Revelation - God's Final Word

CHAPTER 1

Revelation is the only book in the Bible with a blessing promised to everyone who reads and applies what they learn here. Revelation 1:3 says, “Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near.” It’s always good to study and apply God’s Word, but the Bible says you are in for a special blessing when you study Revelation.

You may notice something unusual about the salutation to this prophetic book. A salutation is a greeting or a message from the writer to the recipient. In Bible days, they put the name of the letter writer first. This is why 1:4 says John’s name first, instead of “Dear so-and-so.”

The first character we meet in Revelation is the book’s author, John. Tradition says John was the youngest of the disciples and perhaps the closest earthly friend to Jesus. When they were at the Last Supper, the Bible says John was reclining against the chest of Jesus. They were that close.

Tradition tells us all of the disciples died a martyr’s death except for John, who was persecuted under the Roman emperor, Domitian. The Roman emperors had colossal egos, and Domitian was one of the first ones who enforced a Roman law requiring every citizen to burn incense to him once a year as Lord of the Universe. John refused and was to be publicly executed for his faith by boiling in oil. However, tradition says they threw the apostle in a vat of hot, gurgling oil, but he didn’t die. He was terribly burned and disfigured, but it did not kill him. Under the law, if the Romans were unsuccessful in executing someone, they couldn’t try again. Instead, John was exiled to the little island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea where he eventually died of natural causes. While John was living on this island as a recluse, he encountered Jesus Christ, who told him to write this Revelation.

Revelation was originally written as a letter. Who are the ones receiving this letter of prophecy? Chapter two reveals they are seven ancient churches throughout Asia Minor: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and the church in Laodicea.

When you think of churches, don’t think of buildings. The early churches did not have buildings, as we do today. These were simple groups of baptized believers meeting together in people’s homes. These churches were literal congregations, but they also represent all churches and all Christians of all time. To understand why that’s true, we have to unpack the meaning behind our first symbol—the number seven.

Jews assigned meaning to most numbers, a practice known as Gematria. To the Jews, the number one was the number of “unity.” There are three members of the Trinity, but only one God. The number two was the number for “witness.” In Jewish law, a fact had to be established by two witnesses or more for it to be true. In Revelation, we are going to be introduced to two key witnesses in the future. The number three was the “divine” number: God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. The four living creatures in heaven never stop crying out before the throne of God: “Holy, Holy, Holy” (Revelation 4:8), referring to the number of the Trinity.

The number four was the number of our planet, the earth. Winds come from the four directions, just as there are four points on the compass. The number five was “the Law”—there are five books in the Torah. Six was man’s number, because man was created on the sixth day. We’re going to see later in Revelation where the number six has special meaning.

The number seven means completion or “a unit.” We see several key biblical elements in sets of seven in Revelation. There are seven spirits surrounding the throne of God, for example (Revelation 4:5). Does that mean there are seven Holy Spirits? No, it is a symbolic reference to the unified, singular spirit of God: the Holy Spirit. There are seven wax seals on a scroll, seven trumpets and seven bowls of wrath in Revelation. There are also seven prominent characters in the book of Revelation. And there are seven “new things to come” that God promises at the end of Revelation.

Therefore, when Jesus addresses seven churches in the first few chapters of Revelation, the symmetry of the number “seven” is not by accident. These churches symbolize the totality of all Christians everywhere as a unit. There is one Body of Christ, which is the Church.

“Dispensationalism” takes a little different angle on all of this and teaches that the seven churches represent seven church “ages” or periods of time. For instance, one might pinpoint the characteristics describing one of the seven churches and say, “We are living in the age of the Laodicean church.” I personally don’t believe that teaching. One can find a full spectrum of believers who are like all seven churches: some are like the Laodicean Christians, some are like Ephesian Christians and some are more like the Philadelphian Christians. What Jesus says to all of these churches is an important message to us today.

John used a very common greeting followed by a reference to the writer of the letter. It’s a reference to the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. “From him who is, and who was, and who is to come and from the seven spirits” (1:4). In other words, this message is from God himself, given to John personally through an encounter with Jesus. Revelation is all about Jesus. There are more designations and descriptions of Jesus here than in any other book of the Bible. This first chapter reveals so much about him, even in the opening verses. He says he is “the faithful witness,” the “firstborn from the dead” and the “ruler” (1:5).

In verses 7 and 8, John gives us a condensed preview of the rest of the book: Jesus is coming back. There are some passages in the Bible indicating that when Jesus comes back he’s going to come “as a thief in the night.” Like a thief, he will slip in suddenly, silently, secretly and then be gone. So why is John talking about him coming in power and majesty when “every eye will see” (1:7)? Is Jesus coming back like a thief in the night? Or a ruler in glory for all to see? Which one is it? The short answer is, “Yes!”

When Jesus comes to rapture the Church, it will be like a thief in the night—suddenly. This is when we are changed and meet up with Jesus in the clouds. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:52 this will happen in a “flash.” However, when he comes back seven years later at the Final Battle, “every eye is going to see him.” The rapture of the Church will be sudden and secretive, but Christ’s return described in Revelation 19 will be an event witnessed by the whole world.

In 1:8, Jesus adds to what John says and gives us more powerful descriptions of his character. But he could have just stopped with the words, “I am…” In Exodus 3, Moses stood at the burning bush and God told him to tell Pharaoh to let his people go. When Moses asked in what name he should make this demand, God said, “You just tell them that my name is ‘I AM.’” In the Hebrew language, there is no sense of past, future and present tense. When God said to Moses, “I AM,” he was saying, “I have always been. I AM being right now and I will always be!”

That’s why Jesus says of himself, “I am the Alpha and the Omega.” In the Greek alphabet, alpha is the first letter; omega is the last letter. In our alphabet, he is the A and the Z and everything in between. He is also beyond the scope of time. Jesus is the One “who is, and who was, and who is to come” (1:8). He is the past; he is the present; and he is the future. The Bible says his words are eternal and they will never pass away. There are only two eternal things in this world: the Word of God and the souls of men and women. Your houses, your bank accounts, your cars—everything else is temporary.

When I was studying in seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, I often attended St. Matthews Baptist Church. One wintry Saturday night, some teenagers broke into the church and stole the audio equipment. Then they set the church on fire. It was in the middle of the night and the church was already consumed in flames when an alarm finally reached the Louisville Fire Department. By the time the firemen got there, the building was almost completely destroyed. I heard the sirens near the church and went to see what had happened. It was so cold that when the firefighters aimed at the flames, the water froze instantly on the parking lot.

The people who had not heard about the fire arrived for church the next morning, only to see their building was nothing but a charred, ice-covered ruin. When they found another place to worship a week later, the pastor talked about his entire personal library being destroyed except for one book. He held up the book they managed to salvage. It was his Bible. Every other book in his office burned to ashes, but not the Word of God. It was a vivid reminder that the Word of God endures...