Bible Study - Summary of Session I Rev. 1:1-8

The Book of Revelation
Summary Session 1
Rev. 1:1-8

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 testified to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw.
3Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of the prophecy, and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it; for the time is near.
4John to the seven churches that are in Asia:
Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, 5and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.
To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, 6and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.
7 Look! He is coming with the clouds;
every eye will see him,
even those who pierced him;
and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail.
So it is to be. Amen.
8“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.

Discussion Summary
Rev. 1:1-2
The book of Revelation is a story about Jesus Christ.

The word Revelation comes from the Greek word “apokalypsis” from the root “kalupto” (to cover, hide) and the preposition “apo” (off, from) and therefore means to unveil, remove the covering. The author is uncovering something about Jesus that the author wants us to know.

The audience is told that they will hear a story where the owner and subject of the story is Jesus, the content is the word of God, the author is John who hears the story from a messenger of Jesus and the story is called a revelation.

Rev. 1: 3
The readers are blessed. By speaking John’s words out loud, the reader once again empowers the words. The Greek word translated “to read” is “anaginosko” from the roots that mean to come into being once again. By reading, we cause the words to live again.

Rev. 1:4-8
The words in these verses would have been immediately recognized as a letter by the original audience. We learn that God is the one who is, who was and who is coming.
We see the first number symbol : 7.

The number 7
The Greeks said that numbers 1-5 beget or generates another number between 1 and 10 by being doubled or tripled. The numbers that are begotten or generated are six, eight, nine or ten. If 7 were doubled or tripled, the answer would lie outside the number 10. None of the lower numbers if doubled or tripled would equal 7. Therefore, 7 is like God since it remains ungenerated and ungenerating. Seven is a qualitative symbol not a quantitative symbol.

John is writing to 7 Churches but there are more than 7 Churches.

Rev. 1:5
We learn some things about Jesus: Jesus is the witness (he bore testimony to God’s truth), Faithful (devoted to the Divine mission), The first born among the dead (reference to the resurrection of Jesus), and the ruler of the kings of the earth (Jesus has been exalted to heaven where he now rules).

The focus of the second part of verse 5 and verse 6 on the redemptive work of Christ brings us to the expectation of the glorious day when Christ will return.

Rev. 1:8
As the divine response to what has been said about Christ, God speaks. God declares that God is the Alpha and the Omega. God only speaks twice in the entire book. Here and in verse 21:6.

What begins as a normal greeting in a letter switches to a hymn of praise to Christ. Christ is the one who will come on the clouds of glory and the entire human race will witness that triumphal return. God indicates his approval so this section prepares the reader for the exalted vision about to occur.


Introduction to The Book of Revelation
Session 1
Date: The Book of Revelation is dated somewhere between the reign of Claudius (A.D. 41-54) and the reign of Trajan (A.D. 98-117). The majority of scholars think the book was written between A.D. 81-96 (reign of Domitian).
During the reign if Domitian there was active persecution of Christians.

Authorship: Tradition has attributed the authorship of the Book of Revelation to John the apostle. The majority of modern scholars are unwilling to assign the work to John the apostle for the following reasons:
1. The Author of The Book of Revelation never mentions that he is an apostle, which would have given his work more authority.
2. There is nothing in the Book of Revelation that indicates the author knew the historical Jesus.
3. There is a tradition that John the apostle suffered an early martyrdom.
4. The language for this book is very different than the language used in the Gospel of John.
So who wrote the book? We will never really know. However, according to one commentary, “Since internal evidence is not entirely unfavorable to apostolic authorship and external evidence is unanimous in its support, the wisest course of action is to accept as a reasonable hypothesis that the Apocalypse was written by John the apostle, son of Zebedee and disciple of Jesus. (pg. 15, The New International Commentary on the New Testament: The Book of Revelation, by Robert Mounce)

Apocalyptic Literature: This genre of literature flourished in the biblical world between 200 BC and 100 AD. People of that time would have been as familiar with this genre as we are with the genre of science fiction or romance.
The word apocalypse means unveiling.

Elements of Apocalyptic Literature:

1. Divine disclosure of some deep truth
2. Usually about a visionary journey
3. Journeys can involve both time travel and space travel
4. Traveling visionary returns with an urgent message for the audience
5. Always eschatological (the part of theology concerned with death, judgment and final destiny of the soul and of humankind)
6. Dualistic. There are two opposing supernatural powers, God and Satan. There are also two distinct ages: The present one (temporal and evil) and the one to come (timeless and perfectly righteous)
7. Symbolic in language
8. Vision is the major instrument of revelation
9. Contemporary examples: Wizard of Oz and The Christmas Carol