Devotions with Dre Episode 16: Book of Revelation Part 1: The Glorious First Chapter

Read Eugene Petersen’s intro to Revelation

Read 1:1-8 in MSG paraphrase

Read 1:1-8 in LASB

3 Thoughts on the meaning:

1) The "image" theory about the phrase - Jesus has been loyal to the image-bearing mantel placed on the Anointed One: to bring reconciliation to the world to God

Rev 3:14 And to the messenger of the church in Laodicea write: These are the words of the Amen, the trusty and faithful and true Witness, the Origin and Beginning and Author of God’s creation.

This means that Jesus perfectly reveals God and His salvation to a darkened world

2) The “legal” theory about the phrase - a reliable witness’s testimony has the power to convince the court. His testimony is about God’s truth: namely the fact that He’s God’s Son and that God and Him are bringing salvation to the entire world.

And of course the greek word for witness is “martys” where we get the word martyr, which became a way to describe people who wouldn’t recant their claims about Jesus even though it was going to get them killed. Jesus was willing to lay down His life for us to support the good news He was announcing.

1 Timothy 6:13 “Christ Jesus, who while testifying before Pontius Pilate, made the good confession.” What did he say when he stood before Pilate? “I came into the world to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me” (John 18:37).

Believers were heavily persecuted under Domitian (Roman emperor), so John was trying to remind them in this Revelation that Jesus is indeed alive and well, and would continue to be the same, all-powerful loving Son of God.

3) The “trustworthiness” theory - that we can rely on everything He ever said. John 14:6 calls Jesus the Truth, meaning He embodies the highest form of what’s true, correct, right, holy, righteous, undeniable, authoritative and everlasting. If He promises to be with us forever, He’s with us forever. if He says He’s gonna raise from the dead in three days, He does that.

Notes from Naked Bible / Michael Heiser

John frequently dipped into the Old Testament to create the book of Revelation and how understanding his strategies in doing so helps us understand what the book is saying. And if we understand what he’s citing and what he does with it and why, that will help us understand what John is trying to communicate in the book of Revelation, and that’s going to matter for the way we interpret the book. There is a good bk called The Old Testament in the Book of Revelation by Steve Moyise - that states we can look at the Old Testament and also look at contemporaneous Jewish writings (writings from the intertestamental period—the Second Temple period) and how those writers were thinking about their Old Testament.

Heiser: there are few if any (and some would say no) explicit quotations of the Old Testament in the book of Revelation. Instead, what you get is you get John drawing words and phrases from different parts of the Old Testament or the same section of the Old Testament and using that to create his own content.

It doesn’t have explicit quotations. It has allusions. The book of Revelation does this more than any other book.

Steve Moyise: “Unlike other New Testament writers, it would appear that John’s primary interest was not the Torah, but the prophetic literature along with the worship language of the Psalms”

Hesier explains …he has a chart in his book illustrating this. So, by his count : there are 82 allusions to the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament) in the book of Revelation. There are 97 in the Psalms. There are 122 in Isaiah. There are 48 in Jeremiah; 83 in Ezekiel; 74 in Daniel; and 73 from the

Minor Prophets. So the Torah is dwarfed in terms of John’s interest in what’s going on here. John is really tracking with the Prophets (prophetic literature) and the Psalms (outside the prophetic literature). And the most prominent of all of them is Isaiah. Just in terms of citations, it’s Isaiah first, Psalms second with 97, and then Ezekiel with 83. And then the five books of the Pentateuch combined are 82. But he cites Daniel 74 times. So he almost has the same number of allusions from one book (Daniel) than he does the first five of the Torah.

Personal application story:

Rom 12:2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Subconscious mind runs most of the show BUT God made us with neuro-plasticity, which includes the fact that our conscious decisions, beliefs and objects of our attention can, over time, influence our subconscious. for me that’s about feeling safe with this sensitive nervous system. For others it’s about changing some bad theology to good, or finally loving ourselves.

Jesus has been a steady, faithful witness to His own constant goodness in this process of mind renewal that He’s helping me do. We are truly partnering in my healing… reconciling how I’m operating to how He created me to operate: free from fear (which is the pattern of this fallen world), and thriving under the Lord’s dominion.