Today we have my interview with Robert O. Robbins, author and my husband (Bob). Last summer he released the Kindle version of REVEALED – Vol. 1 – Prophetic Language: and The Prophet’s Dictionary. To mark the release of REVEALED – Vol. 2 – What the Righteous Desire to See: and The Revelation of Jesus Christ to St. John, The Literal Authorized Version I asked Bob a few questions. I tried to get him to do this on Kindle Live, but he’s camera shy.
Thank you for agreeing to do this Bob. I’m going to start by getting the obvious question out-of-the-way first. Why The Revelation? It’s not the easiest subject matter you could have chosen.
No, it certainly has not been “easy” to find how best to comprehend the message being sent to the believers of the Christian Church, especially when recognizing that the book of The Revelation and its parent book where we usually find it, the Christian Holy Bible, are recognized as the most popular yet most controversial books which have ever existed. When I was a child, listening to my family’s nightly readings of The Bible I remember hearing brief discussions about how every book in the book would be read faithfully until we got to the last book, The Revelation. The way it was written, its picturesque language and nearly fairy tale like scenes and theme was considered just too complex for us to approach as a common, untrained American family. Besides, the other books stated much more clearly how to follow Jesus, about his life and the history leading to him, and why we should. But, to answer your question, I did not choose to attempt to understand and explain this book. Through the years as I grew into adulthood I found that the avoidance of this one book was not unusual. Many people found it simply too “other worldly” to be understandable including Bible and seminary students and their teachers, preachers, priests, and other religious leaders in churches and denominations.
I did not choose to interpret the figurative language of The Revelation, it rather was chosen for me. Here’s what I mean. When I started college, I also started attending a church regularly for the first time. Though I grew up in a faithful believing family, due to unspoken conflict we did not attend an established church as a family. I was surprised to find that most of the students at the state funded and run school had no idea of what the message of Jesus was really all about, much less understanding the allegoric language that The Bible was written. In fact, most of my fellow college peers did not even understand some of the more common phrases of the churches’ language. Words like: “Saved.” “Born again.” “Faith.” and many, many more became stumbling blocks to those who had no or little background in the Christian faith. Therefore, in an attempt to follow the spirit instilled within me by my grandmother a few years earlier, I began gathering words of the Christian faith and recording them very methodically never imagining where it would lead.
What I found was that the church world who claim to be following Jesus as the Christ had through the centuries became so divided and controverted in its ways of comprehending the faith, themselves, that no one glossary of terms could possibly be adequate for all Protestant/Catholic sects. Thus, I asked the spirit what to do and the answer came in a very simple way where a scripture was shown me that the “key” to understanding scriptures were in the scriptures themselves. I followed this thought for several years, gathering one word definition after another as I attended a multitude of churches in various denominations. Finally it started making sense. The parables which Jesus used to tell his flock about how to create and enter the Kingdom of God on Earth was also the way Jesus, the “Master Teacher,” taught his disciples how to understand the messages “hidden” within the chronicles of the Hebraic records. While a daunting task, to say the least, it became obvious that in order to comprehend the message of true Christianity it would first be necessary to understand the alliterations of these records, which today includes The Revelation.
By the time I came to this realization, I had already recorded over 40 figurative words with provable scriptural definitions which had been gathered by my visits to the widely scattered churches through the years. But, to be able to explain the process as a complete unit I needed an example which all interested were familiar with and that would be easily obtainable. Thus the choice of The Revelation. But I did not have enough words “defined” to be able to change the words from figurative to literal, so I determined how the process worked on how the words were defined in The Bible and proceeded to find a few volunteers to help me search the scriptures for more. The result is what is now available in the Amazon/Kindle bookstore.
I know you spent a lot of time researching this book. Could you tell our readers a little bit about the process?