Revelation 1:1-8, Part 2

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Revelation
The Lamb of God: On His Throne And Among His People
It's Jesus!
Revelation 1:1-8, Part 2

  • Read Revelation 1:1-8 and discuss your impressions – impressions, by the way, given to you by the seven spirits (The Holy Spirit).
  • Why is the number 7 so important to God? What does God’s emphasis on numbers say about design and purpose?
  • Read Louis Brighton’s comments (at the very end of the extra notes) about the trinitarian blessing of grace and peace to the seven churches, which represent all churches of all ages. “Now that you put it that way” – I see the importance of Revelation. Do you? Discuss.
  • From Dennis Johnson in the Core Christianity Bible Study for Revelation: 
    • Why are people today, inside and outside the church, offended at the prospect that our personal misdeeds will be judged?
    • Why are people today, inside and outside the church, attracted by the prospect that society’s injustices will finally be made right?
    • In our world of pandemic, injustice, and brokenness (in families, among races, etc.) how can we help others welcome Revelation’s message, that when the King comes, justice will prevail and wrong will be set right?
  • How does it make you feel that you are in a life and death war, whether you want to be or not? How do the lessons in Augustine’s City of God relate to Revelation and to the circumstances of our own day? How can we prepare ourselves – and especially our children and grandchildren – to be faithful unto death, if necessary?
  • Pray for your missionary! He/she is in a cosmic battle, too.
  • Extra notes

    “Speculation is the biggest problem in reading Revelation today.” So begins Scot McKnight in his book, Revelation for the Rest of Us” – to which all of us can only say, Amen!

    Revelation was given to reveal the living Christ.

    The (approximate) date when Revelation was written

    Arguments for an early date (approximately A.D. 68):

    Some make the case that Revelation was written around A.D. 68, a few years before the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. This view is held by preterists, which comes from the Latin praeteritum, which means “the thing that is past.” (See the ESV Study Bible Introduction to Revelation for more detail) This view holds that all the prophecies of Revelation, up to Revelation 19, were fulfilled by the 4th Century, and most of them were fulfilled with the destruction of the Jerusalem temple by the Romans in A.D. 70. An earlier date for the writing of Revelation explains the temple that is referenced in Revelation 11. Many scholars, if not most scholars, believed, at one time, that Revelation was written before A.D. 70.

    Arguments for a later date (approximately 94-95):

    1. The letters to the churches indicate sporadic persecution (under Domitian), not the broad and severe persecution under Nero in the mid 60’s.
    2. The Laodicean Church in Revelation 3 was accused of being rich, but an earthquake devastated the city in A.D. 60-61, so it is unlikely that Revelation was written less than a decade later.
    3. Irenaeus (late 2nd century) claimed that John wrote Revelation under the reign of Domitian (A.D. 81-96). Irenaeus was discipled by Polycarp, and Polycarp was discipled by – the Apostle John.

    I’m going with Irenaeus! Why does this matter? It does shape the way we interpret Revelation, but we will not get into that right now. It will come up, though.

    The OT in Revelation

    Steve Moyise, Professor of NT at Birmingham Newman University in Birmingham, England, identified quite a few OT allusions in Revelation (taken from The Old Testament in Revelation, by Michael Heiser):

    Pentateuch            82

    Psalms                   97

    Isaiah                     122

    Jeremiah               48

    Ezekiel                   83

    Daniel                    74

    Minor Prophets     73

    This is a total of 579 OT allusions in Revelation, according to one person! Your assignment is to run them all down before next week. 

    The connection between Revelation 1:4 and Exodus 3:14, which says, God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”

    Warning – complex information to follow: Who is being referenced (in Revelation 1:4) by the title, “the one who is?” Is it Jesus? No. It is God the Father. What I am about to say is a bit complex and if you don’t get it, that is okay – you will get the gist of it. It is likely that the angel who told John to use this name for God the Father in Revelation 1:4, John thought of Exodus 3:14. You will recall that when the Lord called to Moses out of the burning bush and told him to go to Egypt to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, Moses complained that he was not the man. After going back and forth, Moses asked the Lord, “Whom shall I say sent me?” God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”

    You are probably not seeing the connection, are you? To understand it you need to know how Exodus 3:14 was translated in the Septuagint, which was the Greek translation of the Old Testament, although it is more complex than that. Because of the dispersion of the Jewish people by the Babylonians, the Jews who did not return home from captivity were scattered abroad into the lands of the Babylonian, Persian, Greek, and Roman Empires. When Greek became the official language of that part of the world, a Greek translation of the OT was need for Jews living in those lands. Most of the NT verses that are quotations of the OT are taken – not from the Hebrew text – but rather from the Septuagint. That is why when you see a verse quoted in the NT and then you go back to the original verse in the OT, it is often slightly different.

    So, back to Revelation 1:4 and Exodus 3:14. The Septuagint version of Exodus 3:14, once it is translated into English (can it get any more complicated? Yes, quite a bit actually – the angel of the LORD who speaks from the burning bush could be the pre-incarnate Christ) reads, “God said to Moses, ‘I am the One who is.” So, Revelation 1:4 is based (partially) on Exodus 3:14, and is expanded to “Him who is and who was and who is to come.”

    Who are the seven spirits in Revelation 1:4 (and later), and why is the number seven so important?

    • The seven spirits represent the Holy Spirit
    • Seven is the number of perfection and completion
    • Seven days of creation – and on the seventh day, God rested
    • Isaiah 11:1-2: The sevenfold Spirit of God
    • Leviticus 4:6, 17: The cleansing of the altar by the priests with the sprinkling of blood – seven times
    • Joshua 6: Marching around Jericho – seven times
    • The seven spirits represent the Holy Spirit because angels are never worshiped in Revelation

     What does it mean that we have been made a kingdom?

    In A.D. 426, Augustine, whom you may know as St. Augustine, wrote a book to prepare believers for the dark age he saw coming, and it turned out to be a very dark age, indeed. Augustine saw what many Christian leaders and thinkers see today, which is the likelihood that Christians in the West will be persecuted at a higher level than we have previously known, and that the world will regress just at the time when it seems we have achieved intelligence at heretofore unimaginable levels. The expectation that we will continue to enjoy religious freedom is now so fixed in our cultural DNA that it will be quite a shock to our system should we lose it, slowly and then all at once. We have been in the “slowly” phase for a while.

    Augustine, whose book was called The City of God, addressed the question of how Christians should live in troubled times. He saw two cities existing in one world – the City of God and the City of Man. If you are a Christian, you belong to the City of God. In other words, you are a kingdom, and you have priestly privileges and responsibilities in the City of God. The City of Man will never conquer the City of God because the gates of hell will not prevail against the church. Even so, it is not our responsibility to build the kingdom of God. We are to be faithful witnesses, even at the cost of our lives, sharing the gospel that we have just read about in verses 5-6. No wonder we praise him, to whom eternal glory and dominion have been given! 

    Frodo: I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.

    Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.

    Louis A. Brighton: This is the only book in the Bible which has such a trinitarian imprimatur (sanction, approval – in 1:4-6), at least in this explicit form, by which the source and authority of God is placed upon a human’s writing. Because Revelation is the culmination of all scriptural revelation, this imprimatur (authorization) is also placed, by inference, on the entire Scripture, both the OT and the NT. This (authorization) placed on Revelation may also indicate that there will not be another word of God spoken until the Lord Christ comes at the End. And God’s people must listen, for the time is near (1:3) – the time of judgment, but in particular, the time of blessing in the presence of the exalted Christ.