Summary Chart of Revelation's Major Events

The major events depicted in the book of Revelation, the last book of the New Testament, have a chronological order. The difficulty of determining just what that order is can be helped by several 'tricks of the trade' for interpreting the Bible.

This hub article is part of a series on the study of Revelation. The biblical style of writing and how it was used by John—who wrote down the visions revealed to him—is one clue to this event time-line. The following that are a part of this study series take a look at this style and also address the interpretative helps required to begin to determine the event chronology.

Keys to the interpretation of Revelation

• The analogy of Jewish marriage traditions reveals Jesus Christ coming for His waiting bride as the overriding message of Revelation.
• The four ages or stages of time found in Revelation.

There are other hub articles, in addition to these, that also provide further background to my conclusions on the chronological event-line of Revelation.

Major events in Revelation

One is Revelation's ten major events. Three of those major events occur in the Tribulation stage, which include

• the 'birth pangs' and Great tribulation → The 7 Seals
• "Day" of wrath and Great tribulation → The 7 Trumpets
• pouring out of God's full anger → The 7 Vials

Embedded in these three major Tribulation events is a separate event representing the central idea—the reaping of the harvest. This is the harvest that Jesus referred to in the parable of the wheat and the weeds of Matthew 13:30.

A look at the biblical writing style used in another hub article reveals this central idea in the long Tribulation stage of Revelation. This style

• makes use of the literary device called the chiasmus and
• how it indicates the turning point towards the final fall of the evil empire of the beast of Revelation—taken down when God's full anger is unleashed.

There are two other categories of events key to our understanding the event-line of Revelation.

Jewish Feasts

In Jewish Fall Feasts Reflected in Revelation, I look at the imagery of traditional Jewish feasts how they foreshadow events in Revelation. I explain in Major Events and Jewish Feasts in Revelation how these relate to the series of seven Seals, Trumpets and Vials in the Tribulation stage.

Wars

There are at least three future wars described in the Bible. These wars are more cataclysmic than anything the world has yet seen. I summarize these wars in Future Wars Described in the Bible using three charts. This shows how they are foreshadowed by the Old Testament prophets Isaiah, Obadiah, Zephaniah, Joel, Ezekiel and Zechariah.

These six articles, and the key background information they provide, culminate in the following one-page summary event-line of Revelation.

To understand how I arrived at this order of events, do consider the six articles I have linked to in the above.