The Revelation versus Manmade Eschatology

I have noticed that, in popular, "Left Behind"-style eschatology, there is always an immediate rush past the first chapter of the Revelation to offer hair-raising interpretations of the symbols in the rest of the book. I don't want that to be taken to mean that I don't understand that rush. Studying the first chapter would shut down the exciting interpretations that make some men, such as Hal Lindsey, a lot of money.

Notice first verse 3: "Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it, for the time is near" (emphasis added). The events in the book, or, at least, the majority of them, are explicitly stated to be in the near future when John was writing these words. Not two-thousand years and counting afterward!

In particular I want to direct your attention to verse 9: "I, John, your brother and partner in the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus." The two important words here are "tribulation" and "kingdom." Dispensationalists love to make up new theories about a future tribulation, mostly involving the modern State of Israel. And the Kingdom, i. e., of God, they put off until some future millennium that supposedly occurs after the return of Christ. Yet, John tells us that he was sharing in both at the time he was writing (which I believe to be about 68 AD, shortly after the beginning of the Roman campaign against Israel and Jerusalem).

Any sober reading of the Revelation must, therefore, conclude that most of the feverish teaching that is so popular today is merely manmade (un)science fiction, not biblical exegesis.