Rev 1:1
The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place;
St John wrote a book in which he was trying to convey a transcendent experience to his readers, a book that seems to raise more questions than it answers.
For example – the language a little odd when compared to modern writing and it turns out to be Jesus’s revelation, not John’s. For that matter what’s a revelation anyway? Finally (and it’s only the first verse) who are these ‘servants’ and are you and I included in the list the intended readers?
In fact the word ‘Revelation” is in Greek: Apokalypsis. This is derived from the term apokalýptein which means ‘to uncover what has been concealed’. So we can assume that what’s in the book has been hidden up to now but God has revealed it so the servants of Jesus Christ may know what’s soon going to happen.
Still, for something that’s supposed to be an unveiling John, or God for that matter, seems to have done a good job at hiding the meanings deeply in symbolism. For us readers to understand the symbolism one of two things must happen:
1. Either we have to be been educated in the ‘system’ John is using. In other words we’ve been initiated into the ‘secret’ – usually the meaning of the symbols.
In regard to being ‘educated’ into the mystery we know John had a Jewish upbringing so was he writing to readers who interpreted meaning through the scriptures and religious symbolism of Judaism? The seven candles for example do sound like the menorah in the Jewish tabernacle and John uses lots of that language.
Then again he played with Greek number symbolism too (the beast 666 etc) and his work has the structure of a Greek play, complete with choruses. Was it therefore a document for those initiates of the dramatic Greek mysteries? The term ‘unveiling’ came from the mystery religions too.
2. Or we are somehow changed/reborn into a new consciousness and can then see the mystery played before us. This of course implies initiation and there is evidence in John’s writings of initiatory experience, for example in John’s gospel 19:30 Jesus says “tetélestai” which translates as “It is finished”. This term was usually used in the Greek mysteries as a pronouncement that an initiation was complete.
Schoenmaker makes the point that the Greek initiates were termed ‘Mystai’ which meant ‘veiled one’. So Revelation, ‘Apokalypsis’, which means ‘unveiling’ implied the showing forth of the perfect/completed initiate. John wasn’t sending a reference library out with every copy of the book so each reader had to have the ‘qualifications’ to interpret the book.
In English the text says it was written for the servants of Jesus Christ. This word ‘servants’ is in Greek ‘Doulos’ which almost universally translates as ‘Slave’ in Greek writings (except for the New Testament). Call it my uneducated nature but I suspect the use of ‘servant’ was done to soften the impact of the requirement:
If you want to “Unveil” the mystery of Jesus Christ then you must be His slave – body and soul. Nothing less.
While our modern sense of personal autonomy and dignity squirms at the term ‘slave’ it’s good to reflect that it’s hard to imagine there could be any lesser standard. Sorry but if you wish to ‘see’ the mystery then you have to submit/surrender as a slave in that drama.
Yet if we accept that the message is the revealing of the perfected initiate and the candidate’s pathway to their own completion, complete submission of your self (or John in the text) to the higher self (Jesus Christ in the text) would be required.
I should say at this point that I’m not into churchianity. The global mystery of the Christos and it’s incarnation through Jesus belongs to all of us. You, me and everyone on the planet have been changed in our spiritual and finer natures by that event. This text has little to do with the historic Golgotha event.
In talking of us as the slave I’m not suggesting that kneeling at a church’s altar and giving yourself away to that institution or any other, nor to a mosque or an ashram or any other external form.
An angel once said to me that ‘it isn’t if I believe in God that’s important, it’s whether or not God believes in me’. OK, it sounds a little ‘sweet’ I know but what was being communicated was the need for me to reference things from a higher viewpoint. Now ‘God’ means lots of different things to people but in this context it meant ‘the spiritual source’. So, it’s important to ‘be known’ to your spiritual source”
If you are, if you can sense to supportive ‘hum’ of divine being about you – then you are already approaching the consciousness of ‘the slave’ in St. Johns book. You can’t be any other way. The doubts, the human stuff is just a part of the spiritual detox we call the ‘here and now’.
Though I’m fond of ‘angels’ they can be far too serious and from that perspective I suppose another meaning in their comment could be that my human opinion on life, the universe and all is just ‘diddly squat’ (a wonderful term I picked up from Col. Sherman Potter).
When is ‘soon’?
The final bit of this verse is that it ‘must soon take place’. Yet looking back over the centuries literalists have be pointing to hundreds of dates when ‘it’s going to happen’ according to the bible. It hasn’t happened yet.
So, for a moment think about foreknowledge. This is what we associate with prophecy. We usually give it’s authorship to God, via a prophet, which if you were religious would add to it’s authority. The Book of Revelation is a prophecy too.
Let us imagine that a fictional asteroid designated BigMFr47d was discovered to be about to collide catastrophically with earth next year and the secret was being whispered to only a few.
Would you want to know? Would the information be useful?
Then again there may be something reverential about praying “Thank you Father for telling me that my family and I are going to be splattered next year” but does that foreknowledge give you any specific advantage?
So a prophecy has to be useful; it has to give us a road map or information that is to our advantage if we apply it. As to what we can do with this revelation we’ll go into later but the issue is timing.
Part of the problem is that we live in a busy over-organized modern world. We can say ‘I’ll meet you next Tuesday at 3 p.m.’ whereas the concept of a precise time-slot being booked up was not a common one in ancient times. So when is ‘soon’?
Most Greco-Roman cities did have a 12 month lunar calendar with festivals booked up in advance by the city state planners. However, for trade and public celebrations a calendar was far more a ‘sequence of events’.
A guild of traders might say ‘after the trading ship returns to port – we’ll have a meeting with the merchants”. It was precise in the sequence of events, not in the actual date.
In addition there might have to be a ritual planned to honour Aeolus before the ship leaves on it’s journey, a sacrifice to Poseidon to keep it safe whilst it’s traveling and a celebration in honour of the town’s patron deity after it’s return.
None of these events are on a precise planned date. Rather they were planned to be after the one before, whenever that occurs. For your interest these offerings were an equivalent to departure tax, insurance and import duties. All of these were ‘booked up’ in the calendar and would happen when it was appropriate.
So the ‘time being near’ is true – we’re at the stage where things are about to happen. Mind you, if we were actually in the Greek mysteries this would usually be a period of days.
Rev 1:2-3
He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, who testified to the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that he saw.
Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of the prophecy, and blessed are those who hear and who keep what is written in it; for the time is near.
That famous number 7
By the end of the third verse you’d have noted that we now have 7 characters:
- God – Not much we can add to that just yet.
- Jesus Christ. It’s His revelation, not John’s.
- An angel – who acts as a messenger.
- Servants (of Jesus Christ) – who will receive the message.
- John, a specific servant of Jesus Christ.
- One – who reads aloud the words of the prophecy.
- Those – who hear and keep what is written in it.
I think I pointed out that number is an important symbolic key to this book, not just in it’s gematria but also in it’s basic philosophical meaning. Things tend to come in 7’s (or in Septenaries if you want to sound philosophical) when you wish to display a completed set.
Agrippa (book 2 of Four Books of Occult Philosophy) listed pages of associations of the number 7 which essentially come down to the idea of complete inclusion of various parts. So for example the higher nature (symbolize by 3) and the physical nature (by 4) are added together for the 7.
As examples of some relevance to our research could be:
The 7 Classical planets – Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury, Sun and Moon. The 7 Colours of the Rainbow. – Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple and Violet. The 7 days of creation.
It’s worth noting that just because various things are in a set of 7 doesn’t mean they co-exist harmoniously. The qualities of the goddess Venus and the god Mars don’t get on too well. So there is still energetic power in sevens.
Though it’s a little early in our study it is in fact the set of 12 that harmonizes as well as encompasses all possibilities. So you get 12 knights of the round table, 12 apostles, 12 signs of the zodiac, 12 tribes of Israel. In fact (thanks to John Rawson for this bit of information) it is the sharps and flats that ‘fill out’ the tones of the octave. Completed there are 12 tones made up of 7 notes and 5 sharps.
Then in verse three God adds two separate blessings – one for those who read aloud the words of the prophecy and the second for those who hear and who keep what’s written in it. These happen to be the first of seven blessings in the book.
This conditionality of receiving the blessing depends on our actions – If either you read aloud the words of this prophecy Or you hear and keep what’s written Then you will be blessed. There is that fine point though – we can receive both blessings. The person who reads aloud also hears what they say, but do they keep what’s written?
It’s not without irony that Thomas Harris named his literary monster ‘Dr. Lecter’. The office of Lector was that of the person licensed by the Church to read the Bible.
Actually ‘Holy Orders’ can be used to provide another key to this book for guess what – there were seven of them. They ranged from Porter through Lector, Exorcist, Acolyte, sub-Deacon, Deacon and Priest. The priesthood also included Bishop too, but in a ‘super-priest’ capacity.
If we were to ‘place’ these orders in the body of a church building then they would be a sequence from the entrance door to the high altar. The important thing is that in this list there is clearly a sequence of increasing ‘access to God’.
A parallel to this is the seven primary Chakras of Indian tradition which show a similar pattern of refinement in consciousness.
I assert that this gradation of spiritual awareness through patterns of 7 is the key to the metaphysics of the number 7 in the Book of Revelation. Pryse, writing in his ‘Apocalypse Unsealed’ asserted as much, linking the seven chakras with the Greek vowels and the ‘Churches that are in Asia’. Likewise Cayce too made the same assertion in his ‘A Commentary on the Book of The Revelation’.
Spurious Note: Of course if my linking Holy Orders with Chakras is accurate then the dropping of the minor orders of Porter and Lector in the 1960’s indicates the body of Holy Mother Church clearly doesn’t want to be involved with it’s lower two chakras any more.