Archive for April 2007
BillyCalderwood.com
Billy Calderwood is pastor of Aqueous Church in nearby Goleta. He writes an interesting, provocative blog from an emergent, progressive evangelical perspective. Check it out!
An Outline of the Christian Faith, Part 2: Trinity (Revelation 1:4-5a)
As we have seen, the primary source of the Christian faith is revelation. Now we turn to the primary content of the Christian faith: Who God is and what he does. Revelation 4-5a touch on both topics.
Before examining these topics, however, notice the literary context of John’s remarks. Ancient letters begin with the sender’s name followed by the recipient’s name and a short greeting (e.g., Jas. 1:1, 1 Pet. 1:1–2)—just like John does here. But the greatness and goodness of God so overwhelm John that he transposes an ordinary greeting into an extraordinary declaration of God’s doing and being.
Doing: What God does may be summed up in three words: grace and peace. “Grace is the divine favor showed to the human race,” Robert H. Mounce explains, “and peace is that state of spiritual well-being that follows as a result.” He goes on to note that, “[Bruce] Metzger calls attention to the fact that grace and peace always stand in that order and observes that ‘it is because of God’s grace that his people can enjoy peace.’”[i]
Being: Who God is may be summed up in one word—Trinity. Although the Bible does not use it, Trinity—from tri- (three) and -unitas (oneness)—accurately summarizes the biblical teaching about God’s nature: He is Three-in-One (Deut. 6:4 and Matt. 28:19). To avoid logical contradiction, Christians speak about God’s threeness and oneness in different respects. Threeness describes the divine persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. (In verse 4b, “the seven spirits” is best interpreted as a symbolic description of the Holy Spirit.) Oneness, one the other hand, describes the divine essence.
Undoubtedly, the doctrine of the Trinity is difficult to understand. Why, then, do Christians insist on it? For four reasons: First, God’s nature demands it. “God is love” (1 John 4:8). Since love is a relational term, it demands a beloved. Love cannot be given in solitude. So, either God, who is eternal, has an eternal beloved or is eternally lonely. Since creation is not eternal, and since God is love, he has an eternally Beloved Son (Matt. 3:17). The Holy Spirit is the bond of love tying them together.
Second, the Bible declares it. Notice how often John uses descriptions of God as descriptions of Jesus Christ. For example, compare Revelation 1:8 and 21:6, in which God is “the Alpha and the Omega,” with 22:13, in which Jesus Christ is “the Alpha and the Omega.” These descriptions do not make sense unless the Trinity is an accurate description of God.
Third, worship desires it. John directs praise and prayer to Jesus Christ as if he is God (e.g., Rev. 5:9–10). But the worship of a creature is blasphemous (Ex. 20:3–6, Rom. 1:18–23). So, praising and praying to Jesus Christ is blasphemous unless he is in fact God. The doctrine of the Trinity flows out of the doctrine of the Incarnation, that Jesus Christ is God “in the flesh” (John 1:14). Unless Jesus is divine, he is not worthy of our praise and prayers.
Finally, salvation depends on it. Speaking of Jesus Christ, Verse 1:5b says, “To him who loved us and has freed us from our sins by his blood….” A mere human cannot free us from our sins. But God cannot die. So, if Jesus frees us from our sins by his blood, he is both God and man. Once again, Incarnation leads to Trinity.
In my Bible, verses 4–5a contain fifty-six simple words. So few words. So much theology. But how great and good the God they describe!
Listen to The Daily Word online.
An Outline of the Christian Faith, Part 1: Revelation (Revelation 1:1-3)
The message of John’s Apocalypse is complex and simple: Complex because it uses figurative language, which is capable of multiple interpretations. Simple because one person dominates throughout. The key to understanding Revelation is Jesus Christ. If we see him clearly, we will interpret it correctly.
In chapter 1, as a prologue to the whole book, John presents us with an outline of the Christian faith.
Revelation (Verses 1–3)
Over the years, I have accumulated many volumes of systematic theology (and even read some of them). Usually, they begin with a section on the sources of Christian faith: the Bible, tradition, reason, and experience. The Bible is the first, most important, and ultimately decisive source of Christian faith because it is God’s word (2 Tim. 3:16–17, 2 Pet. 1:20–21). But tradition, reason, and experience also are important, albeit secondary, sources of belief. They are guides to how Christians through the ages have interpreted God’s word and applied it to their lives.
Systematic theologians address the sources of Christian faith first for a very simple reason: The truthfulness of a belief depends, in part, on the reliability of its sources. When forming a theory, for example, scientists pay close attention to the accuracy of their experimental evidence. Prosecutors prize eyewitness testimony as they make their case against the accused. Biographers root through library stacks to find the original letters of the person whose life they are writing.
John is a theologian—a person who speaks a word (logos) about God (theos). In some Greek manuscripts, the title of his book is “The Revelation of St. John the Divine”—an older English word for theologian. (The actual Greek phrase is tou theologou.) Not surprisingly, then, he begins his book of prophetic theology with a comment on his sources: “The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John….”
“The revelation of Jesus Christ” is ambiguous. Grammatically, it can mean the revelation by Jesus Christ or the revelation about Jesus Christ, the revealer or the one revealed. In the context of verses 1–2, it probably means the former, but we should not overlook the latter. After all, elsewhere in the New Testament, Jesus Christ is both. Revealer: The unique Word that makes God known (John 1:1, 14) and the Son of God whose speech is the Father’s own (Heb. 1:1–2). Revealed One: “And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, Jesus interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27). In John’s Apocalypse, he is both too.
John points out that God speaks to his servants through intermediaries: Jesus Christ, the angel, and John himself. Just as Jesus Christ is the Word of God in human flesh, so the Bible is the word of God in human words. That is why a blessing comes to all who read and heed the Scriptures generally (Ps. 1) and John’s Apocalypse particularly (verse 3). When they read John’s book, they see what the angel showed, go where Jesus Christ sent, and comprehend what God revealed.
If you are a Christian, you are a theologian—a person who speaks words about God. So, pay attention to your sources, the Bible especially! The truthfulness of your beliefs and the blessedness of your life depend upon it.
Listen to The Daily Word online.
How Should We Interpret Revelation?
“Of making many books there is no end,” said the Preacher, “and much study is a weariness of the flesh” (Ecc. 12:12)—especially if you are studying commentaries about John’s Apocalypse.
Few books of the Bible have been as ill served by their later interpreters as the book of Revelation. D.A. Carson described the multitudinous Puritan commentaries on the book as “eminently forgettable and mercifully forgotten.”[1] G.K. Chesterton famously quipped that “though St. John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators.”[2] And Ambrose Bierce defined Revelation as “A famous book in which St. John the Divine concealed all that he knew. The revealing is done by the commentators, who know nothing.”[3]
Bierce’s definition goes straight to the heart of the problem. John concealed his message in elaborate and highly figurative language—in code, so to speak. Presumably, his readers in the seven congregations of Roman Asia held the key to interpret the code. We do not, however; hence, the variety of interpretations.
Making our understanding of Revelation even harder is the proliferation of bad interpretations. A Gresham’s Law of Commentary seems to be at work: Bad interpretations drive out good ones. The more books are written about Revelation, the less understandable Revelation becomes. No wonder the average Christian reader approaches John’s Apocalypse with confused trepidation!
However difficult interpreting Revelation may be (or seem to be), it is not impossible. We may not hold the interpretive key our brothers and sisters in Roman Asia did, but we have a reasonable copy. At the very worst, we can always pick the lock. Indeed, that is what Christians have been doing for hundreds of years.
Over time, four basic schools of interpretation have emerged as useful ways to unlock Revelation.[4] Preterism interprets Revelation in the past tense. Although the events it describes were in the future of its original readers, they are in the past for modern readers. According to preterists, Revelation predicted either the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 or the fall of Rome in A.D.476.
Futurism interprets Revelation as describing events at the end of the age, which are still in the future for modern readers. Although there are several varieties of futurism—such as historic premillennialism and dispensational premillennialism, the futurist interpretation is the one the average American Protestant is most likely to hear from the pulpit or read in a Christian book. The Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, for instance, is a fictional presentation of the dispensational premillennial brand of futurism. Unfortunately, futurism’s very popularity makes it uniquely susceptible to Gresham’s Law of Commentary. For every reasonable futurist commentary that is written, ten or fifteen unreasonable ones are. And the latter commentaries are the ones that most often crowd the shelves of Christian bookstores.
Idealism, or symbolism, interprets Revelation without reference to specific historical events, whether past, present, or future. Rather, it reads John’s Apocalypse as a symbolic depiction of the kinds of battles the church fights with the world, the flesh, and the devil in every generation. The strength of such an interpretation of Revelation is its protean ability to speak meaningfully to readers in every age. On the downside, however, idealism seems to fail to grasp the historical concreteness of John’s warnings. John wrote about “the things that must soon take place” (1:1), not “the kinds of things that will always take place.”
Historicism, on the contrary, takes Revelation’s historical concreteness very seriously. It interprets Revelation as describing the unfolding events of church history. Thus, each of the seven seals, trumpets, and bowls correlates to a specific historical event, some already past but others still future. Historicism is almost solely a Protestant interpretation, no doubt because it identifies the Pope as the Antichrist of Revelation 13. Although common coin in the centuries following the Protestant Reformation, historicism now circulates rarely, if at all, but it still exercises influence in some circles, especially its anti-Catholicism.
So far, I have argued that Revelation is a hard book to interpret because of its elaborate and highly figurative language, the proliferation of bad interpretations, and the plausibility of several standard interpretations: preterism, futurism, idealism, and—at least in times past—historicism. Proverbs 18:17 says, “The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him.” Everyone with the desire to read John’s Apocalypse should keep that wise saying in front of him- or herself at all times. It is perfectly respectable for Christians to favor one school of interpretation over another. But let us do so reasonably and humbly, for we may be wrong.
But if Revelation is so difficult to understand, and the possibility of misinterpretation so common, why bother reading the book at all? Two reasons: First, it is God’s Word, and promises a blessing to all who hear and heed its message (1:3). Second, it is God’s Word to us, intended by him to guide us as we “follow the Lamb wherever he goes” (14:4). In the end, then, perhaps we should think of Revelation as a compass to find True Spiritual North rather than a lock to be picked, as a map to be unfolded and used on the road to heaven rather than a mystery to be solved.
As I have worked through John’s Apocalypse, I have found the complex debates about the proper interpretation of details to be both fascinating and frustrating. But I have also discovered that, niggling details of interpretation aside, the basic message of Revelation is simple, obvious, and practical: Christ, our Hero, has defeated the devil, our enemy, and we will share in his victory if we “conquer” life’s trials and temptations in his name (2:7, 11, 17, 26; 3:5, 12, 21). Revelation both exhorts and instructs us how to do precisely that.
How, then, should we interpret Revelation? With its interpretive details in our peripheral vision—for they make up the scenery of the book—but with our eyes firmly on the application road.
Listen to The Daily Word online.
[1] D.A. Carson, New Testament Commentary Survey, 5th ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2001), 127.
[2] G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, chapter 2; available online at http://www.ccel.org/c/chesterton/orthodoxy/ch2.html
[3] Quoted in J. Ramsey Michaels, The IVP New Testament Commentary Series, vol. 20, Revelation (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 13.
[4] See C. Marvin Pate, ed., Four Views on the Book of Revelation (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1998), and Steve Gregg, ed., Revelation: Four Views: A Parallel Commentary (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1997).
Why Was Revelation Written?
John states the purpose of his revelation at the very outset: “to show God’s servants the things that must soon take place” (Rev. 1:1). What kinds of things does he have in mind? A brief outline of Revelation can answer that question. John wants to show God’s servants that:
-
Jesus walks among his churches, encouraging them to “conquer” the trials and temptations they face (chs. 1-3).
-
God is enthroned in heaven, and his Son is worthy to break the seven “seals” on the “scroll,” inaugurating divine judgment against sinful humanity (chs. 4-6).
-
Because they have been sealed with God’s Holy Spirit, God’s servants are able to stand and worship God, even as his judgment falls all around them (ch. 7).
-
Unfortunately, even though God’s judgment of unbelief (now portrayed as seven trumpets being sounded) shows up the folly of sinning against him, many refuse to repent and turn to God for grace (chs. 8-9).
-
Nevertheless, as the example of both John and the mysterious “two witnesses” shows, it is the church’s duty to witness to God’s justice and love to an unbelieving world (chs. 10-11).
-
In the meantime, a great red dragon (the devil) and his two grotesque beasts (sinful politics and unholy religion) antagonize the church and make the life of believers miserable. But God keeps the faithful safe from eternal harm (chs. 12-14).
-
At the end of time, when it is clear that humanity will not repent and seek forgiveness, God’s judgment—now portrayed as seven bowls being poured out upon the earth—is given in its final form (chs. 15-16).
-
In light of all this, humanity must make a decision whether it is for or against God. Those for God are portrayed as a bride and a New Jerusalem. Those against God are portrayed as an adulteress and the wicked city of Babylon (chs. 17:1-22:5).
-
Knowing the future that awaits it, the church prays, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (22:5-21).
Obviously, John—or rather, God—is not concerned merely to show his servants (us) the events that must soon take place. He wants to show us their significance too, and the proper response we should make to them.
As you look at this simple (but hopefully not simplistic!) outline of John’s Apocalypse, notice how often the theme of divine judgment appears. The seven seals reveal God’s judgment of sinful humanity, as do the seven trumpets and the seven bowls. Chapter 18 portrays the judgment of Babylon in graphic—even grotesque—terms. Revelation is not a book for the faint of heart.
Then again, neither is life. The great fact of the matter, which John drives home in every chapter of his book, is that the choices we make in this life have consequences in the life to come. Life is momentous! There is a heaven to be gained and a hell to be avoided, and our choices—in response to God’s grace—determine where we end up.
When driving a curvy mountain road, you see many yellow warning signs, which warn of sharp turns, falling rocks, and the need to slow down and drive carefully. Revelation too is a warning sign from God that shows us the peril of the road ahead. If we heed the sign, we will steer through life’s dangers and at last arrive safely home.
Listen to The Daily Word online.
World’s Biggest Dog
Hercules was recently awarded the honourable distinction of Worlds Biggest Dog by Guinness World Records. Hercules is an English Mastiff and has a 38 inch neck and weighs 282 pounds.
UPDATE: Dave Kind alerts me to the fact that this story is an urban legend.
Where Was Revelation Written?
Some time ago I purchased a small religious icon at a Greek festival in Irvine, California, which now hangs on my office wall. It is an icon of Christos Pantocrator—a picture of “Christ the Ruler of Everything.” Being Protestant, I did not purchase it as an aid to my worship of God, which is how icons are used in the Eastern Orthodox churches. Rather, I purchased it for its beauty, for its serene depiction of Christ’s authority, and for the location at which it was painted: Patmos.
Patmos is a small, rocky island in the Aegean Sea, ten miles long and six wide, located thirty-seven miles southwest of the port city of Miletus, itself not far from Ephesus. It was there, according to Revelation 1:9, that John received his apocalyptic vision. He also may have written Revelation there, although the text does not say. What it says is this: “I, John, your brother and partner in the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus was on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.”
Some commentators think that John had sailed to Patmos for the purpose of evangelism. That seems to be how he uses the phrase “the word of God and the testimony of Jesus” in 1:2, as something to bear witness to. Most, however, following church tradition, insist that John had been exiled to Patmos on account of his evangelistic activity elsewhere. In 6:9 and 20:4, when John refers to “word” and “testimony,” the context is one of persecution. Christians had been martyred for their faithfulness to God’s Word. Such persecution, it seems, had touched John himself. Why else would he have mentioned the fraternity of tribulation, kingdom, and endurance to which he belonged?
So, the provenance of John’s vision is Patmos. Its destination, however, is Roman Asia (modern-day western Turkey), specifically, seven churches there: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea (1:11). Concerning this region, G.R. Beasley comments: “It is imperative to bear in mind that the churches for which Revelation was written were situated in the province of Roman Asia and that the emperor cult (i.e., the worship of the emperor) was enthusiastically adopted in that area, possibly more than elsewhere in the Roman Empire.”[i] Because she confessed Jesus Christ as Lord (Rom. 10:9, 1 Cor. 12:3, Phil. 2:11), the church refused to worship the genius of Caesar, as the emperor cult demanded. Persecution resulted, such as the martyrdom of Antipas in Pergamum (2:13).
From Patmos, John foresaw that many would follow in Antipas’s steps in the days to come.
And that explains why I purchased an icon painted on Patmos. In the midst of difficult times, when our faith is being tried—and for some Christians in the world, it is being tried to the point of death[ii]—we must keep in mind Christos Pantocrator, “Christ the Ruler of Everything.” John saw persecution from Patmos. He also saw glory. Appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, he teaches us, Caesar does not rule the world. Christ does, along with all who, putting their faith in him, bear witness to “the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.”
Listen to The Daily Word online.
[i] “Revelation, Book of,” 1028.
[ii] See, for example, Paul Marshall, Their Blood Cries Out: The Untold Story of Persecution against Christians in the Modern World (Waco, TX: Word, 1997) and Nina Shea, In the Lion’s Den: A Chocking Account of Persecution and Martyrdom of Christians Today and How We Should Respond (Nashville, TN: Broadman and Holman, 1997).
When Was Revelation Written?
Revelation does not explicitly state when it was written, so its date is a mystery to be solved. And like any good mystery, there is evidence, both internal and external, to consider.
Internal evidence consists of clues within the book itself. For example, John mentions Jesus Christ in 1:1. So, John wrote Revelation after Jesus’ ministry, that is, after A.D. 30. External evidence consists of clues left by other writers about the book. For example, in approximately A.D. 130, Justin Martyr refers to Revelation. So, Revelation was written before then.
Can we date John’s Apocalypse with more precision? Yes and no. Yes: Commentators agree that a closer examination of all the evidence yields a more precise date. But, no: They disagree about the precise date that examination yields. According to Robert H. Mounce, “The majority of scholars place the composition of the Apocalypse either during the reign of Domitian (A.D. 81-96) or toward the end or immediately after the reign of Nero (A.D. 54-68).”[i]
External evidence favors the Domitian date. In the late second century, Irenaeus wrote, “For it [Revelation] was seen not long ago, but almost in our generation, near the end of Domitian’s reign.”[ii] Other proponents of the Domitian date include Clement of Alexandria and Origen in the third century, and Victorinus, Eusebius, and Jerome in the fourth. The Nero date lacks similarly compelling external evidence.
Truth is not determined by majority opinion, however, but by sound arguments. Advocates of the Nero date make the following case[iii]: (1) The angelic instructions to measure the Temple in 11:1-2 assume that it is still standing, which was not true after A.D. 70. (2) The number 666 in 13:18 is a cryptic reference to Nero, since the numerical value of NRWN QSR (“Nero Caesar” in Hebrew letters) is exactly 666. (3) The “seven heads” of 17:9-11 favor the Nero date. The five kings who have fallen are Julius Caesar, Augustus, Tiberius, Gaius, and Claudius. The “one who is” is Nero. The one to come and remain “only a little while” is Galba, who reigned for only seven months.
But, in reply, it might be pointed out that the reference to the temple can be interpreted symbolically. The identification of 666 with NRWN QSR was unknown to Irenaeus when he listed the various candidates in the early third century. And neither Otho nor Vitellius (who succeeded Galba A.D. 69) make good candidates for the beast of Revelation 17:11. Their reigns were even shorter than his!
The Domitian date, on the other hand, explains the internal evidence well, its proponents argue. Mounce writes, “The Roman Empire is personified as a beast who demands universal worship (13:4, 15-17; 14:9; 16:2; 19:20), insisting that everyone bear his ‘mark’ or be put to death (13:15-17; 14:9: 16:2; 19:20; 20:4).”[iv] While Nero’s persecution of Christians was politically motivated and limited to Rome, Domitian’s persecution was religiously motivated—Christians would not worship Caesar as “Lord”— and spread beyond Rome. But, in reply, even Domitian’s persecution does not seem to match the intensity of the one described in Revelation.
Whichever date one finally adopts, perhaps it is wisest to consider the times in which Revelation was written, rather than the time at which it was written. They were difficult times for Christians, if we are to believe the language of martyrdom that pervades John’s Apocalypse (e.g., 17:6, 18:24, 19:2). And difficult times always call for a resilient faith—whoever the specific emperor may be.
Listen to The Daily Word online.
What Kind of Book Is Revelation?
If you want to interpret Revelation properly, you must know what kind of book it is. This principle is true not only of Revelation but the entire Bible and all literature. Different literary genres require different rules of interpretation. You would never interpret a Shakespeare sonnet as you would a peer-reviewed scientific study, for example, nor a novel as a legal search warrant. Similarly, in the Bible, you would never interpret a parable as a historical narrative or a prophecy as a proverb. They are different kinds of literature, requiring genre-specific rules of interpretation.[i]
So, what kind of book is Revelation? An apocalypse, a prophecy, and a letter.
Apocalypse. The first word of Revelation is the noun apokalypsis (1:1), which derives from a verb meaning “to reveal or disclose” and from which we get the word apocalypse. According to New Testament scholars, apocalypse is a distinct literary genre. In the well-known definition of J.J. Collins:
Apocalypse is a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological [end-times] salvation, and spatial, insofar as it involves another, supernatural world.[ii]
Despite its transcendence and supernaturalness, an apocalypse has a very down-to-earth purpose, namely, to reveal or disclose what has been previously hidden or unknown. In that sense, it functions very much like prophecy. Indeed, the New Testament uses apokalypsis as an interchangeable synonym of prophecy (1 Cor. 14: 1, 6, 22, 26, 30).
Prophecy. On several occasions, John refers to his book as a prophecy (1:3; 22:7, 10, 18, 19) and identifies himself as a prophet (10:11, 22:9). Prophecy is one of the Bible’s most common genres, but it is often misunderstood to be wholly future oriented. Undoubtedly, biblical prophecy predicts the future, usually events just over the temporal horizon of its original readers. But prophecy also calls God’s people to follow him now, promising blessing for obedience and judgment for disobedience. It both foretells the future and forthtells our duties in the present, in other words. Consequently, biblical prophecy is eminently practical literature, given to us by God for “upbuilding and encouragement and consolation” (1 Cor. 14:3).
Letter. A letter is often an intimate communication between people who know one another. Most of the books of the New Testament are such letters, including Revelation. Like other first-century epistles, Revelation begins by listing the sender and the recipient: “John to the seven churches that are in Asia” (1:4; cf. Rom. 1:1, 7; James 1:1; Jude 1). And it ends with a benediction: “The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all. Amen” (22:21; cf. 1 Cor. 16:23(24, 1 Pet. 5:14, 3 John 14). John writes to his beloved congregations in Asia Minor, urging them—like Paul had done in his letters to the churches—to understand their faith and live their lives better, more Christianly.
So, John’s Revelation is an apocalypse, a prophecy, and a letter. Or perhaps we should say that it is an apocalyptically prophetic letter. Whatever the case, John’s intention—and God’s, behind him—is to provide his readers, both first- and twenty-first-century, with usable information about God, their world, and their duties in perilous times. We have misinterpreted Revelation if we do not see the practical point of its apocalyptic, prophetic, and epistolary genres.
Listen to The Daily Word online.
[i] For an excellent study of how to interpret the Bible’s various literary genres, see Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth: A Guide to Understanding the Bible, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1993).
[ii] “Apocalyptic, Apocalypticism,” in Dictionary of the Later New Testament, 57.
Who Wrote Revelation?
When reporting a story, journalists attempt to answer six questions for their readers: Who? What? When? Where? Why? How? Those same questions are useful for introducing John’s Apocalypse to you: Who wrote Revelation? What kind of book is it? When was it written? Where was it written? Why was it written? And how should we interpret it?
Who Wrote Revelation?
Revelation 1:1-2 identifies its author with these words: “The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ.” Let us examine more closely the four persons associated with the writing of Revelation.
God. In a sense, God is the author of all Scripture (2 Tim. 3:16-17)—more specifically, of all prophecy: “…no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone’s own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet. 1:20-21). Since Revelation repeatedly speaks of itself as a prophecy (1:3; 22:7, 10, 18, 19), we can conclude confidently that God is its author too. Because Revelation is God’s word, a divine blessing comes to those who obey its words (1:3). Conversely, a warning is given to those tempted to add or subtract to its message (22:18-20). As God’s word, Revelation should be read, but not trifled with.
Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ also is the author of Revelation. It is a revelation of him. In Greek, the word “of” plus a noun or a pronoun is called a genitive construction. Greek genitive constructions are enormously flexible in meaning. The words “the revelation of Jesus Christ” might mean, for example, the revelation by Jesus Christ (a subjective genitive) or about Jesus Christ (an objective genitive). If subjective, “of Jesus Christ” means that he is the revealer. If objective, it means that he is what is revealed. The context of 1:1 favors the subjective interpretation: Jesus Christ reveals the contents of the book. More specifically, he is identified as the author of the letters to the seven churches in chapters 2 and 3 (2:1, 8, 12, 18; 3:1, 7, 14; cf. 1:19). And yet, it is hard to escape the conclusion that Jesus is at the same time what the book of Revelation is all about.
His angel. An angel is a messenger; that is what the Greek word aggelos means. In Revelation, angels proclaim God’s message to the world (5:2) and speak to John (17:3, 7, 15; 19:9; 21:15; 22:6, 8, 16).
His servant John. Finally, we come to John, the human author of Revelation (1:1, 4, 9: 22:8). Early church tradition understood John to be the apostle, son of Zebedee (Matt. 10:2), and author of a Gospel and three canonical letters. Late in the third century, however, Dionysius of Alexandria argued that John was an Ephesian church elder. Revelation’s John nowhere identifies himself as an apostle, Dionysius argued, and the content and style of the book vary significantly from those of the Gospel and the letters. Apostle or elder? A good case can be made for either, and perhaps a decision one way or another is not very important. As G.R. Beasley-Murray writes, “The question of the authorship is settled not by the name of the person who received the Revelation and wrote it down but by the nature of the work….”[i]
Whoever its human author, God is the ultimate author of Revelation.
Listen to The Daily Word online.
[i] “Revelation, Book of,” in Dictionary of the Later New Testament and Its Developments, ed. Ralph P. Martin and Peter H. Davids (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 1033.
