REVELATION 1:2, PART 12
Therefore, he who would get God’s mind as to this portion of His Word must study with earnest and prayerful attention every other part of Holy Scripture.
and He sent and communicated it by His angel to His bond-servant John, 2who testified to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, everything that he saw. (New American Standard Bible - NASB)
Continuing on with the 20th century commentaries:
“The ground of hope is clearly stated. God, Christ, and an angelic assistant have united in the work of revealing to John a picture of coming deliverance. Now he is qualified to communicate this heavenly information to his fellow-Christians.” [from THE REVELATION OF JOHN: A HISTORICAL INTERPRETATION, by Shirley Jackson Case, 1919]
Nothing to argue about; basic and true.
“…Christ sent and signified it through His angel to John — esimanen aposteilas dia tou angelou aftou to doulo aftou Ioanni (cf. the declaration of Christ in xxii. 6-7, 16,13, 12, 10, 18)”
6And he said to me, “These words are faithful and true”; and the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, sent His angel to show His bond-servants the things which must soon take place. 7”And behold, I am coming quickly. Blessed is the one who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book…16I, Jesus, have sent My angel to testify to you of these things for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star…13I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end…12Behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to reward each one as his work deserves…10And he said to me, “Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near…18I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: If anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues that are written in this book (Revelation 22: 6,7,16,13,12,10,18; NASB)
Hmmm. Two of these passages have a similar saying to the one being looked at, the other five really don’t. I even looked at the Greek and couldn’t find any words similar to the ones used in this phrase.
The literal translation of esimanen aposteilas dia tou angelou aftou to doulo aftou Ioanni in Green’s Interlinear is: “He signified sending through the angel of Him to the slave of Him, John” On Google Translate the phrase is translated “signified apostle by this angel to his servant John,” which implies that Google is not reading this correctly (the word aposteilas is totally mistranslated). I checked the other two with far worse results: DeepL mistook the word for angel (angelou) to be a family member and left the word for “sent” (aposteilas) out completely — “He signified by his grandson to his servant John;” and Bing thought it was a question about John being sent somewhere, skipping the word for “signified” (esimanen) - “Did you send through this angel this servant John?” It’s a bit scary seeing what a mess these translation services can make.
”…John bare witness to this Apocalypse accorded by Christ to him, i.e., the word of God and the truth attested by Christ — ton logon tou theou kai tin martyrian ‘Iisou Xristou, osa eiden (cf. the testimony of John in xxii. 8-9, 20-21) this correspondence between i. 1-2 and xxi. 6-8, xxii. 6-21, is, therefore, not accidental.”
6Then He said to me, “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give water to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life, without cost. 7The one who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son. 8But for the cowardly, and unbelieving, and abominable, and murderers, and sexually immoral persons, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.” (Revelation 21:6-8; NASB)
8I, John, am the one who heard and saw these things. And when I heard and saw them, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel who showed me these things. 9And he said to me, “Do not do that; I am a fellow servant of yours and of your brothers the prophets, and of those who keep the words of this book. Worship God!”…20He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming quickly.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. 21The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all. Amen. (Revelation 22:8,9,20,21; NASB)
So, ton logon tou theou kai tin martyrian ‘Iisou Christou, osa eiden translates by Google to: “the word of God and the martyrdom of Jesus Christ, what he saw,” which is not correct, because martyrian means “testimony, evidence, or witness” not “martyrdom.” Of course, our word “martyr” comes from this Greek word, which is interesting because it tells us that martyrdom, as we understand it, is actually a “witnessing” or “testimony.”
I checked the other two translations services and they were more correct: “The word of God, and the testimony of Jesus Christ, what he saw” (DeepL); and “The Word of God and the Witness of Jesus Christ what He saw” (Bing). Notice that Bing sees the phrase “what He saw” as relating to Christ, not John. I don’t think that’s correct, but it’s interesting.
“…(2) Its contents are ‘the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ, everything that He saw.’ Here there are three elements corresponding to the three agents mentioned above. First, there is the word of God. Secondly, this word is attested by Christ. Thirdly, it is seen by John in vision.” [from A CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL COMMENTARY ON THE REVELATION ON THE REVELATION OF ST JOHN, by R. H. Charles, 1920]
A decent, if not very inspired, breakdown.
“This revelation has been confided to Jesus Christ by God the Father. Christ in turn sends an angel to impart it to His servant John. Angels are the natural intermediaries between God and man. They often fulfilled this mission before the time of Christ. Today their ministry is less needed for this purpose since we have the unerring Church of Christ as our teacher and guide in all things pertaining to salvation.”
“UNERRING”??? Christ is “unerring,” the Church is not, and has never been “unerring.” We still have some angelic intermediary action, but most of the mediation that we experience is through Christ Himself.
“2. By writing these revelations St. John has given testimony to God and to Jesus Christ. Testimony maybe given by word or by works, especially by martyrdom. St. John here gives testimony by written word.” [from THE APOCALYPSE OF ST JOHN, by E. Sylvester Berry, 1921]
This last paragraph is the most interesting…it touches on the martyrian point that we talked about earlier: that the English word “martyr” means testimony.
“He is said to have signified it; that is, He made it known by signs or symbols. This book is a book of symbols. It is important to bear this in mind. But the careful student of the Word need not exercise his own ingenuity in order to think out the meanings of the symbols. It may be laid down as a principle of first importance that every symbol used in Revelation is explained or alluded to somewhere else in the Bible. Therefore, he who would get God’s mind as to this portion of His Word must study with earnest and prayerful attention every other part of Holy Scripture. Undoubtedly this is why so great a blessing is in store for those who read and hear the words of this prophecy, and keep the things written therein (ver. 3).” [from REVELATION, by Harry A. Ironside, 1921]
I don’t like “the whole thing is symbolic” approach to Revelation. Ironside is generally a very good commentator, he has the possibility of swaying me more than most…so I will hold my opinion a bit until I see his full argument.
“The Revelation was made known through one particular servant whose name was John; but he did not act directly. There is another link in the chain; he signified it to John through his Angel. The word signify is an interesting and uncommon word; it suggests that through St. John the meaning of Christian prophecy was first made plain. The Revelation had already been given (to show it to his servants); its meaning was supernaturally revealed to St. John. An Angel-Guide or Angel-Companion or Angel-Interpreter is almost universal in Jewish apocalypses. Often he is Uriel, and practically always one of the Seven (Four) principal Angels. The question is very complicated, because almost at once we lose sight of the Angel, and St. John receives a revelation from Jesus himself; on the other hand, the Angel-Guide does appear later in the book. Two considerations help to explain this.”
I have issues with this. First of all, I don’t think that Revelation is more than superficially similar to a “Jewish Apocalypse,” so comparisons regarding angels are not really relevant. Secondly, I think we will find that there is not one particular angel that is interacting with John. Third, it is made clear in several ways that the message is from Jesus: sometimes from Him directly, sometimes via direct vision, sometimes with explanations from various angels or other heavenly inhabitants. But always from Jesus, and because of that, I find all the “which angel was it?” questioning very irrelevant.
“1. In St. John’s earlier visions, which come at a later stage in the Revelation, the Angels played a more important part than they do at present. The reference appears to be to the Angel in chapter 10 through whom he received his call to prophecy. This Angel is the Angel of Prophecy, a kind of personification of Prophecy or Revelation. At a later stage St. John’s visions appear to have come more directly, and the Angel was allowed to recede into the background.”
Chapter 10 describes the “strong angel” that comes down from heaven with the scroll that John is told by a voice from heaven to eat. This angel swears by God “that there will no longer be a delay” in the completion of the mystery of God, and it’s this angel who appears to converse with the “seven peals of thunder.” Is this “the Angel of Prophecy”? Perhaps. Is there one “Angel of Prophecy”? I really have no idea, and this author does not cite any Bible passage that tells us the answer to that question. Moreover, he prevaricates by referring to the angel as “a kind of personification of Prophecy” that’s “allowed to recede into the background.” Doesn’t this suggest that it’s not the identity of the angel that’s important here?
“2. The Angel may represent John himself. In Exodus and elsewhere the Angel of the Lord (i.e. Angel of Jehovah) is a representative of Jehovah, the activity or energy or manifestation of Jehovah in history. He appears in the burning bush and says, ‘I am the God of Abraham.’ In a similar way this Angel, his Angel, may be a personification of the energy or activity of Jesus, a projection of him into the mind of the prophet.”
This paragraph is very muddled and confused. The author starts with the conjecture that “the Angel may represent John himself,” a highly unlikely proposition. He then goes on to remind us that God used angels to represent Himself in the Old Testament: John is not God, so this appears to have nothing to do with proving his premise that the Angel represents John. And then he says that this Angel may be the “personification of the energy…of Jesus, a projection of him into the mind of the prophet.” John and Jesus are not one in the same either, so this also says nothing about the original statement. More than that, I’ve never read that an angel is “a projection” into someone’s mind; angels are usually portrayed as actual heavenly beings. In conclusion, the first statement of the paragraph is essentially left unsupported and thus we must assume it is false.
“The difficulty arises from the attempt to personify a process, and particularly a spiritual process like prophecy. Prophecy is an activity of God; it is also an activity of the prophet; it is that manifestation which occurs where the two minds meet. Hence the lack of logical system in John’s orders of Angels; hence his difficult phrases like the Spirit of Prophecy, or the Spirits of the Prophets. The same difficulty occurs when we come to other Angels and other processes. There are powers and influences at work among men, some of which come from God. St. Paul does not fully personify them; he calls them ‘powers and authorities.’ St. John calls them Angels; at times he thinks of them as distinct from God, and at times as his identical activities.”
The author steps even further back from his original ideas to say that we are dealing with a “personification of a process.” I can actually agree with this more strongly than with the idea that we have one particular “Angel of Prophecy” dealing with John. We certainly do not have a full understanding of the process of receiving prophecy or revelation, and the pretense that we do is pretty distracting.
“We now have three links in the chain:
1. God who gave the Revelation to the Messiah,
2. The Messiah who gave it to his Servants,
3. The Angel, or prophetic power by which it was signified to John.
“Lastly we have the prophet himself, who Witnessed the Word of God and the Witness of Jesus Messiah, the things which he saw. This appears to refer to the contents of the book, which he hereby claims as his own actual visions, though it could mean that he saw the trial and crucifixion of Jesus; this, however, would be contrary to what the same words mean in other parts of the book.” [from THE MEANING OF THE REVELATION, by Philip Carrington, 1931]
Of course the prophet is referring “to the contents of the book,” and yes, these were his “actual visions.” Why is Carrington subtly disparaging what John has presented? It gets worse: the statement “though it could mean that he saw the trial and crucifixion of Jesus” is a complete betrayal of the message of Revelation; at least Carrington has the presence of mind to admit that it would, in the very least, be “contrary to what the same words mean in other parts of the book.”
“For a long time it was thought that the Apostle John, to whom we ascribe the Fourth Gospel, had written the Apocalypse also. But it cannot be that the same man wrote the two works, they are so alien to one another. The author of the Fourth Gospel was surely a cultured ‘Greek’ Jew, and one of the great inspirers of mystic, ‘loving’ Christianity. John of Patmos must have had a very different nature. He certainly has inspired very different feelings.”
Let me reveal right here that we are looking at a quote from D. H. Lawrence. This man seems to have run completely on “feelings,” so that to him, “the loving nature” of John’s Gospel means that any writing of John’s must have the exact same “feeling.” Never mind that Revelation was technically dictated to John. Never mind word usage and content. And never mind that John was a fisherman, not a “cultured ‘Greek’ Jew;” the implication being that a Jewish fisherman in Galilee couldn’t have more high-minded thoughts like those in John’s Gospel. My understanding of the culture is that many every-day-type men were scholars to one degree or another in first century Israel. No one was paid to be a scholar, unless they were renowned enough to be a teacher, so most scholars had to work at a job — usually the family occupation. Many think that this was the case for John.
“When we come to read it critically and seriously, we realize that the Apocalypse reveals a profoundly important Christian doctrine which has in it none of the real Christ, none of the real Gospel, none of the creative breath of Christianity, and is nevertheless perhaps the most effectual doctrine in the Bible. That is, it has had a greater effect on second-rate people throughout the Christian ages, than any other book in the Bible. The Apocalypse of John is, as it stands, the work of a second-rate mind. It appeals intensely to second-rate minds in every country and every century. Strangely enough, unintelligible as it is, it has no doubt been the greatest source of inspiration to the vast mass of Christian minds—the vast mass being always second-rate—since the first century. And we realize, to our horror, that this is what we are up against today: not Jesus nor Paul, but John of Patmos….”
Just call me “second-rate.”
I couldn’t disagree with Lawrence more. I feel sorry that he was exposed as a child to people who misused the Bible so badly, or, at least, gave him such an incomplete and corrupted picture of Christianity. But, the real Christ and the real Gospel are on full display in Revelation, though I’m not sure about “the creative breath of Christianity” being present anywhere in the Bible. The only “the creative breath of Christianity” that I am aware of is the great love of Jesus that inspires artists to try to portray that love.
“…But John of Patmos must have been a strange Jew: violent, full of the Hebrew books of the Old Testament, but also full of all kinds of pagan knowledge, anything that would contribute to his passion, his unbearable passion, for the Second Advent, the utter smiting of the Romans with the great sword of Christ, the trampling of mankind in the winepress of God's anger till blood mounted to the bridles of the horses, the triumph of the rider on a white horse, greater than any Persian king: then the rule of Martyrs for one thousand years: and then oh then the destruction of the entire universe, and the last Judgment. ‘Come, Lord Jesus, Come’!“
Lawrence brings up an interesting point here. He thinks that because there is so much violence in the book that the author of it must be violent and pagan. Personally, I think that the choice of John, the author of the Gospel of Love, as the human agent to write Revelation, the most violent and scary book of the Bible, is genius. John would obviously not be writing this because he was violent and pagan, or, because he had a great hatred of Romans. Lawrence sees this disparity and uses it to declare that John the Apostle didn’t write the book. I, on the other hand, see that Jesus was the author of this book, and that He chose a human agent who obviously would not have written this book on his own.
It’s also interesting that Lawrence finds the idea of judgment to be something to poke at…like poking a tiger.
“And John firmly believed He was coming, and coming immediately. Therein lay the trembling of the terrific and terrifying hope of the early Christians: that made them, naturally, in pagan eyes, the enemies of mankind altogether.”
Firstly, I’ve said before, I don’t truly think that all, or even most, first century Christians expected Christ to re-appear “immediately.” I think they watched for Him, and hoped that He would return in their lifetimes, but I really don’t think that they were banking on it. I also don’t think that “pagans” saw the Christians as “the enemies of mankind.” The Jews saw Christians as a perversion of their faith; the Romans saw the belief in One God as a form of atheism (which they couldn’t abide); and in Acts, the craftsmen who made images of the goddess Diana saw the Christians as interfering with their trade. I don’t recall any expression of pagans that indicated they thought of Christians as “the enemies of mankind.” That seems to be a more modern idea, and perhaps only an idea in the mind of Lawrence.
“But He did not come, so we are not very much interested. What does interest us is the strange pagan recoil of the book, and the pagan vestiges. And we realize how the Jew, when he does look into the outside world, has to look with pagan or gentile eyes. The Jews of the post-David period have no eyes of their own to see with. They peered inward at their Jehovah till they were blind: then they looked at the world with the eyes of their neighbors. When the prophets had to see visions, they had to see Assyrian or Chaldean visions. They borrowed other gods to see their own invisible God by. “ [from APOCALYPSE AND THE WRITINGS ON REVELATION, by D.H. Lawrence, 1931]
The last paragraph is really sad and blasphemous and has no basis in fact. It’s so fanciful and vague that I’m not even sure how to defend against it, except to point the reader to the whole of the Bible, of which Lawrence was obviously ignorant.
I can say with a certain amount of certainty, though, that the visions of Revelation are not “Assyrian or Chaldean.” While first century Judaism was inevitably influenced by their ancestors stay in Babylon, John’s generation was certainly not influenced by it more than it was influenced by the study of the Old Testament as a whole.
I did try to research Assyrian and Chaldean imagery in Revelation, and wound up in Wikipedia of all places. The page on Revelation, like many other Christian topics on Wikipedia, tries to throw light on every negative idea ever expressed about Revelation. There is even a paragraph on D. H. Lawrence’s book! But even this paragraph has only a fleeting mention of “Chaldean” imagery:
“He saw Revelation as comprising two discordant halves. In the first, there was a scheme of cosmic renewal in ‘great Chaldean sky-spaces’, which he quite liked. After that, Lawrence thought, the book became preoccupied with the birth of the baby messiah and ‘flamboyant hate and simple lust…for the end of the world.’”
The implication seems to be that any mention of cosmic events in the sky is a “Chaldean” image. I disagree.
There is nothing pagan about Revelation that I know of; there is definitely an Old Testament vibe, but I don’t think it’s pagan. Perhaps someone will convince me otherwise, or perhaps I will find future quotes by Lawrence that bring details to his argument so that I can refute it more clearly.
That’s enough for today. More 20th century commentators next time.
As usual, another one of your works of art. You are an amazing writer.