One reason is the same as the reason that through the centuries God gave revelation about the future to people-so they could know what is coming and have hope for the future. There are several reasons that God gave the vision of the future to the Apostle John during his lifetime instead of waiting for someone in the future to write about their own time. John’s vision continues chapter after chapter, all about the future. In Revelation 6 Jesus Christ breaks the seals of judgment and disasters strike the earth part of the wrath of God (Rev. In Revelation 4-5, John sees God’s throne in heaven surrounded by throngs of angels and Jesus Christ getting the scroll of judgment from Him. 2:1), and the letter has to do with the state of affairs in those churches at the future time of John’s vision. In Revelation 2-3, Jesus dictates a letter to John that is addressed to the “angels” (messengers) of the 7 congregations (see commentary on Rev. In Revelation 1:13, John sees Jesus in his glorified body. A lot of material in the prophetic books concerns events that are still future, and Revelation is a prophetic book that speaks of the future, including the future of the seven congregations in Asia after the Rapture. The letters to the seven congregations in Revelation 2-3 are about the future, in the same way that Daniel 12:2 is about a future resurrection and Ezekiel 40-48 is about a future Temple and a future city of Jerusalem. Starting in Revelation 1:10, John has a detailed vision of the future, and his writing about that vision is what the rest of the Book of Revelation is about. The Day of the Lord was future in John’s lifetime and it is still future today. In other words, The Lord gave John a vision in which he was transported into the future, to the Day of the Lord. Revelation 1:10 says that John was “in the spirit on the Lord’s day,” which is usually referred to as “the Day of Yahweh” in the Old Testament. The scene changes from John’s lifetime to the distant future in Revelation 1:10-11. 1:11).īecause John penned the book of Revelation and sent it to those seven churches, many commentators have falsely assumed that the letters to those churches, which are in Revelation Chapters 2 and 3, are written to Christians. These seven congregations were Christian Churches that existed at the time John wrote and were in the cities of Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea (cp. “to the seven congregations that are in the province of Asia.” When John penned the book of Revelation, he sent it to the “seven congregations (or “churches”) in the Roman province of Asia, which today is in western Turkey.
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