The Book's Recipients
From start to finish, the Book of Revelation is addressed to the “Seven Assemblies of Asia.” These congregations do not fade from the picture in the later sections of the Book. While it may include a larger target audience, Revelation is first and foremost a message for those Seven Assemblies, and the significance of its visions cannot be understood apart from them.
The opening
paragraph presents the Book as a record of the visions received by John while he
was exiled on the Isle of Patmos. It calls itself “the prophecy” in the singular
number, and its contents concern “what things that must come to pass soon.”
Its first recipients would have understood the time reference “soon”
from their perspective.
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John was commanded to record his visions in a scroll, and then to send the document to seven congregations located in key cities of the Roman province of Asia. Moreover, according to the promise of Jesus, those who “read hear the words of the prophecy” are pronounced “blessed.”
John sent
the “Book,” singular, to the “Seven
Assemblies, Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea” - (Revelation
1:1-11).
Its first
vision includes seven letters addressed to the “Seven Assemblies of Asia.”
Each letter includes commendations, corrections, warnings, and promises specific
to its addressed congregation, and each concludes with the admonishment to “hear
what the Spirit is saying to the assemblies,” plural.
These
seven congregations do not disappear after the letter to Laodicea. The promises
for “overcomers” in each letter include verbal links to the vision of “New
Jerusalem” at the end of the Book. Likewise, the exhortation to “hear
what the Spirit is saying” also occurs in its central and concluding
sections - (Revelation 13:9-10, 22:16).
COSMIC STRUGGLE
The daily
struggles of the “Seven Assemblies” with opponents, sin, and deception
echo the larger battles described in the Book’s later visions. For example, the
false “prophetess Jezebel” who “seduces my
servants to commit fornication” is a local
version of the “Great Harlot, Babylon” who makes the “inhabitants of
the earth…drunk with the wine of her fornication” - (Revelation 2:18-24, 17:1-5).
None
of this means that the Book of Revelation is only applicable to these
congregations in first-century Asia. At the time John received his vision, there
were more than seven churches in the province, plus dozens more scattered throughout
the Roman Empire. Plural terms like “churches” and references to saints
from “every nation” indicate a much wider intended audience.
But the original seven congregations remain a part of that audience, and in the Book, the number seven is used symbolically for completion.
Thus, the
“Seven Assemblies” represent a larger whole, though they are included in
it. Likewise, the concluding admonishment in each letter to hear what the
spirit is saying to the “assemblies,” plural, also suggests a broader audience.
Furthermore,
the vision of the vast “innumerable multitude” of men from every nation who
were seen celebrating in “New Jerusalem” certainly envisioned something
far larger and grander than just the seven marginalized congregations of Asia.
Nonetheless,
those seven churches are included in that glorious vision, and their members
also will find themselves “rendering divine service” before the “Lamb
and the throne” in the “Holy City, New Jerusalem.”
Ignoring
the book’s historical setting creates significant problems. For example, if the
promise to keep the church in Philadelphia “out of the Hour of Trial”
refers to escape from a “tribulation” in some remote future, then it has
no relevance to the very congregation that first received the promise.
Passages
from Revelation must be interpreted in their historical contexts. What
was the imminent “Hour of Trial” facing the Assembly in Philadelphia? What
was the "throne of Satan" in the city of Pergamos?
The
Book uses the real-life experiences of these first-century churches to set the
stage for its visions. Thus, any interpretation that writes the “Seven Assemblies
of Asia” out of the Book or pushes them to the side does not take its self-description
as a message for those churches seriously and is doomed to go awry.
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