John Mark Hicks

Peter Jay Martin, following in the footsteps of his father Joseph Lemuel Martin, authored a book that surveyed Revelation. Published by the McQuiddy Company (the Gospel Advocate publisher) in 1913, it was entitled The Mystery Finished, or The New Heavens and the New Earth. Peter’s book is not as well known as his father’s (The Voice of […]

The Apocalypse’s second vision (Revelation 4-16) has a well-defined literary structure. The structure shapes the plot and progression of the drama’s movement.  Below is a way of picturing this structural development: The Heavenly Throne Room: The Sealed Scroll is Seized (4-5) The Seven Seals are Opened (6:1-8:1) The Seven Trumpets Herald the Opening of the Scroll (8:1-11:19) […]

Over the next few months I will teach the “Revelation (Apocalypse) of Jesus Christ” in a bible class at the Woodmont Hills Family of God. I have a specific interest in doing this and it is to highlight the apocalyptic struggle between the kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world. When the seventh […]

There are many hermeneutical issues surrounding the Apocalypse, of course.  And I will assume my own perspectives in this final installment on “Reverse the Curse.”  One of my primary assumptions is the progressive cyclical undestanding of the seven seals, trumpets and bowls of wrath in the second vision (“in the Spirit,” 4:3) of Revelation (chapters 4-16). […]

Revelation 20 is dangerous ground upon which to walk. To comment on it assumes so much. It assumes a particular way of reading the whole apocalyptic drama. It assumes a particular structure to the book. Consequently, there are many ambiguities, varied understandings and even some nasty polemical controversies associated with this text. Nevertheless, I will […]

However we might describe the “intermediate” state (the mode of existence for those who have died in the Lord), their sharing our sense of “waiting” for the fullness of God’s kingdom. Though they have passed from earth to the throne room of God through the portal of death, nevertheless they sense that their own journey […]

Humanity, in terms of its own resources, stands before death helpless and hopeless. It seems like our loved ones pass into nothingness as we are separated from their presence. But the death and resurrection of Jesus testify to a different reality that God will bring about in the new heaven and new earth–victory over the […]

I had the joy of sharing one of my favorite texts with the Wisdom class at Woodmont Hills this morning. I love Isaiah 25. It excites me everytime I read it…and for several reasons. While Isaiah 13-24 rehearses God’s “woes” toward all nations due to their arrogance, injustice and evil, Isaiah 25 (actually beginning with […]