REVELATIO 1 COMMETARY Written and edited by Glenn Pease ITRODUCTIO MY OTES, “Jesus is the author, but John is the writer. Jesus is both the one revealed and the revealer of what is to be. The goal of the book is not to see the future, but to see Him who is Lord of the future and all time. It is more important to know who holds the future than to know what the future holds. Jesus is both the agent and the content of the Revelation. It has no ultimate value if it does not lead you to focus on Him. The revealing of Jesus or the unveiling enables us to see mysteries in a light we could never know without revelation. We cannot discover these things by study and research, but only by the revealed Word of God. From the outset, we are given the most important truth about the Book of Revelation: it does show us the Antichrist, it does show us God's judgment, it does show us calamity on the earth, it does show us Mystery Babylon and all it entails - but most of all, it reveals Jesus Christ to us. If we catch everything else, but miss Jesus in the book, we have missed the book must soon take place.These are not probable things, but things that must take place, and soon. The futurists point out that soon to God can be a long time, for a day is like a thousand years to Him, and so they see this as long range and not in the life time of the first hearers of the revelation as the preterists feel. But the fact is it is a simple statement, and does fit the view that the early Christians had that the end would be soon. See Rom. 13:12 and 1Pet. 4:7 Dr. Ray Summers of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary writes, "I do not believe that any interpretation of Revelation can be correct if it was meaningless and if it failed to bring practical help and comfort to those who first received the book. To start from any other viewpoint is to follow the road which leads away from the truth of the book..." You can spot a lot of foolish ideas easy when you have this perspective. Barclay writes, "As John saw it, the events in it were working themselves out in the immediate happenings and events which were coming upon the world." This little word has been a big issue of debate. Is it God's soon or man's soon? If it is soon for man, then the revelation is primarily for the first century Christians. If it is soon for God, then it can be for any generation, and probably for the last generation of Christians. So the Preterists and the Futurists debate the meaning of this word. It is likely that the books was meant for all Christians. It has to mean something to those who received it first, that is the Christians of the 7 churches. The soon had to be relevant to them or it is meaningless. John is just saying here what his fellow Apostles have already said. Paul writes in Rom. 13:2, "The night is far