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Isa 61:2 To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord,and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn. Isa 63:4 For the day of vengeance is in mine heart, and the year of my redeemed is come. Makes it clear that the book concerns the futures , and the day of the unveiling (the Apocalypse) of the great “KING of kings and LORD of lords’’. Its scope is further shown by its place in the Canon. The order of the separate books of the N.T. varies, but they are always formed in four groups that never vary chronologically: The gospels contain the prophecies of the great tribulatation: Revelelation describes it. Between, come the Scriptures of the intermediate period. Acts and the Epistles. Chronologically and canonically, Revelelation follows after the Epistles, though logically in God’s purpose Eph 3:11 According to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord: It follows the Gospels. Therefore we see the scope embraces the wind- up of all the affairs of time; it records the end of prophecy, the end of “the secret of God’’ Rev 10:7 But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to His servants the prophets. The end of all “emnity towards God’’, and the dawn of the “ages of the ages’’.
ITS HEBREW CHARACTER. The language of the book is Greek: Its thoughts and idioms are Hebrew. This links it with the O.T. (Old Testament), and shows that its great purpose is to declare God’s final dealings with the Jew and the Gentiles as such; and that “the church of God’’ of the Pauline Epistles and this dispensation has no place in Revelation (other than in associtation with its glorified Head). All the imagery of the book, Temple, Tabernacle &c, belongs to Israel. Again in Matthew (the Hebrew Gospel) are some 92 quotations from and references to the O.T. In Hebrews there are 102. In Revelation are found no fewer than 285. This emphatically stamps its close connection with the O.T. and Israel; and it equally stamps the latest utterances of “modern scholarship’’, viz. (Viz. and the adverb videlicet are used as synonyms for "namely," "that is to say,") that whatever view may be taken of the indebtedness to Jewish sources, there can be no doubt that he (the writer) has produced a book which taken as a whole is profoundly Christian’’, as being the dicta of men who wittingly or unwittingly, are blind to this fundamental fact of Revelation.
The titles of Christ further attest it’s hebrew character: 1. “The Son of man’’ Rev 1:13 And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and gird about the paps with a golden girdle. Rev 14:14 And I looked, and behold a white cloud, and upon the cloud one sat like unto the Son of man, having on his head a golden crown, and in His hand a sharp sickle.
2. “The Almighty’’ Rev 1:8 I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is ,and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.
3. “The Lord God’’ Rev 3:8 I know thy works: behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it: for thou hast a little strength,and has kept my word, and hast not denied my name.
Rev 22:6 And he said unto me,”These sayings are faithful and true’’: and the Lord God of the holy prophets sent his angel to shew unto his servants the things which must surely be done. This title with Gen 2:4 – Gen 3:24 in conection with “paradise’’. Gen 2:4 – Gen 3:24 2:4 These are THE GENERATIONS OF THE HEAVENS AND OF THE EARTH when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, |
