What Must Come to Pass
From the beginning, Revelation states that its purpose is to show God’s servants “what things must soon come to pass” – Revelation 1:1-3.
Revelation’s first paragraph lists its
purpose, themes, and main characters, and that purpose is to show God’s
servants “what things must come to pass,” and it establishes
their timing as “soon.” The imminence of these events is
emphasized further by stating that the “season is near.”
God “gave” the “revelation”
to Jesus, and he then “gave” it to his angel to show “his servants”
what was to occur “soon.”
- (Revelation 1:1-3) – “Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave to him to show his servants the things which must come to pass soon, and he showed them by signs, sending through his angel to his servant John, who bore witness to the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ, whatsoever things he saw. Happy is he that reads, and they who hear, the words of the prophecy, and keep the things written in it, for the season is near.”
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The book’s recipients are the “servants”
of Jesus (doulos), a term applied to his followers elsewhere in
the book. They are also described as the “saints,” those who have the “testimony
of Jesus,” the “brethren,” and those who “follow the Lamb
wherever he goes” - (Revelation 2:20, 7:3, 12:17, 13:7).
Even more explicit is John’s own
salutation to his audience, “to the seven churches in Asia.” At the
outset of his first vision, Jesus commanded him to write down all that he saw,
and then to send it to the churches at “Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum,
Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea,” seven first-century
congregations located in the key cities of the Roman proconsular province of
Asia.
The things that must come to pass would
occur “soon,” and that meant from the perspective of the book’s
recipients. “Soon” is not a very precise term, but these first-century
congregations certainly did not understand it to mean twenty centuries or more
in the future.
IMMINENT EVENTS
The book presents the “things
that must come to pass soon,” and this summarizes its contents. The
phrase alludes to a passage from the book of Daniel when the prophet
interpreted the troubling dream of King Nebuchadnezzar. As Daniel proclaimed to
the Babylonian ruler:
- (Daniel 2:28) - “There is a God in heaven that reveals mysteries and made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what things must come to pass (ha dei genesthai) in later days.”
When alluding to Old Testament
passages, Revelation uses the Greek Septuagint translation of the
Hebrew Bible, and in it, the Greek clause from Daniel reads ‘ha
dei genesthai,’ the exact same clause found in the Greek text of Revelation’s
first verse:
- (Revelation 1:1) - “Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants what things must come to pass (ha dei genesthai) soon.”
The same phrase is reiterated
at key points in the book. For example, when John saw the glorified “son of
man” he heard Jesus command him to write down all that he saw, the “things
that are, and what things shall come to pass after these things.”
At the start of his second vision, John
was summoned to “come up here,” where he saw “what things must
come to pass after these things” - (Revelation
1:19, 4:1, 17:1, 21:9).
But John was not simply quoting
Daniel word-for-word. What was expected previously in “later days,”
is changed to “soon” in Revelation. For John and his audience, the
expected time of fulfillment was now at hand. This understanding is confirmed
in verse 3 when it states that the “season is near” - (Daniel
12:4, Revelation 1:3, 22:7-10).
Thus, what for Daniel was expected “in later days” was now imminent for the “churches of Asia.”
Similarly, Daniel was told to “seal
the book until the season of the end,” yet in Revelation, Jesus declares
a “blessing” on all who read and heed the book because the “season
is at hand.” This understanding is confirmed in the book’s epilogue:
- (Revelation 22:7) - “Seal not the words of the prophecy of this book, for the season is at hand” - (Compare - Daniel 12:4).
THE SCROLL IS UNSEALED
In the twelfth chapter of Daniel,
the prophet was instructed to “seal the book until the season of the end.”
In contrast, John is instructed NOT to seal the book because the
“season” of fulfillment is imminent. Thus, what was “sealed” in
Daniel is unsealed in Revelation.
Revelation
discloses “what things must come to pass soon,” and how they will affect
the “servants” of Jesus, and that certainly includes the “churches of
Asia.” This does not mean its visions were only applicable to those seven
churches in the first century, or that their experiences exhausted its
predictions.
But it most certainly does mean
that these congregations were (and are) included in its warnings and promises,
and any interpretation that makes them irrelevant to the visions and
predictions of Revelation has gone awry.
Thus, in the visions of John,
the things that Daniel predicted for a remote future and presented in a veiled
form are disclosed and put into motion by Jesus on behalf of his saints. In his
death and resurrection, the season of fulfillment has dawned and is now well
underway.
