Our great Sovereign God has the first word, the intermediate word and the last word. This is the bottom line of the climactic and concluding book in the Biblical canon. How apt, how fitting, how appropriate. As Genesis commences with the creation of the heavens and the earth, man and wife, rivers, the tree of life, paradise lost with the entrance of sin, the rise of Babel, death and exclusion - and now the Revelation, God’s book of outcomes, caps off Holy Scripture with the New Heaven and the New Earth, the Last Adam and His Bride, "the river of the water of life," paradise regained in the garden city of God, the doom of Babylon, life and reconciliation for the Lord’s own - Eden more than restored - and we marvel again at the perfection, the architectonic beauty and genius of Holy Scripture! No wonder Satan and his minions hate the Revelation! ...

Everyone who interprets Bible prophecy does so within a theological system. Some protest - "I have no system! I just interpret the Bible!" They are like William James' famous crustacean who protested - "I am not a crustacean! I am myself!" But to have no system is probably to have a defective system just like having no theology is to have a bad theology...