Revelation 1:2-3 The time is at hand

Revelation 1:2-3 God's revelation was subsequently communicated by His messenger to John, His love-slave (doulos). John obediently and faithfully testified in writing to all that he saw concerning the logos of God (cf John 1:1) and Jesus Christ. Since John had previously (in the beginning of the gospel) identified Jesus Christ as the logos of God, why are they called out as two separate things here? Perhaps the answer is that this verse parallels John 1:1, in identifying Christ as the logos of God, to tie the gospel of John and the revelation together.

          The blessing that is promised to those who read, hear, and heed these words is based on their temporal imminence. Perhaps reading or hearing is an option, but heeding (terountes) seems the essential link. Keeping, guarding, heeding the words written within the prophecy because the kairos (time, season, era, epoch) is near.

          The temporal imminence might be a stumbling block since these words were penned around 90-100 AD and the events have not come to pass in over 1900 years. What John means by this statement could be taken a couple of ways.

•    Since the resurrection of Christ, there are no further events of Biblical stature that will happen before these events begin to take place. The church age, which began on the day of Pentecost, will culminate in these events, as part of a continuum. The end times began with the sending of the Holy Spirit to the church. Note that the seven churches to which Jesus speaks in chapters two and three were contemporaneous with John.

•    The individual events do not all necessarily have a literal fulfillment only in a worldwide paroxysm of rebellion and war against God followed by His judgment manifested in physical cataclysms and culminating in His physical return to rule and reign over the whole earth. In other words, the individual events depicted in revelation may have a fulfillment on an individual scale in the lives of believers and unbelievers, including persecution of believers (common through the entire church age), overt rebellion against God (essentially the human condition for all of recorded history), and God's judgment of nations and individuals for their rebellion. Perhaps even the coming of Christ in the clouds and standing before Him in heaven occurs in the death of the individual believers.

Heeding these words ought not to be applied only to this unveiling of Christ, it ought to be an admonition relative to all that is in Scripture. Indeed, in Luke 6:46, Jesus asked, “Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not do what I say?" The importance of heeding the words that unveil Christ is that the more we see and understand about Him, the more in tune we are with His kingdom, the more responsibility we have. (See Luke 12:48)