Publisher's Synopsis
From the Preface.
Some say that no person can understand ''Revelation," but this is absurd; for if no one can understand it, it is not a revelation at all, but a sealed mystery, falsely labeled, and let down from heaven to tantalize the 'world; and if any person is ever to understand the Apocalypse, it is high time we knew something about it now; for it was written nearly eighteen hundred years ago.
As the Apocalypse gives a symbolic history (in the future) of the leading events from the apostolic day to the end of time, I have felt excited to try to understand these events in their natural order, with the dates, and meaning of the symbols.
While studying Revelation, and lecturing on it before a number of congregations, I got an idea of its entire fulfillment, sufficient to put my own mind at rest. I then made out brief notes on it all, for my own benefit; I then thought I could easily enlarge the notes into a comment and it would be a particular help to students of the Bible.
I have aimed at clearness, pointedness, and simplicity, omitting superfluous verbiage, opinions, quotations, names, etc., believing that the probable idea would be the best help to the reader to think for himself.
I have heretofore read "Newton," "Faber," "Scott," and "Fleming;" many of their views satisfied my mind so well that, I have adopted them; for a truth still remains a truth, no matter who else looks at it.
As to the more recent writers and speakers on Revelation, I so strongly suspected them of enthusiasm (not to say fanaticism), that they soon discouraged me, and I quit them. I believe I have the true meaning of the symbols, and of all the great events, and of most of the dates, or times of the fulfillment of the events; and where there may be an inaccuracy in the dates, they strike in the neighborhood of accuracy, and so our minds can rest here, and time and observation do the rest, for we have no prophets in this age of the world.
--J. M. Connelly.
