M.A.

hrough Lydda and Gaza to Egypt. Israel was a narrow corridor – to the east was the rift valley, which ran north to south down to the Dead Sea, and to the west was the Mediterranean Sea.
Israel, therefore, was at the crossroads of the world, with trade routes arriving from all directions and Megiddo the place where they all met. Overlooking this ‘crossroads’ was the village of Nazareth, and doubtless Jesus would have sat on the hill there and watched the world go by.

I hope you will put up with a little of my foolishness; but you are already doing that. I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him. But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough. But I do not think I am in the least inferior to those ‘super-apostles’. I may not be a trained speaker, but I do have knowledge. We have made this perfectly clear to you in every way.
Was it a sin for me to lower myself in order to elevate you by preaching the gospel of God to you free of charge? I robbed other churches by receiving support from them so as to serve you. And when I was with you and needed something, I was not a burden to anyone, for the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied what I needed. I have kept myself from being a burden to you in any way, and will continue to do so. As surely as the truth of Christ is in me, nobody in the regions of Achaia will stop this boasting of mine. Why? Because I do not love you? God knows I do! And I will keep on doing what I am doing in order to cut the ground from under those who want an opportunity to be considered equal with us in the things they boast about.
For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve.
I repeat: Let no-one take me for a fool. But if you do, then receive me just as you would a fool, so that I may do a little boasting. In this self-confident boasting I am not talking as the Lord would, but as a fool. Since many are boasting in the way the world does, I too will boast. You gladly put up with fools since you are so wise! In fact, you even put up with anyone who enslaves you or exploits you or takes advantage of you or pushes himself forward or slaps you in the face. To my shame I admit that we were too weak for that!
What anyone also dares to boast about – I am speaking as a fool – I also dare to boast about. Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they Abraham’s descendants? So am I. Are they servants of Christ? (I am out of my mind to talk like this.) I am more. I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one.

Satanic opinion
Satanic opinion is consistently negative. The devil hates the first few pages of the Bible (which reveal how he gained control of our planet) and the last few pages (which reveal how he will lose control of it). If he can convince humans that Genesis is composed of impossible myths and Revelation of impenetrable mysteries, he is content.
The author has remarkable proof of Satan’s particular hatred of Revelation 20. Many cassette recordings of an exposition of this chapter have been damaged between despatch and receipt. In some cases the section dealing with the devil’s doom has been wiped clean before reaching its destination; in others a screaming voice using a foreign language has been superimposed, rendering the original words unintelligible!
The book calls his bluff. He is only prince and ruler of this world by God’s permission. And that has only been given temporarily.
Divine opinion
Divine opinion is consistently positive. It is the only book in the Bible to which divine sanctions of reward and punishment have been directly attached. On the one hand, a special blessing will rest upon those who read it aloud, both to themselves and others (1:3) and who ‘keep the words’, by meditation and application (22:7). On the other, a special curse will rest on those who tamper with its text. If this is done by addition, or by insertions, the plagues described in the book will be added to the culprit’s experience. If it is done by subtraction, by deletions, the culprit’s share of eternal life in the new Jerusalem will be taken away.
Such a blessing and curse tell us how seriously God regards the facts and truths revealed here. He could hardly have made its importance clearer.

From these opinions about the book, we turn to look at the book itself.
Consider first its position in the Bible. Just as Genesis could be nowhere else but at the beginning, Revelation could be nowhere else but at the end. In so many ways it completes the ‘story’.
If the Bible is simply regarded as the history of our world, Revelation is needed to round it off. Of course, biblical history is different from all other such publications. It starts earlier, before there were any observers to record events. It finishes later, by predicting events that cannot yet be observed and recorded.