Revelation 1.4-8.
1.4 John. To the seven churches in Asia Minor. Grace to you, and peace from the Being, the Been, and the Coming; and the seven spirits in front of His throne; 5 and from Messiah Jesus, the trustworthy witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the prince over the world’s kings.
To the One who loves us, and frees us from our sins through His blood, 6 and made us a Kingdom, priests of God His Father: To Him, high opinion and power forever and ever. Amen.
7 Look: He comes with the clouds, and every eye will see Him—including whoever stabbed Him, and all the tribes of the world will wail over Him. Yes, amen.
8 “I am the first letter and the last letter,” Master God says, “the Being, the Been, and the Coming: the Almighty.”
“John” wrote Revelation, but there’s some speculation as to which John: the same John who wrote the gospel and possibly the letters—unless those are different Johns—or a third John altogether? Lots of people were named John; then, as now, it’s a common name. The reason why it might not all be the same John is because the events of Revelation appear to refer to the religious purges of emperor Domitian (Titus Flavius Domitianus, 81-96 CE) are said to have committed. (Eusebius Pamphilius, Church History 3.17) If that’s when Revelation was written, (CH 3.18) many scholars automatically say, “Can’t be John ben Zebedee; he’d be far too old.”
But that’s assuming—as many people automatically and incorrectly assume—that John was about the same age as Jesus. After all, that’s the way he’d depicted in art and movies. But 30-year-old men did not follow rabbis. They had families to take care of and jobs to do. Teenage men—for in Jesus’s culture, you were an adult at 13—would be disciples; John could easily have been 20 years younger than Jesus, which would put him in his 70s by the time Domitian was elected emperor. Hardly too old. And, according to Eusebius, this was the same guy—who, as bishop of Ephesus, the capital of Asia Minor, would be just the appropriate guy to get the visions that produced this book.
Exposition time. The introduction (vv1-3) doesn’t start like a proper Roman letter. This does. It’s the usual “From” and “To,” with the usual Christian greeting of “Grace and peace.” Yet instead of the usual bit about being from a servant of Christ Jesus and His Father, John just had a revelation so profound that he now describes God in big terms. But you know, the more we discover about God, the more we should pass that on to others. After all, revelation is for everyone.
“The Being, the Been, and the Coming” (vv 4, 8) is a bit of an expansion from the traditional “I am who I am.” (Ex 3.14) The original Hebrew
Footnotes tell us “the seven spirits in front of His throne” can be rendered “the sevenfold Spirit,” but the only translation I own that puts it that way is David Stern’s Complete Jewish Bible, which he defended by saying it’s bothersome that John, who wasn’t in favor of angel worship (19.10, 22.8-9) would stick a reference to seven created beings between a greeting from the Father and Jesus, instead of being more Trinitarian. He has a point. But let’s not rule out the possibility that John has a point: These seven spirits come up more than once in Revelation. They may be the seven angels who stand before God, (8.2) whom 1 Enoch 20 identifies them as Uriel, Raphael, Raguel, Michael, Saraqa’el, Gabriel, and Remiel. (Gabriel we know from Daniel 8 and Luke 1, Michael we know from Daniel 10 and 12; Raphael from Tobit in the Apocrypha.) I don’t know how valid 1 Enoch is, so let’s not cling to those names too tightly. Still, the point of these spirits is to show, as Revelation shows throughout, that God isn’t bringing about the End alone. Other mighty spirits, who work for Him, are connected with the End—and are particularly connected with the very seven churches John is writing to. These folks may have a part to play in the End. And by extension, we may have a part to play in the End.
John describes Jesus as “the trustworthy witness,” (v5) because if this is truly Jesus’s revelation, we ought to trust Him, and therefore His revelation. He’s “the firstborn from the dead” (v5) in that He’s the first to be resurrected, and “the prince over the world’s kings” (v5) —now, not just in the future. He also “loves us, and frees us from our sins,” (v5) “made us a Kingdom, priests of God His Father,” (v6) therefore He deserves “high opinion and power forever and ever.” (v7) Literally that’s “the eons of the eons,” a large span of large spans, which is why I go with “forever and ever.” But the thing about forever and ever is that it also includes now. Jesus’s authority and honor begin now, not later.
“Comes with the clouds” (v7) is a quote from Daniel 7.13, which is a phrase Jesus quotes to identify Himself as the Son of Man in Mark 14.62. “Whoever stabbed Him, and all the tribes of the world will wail over Him” (v7) comes from Zechariah 12.10, when God talks about destroying “every tribe” that comes against Israel. These two passages are also put together at Matthew 24.30. Originally these prophecies were specifically about Israel, not the world, but Jesus used their language to indicate that His Kingdom borrows their language because his vision of the End is about the world. (And I remind you: Don’t read Revelation backwards into the Old Testament.)
“The first letter and the last letter” (v8) is how I rendered what’s literally “the alfa and the Ω”—the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, back before Ω was renamed omega. It refers to a Jewish saying that God is the
“The Almighty” (v8) is literally παντοκράτωρ/pantokrátor, all-power. It’s a title given to pagan high gods. It’s included here to point out to any pagans who read this letter that God is truly the authority, not Zeus or Jupiter or Ra, or in our day, governments and money. God is called
And that’s one of the main themes of Revelation. In the Old Testament, the End was primarily about the rescue of Israel from its evil, evil neighbors. But that’s not what John is presenting in Revelation. Thanks to Jesus, the worldview had shifted completely: The End was no longer about the kingdom of Israel, but the Kingdom of God. The evil enemies to be conquered weren’t the countries around Israel, but the pagans who are intermingled with God’s followers all over the planet. The Prophets might have personally foreseen this, or not; doesn’t matter, ’cause God did.
However, part of bible study is reading the bible in context. That means when we’re reading Old Testament, we have to think, “What was the author trying to tell his readers?” Not “The author was really God, and the reader is really me, so what was God trying to tell me?” Wrong. God deliberately picked that prophet to give the message; God meant that message to be given to that people. We get something out of it only once we identify what they got out of it. The bible is not secret messages to the future.
The problem is that’s exactly what End Times fanboys think: the bible is secret messages to the future. Specifically us. ’Cause the End is coming soon! (Even though it’s been “coming soon” for twenty centuries; to them that just means it’s really coming really soon!) And in their quest for Kabbalah-style clues about the End, they misappropriate the OT’s prophecies about the Hebrews so they can fill in all the blank spots that Revelation seems so annoyingly full of. So whenever they trot out a prediction about the End and you’re wondering, “Where on earth did they get that from?” that’s where.
Of course if you try to look it up in the OT, you’ll find it’s not about that at all. But the very fact that you tried means you’ve done 100 percent more than most Christians. Your average Christian simply assumes the End Times experts know what they’re talking about, and never double-check. Those very few who do double-check conter-intuitively figure that since they can’t find anything, these experts must be really good, ’cause they can find stuff that seems impossible to find. Folks, God isn’t trying to hide anything. If anything, the prophecy scholars are doing the hiding: they don’t want you to see how fragile their house of cards really is.
I may rant about this a lot throughout Revelation. I’ll try not to.
Rv 1.4: Ἰωάννης ταῖς ἑπτὰ ἐκκλησίαις ταῖς ἐν τῇ Ἀσίᾳ· Yochanan to the seven churches, to the [ones] in the Asia, χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη ἀπὸ ὁ ὢν grace to you and peace from the [one; or who] being, καὶ ὁ ἦν καὶ ὁ ἐρχόμενος καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν ἑπτὰ πνευμάτων ἃ ἐνώπιον τοῦ θρόνου αὐτοῦ and the [one; or who] is being and the [one; or who] coming, and of the seven spirits which in front of the throne of him, 1.5A: καὶ ἀπὸ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, ὁ μάρτυς, ὁ πιστός, and from Yeshua Christ, the witness, the faithful, ὁ πρωτότοκος τῶν νεκρῶν καὶ ὁ ἄρχων τῶν βασιλέων τῆς γῆς. the firstborn of the dead [ones] and the first of the kings of the land.
1.5B: Τῷ ἀγαπῶντι ἡμᾶς καὶ λύσαντι ἡμᾶς ἐκ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ἡμῶν ἐν τῷ αἵματι αὐτοῦ, to the [one] loving to us and [one] loosening to us, from the sins of us in the bloods of him, 1.6: καὶ ἐποίησεν ἡμᾶς βασιλείαν, and he did to us [a] kingdom, ἱερεῖς τῷ θεῷ καὶ πατρὶ αὐτοῦ, priests of the God and father of him, αὐτῷ ἡ δόξα καὶ τὸ κράτος εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας [τῶν αἰώνων]· ἀμήν. to him the opinion and the power in the eons [of the eons], amen.
1.7: Ἰδοὺ ἔρχεται μετὰ τῶν νεφελῶν, you look! he comes with the clouds, καὶ ὄψεται αὐτὸν πᾶς ὀφθαλμὸς καὶ οἵτινες αὐτὸν ἐξεκέντησαν, and he will see him (all eye), and whichever [ones], him they stabbed, καὶ κόψονται ἐπ᾿ αὐτὸν πᾶσαι αἱ φυλαὶ τῆς γῆς. ναί, ἀμήν. and they will beat on him all the tribes of the land. Yes amen.
1.8: Ἐγώ εἰμι τὸ ἄλφα καὶ τὸ ὦ, λέγει κύριος ὁ θεός, I am the alfa and the O, he says (lord the God), ὁ ὢν καὶ ὁ ἦν καὶ ὁ ἐρχόμενος, ὁ παντοκράτωρ. the [one; or who] being and the [one; or who] is being and the [one; or who] coming, the all-power.
