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Revelation 1

Revelation
RevelationSteve Gregg

Steve Gregg provides an insightful analysis of the Book of Revelation, starting with the identification of John as the writer of the book. He explains that the phrase "born witness" means to bear witness to one's faith at the cost of one's life, which John did, and also that the word of God refers to both the written word and Jesus Christ. Gregg also delves into the symbolism of the book, including the seven eyes of Christ representing the seven spirits of God. Finally, he notes that the "first and last" phrase used to describe Jesus in Revelation is a reference to Yahweh in the Old Testament.

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Transcript

We're turning now to the first chapter of the Book of Revelation. We've had several sessions of introduction, and so now we're prepared to look at the book itself and begin to go through it. The first chapter, actually the first three chapters, stand out as different from the rest of the book in that they are not specifically prophetic.
The prophetic portion seems to begin in chapter 4 when John is caught up into heaven and begins to see visions that he reports. Here there is a vision, in fact, but it's not predicting anything. Rather, he has a vision of Jesus Christ and Jesus commissions him to write a letter.
The book almost seems to have two beginnings, one of them in verse 4 where it says, John, to the seven churches which are in Asia. It sounds like he's beginning a book. But later on, he says, John, I, John, your brother, in verse 9, and he mentions himself more than once as the author in the first person.
But the first three verses are not in the first person. The first three verses are in the third person. In that respect, it resembles Ezekiel.
Ezekiel is a book that the author writes in the first person.
I saw this, I saw that, and this happened to me. That's what John says throughout the book too.
But the only exception is that the, I think, verses 2 and 3 of Ezekiel chapter 1 are in the third person. And they talk about Ezekiel. Likewise, the first three verses of Revelation are in the third person.
They talk about Ezekiel, about John, and this is not him talking. And this gives us the impression that the book was preserved after John wrote it. And it was issued with some kind of an introductory remark from whoever preserved it.
Probably the elders of the Church of Ephesus, since John is reputed to have spent his final years in Ephesus. There is, it's probable that the elders of the Church of Ephesus preserved the book, and when it was finally circulated, it was circulated with this commendation, as it were, from the leaders of the Church. They don't say who they are, but they are not John himself.
Because it says in the first three verses, The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants, things which must shortly take place. And he sent and signified it by his angel to his servant John, who bore witness of the word of God, and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, and to all things that he saw. Blessed is he who reads, and those who hear the words of the prophecy, and keep those things which are written in it, for the time is near.
Now this mentions John in the third person, and it's a generic introduction to the book. It tells us that the book was given by God to John, but not directly. It was actually given to Jesus Christ, who then sent it by his angel to John.
Now this angel is hard to identify. Does this mean that the vision he sees in chapter one of this figure who speaks to him is the angel through whom Jesus sent the message? It's not entirely clear, however the angel, if that is him, speaks as if he is in fact Jesus. The person that John describes in chapter one that he will see, is almost always identified with Jesus because of the things he says, that only Jesus could say.
On the other hand, in the Old Testament, the expression, the angel of the Lord, whenever he spoke, spoke as if he was the Lord. He was the messenger of the Lord. It was considered to be a theophany by most theologians.
Most theologians believe that the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament was the Lord appearing in a form other than his own form. As for example, in the burning bush. God is not literally a fire, but he appeared as a fire in a bush.
And this is called theophany. And the Bible says when Moses came to the bush, that the Lord spoke to him from the bush. It also says the angel of the Lord spoke to him.
In fact, alternately it's the angel of the Lord or the Lord speaking. Now, the relationship of the angel and the Lord is never explained. And there perhaps are mysteries that we cannot expect to understand in this life because this has to do with heavenly things and we don't have perhaps the frame of reference for it.
But, in any case, the angel that brings the message talks as if he is Jesus. Is this Jesus? Or is it a messenger coming and, as it were, speaking as a mouthpiece for Jesus? Who knows? I don't know. We will probably never know.
Maybe you have an opinion and maybe it's the right one. I don't even have an opinion. I just think it's interesting and perplexing that he says the message was sent.
It was given by God to Jesus. Jesus sent the message by his angel to John. And John is sending it to the churches.
So the churches are getting it from God about five stages removed. But it's nonetheless said to be a prophecy and therefore a word from the Lord. As it says in verse 3, Blessed is he who reads those who hear the words of this prophecy.
Now, it says in verse 1, in the middle, that these are things which must shortly take place. And at the end of verse 3 it says, for the time is near. So that the readers are informed that this is not going to be describing things that are some very great distance off.
The time is near. Shortly take place. These are emphatic and repeated expressions.
If they do not mean what they seem to mean, then they are extremely deceptive. Some people say, well, now we live 2,000 years later. This hasn't been fulfilled yet.
Therefore, it wasn't very shortly. So it must have been shortly from God's point of view. Well, how do we know it hasn't been fulfilled yet? Who told us that? Maybe it has.
Maybe, in fact, it did happen shortly. Maybe it did happen and the time was near. That's something we'll have to investigate.
It is possible that the words are true. After all, if God spoke them, he might have been right. And if he did not mean that they were going to be shortly in human terms, that is like maybe in the next few years at the very most, if that was not true, then he would have been much more kind to have mentioned nothing about how soon or how late it would be.
Just say nothing. Just say these will someday happen. To repeatedly say shortly, at hand, about to take place.
Every time he says that is going to be misleading if it's not, in fact, talking about things that are about, in fact, to take place and that the readers should be apprised of because it will perhaps have some effect on the world in which they live. And it says in verse 2 that the angel gave it to John and John bore witness of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. Now, these two expressions, the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ, are found repeatedly, sometimes in parallel and sometimes one or another by itself.
The word testimony is a very important word in the book of Revelation. It's the same word for witness. And so the word witness, the word testimony, is frequently occurring in Revelation.
The word witness is the word martia and which is, actually we get our word martyr from that. Jesus is called the faithful witness in the Greek, the faithful martyr. Now, just so we don't get too confused, when we think of the word martia as meaning martyr, it's a bit of an anachronism.
We're reading back into it a later meaning. In the time of the book of Revelation, the word martia simply meant a witness, somebody who testifies to something. Over time, especially as Christians began to die for their faith because they bore witness to their own undoing and were put to death, the term came to mean somebody who bore witness at the cost of his life.
And therefore, it came to mean somebody who died for their convictions. And that's how we think of the word martyr. When we say someone's a martyr, we mean they're either dying or maybe less literally suffering some reason because they're taking a stand that's unpopular.
That's what we think of as martyrs. There were many martyrs in the early church in that sense. But that is not what the word meant at the time.
The word martia simply meant a witness, though many witnesses, including some of the ones in the book of Revelation, sealed their testimony with their blood. The two witnesses, for example, in chapter 11, they bear witness in the time of their testimony is spoken of, testifying as witnesses do in a court of law. A witness is somebody who's seen something and knows something and is testifying to it.
And that's different than just somebody who believes something. And I often find myself having to make this distinction for people who don't understand that. I mentioned that the apostles died for their testimony and therefore they obviously believed it.
And atheists sometimes say, well, so what? Lots of people die for their beliefs. There's Muslims who die for their beliefs. There's Mormons who die for their beliefs.
Lots of people die for their beliefs. That doesn't mean they're true. I have to say, well, you didn't hear me.
I didn't say they died for their beliefs. They died for their testimony. People can believe anything for good or bad reasons, but you only testify to what you've seen.
A Muslim who dies no doubt thinks that his beliefs are true, but he doesn't know they are. He just believes it. He happens to be deceived.
A person who has seen something knows that what he's seen is true. He's seen it with his own eyes. That's why eyewitness testimony is the strongest of all evidences that can be presented in a court of law.
It's even better than expert testimony. You don't have to be an expert. You just have to have seen something to be a witness.
If you say you saw something and you die for that testimony, then there's a good chance that you're not mistaken. You did see what you said, and you're telling the truth. That a Christian today would die for their beliefs doesn't mean they're dying for their testimony.
It's not the same thing. They might have just been convinced by somebody that Jesus is real, and they died. It's the same thing with any religion.
But John testified to what he saw, and that's an important word in the book of Revelation because many of the people in Revelation are testifying. Antipas is a faithful witness who died in the church of Pergamon. And Jesus is a faithful witness.
We know he died. The two witnesses died in Revelation. So the witnesses actually do become martyrs in the later sense of that word in many cases.
John, in this case, had borne witness. He didn't die as a martyr. He was a martia, a witness, but he didn't happen to die.
John would be what the later church would call a confessor. In times of persecution, like those when the Roman emperors were killing Christians, if a Christian was arrested and put on trial, he would end up being one of three things. If he stuck to his guns and did not back down from his testimony, and he died for it, he'd be called a martyr.
If he did back down from his testimony and denied his faith, he was called a lapse. He lapsed. And if he did not back down from his testimony and was prepared to die, but for some reason escaped death, he was called a confessor.
These were three categories of the early church during times of persecution. A man who backed down on his testimony under threats of death was called a lapse. And there were many lapses.
The early church in the 2nd and 3rd century had problems deciding what to do with lapses once they came back. The persecution ended and they came back and said, I want to be a Christian again. And there were many in the church who did not want to accept them back because many in the church had had their own brothers and sisters and fathers killed because they wouldn't lapse.
And so the ones who did lapse struck them as traitors and cowards and so forth. But there were many lapses. A man who backed down under threats and backed off his testimony was a lapse.
The one who was prepared to die and did not back down, but for some reason escaped dying, he was a confessor. And the one who actually did die was a martyr. Those terms were used in the early church quite a bit.
John actually was a confessor. He's the only one of the apostles we know of who did not die as a martyr. Yet he was a confessor because according to the stories from the early church, he was subjected to that which should have killed him.
He was condemned to be dipped in boiling oil. And apparently he was. But he survived.
Apparently unscathed. We don't have absolute knowledge of this, but this is in the traditions of the early church. We do know of other cases that are not dissimilar, like Polycarp who was burned at the stake but the flames wouldn't touch him.
And that was witnessed by a whole arena. So, I mean, there were miracles like that. And John, this tradition about John may be true, that he was dipped in boiling oil, but he survived.
And out of frustration, the persecutors sent him to the island of Patmos, which was a prison island where it's a rocky island just a few miles off the coast of Turkey, sort of a crescent-shaped island where prisoners went to break rocks, sort of like a chain gang colony. And so John found himself, as we shall see, on Patmos because of his testimony. We will see.
That's what he says in verse 9. I, John, both your brother and companion in tribulation and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was on the island that is called Patmos for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. Notice the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. We found it in verse 2 also.
John bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ. Now, both of these expressions have the word of in them. And scholars cannot decide on something.
And that is, does the testimony of Jesus Christ mean a testimony that is born about Jesus Christ? Like, if I testify about Christ, that's the testimony of Christ I'm presenting. Or does it mean the testimony that Christ testifies? Like a witness on the stand gives his testimony, Christ is giving his testimony. It's the testimony of Jesus.
That is something that the phrase can go either way, as scholars tell us. The Greek scholars say it's not clear whether it is Jesus' own testimony that is here spoken of, which is being given through John, Jesus is speaking through John, or whether it's just John speaking about Jesus. Likewise, the word of God, is that the word about God, or is that the word from God? The phrase can mean either one.
And this becomes a puzzle for many scholars who are trying to sort out the Greek of the book of Revelation, which is itself problematic. But we can see one thing without having to decide those issues, and that is that John equated the word of God with the testimony of Jesus Christ. And both of those, no doubt, were equated with the gospel, preaching the gospel.
Later on, we're going to read in chapter 11 that many of the martyrs overcame Satan by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death. The word of their testimony probably, in all probability, means their preaching of the gospel. The testimony of Jesus was the testimony about, or from, Jesus about the gospel.
And the word of God is another term used apparently in the same way. And we find them linked in the book of Revelation again and again, and often the word testimony or witness, the same word, is found in it by itself. Key themes in the book.
And it says that John borrowed testimony, verse 2, of Jesus Christ and to all the things that he saw. And he says, Now, to hear it is one thing, or read it. Probably the one who reads is considered to be the one who would be the public reader in the church.
People didn't have their own copies of this to take home and read. They didn't have printing presses, so it was very, very difficult to get a copy of any kind of written literature. It had to be handwritten, every copy.
But what would normally happen is a reader in the church would get up and read it out loud to the church. So, blessed is he who reads may be a blessing on the public reader who reads it, and then on anyone who keeps the words. Now, this doesn't mean preserves them.
It means obeys them, of course. To keep the word of God means to obey it. So, the book is not just about predictions.
It's got imperatives. It's not just saying there are things going to happen. It's saying there are things that must be done.
Actions, commandments that must be kept and obeyed. And so he says, So, because the time is near, the person who keeps these words is blessed. Meaning, apparently some people will be in trouble if they don't keep them because the time is near.
There is a time that was near, a time of judgment and calamity that the book of Revelation is going to tell about. But there will be those who apparently can escape it. Those who can be blessed through it.
But only if they keep the warnings and the instructions in the book. And there are such warnings, especially in the seven letters of the seven churches that we will find. Now, at that point, the prologue, we might call it, but it's attached by somebody else, ends.
And John begins his book. John to the seven churches which are in Asia. A typical way of opening any epistle.
The author identifies himself, identifies his audience. There were, as I've said, more than seven churches in Asia at this time. There were at least ten.
There might have been many more. But in addition to the seven that are named in Revelation, there was a church at Troas and one at Hierapolis and one in Colossae. And they are not included.
So the number is seemingly artificially kept at seven. When it could have been eight, nine, or ten or maybe more if there were more churches that we don't know about. It is clear that the number seven is deliberately maintained in many senses in the book of Revelation because of its symbolic value.
Seven means completion. To say this is to the seven churches, no doubt seven of them were selected because their number suggests wholeness or completeness. The whole church of all time perhaps.
And so we would find then that the messages of the seven churches are applicable to them but to all churches besides too. And that is what I would think to be the significance of there being seven churches addressed. Although there were other churches in the region that were not here addressed.
Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come. And from the seven spirits who are before his throne. And from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead and the ruler of the kings of the earth.
To him who loved us and washed us from our sins with his own blood. Some translations say who freed us from our sins in his own blood. And has made us kings and priests.
Older translations say, or the older manuscripts say a kingdom of priests. There are many textual variants in Revelation. Let me just say this.
Revelation, the text of Revelation in the original is more difficult than most. You know many people say they think the Textus Receptus from which the King James was translated is the most pure text of the New Testament. Many people don't know that the Textus Receptus was put together by Erasmus from Greek manuscripts available in his time.
Many more have been found since then that he didn't have. But he translated the, well he didn't translate, what he did was he collected the best text of every book of the Bible and made what's called an eclectic text in Hebrew and Greek. But when it came to Revelation there were no Greek texts.
In his day no Greek text of Revelation had ever been found. The church had been using for centuries the Latin Bible which Jerome had translated from the Greek. And the Greek texts had been lost of Revelation.
There were no Greek texts in existence that he knew of or anyone else at that time. So what Erasmus did, he took the Latin Vulgate and made his own Greek translation from the Latin. And that became the Textus Receptus of Revelation.
Now what that means is of course there's a lot of guesswork in it. He didn't know what the actual original Greek words were. He had to kind of deduce it from Jerome's translation which he had made centuries earlier from the Greek into the Latin.
Now he has to translate it, make his own original translation back from the Latin into the Greek. Now the King James and the New King James which we are using actually use the Textus Receptus. But since that time there have been Greek texts of Revelation discovered.
And so we have texts of Revelation that Erasmus didn't have and were not available when the King James was written. So the bottom line is this. There are parts of the Greek text of Revelation that probably need to be corrected by the older manuscripts.
And so when we come to those parts I'll do my best to let you know where they are. And in this case where it says he washed us from our sins in verse 5, the older manuscripts say he freed us from our sins. A reference to the Passover.
Freed us from our sins by his blood. And he made us kings and priests. Well that's not quite as good as the kingdom of priests found in the older manuscripts that are actually in Greek.
Now let me say something about this. Because it says grace to you and peace in verse 4 from. Now usually the epistles of Paul or Peter say grace and peace to you from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ.
Well John goes one better. He sends greetings from the whole trinity it would appear. The first person that he sends greetings from is spoken of as he who is and who was and who is to come.
Now that last line who is to come seems like it might be a reference to Jesus because of the second coming of Jesus we anticipate. However Jesus is mentioned separately in verse 5 and from Jesus Christ. So he who is and was and is to come is not Jesus but is rather probably the Father is intended here.
Because Jesus is mentioned separately later. Now that means that the phrase is to come really means something like is to be. And that is how some translations will render it.
God is the one who was, who is and is to be. That is the unchanging one. In fact at the burning bush when God gave his name to Moses and said what we traditionally read as I am.
That I am. There are some translators who believe those Hebrew words should be translated I am he who is. And if that is true there is an echo of that verse in Exodus right here.
From him who is and who was and is to come. That is the Father. And from the seven spirits of God who are before his throne.
This is thought by most to be a reference to the Holy Spirit. Whether it is or not no one can say for sure. The seven spirits of God are mentioned four or five times in the book of Revelation.
And each time they are mentioned it muddies the water more. It is never explained who they are. For example in chapter five when it talks about the seven eyes on the lamb who is Christ.
It says these seven eyes are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the world. So the eyes on Jesus are the seven spirits but Jesus does not really have seven eyes. So do they really not exist these seven spirits? How are we to understand this? The seven spirits are mentioned a number of times without ever clearing up who is intended by that term.
And so theories may abound but the common theory of most commentators, I cannot do better myself, is that this is simply a term for the spirit of God himself. And usually the cross reference that is given to make the seven spirits be a reference to the Holy Spirit is back to Isaiah chapter 11 in verse 2. In Isaiah chapter 11 verse 2 there is reference to the spirit of the Lord. And he is referred to here as the spirit of the Lord and six other designations.
He is the spirit of the Lord, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and might, of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. So there are seven ways in which the Holy Spirit is spoken here. He is the spirit of the Lord, the spirit of wisdom, the spirit of understanding, the spirit of counsel, the spirit of might, the spirit of knowledge, the spirit of the fear of the Lord.
So he is described in Isaiah 11 verse 2 and that is the best that scholars can do to try to make sense of the seven spirits of God. Obviously it is not all that satisfying because it does not say the seven fold spirit of God, it says the seven spirits of God. And yet if this is a reference to the Holy Spirit, which is just about the only theory that has ever really been seriously entertained by commentators, then we can see how symbolic the language is because we know there is only one Holy Spirit and to depict him as seven spirits perhaps it might mean the Holy Spirit in all of his complete manifestation or something like that since the number seven would be completeness.
It is difficult to know how John, or more properly the Holy Spirit himself who inspired this, intended us to take that phrase, the seven spirits, but suffice it to say, unless someone can come up with a better theory, I am going to go with the default that most commentators do. I am not all that happy with it, but there is no theory I am happier with, so I am going to say that is the Holy Spirit. And if so, then we have had mention of the Father and of the Holy Spirit and then comes Jesus.
So we have got all the members of the Trinity here and Jesus is elaborated on. There are three titles that are given to Jesus and each of them serves, I believe, a pastoral purpose. If the churches that are receiving this letter are suffering, then like most times when Christians suffer, and we may not know much about this, because we haven't suffered very much in this country, although each of us has had his own personal sufferings, you know that when you are a Christian and you are suffering, especially if you are suffering for doing the right thing, if it seems like the church is being attacked and the enemies are winning, there are several questions that come to mind.
One of them is, is God really on the throne still? And is he really in charge or are these enemies in charge? It doesn't seem like what is going on is what God would want, so is there someone really in charge of the situation other than God? And Jesus is mentioned here in three designations that more or less answer the cry of the heart of the suffering churches. He is mentioned first of all as the faithful witness and as such he is the one who has been faithful unto death. Jesus calls us to be faithful unto death as he does for example in chapter 2 verse 10 to the church of Samaria, he says be faithful unto death.
His exhortation to them is be faithful unto death and I will give you the crown of life, but he has earlier said to them in verse 8, these things says the first the last who was dead and came to life. Now Jesus is the faithful witness who died for his testimony. And therefore he tells us to be prepared to die for our testimony.
The one who is facing martyrdom is to remember Jesus that he died for his faithfulness. He bore witness in a dangerous situation before Pontius Pilate and got himself killed there. And so if he did then we shouldn't think it strange if that's what must happen to us.
He is also called the firstborn from the dead. This is not the only time Jesus is called that. Paul also uses that expression in Colossians 1.18. Jesus is the firstborn or the first begotten from the dead.
What does that mean? It means he was born or came to life from the dead. He was resurrected. In saying the firstborn from the dead it means he is not the only one but just the first one.
It suggests that as Jesus came out of the grave so will others later. Who? Well obviously us. And therefore calling him the firstborn from the dead it's informing people, reminding them who may face death themselves as he did for being a faithful witness and they may die that way.
Well he died but he rose. In other words even though he faced what we might call martyrdom he was vindicated anyway. Which is encouraging because we might face martyrdom.
And it's nice to think that we would be vindicated. But if someone said but Jesus was vindicated because he's God. I'm just an ordinary schmuck.
If I die how do I have any hope that I'll be resurrected? Well Jesus was the firstborn from the dead. He's just the first one not the last one. In another similar phraseology in 1 Corinthians 15 Paul refers to Jesus as the first fruits of those who slept.
That is again the first fruits are the beginning of a more general harvest. The firstborn is the beginning of a family of many children. And so first fruits of those who slept means the first one to spring up from the ground after being planted, the first resurrected one.
Firstborn from the dead has the same meaning. It means that he rose but not him alone. He's going to bring others in his train.
Others will rise. Those who are faithful unto death will be given a crown of life. They'll be crowned with resurrection as he was.
So he was the faithful witness as he's calling them to be. He's the firstborn from the dead meaning they too will rise from the dead if they're faithful unto death. And he's the ruler of the kings of the earth.
Answering the question is God still in control? Yeah, he actually is. The kings of the earth may be the ones who appear to be persecuting the church but he's the ruler over them. He's the king of the kings and the lord of the lords.
And therefore in mentioning these things about Jesus and there are many other things that could have been mentioned instead, this selection of reminders about Jesus seems to be calculated to encourage those facing the challenge of martyrdom for their faithful witness. Jesus did it first. He's not asking you to do anything he wouldn't do.
He was faithful unto death bearing witness. You must be too. He rose from the dead but he's not alone.
He's just the firstborn from the dead. You will be in that family of resurrected ones too. And he is the ruler of the rulers of the earth so that they really are not the ones in charge.
They seem to be in power. They seem to be doing their will against the church at this time but they are not really. They are doing nothing but what he permits them to do because he's the one who's sovereign over the rulers.
And that is really something that in almost any kind of trials, the sovereignty of God is probably the one thing more than any other that Christians need to be reminded of. It's in other words saying God's still in control. He's in charge.
He's the ruler. He's sovereign. He's still in control.
In almost any trial, in almost any test where we are tempted to be discouraged, simply to remember God's in control is all that is usually necessary to instill the kind of courage we need. That things haven't spun out of God's control. He's still very much at the helm even if it doesn't look like it.
Then it says of Jesus that he loved us and washed us or freed us from our sins in his own blood and has made us a kingdom of priests. A better rhetoric from the better manuscripts on this. To his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.
Amen. Then it says, behold he is coming with clouds and every eye will see him and they also who pierced him and all the tribes of the earth will mourn because of him. Even so, amen.
Now this statement is sort of a theme statement of the book. It's meaning, however, cannot be assumed to be on the surface necessarily. To me, I always read this meaning, okay, the second coming.
He's going to come with clouds in the sky, all the people of the earth are going to see him and in chagrin, those who have not served him and have not believed him, they're going to mourn. But we have to be careful about this thing because the word comes. Behold he comes.
He is coming with the clouds is not necessarily a term that always refers to the second coming. In the book of Revelation, we will find that when he writes to the seven churches, many of them are told that he's going to come to them. By the way, all those churches are gone now, except for the church of Philadelphia or Smyrna.
Both of them might exist. Ismyr is Smyrna today in Turkey and there is a small congregation there. I've heard mixed reports of whether Philadelphia has one.
But five of the seven, at least, have been extinct for a very long time. If Jesus comes today, he's not coming to them. They're not there.
But he did apparently come to them in whatever sense he meant. But you can even tell by the instances of it, of the occurrence of this promise or threat, that he's not talking about his second coming in many cases. In chapter 2, when he's talking to the church of Ephesus, in verse 2-5, he says, Remember therefore from where you have fallen, repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you.
This is the coming of Christ, but not the second coming of Christ, not what we call the second coming. He says, I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place and bless you to repent. Moving the lampstand means he's going to snuff out the light of that church.
That church is gone. It's gone now. He must have done it.
He must have come and done that because it's gone. That lampstand is no longer there. But that was him coming to them.
Now, in other very well-known cases, in chapter 3, when he's talking to the church of Laodicea, in verse 20, he says, Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him. So Jesus comes to them too, but in a very different sense.
Here, he's not removing their lampstand. He's coming into them to dine with them and so forth. We take this generally to mean his indwelling presence.
He's going to come, perhaps in his Holy Spirit, and dwell inside. And yet, the same words. I will come.
I will come. I will come.
In some of the churches in between those two, we just read promises to the first and the last of those churches.
In between, sometimes he says, I will come and fight with you with the sword out of my mouth. He says that to the church of Pergamos. In verse 16 of chapter 2, Repent or else I will come to you quickly and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth.
That church is gone too. There's no church there. Not even a city there.
Now, he must have come and fought against them, but it wasn't the second coming of Christ. Many times, the coming of Christ or of God in the Bible is figurative. It doesn't always mean what we think of as the second coming.
When Jesus sent out the disciples in Matthew 10, two by two, He said, now you go into certain cities, you preach the kingdom is at hand. If they receive you, stay there for a while and preach some more. If they don't receive you, stamp the dust off your feet, leave that and go to the next village.
He says, because you will not have gone to all the villages of Israel until the Son of Man comes. Now, how long would it take to go to all the villages of Israel? Not 2,000 years. He's saying you need to hasten because the Son of Man is going to come before you get this job done.
Well, if he's talking about a second coming, I dare say 2,000 years is more than enough to visit all the villages of Israel. He couldn't very easily have been talking about that, it seems to me. So, what does he mean before the Son of Man comes? That verse, by the way, was of Matthew 10, 23.
Or, take Matthew 16 and verse 28. Matthew 16, 28. Jesus said to his disciples, Assuredly, I say to you, there are some standing here who shall not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.
Now, those people are all dead now. But he said some of them would not die before they saw the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. If you look at Matthew 24, which we have observed has similarities to Revelation, the Olivet Discourse, He says in verse 30, Matthew 24, 30.
Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then the tribes of the earth will mourn. Hey, that sounds like Revelation 1, 7. All the tribes of the earth will mourn. And they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.
That's what Revelation 1, 7 says. I'm coming on the clouds. Every eye will see him.
Those who pierce him, the tribes of the earth will mourn. Both Revelation 1, 7 and Matthew 24, verse 30 are echoing a verse in Zechariah 12, 10. They will look upon him whom they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only begotten Son.
And it says that all the tribes of the earth will mourn. Now, the thing about this Matthew 24, 30 is that a few verses later, Jesus says, Matthew 24, 34, Assuredly, I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things are fulfilled. Now, they're going to see the Son of Man coming on clouds, and all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and that's going to happen in that generation? That's what Jesus said, and it's the same prediction he made in chapter 16, verse 28.
Some of you standing here will not taste death before you see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. This was not the second coming. It was something else.
Now, scholars have different opinions as to what it was. Some scholars think that the prediction in Matthew 16 was fulfilled at the Mount of Transfiguration. Maybe, but the same prediction was then made later, after the Mount of Transfiguration, in Matthew 24.
It must have been something out beyond that. Let me show you another verse. In Isaiah, chapter 19, verse 1. This chapter of Isaiah is a prophecy against Egypt, and as you can tell when you read through it, it's about the Assyrian invasion.
The Assyrians invaded Egypt in the 8th century BC. This prophecy predicts it. And this is how it begins in chapter 19, verse 1. Isaiah 19, verse 1. The burden against Egypt.
Behold, Yahweh rides on a swift cloud and will come into Egypt. So, Yahweh is coming on a cloud? To Egypt? What actually did happen to Egypt? The Assyrian armies came to Egypt. It was a judgment from God.
God sent them. It was God's judgment on the Egyptians, engineered through the armies of the Assyrians. Because it was God's judgment, it is said that God came.
God came on the cloud and destroyed them. Now, God didn't literally ride clouds, and didn't, in a visible sense, come into Egypt. But it's the same language that we read of Jesus.
Behold, he's coming with a cloud. And Jesus said that would happen in that generation. So, when we come to Revelation 1-7, it says, Behold, he's coming with clouds, and every eye will see him.
Is this talking about what we at first think it's talking about? Now, what about this business at the end of Revelation 1-7? All the tribes of the earth will mourn because of him. Well, that comes from Zechariah 12-10. But the word earth can, as I've told you before, be translated land.
Tribes of the earth are tribes of the land. Either translation is equally valid. However, one makes more sense.
The earth generally is not divided into tribes, but nations. The Bible does speak frequently about all the nations of the earth. All the nations of the world.
But the tribes usually refer to the 12 tribes of Israel. The 12 tribes of the land. Of Israel, that would be.
And therefore, this might not be referring to any global situation at all. All the tribes of Israel in the land will mourn when they see Jerusalem fall, perhaps. Could that be the thing that happened before some of those stand their taste of death? That Jesus spoke about? Is that the thing that happened in that generation? Could be.
Could be. At least it is on the table as a possibility. It wouldn't be if we were not familiar with apocalyptic imagery.
And if we weren't familiar with the way that the word coming is used non-literally. Even in the book of Revelation. He comes to Ephesus and takes away their lives.
And he comes to those in Laodicea who hear him knocking and he comes to them. He comes to the church of Pergamum and fights with them with a sword for his mouth. These are figures.
This is not literal. Now you might say, well then how can you even know if there's going to be a literal second coming at all? Well, because it is spoken of as an event in certain passages that are not in symbolic books. Books like the epistles which are not written in apocalyptic imagery.
And it is said to be accompanied by things that have not yet happened. Like the resurrection of the dead. The second coming of Christ which is still future.
Jesus will come back. It says in Acts chapter 1. This Jesus whom you have seen going to heaven will come back in like manner. As you have seen him go.
He ascended, he will also descend in the same way. He will raise the dead the scripture says. These things have not yet happened.
That's future. But there are references to judgments. Which follow the Hebrew idiom in the Old Testament and the New.
Which speaks of judgment coming on a nation or on a land. As God coming in judgment upon them or a visitation from God. And so when Jesus says as the theme of the book, I'm coming with the clouds.
This may be the second coming. That would make this book about the end times and the end of the world. Or it may be something that will happen in that generation as Jesus said it would.
Jesus said they'll see the Son of Man coming with the clouds of glory. And all the tribes of the earth will mourn. That's the same thing said right here.
Only Jesus when he said it, said it will happen in that generation. So we have to, if we're going to let Jesus speak for himself on this. At least take seriously that this might be referring to something that happened a long time ago.
This does not mean there is no future second coming. It just means that this isn't talking about that. But this is talking about something else.
Using very common prophetic language. Now verse 8, I am the Alpha and the Omega. You probably know those are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet.
And therefore it's like I'm the A and the Z. Suggesting that he encompasses all that is in between. He's everything. He's the beginning and the end says the Lord.
Who is, who was and who is to come. The Almighty. Now Jesus is the one who is and was and is to come.
And yet the one who is and was and who is to come in verse 4 was distinguished from Jesus. And seems most likely to be a reference to the Father. So is this person who is speaking the Father? He does say he's the Almighty.
When you talk to Jehovah's Witnesses about the subject of Jesus being God or not. They always say well it does say in Isaiah he's the Mighty God. But it doesn't say he's the Almighty God.
Only Jehovah is the Almighty God. Jesus is just a Mighty God they say. But here whoever is speaking is the Almighty God.
And says so unambiguously. How do we know who this is? Is this the Father speaking or is it Jesus? Well he's the Alpha, he's the Omega, the beginning and the end. Actually in the Old Testament Yahweh in Isaiah is called the first and the last.
And that expression is added to these ones later in this chapter. When you look at verse 18. John sees a person whom we will have to describe and identify.
And he was so impressed he fell on his face like a dead man. And at the end of verse 17 he put his hand on me saying to me do not be afraid I am the first and the last. As I said this expression the first and the last is actually a reference in Isaiah 41.4 and Isaiah 44.6 and Isaiah 48.12 to Yahweh.
Yahweh calls himself the first and the last. But he goes on and says I am he who lives and was dead and behold I am alive forevermore. Amen.
And I have the keys of Hades and death. Now here's the problem. When did Yahweh ever die? He says I lived but I was dead but I live now again.
This cannot be mistaken for anyone other than Jesus. And yet he's using the titles that Yahweh uses for himself. The first and the last.
He's the beginning and the end. He's the Alpha and the Omega. He is the Almighty in verse 8. And in verse 18 he says he had died and risen again.
These two verses together are devastating to any argument that would say that Jesus is anything other than Yahweh. The terms that are already applied to the Father in verse 4 are reapplied to Jesus in verse 8. The one who is, who was and is to come is the Father in verse 4 but is Jesus in verse 8. The first and the last in verse 17, a term for Yahweh in the Old Testament, is Jesus, the one who died and is alive again. So the identification of Jesus with God in this is unmistakable.
And that's why we say that Revelation has what we call a high Christology, higher than most books because it really does depict Christ as God himself. Although, like the rest of the Bible, it also distinguishes him between him and God. And this is the mystery.
This is the mystery in Revelation and elsewhere. When John is caught up into heaven and sees the one on the throne holding the book, that's obviously God the Father. And then the Lamb shows up and the book is handed to him.
That's obviously Jesus. There is a distinction between the one on the throne and the Lamb. And yet there's identity also.
How so? Well, I'll leave it to you to work it out. I go more or less with the standard Trinity definition. But it's not sacrosanct.
You know, the standard Trinity definition was worked out in 325 by a bunch of bishops. They might have gotten it right. They could be right.
I don't have any serious problem with the way they explained it. It could be true. But we have to realize their explanation is not inspired.
They were just doing what we all have to do. Taking all the scriptures on this subject and trying to make sense of a very confusing thing. Sometimes Jesus is identified with the Father.
Sometimes he's distinguished from Him. Obviously, in one sense, He is the Father. In another sense, He's not.
So that we see in Isaiah 9.6, unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. And the government shall be upon His shoulder, and His name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father. This child is called the Everlasting Father? There seems to be identity.
And yet Jesus says, the Father is greater than I. So here we have a mystery. If I wished, I could tell you everything I think about it. And I would.
But then I wouldn't be able to tell you what I think about the book of Revelation. So we have to choose our battles here. So I leave it to you to sort it out.
But I believe the Trinity is, in one sense or another, the correct explanation. There are people who've gone with modalism, where the Father becomes the Son, who becomes the Holy Spirit. There's only one person, not three, but He changes, wears different hats, so to speak.
That's generally considered a heresy. It's another attempt to explain this mystery. How could Jesus be the Father and not be the Father? But the Trinity, I think, answers the data of Scripture far better than any other theory.
They are one in substance, two in person. What does that mean? I don't think anyone knows. It's just the way we talk about it, to act like we've sorted it out.
Okay? But Jesus clearly claims to be God in this passage. Now, verse 9, And I, John, both your brother and companion in tribulation and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was on the island that is called Patmos for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ. In other words, I'm a preacher.
I was preaching. I got in trouble. I had to go to jail.
I was on the island of Patmos. He says, I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day. Now, the Lord's day is a term used only here in Scripture, but used frequently by the Church Fathers, whether it's used the same way in Scripture as by the Church Fathers is not certain.
But the Church Fathers in the early Church used the term the Lord's day to refer to Sunday, the first day of the week. And they called it that because it was the day that the tomb of Jesus was discovered to be empty. And he appeared, resurrected from the dead, to the disciples on the first day of the week.
And that was more important to them than the Sabbath. So they began to observe Sunday as the Lord's day. Saturday was still called the Sabbath.
Throughout the book of Acts, they still called Saturday the Sabbath. But Sunday eventually became the primary day that Christians gathered for worship. And in the second century, they referred to Sunday as the Lord's day.
Now, John uses the expression here, the Lord's day. And I guess we don't know for sure whether he's using it the same way that it was later used. But if he is not, I can't think of any other way he would be using it.
Now, my former pastor said, well, this line, I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day. He said, well, that can be translated, I was in the Spirit unto the day of the Lord. And what he meant by that is he was carried into the future to the second coming, to the day of the Lord, at the end of the age, in the Spirit.
Perhaps as Ezekiel was in the Spirit, he was carried from Babylon. The Spirit picked him up by the hair of his head, lifted him up and carried him to Jerusalem, which is short of vision. That is what my former pastor, who is a dispensationalist and a futurist, thought.
And he was saying, I was in the Spirit, carried off to the day of the Lord, meaning the end of the age. Well, it could be the day of the Lord, it may not be the end of the age. It may be that it was the day of the Lord against Jerusalem.
The day of the Lord is an expression often found in the Old Testament. And it's always a day of judgment. And it can be on any nation.
It can be the day of the Lord on Moab. It can be the day of the Lord on Babylon. It can be the day of the Lord on Assyria.
It can be the day of the Lord on Egypt. The day of the Lord was the day of judgment. Not always the same day, but for any given nation, the day of judgment for them was the day that the Lord settled the score that he had with them.
And it was the day of the Lord for them. If John is saying, I was carried by the Spirit unto the day of the Lord, this wouldn't necessarily mean the end of the world day of the Lord. It could be the day of the Lord on Jerusalem or any other judgment day for any other people.
In any case, I'm happy enough to go with what most commentators say, that he's probably referring to Sunday here. And he was in the Spirit. If it was Sunday, there's a good chance that he knew that his congregation back home in Ephesus was gathering to worship.
He was exiled, he couldn't be with them. Perhaps longing for Ephesus, that was his home church. It was just across a little bit of water.
I think it was about 27 miles offshore from here, 40 miles offshore, I don't remember. But Paphos was not very far from Ephesus, from the mainland, but it was so near yet so far. When you're in exile, you're in prison.
And on this Sunday morning, it may be that he was reflecting on the fact that his friends back home were probably getting together about now. And as he thought about it, it may be, and it'd be hard for him not to think about it, I would think, on such an occasion. He hears a voice.
He says, I heard behind me, verse 10, a loud voice as of a trumpet saying, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last. Now, by the way, in the previous statement, in verse 8, he said, I'm the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. Now, instead of beginning and end, it's first and last.
And only there do we introduce, actually, the expression Isaiah uses for Yahweh. Isaiah doesn't call Yahweh the beginning and the end, or the Alpha and the Omega. It's the first and the last.
We didn't have that included in verse 8, but now we do. The same person who spoke in verse 8 is now the first and the last, a title of Yahweh. And what you see, write in a book and send it to the seven churches which are in Asia.
He names the particular ones. To Ephesus. Now, that, if John, in fact, was homesick for his home church in Ephesus, it perhaps sparked his interest.
Oh, we've got, Jesus is going to be sending a letter to my home church. I get to take dictation and send it to them. That's the first one.
To Smyrna, which is modern Izmir in Turkish. To Pergamos, or Pergamum, modern translations usually say. To Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, to Laodicea.
That's the seven. They are listed in a logical order. If you follow a map, you'll find that Ephesus, of these churches, would be the most southwesterly of them.
And Smyrna was to the north. And as you would follow the churches as they are listed, you'd move northward, then eastward, then down southward, in a horseshoe shape. It was the natural route that a postal carrier might carry a letter from town to town.
And so, most commentators believe that this is listed in the order that the churches would receive them, in the natural progression of carrying a letter in that region to the various cities. And so, he writes a circular epistle. Apparently, most of the book of Revelation is for all seven churches to read, but each one receives its own little individual message, also, as we shall see in chapters 2 and 3. Not tonight, I assure you.
Verse 12, Then I turned to see the voice that spoke with me, and having turned, I saw seven golden lampstands. Interesting, he didn't see first the person, but the golden lampstands. And in the midst of the seven lampstands, one like the Son of Man.
I don't know if this is intentional, but the seven lampstands, you know, are the seven churches, as we shall see in verse 20. And when he turned to see and hear the voice of God, he didn't first see Jesus, he first saw the church. And it may be that this is trying to communicate that if you want to hear the voice of Christ, if you want to see Jesus, you're more likely, first of all, to have to see the church.
It's there that he dwells, it's there where he speaks. Now, when the Bible uses the term church, we shouldn't mistake it to mean what we think of as church necessarily. We've got 2,000 years of tradition here that the so-called church has been morphing into something very unlike what the original was.
After all, I don't think any of us here think that the medieval church, the Roman Catholic church conducting inquisitions and crusades and so forth, that that's the same thing that John or Jesus would have called the church. The church is the body of Christ. It's the bride of Christ.
The church is the community of Christ on the earth. It's obvious that many things have been called church that are not that. Certainly, we acknowledge that in the Middle Ages, although we sometimes think that since the Reformation, it all got recovered again.
Now, what we have and what we call church is the same thing they had back then. That is not something we should take for granted. We should assume nothing.
We've had 2,000 years of tradition, and even the Reformation didn't shed very much of the innovations that the Roman Catholic church had brought in. Only a few were shed. And so, as we think about the church, we're talking not about the institutions that we call churches.
We're talking about the community of believers who are born again, followers of Jesus Christ, disciples, collectively seeing. God looks on the earth. He sees us all.
And he sees a city, a New Jerusalem. He sees a nation. He sees a kingdom.
He sees something that we don't see with our eyes. But it exists, and we are part of it. And this is where Jesus is found.
Jesus is found in his people. He dwells in his people. He dwells in the tabernacle that he's established, which is the church, a temple built from living stone.
And so, John turns to hear Jesus' voice, and what he first encounters is the church itself, the seven churches. And then, within the seven churches, among them, he sees Jesus. That's where Jesus meets him, through his people, through his community.
And I saw the seven golden lampstands. And in the midst of the seven lampstands, one like the Son of Man. It's interesting he didn't say, I saw the Son of Man.
When John had known Jesus, personally, of course, had been very close to him, he could say, I saw Jesus, and I recognized him right off. It was him. It was the Son of Man.
Instead, he's a little more cautious. He says, I saw one that was like the Son of Man. And this itself may suggest that this was the angel that Jesus sent to speak on his behalf, who resembled him.
I don't know. Or maybe it's just a matter of speaking, and it really was Jesus. We know that the speaking is the message of Jesus.
The things spoken by this messenger are the words of Jesus. Whether it was Jesus appearing to John himself, or the angel that we were told about, that Jesus sent his angel to John, this is never explained fully. I just find it interesting that it says that what he saw was one like the Son of Man, when he could have, as a personal friend of Jesus, I saw the Son of Man.
I saw Jesus. After all, when Stephen was being stoned, he saw the heavens open, and he said, I see the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. He didn't say, I see one like the Son of Man.
The expression Son of Man could be a Son of Man. And one like a Son of Man would be just a human form. Someone who's like a human.
That's actually the term that Daniel used. In Daniel 7, verses 12 and 13, he says, I saw one like a Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven to the ancient days. And John may be replicating that expression.
It's very possible. Anyway, I'm not going to go on the record to say this was or wasn't Jesus himself. I'll say that I've always figured it was.
Because everything he says is Jesus talking. Whether it's Jesus appearing and talking, or Jesus talking through an angel, who knows, any more than the angel of the Lord, obviously, is the Lord talking. These things do not have to be resolved for my satisfaction.
Maybe for yours. You're going to have to get it from someone other than me. Because I don't know.
This description of the one like a Son of Man, or the Son of Man, was clothed with a garment down to the feet, girded around about the chest with a golden band. His head and his hair were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes like a flame of fire. His feet were like fine brass, as if refined in a furnace, and his voice as the sound of many waters.
He had in his right hand the seven stars, and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and his countenance was like the sun, shining in its strength. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. But he laid his right hand on me and said to me, Do not be afraid.
I am the first and the last.
I am he who lives and was dead. And behold, I am alive forevermore.
Amen.
And I have the keys of Hades and death. Now, the description of this person follows very closely, point by point, with only a few deviations.
The description of a man that Daniel saw in Daniel chapter 10. He had been fasting and praying for 21 days, and finally a messenger from heaven appeared to him and gave him information. And the description that Daniel gives of this man before we hear anything that he said is what we find in Daniel 10, 5 and 6. It says, I lifted up my eyes and looked, and behold, a certain man, clothed in linen, whose waist was girded with the gold of Ephaz, his body was like burial, his face like the appearance of lightning, and his eyes like torches of fire, his arms and feet like burnished bronze in color, and the sound of his words like the voice of a multitude.
Now, almost everything in that has its own, its parallel in Revelation, although Revelation has some additional points, like the seven stars in his hand and such. But the linen robe, the gold. Now, what's interesting here is in Daniel chapter 10, verse 5, his waist was girded with gold of Ephaz.
In Revelation, the golden girdle was over his shoulders or across his chest. Some commentators have thought that as the girdle was used, that is, the sash was used to gird up the skirts of the garment when a person was doing their work, that when he was done with his work, he'd take off that girdle and throw it across his chest, over his shoulder, and walk home with his work completed. And that here in the Old Testament, Jesus still has his girdle on because his work is not complete, but by the time Revelation comes, he's already finished his work, as Hebrews tells us, and now he's just throwing his girdle across his chest, and he's now just, it's not being used anymore.
Others have argued that the girdle across the chest is actually bound around the chest, just as it would normally be around the waist, and that high-ranking dignitaries wore their girdles higher on their chest, it was sort of a mark of rank. I don't know which commentators are right. You know, the commentators always like to bring in all kinds of cultural claims.
Oh, this is a reference to this thing that was done in the Roman Empire. And boy, is it hard to find the documentation anywhere except in the commentaries. You know, the commentators, I guess, expect us to trust that they are the documentation, but I would prefer to find... I guess I've seen too many preachers and Christian writers pass along a rumor as true, and then later find out there's actually no... there's no original sources for this, you know.
Someone came up with it in a sermon, thought it was a good idea, and then it got passed along as if it was a fact, and then forever after, it's in the commentary. I really don't know why the difference. The girdle is around the waist in Daniel, it's across the chest in Revelation, so there's different explanations that have been given.
But one thing is clear, the features describing him are those of Daniel chapter 10. And therefore, many have felt it's safe to say that the man who appeared to Daniel was, in fact, Christ in his preexistent form. But we should realize this, that in all likelihood, this was a visionary experience rather than a physical man standing there who looked like this.
A sword coming out of his mouth obviously would represent his words. It's a symbolic thing. If there's really a big sword coming out of his mouth, he better stand back when he turns his head.
The idea that there was really this physical phenomenon rather than it being a vision that he had on the island of Patmos seems unlikely. For example, we find that when John falls on his face as one dead, that Jesus, or the angel, or whoever it is, takes his right hand and puts it on John's head. Well, he had the stars in his right hand.
What happened to them now? The stars in his right hand symbolize him holding the stars, which he explains in verse 20. But it's a symbolic thing, I think. I believe that it's a vision.
I don't think Jesus stood there physically. I don't think when we see Jesus that we'll see him described like this. Any more than when he saw Jesus in chapter 5 as a lamb with seven eyes and seven horns, I don't think that is literal either.
I think that John has seen visions that symbolically depicted that. And these characteristics that are described, I think, symbolize things that are true about Jesus. His hair white as wool suggests old age or wisdom.
The hoary head is the crown of glory if it's found in the way of righteousness, it says in Proverbs. His eyes were like a flame of fire, piercing vision. His feet like bronze.
Now, his feet are used later to trample on the grapes in judgment. Therefore, his bronze feet are like unbreakable judgment trampling upon the wicked. Different things apparently have different meanings.
The long white robe down to his feet is what priests wore. Not many people wore robes down to their feet. It wasn't very practical for walking or for working.
But the priests wore long robes down to their feet. So, he's got a garment down to his feet. He may be in a priestly garment for all we know.
There's quite a few different features here of Jesus that one could imagine representing certain things. Their identity and their meaning would be speculative in some measure. But anyway, John falls down paralyzed with fear, apparently.
And we'll just call it Jesus. He speaks to him and says, I am the first, the last, and so forth. He puts his hand on his head and he says to him, I have the keys of Hades and death.
Now, Hades and death are going to be characters in the drama beginning in chapter 6. The fourth horseman is death. And he's followed by a runner named Hades. And so, we're going to have a symbolic drama where death and Hades figure in it.
And in the end, death and Hades are going to be thrown into the lake of fire with all the other bad guys. We're going to have a personification of these things. Death is, of course, we know what death is.
It's when you stop living. Hades is where the dead go. So, death and Hades represent the great enemy of man, the wages of sin.
That which intruded into God's creation when man sinned and which should never have come in the first place, which the devil brought about by tempting Adam and Eve. And therefore, death came. Now, death and Hades can be unlocked because Jesus has the keys.
Preachers love to give all kinds of imaginative scenarios about this. A very common one that people have heard preachers say is that when Jesus died, he went down to Hades and he confronted the devil who had the keys to death in Hades and he grabbed the keys from the devil and he emerged from the grave holding the keys that he had seized from the devil. Now, the Bible doesn't ever say that the devil holds keys, although, of course, he is referred to as one who has the power of death in Hebrews 2.14. But this idea that Jesus went down to Hades and got the keys is nowhere really taught.
I mean, that's adding a lot of trappings to a story that is never told in the Bible. The Bible doesn't tell what Jesus did when he died and during those three days. But he does at this point say he has the keys of death in Hades.
Now, keys open locks, which means that if you are on his side, he could open the gates of Hades and you could escape. You could rise from the dead, in other words. If you die, he can let you out of death in Hades.
He opens and no man shuts. And he shuts and no man opens. He'll tell one of the churches in chapter 3. And he has these keys.
He determines who will live and die. He determines who will be in hell and who will be in heaven or whatever. It's he's the one who's determining fates beyond the grave.
This is the point here. He's got the keys. The keys represent the authority to lock or to unlock.
Now, you might remember an interesting statement that Jesus made that is taken a lot of different ways by different people. Jesus said when he spoke to Peter in Matthew chapter 16, he says, You are Peter, upon this rock I'll build my church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. Why will the gates of Hades not prevail? Well, Jesus has the keys.
He can open them. What are the gates of Hades? Many people, without thinking, say, Well, this just means that the church will never be overrun by the devil. Because actually in the King James Version, Hades was translated as hell.
So it said the gates of hell will not prevail against the church. And most people thought that meant that under all the attacks that the church must undergo and must endure from hell, from the devil, the enemy will not prevail. The church will stand and withstand it all.
And then, of course, there's a group of people who look more carefully at the passage and say, Wait a minute. It doesn't say anything about the church being attacked. It talks about the gates of Hades will not withstand the church.
The church is attacking Hades. In those days, a walled city would close the gates. And that would keep out the enemy, maybe.
But what if the enemy is strong enough to overcome the gates and the gates don't prevail? Well, then Hades is invaded. So I remember growing up under the teaching and the impression that Jesus was saying the church will survive all the attacks against it. Then I looked at it more closely, as did some others, and said, Wait a minute.
It's saying that Hades will not survive the attacks against it by the church. But in all of this time, it never occurred to me that there's no reason in the world to associate the kingdom of darkness with Hades. It was because of the King James Version, the gates of hell.
We think of the devil, he's the lord of hell, isn't he? He's the one that's, you know, the gates of hell, that's his domain. But is it? Where in the Bible is Satan ever associated with Hades? He doesn't go there. He doesn't live there.
He doesn't control anything there. Satan is never mentioned in the same breath with Hades. Hades is not about Satan.
It's not about the powers of darkness. It's not about the demons. It's about people dead.
People who die go to Hades. That's the only thing the Bible says about Hades. It's the place of the dead.
So how is it that the gates of the place of the dead will not prevail against the church? Only if it means that the church, Christians, having died, will not be confined and trapped there permanently. In Isaiah, it talks about how Hades, or Sheol, in the Old Testament, same thing, has opened its jaws to receive those who are being judged and dying. The gates of Hades, the jaws of death, the jaws of Hades, they swallow up everybody.
Everybody dies. And everyone ends up locked into that prison of death and Hades. But Jesus has the key to that prison door.
He can let people out. He can resurrect the dead. The gates of Hades prevail against everyone except the church.
Because only the church is serving the Lord who has the keys and can let out the dead at the time of the resurrection. That's what I think is referred to here. It's talking about resurrection, not spiritual warfare.
I have used that verse, the gates of Hades will not prevail against us, many times in talking about spiritual warfare. And I have to say, in recent years, I've drawn back and said, is that really justified? Where is the word Hades ever associated with the enemy's territory? It isn't. The devil is not associated with Hades in the Bible.
Death is. And of course, he's associated with death, but that's not a direct link to Hades as the domain of Satan or under his control. I guess one could think of it that way, but that's not how the Bible speaks of it.
Now, verse 19, write the things which you have seen, the things which are, the things which will take place after this. In the Greek, the last line is the things that are about to take place after this. Three categories.
The things he has seen, well, that's what he had seen up to that point, the vision, and he does record it in chapter one. So he wrote what he had seen right there in chapter one. Then the things which are, that is contemporary things in his day.
Well, no doubt chapters two and three, those were current events, current state of the churches, the word that God had to the churches about what they needed to do differently. But the things which must take place after this or the things that are about to take place after this will be future things, after John's day. So there are three categories.
The things he had seen, that's recorded in chapter one. The things which are, that's the condition of the seven churches in chapters two and three. And the things that are about to take place after this begins at chapter four and runs through the rest of the book.
And by the way, if you look at chapter four, verse one, it says, after these things, I looked and behold, the door standing open in heaven. And the first voice which I heard was like a trumpet speaking to me, saying, come up here and I will show you things which must take place after this. The same phrase, metatauta in the Greek, after these things.
So the third category that he's to write is the things that will take place, metatauta, after these things. And in chapter four, verse one, the voice says, come up, I'll show you things that are going to happen, metatauta, after these things. So it's at that point John begins to write the things that would be future from his point of view.
So in a sense, chapter one, verse 19, provides an outline for the book. Three categories, three things to write, and he wrote them all in the order mentioned. Chapter one fulfills the first assignment, chapters two and three, the second assignment, and then chapters four through 22 fulfills the final assignment.
Finally, verse 20, the mystery of the seven stars, which you saw in my right hand, and the seven golden lampstands, the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands, which you saw, are the seven churches. Now this is one of the two times that the angel actually explains the mystery. The other time was when he explained the mystery of the seven heads that were seven mountains and seven kings and five of Paul and one now is, and there's an eighth coming, and he's one of the seven, and that was the explanation in chapter 17 of something that was not so confusing until it was explained.
In this case, this is the other case in the book of Revelation where we get the mystery explained. What is the mystery? The mystery is what are those seven stars? What are those lampstands? He says, well here, I'll explain the mystery here. The seven stars, well the seven stars are the seven angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.
The second part I can get, I know what churches are. There are seven churches in these seven towns. Okay, the seven lampstands represent the seven churches.
The number seven probably being whole, complete, perhaps in a sense they represent all of the churches. But the other part isn't made any more clear by being told. The seven stars are the seven angels of the seven churches.
Well, what is an angel of a church? Is this like a guardian angel over each church? Is this an angel from heaven that is kind of assigned to keep track of each church? We're not told of any such things, thus far in scripture. Is that what we're to imply from this? Not the only possibility, but it is a possibility. The main problem with that is that when the seven letters are addressed to the churches in chapters two and three, in every case, the letter is addressed to the angel of the church.
Take a letter, John, and write to the angel of the church of Ephesus, and to the angel of the church of Smyrna, and to the angel of the church of Pergamon, and so forth. Now, if God wants to communicate with his angels, does he have to send a message through an earthly guy writing a letter to the angels? If these are angels like heavenly angels, why doesn't God have a better communication system to get information to his troops than to go down to some guy on planet Earth and say, write a letter to these angels for me. Okay, where do I address it to? Where do they pick up their mail? This is a difficulty in seeing the seven angels as if they are angels in the sky.
And therefore, most commentators have said, well, the seven angels, I think we should take the angels in the generic sense of the Greek word, angel, means messengers. It is true that most of the time, the word angels in the New Testament does mean heavenly beings that live in heaven with God, supernatural, superhuman spirits. That's the normal, most frequent use of the term, but it is actually a normal Greek word for a messenger.
Even human messengers are called that sometimes. John's messengers they sent from prison to ask Jesus, are you the one who is to come? The Bible refers to them as the ongoloi, the messengers that John sent. They're human.
In other words, the word angel doesn't necessarily mean a superhuman being. It could refer to a human messenger. Therefore, the seven angels could be the seven messengers of the seven churches.
Therefore, almost all commentators, not all, but most, say the seven angels are the seven pastors of the seven churches. But that is a bit of an anachronism too, because it's reading back into the early church what we had in our churches, pastors. We have no evidence in Scripture that any church had what we call a pastor.
In the New Testament, the churches had elderships, and there is no record anywhere in the Bible of any church having a pastor. So the idea that these were seven pastors is reading back into the Bible conditions that developed in later church history, which we're accustomed to, and assuming that it must have been true then too, which the Bible bears no testimony to. On the other hand, even though churches may not have had pastors as we think of them, there might have been somebody who was assigned to read the letters.
There could have been somebody who was assigned to communicate outward information that came into the church, to the church, someone who was a good reader or something like that. He could have been the messenger of the church. We don't know for sure.
Do you hear me saying that a lot? We don't know for sure. Who are the seven spirits? Well, the common view is it's the Holy Spirit. Well, we don't know for sure.
Who are the seven angels? The common view is it's the seven pastors of the church. But we don't know for sure. On almost everything in Revelation, we don't know for sure.
And we just have to get used to that. Although some things will be easier to know when we can start comparing more scripture to scripture and getting a more reliable gauge of interpreting what we're trying to understand. But many things in Revelation, we just have to live with the curiosity.
And I guess it's not essential that we must know the answers. So, there are seven churches represented by the seven lampstands. There are seven angels of the seven churches who are going to be the recipients of the letters and no doubt communicate them to the church.
And that ends the vision. In chapter 2, he begins the letters themselves. That is, Jesus dictates the letters.
In that respect, the seven letters that we find in chapters 2 and 3 are very unique or absolutely unique. And they're the only letters in the Bible dictated by Jesus. These are letters from Jesus to the churches.
Now, of course, all the Word of God is from God in a way, from Jesus. But Paul never claimed that he was writing from Jesus. He said, I'm Paul.
I'll tell you what I know. I'll tell you what I think. I'll tell you what God has shown me.
But he didn't say this is from Jesus. But each of the seven letters said, this is from Him who holds the seven stars. From Him who has the eyes of flame of fire and the feet like furnished bronze.
From Him who is the first and the last. In other words, it's Jesus Himself sending these letters. John is just the scribe.
And so we'll see what those letters contain next time.

Series by Steve Gregg

Judges
Judges
Steve Gregg teaches verse by verse through the Book of Judges in this 16-part series, exploring its historical and cultural context and highlighting t
Revelation
Revelation
In this 19-part series, Steve Gregg offers a verse-by-verse analysis of the book of Revelation, discussing topics such as heavenly worship, the renewa
The Jewish Roots Movement
The Jewish Roots Movement
"The Jewish Roots Movement" by Steve Gregg is a six-part series that explores Paul's perspective on Torah observance, the distinction between Jewish a
The Beatitudes
The Beatitudes
Steve Gregg teaches through the Beatitudes in Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.
Ezra
Ezra
Steve Gregg teaches verse by verse through the book of Ezra, providing historical context, insights, and commentary on the challenges faced by the Jew
Philippians
Philippians
In this 2-part series, Steve Gregg explores the book of Philippians, encouraging listeners to find true righteousness in Christ rather than relying on
Gospel of Luke
Gospel of Luke
In this 32-part series, Steve Gregg provides in-depth commentary and historical context on each chapter of the Gospel of Luke, shedding new light on i
James
James
A five-part series on the book of James by Steve Gregg focuses on practical instructions for godly living, emphasizing the importance of using words f
When Shall These Things Be?
When Shall These Things Be?
In this 14-part series, Steve Gregg challenges commonly held beliefs within Evangelical Church on eschatology topics like the rapture, millennium, and
1 Timothy
1 Timothy
In this 8-part series, Steve Gregg provides in-depth teachings, insights, and practical advice on the book of 1 Timothy, covering topics such as the r
More Series by Steve Gregg

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