REVELATION 1 — THE UNVEILING OF JESUS CHRIST AND THE VISION OF THE RISEN LORD

Revelation is the last book of the Bible and the only New Testament book that belongs wholly to the genre of apocalyptic prophecy, though it also describes itself as a prophecy (1:3) and takes the form of a letter to seven churches (1:4). Its author calls himself John, and the early church from Justin Martyr and Irenaeus onward identified him as the apostle John, the same John who wrote the Gospel and the three letters. Some in the early church, such as Dionysius of Alexandria in the third century, doubted this because of differences in Greek style, and the book was slow to be accepted in some Eastern churches, but this commentary holds that it was written by John the apostle. According to Irenaeus, who knew people who had known John, the vision was seen toward the end of the reign of Domitian, around AD 95, when John was exiled on the island of Patmos, a small rocky island in the Aegean Sea off the coast of Asia Minor. Some interpreters place it earlier, in the late 60s, under Nero, but the Domitian date has the stronger early testimony and fits the evidence of emperor worship, widespread pressure on Christians, and the spiritual condition of the churches described in chapters 2–3. Revelation has been interpreted in several ways. Preterists understand most of it as fulfilled in the first century, historicists as a map of church history from the first century to the end, idealists as a symbolic portrayal of the timeless struggle between good and evil, and futurists as describing events that will occur at the end of the age, mostly in the seven-year period before and at Christ's return. This commentary takes a futurist approach, with a premillennial and pre-tribulational understanding of the sequence of events, held with humility, and it recognizes that the book spoke powerfully to its first readers and that its images have lessons for believers in every age. The structure is given in 1:19: what you have seen (chapter 1), what is now (the letters to the churches in chapters 2–3), and what will take place after this (chapters 4–22). The book is saturated with the Old Testament, with over four hundred allusions to it, especially to Daniel, Ezekiel, Zechariah, Isaiah, and the Exodus, and it uses numbers and symbols such as seven, twelve, three and a half, and a thousand in a deliberate way. The overall message is that Jesus Christ is Lord, that He has overcome, that He is coming, and that His faithful people will share in His victory.

The book's historical setting is well supported. Patmos was a small island that the Romans used as a place of exile. The tradition that John was banished there under Domitian is attested by Irenaeus, who wrote that the vision was seen near the end of Domitian's reign, and by Eusebius, Victorinus, and Jerome. Domitian is known from Suetonius and other Roman writers to have demanded that he be addressed as "lord and god," and the emperor cult was strong in the cities of Asia, which had temples dedicated to the emperor, including one at Ephesus. This helps to explain the conflict in the book between the worship of Christ and the worship of the emperor, and the description of Christ as "ruler of the kings of the earth" at the beginning of a book written to churches under Roman rule. The Christians who read that line would have understood its political significance. The early acceptance of Revelation is also well documented. Justin Martyr in the mid-second century cited it as the work of John the apostle, and Irenaeus, who knew Polycarp, a disciple of John, affirmed it. The Muratorian Fragment lists it. Some in the East doubted it for theological reasons, such as the dispute over the millennium, but it was widely recognized. The manuscripts are plentiful and early, including the fragmentary papyri P18, P24, P47, P98, and P115, and Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Alexandrinus. One notable textual variant, in 13:18, appears in the early papyrus P115, which reads 616 instead of 666, a variant that Irenaeus knew and discussed. The great degree of agreement among the manuscripts shows that the text has been transmitted with care.