The urgency, thrust and necessity of the prophetic message appears once again. God gives the revelation to Jesus Christ in order to show His servants what is to take place shortly. The time is near! It is right at the door! John was permitted to see it and write it down more than nineteen hundred years ago.
John declared the blessings of grace and peace to the reader. First grace, and then peace. In that order. What is grace? It is undeserved favour, a charitable gift, goodness flowing from God.
Once again, the reader sees the number seven. This number denotes fullness, so ‘seven Spirits’ denotes the fullness of the Spirit.
The reverberation of the unfathomable mystery in the Tri-Unity in the essence of God is heard in this greeting: the confession of the mystery that God is One-in-Three.
John spoke about the testimony of Jesus in verse 1:2b, and now he calls Him the faithful witness who testified not just by His words, but by His whole life; His whole person, obedient to the point of death, yes, even to death on a cross…
It says literally, ‘He has loosened us from our sins’ – just as it is said of the donkey and her colt that were to be used for Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem to ‘untie them’. The same word is said about breaking the seals, releasing the angels, and setting the devil free for a short time.
For the Greeks, “forever and ever” is literally: ‘eis tous aioonas toon aioonoon’ – all through the ages of the ages.’ The Greek word ‘aioon/aeon’ can best be defined as “mankind and the world going through a period of time”, a phase, a part of world-history.
The angels at His Ascension told His disciples to expect that the Lord would return in the same way that He was taken up: ‘This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into Heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen Him go into Heaven.’
Those who do not want to hear about Jesus, will have to see Him, nonetheless. Every eye, every generation (tribe) of the earth (gè) will mourn and wail. Behold, He is coming! That is the theme of this last book of the Bible.
Following the prologue (verses 1–3) and the opening words that make it clear that the whole of the Book of Revelation is addressed as a letter to the whole church of Jesus Christ (verse 4), the greeting with the blessing in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost
‘I, John’ – ‘the one Jesus loved’. This was how John referred to himself in the Gospel he wrote. John never mentioned his own name in ‘his’ Gospel, but referred to himself in the third person, as ‘the other disciple’.
‘I, John’ – ‘the one Jesus loved’. This was how John referred to himself in the Gospel he wrote. John never mentioned his own name in ‘his’ Gospel, but referred to himself in the third person, as ‘the other disciple’.
John was to send everything he saw—the whole book—to the seven churches, to the church of God, i.e. not just seven separate letters that each of the seven churches receives individually, as a special encouragement and admonition to them, but the whole book.
