The single greatest important issue in all of the Bible is the advent of Christ and the New Covenant Church. The Church is not a continuation of Israel from the old testament, but rather is the antitype to the type of Israel of old. In other words, the church is the reality that God foreshadowed using Israel in the natural. Just as much as God did not ultimately desire the sacrifices of lambs, but merely foreshadowed Christ's sacrificial death by lambs' deaths, God's ultimate desire was to have a Church, that was said to be in Christ since the foundation of the world (Eph 1:4).
And the book of Revelation is simply the symbolic panorama of the changeover from Law to Grace, and the ramifications of rejecting Christ involved in that scenario. Since the greatest sin was for His own people to reject Him, it is no wonder that we find such harsh words spoken to Israel by Jesus from Matthew chapters 21 through to 25. And it is therefore no wonder that much of Revelation speaks of the destruction of Jerusalem (not Rome or any modern secular system) in 70 AD. The Bible itself called Jerusalem a Harlot and rebuked her severely through Christ and Old Testament prophets for drinking the blood of the martyrs. And yet people say this character in Revelation is not Jerusalem. In fact, Jesus explicitly said that Jerusalem "filled the cup" by slaying and crucifying God's prophets (implying His own crucifixion), and that all the righteous blood shed from Abel to Zecharias would be meted out upon Jerusalem! (Matthew 23:31-35).
What Revelaiton is saying can only be understood if you practically know the Old Testament backwards and forwards, because Revelation uses idioms and metaphors that are everywhere throughout the Old Testament. Instead of "newspaper exegesis," interpreting revelation by looking at what the newspapers today say about technology of computers or middle east warfare), we need to look in the Bible itself to interpret the idioms used in Revelation.
John literally quotes hundreds of statements from the Old Testament. And without an understanding of that fact, our subsequent uneducated perusal of the book of revelation will cause us to come up with all sorts of wild interpretations, such as computer chips literally on the hand and forehead, when placing a thing on the right hand or forehead is actually an idiom pointing back to the Law of Moses when PHYLACTERIES were placed on the forehead or arm, indicating one's might (right hand) and will (forehead) were dedicated to the law of God. Well, John was symbolically shown how Satan has his own "torah" and law. And he, too, moves humanity to dedicate themselves and the their wills to self-exaltation... for the beast (man created on the 6th day - 666) exalts itself as god (ye shall be as gods). The most subtle BEAST of the field, the serpent, first urged humanity to exalt itself as gods.
Without linking all these obvious old testament connections to the thoughts of Revelation, it is little wonder that one will come up with computer chips and Chinese armies as interpretations of what Revelation is trying to say.
A 19th century preacher named JL Martin quoted Revelation 9:17-19 where we read of an army numbering hundreds of thousands, and interpreted it in light of the "technology " of his day.
"John is pointing to the modern mode of fighting on horseback, with the rider leaning forward, which, to his sight, and to the sight of one looking on at a distance, would appear as the great mane of the lion; the man leaning on his horse’s neck. He would, in fighting with firearms, have to lean forward to discharge his piece, lest he might shoot down his own horse that he was riding. In John’s day the posture was very different. . . . Now, I want to ask my friendly hearers if it is not as literally fulfilled before our eyes as anything can be? Are not all nations engaged in this mode of warfare? Do they not kill men with fire and smoke and brimstone? . . . Do you not know that this is just ignited gunpowder? . . . Could an uninspired man, in the last of the first century, have told of this matter?"(JL Martin, The Voice of the Seven Thunders: oc Lectures on the Apocalypse (Bedford, IN: James M. Mathes, Publisher, sixth cd., 1873), pp. 149f.)
We laugh at that today, and yet we do not flinch at looking at Revelation
9 today as prophesying nuclear weapons and Chinese armies numbering in
the millions, or Revelation 13 as computer chips on the arm and forehead.
Its the same thing that Martin did! Newspaper Exegesis!
Instead of looking into the BIBLE ITSELF to interpret these IDIOMS, we take them literally, and miss the cultural and literary use of them as IDIOMS, never intended to tbe taken literally.
When we Look at Revelation as a book showing us the inception of the New Covenant in symbolic form, using idioms from the Hebrew culture in the Old Testament, it is valid for believers of any generation. However, looking at it as pointing to our day of nuclear missiles and computer chips, makes the book out to be useless to all previous generations of the church!