REVELATION
Title of the only prophetic book of the New Testament, and which is taken from the first Greek word, which means “revelation.” In this book, the future is revealed in a series of panoramic visions seen by the Apocalyptic Seer. Light and darkness, good and evil, are moral forces in opposition.
God, Christ and Satan; Men, saved and lost, and angels, holy and ungodly, are the actors in this wonderful book about the plans and purposes of God. The scenes vary and change; now time, then eternity. The sky, the earth, the abyss and the lake of fire constitute its setting.
The song of the redeemed and the cry of the defeated rejoice and grieve. The result is the triumph of God, and the millennial and eternal glories of Christ shine brightly and everlastingly. “Then” what was said by the ancient Hebrew prophet will be fulfilled; “He will see the fruit of the affliction of his soul and will be satisfied” (Isa. 53:11).
The created heavens and earth (Rev. 22:1) become the eternal homes of all that is holy and good, while the lake of prayer (Rev. 21:8) will collect all that is wicked and contrary. bye bye.
Just as “grace” is the central theme of the Epistles, the characteristic theme of this book is the public “rule” of God in dealing with evil and in exalting good.
1. Division:
(a) Two parts. This book is divided into two main parts:
(A) From chapter 1 to 11:18, where the state of affairs and events from the end of the first century of Christianity to the introduction of the eternal state are prophetically outlined.
(B) From chapter 11:19 to 22:21, in which details are given related to Israel and Christianity in the terrible future crisis of their history.
(b) Three divisions. The key to the three divisions of the book is given to us in Rev. 1:19. Here we have the key to understanding this book. It contains a past, a present and a future:
(A) “Write the things you have seen.” This is the vision of verses 10-18, in which Christ, in the middle of the seven golden lampstands, is the central object. “Past”.
(B) “Write the things… that are.” These are set out in chapters 2 and 3, where the path of the professing church is traced through contemporary and successive stages of its history, from its decline (Rev. 2:4) to its rejection (Rev. 3:16). . “Present”.
(C) “Write the things… that shall be after these.” This division begins with chapter 4 and continues through 22:5. This is essentially the prophetic part of the book. “Future”. The seals, the trumpets and the bowls; Babylon, the wedding, the kingship, etc., are all things awaiting fulfillment.
(c) Twelve sections. The entire contents of the Apocalypse are distributed in twelve sections, and if they are carefully considered, they will be of great help to the study of the book.
(A) General introduction (Rev. 1:1-9).
(B) Christ in judicial glory among the seven churches of Asia (Rev. 1:10-18).
(C) The church in its profession of witness to God on earth. His increasing departure from love and truth (Rev. 2, 3).
(D) The heavenly saints enthroned and glorified, including all those mentioned in 1 Thessalonians (1 Thes. 4:5-17), (Rev. 4, 5).
(E) The seven seals successively opened by the Lamb (Rev. 6-8:1). Chapter 7 is a parenthetical passage of great interest.
(F) The seven trumpets, blown successively by the angels (Rev. 8:2-11:18). Here we have the revived Roman Empire as the protagonist of these prophecies of judgment.
(G) Three sources (App. 12), two actors (App. 13) and seven results (App. 14).
(H) The seven vials of God’s wrath successively poured out (Rev. 15-16). The last acts of God in his judgments on the empire, Israel, and the land.
(I) Mystical Babylon in its political and ecclesiastical associations and its total destruction (Rev. 17, 18).
(J) Chronological sequence from the fall of Babylon to the eternal state, opening with rejoicing in heaven, and closing with an image of eternal misfortune in the lake of fire (Rev. 19-21:8).
(K) The wife of the Lamb in governmental and millennial splendor. Love, life and beauty forever (Rev. 21:9-22:5).
(L) Warnings, threats and encouragements (Rev. 22:6-21).
2. Purpose.
The purpose of the book of Revelation is to keep love and hope alive by focusing the attention of its readers on the promise of the coming of the Lord and by announcing the final victory of the King of kings and Lord of lords, of the Word of God, over a world that rejected Him at His first coming and that will bow the knee to Him at His second coming.
The effect of all this on believers should be to keep them in a true appreciation of God’s grace and His counsels, so that “we may live in this age soberly, justly, and godly, awaiting the blessed hope and the glorious manifestation of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Tit. 2:12, 13).
3. Apostolicity of the book.
Already from the beginning, in the second century, we find that there is unanimity in assigning the authorship of Revelation to John the apostle, the author of the fourth Gospel. This paternity is affirmed, among others, by Justin Martyr (140 AD); Melito (170 AD); Theophilus (180 AD); Irenaeus (180 AD), who received this information from Polycarp himself, a disciple of the apostle John.
In the 3rd century, Tertullian (200 AD), Clement of Alexandria (200 AD), Origen (233 AD) and Hippolytus (240 AD), maintain testimony of the same. However, its apostolicity was later attacked, mainly alleging a great difference in style between the fourth Gospel and Revelation.
However, a careful examination of the texts and the constant testimony of the Church make it possible to reject such an attack. The comparison between the book of Revelation with the Gospel and with the first Epistle of John reveals that certain doctrinal ideas, and especially certain linguistic peculiarities, are common to all three writings.
That the style of Revelation is less fluid than that of the Gospel and the Epistle can be easily explained for two basic reasons:
(1) The theme itself forces the writer to use unusual expressions.
(2) The author, because he is dealing no longer with grace in action, as in the Gospel, but with the introduction of the days of the Messiah, with a radical change of conception in the dealings of God in which he spends from considering Israel as “lo-ammi” (“not my people”) to “ammi” (“my people”) through a series of judgments that will close this era of grace, is necessarily forced to deal with issues not peculiarly New Testament.
The apostle, however, does not introduce any new ideas into the New Testament, but rather develops the prophecies of the Old Testament, centered on the final triumph of God and the Lord Jesus Christ, and already indicated in other passages of the New Testament (cp. Mt. 24-25; and parallels; Acts 1:1-7; 15:14-18; Rom. 9-11; James 5:1-8; 1 Jn. 2:18-22, etc.).
Revelation is a book full of Old Testament symbology and imagery precisely because, in the light of the revelation of Christ in the New Testament, the development of God’s plan for the ages is brought to its fullness, and of his purposes, certainly, for humanity. Church, but also the consummation and fulfillment of the promises of restoration through judgments given to Israel by the prophets of the Old Testament, and endorsed in the New Testament, of the national salvation of Israel through the repentant remnant.
Due to this and other characteristics, the Johannine paternity of Revelation cannot be denied; rather affirm it; All the diversity of style and content, balanced on the other hand by the intense similarity already stated above in crucial linguistic matters, is due to the thematic difference existing within the multiform purposes of the God who inspired this book.
There is, then, no reason to reject the internal evidence and the uniform external testimony immediately to the writing of Revelation that it was written by the apostle John on Patmos, at the close of the first century, at the end of the reign of Domitian, about the year 96 AD
4. The different interpretations. They are innumerable, and among them four main systems can be distinguished.
(a) The “preterist interpretation.” Consider the Apocalypse as the description of what happened at the time of its writing. This interpretation is far from sufficient and eliminates the prophetic character of the book.
(b) The “historical-prophetic interpretation.” Its supporters argue that this book presents a complete outline of human and church history, and the history of the struggle between good and evil until the end of time.
(c) The “futuristic interpretation” considers that the totality of the events described after chap. 3 remain to be fulfilled in the future.
(d) The “purely symbolic interpretation” considers the visions as the representation in images of the truths that are to be fulfilled in the history of the Church.
Although the most coherent interpretation is number (c), since it harmonizes with all the prophetic hopes of Israel in the OT of a final restoration to repentance and joy in the days of the Messiah, in a national sense, also endorsed in various passages of the NT, one must also accept the fact that the prophecies of Revelation have a partial and preliminary fulfillment in past and present history, in a movement of ascending and ever-widening historical cycles, following the lines and moral principles of divine government seen in Revelation and the prophets, which will find their culmination in their future and total fulfillment.
It is only on the basis of a clear understanding of the symbols and images of the Apocalypse in accordance with the entire prophetic vision of the Scriptures, the recognition of its close relationship with the prophecies of the Old Testament, in everything that has to do with the cataclysmic establishment of the Messianic Kingdom on earth and its relationship with the remnant of Israel, converted to their Messiah in the times of “Jacob’s anguish”, that we will be able to see the broad outlines of God’s plans.
This will allow its application to illuminate the walk of the people of God in the midst of the persecutions and seductions of this world system that has rejected Christ, and that awaits that day when the Father will make the enemies of the Lord Jesus His footstool. , and that Christians will rejoice in the universal triumph and total recognition of the Lord Jesus, King of kings, Lord of lords, when the gates of Jerusalem will be raised to make way for the King of glory (cp. Ps. 24).