The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to show unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and revealed it by his angel unto his servant John:
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Andreas of Caesarea
AD 637
Revelation is the revealing of hidden mysteries when the intellect is enlightened by either divine dreams or by visions from divine enlightenment while awake.
things which must shortly come to pass. this means that some of the prophecies about them are to happen then, and the things concerning the end are not to come until later on, because to God a thousand years is like a prior day, which is like having already happened. Ps. 89:4
which God gave unto him. But what is it, which the Son has heard from the Father? Has He heard the word of the Father? Yes, but He is the Word of the Father. When you conceive a word, wherewith to name a thing, the very, conception of that thing in the mind is a word. Just then as you have in your mind and with you your spoken word; even so God uttered the Word, i.e. begat the Son. Since then the Son is the Word of God, and the Son has spoken the Word of God to us, He has spoken to us the Father's word. What John said is therefore true.
which God gave unto him. And John, in his own manner, refers the glory of the Son to the Father, and testifies that Jesus Christ has received from God.
John: That through John He might lay open to all His servants the things which he, by the privilege of a peculiar chastity, obtained above all others to behold. <a
The revelation of Jesus Christ: The progress with which the Church that had been founded by the Apostles was to be extended, or the end with which it was to be perfected, had need to be revealed, in order to strengthen the preachers of the faith against the opposition of the world. And John, in his own manner, refers the glory of the Son to the Father, and testifies that Jesus Christ has received from God.
John. This book was written not by another John but by the one who wrote the Gospel, he who at the marriage feast at Cana reclined on the breast of the Lord in which all treasures of wisdom and knowledge are concealed.
There exist others that say it was composed not by him but by another.
By Christ, he says, and not simply by God. But if through Jesus Christ God had this knowledge revealed, it is clear that it was through the Spirit, that is, because through Christ the grace of the activity of the Spirit descends to us.
which must shortly come to pass That is, the trials of the Church which must come to pass quickly, because this proceeds from the divine command which is not able to be altered. This is for the testing of the faithful and to expand of their glory. sending by His angel Jesus appearing in this way.
At the beginning of all his writings, it is a common practice of John to use words that express the divinity of our Savior Jesus Christ. In this work he instead uses words that express His humanity, unless we might come to know Him from His divine qualities and not from His human qualities too. For it is a sign of true theology to believe that God the Word has been begotten from God and the Father before all eternity and of time and space, being coeternal and consubstantial with the Father and the Spirit, and joint-ruler of the ages and of all conceivable and sensible creation, according to the words of the most wise Paul in the letter to the Colossians, that: "For in him were all things created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, or dominations, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him and in him. And he is the head of the body, the Church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he may hold the primacy: (Co...
things which must shortly come to pass. since those things that were going to happen have yet to be fulfilled, even though a long time, more than 500 years has gone by since John said this. The reason is because that all time in the eyes of the infinite eternal God are as nothing.
angel. not as appearing and speaking Himself, but through an angel he initiated me into his mysteries. You see the truthfulness of John in confessing that it was though an angel that the revelation came to him, and that he did not hear it from the mouth of the Lord.
But the writer of the Revelation puts himself forward at once in the very beginning, for he says: "The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which He gave to him to show to His servants quickly; and He sent and signified it by His angel to His servant John, who bare record of the Word of God, and of his testimony, and of all things that he saw."