Revelation Introduction (Part 1) - Overview and Authorship

Revelation — Steve Gregg

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Revelation Introduction (Part 2) - Symbols and Images

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Revelation Introduction (Part 1) - Overview and Authorship

RevelationSteve Gregg

In this overview of the book of Revelation, Steve Gregg discusses its authorship and audience, as well as the debates and open questions surrounding it. Despite being difficult to interpret, the book is regarded as a prophetic and edifying work, offering a unique glimpse into heavenly worship and providing Christians with hymns and material for worship. Interestingly, the book of Revelation is both an epistle and a prophecy, and its style fits in with the apocalyptic genre of writing found in inter-testamental Jewish literature.

Transcript

Whenever I begin teaching through a new book, I feel the need to have an introductory lecture, or two, or three, depending on the book, and that is especially true with the book of Revelation. When you begin to study a book, it's good for you to know some background, circumstances under which it was written, who wrote it, who they were writing to, and things like that. That's true no matter what book of the Bible you're studying.

It's always good to understand those things. Some of those things are self-evident with many books. The author and the audience are often mentioned in the very first sentence of many of the epistles.

But the book of Revelation actually presents more difficulties than most, which should be handled in an introductory lecture, or two, or three. The notes that I have here are eight pages long. My students know I can use an hour and a half or two to go through half a page of notes.

But we have a limited amount of time, and we must go through the entire book of Revelation in 16 sessions. So I'm going to hasten through this introduction, but not so fast, I hope, as to make it unprofitable. The first thing I'd like to say about the book of Revelation is that it is, in a way, paradoxical in that, on one hand, it is the most difficult book of the Bible.

I think almost all commentators acknowledge this. I think most people acknowledge this, except for people who think they have it all figured out. And it was really quite easy.

They just had to read it, and they knew instantly what it was about. I meet people like this. Some people, when they first get saved, the first book of the Bible they read is the book of Revelation.

And they interpret the rest of the Bible through the lens that they fit themselves with once they read the book of Revelation. So all the prophecies of the Bible have to fit into their idea of the book of Revelation. They get it right off.

It's all about the future, as far as they're concerned. And it's talking about nuclear war and famine and modern day events, so they think. Well, that is the first impression that many people in the modern world get.

It's not the only possible way of looking at the book of Revelation. It is perhaps the default way for most moderns, because the popular writers and speakers on the subject of Revelation typically are of one particular school. And that school does, in fact, see the book of Revelation as a history in advance of the end times.

And so they try to find things in the modern newspapers and recent events that correspond with the visions. And from time to time, you can find things like that. What they don't know is that people for 2,000 years have been finding things in their current events that they could correspond with the book of Revelation.

Just as much as today. In some cases, more than today. And this is something that we, because we are provincial, because we're products of our own age, and often are not very acquainted with people of other times and places and how they think about things, we just assume that the way everyone around us is talking about it must be the only way anyone's ever thought about it.

The fact is that this is not so. I wrote a book some years ago called Revelation Four Views, a parallel commentary. No, I don't have it for sale.

A speaker ought to have his book on a table in the back for top dollar for sale to the audience. You've got a captive audience. I can give a 90-minute infomercial for my book and sell them all.

However, I don't sell books. I don't write very many books, but no matter how many I write, I'll never sell one. I don't believe in selling things.

But I'm in the ministry. I'm not in business. But there is a book you can buy from somebody else, Amazon or someone else, called Revelation Four Views.

And by the way, it's a $32 book. I think you can get it from Amazon for $21. And if you do, I'll get $1 from it.

So buy thousands, and I will be wealthy. I wrote the book in 1997 to correct what I consider to be an imbalance in teaching on the book of Revelation in our modern time because the only view anyone seems to have ever heard, at least since the 1970s, is that Revelation is a book about the end of the world, about a seven-year tribulation, about Antichrist, about Jesus' second coming, and so forth. And that's the only view I ever heard.

In fact, that's the only view most people have heard. Until I taught in a school where I had to teach through the book of Revelation, I had to actually study as much as I could the various options. And I discovered that the view I held was not at all the only view, nor the longest-held view, in church history.

The earlier people in church history had very well-developed schemes of interpretation of the book of Revelation that were entirely different than any I had ever heard in my youth or in the 70s and so forth. As I became aware of this, I also became aware that people in general around me were unaware of it. Friends of mine heard that I was writing a book on the four views of Revelation.

And they'd always try to speculate about what views those might be, because they'd never heard of four views. They thought, well, okay, there's pre-trib, there's mid-trib, and there's post-trib, but that's only three. And, of course, those of you who now know what the four views of Revelation are know that all three of those are one view.

All three of those are variations on what's called the futurist view. Others said, well, okay, four views. There's the amillennial view, the premillennial view, and the postmillennial view.

But those aren't actually different views of Revelation. Those are different views of the Bible as a whole, and particularly one chapter in Revelation, chapter 20. You never encounter the millennium in the Bible until you get almost to the last chapter in the whole Bible.

It's not the exact last. It's chapter 20 out of 22 in the book. You get through 65 books of the Bible without any mention of the book of the thousand-year reign of Christ.

Not anywhere in the first 65 books. You get to the 66th book, and you get through 20 or 19 of its 22 chapters before you hear about it. By the time you get to chapter 20, you've got one chapter that mentions, the only chapter in the Bible that mentions the millennium.

Obviously, one's view of the millennium is not exactly the same thing as their view of the book of Revelation. It's their view of one chapter of the book of Revelation, and that's not what we're talking about. We're not talking about millennial views.

We're not talking about rapture views. The four views of Revelation are much different, much more different from one another than any of those views are. That's what we're going to be looking at here.

But this is one of the difficulties of the book of Revelation. It's full of difficulties. One of them is, of course, what in the world is it talking about? How is it to be approached? But there's other difficulties of a more, shall we say, less sensational sort.

Like, who's the author? Now, you might say, well, that's obvious. It's John who wrote the book of Revelation. It even says so.

True, it does. Four or five times it says, I, John. The writer's name is John.

The question is, which John? The early church did not all have the same opinion about this. Well, the earliest Christians did. For the first two or three centuries, it seems that almost all the Christians believed that it was the apostle John who wrote it.

But the man didn't call himself the apostle John. When Peter or Paul wrote, they said, Paul, an apostle. Peter, an apostle.

John doesn't say John, the apostle, he just says, I, John, without any further embellishment or identifying remarks. And there were some, at least in the third century, who suggested that it was a different John, not the apostle, who wrote the book. And I'll tell you later why.

But it remains a substantial controversy. Scholars are not all agreed that the apostle John wrote it. And I say, well, I don't care about that kind of menial stuff.

Who wrote the book? Well, I do, because it's in the Bible. And it's not just a matter of curiosity. Not every book that was written by a Christian belongs in my Bible.

Not everything that Christians write is the word of God. Christians have written hundreds of books, thousands of books, maybe hundreds of thousands of books through the years. They're great books in many cases, but they don't belong in the Bible.

Why? They're not written by an apostle of Jesus Christ. That's why. They're not the word of God.

Jesus ordained his apostles and authorized them to speak as him, as his agents. He said, he that receives him that I send, receives me. An apostle is a sent one, and to receive an apostle is like receiving Jesus himself.

To receive a teacher, like me for example, is not the same thing as receiving Jesus. In other words, you can reject everything I say and still be loyal to Jesus. You can just say, I think Steve doesn't have it right, but I'm still following Jesus.

But you can't say the apostles didn't have it right and still be following Jesus, because Jesus authorized them as his spokesmen. Whom to receive is to receive him. Whom to reject is to reject him.

Now, if a book is written by an apostle, it's as good as it was written by Jesus. If it's not written by an apostle, it might be as good as if I'd written it. It doesn't belong in the Bible.

So, the apostolic authorship is contested, but it's very important. And by the way, the book of Revelation has also difficulties with reference to its inclusion in the canon of Scripture, because of this very thing. The book of Revelation was the last book for the Christian church to accept into the New Testament.

And it was very late. Although there were Christians from the very beginning, when it was written in the first century, there were immediately churches that accepted it as an authoritative word from an apostle. There were many churches that did not.

They thought it was a different author, perhaps. And, therefore, it was not included in the canon of Scripture until as late as 396 A.D., almost 400 years into the Christian era, before the church as a whole accepted that Revelation belongs to the canon of the New Testament. If you had been born in 350 A.D., you would not have the book of Revelation in the New Testament.

It was around, and there were people who accepted it, but there were people who didn't, who were church leaders. But it was in the late 4th century that it was finally accepted as genuinely a scriptural book that needed to be included. So, it had problems with reference to establishing its authorship, problems with reference to its inclusion in the canon, problems with reference to its date and historical setting.

Now, with many books of the Bible, it doesn't matter when they were written that much. It could be 20 years earlier or later, and it wouldn't make much difference. The content is all the same.

But, with Revelation, there are some factors that make it very important to know when it was written. Because one of the four views of Revelation is that John was writing about things that were about to happen, and which did, in fact, happen shortly after he wrote it. That view is called the Preterist view.

So, now you know about the Futurist view, the one that says it's all about the future. The Preterist view actually says it's basically about the past, things that happened shortly after John's time. They were genuine prophecies at the time he wrote them, but they have subsequently been fulfilled, and we do not look forward to a later fulfillment than John's own day or shortly thereafter.

Most who hold that view believe that it was written prior to A.D. 70. A.D. 70 is when Jerusalem was invaded by the Romans, and the temple was destroyed permanently. And it has not stood since.

It was the end of the Jewish order. And many people, the Preterists, believe that the book of Revelation is predictive of that event. Well, obviously, if the book of Revelation predicts A.D. 70, that tells us something about the date of its writing.

It must have been written before that. But there's a problem. Most scholars today believe that Revelation was written after that.

The most commonly given date for the writing of Revelation in modern commentaries and study Bibles is about 96 A.D. But if so, that's a quarter of a century after the fall of Jerusalem. And therefore, if that is in fact the date of writing, then it cannot possibly be predicting an event that happened 25 years earlier than it was written. It might be written as a forgery, pretending to have been written in advance.

Some books are written that way. But if Revelation was written that way, it needs to be excised from the Bible as a forgery and as a fake. Now, you might say, well, I don't have any commitment to it being about the fall of Jerusalem, so I don't care about the date.

True. If it's not about that, the date could be anything, and it would make much difference. For example, if the book of Revelation is describing the end of the world, it wouldn't matter whether it was written in 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, or 100 A.D. It's still writing about things way off in the future.

In fact, all four of the views, or three of the four, would be unaffected by the date of writing. But the reason that the date of writing is important is because the one view that is affected by it is otherwise a very well-attested view. A view that has much in its favor, but is vulnerable on this point of the date of writing.

Because if the book of Revelation was written in the reign of Domitian in the 90s A.D., then of course the Preterist view is not even worthy of consideration. However, there have always been top-rank scholars, and there still are, who believe the book of Revelation was written in the reign of Nero. Nero died, committed suicide, in 68 A.D. And if the book was written during his reign, it was written, therefore, before 70 A.D. And then all the other indicators that might support that identification of its fulfillment are supported.

Especially in view of the fact that John repeatedly said these are things that must shortly take place. His original readers probably thought that meant something. So, you've got those two views we've just, in passing, have mentioned.

The Futurist view and the Preterist view. There are two others, and we will come to them later. But the date of writing is a significant one, issue, to solve in the case of interpreting Revelation, more than in the case of most other books of the Bible.

Thus, its historical setting is open to question. Was it the persecution during Nero's time? Was it the persecution during Domitian's time? Was it another period of time, and a different set of circumstances? Was there an imperial persecution, or was there just localized persecution? These things are questions that scholars don't all agree about. Though we can get some idea as we study it, we may not be able to be sure.

These remain problematic questions. There's also problems with reference to its relationship to the other books attributed to John. Now, Paul wrote 12 or 13 epistles.

There's always been some question about the authorship of Hebrews. Therefore, the exact number of epistles Paul wrote is not known, but certainly the vast majority of them are easy to identify as his own. They have his name on them.

John wrote, we believe, five books. The Gospel of John, three epistles that bear his name in our Bible, and the book of Revelation. The problem is, there are many scholars, and there have been from very early times, who have felt that whoever wrote the book of Revelation could not have been the same man who wrote the Gospel of John and the epistles of John.

This has to do primarily with the style of the Greek, which is not a small matter. The style is extremely different, so much so that the other books attributed to John are said to be written in some of the most polished Greek in the New Testament. Whereas the book of Revelation is not only the most unpolished Greek in the New Testament, but it's almost the most unliterary document that's come down to us from the ancient world.

It's got bad grammar in the Greek. It's got incomplete sentences. It's got all kinds of issues.

Many have said, well, the guy who wrote Revelation doesn't even speak Greek well. He couldn't be the same guy who wrote John and the epistles of John. So that's been a problem.

Now, my contention is it is the same man, and we'll have to discuss that later. But that's one of the problems that have attended the study of this book from the earliest times. So these are the issues.

The book of Revelation provides us with a much larger plethora of problems to solve. Just going in, even before we start talking about what the symbols are talking about, the visions, what they mean, just talking about the book as an existing document is full of various problems that don't attach to most of the books of the Bible. But on the other hand, it's a blessed book to read, problematic as it is.

And this is why I say it's paradoxical. On one hand, extremely problematic. On the other, an extreme blessing.

And there's a few things that make it so. One thing, the book itself claims to be so. It's the only book in the Bible that actually says, blessed is the man who actually reads this book.

A blessing is pronounced on the reader and those who keep the words of the book. In chapter 1 and verse 3. Furthermore, it is a prophecy. It's the only book of the New Testament that is actually a prophetic book.

Now some of the other New Testament books contain prophecies. For example, the Gospels contain some prophecies that Jesus uttered. But they're not books of prophecy.

They're books of history, telling the story of Jesus, which happen to contain, incidentally, some prophecy. Likewise, the Epistles are not books of prophecy. They are occasional documents written to address matters going on in certain churches.

Once in a while, there's a prophetic sort of statement in them. But they're not books of prophecy. The book of Revelation is a book of prophecy.

In fact, it calls itself a book of prophecy. It's the only New Testament book that is identified as a prophetic book. Now many books in the Old Testament are prophetic.

But Revelation alone in the New Testament is. And by the way, prophecy, according to the Apostle Paul, in 1 Corinthians 14, 3, Paul said that the prophet, he who prophesies, speaks edification and exhortation and comfort to men. This book fills that bill.

The book of Revelation exhorts, it edifies, and there's comfort in it. Although many people find it very uncomforting. Many people find it very troubling.

That, I think, comes from, again, popular teaching on the book rather than the book itself. And therefore, we'll have to look at the book through some various lenses other than just the popular one. You'll find it is a book of comfort.

It's a book of edification. It's a book of exhortation. It is a prophecy.

And therefore, it edifies. It's a blessing. It promises a blessing.

And one of the things that's such an edifying thing in the book of Revelation is that it's the only book in the Bible that actually transports us from time to time into heaven to see the worship of God taking place around the throne by beings that have no sin in them. By beings whose worship is as perfect as it gets. We have in David's Psalms, in the Old Testament, samples of Israeli worship.

They are very excellent and provide the songbook not only for the Jews but for Christians. And, in fact, some of the songs we sing tonight are from the Psalms. Some we may sing in the future are from Revelation.

Some say Revelation is the New Testament songbook as Psalms is the Old Testament. But the difference is David and some of the writers of the Psalms didn't always have a good attitude. They were not perfected men in heaven uttering perfect praise.

They were men sometimes ventilating their doubts, their anger, their hostility, wishing for other people's babies be dashed against stones and so forth. Things that, while as we study those Psalms, we can see why they felt that way. And they might even seem justified.

But it's hardly the same kind of worship you find in heaven. In Revelation, we read such specimens of heavenly worship that it has provided for the church throughout history as the Psalms have material for hymns and material for worship for the church because it just doesn't get any better than what we find in the book. So the book, with all of its problems, is nonetheless worthwhile.

More than worthwhile, it's a blessing. It's a unique book. It is, I believe, and most commentators agree, the most difficult book in the Bible.

But in some respects, it could be the one that promises and delivers the most blessing in some respects. Perhaps not as much as some other books in terms of practical instruction, though there's some of that there too. There is a lot of theology in the book.

It has, in fact, the most exalted view of Christ of any other book in the New Testament, with the possible exception of the other books of John. John exalts Christ as God more clearly in his writings than do other writers. Paul does sometimes.

Peter does seemingly one time in his writings. But John does frequently. In fact, our doctrine of the deity of Christ, that is, the view that Christ is in fact God, not just some exalted creation of God, our doctrine of the deity of Christ is supported by more texts from the writings of John than from probably other New Testament books combined.

Because it is John that emphasizes this, and the book of Revelation emphasizes it. We have the highest Christology, as a scholar would call it. Our view of Christ is more exalted in the book of Revelation than anywhere else.

He is equated unashamedly with the Alpha and the Omega, with Yahweh, with God. And so the book of Revelation certainly carries much profit in it. And it is a good thing, in my opinion, that it passed the final tests to be included in the canon of Scripture, and that we have it today.

Now, the book is unique in its genre. The name of the book of Revelation in the Greek Bible is the Apocalypse. The actual Greek word is Apokalypsis, but when you anglicize that word, it's Apokalypsis.

And so, for example, in the Catholic Bible, the name of the book is the Apocalypse. If you've ever been a Catholic, or ever read a Catholic Bible, you find the final book is not called Revelation, it's called the Apocalypse. That's the Greek name.

The word Apokalypsis means the unveiling. It comes from two Greek particles. Apa means away from, and kalypsis is the Greek word for covering.

And so, away from, taking the covering away, is what Apokalypsis means. It means like removing the veil and showing something that has been there already, but has been concealed until this moment. The name of the book is actually the Apokalypsis, or the unveiling of Jesus Christ.

The name in our English Bible says the Apocalypse of John, or of Saint John the Beloved, or something like that. But that title is not actually in the oldest manuscripts. The titles are added, actually, of our books later on by editors.

But in the book itself, its title is its first line, the Apocalypse, the unveiling of Jesus Christ. And it fills three literary genres. Most books in the Bible only fill one genre, or maybe two.

This one has three. First of all, not in order that your notes give. I apologize, I reserve the right to change my notes on the fly.

First of all, it is an epistle. Now, it's certainly not the only example of an epistle in our Bible. There are many epistles.

In fact, all the books of our New Testament are epistles, with the exception of three. Of the 27 New Testament books, 24 are epistles, or at least writings addressed to somebody, like letters or something that's a personal correspondence. Of course, the ones that are the exceptions are Matthew and Mark and the Gospel of John.

But the book of Luke and the book of Acts are written to a man named Theophilus. The rest of the books of the Bible are epistles that are, of the New Testament, are epistles addressed to churches or individuals. The book of Revelation is really no different than others in that respect.

If you'll look at Revelation chapter 1, for example, and verse 4, it begins, John, to the seven churches which are in Asia. Well, that's exactly how epistles begin, isn't it? The author identifies himself and mentions who his audience is. Paul does that, Peter does that, James does that.

All the epistle writers, unless they are anonymous, open with the same kind of structure. The author names himself and names his audience. A little later on, he is told by Jesus Christ to take down a letter and send it to the seven churches, which are in Asia.

So this is a letter that was sent to seven churches. Now, they are called the seven churches in Asia. To us, Asia means a big continent over there just to the east of Europe.

In biblical times, Asia was the name of a Roman province. The Romans had conquered most of the Mediterranean world and they gave names to different provinces. The portion of land that we today would call Turkey was the Roman province of Asia Minor, or simply Asia.

The seven churches named in this book are all in that region. They are all in what is today Turkey. And that is what is meant by Asia in the book, because that is the Roman province by that name.

Now, the book was sent to the seven churches just like Paul's letters were sent to churches. If you look at the end of the book of Revelation, chapter 22, verse 21, the last line in the book of Revelation is, The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.

Now I would just give you an assignment on your own time. We don't have time right now, but look at random at the closing words of any of Paul's epistles. You will find Paul's epistles end with, The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.

Or some slightly modified version of the same. The epistles begin and end as this book begins and ends. It is an epistle.

It is an epistle to certain people. In that respect, it is like other books of the New Testament. And that is helpful to know, because many times we don't think of it that way.

We think of it as a book almost like a science fiction novel to intrigue us about the end of the world. No, it is a letter written to some people about their situation, just like all the epistles are. Whenever you study a biblical epistle, you should find out something about who the people are who are receiving it, what their circumstances were, because all the epistles were written primarily to an original audience, not to us.

When you read the epistles of the Bible, you should realize you are reading somebody else's mail. Now, it is okay, because it has been published. You can't be arrested.

But you are reading a conversation that took place 2,000 years ago, in many cases, between one party and another set of parties, usually an apostle and some group of Christians. That is why there are so many things in the epistles that are obscure to us, because Paul or Peter will allude to something that his readers know about, because he is writing to them about things they know about, things that are actually going on in their church, actually mentioning people that we don't know, mentioning names. Tell Euodias and Syntyche to stop fighting with each other.

Well, who are they? The Philippians knew. I don't. It was written to them, not to me.

When Paul says to Timothy, when you come, try to come before winter and bring the cloak I left behind, and the books and the parchments, too. Is that written to me? Am I supposed to find out where Paul is and find out where his cloak is and get it to him before next winter? Obviously, it is clear that epistles are written in situations to people, real-life situations, and they are directed to them where they are. But also, the reason that these epistles are in our Bible is because they are so full of universal theology and ethics and so forth, such as all Christians can benefit from, that we benefit from reading what Paul said to the Corinthians about church orderliness, or what Paul said to Timothy about appointing elders in the church, or what Paul said to Thessalonians about people working instead of sitting around on their hands and expecting people to provide for them.

In other words, there are situations in the original churches that these epistles were written to that are fairly universal, that correspond to situations in churches that we actually go to. And, of course, Paul's solutions, Paul's answers, Paul's exhortations about these things clearly reveal the mind of God about such things. And when we see such things in our churches, we read the epistles and we apply them.

We see there are transferable truths. When you read an epistle, you're not reading a letter written to you in the Bible. You're reading a letter written to somebody you don't know.

You'll know them someday if you persevere, and if they did. But they're not you, they're not your friends, they're not anybody you know. They aren't living in America.

They're not living in the 21st century. They had their own situation in life that was the milieu into which the epistle was written. And it's as you learn something about what it meant to them, then you learn how to transfer the truths to your own situation.

That's what we do. That's what we do with epistles. That's the only reasonable way to study epistles.

And that's what all Christian scholars and Christian pastors do. I mean, you realize first of all, the original audience had a stake in this. It was about and to them.

It secondarily can apply to anyone else who's in similar circumstances, and that's the benefit we get from it. True of Revelation also, and this is something we don't usually think about Revelation. We think Revelation is written to us living in the 21st century, about us in our time.

There's no indication that this is so. This is an epistle written to seven churches that were alive at the time, and John said to them at least five times, these things I'm talking about are soon going to happen. These are about to take place.

The time is near. Now, those words would mean something to the original audience. We can't forget them when we read the book of Revelation.

They existed, and they were the people John had in mind when he wrote this, and that Jesus had in mind when he sent it to them. True, things that are said there may have broader application. Certainly when you read the seven letters to the seven churches in chapters two and three, you're reading like regular epistles to churches with problems and solutions being offered to those problems.

You'll find all those seven churches today. Some churches are like the church of Smyrna. Some are like the church of Laodicea.

Some are like the church of Ephesus. Some are like the church of Pergamon. The messages to the churches have transferable truths to modern times, but the letters had an original audience, and the book as a whole was directed to their concerns.

Now, that's an important omission in the teaching of many on the book of Revelation. We're talking about a real epistle to real people. It's an epistle, first of all, like most of the books of the New Testament are.

But unlike most of the books of the New Testament, it is a prophecy also. It says in Revelation 1.3, Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy. There is no other book of the New Testament, epistle or otherwise, that is a book of prophecy.

Therefore, although it is like other books in the New Testament in being an epistle, it is unlike them in being a prophecy. Now, what is a prophecy? Well, we said, it's he who prophesies, speaks to edification, exhortation, comfort to men. What is the content of prophecy? Well, a couple of things primarily.

And this is true whether it's Old Testament or New Testament prophecy. There are, after all, some very clear similarities between Revelation and certain Old Testament prophetic books like Daniel and Ezekiel and Zechariah. Not much difference between New Testament prophecy and Old Testament prophecy, apparently.

The only book of New Testament prophecy we have in our Bible would fit very well into the canon of Old Testament prophets, except that it talks about Jesus and they don't in quite so particular terms. They do in other terms. But prophecies, no matter what book of prophecy you read, you're going to read two elements in prophecy.

One is the forth telling or the preaching, the proclaiming of God's message to the original recipients. And that would be more like preaching than anything else. It would be saying, here's what God wants you to know.

Here's what you're doing wrong. Here's what you need to repent of. Here's what God promises you if you turn and repent.

This is what the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, all the minor prophets, they all have these elements. They tell like a sermon. Here's what God wants you to do.

Here's what he's upset about. Here's what you need to repent of. It's like a sermon.

Revelation has that, especially in the first three chapters. The seven letters to the seven churches in chapters two and three are that. They're like forth telling, a prophetic oracle to the churches.

But prophets also predict things. In the Old Testament prophets, this element of prediction is somewhat less pronounced, believe it or not. We know of hundreds of Old Testament predictions, and there are hundreds.

But there are thousands of verses in the Old Testament prophets that don't predict anything at all. In the Old Testament the prophets are mostly preachers who sometimes predict things. The book of Revelation, it's kind of balanced the other way.

Mostly predictive. Mostly talking about future events from the author's point of view. And a little bit of, a couple chapters there of preaching.

But both elements are present in the book of Revelation as they are in all the books of prophecy. In that respect, Revelation fits more neatly into the canon of the Old Testament prophets than the New Testament in its style. But it's an epistle that makes it like other New Testament books.

It's a prophecy which makes it unlike other New Testament books, and like quite a few Old Testament books. Then it wears a third hat. It is also what we call an apocalypse.

I already mentioned the word apocalypse. It means unveiling. There is a word that Christian teachers and preachers and scholars use that you may wish to know.

It's the word apocalyptic. It should be obvious it comes from the word apocalypse. But what is the relationship of the word apocalyptic to the word apocalypse? There's a whole genre of literature that modern biblical scholars recognize that were written in the intertestamental period.

In the centuries prior to the birth of Jesus, but after the Old Testament closed. You may not be aware there was 400 years between the close of the Old Testament, the prophet Malachi, and the coming of John the Baptist at the beginning of the New Testament. There's a 400 year gap.

That's called the intertestamental period. In the latter half of that period, the last 200 years before Christ came, there were many, many books written by Jewish writers, which modern scholars have discovered and they have called them apocalyptic literature. It's an actual genre or style of writing.

The reason it is called apocalyptic is because it resembles the book of Revelation in its style. Now, it's kind of an anachronism to call it apocalyptic because they only gave it that name after they knew about the book of Revelation, which is called the Apocalypse. And because these earlier books written before Revelation have been found more recently, they simply refer to them as apocalyptic.

It is like the book of Revelation, though really the book of Revelation is like them. They were written sometimes a couple hundred years before the book of Revelation. Apocalyptic literature was extremely popular among the Jews and the early Christians.

Many of the New Testament, well, the books that were excluded from the New Testament canon, but were considered for it. Christian books written in the first century and the early second were apocalyptic in style. This was like a genre, like today, science fiction would be a genre of literature.

Or children's fairy tales would be a genre, a different kind of genre of literature. Rap would be a certain genre of music. Apocalyptic was a certain genre of religious writing among the Jews for about 200 years prior to the writing of the book of Revelation and for about 100 years after.

So it was written in the midst of a time when the style in which it is written was very popular, though Christians didn't know about this style very much in modern times until quite a collection of ancient apocalyptic books written shortly before the Christian era were discovered in the 1940s. And this led scholars to realize, oh, the book of Revelation isn't as unique as we thought. We once thought that its closest affinity was to books like Daniel, Ezekiel, Zechariah, which also contained the same style.

They would also have what we call apocalyptic style in them. But actually, Revelation is closer in affinity to these apocalyptic works, which probably, since they were not inspired, by the way, the Jewish apocalyptic works were not inspired. They're just popular Jewish writing.

Just like C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, they're not inspired, but they're edifying Christian reading. Christians read them profitably, but they don't want to put them in the Bible because Lewis was not an inspired prophet or apostle, nor did he claim to be. And nor did the writers of these apocalyptic books claim to be prophets.

They were just writers with something they wanted to say. And the popular way of saying it was in apocalyptic genre. This style is writing things usually about earthly events, but written as though they're not earthly events, like almost in fairy tale style, dragons and monsters and wars in the sky, and things like that are the stuff of apocalyptic literature in general.

In apocalyptic literature, generally speaking, an angel appears to an author and guides him around, shows him things, interprets them for him, as you know also happens in Daniel and the Book of Revelation. The only difference is in the popular apocalypses of the intertestamental period, there were no real angels doing that. That was just the author's style.

A little bit like when John Bunyan wrote Pilgrim's Progress, it begins, I dreamed, and I saw a man with a burden on his back. And then he tells the story. How many of you have read Pilgrim's Progress? If you've read Pilgrim's Progress, then you're better equipped to understand how apocalyptic literature works.

It claims to be seen, John Bunyan didn't really have that dream. At least I don't think he did. He was in prison, and he could have had the dream, but he sure had a great memory if he dreamed all those things and remembered them to write them down, because the book's thick like this.

I think he simply wrote it as a piece of edifying fiction and framed it in the imagery of being a dream that he had. C.S. Lewis did the same thing when he wrote The Great Divorce. It's a popular thing to do.

Also, the apocalyptic writers, not John, but the apocalyptic writers that were previous to him, wrote their religious fiction using the claim that angels had come to them and shown them things and so forth. Now, the other apocalyptic literature has given us a real assistance in helping to make sense of the book of Revelation. Because, of course, the book of Revelation, what kind of a book is it? It's a different book than any other we read anywhere, unless you've read apocalyptic literature, in which case it's a lot like books you've read before.

The early readers had read a lot of apocalyptic literature. It was the most popular genre of religious fiction that was being circulated in their day. Therefore, God inspired a book using that genre, and it communicated its message in the same manner as did the other apocalyptic books.

The difference was, this was God's message revealed by real angels to a real apostle. And that makes it different than the others, but in other respects, the style and the means of communication is the same. Now, in the providence of God, we have preserved for us a sample of apocalyptic literature written before the time of Christ, which is easy for us to interpret because it is an apocalyptic prologue and an apocalyptic epilogue attached to the prosaic book of Esther.

Now, the book of Esther is about as prosaic as any book in the Bible. It doesn't even mention God. It's just telling a very interesting story where the providence of God is so visible that you're not even aware that God isn't mentioned.

You read the book of Esther and you say, you've seen God through the whole book, but he's never been mentioned because the providence of God is so striking through the book of Esther. But at least the story is told in a historically literal way, so we know exactly what happened. But years after Esther's time, in the time when apocalyptic literature was popular, some unknown writer claiming to be Mordecai, now, Mordecai, of course, was one of the main characters in the book of Esther, Esther's cousin or uncle, a hero in the book.

Esther's the real hero in the book, but Mordecai's like the second hero in the book. An author who claimed to be Mordecai but wasn't, who was living hundreds of years after Mordecai's time, wrote an apocalyptic prologue to the book of Esther and an apocalyptic epilogue in the style that was popular in his time, which was apocalyptic style. The interesting thing, though, is that he claimed that what he wrote was a dream and that when the story transpired, he realized how the dream had been fulfilled.

In other words, the story of Esther, as we have it from God, is the story that is summarized in these apocalyptic sections. But you wouldn't know it. This is so helpful because we can read these apocalyptic sections and say, that sounds like the book of Revelation, but it isn't.

It's the book of Esther. Let me read them for you. They're in your notes.

Page two of your notes, near the top. This anonymous author claiming to be Mordecai wrote this. By the way, these sections are still found in the Catholic Bible because they're part of the Apocrypha.

The Catholic Bible includes this prologue and the epilogue attached to the book of Esther, though they were not originally part of the book of Esther and were written centuries later. At the beginning, the anonymous author claiming to be Mordecai says, Behold, noise and confusion, thunders and earthquake, tumult upon the earth. And behold, two great dragons came forward, both ready to fight, and they roared terribly.

And at their roaring, every nation prepared for war to fight against the nation of the righteous. And behold, a day of darkness and gloom and tribulation and distress, affliction and great tumult upon the earth. And the whole righteous nation was troubled.

They feared the evils that threatened them, and they were ready to perish. Then they cried to God, and from their cry, as though from a tiny spring, there came a great river with abundant water. Light came, and the sun rose, and the lowly were exalted and consumed those who held in honor.

Now, although it doesn't sound exactly like any particular passage in the book of Revelation, it looks like a passage that could easily fit in the book of Revelation. If you read it there, you wouldn't stop to think, Boy, that's different. Because it isn't.

It's very much the same. It's very much the same kind of writing that Revelation is. Dragons, rivers, light, world wars, earthquakes, it's all there.

However, then follows the book of Esther, and at the end of the canonical book of Esther, we have the same hand writing an epilogue, and we have that here too. He says, I remember the dream that I had concerning these matters, and none of them has failed to be fulfilled. The tiny stream, which became a river, and there was light and the sun and abundant water, the river is Esther, whom the king married and made queen.

The two dragons are Haman and myself. The nations are those gathered to destroy the name of the Jews, and my nation, this is Israel, who cried out to God and were saved. In other words, he says, that whole prologue was simply a summary of the book of Esther, but didn't sound very much like the book of Esther.

It sounded like the end of the world. But you see, the value of these particular specimens of apocalyptic writing is that we can compare them with the actual prosaic story and say, oh, okay, so a woman is used in such and such a way in the providence of God to spare her nation, and an apocalyptic writer writes about dragons fighting each other and a river filling the earth and earthquakes and tumult, and tribulation is mentioned. In other words, all the stock in trade of apocalyptic writing is here because it's a sample of it.

But we can see that it's not talking about dragons and world wars and earthquakes and rivers. It's talking about a rather interesting romantic story, which, although it has great evidences of God's providence taking place, it really is a very earthly story itself, and one which you might read in a history book rather than in science fiction. It's not about outer space, for example, or the end of the world.

Now, the book of Revelation clearly is written in this style, which raises questions. What do these same images in the book of Revelation represent, and images of the same sort? Do they possibly represent things that are really quite earthly, normal kinds of events, but described in this fantastic manner? It is certainly something we need to consider. It's something we would not know if we were not familiar with apocalyptic literature, and certainly most people are not.

Most Christians are not. But there's plenty of samples of it now to read, so it's not necessary to be unfamiliar with it now. And the early readers were not unfamiliar with it.

They knew it very well and would have approached the book as a piece of apocalyptic writing, and therefore would have had a different set of presuppositions about it than we might in the 21st century coming to it raw, cold, not prepared, unfamiliar, and they'd reach different conclusions, of course. So the book of Revelation is three genres, epistolatory, prophetic, and apocalyptic. By the way, there are apocalyptic passages in some of the canonical books like Isaiah, Daniel, Ezekiel, Zechariah, and also in Jesus' Olivet Discourse, Matthew 24, but for the most part, most of the scripture is not written in apocalyptic style, but Revelation in its entirety is.

Okay. Now, most apocalypses that have been found are different from the Revelation in a number of ways. One, Revelation claims to be an inspired prophecy.

The others don't. The other apocalypses lie about who wrote them. For example, the apocalypses have names like, you know, the testimony of the 12 patriarchs, the book of Enoch, the book of Baruch.

Baruch was Jeremiah's scribe. None of these books were written by those men, but they claim to be. The book of Enoch was not written by Enoch.

The book of Baruch was not written by Baruch. The book of the 12 patriarchs was not written by any of the 12 patriarchs. It was the common practice in the intertestamental period for those who wrote apocalyptic literature in order to give their books a sense of authority to lie about who their author was.

They're all anonymously written. No one knows who really wrote them, but they claim to be famous people who had lived centuries earlier than themselves. In that respect, Revelation is different from other apocalypses.

The writer doesn't do that. He doesn't claim to be anyone famous. He might be the apostle John, but he doesn't say, so he just calls himself John.

He doesn't claim to be anyone famous from another generation previous or centuries earlier. If he isn't really John, then he's lying about who he is. But if he was lying about who he was, he'd probably say John the apostle or John the son of Zebedee or John the son of Thunder or something like that to try to pretend to be an apostle.

The author doesn't claim to be an apostle. He just says, I, John, and assumes that his readers know him. He's familiar to his readers, and that's his real name.

So it's different than apocalypses of another sort in that way. Also, the book of Revelation makes an appeal to the readers to repent. The other apocalypses sort of paint the Jews out to be the righteous people persecuted by the evil people and does not call the people of God to repent, but rather encourages them that God's on their side.

The book of Revelation, at least five of the seven churches are told they better repent or they're in a heap of trouble with God. So it's a book calling for repentance. It's rebuking even the church.

It's written by the man who claims to have written it, whoever he might have been. I'm convinced he's the apostle John, and we will show why in due time. Now, let's do so now, as a matter of fact.

Let's talk about the authorship of the book. Very important. In five places, the author simply calls himself John.

He does not elaborate. There were certainly more than one Christian named John in the first century. In fact, there might have been thousands of Christians named John, although John might not have been as popular a name in first century Israel as it is in modern America, where John is an extremely common name.

But there are other Johns that are known to us. In fact, Peter, the apostle's father's name was John. John is the Greek form of Jonah.

And Jesus referred to Peter as son of Jonah or son of John. And the apostle John, of course, was John. There's also a known man who was an elder, a presbyter, of the church of Ephesus, whose name was John.

We know very little about him. What we do know about him comes from a quote from a church father named Papias. Papias was a very knowledgeable man at the end of the first century who had known some people who had known the apostles.

He wrote six books. All of them are gone. We don't have any of them.

But we know some of the passages from his books because while they were still around, a church historian named Eusebius in 325 quoted from Papias somewhat. So although we've lost Papias' actual work, we have fragments of his work preserved in the writings of Eusebius, the earliest church historian that we know of besides Luke. And in one of the quotations of Papias in Eusebius' work, which I've given you at the bottom of page two, Papias said, Now, we don't know who Aristion was, but he and John are said to be presbyters, disciples of the Lord, but not apostles.

This John is mentioned separately from the apostle John because obviously in the line above that, he talks about Thomas, James, John, Matthew, and the other disciples. Obviously, there's more than one John here. But in the third century, Papias was conversant with people who had known these people.

He lived in that transitional generation after the death of the apostles where there were still quite a few living witnesses to what had been said. He said, Whenever I ran into these people, I wanted to know what the apostles and others had said. I wanted to know what the Aristion had said, too, and the presbyter John.

Well, who is the presbyter John? We don't know. But in the third century, there are two tombs, Christian tombs from the first century in Ephesus that have the name John on them. And assume that one of them was the apostle John who died in Ephesus according to tradition, and the other perhaps this presbyter John in Ephesus.

Now, there's really no reason to ascribe the book of Revelation to this presbyter John, except for the difficulties in ascribing it to the same author as the man who wrote the Gospels and the Epistles. That is, the Gospel of John and the three Epistles of John. They all are very much alike in style and in content and in emphasis.

Anyone who's read the Gospel of John and has become acquainted with its language and then moves to the Epistles of John, it feels very much like they're reading the writings of the same man. But when you come to Revelation, it's not so clear. And if you're reading it in Greek, it's almost clear that it's not the same man.

As I said, the other writings attributed to John are among the most polished Greek. Now, not all the New Testament is written in good Greek. Paul, for example, did not write very well in Greek.

His grammar, his diction wasn't perfect. And scholars don't consider Paul to be a very good Greek writer in terms of his literary style. On the other hand, Luke was excellent.

John was excellent. Whoever wrote the book of Hebrews was excellent. Some of the books were written in very superior Greek and some not so much.

The books of John, other than Revelation, are among the very best, written by somebody who knew Greek very, very well. But by contrast, the writer of the Revelation did not seem to know Greek very well. And this is acknowledged by conservative evangelical scholars everywhere.

J. H. Moulton, for example, said of Revelation, its grammar is perpetually stumbling. Its idiom is that of a foreign language, as the author didn't speak Greek as a native language. Its whole style is that of a writer who neither knows nor cares for literary form.

Not very flattering. But a little more flattering than the next quote, which comes from Earl Rademacher, who said, the book of Revelation is the most uncultured literary production that has come down to us from antiquity. Now, whether this is hyperbole or whether this is exactly true, it's a clear contrast with the cultured Greek of the other writings that are attributed to the same author.

And from very early times, at least the third century, there have been people who denied that the apostle could have written Revelation for this reason pretty much alone. One other reason was sometimes given, and that's that they believed that the book of Revelation taught a future millennium. The earliest Christians did not believe that.

They didn't believe that doctrine. But they said the Gnostics were the first to teach that. And so some of the early church fathers thought, for example, Eusebius, the church historian, thought that it was Serentis, the Gnostic heretic, who wrote Revelation.

Not a good theory, in my opinion, since the author's name was John. But the point is, there was some theological concern, because most Christians did not believe in a future millennium, and reading Revelation 20 sounded like the writer did. And that was, in the earliest days, a doctrine associated with the Gnostics, not with the Christians.

But they got over it. Many Christians came to adopt the premillennial view, and of course a great number of them adopt it today. But it was mainly the Greek style that was the hang-up.

And there were some who just couldn't get over it. There are modern commentators who say, we don't know who wrote the book of Revelation, but one thing we know absolutely sure, it's not the same person who wrote those other books of John. And they say it based entirely on the tremendous difference in grammar.

However, those are not insuperable obstacles. Now, that's coming from me, a person who doesn't read Greek. The guys who are the real Greek scholars, they say, it can't be the same guy.

Here's a guy who can't read a line of Greek, and I'm saying, that's not a problem. But there's a reason I'm saying it. Because you don't have to know much Greek in order to see ways in which the problem can be resolved.

And many who do read Greek have observed that it can be resolved in various ways. We're told in Acts 4.13 that John was an unschooled layman. The Sanhedrin marveled at Peter and John because they were so influential among the people and so well-spoken, but they recognized they had no schooling.

John was an unlettered man. He probably didn't write very good Greek. It's entirely possible that he didn't write Greek any better than the Greek in the book of Revelation.

But, one difference between his writing the book of Revelation and the other books is that he wrote the book of Revelation, it may be, on the island of Patmos. The other books he wrote were probably written from Ephesus, in a church, where there were literary people. Most writings of the New Testament were not written by the hand of the author, but by what they call an amanuensis.

An amanuensis is what we might call a secretary, but more than a secretary, they didn't just take dictation, they did that. They took dictation from the author, but they also had some literary input. Anyone knows that when you're dictating a letter or dictating something, you don't really talk exactly the way that you'd write.

And an amanuensis, who took dictation, would take the speaker's words and write them into a literary piece. Peter, for example, the style of 1 Peter is very different than the style of 2 Peter. Peter, in 1 Peter 5, in verse 12, says he's writing by Silvanus, meaning that Silvanus is apparently taking dictation, and is his amanuensis.

He may have written 2 Peter without Silvanus, and that would explain why there are different styles between 1 and 2 Peter. Paul used an amanuensis often, although sometimes he wrote with his own hand, and when he did, it was exceptional enough. He said, see what great a letter I've written with my own hand.

I've signed this with my own hand. I've written this with my own hand, especially Galatians. But Romans, for example, was not written by the hand of Paul.

He dictated it to a man named Tertius. The reason we know that is because Romans 16 is mainly a list of greetings that Paul sends to friends in Rome, and at one point he must have stopped to take a drink of water or something, and you find this line in Romans 16, I, Tertius, who wrote this letter, also greet you. And then Paul's greetings continue.

So Paul must have taken a breath or something, and Tertius decided, hey, I want to mention that I'm sending greetings too. He was obviously the one who, he said he wrote the epistle. Now, to what degree John had the services of an amanuensis for writing the gospel of John and the epistles of John, we cannot say, but he was in Ephesus where there were such services available.

When he was on the island of Patmos as a prisoner, he obviously couldn't send out for an amanuensis and would have to write in his own style. And that could easily explain why Revelation is written by a non-literary man, John. And the other books attributed to him were dictated by him, probably, to an amanuensis who had somewhat greater command of the Greek language, was a professional, polished, and that would explain a lot.

It would certainly resolve the difficulty. An alternative solution, people have suggested, is that John wrote both, all the books, but the other books he wrote in his normal state of mind. But when he wrote Revelation, he was in an excited state of mind and trying to keep up with the visions as they went by and writing in choppy Greek and not, you know, I don't know.

There are ways to resolve this, in other words. It's not necessary to assume that the great difference in Greek style must argue for a different authorship. In fact, there's a couple of very strong reasons to argue for the same authorship.

One of them is that the author simply calls himself John. In the lifetime of John the Apostle, for anyone who was not John the Apostle to write a book and simply call himself John would invite confusion. No one would know who this is.

They might even think it was the Apostle John, but he didn't say so. The Apostles always made clear who they were, or usually did, if there was any possibility of confusion. But if John was the last surviving Apostle at the time this was written, he'd be the most, whether he was or not, he would be the most famous man in the church named John.

He was the only John who was an Apostle. He might be the last surviving Apostle. He would be the old man of the church, the most famous man named John.

It's like if we're talking about evangelists, and I said Billy. Well, need I say more? Everyone knows who Billy is, at least for the time being. After he dies, it might be different.

There might be another Billy come along. But if someone just says John, during the lifetime of John the Apostle, of course the audience would not know who he was, unless he was that John. The lack of any designation necessary to identify him more exactly would suggest strongly he was the John, the most famous John, the John who needed no introduction to his readers, John the Apostle.

This is what all the early church fathers in the first two or three centuries believed, and they seem to have good reason. Here's another reason for thinking that the same author wrote all those books. There are certain ideas, although the Greek style is different, the Greek thoughts and vocabulary are very much the same in Revelation as the other books.

Here's some examples for you. The word logos, or logos, which means word, it's used as a title for Jesus only in the Johannine literature, that is the literature that John wrote. It is, of course, most famously found in John 1.1. In the beginning was the word, the logos.

But it's also found in 1 John 1, where he says, that which we have heard, that which we have seen, which we have looked upon, our hands have handled, of the word of life, referring to Jesus, the logos. So we have John in his gospel and his epistle referring to Jesus as logos. Likewise, in Revelation 19.13, John sees Jesus on a white horse and his name is called the logos, the word of God.

Apart from these three references, there is no reference in the Bible that clearly speaks of Christ by the title logos. Only John does. And Revelation does.

That's not enough by itself, but similar evidence mounts. Likewise, the reference to Christ as the lamb. Very prominent, of course, in the book of Revelation, probably 27 times or so in the book of Revelation, Jesus is called the lamb.

Elsewhere in the Bible, he's not referred to as the lamb. Except in the gospel of John, chapter one, where twice John the Baptist is quoted saying, behold the lamb of God. Now to us, lamb is a very common term to use for Christ.

Much of our Christian iconography and art has depicted him as a lamb. But it might surprise us how absent that title is from scripture with the exception of John chapter one and the book of Revelation. That's where we get the idea of Jesus being the lamb from John's writings in those two places.

Likewise, John 7, 37 and 38, Jesus calls out to anyone who thirsts and invites them to come and drink the water of life, the living water. The same invitation is given in Revelation, chapter 22, verse 17. Anyone who thirsts, let him drink of the water of life.

Only in John and Revelation. No reference to any such things elsewhere in scripture. The expression he who overcomes or a reference to Christ as the one who overcomes or the disciples as those who overcome is very Johannine.

In John 16, 33, Jesus says, be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. In first John chapter two, verse 14, John says, I've written to you young men because you're strong and the word of God abides in you and you have overcome the world. In first John chapter five, it says, whosoever believes that Jesus is the son of God overcomes the world.

And this is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith. In Revelation, in every church, there is an invitation to those whoever overcomes. Jesus is first seen in Revelation five, six and in a visionary form other than chapter one.

He is first seen as a lamb. And it says when he's introduced in Revelation five, I think it's verse five, the elder who speaks to John says, behold, the lion of the tribe of Judah has prevailed. It's the same word overcome.

In Revelation 12, 11, speaking of the spiritual warfare of the Christians against Satan says they overcame him. Same word, by the blood of the lamb, by the word of their testimony. And they did not love their lives unto the death.

Overcome, overcome, overcome. Only in John's literature. It's in gospel of John.

It's in the epistle of John. It's in Revelation. You see, Revelation has many distinctly Johannine, that is, terms that are not found anywhere except in John's writings elsewhere.

The word true, of course, occurs many times throughout the scripture, but there's a particular word in the Greek for true. There's more than one word for true, but this particular word, which is a latinos, appears nine times in the gospel of John, four times in 1 John, ten times in Revelation, and in all the rest of the New Testament, only five times. In other words, it occurs in 1 John alone, almost as many times as it occurs in the rest of the New Testament, but twice as many times in the gospel of John, and twice as many times in the book of Revelation.

It's very much, though not uniquely a term that John uses, it's very much a term that John is fond of and uses a great deal, and others do not. The reference to the first resurrection in Revelation, chapter 20, in verse 5, very mysterious expression, this is the first resurrection, blessed and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. On him the second death has no power.

What is the first resurrection? As you read almost every book in the New Testament about the resurrection, it's always just one resurrection is mentioned. The resurrection of the last day, of the end, when Jesus comes to judge the living and the dead, when he calls the sheep and the goats out on the day that he returns. There's a one resurrection, but Revelation talks about the first resurrection, suggesting at least two.

Where does that idea come from? Where can we get an explanation of that? Well, lo and behold, only one place in the scripture, and that's in John's gospel, John chapter 5, because John chapter 5 does mention a physical resurrection in verses 28 and 29. Jesus said, do not marvel at this, the hour is coming in which all who are in the grave shall hear his voice and shall come forth, some to a resurrection of life, some to a resurrection of condemnation. All who are in the graves, that's bodies.

But four verses earlier, in John 5, 24, Jesus says, he that hears my words and believes in him who sent me has everlasting life and shall not come into condemnation, but has passed from death into life. Jesus said that those who have heard and believed his words already have passed from a state of being dead to a state of being alive. That's a resurrection.

In John 5, Jesus talks about two resurrections, a spiritual resurrection, which Christians have already experienced through faith. Paul also refers to it in Ephesians, says we who are dead in trespasses and sins he has made alive with him. Being born again is a spiritual passing from death into life, it is a resurrection.

Jesus mentions two in only one passage, John chapter 5, that which is spiritual, which Christians have already experienced, that which is physical, which remains for everyone to experience at the end of the age. Thus, John alone and Revelation give the indication that there are two resurrections that Christians experience, one now, one later. It's John's theology.

There's a Greek phrase, ektereo, which is found only twice in the Bible. It is translated to keep from or to guard out of or to keep out of. I think the translation I'm using would translate keep from.

It's found in Revelation chapter 3, verse 10, where Jesus says because you've kept my command to persevere, I also will keep you from the hour of temptation that is coming on all the world to test those who dwell on the earth. He says I will keep you from it. The word is ektereo, two words.

That phrase is found only one other place in the Bible. In John, not surprisingly. Chapter 17, verse 15, where Jesus was praying and he said, Father, I pray that you do not take them out of the world, but that you will keep them from.

Ektereo, the wicked one. So again, a Johannine term found only in John and Revelation. Likewise, in Revelation 12, we have the very graphic picture of Satan like a dragon losing a battle in the heavens being cast to the earth.

Revelation 12, 9. After that, a voice in heaven says, Now has come salvation and strength in the kingdom of our God and the power of his Christ. For the accused of our brethren has been cast out who accused them before God day and night. That's Revelation 12, 9 and 10.

In John, chapter 12, verse 31, Jesus said, Now is the judgment of this world. Now shall the ruler of this world, he means Satan, be cast out. The idea of Satan being cast out of heaven is found in John, 12, 31 and in Revelation 12.

The exact thought is not found elsewhere except there is something very similar to it in Luke. In Luke chapter 10, verse 19, where Jesus said, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. But fall is a description of the motion that Satan did.

These two passages refer to some action of him being thrown out. His falling, no doubt, is the result of being thrown out. But the throwing out involves another party.

Satan could just fall if he slipped and fell off a cliff. No one had to be present. But to be thrown out requires that someone stronger than he has overcome him and tossed him out.

And the idea of Satan being cast out is found only in those places. In the New Testament, in John and in Revelation. Also, both John and Revelation quote, but not exactly quote, the same verse in Zechariah.

Zechariah 12, 10. Neither John nor Revelation actually quote it, but they sort of cannibalize the verse and take phrases from it and put them together in an innovative way. John does.

In John chapter 19, verse 37. Revelation does. In Revelation 1, 7. Interesting that the same verse would be not quite quoted by both books.

So, these, I think, make a strong case that the author of Revelation was very much in tune with the thought of the Gospel of John and the Epistles of John. Use the same language, some of which is used nowhere else in the New Testament. I believe that we have very good grounds for accepting the apostolic authorship of this book, which means the author of the book was one of the two sons of Zebedee, one of the ones that Jesus called sons of thunder.

A good name for someone writing a book like this. A man who was one of the twelve apostles and one of the three who were called the inner circle of the apostles, Peter, James, and John, who had special closeness to Jesus. And of those three, he is the one that is referred to as the disciple that Jesus loved.

This man had a closer intimacy with Jesus than most. Even most of the other apostles. Apparently, even than Peter.

Interestingly, that the book of Revelation would be written by a man who elsewhere is called beloved, disciple, because the only other person referred to by that kind of a name was Daniel in his book. O Daniel, greatly beloved he's called. And Daniel and Revelation are obviously very similar books.

God obviously vouchsafed very similar revelations to two men that were particularly beloved by him and privileged to receive them. Now, we're out of time for tonight. We're not out of pages of our notes, and so there will be a further continuation in our introduction to Revelation in our next session.