Days of Vengeance - The Preterist Archive

1:17-19
Christ has come to take it back. The seven stars, and
with them all things in creation, belong to Him.
Dominion resides in the right hand of the Lord Jesus
Christ.
Naturally there will be opposition to all this. But St.
John makes it clear that Christ is on the offensive,
coming forth to do battle in the cause of His crown
rights: out of His mouth came a sharp two-edged
sword, His Word that works to save and to destroy. The
image here is taken from the prophecy of Isaiah: “He
will strike the Land with the rod of His mouth, and
with the breath of His lips He will slay the wicked” (Isa.
11:4). It is used again in Revelation to show Christ’s
attitude toward heretics: “I will make war against them
with the sword of my mouth” (2:16); and yet again to
show the Word of God conquering the nations (19:11-
16). Not only is Christ in conflict with the nations, but
He declares that He will be completely victorious over
them, subduing them by His bare Word, the sharp and
powerful two-edged sword that comes from His mouth
(Heb. 4:12).
St. John’s Commission (1:17-20)
17 And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as a dead man.
And He laid His right hand upon me, saying, Do not be
afraid; I am the first and the last,
18 and the living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am
alive forevermore, amen; and I have the keys of Death
and of Hades.
19 Write therefore the things you have seen, and what they
are, and what things shall take place after these things.
20 As for the mystery of the seven stars that you saw in My
right hand, and the seven golden lampstands: the seven
stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven
lampstands are the seven churches.
17-18 When he saw the Angel of the Lord, Daniel
says, “I fell into a deep sleep with my face to the
ground. Then behold, a hand touched me and set me
trembling on my hands and knees . . . And when He
had spoken this word to me, I stood up trembling”
(Dan. 10:9-11). St. John’s reaction to the sight of the
glorified Lord is much the same; yet Christ tells him not
to fear. While fear is a proper first reaction, it must be
replaced. Ultimately, the awesome majesty of God is
not a reason for terror in the Christian; rather, it is the
ground of our confidence and stability. The presence of
Christ is, very properly, the occasion for unbelievers to
faint away and hide, out of sheer fright (cf. 6:15-17);
but our Lord comes to St. John (as to us) in love, and
sets him on his feet. The presence and activity of God
in the Cloud was to the Egyptians a terrifying omen of
their destruction; but, for the covenant people, He was
the Comforter and Savior. The same contrast is set out
in Habakkuk 3:10-13:
The mountains saw You and quaked.
Torrents of water swept by;
The deep uttered its voice,
And lifted high its hands.
Sun and moon stood still in the heavens;
They went away at the light of Your arrows,
At the radiance of Your gleaming spear.
In wrath You strode through the earth
And in anger You threshed the nations.
You went forth to deliver Your people,
For the salvation of Your anointed one.
You crushed the head of the house of evil,
You laid him open from thigh to neck.
Jesus is God, the First and the Last, as the LORD says of
Himself in Isa. 44:6: “I am the First and I am the Last,
and there is no God besides Me” (cf. Isa. 48:12).
Appropriating another Old Testament title for God,
Jesus declares that He is the living One (cf. Deut. 5:26;
Josh. 3:10; Ps. 42:2; Jer. 10:10): He is self-existent,
independent, the All-Controller – and He, “having
been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death
is no longer master over Him” (Rom. 6:9). St. John can
be resurrected in verse 17 because of the truth of verse
18, that Christ is alive forevermore. As the Risen Lord,
Christ has the keys of Death and of Hades. 35 The
Empire claimed to have all authority, to possess the
power over life and death, and over the grave; Jesus
declares instead that He – and not the State, nor the
emperor, nor Satan, nor the ruler of the synagogue –
has command over all reality. He is the Lord of life and
death, of all history, and of eternity; and it is in terms of
this complete dominion that He commissions St. John
to write this book which so clearly and unequivocally
sets forth the truth of His eternal and comprehensive
government.
19 St. John’s commission was interrupted by his falling
into a dead faint; now that he has been “resurrected,”
he is again commanded: Write therefore 36 the things
you have seen, and what they are, and what things
are about to take place after these things. Some
interpreters read this as a threefold outline of the whole
book: St. John writes about what he has seen (the
vision of Christ), then about the present (the churches,
in chapters 2-3), and finally about the future (chapters
4-22). Such a division is quite arbitrary, however; the
Revelation (like all other Biblical prophecies) weaves
past, present, and future together throughout the entire
book.
A more likely meaning of this statement is that St.
John is to write what he has seen – the vision of
Christ among the lampstands holding the stars – and
what they are, i.e., what they signify or correspond to.
The word are (Greek eisin) is most often used in
Revelation in this sense (1:20; 4:5; 5:6, 8; 7:13-14;
11:4; 14:4; 16:14; 17:9, 10, 12, 15). Thus verse 20 goes
on to do just that, explaining the symbolism of “the
things you have seen” (the stars and lampstands). St.
John is then commissioned to write the things that are
about to happen, or (as he told us in verse 1) “the
35. Adam originally held the Key of Death and Hades, for he was the Priest of
Eden, with the priestly responsibility of guarding the Gate of Paradise (Gen.
2:15; see Meredith G. Kline, Kingdom Prologue (privately published syllabus,
1981), Vol. I, pp. 127ff. When he abdicated that responsibility, he himself
was turned out into death, away from the Tree of Life, and the cherubim took
his place as guardians, holding the flaming sword (the key). By the
Resurrection, Jesus Christ as the Second Adam returned to Paradise as Priest,
the guardian of Eden’s Gate, to cast the Serpent into Death and Hades (cf.
Rev. 20:1-3).
36. The therefore shows the connection with St. John’s original commission in
v. 11.
43