Revelations Puzzle of a Thousand Words

And that's how we are going to read it, now and in the coming weeks. Summarizing these opening verses, we hear them tell us, it is: The cover taken off 2. A rapid succession 3. In this sermon about the first verses, the "Introduction" you may say, some more introductory remarks have to be made. The first one has to be that our text is really a summary of what we read in the last chapter, chapter Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit John follows here the custom of many authors of books: The Introduction is written last, after the completion of the book.

Thus John, when he wrote this address to the seven churches, had already seen everything of this one revelation do not use the plural "revelations" , this one revelation given to him in successive pictures. We must bear in mind that we must keep an eye and ear on the whole book, while we read the opening words. Then there is that little but most-important word must in verse 1: What must soon take place. In the original Greek this must indicates the unfolding of a divine plan. The Lord Jesus, while on earth, lived with this must. He already used it as a boy, I must be about my Father's business, Luke 2: This is a must not of cold, impersonal facts, creating fatalism.

No, it is the word of the God of John 3: This must that guided our Saviour during his earthly life of suffering and death, now continues to guide Him in the glory of His exaltation, the glory of gathering His Church from His heavenly throne. The revelation which God gave. Revelation, literally taking away the cover.

The cover over what? The cover over what soon must take place. With John we would know nothing of what soon must take place it is covered from our eyes unless someone, in this case God Himself "reveals" and takes away the cover. This divine uncovering, as always, works in two directions. Not only the cover must be taken off from the things that are soon to take place We must take on our lips the prayer, so often heard from the lips of God's children, like in Psalm Like in the case of Elishah's servant, the prophet prayed, Lord, open his eyes so that he may see. We need this prayer. We are in need of such an opening of our eyes, so that we may see the uncovering of things that soon must take place.

Now we should discover from the words of our text, how this Revelation came down and is coming down. It is like coming down along a ladder with a number of rungs. The top of the ladder reaches into heaven, or rather the ladder is let down from heaven, from God. That is the highest rung: Worthy art thou, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power, for thou didst create all things, and by thy will they existed and were created.

The top of the ladder. Before we go down the next rung of the ladder, it may be noted that what we are going to see is not exclusively the very last days. The book of Revelation gives us a visionary picture of the whole new dispensation that started when our Lord and Saviour sat down in the heavenly throne. But not only that. When going through Revelation, we will note every time that it refers to the time of the Old Dispensation. It speaks in the words of the plagues sent by God to Pharaoh and his Egypt. It uses the colours and pictures of the journey through the desert. It repeatedly speaks about what happened at the beginning of history when the dragon, the old serpent, stood before the woman.

At the end that old serpent proves to be the last survivor of all antichristian powers in the history of this world. Thus we may say that Revelation speaks about the future, the last days, but certainly not only about the future.

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It tells us about what was the present for those seven churches, see only vs. Now write what you see, what is and what is to take place hereafter. And it speaks as much about the past; in chapter 4 about creation, in ch. Further you will hear about Egypt, Babylon, and so on. Many quotations from Daniel and Ezekiel remind us of that past.

As much as the blessing comes from Him who is and who was and who is to come, vs 4, so as much His book speaks about what is and what was and what is to come. Because past, present, and future are all one in the great drama proclaimed by God in paradise, the battle between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. And thus, with this in mind, we go down the ladder one rung: We must never overlook the names that are used for our Saviour. Here it is Jesus and Christ. The second name as the one ordained by God the Father and anointed with the Holy Spirit, as we confess in Lord's Day He is the one who received His mandate from God after He had become the son of Mary, and He fulfilled that mandate up till the moment that He sat down in the throne.

This already answers your questions which I hear coming. When and where and how did God give this Revelation to Jesus Christ? The answer to all these questions is given in chapter 5. And there you see again that our text, a summary of chapter 22, and written after the book was finished, includes what happened when no one could take the scroll from Him who sat upon the throne except the Lion of Judah, the Lamb of God.

God gave that scroll, containing past, present and future, to His Son who gave His blood for sinners. You may thus say that this event of the Father giving the scroll to the Son is also described in Matthew Unto Me has been given all authority in heaven and one earth, and in 1 Corinthians 15, for He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet, vs. Yes, on the day that Psalm 24 was fulfilled: Lift up your heads, you arch and gate; 0 ancient doors, rise up and wait..

Let Him come in, the King of glory! From now on He has everything under control. He will break open the seals, the seven seals of the scroll that the Father has given to Him. That's a must, the must of God's eternal good-pleasure. Isn't that a wonderful comfort already, in these first lines of the book, a comfort for the seven churches at the eve of persecution, a comfort for us who see the world around us changing by the month? What may all come of out of this chaos?

But everything is under control, the control of Jesus Christ. God gave this Revelation to the Son. Then comes the next rung on the ladder; one step down. Thus the Lord Jesus Christ, Lord of the angels too, did not come personally to John, but used an angel. Here we feel again at home.

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The Lord did again what he had done so often. One thinks of the prophet of Zachariah who was all the time, during the visions he received in one night, led around by the angel who could also answer his questions. The same occurs with Daniel and Ezekiel. Even Moses who was with God on the mountain, obviously needed the service of angels. We hear Stephen say, in Acts 7: When you hear this word in our text, you look of course beyond the text at what is said in the rest of this chapter. The Exalted Lord held in his right hand seven stars, vs.

So, in each of these churches there was an angel. The word angel means "messenger" who was sent to pass on the message from God. When no men were available, like on the mountain of Horeb, or in the night the Saviour was born, and on the morning of His resurrection, the Lord used angels. But as soon as possible they are joined by human angels, messengers and preachers, proclaiming the news from God. Thus, when we read in the text, by sending his angel, we cannot but also look at those seven angels of the seven churches.

Yes, they need the support of angels, very much so. But we have to always remember, when we attend God's Church to hear His Word, that we have there, before us, an angel sent by God! He, the man in the pulpit, will always during the preparation and the delivery of sermons have to keep in mind that he is only a messenger, but the most important messenger. And we in the pews, we have to always remember that too. That man in the pulpit, who has his breath in his nostrils, is but a human, and a sinner, but he is an angel sent form God! And this brought us another step down on the ladder that reaches into heaven: He even tells us on what day it happened to him.

I was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day. He must have been sitting on the rocky shore of the island Patmos, and - looking over the waves that separated him from his beloved flock in Ephesus, he must have seen them, With the eye of his mind, gathered together on the Lord's Day, without him in the pulpit, without him having to bring a message from the Lord.

But now the surprise! An angel, a vision wide and colorful and dramatic. And he has to write it all down: Now write what you see. And after that seven times repeated: Write what you see in a book, and send it to the seven churches: Please notice, brothers and sisters, that the command is not: And although further on in the book hearing is added to seeing, and combined with it, yet all the stress is on what John saw. This tells us that the special character of this fast book of the Bible is that it is a vision.

You must see it. And John must show it. And by stating this we have said quite a mouth-full. If it is a vision, we must not try to draw a picture, black on white, for example what we read in vs Literally a sword sticking out of the mouth of our lord. It looked awful, and 1 do not want to ever see it again. The words are all symbolic. The Word is the sword of the Spirit, yes, even two-edged, cutting right through heart and soul and spirit, right through the church and right through the world.

But not a sword in the literal sense: Greydanus writes in his commentary on Revelation, We cannot make a picture of the glory in which the Lord appeared to John, and we should not try ft. Everything in Revelation is visionary, symbolical.

Revelation's Puzzle of a Thousand Words

Thus we are now already told in the opening lines of this book that we are not to take, for example, the many numbers of Revelation literally. Many people, like the Jehovah Witnesses, actually do take the number , literally. The real mature members of this sect expect to dwell in heaven, their exact number , Not many, one would suggest. But their millions of followers, so they say, will forever dwell on the earth below, in happiness and peace.

Nor should the number be taken literally, as it occurs in chapter twenty. Many do nowadays, thus getting the name of Millennianists: No, that is not the way to interpret and understand the vision that John received on Patmos and that he wrote down in a book. It wants to be understood for what it is, a vision, in symbols and pictures of the Gospel of Jesus Christ the king of kings. Two final steps down the ladder. The book is written by John. He surely needed the guidance of the Holy Spirit for remembering all that he had seen, and then to describe every detail according to what he had seen.

Now the manuscript has to be sent to Ephesus and the other six churches. It has to cross the sea, to survive thunderstorms and leakage of sea water. So ft goes down from John who received ft, to the churches for which he wrote it. Only then verse 3 can become reality. One has to read ft aloud, and the congregation has to hear ft. More about that later, but already now we may hear, Blessed is he who reads and blessed is he who hears! Blessed for ft is a great blessing and privilege to hear the good tiding by means of this last book of the Bible.

And then the last step: It has come down to us throughout the centuries by the most special providence and protection of Him from whom it came in the first place. Notwithstanding all the wars and destruction, notwithstanding all the attempts of the evil one to prevent this book from being read and heard, it has come to us upon whom the end of the ages has come.

The result is that we might see the vision through the eyes of John. So that we also may be blessed by hearing the words of this fast book of God. And so John's vision can become, has become, my vision.

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But wait a moment, so 1 hear everyone exclaiming, wait a moment, you are ducking the main problem we have with the book of Revelation. You, so 1 noticed, have sailed with a wide detour around that one little word with which the book ends in chapter 22, and that John already takes up in the introduction. The word is soon. What soon must take place. A nice idea, indeed, of that ladder, but climbing down the ladder we end up in the mud.

Not in the first place there was the mud of the life in the seven churches. Some of them had abandoned the first love, or thought they were rich while they were utterly poor; the mud of utter confusion caused by that word soon. Did he not write in his epistle, little children, it is the last hour? But was it the last hour? The world still stands! And what about Paul? The one moment he creates the impression that the end is near, but the next time he has to admonish the believers in Thessalonica that they should not stand in idleness at the street corner, wafting for Christ's return, but rather go back to work.

And what about Jesus Himself? Did He not at the one occasion draw the picture of a speedy return? You will see the Son of man coming with the clouds. But the next time you hear, that there will be wars and rumours of wars, but yet the end will not take place until this gospel of the kingdom has been preached to all nations. And did He not include Himself in that mysterious word in Matthew He seems to include Himself, that also He Himself, at that moment anyway, did not know the exact day and hour? And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.

Satan was our master before Christ set us free. But while in sin, Satan would have his mark on us, showing that we belonged to him. Speaking of the persecution the apostles suffered, Paul said they were "always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus' sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh" II Corinthians 4: Paul did not mean this literally for the Lord had ascended when this was written.

Rather, Paul is speaking of how their lives were marked by the suffering of Christ and that their own sufferings were reflections of their Master's life. Therefore, the center of John's scene is a group of Christians who have been martyred for their faith in Jesus and the Bible, who have refused false worship, and are not servants of sin.

Though these people had died for their faith, John tells us they are alive and reigning with Christ. Paul tells us that Christians reign in life with Christ. Paul also tells us, "This is a faithful saying: For if we died with Him, We shall also live with Him. The question then is "When is Christ's reign? After Jesus' ascension into heaven, Paul tells us Jesus is currently reigning. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death" I Corinthians The end of his reign comes when death is conquered and that takes place at Christ's second coming.

Christ's reign cannot begin at his return, because his return marks the end of the world. This is why the church is called Christ's Kingdom. Christians are citizens of the kingdom that Christ rules. It is not a kingdom with physical borders. It exists in the hearts of people. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would fight, so that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now My kingdom is not from here.

For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth" John The length of Jesus' reign with his saints is called a thousand years. This symbol is used often in the Bible to refer to large, but complete set. For example, in Deuteronomy 7: God is not saying there is exactly one thousand hills with His cattle, but to say that all the cattle in the world belong to Him. It does not make sense to take one symbol and assign it a literal meaning while assigning figurative meanings to all the other symbols in the same passage.

Yet, many have done so when they declare that Jesus will reign for a thousand years. The second death Those who partake of the first resurrection will not face the second death. Here is a phrase familiar to many Christians.

The second death is defined later in Revelation This is the second death. And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire" Revelation The second death is the condemnation to Hell at the Judgment.

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In other words, children of God will not be a part of the second death, so they must be of those who partake of the first resurrection. Jesus speaks of this too, "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. He who overcomes shall not be hurt by the second death" Revelation 2: Later there is a list of the type of people who will experience the second death. But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death" Revelation If Hell is the second death, a natural question is what then is the first death?

All men must face death. Except for those alive when Christ returns, we will all die one day. This is the first death and afterwards the Judgment will sentence some to a second death in Hell. The first resurrection If we look back at Revelation Once again, we are referring to Christians.

These priests are to reign with God and as we pointed out prior, this speaks of Christians. Now consider how people become Christians priests.

Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin" Romans 6: Baptism then is a representation of Christ's death, burial, and resurrection.

All Christians participate in baptism; they die to their old life of sin and rise to a new life in Christ. This is what Paul alludes to Timothy, "This is a faithful saying: If we endure, We shall also reign with Him. Our death in baptism is our resurrection to life. In Ephesians, Paul makes another allusion to baptism and the theme of death, resurrection, and reigning. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ by grace you have been saved , and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus" Ephesians 2: Therefore, becoming a Christian is the first resurrection when we rise up out of the waters of baptism to walk in a new life.

Since Christians participate in the first resurrection, it is logical that they in their escape from sin should not join others in the second death. Of course, if there is a first resurrection, then there must be a second one as well. We all know that the dead will rise at Jesus' return.

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For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no mean precede those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God.

And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words" I Thessalonians 4: This resurrection is not limited only to the righteous. This is what Revelation The wicked only experience one resurrection - their resurrection at Jesus' coming so they may face judgment. A parallel prophecy Revelation