Preamble to Revelation
One thing is for certain, there will be an awful lot of disappointed people in the New-Kingdom. The Republican will shudder at the appointment of a King. The Democrat will lament not having appointed Him. The staunch Feminist will regret He is male. The libertarian will be frustrated by the King’s high standards, the ambitious will be disappointed at not being on the short list and the rich will then have their wealth redistributed. These are just a few differences between the Kingdom of earth and the Kingdom of God. So how will it work? It will work because the hearts people are right. Any of the world’s political systems could work if the hearts of all its people were right. Honesty, integrity, competence, trust, respect, empathy, selflessness concern and putting others first, These and so much else are all derived from the heart.
Revelation needs a preamble. Because there is a tendency to, ‘leave it to the experts’. Revelation is not for the faint-hearted. John does say it should be read aloud. John does not say you should attempt to interpret it in detail, but watch it unfold. Interpreting Revelation has become the foundation of many false sects and weird ideas. This book was not written to graduates, it was written to ordinary folk. It was not written in complex Greek but in basic everyday lingo. It was penned by John; he penned it, he did not write it. He was told to write down what he saw and heard, as he saw it,302 and not to polish it, add to it or subtract from it.303
Give this book to the experts, and they will question the author, the grammar, the logic, the style, then invent all sorts of allegories and rearrange its content to suit taste. In fact, they will do precisely what John was told not to do. If it was penned to ordinary people not university students, then the only proviso is, that we might get back into the shoes of ordinary folk of that time. They were a suffering, persecuted people. The circumstances have a bearing on the understanding.
There are said to be fifty-six predictions in this book. That is an awful lot of speculation. Not least of these is when the end time will be? Before the book was even written, the Essenes were predicting the world would end in Seventy AD. It might have seemed like that when the temple in Jerusalem was being destroyed and the people running for their lives. French Bishop, Hilary of Pointer, predicted the end would come in three-hundred-and-sixty-five AD. Hippolytus of Rome predicted the nice round number of five-hundred AD. Christopher Columbus, with his precise mathematics, said it would end in one-thousand-six-hundred and fifty-eight AD.
Charles Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church, foresaw the Millennium beginning. His estimate was the year eighteen-thirty-six AD, ‘When Christ should come’.
Luther, a German priest and professor of theology known for starting the Protestant Reformation, predicted the end of the world would end no later than sixteen-hundred AD. He predicted such a time, even though he was not keen on the book, and thought Revelation should be cut out of Scripture saying:
‘It is neither apostolic nor prophetic everyone thinks of the book what his spirit finds there. There are many noblere books to be retained’
Jehovah's Witnesses are more persistent, proclaiming Jesus would come again in 1878 AD. When He didn’t, they proclaimed 1914 AD 304. When He didn’t turn up then either, they claimed Jesus did receive his heavenly crown on that date and was installed as king, but invisibly so.
John Calvin omitted the book of revelation from his commentary translation altogether, assigning it to an appendix.
This book is not contrary to the statement of Jesus, ‘only the father knows the times and order of the end’. If it is read to satisfy our curiosity about the future, it will deceive, because it will project hopes and fears into interpretation. It needs to be taken at face value.
Not one of the many interpretations takes the whole of the book metaphorically. Not one takes it all literally. So there is an element of interpretation. But that must be used with common sense. We are not Gnostics!
The Greek word translated ‘soon’ or ‘shortly’, is not ‘ in a short while from the time of writing’. It is, ‘from when you see these things beginning, they will happen rapidly and end shortly’. Which leads to the next point, All prophesy carries a foreshadowing. We will see many false prophets, but the one in Revelation will be worse and more obvious. We will see many Antichrists but these will be only a foreshadowing of the real thing. Throughout history the anti-Christ has been named as: Rome, Nero Caesar, Napoleon, The Pope, Hitler, Henry Kissinger, Mikhail Gorbachev and many others. The list is long but at worst these are a foreshadowing of the real thing.
Prophesy is not allegory, there are symbols because symbols transcend time language and culture but these are explained in the text and have their foundation in the Old-Testament. I rely on others that tell me there are four-hundred-and-six symbols in these verses and three-hundred-and-sixty allude to Old-Testament pictures.
After Pentecost, the Church in Jerusalem became the centre of mission. It became very active and drew the attention of Rome. Expelled Jews, being mainly businessmen, migrated to another good trading position in Turkey where the trade route crossed between three continents. This became the strategic area for the next thrust of the gospel. Ephesus was their mother Church305, but when Ephesus declined306, the baton passed to Smyrna church under Polycarp. There were seven churches close together, both in geography and mission, but a number of others in the region were not singled out in Revelation. These, were all based in this fertile basin of Turkey, which was formed by a number of rivers at the meeting place of western and eastern worlds.
Without sidetracking, it is worth mentioning when John said he was in the spirit on ‘The Lord’s Day’, it could mean one of three things. Jewish believers were still holding to the Sabbath, Gentiles Christians were beginning to prefer ‘the first day of the week, but he could also have been talking of the Roman holiday ‘Lordy Day’ 307. On this day once a year, all citizens were required to go to the Temple of Caesar, take a pinch of incense and declare ‘Caesar is Lord’. That would make it an anniversary of John’s original arrest. We do not know which view holds the original intent of John.
The first three chapters contain letters to these seven churches. This has given rise to several major approaches of these letters: The letters were written to real churches with real people at a given time. The issues can apply to all churches in all places and all times. In terms of Prophesy, for us who look back we can match each church to a period in history described in their letter, so it could also be read as a seven stage progression toward the end times.
1-Preterists: say all these warnings were fulfilled literally in history by seventy AD, (at the fall of Rome).
2-Historicists: take the approach that the seven churches represent the state of the Church in each of seven ages that will occur before end times. History can certainly plot a remarkable parallel corresponding to the seven letters, but as to if this is the primary intent, that is conjecture.
3-Futurists: view all the states of the Churches as literal, but yet to come.
4- idealists: will say these things can apply to past present and future. That is, they apply to all or any age.
The book
This book is a Revelation. It is not Revelations. As such it is a whole, and we are not entitled to dissect it or move its parts around. The phrase ‘coming soon’ literally means, ‘when these things start they will come at high velocity’.
The book is an open, or circular letter. Chapters one to three contain a letter to individual churches but all the Churches will read it all the letters. The faults and praises in each are open for all to see. Each letter is in seven parts, the Church to whom this section is addressed, followed by the particular title Jesus gives himself for that particular church308. Next comes a recognition of something good within the Church. This is important because these are hard times for the Church and Jesus is not about to crack the whip or break the reed with yet even more burdens.
If the Church is not to fall away by sinful influence, there are some particular things to watch309. It only takes one sin to get the better of a church to disqualify her from God’s purposes. Jesus tells them what to watch for and how to put it right. Finally, Jesus assures them that if they put it right and remain vigilant. He will remain with them and bless them.
These chapters are about the Priest-King ministering to Christians through the Churches It is the age of the Church.
The Churches are meant to be Lampstands and will be judged according to this image.
To this end I must clarify why I use the term Ram rather than Lamb in these Chapters. The Hebrew language, besides not having vowels and other strange anomalies, relies on the context to complete a word picture. In Isaiah, the Lamb is pictured as one of the flock, being taken out and led to the slaughter on behalf of the flock310. In Revelation the picture is still the Lamb, but now he is a male lamb in the peak of his prime with seven horns. He is now king and Master of the flock. Same lamb, different role and character.
302 Revelation 1 : 19
303 Revelation 22 :19
304 Watchtower 1993 Jan 15 p.5
305 We cannot be sure she birthed the other churches but with Paul and John being there she fed and educated them.
306 Soon after the book of Acts concluded
307 There is a definite article in the original, which might argue the case either way.
308 He addresses Himself differently to each in turn relevant to what He is about to say
309 This takes us back to Cain and Abel. ‘Sin crouching at the door’, is a compassionate warning of sin, which got the better of Cain.
310 Isaiah 53