John F. F. Walvoord - Revelation

{THE JOHN WALVOORD PROPHECY COMMENTARIES}

Revelation

John F. Walvoord

Edited by Philip E. Rawley & Mark Hitchcock

M OODY P UBLISHERS
CHICAGO

2011 by
J OHN F. W ALVOORD

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. Copyrdight 2000; 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the King James Version.

Original edition published in 1966, under the title of The Revelation of Jesus Christ.

Edited by Christopher Reese
Interior design: Ragont Design
Cover design: Tan Nguyen
Cover image: iStock photo

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Walvoord, John F.
The John Walvoord prophecy commentaries: Revelation / John F. Walvoord, Philip E. Rawley, Mark Hitchcock.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8024-7312-7
1. Bible. N.T. RevelationCommentaries. I. Rawley, Philip E. II. Hitchcock, Mark.
III. Title. IV. Title: Revelation.
BS2825.53.W35 2011
228.07dc22

2010047804

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To my wife, Sarah,
my lifelong and only love

To my daughter, Bethany,
the child for whom we prayed

To my son, Philip,
the best a dad ever had

To my daughter-in-law, Denise Hill Rawley,
Gods gift to our family

To my grandson, Micah Ryan Rawley,
the light of all our lives

Philip E. Rawley

Philip E. Rawley is a former Moody Publishers textbook editor, one of the founding editors and writers for Today in the Word, and a freelance writer living in Rockwall, Texas. He is a graduate of the University of South Florida (BA) and Dallas Theological Seminary (ThM). Phil and his wife, Sarah, have two children and a grandson.

Mark Hitchcock graduated from law school in 1984 and worked for a judge at the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals. After a clear call to full-time ministry, Mark attended Dallas Theological Seminary, graduating in 1991. Since that time he has served as senior pastor of Faith Bible Church in Edmond, Oklahoma. He completed his PhD at Dallas Theological Seminary in 2005 and serves as an adjunct faculty member at DTS in the Bible Exposition Department. He has authored over twenty books related to endtimes Bible prophecy.

Contents

I n the last few weeks before my father died we had time to celebrate his life, tell stories about past family events, and dream a little about the future. His mind and memory were sharp and he was as upbeat and confident as ever. He was 92 years of age, had lived a full life, and had served well the Lord he loved.

The doctors had given him six weeks to live, and in that time we relived many a family story. He was visited by a parade of his close friends, many influential leaders he had taught and mentored. From his hospital room were days filled with warm memories and laughter, and an occasional hymn echoed down the hall.

My father had a list of things he entrusted to me as his oldest son. But in the last week of his life, the conversation turned to the seventy years he had dedicated to the study of the Bible. And in all that time, he explained, four key books of the Bible had been the subject of his most intense study; Revelation, Daniel, Matthew, and 1st and 2nd Thessalonians. He shared stories about how they were first written, taught, and eventually published.

I remember many of those times. Every summer our family piled into our car and drove across the U.S. and sometimes into Canada. We went from one Bible conference to another, but a lot of that time was spent on the road. And always somewhere in the car was a cardboard box filled with books.

Many nights Dad put us to bed and quietly went into a motel bathroom to read and take notes. Then when he was ready he would dictate an entire chapter, footnotes and all. So whether on the road or at home, this scholarly work was often done late at night and early in the morning. And it continued all his life.

His dream in those final conversations was that his work and biblical insights would live on after him. He remembered how the commentaries and works of some of the great teachers of the Bible lived on for generation after generation. Would his commentaries survive to teach others after his death?

My father explained he had chosen Moody Publishers (then known as Moody Press) to publish his first commentary on Revelation for one very important reason. He knew he could trust them to keep the commentary in print as long as it was needed.

So in those last weeks of my fathers life, our discussions produced one more assignment. Could I find a way to fulfill his dream to keep these works alive for the generations of students he would not be able to teach in the classroom?

From the seed of that dream has grown the new Walvoord Commentary series. The team that took up that dream is made up of men my father knew and trusted. And as he would have guessed, it was championed by Greg Thornton, vice president of Moody Publishers.

Phillip Rawley agreed to take the lead as the editor of the series. And he took on the assignment with much more than the word editor implies. Phil was both a student of my fathers and a friend. As far back as twenty five years ago he collaborated with me to help my father with a project that became All The Prophecies of the Bible. Since then we have worked together on many writing projects.

But I believe this may have been one of Phil Rawleys most important tasks. He was much more than an editor. In many instances he took up the mantle of the writer who could best capture the way my father would have explained his biblical insights to a new generation of students.

Dr. Mark Hitchcock also agreed to join the team. Because of Marks interest in prophecy, he and my father often had lunch to discuss key issues in biblical prophecy. Mark is a great admirer of my fathers work and a prolific author in his own right who had written more than fifteen books on prophecy and end-time events before we met. Mark was a natural choice to work with me to research and write Armageddon, Oil, and Terror shortly after my fathers death. In that process we became close friends in the quest to turn my fathers ideas and notes into an entirely new work. It was an amazing journey.