after the events of the Church Age. That is huge to understand I think. To further establish that the seals, the trumpets, and the bowls are not chronologically after one another but probably overlap in time. They’re looking at the same epoch and period, but from different vantage points. My wife gives the example that if you're in a room, maybe you see the wall there, and then what’s behind me—it’s different perspectives at the same time, but on the same thing and the same room. I think that’s true. There are a number of reasons why I hold those visions are not chronological but overlap in meaning. You used the word recapitulation. We could say they recapitulate one another; they repeat one another. But they’re not just saying the same thing. If you go to the Old Testament and you look at Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Zechariah, Daniel—a lot of which are apocalyptic Old Testament books—the visions there are not in chronological sequence. They’re recapitulation. They’re going over and over again.

Nancy Guthrie
Maybe that’s why the Prophets are challenging for us to read too. If we think about the books people avoid, I think a lot of time it’s the prophets because we like things to be chronological, and the Prophets don’t cooperate with us, and neither does the prophet John.

Greg Beale
And Daniel is among those that recapitulate, and Daniel is very, very influential in the book of Revelation. But so is Ezekiel. In fact, I think those are the two dominant books that influence the book of Revelation, and they are recapitulations. They don’t present things in chronological order.

Nancy Guthrie
One of the points you made in your commentary on this topic is probably the most convincing argument for that, and that is that as you read through, if you think it’s chronological, then the final judgment happens again and again and again. Even when it says that all have been judged, they emerge again and there’s another final judgment. We just know that just doesn’t make sense.

Greg Beale
Exactly. The seals end with judgment. When you start the trumpets, if we’ve just finished with judgment, then we’ve got to be in the new creation now. But all of a sudden there are all these trials, all these tribulations, so it can’t be. It has to go back. The same, then, when you go to the bowls. That is a huge point you’ve just made. The response to that is, This judgment is just in anticipation of the future. It’s not really recounting it, even though what’s preceded in the seals are really trials at the final tribulation. But when it recounts final judgment, that’s just a parenthetical anticipation. So, when we hit the trumpets, we continue on with the final tribulation. Oh, and then at the end of the trumpets we get another reference to judgment, but that’s just in anticipation. It’s not an actual event that we’re recording. Finally, at the end of the book you get that. I just don’t think that that pans out well. I don’t think that that’s convincing. Another reason that I hold that they are recapitulations is that in the trumpets and the bowls, they are almost consecutively based on the Exodus plagues—both of them—so they’ve got to be related in some way. I think the best answer to that is that they probably overlap.

24:09 - The Key to the Book of Revelation

Nancy Guthrie
You point out Revelation 1:19 as being a key to the whole book. It kind of relates to what we’re talking about a little bit in terms of understanding timeframe. Would you talk to us a little bit about that?

Greg Beale
I will, but now we’re really going to get down into some, can I say, in-depth, interpretative spade work?

Nancy Guthrie
We’re up for it!

Greg Beale
Okay, you’ve asked me. Revelation 1:19 says, “Write, therefore, the things which you have seen and the things which are and the things which shall take place after these things.” The person who takes the book of Revelation as a chronological sequence sees this as proof of their view. In other words, write what you’ve seen (the Son of Man vision), then write what is (the things of the Church Age). That’s what is. And then the final statement, “write about the things that shall take place after these things,” that’s after the Church Age (chapter 4 and following). You have a nice reference to past (Son of Man vision), present (the Church Age with the seven churches), and then the future (chapters 4 and following). On the surface that really sounds good. As I began to look at it, one of the things that struck me was that the last phrase—”the things which shall take place after these things”—that is an allusion to Daniel 2:28, 29, and 45. I refer to my wife a lot, but I’ll refer to her again: I’ll always say, This is an allusion to Daniel, and she’ll say, Okay, what difference does that make? That’s become a transition in all of my teaching. I’ll point out an Old Testament allusion, and then I’ll say, The Dorinda Principle is this: So what difference does that make? The difference is this: in Daniel 2, Daniel says to the king when he sees this huge statue that’s struck by a rock and it crumbles and then the kingdom of God is set up eternally, the king doesn’t know what it meant. He just knows he had this dream and he’s troubled. Daniel tells him what it means. He said, Oh king, God has revealed to you what must come to pass in the latter days. Then, he repeats it in the next verse: God has revealed to you what must come to pass after these things. That is a synonym of “What must come to pass in the latter days.” It’s true that the Daniel vision is something about the future; however, here Daniel is clearly seen as being fulfilled in the present. Why do I say that? Because the Son of Man vision is presented in Revelation 1:13: “I saw a Son of Man.” Jesus has begun to fulfill the Son of Man Daniel 7 vision. Furthermore, Revelation 1:5 says he is the ruler of the kings of the earth, which makes it clear the Son of Man has begun that rule. When we come to that phrase in Revelation 1:1—”what must come to pass after these things”—we can paraphrase it as the things which shall take place in the latter days. What are those things? According to Daniel, one of the high points was Daniel 7, the rule of the Son of Man. That’s begun! So, I would say that that phrase—“what must come to pass after these things”, which really means what must come to pass in the latter days—that is a fully packed phrase. It’s an already, and not yet phrase. This isn’t just a reference to the exclusive future. We get the same phrase again in Revelation 4:1 at the end of it: “I will show you what must come to pass after these things.” I think what that means is I will show you what must come to pass in the already, but not yet latter days. It makes sense that you’re going to get visions that deal with the not yet (the future) and things that are also present. I think the key is let’s let the Bible interpret the Bible.

Nancy Guthrie
And you’re demonstrating how important throughout Revelation it is to make those connections between who he’s drawing from, in regard to Daniel and Ezekiel. Those really guide us in interpreting.

Greg Beale
In fact, already we’ve had a reference to Daniel 2:28, 29, and 45 in the programmatic verse of Revelation 1: “The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave to him to show to his bondservants the things which must shortly take place.” He sent and he communicated it by symbols by his angels to his bondservant, John. Even the English Bible, as well as the Greek Bible, will have in the margin Daniel 2:28, 29, and 45, because of the word revelation, communicate by symbols, and the phrase “what must come to pass” is clearly uniquely found only in those verses in Daniel and here. This is an allusion back to Daniel 2, but what difference does that make? Well listen, “The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place”—Daniel said “in the latter days”, but John says "shortly," which is further defined at the end of verse 3: “the time is near.” That phrase actually refers not just to something that’s near in time, but it’s just barely beginning. So, we already have a reference that things are just barely beginning. They’re not just around the corner. Yes, they are, but they’re just barely beginning. In Mark 1:15 Jesus says, “the time is near.” He’s not saying, It’s about to come, but It’s beginning, but there’s more to come. That’s the idea here and, in fact, the end of verse 3 may even allude to Mark 1:15 when it says “the time is near.”

30:15 - Were John’s Visions Literal?

Nancy Guthrie
I want to go back to a phrase in there, and you’re reading from what translation?

Greg Beale
That’s New American Standard Version, but I’m also reading the Greek.

Nancy Guthrie
He says he’s going to communicate through symbols. Here’s a question I’ve been wrestling with a little bit. I’m almost not even sure I can articulate the question, but I’m sure you’ve thought this through. John, I take him at his word. He has shown these things. He visually sees these things. But then the way he records them, it would seem to me that he’s been so filled with words and images from Daniel and Ezekiel and Isaiah that he draws from that language to articulate what he has seen. One of my question is when he writes, “I saw a lamb looking as if it had been slain,” what did he see? Did he see something that looked like a lamb? Or when he says, “I saw a lamb,” is he the one choosing to insert that symbolism to describe what he saw? Does that make sense?

Greg Beale
It makes sense. I think he actually saw a lamb. I have a friend who is very sophisticated in all areas. He’s a mechanical engineer, went to MIT and makes airplanes. He believes that Jesus was an actual lamb—an actual lamb. I think that’s a little too literal. I think this is a symbol, but he does see a lamb, just as he sees a whore riding a red beast in Revelation 17. He sees it. I don’t think he’s injecting that. But what can happen is I think that God presents visions to John that God intends for him to draw on from the Old Testament—because they’re beginning fulfillment, and also they’re going to be fulfilled. You see some of the same things and developments of it. When John goes down to write, he does write what he saw, but he may go back to those same passages and fill out a little bit, under inspiration, to further explain what he saw—because sometimes what he sees is hard to describe. What better way to describe it? I’m not going to try to create this in my own words. I can partly, but I’m going to go back to Daniel 7 and use what God said. I think that’s the idea. So, it’s both/and. Some people think that the book of Revelation is only a literary product. Others think it’s only a record of visions. It’s both/and.

33:12 - Why is the Book of Revelation an Encouragement?

Nancy Guthrie
That’s really helpful to me. I appreciate it. Let’s close this way. I’m going to read a statement you wrote in the introduction to your Revelation commentary. You said, “The goal of Revelation is to bring encouragement.” Even when I say that I think maybe a lot of people don’t assume that about Revelation, right? “. . . to bring encouragement to believers of all ages that God is working out his purposes, even in the midst of tragedy, suffering, and apparent Satanic domination. It’s the Bible’s cry of victory, for in it, more than anywhere else in the New Testament, is revealed the final victory of God over the forces of evil. As such, it is an encouragement to God’s people to persevere in the assurance that their final reward is certain, and to worship and glorify God despite trials and despite temptations to march to the world’s drumbeat.” Maybe some people really are mystified that we would call Revelation encouraging. Why do you make that case?

Greg Beale
Revelation 14:4 says, “they followed the Lamb wherever he goes.” They’re living a cruciform life. He suffered, and they need to realize that their life is no different than the Lamb’s. They’re going to go through suffering, but, if you remember, Revelation 5 says, “I saw a lion who was from the tribe of Judah, the root of Jesse, who conquered.” And all of a sudden, the next verse says, “and I saw a lamb, having been slain.” By the way, the translations often say, “I saw a lamb as though having been slain.” Bad translation. It’s that he actually saw a lamb slain, not as if. How does the lion—and that’s from Genesis 49, the prophecy of the Messiah’s victory as a lion over the forces of evil—how is that accomplished through his suffering on the cross? That then is inextricably linked by resurrection. He got his reward, and so we’re no different. If we’re really believers, we follow the Lamb wherever he goes, and in the midst of it we really do reign. That’s why Revelation 1:6 is important. He made us to be a kingdom and priests. What does it mean to be a priest? It means to be a mediator. That’s one of the things it certainly means. Another thing that it means is that we present ourselves as a sacrifice (Rom. 12:1). I think those go together. As we are suffering, as we give sacrifices of thanksgiving for it, and as we follow the Lamb, then we are being a testimony to the world. Just as Jesus’s death and resurrection is the center of the gospel, so our suffering and our trust in Christ during that suffering, which is empowered by spiritual resurrection life in us now (already, and not yet), that becomes a mediating, priestly activity to the world. The encouragement comes from the fact that God is using us to communicate the gospel to the world. The further encouragement is that we really do have that resurrection life now, even those who die. In Revelation 20 it says they came to life when they died. That’s ironic. I think what happens is the believer already has that life, and when they die they go into a further escalation of resurrection life, and then at the final age that’s completed with a full resurrection body.

Nancy Guthrie
May we live out of what he has made us to be—to be those priests of his kingdom, mediating the gospel to the world around us. Revelation is clear to us that that might be very costly to us. I think about Revelation 11—we might get trampled in the process. But we’re given this solid confidence that that won’t be the end of the story. Thank you so much, Dr. Beale. Thanks for all the work that you have done on Revelation. I know I’m not the only person who was maybe given a little bit of courage to tackle Revelation because they knew that they had a Greg Beale commentary on Revelation on their shelf that would answer a lot of difficult questions. I thank you for helping me with my book.

Nancy Guthrie

Nancy Guthrie teaches the Bible at her home church, Cornerstone Presbyterian Church in Franklin, Tennessee, as well as at conferences around the country and internationally, including her Biblical Theology Workshop for Women. She is the author of numerous books and the host of the Help Me Teach the Bible podcast with the Gospel Coalition. She and her husband founded Respite Retreats for couples who have faced the death of a child, and they are cohosts of the GriefShare video series. 

Popular Articles in This Series

View All

Introducing the ‘Blessed’ Podcast with Nancy Guthrie

May 04, 2022

In this new podcast, Nancy Guthrie—author, Bible teacher, and podcast host—leads listeners to a deeper understanding of the book of Revelation through conversations with respected Bible scholars, pastors, and other Bible teachers.

Crossway is a not-for-profit Christian ministry that exists solely for the purpose of proclaiming the gospel through publishing gospel-centered, Bible-centered content. Learn more or donate today at crossway.org/about.