Sufficient Revelation; Revelation 1:1
The main theme in Revelation
is the resolution of human history. In this we have the resolution of the
angelic conflict, the judgment of the human race and ultimately angels for sin,
and the resolution of all sin, suffering and evil in human history. In an nutshell, what Revelation portrays for us is the
consequences that come to those who rebel against God, to those who reject His
Word, to those who are influenced by the world system which we call the cosmic
system. The term “cosmic system” refers to the system of thinking that
characterizes Satan’s rebellion against God. What we see in the book of
Revelation is what happens, what the inevitable consequences are of that kind
of thinking and people who give in to that kind of thinking—that it is
self-destructive because eventually there will be judgment. And that is the
theme of Revelation, not just judgment on the earth during the time of
Tribulation, not just judgment at the great white throne judgment, but there is
also the emphasis at the beginning of the book in the seven letters to the
seven churches a warning that believers will be evaluated in heave, and we know
that is the judgment seat of Christ. In Revelation chap6ters two and three
there is a call to the churches to wake up and to be aware of the fact that we,
too, are going to be evaluated, not with reference to salvation—salvation is a
free gift based upon the finished work of Christ on the cross—but it is on our
spiritual growth, our spiritual maturity, and is related to our ultimate
responsibility to rule and reign with Him. We will see that very clearly as we
go through each of those letters and then we will put them together in one
complete study. So Revelation is a warning to all of us that there will be an
evaluation.
There are a lot of believers
who don’t think there is going to be much of an evaluation. They just think
that we are going to live our life and they have a very shallow view of
ultimate rewards, that we will all get the same rewards, we will all get the
same resurrection body and all have the same position in heaven, a sort of
Marxist-Leninist view of the eternal kingdom, that we will all end up with the
same thing and it doesn’t matter how we live on earth today. But that is not
what is taught in the Scriptures. So we are continuing our study of Revelation
which is the only book in the New Testament which is primarily prophetic. There
are four hundred and four verses in Revelation and three hundred and
twenty-three of them are prophetic and have to do with what will take place in
the future.
We began last time with a
study of chapter one, verse one. One of the key things that we must do in
exegesis is identify what the main clause is in any
particular verse. This is a classic example of a sentence that extends beyond
one verse and so we have to identify the main verb, the main subject, because
that gives us the main idea of the passage. The main thought here is that God
gave Jesus Christ the revelation to show to His bondservant. God has disclosed
this information to us for a purpose. We have seen that part of the purpose is
to motivate us because we understand where history is going and we understand
our role and position in the future. If we begin with the end in mind then that
will motivate us to persevere and remain steadfast in the midst of testing.
This is the major theme that we will find in both of the chapters dealing with
the seven letters to the seven churches.
This is not apocalyptic
literature. Apocalyptic literature is a secular category of literature that
really has its roots in Persian literature and other Near Eastern literature
that began to influence some Jewish writings, and there are various apocryphal
works written between the Old Testament and the New testament
that pictures this end-time struggle between good and evil. It is characterized
by a lot of things that happen with angelic forces, the battle between the holy
angels and the evil angels, visions, all of this kind of thing. So a lot of
people want to classify the book of Revelation with that kind of literature.
That kind of literature is very cryptic, very symbolic, you don’t use a literal
interpretation necessarily, and so the danger that happens when you classify
Revelation as apocalyptic literature is that you use a wrong hermeneutic, a
wrong principle of interpretation.
The book is often referred to
in context as a prophecy. As such it fits other prophetic books in the Bible
such as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, the Minor Prophets, books which also
should be interpreted on the basis of a plain, literal historical-grammatical
principle of interpretation. It is something that is written to be understood;
it is the revelation of Jesus Christ. This book is about the future, the
revelation Jesus Christ provides. He is going to disclose the future so that we
can live with the end, the future, in mind.
The subject of the main
clause in verse one is God, the noun THEOS [qeoj], and here it is God the Father. This is the
revelation that God gives, so the main clause is indicated by this noun, the
subject of the clause and the subject of the verb “gave,” which is the verb DIDOMI
[didomi] in the aorist active indicative. That means that it
is just a simple past, referring to a past action; it simply summarizes the
action in the past, that God at some point in the past gave a certain body of
information to Jesus Christ for the purpose of His disclosing that to His
bondservant. Whenever we see this verb DIDOMI where God is the subject we need
to remember that the emphasis is on grace. Whenever God gives it is always on
the principle of grace, not on who and what we are but
on who He is and what Christ did on the cross. God has graciously provided
revelation to us so that we are not in the dark.
The idea of revelation is
that it enlightens us, it gives us information so that
we know truth from error. God the Father has provided this body of information
so that we have sufficient revelation. That means it is enough, we don’t need
to know everything that will happen in the future. The danger in reading
Revelation is that people get into all kinds of speculation. People love to
speculate and try to figure out who the Antichrist is. The giving of the
Scripture is part of God’s logistical grace for believers. It is available to
every believer without charge. Every believer has the tools to get into the
Word and understand the Word at a rudimentary level because of the teaching
ministry of God the Holy Spirit. But God has also provided us with
pastor-teachers who can give us the information we need to grow to spiritual
maturity. That is the purpose of the gift of pastor-teacher, to be able to dig
into the Word and to be able to communicate it in such a way that people can
get information they couldn’t normally get and are therefore able to grow to
spiritual maturity.
So God gives this revelation
graciously. The word DIDOMI means to give, to grants, to graciously bestow or
to provide. So this is revelation that belongs to Jesus Christ which God
graciously provided Him [Jesus Christ]. Remember that Jesus Christ can’t reveal
anything unless the Father gives it to Him. The Father gives this information
to Him for a purpose. The word there translated “to show” is the Greek word deiknumi [deiknumi] which is an aorist active infinitive of purpose in
this clause. The infinitive indicates this is the purpose of God’s granting
this to Jesus Christ. God wants us to know things. The word deiknumi means to point out, the
present something to the sight. It is a visual demonstration of something. It
means to cause to see, to exhibit, to display, and it is a metaphor of showing
something by words, i.e. to teach. So Revelation is given to teach something
“to His bondservants,” that is, believers. This is not written for unbelievers,
it is written for believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.
So this revelation is given
for the purpose of teaching us by enlightening us as to the facts of the future
what will “soon take place.” And this is a crucial term, “the things which must
soon take place. If we just read that in the English we think that all that is
being said is that this book is going to tell us about the future, and we think
it is going to happen soon in terms of a relatively close amount of time. But
that would be misleading. This is not what this phrase means. In fact this is
an extremely important phrase and it is not original to the writer of the
apocalypse. It was a word that originated in the Old Testament in Daniel
chapter two, the chapter where Daniel interprets the dream that Nebuchadnezzar
had about the future of the Gentile kingdoms. In verse 28 Daniel says, “However
there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and has made known to the king
Nebuchadnezzar what will take place the latter days.” This is in the section of
Daniel that was written in Aramaic because it deals with the Gentile kingdom,
and the Aramaic was translated into the Septuagint by the exact same phrase
that we have in Revelation 1:1—ha dei
genesthai [a(
die genesqai]. Ha is a relative pronoun meaning
“things”; dei is a verb which is
a word of necessity; genesthai is
aorist passive infinitive of ginomai
[ginomai], meaning the things which must come to pass or come
into existence. So this phrase is a technical phrase that comes right out of
Daniel 2:28. When? “In the latter days.” Daniel
repeats that phrase in verse 29. Some of what was revealed to Nebuchadnezzar
was taking place. The head of gold in the image represented the king of
Reviewing
the history: The head of gold represented the
So when Revelation begins
with this phrase it is saying what we are going to see in Revelation is the
culmination of what began in Daniel chapter two. But Daniel 2 isn’t the only
place where we find this verbiage. We also find it in the Olivet discourse in
Matthew 24:2-6, “And Jesus said unto them, Do you not
see all these things? truly I say unto you, There
shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down. And
as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came
unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of
the age?” So the question has to do with the second coming, not the Rapture.
“And Jesus answered and said to them, Take heed that no man deceive you. For
many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. And
your will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars: see that you are not
frightened: for those things must take place, but the end is not yet.”
“… for those things must take place.” That is the same
phrase as in Daniel chapter two. So again, this locates that in the future.
We find the phrase again in
Revelation 4:1, “After these things.” What we will see when we get to 4:1 is
that the Rapture takes place. “After this I looked, and, behold, a door was
opened in heaven: and the first voice which I heard was as it were of a trumpet
talking with me; which said, Come up hither, and I will show what must take
place after these things.” This is the same phrase that we have in
Revelation 1:1, but it is not the last place we find it in Revelation. We find
it again in 22:6, “And he said unto me, These sayings
are faithful and true: and the Lord God of the spirits of the prophets sent his
angel [An angel was sent in 1:1] to show [DEIKNuMI] unto his bondservants
[DOULOS] the things which must soon take place.” So we have a bracket
here between 4:1 which says, “Now we will see what must take place,” and 22:6
which basically says, “We’ve seen what must take place.” So the things which
must take place are described and unfolded and revealed between 4:1 and 22:6.
That describes the things which must soon take place.
What does the word “soon”
mean? This is the Greek word tachus
[taxuj]. This is an important word in understanding the
doctrine of imminence, it provides something about the
timing. It can mean a very brief period of time and focus on the speed of an
activity: when something begins it will happen quickly. In other words, there
will be a quick succession of events once it begins. The other idea that TACHUS
can communicate is that it describes a time, a relatively brief span that
follows shortly after another point in time. What we see here from the use of
this phrase is that Revelation brings to a climax and close
the events that are first revealed in Daniel chapter two. These are the events
that are associated with the bringing in of the kingdom. For example, in
Revelation
Then we read, “and he sent and communicated it by his angel unto his
bondservant John.” The verb here is the verb to communicate, from the Greek
verb semaino [shmainw]. It means to make something known, to communicate
something about the future, or to explain something enigmatic. Some have
related to this to the noun for “sign,” and they say, See, this is just a
symbolic book and you have to interpret it in an allegorical manner. That is
not what the word means at all. It simply means to communicate. We are told
that He communicated by His angel. What we will see is that Jesus Christ will
appear to John, but there is also this emphasis that it is communicated by an
angel. Even though the angelic presence is not always emphasized it is there.
In chapters 17:1 and 21:9 Jesus communicates to John by means of angels only,
but other times He is communicating directly to John. But throughout all the judgments
there is always an angel associated as sort of a witness to what is taking
place.
The point here is that there is an evaluation coming. Revelation is about the culmination history and all the things that must come to pass before Jesus Christ establishes His kingdom. He will put an end to all authorities and rulers and powers, and then he will give the kingdom to the Father at the end of the thousand years, and then there will be an end to all death and an end to the angelic conflict, and everything will be returned to the position of being under the authority of God.