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Welcome our commentary on the Book of Revelation.

Updated Sep 9, 2006
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The Revelation of Jesus Christ: Introduction

W hile many of us evangelicals wearied of eschatology after the Late Great Planet Earth fervor of the early 1970’s, the American church has experienced a resurgence of interest in the End Time with the turn of the millennium. Nevertheless, veteran pastors remain disinclined to say much about eschatology from their pulpits, because they remember all too well the last few decades of confusion and bitter disputes over Bible prophecy. Thus, a loud silence now emanates from our pulpits regarding the eschaton. If we judged by our Sunday sermons, we would think the church no longer awaits the coming of her heavenly bridegroom. But what bride has no interest in her approaching wedding? The church is interested in Christ’s coming; it is only we leaders who have avoided the subject. Unfortunately, if we pastors remain silent on eschatology, we condemn our congregations to absorb the shallow eschatology-of-the-day by osmosis. If we do not teach the eschatology of our convictions, most of our people will adopt their personal eschatology by default. Furthermore, by not teaching our congregations about their future destiny to shepherd the nations (Rev. 02.26,27), we make it difficult for them to fully understand and engage in their present commission. In the light of these problems, it is time for us to ask whether as church leaders we can justify a continued silence on the huge segment of the biblical revelation that concerns future things. It is in the hope of encouraging my brother pastors in the renewed study and teaching of eschatology that I make this commentary and related articles available.
-- R. G., Tacoma, 2002.

This commentary on the Apocalypse is designed as a quick reference on select passages. It does not address every verse nor provide a complete exposition of the passages dealt with. It does endeavor to provide the student of the Apocalypse with insights that will make the prophecy as a whole more meaningful.
    This commentary is arranged in single-paragraph blocks and uses digital-style references to facilitate computer searches. For computer sorting purposes, biblical references use a three-letter designation for book titles and zeroes as placeholders in the chapter and verse numbers. Consequently, the passage traditionally designated Revelation 1:1 will appear as REV 01.01, while Revelation 19:10 does not require the placeholders and will appear as REV 19.10. Paragraphs given a double-zero designation, such as REV 00.01, contain introductory information and are not related to a specific verse of the Apocalypse. Biblical references embedded in the commentary text omit the unnecessary zero place holders but use the dot rather than the more traditional colon. References that do not designate a book refer to verses in the Apocalypse.
REV 00.01 [ TITLE OF THE BOOK ]: The title for this last book of the Bible appears in the first line of the text: Apocalypse of Jesus Christ.  Of course most people know this book simply as Revelation (or incorrectly as Revelations), and the basic definition of the term apocalypse has been obscured by modern connotations. Consequently, I enjoy taking a small, veiled portrait of The Glorified Christ to class when I teach the book of Revelation. I inform the students that they are about to experience an apocalypse — an announcement that is apt to raise some eyebrows. I then lift the veil from the painting. “Did you notice the apocalypse?” I ask. It has taken two or three repetitions of removing the veil for some of the students to catch on: an apocalypse is simply an unveiling. That is what this book is all about. The Revelation draws back the veil of Christ’s incarnation, so that we might see a little bit more of His character and divine nature. As Paul told the Philippians (2.6), Christ “made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.” This veil of His humanity was drawn back at Christ’s transfiguration and in His post-resurrection appearances, and now the Revelation draws the veil back further and describes the final unveiling, the apocalypse, when Christ will return and be seen by all the world in all His glory. Therefore, rather than reading this book with a focus on events, we should read it with a focus upon Christ and upon what the events tell us about Him. This is our chance to peek behind the veil and know Christ more fully.

REV 00.02 [ THE BOOK AS AN ANSWER TO PRAYER ]: With divine insight, Paul had prayed for the Ephesian Christians in about AD 61, saying, “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better” (Eph. 1.17). The ultimate answer to that prayer came nearly 40 years later through the ministry of the Apostle John. John sent the Apocalypse from the island of Patmos to the church in Ephesus, and subsequently went to Ephesus himself to live out his post-exilic days there. In the closing years of his life John no doubt provided invaluable commentary on the Revelation to the Ephesian Christians. The Ephesian Christians were struggling at that time with maintaining a proper spiritual focus in spite of their hard work for the gospel and steadfast witness. Paul’s prayer that they would experience a deeper glimpse of Christ through the Spirit of wisdom and revelation was answered at a crucial time in their history.

REV 00.03 [ AUTHORSHIP OF THE BOOK ]: The one who reports the visions of the Apocalypse identifies himself as John, God’s servant, one suffering for the “testimony of Jesus” (01.09) on the island of Patmos. Traditionally, the authorship of the Revelation has been ascribed to John, son of Zebedee, one of the 12 apostles.

REV 00.04 [ INTERSECTIONS WITH JOHN’S GOSPEL ]: Some commentators suggest that the same author could not have penned two books so diverse as John’s gospel and the Apocalypse. However, as Green well notes in his How to Read Prophecy,  “A single author might pen books so varied as to require different approaches for proper understanding — compare C. S. Lewis’s children’s fantasy Chronicles of Narnia with his theological treatise The Problem of Pain.” This is common sense. Diverse styles of writing do not prove diverse authors. Besides, while John’s gospel and the Apocalypse admittedly fall within two different genres, they do have important points of intersection, beginning with the relatively simple syntax and vocabulary common to both works. Furthermore, John’s gospel and the Apocalypse have themes in common like those of the piercing and exaltation of Messiah, the call to suffering and the resurrection of the last day. Note also that while various biblical passages ascribe vitality to the Word of God, only John 1.1,14 and Rev 19.13 make the Word of God a person.

REV 00.05 [ TIME OF WRITING ]: Irenaeus, a hearer of Polycarp, the disciple of John, and supposed by Archbishop Usher to be “the angel of the Church of Smyrna,” declares that the Apocalypse “was seen no very long time since, but almost in our day, towards the end of Domitian’s reign” (Against Heresies 5.30.3). Charles T. Chapman, Jr.(Message of the Book of Revelation), places the writing of the Apocalypse in the time of Domitian’s persecution, around the mid-90s of the first century AD. However, Kenneth L. Gentry argues strongly for a pre-A.D. 70 composition in his Before Jerusalem Fell (American Vision, 1998).

REV 00.06 [ DEPENDENCE UPON THE OLD TESTAMENT ]: Donald Guthrie, in his New Testament Introduction, estimates that of the 404 verses in the Apocalypse only 126 contain no allusion to the Old Testament.

REV 00.07 [ SYMMETRIES WITH THE BOOK OF GENESIS ]: The Apocalypse was written with the book of Genesis very much in mind. References to the Tree of Life, the New Heavens and New Earth, the abolition of death, etc., reveal an awareness of the author that the Apocalypse announces the redemptive solution to the cosmic tragedy of Genesis 3.

REV 00.08 [ INTERNAL SYMMETRIES OF THE APOCALYPSE: CONTRASTS ]: The Apocalypse is a book of striking contrasts. We find the Holy Trinity contrasted with the unholy triumvirate of Satan, Beast and False Prophet. We read of the Great Prostitute of commercial hedonistic idolatry contrasted with the Bride of Christ. We are shown the Overcomers who follow the Lamb contrasted with the rest of mankind who do “not repent of the works of their hands.” All of these are instructive to us and help us see what holiness and righteousness really look like.

REV 00.09 [ INTERNAL SYMMETRIES OF THE APOCALYPSE: REPETITIONS ]: The Apocalypse is also a book of repetitions. We find repeated series of sevens: seven seals, seven trumpets and seven bowls of wrath. We also discover “bookend repititions” that tie the end of the prophecy back to its beginning. These bookend repititions include the mentions of “Alpha and Omega” in 1.8 with 21.6 and 22.13 and also the blessings for heeding the prophecy given in 1.3 and 22.7. The repititions tell us that there is a plan to the book (prophecy) and a plan to God’s program of the End Time. God’s doings do not occur randomly but exactly as planned.

REV 00.10 [ CONTEMPORARY RELEVANCE OF THE APOCALYPSE ]: It is fitting to ask, as Joel B. Green does in his How to Read Prophecy: “What role does biblical eschatology serve in determining our own faith and life? Are our congregations serving under the challenge of the biblical prophets? Do we live in the hope to which writers like John and Daniel testified? Are we motivated to mission because of the inbreaking kingdom of God? Or is our belief concerning the end times expressed only when we recite the last two phrases of the Apostle’s Creed?” God forbid that we should approach the Apocalypse on an academic level only, or worse in pursuit of only sensational ideas that we can speculate about over coffee. Indeed, if we read the Apocalypse well, at least two things will happen: We will understand Christ more (Rev 19.10; Eph 1.17), and we will value temporal things less (Mat 16.26). To serve “under the challenge of the biblical prophets” is to stop prioritizing worldly gain and worldly comforts, and to extravagantly pursue the advancement of God’s kingdom.





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