Reflections and Musings From the Book of Revelation

To study Revelation, we must understand exactly what the Isle of Patmos looked like and where it was located. As an interesting aside, Patmos means my killing according to the 1901 reprint of the Dictionary of Scripture Proper Names (Jackson 2016).
Yonge (1868, 71) quotes an ancient Latin hymn entitled “The Exile of Patmos,” which iterates the strong traditional belief of John being caught up to heaven and commissioned by God to view and write about the Apocalypse.
“Through Rome’s infuriated city, From Caesar’s judgment chair, They drag Christ’s beloved disciple, The Saint with silver hair. To desert islands banished, With God, the exile dwells, And sees the future glory His mystic writing tells.”
Most of what we know about John comes from the Bible itself, particularly the Gospels. Interestingly, every gospel, except the one named after him, mentions the Apostle John by name.
According to the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), John was one of the first disciples Jesus called to follow him. Like many of Jesus’ disciples, John was a fisherman by trade. At Jesus’ call, John forsook all, followed him, and stayed with Jesus continuously until the end. John was one of Zebedee’s two sons. Zebedee was a man of considerable wealth because he had “hired servants” with him and his wife was one of those women who ministered of their substance to Jesus and His disciples (Mark 1:20). Around AD 100, John found himself banished to the Isle of Patmos because he would not stop preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. When arrested, John was in Ephesus ministering to the church there and in the surrounding cities, seeking to strengthen those congregations. Gospel writers cannot seem to agree on who exactly banished him to the Patmos, and I will not spend time on their discourse. It is sufficient to know that he was indeed there.
There is a great controversy about whether John the Revelator was the same John identified as the disciple whom Jesus loved. In the Gospel according to John, we find references to “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” (John 13:23, 19:26, 20:2, 21:7, and 21:20). While John’s Gospel does not specifically identify its author, and the disciple whom Jesus loved is nowhere explicitly named in Scripture, early Christians universally recognize John as both. This is consistent with internal evidence in the John’s Gospel.
Alone and having no one with whom he could communicate, John was left on Patmos to die. The courts assumed that there was nothing he could do out there to promote our Savior Jesus Christ. I am sure they said to let him preach to the rocks and dead carcasses. How wrong they were. God chose John to write the book of Revelation to serve as a witness to mankind until the Lord returns. His witness is even stronger today than when he walked upon the earth. We must never forget that while John was the penman, Jesus was the author.
It is not by accident that Revelation is the last book of the Bible. It is evident that in his wisdom, God has ordered each chapter from Genesis to Revelation. Revelation has to do with eschatology, which is the study of the last things. It shows how the ending affects the present in such a way that the Gospel is verified in life, specifically with any of the various Christian doctrines concerning the Second Coming, the Resurrection of the Dead, or the Last Judgment. While reading Revelation, we must keep in mind that Genesis is the book of beginnings and Revelation is the book of the end time. Thus, we see that the Bible forms a glorious circle of truth.
Genesis gives us the creation of the heavens and the earth, whereas Revelation provides us with a view of a new heaven and a new earth. Genesis depicts the earthly paradise including the Tree of Life and the River of Blessing, all lost to mankind through sin. Revelation shows the Paradise of God with the Tree of Life and the pure river of water of life flowing from the throne of God and the Lamb. In other words, paradise is regained because of the atonement of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
In Genesis, the first blood sacrifice had to be made for man’s sins. That sacrifice was a lamb. In Revelation, John sees Jesus standing next to the throne as the Lamb which was sacrificed for the remission of mankind’s sin.
In Genesis, we become aware of the origin of sin when the serpent entered the Garden of Eden to beguile Eve. In Revelation, the serpent is now called the devil, and Satan is cast into the Lake of Fire.
In Genesis, we learn of the first murder, the first polygamist, the first drunkard, the first act of rebellion, etc. In Revelation, we learn that all these types who refuse to accept God’s salvation are banished from his presence forever.
In Genesis, we see the rise of Babylon; we see its doom in Revelation. In Genesis, we see the city of man; we see the city of God in Revelation.
In Genesis, we see how sorrow, death, tears, and all the rudiments of sin came into the world. In Revelation, we see these things overcome, and God wipes away every tear. We see a new heaven and a new earth where these things will never be again.
There are four distinct views of Revelation, the Historical, Preterist, Futurist, and Idealist. The Historicist view poses that the book of Revelation is a prophecy about church history from the time of John to the end of the world. Preterists believe that John’s prophecy was fulfilled primarily in the first Century AD. Futurists propose that Revelation is prophecy primarily about the future. Idealists view Revelation as a non-historical and non-prophetic drama about spiritual realities. This perspective is thought to have originated among ancient Alexandrian theologians, who frequently allegorized biblical texts. There are also some contemporary followers of this perspective.