Revelation as we know it is the record of John, the beloved disciple and a foundation-apostle of Jesus, which he compiled from notes written during his earlier experience of visions while incarcerated in the Roman prison on the island of Patmos in the Aegean Sea. This is the man Jesus entrusted with the care of His mother; a man who deserved trust. In John's old age, similar to the prophet Daniel isolated in a pagan culture, John's love for God and concern for God's people is crowned with an unparalleled revelation of both, this was then lifted by the Spirit of God to become the closing climax of God's written word for all generations.

himself describes the content of his much misunderstood writing as –

'the word of God', the 'witness of Jesus Christ', and 'as many things as he [John] saw'.

situation cannot be separated from our understanding of what he has written. For this reason a glossary is useful to help our understanding today, for the mix of his Jewish background and his world of Roman law and politics is the very fabric upon which his climactic revelation of Jesus Christ is written.

instance, John from living in Ephesus and with a close pastoral relationship to the other six congregations of that Roman highway through South West Anatolia (modern Turkey) is visited in prison by a caring group composed of a representative from each of the seven congregations. Hence Christ's reassurance in its opening chapter that these seven messengers are as 'stars' held protectively in His right hand.

a lack of understanding of his context has led many translators to misleadingly translate the common Greek word for messenger ἄγγελος/angelos as 'angels' which has seriously hindered Christian understanding of this book.

out-of-body climate of this revelation has helped mislead many to also ignore the cultural context of the congregations into which it was given. The Bible was written for us but not to us; therefore it is essential to understand it as its first readers did.

instance, the fact that pagan Rome symbolically represented the four seasons grouped around their image of supreme deity is not incidental to John's description of Heaven's court. The 24 seniors/elders of that court are not simply coincident to the twenty-four hours of our day (twelve to a day and twelve to a night) for this representation of God's rule over humanity is far older in human history than Israel's twelve tribes (or its twelve apostles of Jesus) finding its origin in the earliest records of ancient Egypt. So, the human environment into which John wrote his revelation is directly relevant to the symbolic language God used and John certainly expected it to be understood by the ordinary Christian believer in the world of his time.

needs to be remembered that, though appearances may be richly symbolic within their historical/cultural context, the reality behind the symbolic appearance is very real. For instance, Jesus' form of appearance in Chapter One is completely symbolic but His person is real.

Revelation, given while John is in prison, starts with the messengers (ἄγγελοι) from the seven congregations, pictured as stars in Christ's right hand in order to assure them of their personal protection in their putting themselves at such risk to the Roman authorities in coming visit to him in the Roman prison on the island of Patmos.

is relevant to therefore know something of the cities in which these congregations lived. They are seven in number because the number represents completeness (as the 7-days of creation) as they corporately represent the whole Church of Jesus, and so the one holy Spirit of God is therefore represented symbolically before the Throne as 'seven spirits' (1:4, for each of the seven local congregations was as a local instance of the whole Christian church universal to which the Holy Spirit was fully given at Pentecost, as each of all Christ's congregations also are today).

congregations in the Roman province of Asia would have known John personally from his base of ministry in its principal town Ephesus. Each message to a congregation begins with a particular aspect of Christ in His relationship to them and ends with an instruction to hear His Spirit and a promise to those who endure.

There is no basis whatsoever for reading these seven messages as if addressed to seven 'Eras of Christianity'. They were each real congregations, each in a different circumstance, and each responsive to the personal ministry of John.

worst abuse of this Book that I have come across is the shame of a senior academic at a leading South African university in Johannesburg, who used John's words – "And I saw no shrine in it" (concerning the cubic New Jerusalem as Christ's Bride) to teach a future elimination of all religion in a perfect socialist world. Very strangely, his university colleagues seemed to respect it as a possible exegesis.

This Book is certainly not for those who do not know God!

Book is the rich inheritance of every believer who submits to the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ, who was given fully at Pentecost to all His congregations in every time and place.

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