A New Commentary on the Book of Revelation by Dr William Dumbrell

On 21 June 2011 Redeemer Baptist Press held a book launch at historic Castle Hill House in Castle Hill, a suburb of Sydney, Australia, for Dr William J. Dumbrell’s latest commentary Revelation: Visions for Today: A New Covenant Commentary.

In launching his book, Dr Dumbrell spoke about the importance of seeing the bigger picture of the Bible, and the place of the book of Revelation in helping us in this task. Pursuing the basic message of the Bible is a task that Dr Dumbrell has actively been working on since the 1970s.

According to Dumbrell, we need to read the whole of the Bible before reading the parts. The Bible proclaims an ultimate destination for the human race, and tells us how to get there. The Bible traces a movement from Eden in the garden to Eden restored in the new Jerusalem. The various parts of the Bible, therefore, need to be read and understood in the light of this basic biblical-theological trajectory. In particular, the New Testament needs to be read with the Old Testament in mind, hence Dr Dumbrell’s desire to write commenaries on the New Testament despite his renown as a scholar of the Old.

“Evil, conquered by the cross, will finally be eliminated from human experience. New covenant believers will therefore experience the divine purpose and provision of life in a new Eden” (William J. Dumbrell, Revelation: Visions for Today: A New Covenant Commentary).