Revelation Video - Intorduction

Revelation 1:1–3 NASB

1 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show to His bond-servants, the things which must shortly take place; and He sent and communicated it by His angel to His bond-servant John, 2 who bore witness to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw. 3 Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy, and heed the things which are written in it; for the time is near.

As I stated in my sermon, all passages in this series, unless noted otherwise will be from the NASB 1977.

Sunday we began our series There’s A Man Going ‘Round Takin Names: The Book of Revelation

We talked about how Revelation captures our imagination with its imagery.

I like what N.T. Wright said about Revelation: “This book in fact offers one of the clearest and sharpest visions of God’s ultimate purpose for the whole creation, and the way in which the powerful forces of evil, at work in a thousand ways but not least in idolatrous and tyrannous political systems, can be and are being overthrown through the victory of Jesus the Messiah and the consequent victory of His followers.”

That is why Revelation is more about preparation than prediction.

Today in this video I want to consider the Genera, Authorship and Date of Revelation.

These are important subjects as they can be helpful to our understanding of this book.

Authorship and Date

Would it surprise you that the verdict is till out on which John authored this book?

The question of authorship is one that will never be answered to everyone’s satisfaction.

The ancient church historian from the 4th century Eusebius mentions that Dionysius Bishop of Alexandria in the 4th century from his work On Promises, states that early church fathers rejected not only the apostle as the author, but also the book all together, questioning the authorship of Revelation. That is was not written by the apostle John but some other John.

However, the discussion has continued down through the centuries, with no official conclusion of the matter.

Even with all my research I have narrowed it two people John the Apostle and John the Elder from Ephesus. I do lean towards John the Apostle.

I learned there is there is a manuscript at Mount Athos that has the longest title for the book known.

“The Revelation of the all glorious Evangelist, bosom friend of Jesus, virgin, beloved of Christ, john the theologian, son of Salome and Zebedee, but adopted som of Mary the Mother of God, and Son of thunder.”

That is quite the title!

As we discuss the author one thing we could overlook is the author was known to his audience.

He only needed to write his name and they would read it and know exactly who he is.

Even though the precise identity of John is still debated today, interpretation of the book does not depend on certainty concerning this matter.

For us as we come to the book, we just know the author’s name was John.

Here a word about the date of the writing I place it in the 90s - 100 AD. Placing the date of book toward end of Domitian’s reign as Emperor of Rome.

One reason for placing the date of Revelation toward the end of Domitian’s reign is that it appears that the Jews, and thereafter Christians began calling Rome “Babylon” only after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. A point we will come to later in our study.

Apocalyptic Genera

The first word in the book of Revelation is Apocalypsis, where we get our english word apocalypse.

The translation of the word is Revelation. So now you know how the book got its name.

It is sad that many have highjacked the word apocalypse so that it carries a dramatic end to the world.

The use of this genera by John means like the other apocalyptic authors in scripture he has as his primary concern judgment and salvation.

The word apocalypse is better understood as associated with a genera of Biblical literature, “With Jewish apocalyptic writings, for example Daniel, Ezekiel, and Zechariah, many of the images are intentionally bizarre and their meaning is uncertain.”

An important point to remember about Revelation is it is a letter as well as and apocalypse.

It has 2 matters that seem to dominate the entire book.

The War between God Almighty and the lamb verses Satan and his followers both demonic and earthly

The war seen in Revelation is an on going war. Starting with the heavenly revolt of Satan then Genesis - Jude, the other 65 book. It is not a new conflict.

The role o God’s people is to engage in the war.

And here lies the heart of the letter and the apocalypse, because their lot in the war is one of suffering both already present and impending.

Michael Gorman writes, “Understanding the book of Revelation as apocalyptic literature will encourage us to understand the real world situation depicted in cosmic terms, that it reflects and addresses.”

This will help us to not take all the symbolism literally.

Like multi-headed beasts or thousand year periods. These are al symbolic but that does not make the realties to which they point any less real.

Don’t worry we will be looking at the idea of symbolism in great detail when we get to chapter 6, as that is when things get really bizarre, fascinating, and exciting.

Conclusion

So there you go. This serves as our introduction to this wonderful book.

My prayer is that as we come to this book with fresh eyes, we learn the message God has for us today.

In our next lesson we will dig into chapter one and learn about who sent the message, and the audience, and also our first glimpse of Jesus in this book.