Original Meaning
Setting the Scene (1:9–10)
JOHN WAS A “brother” and a “companion in the suffering”—that is, a fellow sufferer with these churches for the gospel (6:11; 12:10). “Suffering” and the “kingdom” are inseparable parts of our inheritance in Jesus. “Endurance” requires fortitude in view of God’s promises (13:10; 14:12) during present tribulation (thlipsis in 1:9; 2:3, 9–10; 3:10; 7:14). A North African theologian records one saying of Jesus reportedly still circulating in his day: “No one can obtain the kingdom of heaven without first passing through testing.”1
When John, in the context of speaking of “suffering,” declares that he was on the island of Patmos “because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus,” he does not imply that Patmos was a vacation stop on a pleasure cruise. Literally he was there “on account of” God’s word—as a punishment by the state for preaching and testifying about Jesus (cf. 6:9; 12:11). Whereas Ezekiel saw his vision of the Lord while exiled near literal Babylon (Ezek. 1:1), John has a vision while exiled by an empire that resembled the earlier Babylon. Although different kinds of exile existed, usually exile involved banishment to an island;2 a later writer charges that the islands were full of exiles during the reign of the emperor Domitian.3 Often people of lower social status were executed, enslaved, or banished to the mines or to die in gladiatorial combat;4 but John was aged, and sometimes those in authority sentenced persons more lightly on account of their age.5
But while banishment was a lesser penalty than execution, we should hardly think John’s sentence light. He may have been treated less harshly than others on account of his age or because the governor rather than the emperor sentenced him, but in any case banishment involved loss of honor.6 The severest form of banishment—probably not what John experienced—involved loss of one’s civil rights, including the forfeiture of nearly all one’s property to the state. Unless the government lifted the ban, those banished to an island remained there until they died. Those of higher social status could work on the island and earn some money; those of lower status were scourged (a punishment that is known to have laid a person’s bones bare), chained, given little food or clothing, left to sleep on the bare ground, and sentenced to hard labor.7
Because this severer penalty (deportatio) required the emperor to pass judgment, probably we should think of John as enduring a lighter form of punishment (relegatio) ordered by the governor of his local province, who did not seize all his property.8 It is also difficult to imagine John as a working convict who had to receive his entire vision before going off to work Sunday morning! But though he probably experienced the more lenient form of banishment, his conditions would be harsh for someone of his age.
Rome especially used two groups of islands in the Aegean Sea near Asia Minor to detain political prisoners, namely, the Cyclades and the Sporades; Patmos was in the Sporades, and the older Pliny can be understood as naming this a place of exile.9 The island was not deserted; it included a Greek gymnasium and a temple and cult of Artemis (though it would not have been as pervasive as the veneration of Artemis in nearby Ephesus).10 Since John would be permitted visitors, the churches of Asia would undoubtedly send him messengers; Patmos was only forty to fifty miles southwest of Ephesus.
Some people in Asia Minor celebrated a monthly “emperor’s day” (Sebaste, Augustus Day) in honor of the divine emperor.11 By contrast Christians, who might suffer for their refusal to worship the emperor, celebrated a different day in honor of the true and ultimate king—kyriakos (lit., “Lord’s”), which was a term Romans used to designate what belonged to Caesar, but which Christians applied to the ultimate kyrios or Lord (1:10).
Most likely the “Lord’s Day” refers to the first day of the week, Sunday.12 The phrase also appears in Did. 14.1 for the day on which Christians gathered to break bread, and Roman officials also recognized that Christians gathered on a fixed day (Pliny, Ep. 10.96). Christians seem to have assembled together on Sunday from an early period (Acts 20:7; 1 Cor. 16:2), probably to commemorate Jesus’ resurrection (John 20:19, 26).13 Because the first Christians were Jewish, they may have also avoided assembling on Friday evening or Saturday morning to avoid conflict with their synagogue services. “The Lord’s Day” here may also involve a play on words: In worship, John was experiencing a foretaste of the future day of the Lord, when believers’ suffering would give way to the kingdom (1:9).14
John’s contemporaries most often associated the Spirit with prophetic inspiration, and John’s audience would therefore have naturally understood John’s being “in the Spirit” in terms of prophetic inspiration (see Ezek. 2:2; 3:12–14; 11:5, 24).15 But because John was already in the Spirit when the vision began, perhaps “in the Spirit” begins here not with a visionary state, as in 4:2 and 21:10, but initially in worship that led to a visionary state.16 Such an interpretation helps explain John’s mention of “the Lord’s Day,” likely used for corporate worship (see comment above). Given the usual sense of “in the Spirit” among John’s contemporaries, “worship in the Spirit” (cf. John 4:24; Phil. 3:3) undoubtedly meant Spirit-guided and Spirit-empowered worship. Prophetically inspired worship characterized early Christianity (1 Cor. 14:15, 26; Eph. 5:18–19) and existed in ancient Israel (1 Sam. 10:5; 1 Chron. 25:1–5). John, whose message will be read when the Asian churches assemble on the “Lord’s Day,” probably was himself in worship on that day when the vision came.17
Bridging Contexts
IN THIS SECTION we will examine issues such as various views concerning the “Lord’s Day,” Spirit-filled worship, and some aspects of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity.
Sharing in sufferings. Believers in many parts of the world as well as some ministry situations here can identify with the shame and persecution John endured for Christ. Most of us in the West, however, at the moment are tested more by materialism than by persecution, and John’s own suffering was persecution. This does not suggest, however, that analogies cannot be drawn. If John’s suffering is more serious than ours, we should reason: If God enabled John and his companions in persecution to stand, how much more should we stand firm in the face of less severe testing?
Furthermore, even in the West today we have plenty of reminders that the world does not embrace the church as an ally (cf. John 15:18–25). Many of us have been denied jobs or otherwise maligned on account of our obedience to Christ; some of us have even suffered “friendly fire” within the church because we sought to do God’s will. Yet as John stood boldly as a model for believers then, he stands also as an example for us.
The Lord’s Day, church, and the Sabbath. The meaning of “the Lord’s Day” is important for the setting of this section, but has been reapplied in some ways that shed little light on John’s point. Yet our own traditions can lead us to read illegitimate ideas into this text.26 One area of potential misinterpretation concerning the “Lord’s Day” is that some believe that Sunday is a new Sabbath. When I was in Bible college, my hometown newspaper ran a debate between a traditional pastor and a Seventh-Day Adventist layperson as to the day of the week on which the Sabbath should be honored. The Adventist argued predictably for Saturday, to which the pastor responded, “We’re not under the law, so the Sabbath is on Sunday.” The pastor’s conclusion certainly did not follow from his argument, first because the Sabbath teaching precedes the Law of Moses (Gen. 2:2–3), second because the pastor did not define how he meant “under the law” (a matter of considerable debate today), and worst of all because he simply assumed that not being under the law meant moving the Sabbath one day forward!
As early as the second century some Gentile Christians may have contrasted the “Lord’s Day” with the Jewish Sabbath (Ignatius, Magn. 9.1).27 But within the New Testament itself there is no evidence that the Sabbath was “changed” from Saturday to Sunday. The custom of Sunday as a Christian “Sabbath” became widespread only in a later period, probably after A.D. 321, as church historian Henry Chadwick points out:
An inscription found near Zagreb records that Constantine changed the old custom of working for seven days and holding a market-day every eighth, directing farmers to hold their market-day each Sunday. This is the earliest evidence for the process by which Sunday became not merely the day on which Christians met for worship but also a day of rest, and it is noteworthy that in both law and inscription Constantine’s stated motive for introducing this custom is respect for the sun.28
Some Christians argue that no weekly day of rest remains necessary; we should celebrate every day alike (Rom. 14:5–6) and enjoy Jesus’ Sabbath-rest continually (Heb. 4:9). Others argue that because God built a day of rest into the nature of creation (Gen. 2:2–3), we will function in much better physical and emotional health if we take a day away from our work each week, though the particular day is less important.29 Those who insist on a particular day, however, cannot insist from the authority of Scripture that the day must be Sunday.30 Likewise, some of those who argue that the particular day in Scripture is Saturday and was never changed insist that one should attend church on Saturday; but Scripture does not require one to hold church on one’s day of rest. The connections between the “Lord’s Day” and the Sabbath on the one hand and between the Sabbath and church services on the other are postbiblical, and we should be charitable for differences of practice on this point.
In which Spirit? If we have correctly understood this verse as including a reference to Spirit-filled worship, we must be careful in applying it today. Different churches and cultures have different understandings of what “Spirit-filled” worship is. Some prefer lively Scripture choruses; others prefer traditional church hymns that sometimes reflect a deeper contemplation of Scripture than songs that merely quote Scripture (sometimes out of context, like “This is the day” in Ps. 118:24). Some preferences in worship style reflect cultural or generational differences rather than the presence or absence of the Spirit and are best tailored to those we invite to worship. I know some aging churches that cannot understand why they are not attracting younger worshipers, yet nothing in the style of music reveals their commitment to younger worshipers’ culture!
At the same time, the content of the worship songs may be significant: Do they invite us to worship our awesome God, or simply to enjoy the music (not that bad music is necessarily more conducive to good worship)? Do they provide simply nostalgic feelings of security for traditional believers, or do they provide us the opportunity to transcend our feelings in obediently glorifying God? In any case, we need to depend on the power of God’s Spirit to lead us deeper in our intimacy with him; we cannot achieve that by merely “fleshly” or mechanical means. Only by depending on God’s power can we offer worship truly worthy of his honor.
One should also be careful in applying this text to not promise too much. Jewish mystics and apocalyptists in John’s day sometimes offered formulas for how one could be caught up into heaven to receive visions or revelations; some of these techniques were magical and involved spirits other than God’s Spirit. Like the biblical prophets, however, John was simply spiritually prepared when Jesus came to him (cf. Isa. 6:1, 5; 2 Cor. 12:2–4); he was not trying to induce a vision.31 Scripture does allow that prophets could seek God for guidance (Dan. 2:18–19), but the means were always prayer, not magical manipulation, and God could also speak to those who were not seeking a revelation (e.g., Judg. 6:11–12; Acts 10:9–13).
We cannot promise how God will meet his people in worship or other experiences in the Spirit. But we can promise that when they turn their eyes to him, they will find his presence, and in his presence they will begin to learn the answers they need. The answers we need are not always the answers we want (John promises greater hardship), but they are also often better than we can guess (compare the picture of the new Jerusalem).
Lampstands, Judaism, and the church. How should we apply today John’s application of the lampstand, a standard symbol of Judaism, to the churches in 1:12, 20? We cannot suppose that he is addressing only ethnically Jewish Christians in the seven churches; long before this period Gentiles had become Christians in some of these cities (e.g., Acts 19:10, 17). Some Christians have responded to this and other New Testament passages by claiming that the church has replaced Israel in God’s plan; Jewish scholars tend to react with hostility to such claims, especially since the Nazi Holocaust in “Christian” Europe.32 Has the “church” replaced Israel?
To understand John’s perspective requires us to set aside for a few moments nineteen centuries of subsequent interpretation and imagine ourselves among first-century Christians. Jewish Christians proclaiming a Jewish Messiah, the fulfillment of ancient promises to Israel, won pagan, usually polytheistic converts to faith in Israel’s one God. Unlike most other Jews, Jewish Christians in Paul’s circle did not require Gentile converts to be circumcised, but they nevertheless embraced them as new participants in their Jewish faith in Jesus, spiritual children of Abraham (Gal. 3:29), inwardly circumcised (Rom. 2:28–29). They viewed such Gentile converts as grafted into Israel, while unbelieving branches were broken off (11:17).
Although people rarely understood this perspective before Jesus came, the principle was already available in the Old Testament (cf. Rom. 16:25–26). God had cut off disobedient Jewish individuals from the blessings of his covenant; in some generations, this involved even the majority of the nation (Deut. 1:35–38), though in other generations it involved only a small minority (Josh. 1:16–18). Likewise, Gentiles sometimes became members of the covenant community (e.g., Josh. 6:25; Ruth 1:16; 2 Sam. 8:18), though they had always been a minority.
John’s circle of Christians believed that they were the heirs of the Old Testament promises, but probably did not think in terms of a largely Gentile church “replacing” Israel. Instead, they most likely saw the Jewish people who rejected Jesus as apostate from Israel (2:9; 3:9), just as the Dead Sea Scrolls viewed Jewish people who rejected their teaching; they probably saw Gentile Christians as converts to the truest form of Judaism. In other words, John uses the “lampstand” image to stress the Jewishness of faith in Jesus and the continuity of believers’ faith with the heritage of ancient Israel.33 In our less polemical situation today, Gentile Christians should continue to see themselves grafted into the spiritual heritage of Israel, yet we should do so by recognizing, as we often have failed to do, that it was we and not the heritage that changed.34
Contemporary Significance
SHARING IN SUFFERINGS. Sometimes we pontificate too easily about the sufferings of others that we have not shared, and our insensitivity becomes obvious. This can happen with all kinds of deprivation, not simply the persecution John shared. I attended a singles meeting where a pastor who had been married since his early twenties lectured his hearers on how they ought to be content with their singleness. Although I agreed with his premise, I saw no proof from his own life that he understood the heaviness of his demand, how much some singles had to pray and fast and seek God’s strength to rest content while waiting for something that mattered to them very much. He may have been more persuasive if he could have better identified with his hearers’ situation.
Those who share in sufferings or in the world’s opposition often are unified in ways that surmount other barriers. In Bible college some of us nearly broke fellowship over details about the end times, though most of us belonged to the same denomination. By contrast, in the high school and secular universities I attended, as well as at secular jobs I worked, committed Christians stuck together regardless of denominational differences.35
We should also notice John’s point that “suffering” is “ours in Jesus”; one cannot follow Christ and not experience affliction. Some churches today teach prospective converts that God will solve all their problems and bless them with abundance if they become Christians, but this was not what the apostles taught new converts (Acts 14:21–22), nor was it the life that the apostles themselves experienced (1 Cor. 4:11–12). With proclamation comes persecution and sometimes deprivation; banishment often could include seizure of any assets one had. The leaders of John’s society cut him off from everything else familiar to him, but the aged prophet still retained his greatest security: God is sovereign in testing (1:8), and just as he suffered with Christ, he would also reign with him (Rom. 8:17; 2 Tim. 2:12). If he shared with his fellow believers the sufferings of Christ, he also shared Christ’s perseverance and ultimately his kingdom, as this passage declares (1:9). As F. F. Bruce puts it,
[John’s] placing of “the kingdom” between “the tribulation” and “the patient endurance” underlines a recurrent New Testament theme—that the patient endurance of tribulation is the way into the kingdom of God. If, then, John encourages his friends in the churches of Asia to stand firm, he is not cheering them on from the sidelines; he is involved with the same struggle.36
John’s response to his suffering may also be instructive to some believers today who feel that an easy life is our birthright and prove hostile to those who threaten it. Some of John’s contemporaries advocated violent resistance against Rome, but John is among those who wait on God for deliverance. At the same time, John is not completely passive; he believes, like some of his Jewish contemporaries, that suffering and martyrdom for God’s word hastens the end (6:9; cf. Col. 1:24).37
Revelation in the context of worship. If John was worshiping “in the Spirit” as we have suggested (or in any case overwhelmed by God’s Spirit), this passage suggests to us that we are apt to hear from God most clearly when it is his face and glory we are seeking. My first year in Bible college a student named Lillian prayed for many hours each day—her life so anointed for prayer that every time I even saw her, I felt an urge to run somewhere and pray. Some of her witnessing partners told me stories about her witnessing methods: For example, when a man was mocking her witness, she began listing his secret sins, leading quickly to his repentance. We each have different gifts; Lillian told me whenever she saw me, it made her want to run and read her Bible. But devotion to prayer and worship often opens our hearts more fully to other aspects of the Spirit’s testimony.
Throughout Revelation we see the saints in heaven engaged in worship (4:10; 5:14; 7:11; 11:16; 19:4), while saints are being slaughtered on earth and followers of the beast worship the beast (13:4, 8, 12, 15; 14:9–11). The scenes of heaven are intended as scenes of worship, for heaven’s furniture is the furniture of the Old Testament temple: the ark (11:19), the tabernacle (15:5), the altars of incense and sacrifice (6:9; 8:3–5; 9:13), the sea (4:6; 15:2; cf. 1 Kings 7:23–25, 39, 44)—and, of course, the lampstands (Rev. 1:12–13; 2:1, 5). The church on earth is never closer to heaven than when we are offering God and the Lamb the glory they deserve; it is then that we experience “in the Spirit” a foretaste of heaven (cf. 1 Cor. 2:9–10; 2 Cor. 5:5).38 A church that is suffering in this world will long for heaven, and in turning our hearts toward our heavenly king we will find strength to remember that the future world belongs to us.
The book of Revelation is a book of worship that summons us to recognize the awesome majesty of our Lord. The congregation I pastored used a number of worship choruses from the this book, so in one of my first sermons I interspersed these worship choruses with the sermon as a way to both explain the contextual significance of the subject of our songs and respond to the message of Scripture by adoring the God who had spoken to us in it.39
Jesus among the churches. One of Revelation’s most important declarations is that Jesus appears among the lampstands (1:12; 2:1), which represent the seven churches (1:20). One need only skim the letters to these churches in chapters 2 and 3 to realize that five of them needed serious correction. Nevertheless, until a church has gone so far as to be withdrawn from its place (2:5), it remains the place where Christ’s presence is found.40 One might remember the Corinthian Christians, “sanctified in Christ Jesus” (1 Cor. 1:2); despite their lifestyle (3:3; 5:2), God still viewed them according to his finished work in Christ (6:11). We see here in Revelation Christ’s faithfulness to the church, including the local church. When we see the flaws in churches, our tendency is sometimes to react with disdain; but we must never give up on the spiritual life that remains in the church, for the Lord of the churches, who offered his blood to redeem them, still loves them and walks among them (cf. 1:5; 3:4).
Because John portrays the churches symbolically as “lampstands,” a traditional Jewish image, he emphasizes the Jewishness of our faith. We Gentile Christians too often treat the Old Testament like a mere prolegomenon to the New Testament, or its history as a boring and irrelevant story with no relevance to our lives today. Nothing could be further from Scripture’s intention!41 We should read the stories of patriarchs and prophets as the stories of our spiritual ancestors, and ourselves as grafted by mercy into God’s single plan in history for his people running from Abraham forward. We should learn from Judaism an appreciation for a heritage that Jewish tradition has often preserved with greater reverence than we have (cf. Rom. 11:16–18, 24). At the same time, the New Testament witness is unanimous that no heritage or tradition is adequate to make us right with God; only faith in his Son, Jesus, can do this (John 14:6; Acts 4:12).42
Applying this lesson will be easier in some contexts than in others. Many Christians in the urban areas of the United States have Jewish friends and may be inclined from the start to reclaim the Jewishness of their faith; by contrast, presenting faith in Jesus as conversion to Israel’s heritage in the Arab world could lead to serious misunderstandings without careful explanation of biblical teaching about the role of Arab peoples in God’s plan (cf., e.g., Isa. 19:24–25). Ultimately, it was God’s plan from the start to bless all peoples; but he chose the history of a particular people as the channel through which that blessing would come (Gen. 12:3).
Original Meaning
Among the Lampstands (1:11–12)
JOHN TURNS WHEN he hears a voice “like a trumpet” (1:10). This expression presumably refers to the clarity of Jesus’ voice, a voice that could therefore strike terror into the hearts of the unprepared.18 Several scholars argue that some Jewish people understood God’s “voice” as itself a divine being and note that when John turns, he sees the “voice” (1:12), perhaps linked with Jesus’ title as the “Word” (19:13).19 More likely, however, the voice’s near personification is simply Semitic idiom (Ex. 20:18; Josephus, War 6.301).
Sometimes visionaries wrote by dictation as they saw their visions; this may be the case here (1:11). Sometimes they wrote shortly after their vision, as in 10:4. John does not, however, need to wait until the completion of his visions (which happened in some Jewish texts; Tobit 12:20; Jub. 32:25–26). And “I saw” (1:12; 5:1) is typically visionary language, not only in the Bible (Ezek. 1:1; 23:13; Dan. 8:7) but also in apocalyptic literature.20
What is most significant is that Jesus appears among the lampstands (1:12–13; 2:1), which represent the seven churches (1:20), probably suggesting Jesus’ presence with his church (cf. John 20:19). Because priests needed light to function in the sanctuary concealed from the light of the external world, the temple included a golden lampstand (Ex. 25:31–35; 37:18–21; 2 Chron. 4:7, 20), never extinguished by night or day.21
Throughout the ancient Mediterranean world, this seven-branched lampstand, or menorah, stood as the most common symbol of Israel and Judaism,22 including in Asia Minor.23 Those who believed themselves the true heirs of Israel’s heritage, such as the Samaritans, naturally appropriated the symbol for themselves.24 John encourages Jewish Christians excluded from their synagogues that it is not they but their opponents who are severed from their Jewish heritage (see comment on 2:9). But whereas the lampstand in Jewish iconography may stand for Israel as a whole, for John each local congregation is a lampstand, perhaps because it embodies “the church universal in all its fulness.”25
Bridging Contexts
IN THIS SECTION we will examine issues such as various views concerning the “Lord’s Day,” Spirit-filled worship, and some aspects of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity.
Sharing in sufferings. Believers in many parts of the world as well as some ministry situations here can identify with the shame and persecution John endured for Christ. Most of us in the West, however, at the moment are tested more by materialism than by persecution, and John’s own suffering was persecution. This does not suggest, however, that analogies cannot be drawn. If John’s suffering is more serious than ours, we should reason: If God enabled John and his companions in persecution to stand, how much more should we stand firm in the face of less severe testing?
Furthermore, even in the West today we have plenty of reminders that the world does not embrace the church as an ally (cf. John 15:18–25). Many of us have been denied jobs or otherwise maligned on account of our obedience to Christ; some of us have even suffered “friendly fire” within the church because we sought to do God’s will. Yet as John stood boldly as a model for believers then, he stands also as an example for us.
The Lord’s Day, church, and the Sabbath. The meaning of “the Lord’s Day” is important for the setting of this section, but has been reapplied in some ways that shed little light on John’s point. Yet our own traditions can lead us to read illegitimate ideas into this text.26 One area of potential misinterpretation concerning the “Lord’s Day” is that some believe that Sunday is a new Sabbath. When I was in Bible college, my hometown newspaper ran a debate between a traditional pastor and a Seventh-Day Adventist layperson as to the day of the week on which the Sabbath should be honored. The Adventist argued predictably for Saturday, to which the pastor responded, “We’re not under the law, so the Sabbath is on Sunday.” The pastor’s conclusion certainly did not follow from his argument, first because the Sabbath teaching precedes the Law of Moses (Gen. 2:2–3), second because the pastor did not define how he meant “under the law” (a matter of considerable debate today), and worst of all because he simply assumed that not being under the law meant moving the Sabbath one day forward!
As early as the second century some Gentile Christians may have contrasted the “Lord’s Day” with the Jewish Sabbath (Ignatius, Magn. 9.1).27 But within the New Testament itself there is no evidence that the Sabbath was “changed” from Saturday to Sunday. The custom of Sunday as a Christian “Sabbath” became widespread only in a later period, probably after A.D. 321, as church historian Henry Chadwick points out:
An inscription found near Zagreb records that Constantine changed the old custom of working for seven days and holding a market-day every eighth, directing farmers to hold their market-day each Sunday. This is the earliest evidence for the process by which Sunday became not merely the day on which Christians met for worship but also a day of rest, and it is noteworthy that in both law and inscription Constantine’s stated motive for introducing this custom is respect for the sun.28
Some Christians argue that no weekly day of rest remains necessary; we should celebrate every day alike (Rom. 14:5–6) and enjoy Jesus’ Sabbath-rest continually (Heb. 4:9). Others argue that because God built a day of rest into the nature of creation (Gen. 2:2–3), we will function in much better physical and emotional health if we take a day away from our work each week, though the particular day is less important.29 Those who insist on a particular day, however, cannot insist from the authority of Scripture that the day must be Sunday.30 Likewise, some of those who argue that the particular day in Scripture is Saturday and was never changed insist that one should attend church on Saturday; but Scripture does not require one to hold church on one’s day of rest. The connections between the “Lord’s Day” and the Sabbath on the one hand and between the Sabbath and church services on the other are postbiblical, and we should be charitable for differences of practice on this point.
In which Spirit? If we have correctly understood this verse as including a reference to Spirit-filled worship, we must be careful in applying it today. Different churches and cultures have different understandings of what “Spirit-filled” worship is. Some prefer lively Scripture choruses; others prefer traditional church hymns that sometimes reflect a deeper contemplation of Scripture than songs that merely quote Scripture (sometimes out of context, like “This is the day” in Ps. 118:24). Some preferences in worship style reflect cultural or generational differences rather than the presence or absence of the Spirit and are best tailored to those we invite to worship. I know some aging churches that cannot understand why they are not attracting younger worshipers, yet nothing in the style of music reveals their commitment to younger worshipers’ culture!
At the same time, the content of the worship songs may be significant: Do they invite us to worship our awesome God, or simply to enjoy the music (not that bad music is necessarily more conducive to good worship)? Do they provide simply nostalgic feelings of security for traditional believers, or do they provide us the opportunity to transcend our feelings in obediently glorifying God? In any case, we need to depend on the power of God’s Spirit to lead us deeper in our intimacy with him; we cannot achieve that by merely “fleshly” or mechanical means. Only by depending on God’s power can we offer worship truly worthy of his honor.
One should also be careful in applying this text to not promise too much. Jewish mystics and apocalyptists in John’s day sometimes offered formulas for how one could be caught up into heaven to receive visions or revelations; some of these techniques were magical and involved spirits other than God’s Spirit. Like the biblical prophets, however, John was simply spiritually prepared when Jesus came to him (cf. Isa. 6:1, 5; 2 Cor. 12:2–4); he was not trying to induce a vision.31 Scripture does allow that prophets could seek God for guidance (Dan. 2:18–19), but the means were always prayer, not magical manipulation, and God could also speak to those who were not seeking a revelation (e.g., Judg. 6:11–12; Acts 10:9–13).
We cannot promise how God will meet his people in worship or other experiences in the Spirit. But we can promise that when they turn their eyes to him, they will find his presence, and in his presence they will begin to learn the answers they need. The answers we need are not always the answers we want (John promises greater hardship), but they are also often better than we can guess (compare the picture of the new Jerusalem).
Lampstands, Judaism, and the church. How should we apply today John’s application of the lampstand, a standard symbol of Judaism, to the churches in 1:12, 20? We cannot suppose that he is addressing only ethnically Jewish Christians in the seven churches; long before this period Gentiles had become Christians in some of these cities (e.g., Acts 19:10, 17). Some Christians have responded to this and other New Testament passages by claiming that the church has replaced Israel in God’s plan; Jewish scholars tend to react with hostility to such claims, especially since the Nazi Holocaust in “Christian” Europe.32 Has the “church” replaced Israel?
To understand John’s perspective requires us to set aside for a few moments nineteen centuries of subsequent interpretation and imagine ourselves among first-century Christians. Jewish Christians proclaiming a Jewish Messiah, the fulfillment of ancient promises to Israel, won pagan, usually polytheistic converts to faith in Israel’s one God. Unlike most other Jews, Jewish Christians in Paul’s circle did not require Gentile converts to be circumcised, but they nevertheless embraced them as new participants in their Jewish faith in Jesus, spiritual children of Abraham (Gal. 3:29), inwardly circumcised (Rom. 2:28–29). They viewed such Gentile converts as grafted into Israel, while unbelieving branches were broken off (11:17).
Although people rarely understood this perspective before Jesus came, the principle was already available in the Old Testament (cf. Rom. 16:25–26). God had cut off disobedient Jewish individuals from the blessings of his covenant; in some generations, this involved even the majority of the nation (Deut. 1:35–38), though in other generations it involved only a small minority (Josh. 1:16–18). Likewise, Gentiles sometimes became members of the covenant community (e.g., Josh. 6:25; Ruth 1:16; 2 Sam. 8:18), though they had always been a minority.
John’s circle of Christians believed that they were the heirs of the Old Testament promises, but probably did not think in terms of a largely Gentile church “replacing” Israel. Instead, they most likely saw the Jewish people who rejected Jesus as apostate from Israel (2:9; 3:9), just as the Dead Sea Scrolls viewed Jewish people who rejected their teaching; they probably saw Gentile Christians as converts to the truest form of Judaism. In other words, John uses the “lampstand” image to stress the Jewishness of faith in Jesus and the continuity of believers’ faith with the heritage of ancient Israel.33 In our less polemical situation today, Gentile Christians should continue to see themselves grafted into the spiritual heritage of Israel, yet we should do so by recognizing, as we often have failed to do, that it was we and not the heritage that changed.34
Contemporary Significance
SHARING IN SUFFERINGS. Sometimes we pontificate too easily about the sufferings of others that we have not shared, and our insensitivity becomes obvious. This can happen with all kinds of deprivation, not simply the persecution John shared. I attended a singles meeting where a pastor who had been married since his early twenties lectured his hearers on how they ought to be content with their singleness. Although I agreed with his premise, I saw no proof from his own life that he understood the heaviness of his demand, how much some singles had to pray and fast and seek God’s strength to rest content while waiting for something that mattered to them very much. He may have been more persuasive if he could have better identified with his hearers’ situation.
Those who share in sufferings or in the world’s opposition often are unified in ways that surmount other barriers. In Bible college some of us nearly broke fellowship over details about the end times, though most of us belonged to the same denomination. By contrast, in the high school and secular universities I attended, as well as at secular jobs I worked, committed Christians stuck together regardless of denominational differences.35
We should also notice John’s point that “suffering” is “ours in Jesus”; one cannot follow Christ and not experience affliction. Some churches today teach prospective converts that God will solve all their problems and bless them with abundance if they become Christians, but this was not what the apostles taught new converts (Acts 14:21–22), nor was it the life that the apostles themselves experienced (1 Cor. 4:11–12). With proclamation comes persecution and sometimes deprivation; banishment often could include seizure of any assets one had. The leaders of John’s society cut him off from everything else familiar to him, but the aged prophet still retained his greatest security: God is sovereign in testing (1:8), and just as he suffered with Christ, he would also reign with him (Rom. 8:17; 2 Tim. 2:12). If he shared with his fellow believers the sufferings of Christ, he also shared Christ’s perseverance and ultimately his kingdom, as this passage declares (1:9). As F. F. Bruce puts it,
[John’s] placing of “the kingdom” between “the tribulation” and “the patient endurance” underlines a recurrent New Testament theme—that the patient endurance of tribulation is the way into the kingdom of God. If, then, John encourages his friends in the churches of Asia to stand firm, he is not cheering them on from the sidelines; he is involved with the same struggle.36
John’s response to his suffering may also be instructive to some believers today who feel that an easy life is our birthright and prove hostile to those who threaten it. Some of John’s contemporaries advocated violent resistance against Rome, but John is among those who wait on God for deliverance. At the same time, John is not completely passive; he believes, like some of his Jewish contemporaries, that suffering and martyrdom for God’s word hastens the end (6:9; cf. Col. 1:24).37
Revelation in the context of worship. If John was worshiping “in the Spirit” as we have suggested (or in any case overwhelmed by God’s Spirit), this passage suggests to us that we are apt to hear from God most clearly when it is his face and glory we are seeking. My first year in Bible college a student named Lillian prayed for many hours each day—her life so anointed for prayer that every time I even saw her, I felt an urge to run somewhere and pray. Some of her witnessing partners told me stories about her witnessing methods: For example, when a man was mocking her witness, she began listing his secret sins, leading quickly to his repentance. We each have different gifts; Lillian told me whenever she saw me, it made her want to run and read her Bible. But devotion to prayer and worship often opens our hearts more fully to other aspects of the Spirit’s testimony.
Throughout Revelation we see the saints in heaven engaged in worship (4:10; 5:14; 7:11; 11:16; 19:4), while saints are being slaughtered on earth and followers of the beast worship the beast (13:4, 8, 12, 15; 14:9–11). The scenes of heaven are intended as scenes of worship, for heaven’s furniture is the furniture of the Old Testament temple: the ark (11:19), the tabernacle (15:5), the altars of incense and sacrifice (6:9; 8:3–5; 9:13), the sea (4:6; 15:2; cf. 1 Kings 7:23–25, 39, 44)—and, of course, the lampstands (Rev. 1:12–13; 2:1, 5). The church on earth is never closer to heaven than when we are offering God and the Lamb the glory they deserve; it is then that we experience “in the Spirit” a foretaste of heaven (cf. 1 Cor. 2:9–10; 2 Cor. 5:5).38 A church that is suffering in this world will long for heaven, and in turning our hearts toward our heavenly king we will find strength to remember that the future world belongs to us.
The book of Revelation is a book of worship that summons us to recognize the awesome majesty of our Lord. The congregation I pastored used a number of worship choruses from the this book, so in one of my first sermons I interspersed these worship choruses with the sermon as a way to both explain the contextual significance of the subject of our songs and respond to the message of Scripture by adoring the God who had spoken to us in it.39
Jesus among the churches. One of Revelation’s most important declarations is that Jesus appears among the lampstands (1:12; 2:1), which represent the seven churches (1:20). One need only skim the letters to these churches in chapters 2 and 3 to realize that five of them needed serious correction. Nevertheless, until a church has gone so far as to be withdrawn from its place (2:5), it remains the place where Christ’s presence is found.40 One might remember the Corinthian Christians, “sanctified in Christ Jesus” (1 Cor. 1:2); despite their lifestyle (3:3; 5:2), God still viewed them according to his finished work in Christ (6:11). We see here in Revelation Christ’s faithfulness to the church, including the local church. When we see the flaws in churches, our tendency is sometimes to react with disdain; but we must never give up on the spiritual life that remains in the church, for the Lord of the churches, who offered his blood to redeem them, still loves them and walks among them (cf. 1:5; 3:4).
Because John portrays the churches symbolically as “lampstands,” a traditional Jewish image, he emphasizes the Jewishness of our faith. We Gentile Christians too often treat the Old Testament like a mere prolegomenon to the New Testament, or its history as a boring and irrelevant story with no relevance to our lives today. Nothing could be further from Scripture’s intention!41 We should read the stories of patriarchs and prophets as the stories of our spiritual ancestors, and ourselves as grafted by mercy into God’s single plan in history for his people running from Abraham forward. We should learn from Judaism an appreciation for a heritage that Jewish tradition has often preserved with greater reverence than we have (cf. Rom. 11:16–18, 24). At the same time, the New Testament witness is unanimous that no heritage or tradition is adequate to make us right with God; only faith in his Son, Jesus, can do this (John 14:6; Acts 4:12).42
Applying this lesson will be easier in some contexts than in others. Many Christians in the urban areas of the United States have Jewish friends and may be inclined from the start to reclaim the Jewishness of their faith; by contrast, presenting faith in Jesus as conversion to Israel’s heritage in the Arab world could lead to serious misunderstandings without careful explanation of biblical teaching about the role of Arab peoples in God’s plan (cf., e.g., Isa. 19:24–25). Ultimately, it was God’s plan from the start to bless all peoples; but he chose the history of a particular people as the channel through which that blessing would come (Gen. 12:3).