The Book of Revelation

Robert H. Mounce

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 1997
• ISBN:
  9781467423724
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

This contribution to The New International Commentary on the New Testament is a revision of Robert Mounce's original entry on the book of Revelation and reflects more than twenty additional years of mature thought and the latest in scholarship.

Text, Exposition, and Notes

I. PROLOGUE (1:1–20)

A. SUPERSCRIPTION (1:1–3)

1The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, 2who testifies to everything he saw—that is, the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. 3Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near.

The book begins with a statement of the origin and transmission of God’s revelation through Jesus Christ and an angel to John, who in turn is to make it known to others. Vv.1–3 form an introduction or prologue to the entire book. They tell how and for what purpose the revelation was given, and then pronounce a blessing on both reader and obedient listener. The earliest manuscripts of Revelation carried the simple title, “The Apocalypse of John.” Later manuscripts modified and expanded the title in various ways. The Textus Receptus has, “The Apocalypse of John the theologian.”1 There is no compelling reason to believe that the prologue is the work of some later redactor.2 It was written by the author himself, probably after having completed the rest of the book.

1 The work designates itself as “the revelation of Jesus Christ.” It is an apocalypse3 or unveiling. Had God not taken the initiative, the human mind could never have understood the real forces at work in the world. Nor could anyone have known how it would all turn out. The term “revelation” (as used here) is not a literary classification but an indication of the nature and purpose of the book. Modern scholarship has appropriated the term “apocalyptic” to describe a specific body of literature widely diffused in Judaism from about 200 B.C. until A.D. 100 or a bit later. This literature is pseudonymous, pseudo-predictive (the writer placed himself at some point in the past and by means of symbols rewrote history under the guise of prophecy), and pessimistic.4 It deals with the final catastrophic period of world history when God, after mortal combat with the powers of evil, emerges victorious. It is clear that Revelation has much in common with such Jewish apocalypses as 1 Enoch and 2 Esdras. However, that it is not apocalyptic as opposed to prophetic is established by v. 3, which promises a blessing to those who hear “the words of this prophecy” (cf. Rev 22:7, 10, 18, 19).

The work is a revelation mediated by Jesus Christ rather than a revelation of Christ himself. The following clauses in v. 1 indicate that God gave it to him for the purpose of showing to his servants “what must soon take place.” Although Hort argues that in the NT both verb and noun are used for “the unveiling of the hidden Christ to man,”5 he goes on to say that “the revealing of Jesus Christ would be at the same time and for that reason a revealing of things shortly to come to pass.”6 Christ is the revealer, not in the sense that he accompanies John on his visionary experiences (angels play this role), but because he alone is worthy to open the scroll of destiny (Rev 5:5, 7) and disclose its contents (Rev 6:1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 12; 8:1).

The full designation, “Jesus Christ,” is found three times in Rev 1:1–5 but nowhere else in the book. It is appropriate in the elevated style of the prologue. Throughout the rest of the book the simple name “Jesus” is used (11 times).

God is the source of all revelation. He is, as Daniel declared to Nebuchadnezzar, the one who reveals mysteries and makes known what is going to happen (Dan 2:28, 29, 45; cf. Amos 3:7). In Revelation this disclosure is mediated by Jesus Christ. (In the Fourth Gospel the role of taking the things of God and showing them to people is often assigned to Christ: John 1:18; 5:19–23; 12:49; 17:8; cf. Matt 11:27.) The express purpose of God in giving the revelation is to “show his servants what must soon take place.” History is not a haphazard sequence of unrelated events but a divinely decreed ordering of that which must take place. It is a logical and moral necessity arising from the nature of God and the revelation of his purpose in creation and redemption.

John writes that the events that constitute the revelation must “soon take place.”7 That almost 2,000 years of church history have passed and the end has not yet come poses a problem for some. One solution is to understand “soon” in the sense of suddenly, or without delay once the appointed time arrives. Another approach is to interpret it in terms of the certainty of the events in question. The suggestion that John may be employing the formula of 2 Pet 3:8 (“With the Lord a day is like a thousand years”) involves the Seer in a verbal scam. Others believe that the coming crisis was not the consummation of history but the persecution of the church.8 Indeed, that did take place before long. Yet another approach is that for the early Christians the end of the present world-order had already begun with the resurrection of Jesus and would be consummated with his universal recognition—an event John believed to be imminent.9 While it is certainly true that in one sense the kingdom of God is a present reality, that still does not answer the problem of the extended delay in the final consummation.

The most satisfying solution is to take the expression “must soon take place” in a straightforward sense, remembering that in the prophetic outlook the end is always imminent.10 Time as chronological sequence is of secondary concern in prophecy. This perspective is common to the entire NT. Jesus taught that God would vindicate his elect without delay (Luke 18:8), and Paul wrote to the Romans that God would “soon” crush Satan under their feet (Rom 16:20).11

The servants who are to receive the revelation are primarily the Christian prophets (in the sense of Amos 3:7, “Surely the Sovereign LORD does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants the prophets”; cf. Rev 10:7; 11:18),12 although the term as used elsewhere in the book includes all believers (Rev 7:3; 19:5; 22:3).

The revelation is said to be made known by an angel sent to John. If “He,” the subject of the verb, is Christ, then there is an angel who acts as an intermediary between Christ and John. It would undoubtedly be the angel who appears again in chapter 22 to rebuke John for falling at his feet to worship. (In Rev 22:16 Jesus says, “I Jesus have sent my angel to give you this testimony for the churches”). In this case there would be four stages in the transmission: God to Christ, Christ to his angel, the angel to John, and John to his servants.13 It is possible although less likely that “made known” is parallel to “gave” in the previous sentence, which would make God the subject of both clauses. In that case, the term “angel” would have the general meaning of messenger (as in 1:20; 2:1, 8; etc.) and refer to Christ himself. As mediator of the revelation, Christ would be performing the function of an angel in the general sense of messenger.14

The revelation is said to be “signified” (AV) to John. The Greek verb (sēmainō) carries the idea of figurative representation. Strictly speaking, it means to make known by some sort of sign.15 Thus it is admirably suited to the symbolic character of the book. This should warn the reader not to expect a literal presentation of future history, but a symbolic portrayal of that which must yet take place. It is important for an adequate understanding of Revelation to remember that God is communicating his message by means of visions that are symbolic rather than literal. What they portray exists in actuality, but the vision itself is simply the medium used by God to transmit that reality.16

2 John is further designated as one “who testifies to everything he saw—that is, the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ.”17 The reference is to the revelation given by God and testified to by Christ.18 It is also possible that the writer is following his customary mode of making a general term (in this case, “word of God”) more specific by adding another phrase for clarification (i.e., the “testimony of Jesus Christ”). In either case, the final clause of the verse (“everything he saw” is brought forward in the NIV) is appositional and limits the scope of both. The message of God attested by Jesus consists of everything that John saw in his vision. Although the Greek verb in the first clause is in the aorist tense (ematyrēsen), the present tense translation in English (“testifies”) is appropriate since the prologue was probably composed after John had written down the visionary experiences described in the book. It is unnecessary to conjecture some prior incident when John may have testified to the word of God with the result that he was banished to Patmos.

3 A blessing is pronounced on the person who will read “the words of this prophecy” to the church and upon those who will hear it and take to heart what it says. In John’s day the vast majority of people could not read and therefore learned aurally. The responsibility of those who heard it read in church is clear from the final instructions in 22:18–19. The beatitude in 1:3 is the first of seven beatitudes in Revelation. (The others are found in 14:13; 16:15; 19:9; 20:6; 22:7, 14.) It virtually reproduces the words of Jesus in Luke 11:28, “Blessed … are those who hear the word of God and obey it!” The public reading of Scripture was taken over from Jewish practice (Neh 8:2; Luke 4:16; Acts 13:15; cf. Col 4:16; 1 Thess 5:27).19 At first the reader was probably someone chosen from the congregation who had acquired some proficiency in the art. Later the office of reader became an official position in the church.20

That the congregation was to “take to heart” the things written in the prophecy indicates that the work was considered to be moral instruction, not simply prediction. John viewed his work as prophetic literature on a par with the prophetic books of the OT and possessing an authority that required the obedient response of all believers.21 Although the beatitude is certainly true in a general sense, here it takes on special significance in view of the fact that “the time is near.” The Greek kairos (“time”) was commonly used in an eschatological sense to indicate a time of crisis or a decisive moment. The statement seems to have come from the standard Jewish messianic expectations of the day. In Mark 13 Jesus warned his disciples that many would come in his name claiming to be the promised Messiah (v. 5). A bit later in the chapter he spoke of the time of his return, telling them to be on guard because they did not know when that time (kairos) would come.22 The critical moment for the fulfillment of all that John had seen in his visions had drawn near. Hence the urgency of hearing and obeying the words of the prophecy.

B. SALUTATION AND DOXOLOGY (1:4–8)

4John, To the seven churches in the province of Asia: Grace and peace to you from him who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits before his throne, 5and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the d...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Editor’s Foreword (First Edition)
• Editor’s Foreword (Revised Edition)
• Author’s Preface (First Edition)
• Author’s Preface (Revised Edition)
• Abbreviations
• Select Bibliography
• Introduction
• Text, Exposition, and Notes
• Notes
• Index of Subjects
• Index of Authors
• Index of Scripture References