Revelation 1-3: The Lord and the Churches

We come this month to the first three chapters of the book of Revelation, the great consummation of Scripture, the book in which all the threads of doctrine which have been running through the Bible come together. The story of sin finds its solution in Revelation. The agony of the human heart finds its explanation and its ultimate consummation in Revelation. This is a book that frightens many people. No book of the Bible is quite so fearsome to many as Revelation. Some people are literally afraid to read this book. To them it is like a chamber of horrors. They read of all those strange animals, remarkable visions, and amazing beings which appear — the unusual, almost weird, personalities that occupy the pages of this book — and it becomes to them a sort of eschatological Disneyland where they are afraid to venture.

Because of this, there are many who simply do not read this book. But if you read the first seven verses you will notice that this is the only book of the Bible which contains a promise of special blessing to those who read it: Blessed is the one who reads aloud 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 (Revelation 1:3).

Revelation is not a difficult book to understand, once you grasp the key to it. The Lord Jesus appears to John as he is in exile on the island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea, at the close of the 1st Century, and says to him, I am the Alpha and the Omega who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty (Revelation 1:8). Then he says to him, Write, therefore, what you have seen, what is now and what will take place later (Revelation 1:19). There is the key to the book: What John sees occupies the first chapter. What is occupies Chapters 2 and 3 — the letters to the seven churches. What is to take place hereafter occupies Chapter 4 through the rest of the book. This month we will focus on the what John sees (chapter 1) and what is (chapters 2-3).