12. See Revelation 5–6; Mounce, The Book of Revelation, 14.
13. Osborne, Revelation, 2–4.
14. Mounce, The Book of Revelation, 31.
15. Beale, The Book of Revelation, 35–36.
16. See fuller discussion in Beale, The Book of Revelation, 5–20.
17. See Pliny the Younger, Epistles 10.96-97, as footnoted in Beale, The Book of Revelation, 5.
18. Beale, The Book of Revelation, 7, referencing Eusebius, History of Eusebius 3.20.
19. Clement in the First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians 1.1, in The Church Fathers. The Complete Ante-Nicene & Nicene and Post-Nicene Church Fathers Collection, Kindle edition, Loc. 1880.
20. See also Osborne, Revelation, 9.
21. The fact that these church leaders were chronologically close to the later date gives more credence to their testimony.
22 Aune, Revelation 1–5, lxx.
23. Beale, The Book of Revelation, 21–26.
24. Thomas and Macchia, Revelation, 34.
25. Beale, The Book of Revelation, 33.
26. For a fuller description of different methods, see Osborne, Revelation, 18–22.
27. See Osborne, Revelation, 38–40.
Revelation 1:1–8
The Revelation of Jesus Christ
Introduction
There are a lot of books in bookstores, on our devices, and on the internet. Too many to read. There are science books, comic books, cooking books, classic books, history books, math books, political books, how-to books, how-not-to books. There are books published every day, every hour, every minute. There are books I would never want to read, books I would be interested in reading, and books that I know are must-reads.
There are reference books, manuals, and coffee-table books. You know, the kind that you put out so people who come to your house will think you read them when they’re just for display, even though everybody else does the same thing so, in some sense, you’re not fooling anyone.
Then there are those books that are indispensable. These are the kinds of books we try to get everyone to read. Of course, there are no books more valuable to read than the Bible. And within the sixty-six books of the Bible, there is no other book in the Bible that claims for itself the promise of blessings for those who read it like the book of Revelation does. Certainly, blessing comes when we read any part of the Bible. After all, in Matthew 24:35, Jesus says, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”
But Revelation is the only book that includes blessing as a direct result of reading, provided reading is accompanied by action. We see in this first section of Revelation, the prologue to the rest of the letter/vision, that this is a book about Jesus and a book given by him. No wonder there is a blessing attached to its reading!
Exposition
From the start of Revelation, we get a lot of information. First, John tells us this is a “revelation.” Our word “revelation” comes from the Greek word apokalupsis, which is transliterated “apocalypse” in English. This word could place John in line with the Jewish apocalyptic literature of the day, but, according to Ladd, John is different for several reasons. John names himself as the recipient of the vision, while Jewish apocalyptic literature is often written with a pseudonym. John’s vision is written from the perspective of the present about the future, not placed, like Jewish literature, back in time and speaking of current events. And John’s vision is a positive understanding of God’s control, whereas Jewish literature is typically very pessimistic.28
As we read the apocalypse of John, we have to remember that this is apocalyptic imagery. What must soon take place may be couched in very symbolic terms, hard for the twenty-first century reader to understand. In other words, first-century readers would have more readily picked up the symbols and Old Testament allusions from which Revelation borrows much of its imagery.
But even Old Testament prophets did not understand everything they wrote. 1 Peter 1:10–11 says, “Concerning this salvation, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories.”
Our experience of Revelation in contrast to a first-century reader’s experience of Revelation is similar to how someone from the fifteenth century might feel if an American talked about a yellow penalty flag in football. Most Americans instantly recognize what a yellow flag symbolizes, but a fifteenth-century person would be mystified without the right contextual knowledge. In studying the book of Revelation, we must be diligent in our study of the Old Testament and, even so, realize there are some things we just may not understand fully yet.
This is a “revelation of Jesus Christ” (Revelation 1:1, emphasis mine). This could either be interpreted as a subjective genitive (a revelation given by Jesus Christ), or an objective genitive (a revelation about Jesus Christ). Mounce, among others, takes the subjective genitive view, saying, “Christ is the revealer, not in the sense that he accompanies John on his visionary experiences (angels play this role), but in that he alone is worthy to open the scroll of destiny (Revelation 5:5, 7) and disclose its contents”29 (Revelation 6:3, 3, 5, 7, 9, 12; 8:1). Both Beale30 and Thomas31, however, believe the text can be read either way, as do I.
The reader’s takeaway should be that this book is about Jesus Christ and his victory and a book given by Jesus Christ to the church—both the first-century churches in Asia Minor and to all churches past and present. That is the beauty of the book of Revelation. Revelation has always been applicable at all times, and at all times it is focused on Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
There is an urgency to John’s writing. When I was a kid and heard my mother yelling from the house, “Andy, you come here right now!”, her specific emphasis of words told me how fast I should get back to the house. If she said, “Andy, come here right now” with no emphasis, I would jog home. But if she said, “Come here right now!”, I’d run fast. Revelation is a “Come here right now” kind of book.