Our church has been studying Revelation for the past three summers, and over the course of that time, it may be hard for people to track the overarching structure of the book. So I thought I would map it out for us here.

Here I’ll offer two outlines. First, I’ll show how Revelation largely tracks the history of the church from 30–70 AD. Second, I’ll show how Revelation is structured like a liturgical worship service.

The liturgy of the church is not simply some dusty, old church tradition. It is the pattern of redemption that we see throughout Scripture, especially in Revelation.

Revelation maps (largely) to the years 30–70 AD
In this article, we argued that a key interpretative principle for studying the book is identifying “Babylon the great” (18:2) as Jerusalem in the first century. We also believe that the symbolism of Revelation has concrete referents in history. Here is how we have mapped it out:

Though Revelation is speaking specifically to Christians in the first century, many of its themes apply to Christians throughout history—just like how Galatians is about Christians and Judaizers in the first century but applied to the Roman Catholic church in the time of the Reformation. Revelation works the same way. It has an original audience that needs to be understood and respected, but it also applies to all God’s people throughout history.

Revelation maps to the liturgy of our worship service

Revelation has several structures that tie the book together. One that I have found particularly beautiful is how it is structured as a worship service. The book as a whole is filled with songs of praise to God—by both humans and angels in heaven—and the reader is constantly being caught up into that worship. 

The overall structure follows the pattern of covenant renewal worship:

The liturgy of the church is not simply some dusty, old church tradition. It is the pattern of redemption that we see throughout Scripture, especially in Revelation.

Revelation is filled with many patterns and deep meanings. It has cycles and imagery, double meanings and careful foreshadowing. It is Jesus’s book of the Bible. And it is the great masterpiece of literary history.