€XpLoR!n9 ReVeLaTion 1 9-20

     WeeKly BooK oF Revelation

The revelation vision is a piece of the Truth puzzle. It can help reveal what it is God is doing and how. And most importantly why. 

                 A Paraphrased Study

9 - I, John, your brother and partner in the tribulation and in the kingdom and in the patient endurance that are in Jesus, was on the prison island called Patmos on account of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. 10 I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day, and heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet sounding 11 saying, “Write what you see in a book and send it to the seven churches in Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea.”

     12 Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking and when I turned I saw seven gold lampstands, 13 and in the midst of them one like a Son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a gold sash around his chest. 14 The hairs of his head were white, like pure white wool, and snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, 15 his feet like glowing bronze, refined in a fiery furnace. And his voice was like the roar of mighty waters. 16 In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sWord (“thy word is Truth” Jn.17:17) and his face was like the sun in its shining. 17 And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying, “Fear not, I am the first and the last, 18 the living one. I died, but behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and of the hades/grave. (These two are capitalized in some versions. Which I find completely strange!) 19 Write therefore the things seen, what is now, and what will take place after now. 20 As for the mystery of the seven stars I hold in my right hand, and the seven gold lampstands, the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven lampstands are the seven churches.

                         ~*~

🗝️ [  ] - word/language insights, facts, cross references, etc.

      (  ) - thots

Previous posts:

Intro - This Year’s Revelation Study

1:1-8

               📜🍞+🍷🕊️(+Logic)

The Human Story

Revelation, or its Greek name, “Apocalypse”, is the story of the consummation of good and evil. Adam and Eve, placed in and of the GARDEN PARADISE had eaten of the forbidden tree of the KNOWLEDGE of both good and evil, which fruit we are still chewing on to this day. (Once thinking ability, thus choice, was endowed, a whole new world, or tree, of possibilities ‘came to be’.) In this final book of the Bible, the FRUIT OF THE EARTH is fully ripe, both goodness, and wickedness. John was a very old man, when Roman authorities banished him to an uninhabited island called “Patmos”.
     While he was there, the Lord Jesus showed him a great vision of how man’s world would end up. The visions of this book are especially poignant. Believers are urged to read, listen to, and hear, the words of this little book – after the mighty crash of all things false and the last great war of nations, Armageddon (with environmental woes as a precursor to these things) and after a 1,000 year Kingdom of our Lord's long second advent of rebuilding paradise upon Earth, the New Jerusalem (the new capital of the planet) comes down from heaven, onto the earth.
     It shines of jewels and gold, and the pure sparkling river of the water of life flows through it, to all the world, with trees of life on either side, which leaves and fruit will be for the total healing, and continued health of the nations. No eye will again cry from sorrow, there will be no sickness, suffering or death. The question of good and evil, right and wrong, what is life as opposed to what is death, has been answered for all time, and all citizens have it engraved deeply upon their very hearts and minds for all eternity and ages. To stray from Perfection/Life/God, is to stray away from the very “breath of life” and can only ever end in a self destructive puff of smoke... and dust and ashes.
     Elsewhere we are told "eye has not seen, nor ear conceived, nor heart ever been able to fully imagine, all the good things God has created for those who love Him."