Part 2: What is Revelation about?

Victory Life Durant— Wednesday, August 13, 2025

(Key Text)

Revelation 1:9–20 (ESV)⁹ I, John, your brother and partner in the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus, was on the island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. ¹⁰ I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet ¹¹ saying, “Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea.” ¹² Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, ¹³ and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest. ¹⁴ The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, ¹⁵ his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters. ¹⁶ In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength. ¹⁷ When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying, “Fear not, I am the first and the last, ¹⁸ and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades. ¹⁹ Write therefore the things that you have seen, those that are and those that are to take place after this. ²⁰ As for the mystery of the seven stars that 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 are the seven churches.

Genre(s) of Revelation

Genres of Revelation: (1) Letter, (2) Prophecy, (3) Apocalypse

Revelation 1:1 (ESV)¹ The Revelation of Jesus Christ

Revelation 1:1 (Greek) Ἀποκάλυψις Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ (“Apokalypsis Iēsou Christou”)

ἀποκάλυψις (apokalypsis) Something that is made fully known; a full disclosure.

The first word in the Greek text of the book of Revelation is “apokalypsis,” or apocalypse, meaning “unveiling” or “lifting off of a veil.” Apocalyptic literature uses symbolic, figurative, and mythic language to reveal a reality that undergirds what is being experienced in the natural world; it enables us to see beyond the natural world into the spiritual realities that supersede it, like looking through a window with open plantation shutters. Though this form of writing may seem odd or confusing to modern readers, to a first-century reader, it made sense.

A thorough academic definition of an apocalypse is this, from The Society of Biblical Literature: “Apocalypse is a genre of revelatory literature with a narrative framework, in which a revelation is mediated by an otherworldly being to a human recipient, disclosing a transcendent reality which is both temporal, insofar as it envisages eschatological salvation, and spatial, insofar as it involves another, supernatural world.”

An apocalypse was a narrative account of someone’s visionary experience, recording what the author saw in a dream or vision. An apocalypse would refer to actual persons, places, and events in the seer’s day, as well as the future; however, it communicated these realities through highly symbolic and metaphorical language, rather than literal language. An apocalypse ‘unveiled’ or ‘uncovered’ the true nature of things through a vision that offered an alternative [divine, heavenly] perspective on the world, challenging the dominant cultural perspectives, so that the readers could see their situation in a new light and respond in an appropriate manner. ~ David Mathewson

The Book of Revelation ultimately uncovers the truth about the world and the situation of the hearers: God is in control, not the dominant empires of the day.

Apocalypses, as a genre, were prevalent during the first century (roughly 200 B.C. to 200 A.D.). In the Scriptures, beyond the book of Revelation, the book of Daniel and parts of Ezekiel and Zechariah could also be included as Apocalypses. However, beyond Scripture, numerous other works were considered within this genre: 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, 4 Ezra, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Apocalypse of Abraham, and others. Because of the prevalence of this genre, first-century hearers and readers were equipped with the proper way to interpret the medium and the meaning of Revelation; even more so than we are, millennia removed from them.

“For the Christians addressed in Roman Asia Minor, Revelation would not have been engaged as a mysterious book needing to be interpreted; it would have been encountered as a book that interpreted the world in which they lived daily.” ~ David DeSilva

• Examples of Symbolic Language or Imagery

• • • Cake with Candles; Tin-foil hats; Elephant and Donkey with stars and stripes

Though the language is symbolic in nature, intended to activate and stretch the imagination, it points to a concrete and literal reality. Darrell Johnson elaborates on this feature of apocalyptic literature in two ways:

First, Revelation “seeks to set the present in light of the unseen realities of the future,” and second, it seeks to “set the present in light of the invisible realities of the present.” ~ Darrell Johnson

Both prophecy and an apocalypse are interested in the future, but not for its own sake, but for the sake of those who read it, specifically the original audience. Prophecy, in line with the Old Testament prophets, presents a picture of the future with the hope that the target audience would repent, making the future conditional based on their response.

John presents a future in Revelation “to evoke hope in his readers who are in sore need of it.” Revelation reminds the reader that God is aware and involved in the world, and will intervene within history to “defeat evil and bring His church to Himself.” ~ Tremper Longman III

Again, Revelation as apocalyptic literature is communicating to the reader that things are not what they seem.

Revelation is “an apocalyptic prophecy in the form of a circular letter.” ~ Richard Bauckham

Revelation of Jesus Christ

Before delivering the message, John made it clear who the message was actually from. John has a dramatic “unveiling,” not of events first, but of a person.

Revelation 1:1 (ESV)¹ The Revelation of Jesus Christ

Though John was the writer of the letter, the message to John for the churches is directly from Jesus Himself.

At the onset of the very first verse, John states that this is “the revelation of Jesus Christ.”

The book is entitled THE REVELATION (singular), not “revelations” (plural). All that follows in this letter is from Jesus and ultimately about Jesus.

As the introduction in chapter one progresses, John receives an overwhelming vision of the Cosmic Jesus (1:9-20). In this worship-worthy encounter with “one like a son of man,” John gets a panoramic view of Jesus as the Risen and Exalted Lord, the Glorious and Holy One, the One who sees all and knows all. The One whose eyes are flames of fire states, “I know…” to every church because He is the Great Discerner.

Revelation 1:17–20 (ESV)¹⁷ When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying, “Fear not, I am the first and the last, ¹⁸ and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades. ¹⁹ Write therefore the things that you have seen, those that are and those that are to take place after this. ²⁰ As for the mystery of the seven stars that 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 are the seven churches.

This vision of Jesus at the beginning of Revelation frames the message that will follow. Each description of Jesus will be connected to how He is revealed to the churches, and because He holds “the seven lampstands” and “the seven stars” in his right hand, it means He holds and upholds the whole of His church. “Christ then is Lord of the whole Church,” and as such, He has something to say to the church as “the chief pastor of his people.”

The seven messages to the seven churches (or the one message to the seven churches) tell us what Christ thinks of His church, as it was, is, and as He would have it; additionally, the messages tell us what He has to say to our churches if we have ears to hear.

Amid the challenges of the surrounding culture, temptations toward compromise or complacency, suffering and persecution, or drifts toward heresy or apathy, Jesus encourages His church with hope, warns them to repent, exhorting them to remain faithful, and “to hear and to overcome compromise in order to inherit eternal life.”

Hermeneutical Approaches

Hermeneutics: the science and art of interpretation of the Scriptures

One crucial aspect for the interpretation of the book of Revelation specifically, and the New Testament more generally, is the concept of “inaugurated eschatology,” or simply stated as the “now/not yet” or “already/not yet” framework of the Kingdom of God.

“Inaugurated Eschatology” — “now/not yet” or “already/not yet”

When it comes to aspects of the Kingdom of God and the reign of Christ Jesus, how much do we understand its presence and power now in the life of the believer and the role of the church in the world (or the people of Israel)? And how much of what is said is “not yet” until the return of Christ and the full establishment of His Kingdom reign on earth at the end (the “eschaton,” hence, “eschatology” is the study of “the end”). Each interpretive strategy for this book must wrestle with these ideas as they relate to interpreting the book of Revelation and its message and purpose for the church and the future.

“The absolutely essential framework of the self-understanding of [early] Christianity…is an eschatological one. Christians had come to believe that, in the event of Christ, the New (Coming) Age had dawned, and that, especially through Christ’s death and resurrection and the subsequent gift of the Spirit, God had set the future in motion, to be consummated by yet another coming (Parousia) of Christ…They lived “between the times“ of the beginning and the consummation of the End. Already God had secured their…salvation; already they were the people of the future, living the life of the future in the present age…But they still awaited the glorious consummation of this salvation. Thus they lived in an essential tension between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet.’” ~ Gordon Fee

Conclusion

1 Corinthians 11:23–26 (ESV)²³ For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, ²⁴ and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” ²⁵ In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” ²⁶ For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.