Shabbat shalom and welcome back. It has been a month-and-a-half now since we paused our studies of the Book of Revelation because of the Spring Festivals and then the Jericho Marches. This means we have lost some momentum and need to blow off the dust, as it were, to reconnect to its phronema or stream again. That's our main purpose today.

Without covering any of the old material again, it's worth perhaps looking around anew at the bigger picture just to 'freshen up', as it were. As I have peeked at the overviews of some of my older commentaries, I have been struck once again at just how subjective we humans tend to be, even the scholars at times, let alone the great preachers and leaders of Christian movements. One question we are going to have to repeatedly ask ourselves as we move next to Chapter 4 is whether what we're reading is literal or spiritual...or both, given the way prophecy works. Then we will need to ask ourselves, how did the earliest believers interpret it, followed by later believers (if they subsequently adopted a different interpretation), and so discover what motivated them to change the earlier consensus, and why. I believe in being thorough to be accurate, and to be that you have to be patient and diligent in digging deep in your studies.

For those of you who come from a Protestant background, or are investigators still a part of one of the Protestant traditions, you face some difficult questions and decisions. Luther was extremely hostile to the Book of Revelation in the beginning and ended up putting it together with Hebrews, James and Jude in an Appendix to his New Testament translation into German. Why? Essentially because all four of these New Testament books contradicted his pet Reformation doctrine of 'salvation by faith alone'. He would doubtless have burned them if he could have. His contemporary and fellow Reformer Zwingli regarded Revelation as non-biblical, and Calvin, you will recall, in spite of his extensive commentaries and other writings (though paying lip-service to it, one presumes, because he did not join the critical Luther-Zwingli duet), did not comment on it at all. Why? He chose simply to ignore it hoping it would go away. In other words, none of the leading Reformers understood it because if they had, they would be delighting in, and enthusing about, it as we are now. Two of them, Luther and Zwingli, rejected it outright with one of these two (Luther) later becoming undecided and relegating it to obscurity in the metaphorical scriptural 'attic' in much the same way the Apocrypha were separated out from the main body of the Tanakh (Old Testament). Only Catholic Bibles fully integrate the two without making any distinction. So Luther tried to turn this 'Gang of Four' into his own New Testament 'Apocrypha' in the hope of discouraging study of them. Very naughty. The last one (Calvin) just ignored the Book of Revelation. Today it's in the Protestant Canon so no Protestant can or dares reject or ignore it. So there you have it, one of those quirks of history.

One of the most important questions you will need to have answered by the time we finish this study is whether the Millennium is literally 1,000 years-long or just figurative. Because if it's merely figurative, as some claim, then Christ's personal and physical reign on the earth for 1,000 years is called into serious question. To these people, He isn't coming back physically at all so getting ready for that is probably a waste of time. That's certainly the Jehovah's Witness view. That would explain why many Christians are so casual about the last days since they don't believe anything is ever going to substantially change, or at least it's so far off because we have no idea when so we can conveniently forget about it and carry on doing things as we always have been. Yah'shua (Jesus) told a story about that attitude, you may recall - the parable of the ten virgins (Mt.25:1ff.) - which is perhaps why these Christians and Messianics need to become reacquainted with it.

It is at this juncture that the theologians must step to one side and the historians move in with their evidence, because our question is about history. And they will tell you that all the earliest believers considered the Millennium to be literal. This means the apostle who received the Book of Revelation, and his talmidim (disciples), must also have taught that it was literal. And I don't know about you, but to me the author's interpretation of his own revelation must surely take precedence over dissenting viewpoints. The first believers all believed in a literal reign of Messiah on the earth one day in the future. Yes, they almost all thought it would be much sooner than much later, but that's besides the point. All had the same hope. Those who rejected or ignored the Book of Revelation, and specifically its literal claims, did so because they did not believe in a literal Millennium. The book contradicted their preconceived doctrine so rather than reject their doctrine, they rejected the book as canonical instead. Very convenient but dishonest because the first believers didn't. Can you perhaps understand why I am rather sceptical not only of the leading, founding Protestant Reformers but also of the Catholic Church which believes the Millennium is already here! Seriously? Does this world look anything like the millennial vision portrayed in Scripture? Like I keep on saying, the Book of Revelation is a 'game changer', knocking out many false teachings with a sharp upper cut, if I might borrow a boxing term. Hence its importance and why we are devoting so much time to it.

To understand the Book of Revelation is also to understand the author's other four writings, and vice versa - the Gospel of John and his three Epistles. None of the earliest believers disputed John's authorship because he was there with them, based at Ephesus, and travelled around on his Western Anatolian Circuit visiting their congregations. And when he died, those he trained to become Bishops simply reaffirmed what they already knew - the apocalypse's authorship.

Likewise those who know me personally, and especially those who were around when I penned them, know that I am the author of the Olive Branch. So do those who were not around when I penned them but questioned me while I was still alive because there were multiple witnesses, let alone myself. And I have started writing a Commentary on them precisely to preclude squabbling over false interpretations of them in the future when I'm gone. The first witnesses are always the most important. Later on some may question I authored the Olive Branch just as scholars have questioned the authorship of the Book of Revelation. That is why I actively promote the Critical Realist model of history. I am very conscious of the corrupting influences of later generations who were not primary witnesses. We can't now afford to have clouds of doubt hanging over the teachings of the authentic apostles and prophets of the end-times.

I want you to believe and trust in the Book of Revelation because I believe it is thoroughly vindicated - it is reliable. The Enemy is always going to oppose anything that's true because the truth is his enemy. As late as the beginning of the fourth century all the 'Church Fathers' affirned John's Apocalypse - Justin Martyr (~140), Bishop Melito of Sardis (~170, who confirmed Esther was not in the original Tanakh), and Bishop Theophilus of Antioch (~180). Bishop Irenaeus of Lyons (~180), who had known John's talmid (disciple) Polycarp, maintained John had written it. The apostolic authorship is witnessed by the Muratorian Fragment (~200), Tertullian (~220), Bishop Hippolytus of Ostia (~240), Origen (~233) and Victorinus who wrote the earliest known commentary on the Book of Revelation, and was was martyred under Diocletian (303).

And yet, not surprisingly, because Satan always has his agents stirring up doubt and dissent, there was an Asiatic sect at the end of the second century called the Alogi who rejected all the writings of John, including Revelation. Why, you might ask? Well there were several reasons, but one of the reasons, that is so common among apostates, is that it contradicted their doctrinal views, pure and simple. Sounds a bit like Luther, doesn't it? The history of these apostates is quite instructive actually, because they sound exactly like modern sceptics who have personal axes to grind. There were then, as now, the 'critics' (whose school of thought is arrogantly called 'higher criticism' by today's atheistic and liberal scholars) like Dionysis of Alexandria (~250) who rejected the apostolic authorship of Revelation because the language was wholly unlike the writings of the other apostles. And it was from this early criticism that we have the modern liberal school that the Book of Revelation was written by 'another John'. And all because John wrote in a different style.

This is the historian and scientist in me speaking now: being the sceptic that science trained me to be in the evaluation of data, I have to say that the summum bonum of the evidence overwhelmingly points to the apostle John as the author of all the Johannine writings. There's just too big a corpus of evidence to lend any sort of credance to the dissenters who, in many cases, continue to reject Revelation (or Hebrews, James and Jude) because it contradicts their personal doctrinal beliefs, in the same way that sceptics of the Bible and Christianity as a whole continue to reject both because it contradicts the lifestyle they want to live, and the beliefs that justify it. There is only one word to describe these people - they're not honest. They're not realists either.

The fact that John wrote in a different style to the other apostles is irrelevant. So what? He also wrote the Book of Revelation in a different style to his other works. So what? I do the same. My conversational English is very different from my academic English and my preaching English as those who live around me will know, though I admit I unintentionally mix them sometimes. Even my accent changes when I am with different people, not by contrivance, but spontaneously to 'flow' with the kind of English used by the people whom I am with. The reason is simple - my relatives on my mother's side were all working class and spoke the regional dialects of the Midlands and my relatives on my father's side were all either middle or upper class. So I was exposed to the whole range. When I went to boarding school the predominant accent was aristocratic English and it is quite funny hearing a recording of me from that time speaking in that 'different' way. When I went to Oxford my dialect more-or-less settled into the standard Oxford English that was common then and that remains my default dialect... with a little bit of Scandinavianisation from nearly 40 years of immersion in Norwegian and Swedish which my friends say they can detect. Certainly, and embarrassingly, my spoken English syntax sometimes now goes wrong.

One of you here moves in and out of Yankee and Southern American accents all the time, another here moves in and out of East Norwegian and that of the West Coast. We mix our Norwegian and Swedish up into all sorts of interesting and entertaining cocktails at home because playing with language is part of our sense of humour. We don't think twice about it. It's all good because we understand each other. In our home we move in and out of different languages all the time into which we liberally mix smatterings of Malay, German, Afrikaans, Swahili, Greek, Hebrew, Slovenian, Russian, Japanese, Italian (and recently lots of French) and goodness knows what else. We always ask visitors from other countries to teach us something in their language. It's all stimulating and tremendous fun because we love languages! And that was a bit like the Roman world of the first century AD, which was a hodge-podge of lots of languages and dialects. Cities like Corinth were typical. Just read Acts chapter 2 and see all the different foreign languages and dialects that the first believers spoke supernaturally when they were given the gift of foreign languages or 'tongues' (it wasn't the gibberish or monkey-chatter of modern charismatics). The New Testament time, and particularly the Mediterranean world, was a polyglot world! It was rich and diverse in many languages being spoken in mixed communities.

And John - dear John - lived in an Anatolian pagan world for decades and doubtless spoke their form of Greek too. It's all good. It's all natural. We don't need silly, snooty academicians pushing a sceptics' agenda telling us that the more 'primitive' Greek of the Book of Revelation can't have been written by John because it's unlike the Greek of his Gospel and Epistles. Besides, the apostles frequently had secretaries who translated from Aramaic into their particular dialects of koine Greek. If you look over the Norwegian translations of some of my early sermons you'll find they read differently because where they used variant vocabularies and turns of phrase. But it's all good. It's part of the richness and diversity of language which is ever changing. So, no, the Book of John wasn't written by 'John the Presbyter' or any other 'John' apart from John the Apostle.

That all said, if we are ever to finally break the back of all the contrary interpretations of the Book of Revelation, we do need to carefully look at its language construction. As you look at the structure of the Book of Revelation, it is Israelite, Hebrew, and Judahite through-and-through. It was not written by a Greek or Roman mind. You can feel its phronema, as I said - its rapturous qualities, which, even if it had originally been written in Greek (which I doubt), still bursts through the Greek veneer. The author's mind is filled with the Hebrew Scriptures of the Tanakh (Old Testament), was familiar with the structure of Jewish apocalypses whose style the Ruach (Spirit) caused John to subsoncsiously adopt so as to the more easily penetrate the mind of first century Judahites for whom this style would have been familiar, making them all the more receptive to it. The symbolic and figurative material was thoroughly Hebrew too. Nothing was forced or artificial. There is a natural flow, a dynamic, a spirit, call it what you will. It doesn't read like a Greek composition at all. It's even possible that John himself translated his own Aramaic original to Greek and that more linguistically sophisticated secretaries translated his Gospels and letters. That would certainly account for the poor Greek. I have tried the same myself, writing and preaching in grotesquely inferior Norwegian. Since I don't have the gift of languages/tongues, I rely on translators still, and increasingly on online translators which I then get others to tidy up.

What is perhaps even more interesting, as far as the language is concerned, is that the characteristic words and thoughts of the Besorah (Gospel) do not appear in the Book of Revelation. The curious mind will want to know why, of course. The simple answer is that an Apocalypse has a different task to perform than a Gospel.

But also, note this: it is only in the Gospel of John and the First Epistle of John and in the Book of Revelation that Christ is called "the Word", the Davar (Hebrew), the Miltha (Aramaic) or the Logos (e.g. Jn.1:1; Rev.19:3) which is never shorthand for a specific book called the 'Bible' anymore than someone who 'gives his word' to you about some matter means he is about to hand over his copy of the English King James Version to you for safekeeping or for you to keep. It may, and does, refer to Scripture, and specifically, the Tanakh (Old Testament), but never the Bible (whose future arrival as a compilation is nowhere predicted anywhere in what we call the 'Bible') and is not the sense in which John uses the word. That is the first thing to note. With all the persecution going on when Revelation was penned, as is known, it is quite possible that John's secretary and translator had been martyred, forcing him to do the work himself, using his 'Greek-as-a-Second Language' skills. We just don't know. What we do know is that there are reasonable explanations for the differences in Greek style once you do some intelligent detective work.

The second is the word "Lamb", which is applied to Yah'shua (Jesus) lots of times in the Book of Revelation, and reminds us of John 1:29,36, though the form of the word is slightly different. The symbol of the Shepherd, applied to Christ in Revelation 7:17, John 10:1,27ff. and 21:16, and the figure of "living water" or "water of life (mayim chayim)", are pretty common to both John's Gospel and his Apocalypse. And there are other striking likenesses, such as the words translated "true" (Rev.3:7; etc.), "overcome", "keep", "witness" and "testimony", all of which are typically Johannine.

The doctrinal teaching of the Book of Revelation is unquestionably that of the Gospel of John in a less crystalised or focussed form. That has led some scholars to conclude that Revelation was written some time before John, as early as 70 AD according to some, but I remain to be convinced of that. Nevertheless the main idea of the two is identical. Both present a view of a supreme conflict between the powers of good and evil. In the Gospel, the opposing forces are viewed under almost abstract forms, such as 'light' and 'darkness', 'love' and 'hatred' - but in the Book of Revelation, these abstractions are more concrete, finite forms such as 'Elohim (God)', 'Messiah (Christ)', and the 'Messianic Community (Church)' warring with the 'devil', the 'false prophet', and the 'beast'.

This difference is easily accounted for when you consider the target audiences: the Book of John was written to evangelise pagans in whose religions and philsophies abstractions like 'light' and 'darkness' were common place, whereas the Book of Revelation is written to believers who were either raised in the Hebrew mindset or to converted pagans who subsequently were trained in it. Indeed, this is surely good evidence, is it not, that rather than being 'gentilised', the Besorah (Gospel, Good News) was purposefully kept within its Hebraic framework and the subsequent loss of that framework in the later Greek and Roman cultures is a fruit of apostacy and not of 'natural evolution'. The Besorah (Gospel, Good News) has always been, and always will be, comprehensible and properly liveable only within a Hebraic worldview. This is another reason I accept the traditional chronology of Revelation being written some time after John's Gospel.

In both the Johannine Gospel and Book of Revelation, history and vision leads to the victory of Christ, and it is His Person and work that are the ground for triumph. Both books stress personal 'witness'. Both present the abiding of Elohim (God) with man as the issue of Christ's work (Jn.14:23; Rev.3:20; 21:3). I highly recommend that you carefully read through John's Gospel before making a serious study of the Book of Revelation.

Again, and for the reason I suggested, there are important contrasts. In Revelation Christ's coming is outward and visible; in the Gospel it is spiritual, and judgment is self-executing. In Revelation the future is historical whereas in the Gospel it is present and eternal. Is this a contradiction? Not at all, for we human beings have both an 'inside' and an 'outside' that we experience a little differently, yet both are a shared, common reality, because we are both spiritual and physical beings, the two of which will be inseparably married one day in the resurrection. So we need to accept and integrate both - no 'killing the physical' in religious asceticism and no exclusively glorifying in the physical either in carnal indulgence. In Revelation, the conception of Elohim (God) follows the lines of the Tanakh (Old Testament); in the Gospel, Elohim (God) is revealed as the Father, and espcially in connection with the work of redemption. Both are true but each has its separate focus.

The sceptical liberal will not gain any advantage by trying to pit these two books against one another by, amongst other things, suggesting two different authors with two different 'views'. The portrayal of the Messiah in Revelation is in complete harmony with that of the Gospel. His humanity and His redemptive work are recognised (Rev.1:5,7; 5:5,9; 7:14; 11:8; 12:11; 14:3ff.; 22:16) followed by His exaltation. Messiah is wholly separated from creatures. He possesses divine knowledge (2:2,9,13,19,23) and divine power (11:15; 12:10; 17:14; 19:16). He receives divine honour (5:8ff.; 20:6) and is joined with Elohim (God) (3:2; 5:12; 6:16ff.; 7:10; 14:4; 21:22; 22:1,3), so that with Elohim (God) He is spoken as echad or one (Rev.11:15; 20:6; 22:3). He shares also, in part, divine titles (1:7; 3:7; 19:11). His preexistence is recognised in passages (1:17; 2:8; 3:14; 19:18) in which we have the same basic idea found in John 1:14.

You might not realise this but there is more evidence for the early use of the Book of Revelation by the Christian/Messianic assemblies than for any other book in the New Testament! This is not unimportant. Wherever you look in early Christian history, you'll find the Apocalypse recognised and used. The early French (Gaulish) assemblies in Lyons and Vienne (177) regarded it as Scripture. Apollonius (~210), a bishop of Ephesus some time after John, is said by Eusebius to have made use of testimonies from the book. Before the Reformers came along doubting it, the Western Church was in no doubt and always accepted it. Interestingly it was the Eastern (Orthodox) Church that early on expressed doubts because they were opposed to sects like Montanists who upheld it, and did not accept it, or start writing commentaries on it until the 5th and 9th centuries. That's a long time to be so uncertain! But I guess things moved a lot more slowly in that day and age before mass media communications sped everything up for us.

We can sometimes reject a truth out-of-hand because some sect or cult is positive about it - I think of the hostility of Protestants and others to the doctrines of human preexistence, eternal marriage and multiple marriage simply because the Mormons twisted and embraced them. Credit where credit is due. It's the same with the Jehovah's Witnesses and Worldwide Church of God who reject pagan celebrations like Christmas and, in the case of the Armstrongites, advocate the Hebrew festivals (though they have 'lost' one of them - Yom Teruah - just like the Catholics have 'lost' one of the Ten Commandments - the one about not worshipping images). It is silliness in the extreme to reject something unfamiliar which turns out to be scriptural just became some heretical group espouses a distorted version of it. I embrace some of the teachings of the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches but that doesn't make me remotely Catholic or Eastern Orthodox! It just means that they have some things that are right that Protestants have got wrong having rejected right things. We cannot afford to be tribal or partisan in the matter of truth. All truth matters to the Remnant. Everybody's got something useful and we can't let our fear or suspicion of people or the unknown undermine our willingness to be open to anything true that they may have to say or teach. The same goes for Universal Reconciliation. There's a lot of in-house doctrinal and practical cleaning to be done by the denominations.

Next time we shall return to the text of the Book of Revelation itself and to chapter 4. Be sure to do lots of background reading and studying as it's important to understand how the apostle John writes and to have a sound understanding of the Hebraic mindset and worldview. It gets much more symbolic and esoteric from now on as we confront a type of language no longer used in modern society, let alone is it understood, even in the churches. I've already had pushback from friends on our earlier studies of the first three chapters who are stuck in traditional modes of denominational interpretation because they want the Book of Revelation to be a certain way to give them more certainty in what's now a very uncertain world. Try to resist the temptation to read modern events into the text too quickly and eagerly because every generation does this and ends up missing the point. Until then, bon appetite and Yahweh bless. Amen.

Comments from Readers

[1] "I have enjoyed your study of this book and am glad that you are resuming it now. Thank you for all your hard work!" (RRB, USA, 15 May 2022)