Revelation (The John Walvoord Prophecy Commentaries)

by John Walvoord

No other book of the New Testament evokes the same fascination as the book of Revelation. Attempts at its exposition are almost without number, yet there continues the widest divergence of interpretation. Because the book reveals truth relative to every important fundamental of Christian theology, it is inevitable that its interpretation be influenced by the contemporary confusion in biblical scholarship especially in the realm of eschatology. In some sense, the book is the conclusion to all previous biblical revelation and logically reflects the interpretation of the rest of the Bible.

It is implicit in any orthodox Protestant approach to the Scriptures to hold that the Bible was intended to be understood. What is true of other Scriptures is also true of the book of Revelation.

Instead of assuming that the interpretation should be nonliteral unless there is proof to the contrary, the opposite approach has been taken, namely, that terms should be understood in their ordinary meaning unless contrary evidence is adduced.

When approached as divinely inspired and to be interpreted by the phraseology and symbolism of other portions of the Bible, the depth and breadth of Revelation become immediately apparent. The book offers knowledge far beyond human ability and claims revelation not only in relation to spiritual and moral truths, as in the letters to the seven churches, but revelation extending to visions of heaven and earth and prophetic revelation of the future, including the eternal state. If a human invention, the book is of little value; if divinely inspired, it is an open door into precious eternal truth.

The study of Revelation is an endless task but offers rich rewards to the patient student.

Revelation cannot be understood apart from the sixty-five books that precede it, although it is in itself a Bible in miniature.

The idea is not that the event may occur soon, but that when it does, it will be sudden

Revelation is the only book of Scripture containing such a direct promise of blessing. This blessing is the first of seven in the book (1:3; 14:13; 16:15; 19:9; 20:6; 22:7, 14).

Grace is God’s attitude toward believers, coupled with His loving gifts—which will never change. Peace refers to our relationship with God—which includes both the peace made with God at salvation and our ongoing relationship with Him, which we can enjoy, or fail to enjoy, as we walk or fail to walk in obedience to God.

God gave us His revelation for our understanding, our obedience, our warning, and our encouragement.

In chapters 2 and 3 the messages to the seven churches refer to “those [things] that are” (cf. 1:19). These messages contain divine revelation and exhortation pertaining to the present age, which is the church age, and so they are some of the most incisive and penetrating passages in the entire New Testament relating to church doctrine and Christian living.

Many of the problems and evils that exist in the church today are a direct outgrowth of the neglect of Christ’s instruction to these seven churches.

the messages here are applicable to churches in many different settings and historical ages. There are also personal messages of exhortation included, making the messages equally applicable to individual Christians.

Many Bible teachers also believe that the conditions in these seven churches represent the chronological development of church history viewed spiritually. They note that Ephesus seems to be characteristic of the apostolic period in general and that the progression of evil climaxing in Laodicea seems to indicate the final state of apostasy of the church in the last days. There is certainly some merit to this view, although it is a deduction from the text rather than being stated explicitly.

The idea that the churches of Revelation 2 and 3 give us the historical sweep of church history from the first century to today does not mean that the characteristics of each church are found only in succeeding generations of the church. In other words, while the modern-day church exhibits many of the problems of Laodicea (the last age of the church in this view), there are also traits from the other churches present.

From a study of other passages we do understand that this age will end not with progressive improvement and a trend toward righteousness and peace, but with a movement toward failure and apostasy in the professing church (2 Tim. 3:1–5), as symbolized in the church of Laodicea.

The pattern is sadly familiar in church history: a cooling of the church’s love for Christ, then its replacement by a love for the things of the world, resulting in compromise and spiritual corruption, followed by a departure from the faith and loss of effective spiritual testimony.

The second command is to repent. This is the Greek word metanoēson, meaning “to change the mind.” The Ephesians were to have a different attitude toward Christ and reclaim their former love for Him. The third command is the outgrowth of the first two: “Do the works you did at first.” A true love for God is always manifested in the works it produces.

The letter to the church at Ephesus reminds us how easily the church’s early days of passionate love for Christ can grow cold as the years go by. But Christ never meant for our duty to Him, even faithful duty, to replace our love for Him. The church’s “first love” for Jesus Christ has to be continually nurtured, and serve as the genuine motivation for service to our Lord.

The problem of human suffering is as old as humanity. It is not difficult to understand why the ungodly suffer, but what about Christ’s own, as in the case of the Smyrna church? The answer to this question is largely bound up in the doctrine of the sovereignty of God. The Bible does help us with these explanations: In some cases, suffering for a child of God may be disciplinary as indicated in God’s dealings with the church at Corinth (1 Cor. 11:30–32; cf. Heb. 12:3–13). Suffering may also be preventive, such as Paul’s thorn in the flesh (2 Cor. 12:7). Through this affliction Paul was kept from pride in the revelation. A third reason for suffering is that we may learn obedience. Suffering teaches us what we could not learn otherwise (cf. Rom. 5:3–5). Even Christ “learned obedience through what he suffered” (Heb. 5:8). Suffering also allows us to bear a better testimony for Christ. This was true of Paul: “For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9:16).

It is true in every age that the purifying fires of affliction cause the church’s testimony to burn all the more brilliantly.

What God hates the Christian ought to hate as well. The modern tendency to compromise on issues of morality and theology and to downplay their importance had its counterpart in the early church of Pergamum. The word of Christ to this church is a stern warning to modern Christians to examine their morality and faith, and to follow the Word of God where this conflicts with the standards of men.

To some, this verse seems to indicate that a believer’s name could be blotted out, which is contrary to the Bible’s clear teaching of the believer’s eternal security. To make the continuance of our salvation depend upon works is gross failure to comprehend that salvation is by grace alone. If it depended upon the believer’s perseverance, the name would not have been written there in the first place.

Does this verse teach the possibility of the loss of salvation? If so, it hardly sounds like a promise. MacArthur states, “Incredibly, although the text says just the opposite, some people assume that this verse teaches that a person’s name can be erased from the book of life. They thus foolishly turn a promise into a threat.”5 The implication of the passage is that those who put their trust in Christ and thus conquer by faith have the privilege of being recognized as the saints of God throughout eternity—even saints from the church at Sardis where so much was offensive to their holy Lord.

There can be no holiness without truth.

Because of their faithfulness, the Christians in Philadelphia are promised that they will be kept from the hour of trial that will come upon the earth as a divine judgment.

Such a promise of deliverance would seemingly have been impossible if the rapture were delayed until the end of the tribulation prior to the second coming of Christ and the establishment of His millennial kingdom.

3:19 “‘Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent.’”

Christ does not force Himself upon anyone, but awaits our invitation to be admitted.

The church at Ephesus represents the danger of losing our first love (2:4), that fresh devotion to Christ that characterized the early church.

The church at Smyrna represents the danger of fear of suffering and was exhorted, “Do not fear what you are about to suffer” (2:10). With persecution against believers worldwide so strong today, the church can take heart that Christ is aware of her suffering.

The church at Pergamum illustrates the constant danger of doctrinal compromise (2:14–15), often the first step toward complete defection. The modern church that has forsaken so many fundame...

The church at Thyatira is a monument to the danger of moral compromise (2:20). The church today may well take heed to the departure from moral stan...

The church at Sardis is a warning against the danger of spiritual deadness (3:1–2), of orthodoxy without li...

The church at Philadelphia commended by our Lord is nevertheless warned against the danger of not holding fast (3:11), and exhorted to keep “my word about patient endurance,” to maintain the “little power...

The final message to the church at Laodicea is a telling indictment, a warning against the danger of lukewarmness (3:15–16), of self-sufficiency, of bein...

If the events anticipated in Christ’s promise to show us what is to take place are indeed valid prophecy, they should be regarded as a prediction of events that will occur at the end of the age. This demands the futurist view of Revelation.

Significantly, the jasper and the carnelian are the first and last of these twelve stones (cf. Ex. 28:17–21). The jasper represented Reuben, the firstborn of Jacob. The carnelian represented Benjamin, the youngest of Jacob’s twelve sons. In other words, these two stones represented the first and the last, and therefore may be regarded as including all the other stones in between; that is, the whole of the covenanted people.

5:13–14 And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!” And the four living creatures said, “Amen!” and the elders fell down and worshiped.

This commentary holds the pretribulational view that the church has already been raptured, translated to heaven, before the outpouring of God’s wrath. Though the book of Revelation itself does not determine this important question with finality, it is significant that the church that was so prominent in chapters 2 and 3 is not mentioned again until 22:16, except as the wife of the Lamb at the close of the tribulation. Nowhere in scenes of earth that describe the end time (chaps. 6–19) is the church pictured as involved in the earthly struggle.

The picture before us, then, is God’s revelation of the dramatic and terrible judgment that will climax the present age. This constitutes a warning to those who are living carelessly in unbelief to beware lest this present age engulf them. The prophecy of the end of the age is a spur to Christians to snatch souls from the fire and thus prepare them for the coming of the Lord.

the God who sits on the throne in heaven is in complete control of what transpires on earth. The events happening on earth—no matter how frightening and devastating—are neither haphazard nor random. They are ordered by the One seated on His throne. Heaven rules on earth. God’s people are to view what is happening on earth from God’s viewpoint rather than from man’s. Every generation of believers can draw comfort and strength by looking at things from this perspective.

The book of Revelation discredits those who teach that God is so loving and kind that He will never judge people who have not received His Son. Though the modern mind is reluctant to accept the fact that God will judge the wicked, the Bible clearly teaches that He will.

it should be clear from other Scriptures that the Holy Spirit is omnipresent. He has always been in the world and always will be, in keeping with His divine attribute of omnipresence as the Third Person of the Trinity.

The same Scripture that assures all Christians of the love and grace of God extended to those who trust in Christ is unequivocal in its statements of judgment upon evil.

Revelation 14 emphasizes first that the 144,000 of Israel seen at the beginning of the great tribulation will be preserved triumphantly through it. Second, the rest of the chapter is devoted to various pronouncements of divine judgment upon an evil world, reassuring tribulation believers that, though they may suffer and even be martyred, God’s ultimate justice will triumph, evil will be judged, and they will be rewarded. The implications of the message for today are only too plain. Today is a day of grace; but what is true of the tribulation is also true today, that God will ultimately judge all people. Today, however, the invitation is still open to those who will receive the grace of God by trusting in Christ and being saved from entering this awful period that may be impending for this present generation.

“Great and amazing are your deeds, O Lord God the Almighty! Just and true are your ways, O King of the nations! Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship you, for your righteous acts have been revealed.”

Though we are not able to immediately understand all the details of these dramatic judgments, the unmistakable impression of the Scriptures is that the whole world is being brought to the bar of justice before Christ as King of kings and Lord of lords. There is no escape from divine judgment except for those who receive the grace of God in that day by faith in Jesus Christ. The utter perversity and depravity of human nature, which will reject the sovereignty of God in the face of such overwhelming evidence, confirms that even the lake of fire will not produce repentance on the part of those who have hardened their hearts against the grace of God.

The alliance of the apostate church with the political powers of the world during this future period not only debauches the true spiritual character of the church and compromises her testimony in every way, it also has the devastating effect of inducing religious drunkenness on the part of earth’s inhabitants.

The history of the church has demonstrated that apostate Christendom is unsparing in its persecution of those who attempt to maintain a true faith in Jesus Christ.