Unveiling

Revelation 1:1-3

June 28, 2026 • Mount Pleasant UMC

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I spent a good part of my early life scared to death of the book of Revelation. I won’t ask for a show of hands, but I’m willing to bet I’m not alone. Some of you might still avoid this book altogether. I get it. The best estimates out there today say that somewhere between 50-75% of churchgoing Christians refuse to read it, and maybe some of you are in that category. When it came up as part of our New Testament reading this last week, you just quit at Jude. My fear started when I was a kid and the pastor showed a movie that was based on one interpretation of the book of Revelation and the movie scared the living daylights out of me. I wish I had known then what I know now: that movie was based mostly on a Hollywood thriller idea of the book of Revelation and, honestly, didn’t deal seriously with the text itself. This morning, I hope to take away maybe a little of the fear you might have and help you see this book for what it is. It tells us, right up front, what this book is about, though the NIV translation doesn’t get it quite right. The New Revised Standard is better, as is the alternate wording of the New Living Translation. This book is “the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1:1, NRSVue). It’s not a book about war and dragons and prostitutes named Babylon. It’s a book about Jesus.

This morning we are concluding our journey through the New Testament, and while we haven’t hit every book on Sunday morning, we have covered twelve “words of life” that have helped us, I hope, grab ahold of the New Testament message. Today, we come to the end of the series and the end of the book, literally. This book that is called Revelation (not “revelations”) has both frightened and fascinated believers and nonbelievers for centuries. It’s a confusing mix of images and preaching, it has been the fodder for untold numbers of books and movies (both Christian and horror themed), and basically people tend to have one of two reactions to it. Either they ignore it altogether, kind of pretend it doesn’t exist, or they get so immersed in it that it becomes an obsession. They watch the evening news, trying to match up what they hear with some small detail in the book so that we can figure out exactly when Jesus is going to return. Neither of those are the point of the book. In fact, surprising to most people today, “the end times are not really [Revelation’s] primary concern” (Gupta, 15 New Testament Words of Life, pg. 195). That’s why the word for today isn’t “return,” but “witness.”

Some of our confusion rests in the fact that we don’t really understand what Revelation is. Paul’s letters we get; they’re letters written to churches of the time. The Gospel and Acts we get; they’re stories with a message. But Revelation isn’t like anything else in the New Testament, really much not like anything else in the whole Bible. Revelation is actually three types of literature in one. It is a letter, and that applies to more that just the obvious letters in chapters 2 and 3 of the book, written to seven churches in Asia Minor or modern Turkey. The whole thing is was actually a letter written to all seven of those and most likely read out loud to each church in succession. Can you imagine all of your neighbors hearing what problems are happening in your church? And that word coming directly from Jesus? It would be like, “I know we’re bad, but do you hear what Jesus is saying about Laodicea?” This book is also prophecy (it says so directly in verse 3), which is a word often misunderstood and misinterpreted in the church. Prophecy is not about telling the future; I mean, sometimes it contains that but that is not its primary purpose. A seminary professor of mine said prophecy is more about forthtelling than foretelling. Prophecy is a message from God for the people, calling them out on their behavior, asking them to repent and then saying basically, “If you repent, this will happen. If you don’t this other thing will happen. And it will be bad.” If you read it carefully, Revelation is really about calling God’s people to more faithfully follow Jesus, the one who is coming again (cf. McKnight, Revelation, pgs. 12-13).

So Revelation is a letter. And it is prophecy. And it is apocalypse. In fact, the first three words of this book are (literally) “Apocalypse Jesus Christ.” The reason we call it “Revelation” is because when the New Testament was first being translated, the word “apocalypse” wasn’t well known so they chose a word that was close in meaning. In today’s world, the word “apocalypse” tends to have horrific or destructive overtones. When you describe something as “apocalyptic,” the image that comes to mind is terror and death. The original word, however, means “unveiling” or “revealing.” It’s showing you something you didn’t or couldn’t otherwise know. Truths once hidden now unveiled. Something we’ve not seen before revealed. When a company announces a new product, they could call the event an “apocalypse.” Of course, if they did, no one would show up. 

If we don’t understand what we’re really dealing with in Revelation, we end up in all sorts of trouble. Brooklyn Tabernacle pastor and author Jim Cymbala says the church has received all sorts of ridicule for making predictions about the end. We think we can nail down the who, what and when—even though Jesus himself said he didn’t know when any of this would happen (Matthew 24:36). Cymbala writes this: “During World War I, the Kaiser was the Antichrist. ‘Take that to the bank,’ people said. ‘Christ’s coming is around the corner.’ Then came the Depression of the 1930’s. ‘This is the third horse of Revelation 6. The end is now.’ When Hitler tried to exterminate the Jews during World War II, so-called experts said, ‘Surely this is the end.’ But Hitler eventually committed suicide. The war ended. The world wasn’t over. The end had not come” (Cymbala, Jesus Every Day, pgs. 148-149). We could add a lot of other predictions, like how Ronald Reagan’s name had 6 letters in each name, or how Gorbachev had a mark on his forehead, or my “favorite” book 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988. My point is this: what John wrote isn’t so much about giving us a timeline for the end of the world as it is telling us about Jesus. It’s an “unveiling of Jesus Christ;” that’s right in the first line of the book (1:1). As Pastor John Stott once said, we don’t need a forecast of future events; what we need is a vision of Jesus Christ (cf. Smith & Card, Unveiled Hope, pg. 26). So we’re supposed to come away from reading this text not afraid of the end but closer to Jesus and more determined to be his witness (cf. McKnight 10; Wright, Revelation for Everyone, pg. 2).

So Revelation was written to seven churches in the midst of a world where Rome was increasingly demanding that people worship the emperor. The fastest-growing religion in the Roman Empire at the time was the worship of Caesar, and people were investing money and other resources into building beautiful and expensive temples dedicated to whichever man sat on the throne at the time. The slogan of the day was, “Caesar is Lord,” and life centered around a man in far away Rome claimed to be the Lord of the world. Meanwhile, Christians in Asia Minor, impoverished and without any buildings, worshipped a peasant preacher from Galilee who also claimed to be the Lord of the world, who claimed to have created the world and even now was ruling over it. They knew that those who refused to bow their knee to Caesar could find themselves shunned at best or persecuted at worst. Two competing truths. Two competing Lords. Which would they stand up for? Which would they give witness to? That’s what Revelation was written to help them with. In a world that bows to beastly Caesar, Revelation says believers must dare to give witness to this truth: Jesus is Lord (cf. Wright 3).

Being a witness is most likely what got John (the author) in the predicament he’s in in the first place. John, from what we know, was ministering in Ephesus, leading the church, but at some point apparently he is arrested, convicted and sent into exile for his faith. He’s probably sent there because he was helping God’s people declare the truth about Jesus, that he was the savior of the world, that he died and was resurrected and that he lives forever. Rome couldn’t allow word to spread about a rival Lord, so John was arrested and sent away from his people. Rome believed that the church didn’t have its leader, maybe the people would stop being a witness to Jesus. So John is sent to Patmos, an island thirty-seven miles out in the sea. I’ve been to Patmos, a rocky place of about sixty square miles, and honestly I wouldn’t mind being exiled there. It’s a beautiful place, and in John’s day it wasn’t a barren place. It was populated and thriving, but the punishment for John was being away from his people and his work. And yet, even though he was away from the church, he wasn’t away from Jesus. One Sunday when he was worshipping, Jesus gave him this vision—a vision he wrote down and sent back to his people to encourage them to keep up their witness (cf. McKnight 14; Smith & Card 22).

Revelation reminds us that being a witness is difficult; it can be a dangerous business (cf. Gupta 194). The word in Greek is marturia, from which we get the English word “martyr.” A martyr is someone who dies for their faith, an image which shows up repeatedly in Revelation, but the original word meant being a witness. Marturia basically means staking your life on something you know to be true, even if it means you might die for that belief. Jesus had warned John and the other disciples that such a thing might happen. When he sent the disciples out to preach two by two, he told them, “You will be handed over to the local councils and be flogged in the synagogues. On my account you will be brought before governors and kings as witnesses [there’s that word again] to them and to the Gentiles” (Matthew 10:17-18). So now that they are being brought into city squares and accused of not bowing to the emperor, now that John is being taken away and exiled as an example to the Ephesian church, now that believers are being persecuted for their “unbelief” in the emperor (they were called “atheists” because they only believed in one God), the words of this revelation must have brought back Jesus’ words from so many years before. Jesus had also said on that same day, “Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before others, I will disown before my Father in heaven” (Matthew 10:32-33). As disciples in the first century stood before councils or were dragged into town squares or sent into exile, the message in this book, the revelation of Jesus Christ, would have been of great encouragement, just as Jesus’ words were to his first followers. Here’s the message that still resonates, I believe, with us today when we face difficult times or when we are mocked for our faith: “Stand firm. Hold on to what you have. Jesus is coming and the ultimate victory has already been decided. It will not be some fake god or an emperor with delusions of deity. When history’s last page has been written, Caesar will be gone but Jesus will still be Lord, just as he has always been. Hang on and keep being witnesses to what you know is true.” That’s what this revelation is all about: our hope is in Jesus.

Because the object of our witness, the one we witness about, is first and always Jesus. He is described in this book as “the faithful witness,” and we know what happened to him when he stood up for the truth. He lost his life, but it was not taken from him. He gave it up in order that somehow through his death on the cross we might be saved. We can spend days and hours and years trying to understand and interpret every single little image in this book and, I’m just going to say it: we will have wasted our time. That’s not why John wrote all this down. He put quill to paper not so that we could see the symbols and the beasts and the angels. He wrote so that we would see Jesus and then go and be witnesses to what we have seen.

After all, that’s what a witness does, right? They tell what they know, what they have seen and experienced. Or at least a true witness does. Rickey Jackson was just 18 years old when he was sentenced to death row. A salesman had been robbed and shot and killed. Five days later, Rickey was in police custody. The only witness against him was a 12-year-old boy named Edward Vernon who testified that he saw Rickey pull the trigger. Rickey was sentenced to death because of what a witness said. Thirty-nine years later, the 12-year-old boy, now a 53-year-old man, admitted he had been coerced to testify against Rickey. Detectives at the time had threatened to arrest his parents if he refused. It took 39 years, but Edward the witness finally told the truth. He never witnessed the shooting; he had been on a bus quite a ways away at the time. Rickey served 39 years, three months, and nine days, the longest wrongful imprisonment ever to end in exoneration in U.S. history. When the two men finally met face to face, Rickey hugged Edward and told him, “It’s all right, brother. We were both victims.” The power of a witness, a truthful witness, can set a person free.

And so can your witness about Jesus. It can be part of setting someone free. What we have in these first few verses of Revelation is a chain of witnesses (1:1-2; cf. McKnight 11). We’re told God the Father gave this message to the Son, Jesus, and he sent an angel to tell John who then wrote it down as his “testimony” (or witness). And then the beautiful thing is that we get to tell others! We don’t have to understand all the symbols or the imagery. Some of it I’m convinced we will never understand this side of eternity. But a witness, someone who gives a testimony, simply tells what they know. They don’t worry about what they don’t know; they tell what they know. So—what do you know? Or maybe, more importantly, who do you know? Who do you know who can bring peace to a chaotic world? Who do you know who can speak hope to a troubled heart? Who do you know who, according to Revelation, is the final word to all of the world’s problems? I’ll give you a hint: he’s called the “Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God's creation” (3:14). I like that he’s called the “Amen.” We think of that word as the signal that the prayer is over, but this word (which, by the way, is the same in every language, maybe the only word we all share) means “So be it.” It’s an affirmation, a way of saying, “May God’s word on these situations be the final word.” And Jesus’ faithfulness was the final word; he was, as Paul put it to the Philippians, obedient even to death (cf. Philippians 2:8). “As the Amen of God, Jesus models not only God’s promise to make good on his promises, but also what it means to trust God, even to the point of death” (Gupta 194). Our witness is always about Jesus, because he is the final word God wanted to say to humanity. Our witness shares what he has done in our life, not what we have done but what he has done. Everything we have done pales in comparison to what he has done, can do and will do. We witness to what we know—the word of God and work of Jesus (cf. 1:2).

Then there’s this promise that John makes to those who respond to the faithful witness (Jesus) by being faithful witnesses. John writes that those who read this Revelation, those who hear it and those who take it to heart will be “blessed” (cf. McKnight 12). Like “amen,” we hear and use the word “blessed” so often that we don’t really know what it means. It’s not just that I’ve got good things; the word literally means “supremely happy” or “well off.” We are blessed, especially compared to much of the rest of the world. But do you remember how Jesus used this word? “Blessed are the poor in spirit…blessed are those who mourn…blessed are the meek…blessed are the merciful…” (cf. Matthew 5:1-12) and so on. In other words: blessed are those who don’t depend on their own resources and their own stuff to find contentment, happiness, even joy. Blessed are those who know their happiness is found only in Jesus. That’s the same thing John is pointing out here at the very beginning of what can be a very scary book to read. Remember this: no matter how bad it gets in this world, you are blessed. No matter how dark it is around you, you have Jesus, you can live for Jesus, and in the end Jesus will win. Blessed is the one who listens to that message, who takes it to heart, who lives as if it’s true (because it is), and who lives with confidence in that hope. That’s what brings true blessing.

Because, as John says, “the time is near” (1:3). Of course, this book was written nearly 2,000 years ago. John must have been wrong that “the time was near.” Well, perhaps, as we define “nearness.” Or maybe he didn’t mean nearness like the calendar defines it. Maybe he meant to remind us that God’s time is not our time. “Near” to us is not the same as “near” to him. Besides, with the arrival of Jesus, everything changed. People want to know then the “end times” will begin. Well, according to the Bible, they began when Jesus arrived. We’re just waiting on the final act and every day we are closer and closer to the kingdom of God coming in its fullness. The time is near, John says, whenever and wherever you live, so be a witness and let others know about this good news.

And so we have come to the end—not of the world, but of this series. Over the last twelve weeks we have covered a lot of territory and, hopefully, you’ve gotten at least a bird’s eye view of the whole New Testament. Twelve words: righteousness, gospel, forgiveness, cross, faith, grace, fellowship, hope, peace, religion, holiness and witness—and as I said two weeks ago, under all of them is the greatest of all: love. These words are some of the most basic foundations of our faith, the ways we are called to live until he comes again. I pray these words will give shape to your life and your faith in days to come, and that you won’t see them the same again. I think, maybe, there’s just one word—or a phrase—that I’d like to add to this list.

When John is done seeing all the frightening and hope-filled images that the angel wants to show him, he gets a glimpse of the beauty of the end of time, when the New Jerusalem comes down to earth and everything is healed, made the way God intended it to be made from the beginning. That vision, all of these visions, doesn’t scare John. Not at all. Instead, it brings a prayer out of the depths of his soul, a prayer that basically closes out the whole Bible. It’s a prayer I invite you to join me in praying, for it is the hope of the ages and the prayer of the saints. Let’s pray it together with heartfelt desire.

“Come, Lord Jesus!” (22:20). Amen.