About the Author
Hi, and welcome to my website. I’m John Cassinat, and I’ve been me for my entire 64 years. Some people might say I’m a bit of an odd duck, and who am I to disagree? My oddness began when I was eight years old, the same year I learned to drive trucks and other farm equipment on my grandfather’s ranch. I resolved at that time to read an old family Bible cover-to-cover. I began reading in earnest, but somehow lost my resolve in the regulatory recitations of the Mosaic Law in Leviticus or Numbers. I can’t say the Law of Moses stunted my spiritual development, but it took more than ten years before my resolve to read the scriptures was restored. In 1978, I was called on a full-time mission to the Netherlands Amsterdam Mission, where my study of the scriptures began anew. I read and studied them with renewed fervor and everything else scriptural that I was allowed to get my hands on. After returning from the Netherlands in 1980, I continued my scriptural studies more earnestly. I resolved that for every hour I spent studying for my industrial management degree at the University of Wyoming, I would spend another hour studying the scriptures and related commentaries. By 1984, I had my Bachelor of Science degree and a heavily annotated set of scriptures with many margin notes. Years later, I told my seminary students that when you study the scriptures, “you have to read between the lines and then write between the lines.” But I digress. Two things were missing from my religious self-studies at the University of Wyoming. First, there was insufficient space in the margins of my scriptures to record the complete content of my mini-commentaries. Second, I didn’t have the skills or resources to research an immense world of religious literature. Fortunately, within a few short years my problems began to find their solution. When I began law school in 1984, my eyes were opened to a whole new world of research techniques and resources for the study of legal issues. Then, with the advent of personal computers and the internet including electronic search capabilities‒it became increasingly possible to research gospel topics in the same way that I learned how to research legal issues in law school. I graduated from the University of California at Davis with my Juris Doctorate in 1987. Early in 1988, I began my active-duty service in the United States Marine Corps as a Judge Advocate. I achieved the rank of captain and prosecuted more than 100 courts-martial during my three-year tour of duty at Camp Pendleton, California. While on active duty, I also went to night school at the University of San Diego, and graduated in 1991 with a Master of Laws degree in taxation. When my active duty service was complete that same year, I began my 35-year career as a civil trial attorney. For most of those 35 years, I owned my own law firm, called Cassinat Law Corporation, located in Elk Grove, California. My trial practice was based on a rather simple philosophy. In every lawsuit, I researched the facts and the law until I was confident that I knew more about both than anyone else in the courtroom. For the last 14 years I have applied that same philosophy to my authorship of The Book of Revelation Doctrinal Commentary: Unveiling Jesus Christ. But hold that thought. I’m getting ahead of myself. After my schooling and military service, my religious studies have, at times, been focused on specific volumes of scripture as I taught early morning seminary and institute courses for more than ten years. When my studies were not focused on specific course curricula, I researched and wrote about a variety of gospel subjects thinking that one day I would publish “the great American religious textbook.” The Book of Revelation was never on my radar. My topical studies and writings began at the beginning with the premortal existence, including the study of intelligences, the spirit creation, the grand council, and the war in heaven. I extensively researched the physical creation, including the study of geology, evolution, plate tectonics and the flood. I then began researching and writing about the fall of Adam, with the intent to research and write about the atonement of Jesus Christ. That’s where I found myself in 2009. In the spring of that year, I was released from my seven-year call as a bishop. In September of the same year, I was called to be the president of the Sacramento California Stake. Shortly thereafter, I had a very strong spiritual prompting that I must stop my current research and writing project and focus exclusively on the Book of Revelation. That was 14 years ago. Now, after many thousands of hours and almost 17,000 footnotes later, I’m ready to publish a two-volume verse-by-verse commentary on the Book of Revelation. During the last 14 years I have carefully studied every word of John the Revelator. I have studied the words of Daniel and other prophets, both ancient and modern, as they apply to what John both saw and heard during his vision on the island of Patmos. I have studied the words of John through the eyes of many scholars, theologians and church leaders from a variety of religions going back to the writings of the Christian Fathers. Finally, I have prayerfully sought the guidance of the Spirit until I can now say with Joseph Smith that the Book of Revelation is indeed “one of the plainest books God ever caused to be written.” (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, comp. Joseph Fielding Smith [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1938], p. 290). My hope, of course, is that John’s plainness has found its way into the pages of my doctrinal commentary and that every attentive reader will see that plainness without having to invest 14 years of intense effort. Some readers may not perceive the plainness of which I speak. Others will undoubtedly disagree with some of my conclusions that materially differ from their preconceived notions about what John has written. Still others will say that some of my conclusions are speculation at best. I accept and expect such criticisms, and ask but one thing before you summarily dismiss what I have to say. Consider this. Jesus Christ frequently taught doctrines that contradicted the common perceptions and beliefs of his Jewish audience. On one occasion, Christ spoke about the controversial ministry of John the Baptist and said, “If ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear” (Matt 11:14-15). What can I say more about the discourses you’ll discover when reading The Book of Revelation Doctrinal Commentary: Unveiling Jesus Christ?