Chapter # 1 Paragraph # 1 Study # 1
March 19, 2023
Broadlands, Louisiana
(Download Audio)
1901 ASV
1:1 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show unto his servants, [even] the things which must shortly come to pass: and he sent and signified [it] by his angel unto his servant John;
1:2 who bare witness of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, [even] of all things that he saw.
1:3 Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear the words of the prophecy, and keep the things that are written therein: for the time is at hand.
- I. The Description Of This Entire Written Record.
- A. "Revelation".
- 1. John only uses this word [apokalupsis] this one time in this written record. It was originally coined to refer to removing a concealing "cover" that kept the concealed item from being "seen".
- 2. The uses of this word in the rest of the New Testament focus upon a God-given manifestation, in the realm of human "senses" (sight, hearing, touching, etc. as in 1 John 1:1-2), of some "Truth" as a God-intended matter for human knowledge and understanding.
- 3. As a comprehensive "Title", "Revelation" includes every word of this written record.
- 4. In keeping with the uses of this word in the New Testament, the word refers to "Truth" that is known by a divine "revealing", a "manifestation" in some form of something that is unknowable apart from the "revealing".
- 5. And, as with all objective (outside of human subjectivism) "revelation", there is the "problem" of accurate human understanding by way of "illumination" and its subsequent "interpretation".
- B. "Of Jesus Christ".
- 1. The "Of" does not mean that Jesus Christ is the "revealed truth".
- 2. This "revelation" was "given" to Jesus Christ by The God so that He could, in turn, "give" it to His bondservants so that they could "know" its contents.
- a. This language regarding "The God" giving this "revelation" to Jesus Christ does not, at all, mean that Jesus Christ is "not omniscient" as in "being ignorant of the content".
- b. This language means that "The God" as "Father" is the One Who makes the decisions as to the "who, what, where, when, and how" of all things relating to the processes that involve human beings. This is, more likely than not, an example of the divine accommodation of finite man in his extremely limited capacities of understanding infinite realities. The infinite, trinitarian God is farther above man's capacities to understand than the heavens are above the earth: Paul's "how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out" (Romans 11:33) fits this text in regard to its meaning.
- 3. The bottom line is that "The God" wishes to impart to bondservants certain truths that will enable them to "be blessed" (1:3).
