Book Quote of the Day – 11

From the introduction to Revelation: A Participatory Study Guide:

I finally came to the conclusion that if God was intending to provide us with a roadmap to the future in Revelation, he had apparently failed. At a minimum, we Christians were unable to read the map. But could God fail?

One of my guiding lights in Bible study has always been:

Everything in the Scriptures is God’s Word. All of it is useful for teaching and helping people and for correcting them and showing them how to live. – 2 Timothy 3:16

Now I’m aware that when 2 Timothy was written, there was no New Testament canon, and in fact, there was no book of Revelation. And yet it seemed to me that if we are to believe that the Bible is a message from God at all, we have to believe that he can see to it that we get the right books. So barring some revelation of my own, preferably accompanied by a burning bush I was prepared to look further at Revelation.

If this book was failing to accomplish what I expected it to accomplish, it was possible to believe that Revelation, its writer, or the one who inspired it, had failed. But it was much more consistent with my understanding of God to believe that perhaps I was looking for the wrong things. So I began to ask myself just what it is that Revelation is supposed to teach.