1 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to show unto His servants things which must shortly (quickly, soon, right now) come to pass; and He sent and signified it by His angel unto His servant John:
2 Who bare record of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw.
This is the Revelation of Jesus Christ, as, in fact, the whole Bible is. Christ let John (His disciple, one of the "Sons of Thunder.") know what was fixing to happen as He did to other prophets in times past.
He let Isaiah know what was fixing to happen to Israel as much as a hundred years before hand. He told Daniel about the coming Syrian rule a couple hundred years before it happened. He warns His disciples about AD70 in Matthew 24 (roughly AD29).
Here, He is warning everyone what “must shortly come to pass.” John is recording this and the testimony of Jesus.
This verse is full of words telling us the purpose of this book: revelation, show, signified (communicated, to make known by a sign). This was not to be a mystery novel, hiding things, but a book of information teaching and revealing, though revealing them by signs and symbols. This warning of nearness was included both here before the vision is given and in the last chapter, after the difficult parts of the book. The time signature is NOT part of the vision that needs interpretation. It is very plain what is intended.
Some think John was the only surviving disciple at this time, the rest having been martyred for the Name of Christ. This was the last book of divine Revelation as John states later. No cannon scripture was given after this time.
John was to deliver this Revelation to the Church of God, to all believers. Everyone needs to know these things, not just ministers or scholars.
The subject of this book is “the things that must shortly come to pass.” Not things to come to pass two thousand years in the future. Most of These things are in our past, John’s future. Those who lived in the time of the fulfillment of this scripture understood it perfectly.
Terms for “very soon” are also used in Revelation 2:16, 3:11, and 22:6.
3 Blessed is he that reads, and they that hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written therein: for the time is at hand (near).
Everyone who studies (reads and understands and applies) the Bible is blessed as the Bible holds great wisdom and tells us the thoughts of God. Those who studied this prophecy shortly after it was written had the blessing of a measure of warning of things that happened soon afterward. We are blessed to see these prophecies and to see them fulfilled in history because it reaffirms our faith in the rest of the Bible.
“…the time is at hand.” These things are fixing to happen right now, in John’s time, the first century. This could not be said any plainer.
4 John to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace be unto you, and peace, from Him which is, and which was, and which is to come; and from the seven Spirits which are before His throne;
John addresses this letter to the seven, physical congregations in Asia at that time. They were physically near him in his exile to Patmos. These are the same churches addressed by name in the next two chapters.
He wishes the good will of God (grace) and peaceful lives on those servants of God reading this. This grace and peace is to come from the eternal God who has always been, is today, and always will be.
Seven is the Biblical number of perfection and completion, so the “seven spirits of God” are the totality of all that is God, who can’t really be defined by numbers.
5 And from Jesus Christ, who is the Faithful Witness, and the First Begotten of the dead, and the Prince of the kings of the earth. Unto Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood,
Christ’s words are always true. He is a faithful witness of what is fixing to be written, because, as God, He has already seen all of history* and He cannot lie. He was also the first to rise in the permanent resurrection. Everyone else who has been raised from the dead, died again at some point.
He is the King of Kings, the ruler of all and He loves us enough to die- and tortuously so- for our sins.
6 And hath made us kings and priests unto God and His Father; to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
“Hath made” -Present tense; we are currently kings and priests.
Jesus has made us rulers under Him and priests worthy to come before God Himself; not because of our righteousness, but because He washed all our sins away leaving us pure. Through Christ, we have control over ourselves and can command even Satan to leave, in Jesus name, and he must obey.
1 Peter 2:9-“But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into His marvelous light:”
This is current (“…are…hath called…”). The Kingdom we are priests and kings in is the Kingdom of God begun at Calvary.
“1 In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judaea, 2 And saying, ‘Repent ye: for the Kingdom Of Heaven is at hand.’” Matthew 3:1,2
“17 From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, ‘Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’” Matthew 4:17
“14 Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, 15 And saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.’” Mark 1:14, 15
If the kingdom did not come at Calvary, Jesus was mistaken or lying.
References throughout the New Testament to The Kingdom are in present tense.
Prophecies in the Old (i.e. Daniel’s Stone from Nebuchadnezzar’s dream) are set in the Roman time, far in their future, but our past.
Christ’s purpose in His first coming was to set up His Kingdom. If the Jews prevented that by rejecting and crucifying Christ, causing the kingdom’s postponement for 2000 years (as some claim), than He wasn’t much of a God.
His kingdom was, in fact, spiritual from the start.
God has called all who follow Him to be preachers, not politicians.
His kingdom was, in fact, spiritual from the start.
God has called all who follow Him to be preachers, not politicians.
(Though to be clear, He does call SOME to be politicians. We need the godly to be in office. But it is very few who receive this call. EVERYONE is called to be a preacher of righteousness, to witness for God.)
If the kingdom was supposed to be literal/political than there is no room for Calvary. There never would have been salvation.
“4 For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.” Hebrews 10:4
The Cross was God’s plan from the start, not the result of the Jew's rejection.
“1 Who hath believed our report? And to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed?
2 For He (Christ) shall grow up before Him (God) as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground (the virgin birth): He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him.(people didn’t flock to Christ because He was handsome)
3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from Him; He was despised, and we esteemed Him not.
4 Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
5 But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth: He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb (silent), so He openeth not His mouth.
8 He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare His generation? For He was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of My people was He stricken.
9 And He made his grave with the wicked (crucified with thieves), and with the rich in His death (Joseph of Armathia was rich and buried Christ in his own tomb); because He had done no violence, neither was any deceit in His mouth.
10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He (The Father) hath put Him (Jesus) to grief: when thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand.
11 He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied: by His knowledge shall My righteous servant justify many; for He shall bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore will I divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong; because He hath poured out His soul unto death: and He was numbered with the transgressors; and He bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” Isaiah 53, more than 500 years before The Cross.
“54 But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?” Matthew 26:54
“22 Having therefore obtained help of God, I continue unto this day, witnessing both to small and great, saying none other things than those which the prophets and Moses did say should come:
23 That Christ should suffer, and that He should be the first that should rise from the dead, and should shew light unto the people, and to the Gentiles.” Acts 26:22,23
The common Jews, in fact, wanted to make Christ king and He refused:
“14 Then those men, when they had seen the miracle that Jesus did, said, ‘This is of a truth that prophet that should come into the world.’
15 When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take him by force, to make him a king, he departed again into a mountain himself alone.” John 6:14, 15
The Kingdom came into force at Calvary and we are reigning with Him right now.
7 Behold, He cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him. Even so, Amen.
Clouds= nephos= shapeless mass covering the heavens, not nephale which means “clouds.” (“1 Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses,…” Hebrews 12:1, Cloud here means “group.”)
This is the point of the Book of Revelation:
“37 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! 38 Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.” Matthew 23:37-38
“2 And Jesus said unto them, ‘See ye not all these things? Verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down…’
34 ‘Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.’” Matthew 24:2, 34 (See http://bolcf.blogspot.com/2014/07/matthew-24.html for a complete discussion of Matthew 24.)
John just finished telling us that this vision is about things that “must shortly come to pass.” He will soon tell us that he is currently suffering persecution himself. It would be out of context for this verse to apply to a couple of thousand years down the road.
Isaiah 19:1 says “The oracle concerning Egypt. Behold, the Lord is riding on a swift cloud, and is about to come to Egypt: the idols of Egypt will tremble at His presence, and the heart of the Egyptians will melt within them.”
This prophecy is speaking of Assyria’s Esarhaddon’s imminent conquest of Egypt in the mid 600’s BC. There is precedence for symbolic use of God “coming in the clouds” meaning judgment is approaching and it fits for this to be referring to AD70 within the context of the other scriptures.
Jesus Himself told the High Priest “I tell you heareafter you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power, coming on the clouds of heaven.” Matthew 26:62-64.
Same imagery.
In fact, Christ often spoke of immediate judgment of the Jews of those days (Matthew 21:33-48, 22:7, Luke 19:41-44, Luke 21:20-22, Luke 23:28-31, Matthew 24:30)
Blame for Christ’s crucifixion is placed squarely on the shoulders of the Jews- "they also which pierced Him" (Acts2:23, Acts 5:30, Acts 7:52, Acts 10:39, Acts 13:13-15, 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16 Matt 27:25, John 19:15,) and now they will be judged for it.
“Earth” is from the Greek word that is often translated as “promised land” in the rest of the New Testament. This is referring to the tribes of Israel.
The original Greek word translated “they also” in the King James means “even.” So this would read:
“…every eye shall see Him, [even those] also which pierced Him: and all [tribes] of the [promised land] shall wail because of Him.”
Since those who physically pierced Jesus’ hands with nails and a spear died 2000 years ago, this event had to have happened then.
And wail they did.
Titus destroyed the entire country, burning and killing everything in sight. It is estimated over a million people died in Jerusalem alone with more than 100,000 taken captive just from the one city, and Josephus says there were so many dead bodies in the Sea of Galilee you could walk across it on them. There truly has never in all of history been a tribulation, a destruction of a people to equal this event.
And the Jewish religion was ended at that time. The Temple was destroyed never to be rebuilt (they have tried but earthquakes and unexplained fires always stop the work), the sacrifices were permanently ended, the genealogical records destroyed (so the priesthood can never be reestablished). In all ways, the Mosaic Law can never be followed again. Oh, the moral principles could be and are, and the health laws could be followed, but the "meat" of The Law, the sacrifices and Temple worship, are gone for good.
8 “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending,” saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.
Alpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet and Omega was at this time the last, so Jesus is saying, “I am the A to Z.” He created the Universe and He will end it. He is “The Boss.”
9 I, John, who also am your brother, and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.
John, who was a mortal man and a servant of God, who had suffered many things for God already, had been exiled to the Isle of Patmos because he refused to quit preaching about Christ. He was, in fact, one of Jesus’ disciples, who walked with Him every day for three and a half years.
(Legend says John had already been boiled in oil …and survived! However, the earliest reference we have to the event is from a couple hundred years after John lived, so we don’t really know it happened.)
We know from other historical sources that John was on Patmos in AD64. (We actually have quite a few writings from this time period…as if God wanted several witnesses to the events or something)
Tradition has stated he was exiled there again in AD90. I usually take traditional dating over modern interpretations (trusting those sources closer to the event more than those two thousand years away), but in this case the exile in 90 is based on very shaky evidence. The one in 64 was during the reign of Nero, a known time of great persecution- the greatest ever suffered by the Christian church- and John’s exile at this time is mentioned in several sources. The AD90 exile is based on the writings of Ireaneous in the second century who says his teacher Polycarp (who was a student of John himself) told him John was on Patmos during the reign of Domatian (AD81-96). The problem is that;
1) We have no record of a persecution of the church great enough to put John on Patmos at this time from any other source,
2) We have no other record of John being exiled to Patmos a second time
3) Nero was known by another name very close in sound to Domatian, and
4) Ireaneous made many mistakes in names and dates in his other writings, making him an unreliable source.
This means this Book was most likely written in AD64 instead of the traditional dating of AD90. That is, six years before the destruction of the Temple in AD70.
10 I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet,
John was praying on the Sabbath and heard a loud trumpet.
11 Saying, “I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last: and, What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia; unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos, and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea.”
The trumpet said “I am the A to Z, the Creator and the Finisher. Write down what I am fixing to show you and mail it to your buddies in Asia Minor (modern Turkey).”
The order these churches are listed in here is the order they occur on the postal route in ancient Rome.
12 And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks;
The last verse of this chapter tells us these candlesticks are the seven churches. They are “Letting their little light shine.” Gold for their purity and value.
13 And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle.
Christ is in the middle of His churches. He is clothed in a garment the length of the priest’s clothes because He is our Priest. The golden girdle is probably representative of the priest’s girdle in Leviticus, only purer.
14 His head and His hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and His eyes were as a flame of fire;
This is the same description as the Ancient of days mentioned in Daniel. His gray or white hair was not a sign of old age (though of course God is the oldest being in the universe, being completely ageless), but was a crown of glory and wisdom.
What God sees and what comes from Him can purify or destroy just like fire.
15 And His feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and His voice as the sound of many waters.
This description sounds like the angel that spoke to Daniel, but here it is obviously Christ. His feet were strong and steadfast, supporting His own interest, subduing His enemies, treading them to powder.
“Many waters” represents the voices of many people. God has made Himself heard through the use of many Christians proclaiming His Word.
16 And He had in His right hand seven stars: and out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword: and His countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength.
We are told at the end of this chapter that the seven stars are the pastors of the seven churches in Asia Minor. They are under His direction, protection, and influence.
“The Word of God is swift and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword…” Timothy 3:16.
God’s words both wound and heal. They condemn the lost and cut away the sin in our lives.
His countenance was too bright and dazzling, because of His purity, for mortal eyes to behold.
17 And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead. And He laid His right hand upon me, saying unto me, “Fear not; I am the First and the Last:”
John was overpowered by the greatness of Jesus, even though he had spent three and a half years walking by His side (or maybe because he had). Christ comforted John and picked him up. He told him not to be afraid; that He is the Creator and the Finisher.
18 “I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.
Jesus lets John know that He is the One John saw die and saw after His resurrection. He tells him He isn’t going to die again, but live forever and that He controls death and decay and punishment.
19 “Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter;
20 “The mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in My right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches: and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven churches.
A literalist would interpret this to mean Jesus walks around in the Great Throne between candles. However, the words “The Mystery” plainly tells us this is symbolic and the interpretation is given: candlesticks are really churches, stars are really “angels.” Jesus dwells among His people.
“Angel” means “minister” and can mean a human as well as a spirit being. In this case, Christ calls the pastors of the churches “angels.”
Christ gives John the command to write down the things he is fixing to see; the current state of the churches in Asia, and what is fixing to happen in His Kingdom.
If the kingdom was supposed to be literal/political than there is no room for Calvary. There never would have been salvation.
“4 For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.” Hebrews 10:4
The Cross was God’s plan from the start, not the result of the Jew's rejection.
“1 Who hath believed our report? And to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed?
2 For He (Christ) shall grow up before Him (God) as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground (the virgin birth): He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him.(people didn’t flock to Christ because He was handsome)
3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from Him; He was despised, and we esteemed Him not.
4 Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
5 But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth: He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb (silent), so He openeth not His mouth.
8 He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare His generation? For He was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of My people was He stricken.
9 And He made his grave with the wicked (crucified with thieves), and with the rich in His death (Joseph of Armathia was rich and buried Christ in his own tomb); because He had done no violence, neither was any deceit in His mouth.
10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He (The Father) hath put Him (Jesus) to grief: when thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand.
11 He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied: by His knowledge shall My righteous servant justify many; for He shall bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore will I divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong; because He hath poured out His soul unto death: and He was numbered with the transgressors; and He bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” Isaiah 53, more than 500 years before The Cross.
“54 But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?” Matthew 26:54
“22 Having therefore obtained help of God, I continue unto this day, witnessing both to small and great, saying none other things than those which the prophets and Moses did say should come:
23 That Christ should suffer, and that He should be the first that should rise from the dead, and should shew light unto the people, and to the Gentiles.” Acts 26:22,23
The common Jews, in fact, wanted to make Christ king and He refused:
“14 Then those men, when they had seen the miracle that Jesus did, said, ‘This is of a truth that prophet that should come into the world.’
15 When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take him by force, to make him a king, he departed again into a mountain himself alone.” John 6:14, 15
The Kingdom came into force at Calvary and we are reigning with Him right now.
7 Behold, He cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him. Even so, Amen.
Clouds= nephos= shapeless mass covering the heavens, not nephale which means “clouds.” (“1 Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses,…” Hebrews 12:1, Cloud here means “group.”)
This is the point of the Book of Revelation:
“37 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! 38 Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.” Matthew 23:37-38
“2 And Jesus said unto them, ‘See ye not all these things? Verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down…’
34 ‘Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled.’” Matthew 24:2, 34 (See http://bolcf.blogspot.com/2014/07/matthew-24.html for a complete discussion of Matthew 24.)
John just finished telling us that this vision is about things that “must shortly come to pass.” He will soon tell us that he is currently suffering persecution himself. It would be out of context for this verse to apply to a couple of thousand years down the road.
Isaiah 19:1 says “The oracle concerning Egypt. Behold, the Lord is riding on a swift cloud, and is about to come to Egypt: the idols of Egypt will tremble at His presence, and the heart of the Egyptians will melt within them.”
This prophecy is speaking of Assyria’s Esarhaddon’s imminent conquest of Egypt in the mid 600’s BC. There is precedence for symbolic use of God “coming in the clouds” meaning judgment is approaching and it fits for this to be referring to AD70 within the context of the other scriptures.
Jesus Himself told the High Priest “I tell you heareafter you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power, coming on the clouds of heaven.” Matthew 26:62-64.
Same imagery.
In fact, Christ often spoke of immediate judgment of the Jews of those days (Matthew 21:33-48, 22:7, Luke 19:41-44, Luke 21:20-22, Luke 23:28-31, Matthew 24:30)
Blame for Christ’s crucifixion is placed squarely on the shoulders of the Jews- "they also which pierced Him" (Acts2:23, Acts 5:30, Acts 7:52, Acts 10:39, Acts 13:13-15, 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16 Matt 27:25, John 19:15,) and now they will be judged for it.
“Earth” is from the Greek word that is often translated as “promised land” in the rest of the New Testament. This is referring to the tribes of Israel.
The original Greek word translated “they also” in the King James means “even.” So this would read:
“…every eye shall see Him, [even those] also which pierced Him: and all [tribes] of the [promised land] shall wail because of Him.”
Since those who physically pierced Jesus’ hands with nails and a spear died 2000 years ago, this event had to have happened then.
And wail they did.
Titus destroyed the entire country, burning and killing everything in sight. It is estimated over a million people died in Jerusalem alone with more than 100,000 taken captive just from the one city, and Josephus says there were so many dead bodies in the Sea of Galilee you could walk across it on them. There truly has never in all of history been a tribulation, a destruction of a people to equal this event.
And the Jewish religion was ended at that time. The Temple was destroyed never to be rebuilt (they have tried but earthquakes and unexplained fires always stop the work), the sacrifices were permanently ended, the genealogical records destroyed (so the priesthood can never be reestablished). In all ways, the Mosaic Law can never be followed again. Oh, the moral principles could be and are, and the health laws could be followed, but the "meat" of The Law, the sacrifices and Temple worship, are gone for good.
8 “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending,” saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.
Alpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet and Omega was at this time the last, so Jesus is saying, “I am the A to Z.” He created the Universe and He will end it. He is “The Boss.”
9 I, John, who also am your brother, and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.
John, who was a mortal man and a servant of God, who had suffered many things for God already, had been exiled to the Isle of Patmos because he refused to quit preaching about Christ. He was, in fact, one of Jesus’ disciples, who walked with Him every day for three and a half years.
(Legend says John had already been boiled in oil …and survived! However, the earliest reference we have to the event is from a couple hundred years after John lived, so we don’t really know it happened.)
We know from other historical sources that John was on Patmos in AD64. (We actually have quite a few writings from this time period…as if God wanted several witnesses to the events or something)
Tradition has stated he was exiled there again in AD90. I usually take traditional dating over modern interpretations (trusting those sources closer to the event more than those two thousand years away), but in this case the exile in 90 is based on very shaky evidence. The one in 64 was during the reign of Nero, a known time of great persecution- the greatest ever suffered by the Christian church- and John’s exile at this time is mentioned in several sources. The AD90 exile is based on the writings of Ireaneous in the second century who says his teacher Polycarp (who was a student of John himself) told him John was on Patmos during the reign of Domatian (AD81-96). The problem is that;
1) We have no record of a persecution of the church great enough to put John on Patmos at this time from any other source,
2) We have no other record of John being exiled to Patmos a second time
3) Nero was known by another name very close in sound to Domatian, and
4) Ireaneous made many mistakes in names and dates in his other writings, making him an unreliable source.
This means this Book was most likely written in AD64 instead of the traditional dating of AD90. That is, six years before the destruction of the Temple in AD70.
10 I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet,
John was praying on the Sabbath and heard a loud trumpet.
11 Saying, “I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last: and, What thou seest, write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia; unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos, and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea.”
The trumpet said “I am the A to Z, the Creator and the Finisher. Write down what I am fixing to show you and mail it to your buddies in Asia Minor (modern Turkey).”
The order these churches are listed in here is the order they occur on the postal route in ancient Rome.
12 And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks;
The last verse of this chapter tells us these candlesticks are the seven churches. They are “Letting their little light shine.” Gold for their purity and value.
13 And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the paps with a golden girdle.
Christ is in the middle of His churches. He is clothed in a garment the length of the priest’s clothes because He is our Priest. The golden girdle is probably representative of the priest’s girdle in Leviticus, only purer.
14 His head and His hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and His eyes were as a flame of fire;
This is the same description as the Ancient of days mentioned in Daniel. His gray or white hair was not a sign of old age (though of course God is the oldest being in the universe, being completely ageless), but was a crown of glory and wisdom.
What God sees and what comes from Him can purify or destroy just like fire.
15 And His feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and His voice as the sound of many waters.
This description sounds like the angel that spoke to Daniel, but here it is obviously Christ. His feet were strong and steadfast, supporting His own interest, subduing His enemies, treading them to powder.
“Many waters” represents the voices of many people. God has made Himself heard through the use of many Christians proclaiming His Word.
16 And He had in His right hand seven stars: and out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword: and His countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength.
We are told at the end of this chapter that the seven stars are the pastors of the seven churches in Asia Minor. They are under His direction, protection, and influence.
“The Word of God is swift and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword…” Timothy 3:16.
God’s words both wound and heal. They condemn the lost and cut away the sin in our lives.
His countenance was too bright and dazzling, because of His purity, for mortal eyes to behold.
17 And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as dead. And He laid His right hand upon me, saying unto me, “Fear not; I am the First and the Last:”
John was overpowered by the greatness of Jesus, even though he had spent three and a half years walking by His side (or maybe because he had). Christ comforted John and picked him up. He told him not to be afraid; that He is the Creator and the Finisher.
18 “I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.
Jesus lets John know that He is the One John saw die and saw after His resurrection. He tells him He isn’t going to die again, but live forever and that He controls death and decay and punishment.
19 “Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter;
20 “The mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in My right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches: and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven churches.
A literalist would interpret this to mean Jesus walks around in the Great Throne between candles. However, the words “The Mystery” plainly tells us this is symbolic and the interpretation is given: candlesticks are really churches, stars are really “angels.” Jesus dwells among His people.
“Angel” means “minister” and can mean a human as well as a spirit being. In this case, Christ calls the pastors of the churches “angels.”
Christ gives John the command to write down the things he is fixing to see; the current state of the churches in Asia, and what is fixing to happen in His Kingdom.
*History is like a long mural laid out on a table in front of God. He can see the whole thing at once. We are just tiny pixels within that mural and can only see what is immediately around us.