We’re going to finish Revelation 1 today. We have been looking at the descriptions of Jesus Christ which, of course, fits in with the very first verse, “The Revelation of Jesus Christ…”
As we come to Revelation 1:17, John is speaking here saying, “When I saw Him, I fell at His feel like a dead man.” So, John is overwhelmed with the picture and presence of Jesus. Some people ask, “Why would that be? Afterall, John was the disciple Jesus loved, he leaned against Jesus at the Last Supper, he spent over three years ministering with Jesus and he knew him better than anyone else knew him. So why in the world would he be overwhelmed in the presence of Jesus now?” Of course, if you have gone back and read the verses prior to this, you would see this is no ordinary picture of Jesus. John knew Jesus in His humanity and His glory was shielded. It was sheltered from us. We couldn’t see it in its full manifestation. Even John couldn’t see it, but now we see and now John sees it. When he is there in the very presence of his glorious Savior, he is overwhelmed. He just simply cannot stand up. So, he falls down like a dead man, “And He placed His right hand on me saying…” so, Jesus touches him and He says this, “Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades.” That’s quite a sentence. Let’s break it down a little. He says to John, “Don’t be afraid, I am the first and the last…” remember, alpha and omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last, the beginning of all things, the consummation of all things. And, “the living one,” so He of course went to the cross and died for us, but He is resurrected. We have already seen that mentioned earlier in the book in this chapter. He says, “I was dead, and behold I am alive forevermore,” so death could not defeat Jesus. Jesus defeated death. He did die. He died for our sins. To release us from sins He told us earlier, but at the same time He has overwhelmed death, He has conquered death and He is alive. Not just temporarily to go back to the grave like Lazarus. Remember, Lazarus resurrected from the dead because Jesus called him forth, but he went back to the grave. He died again. Jesus never would die again. He is alive forevermore. “…and I have the keys of death and of Hades.” So, Jesus is in charge of death and Hades. Death would seem in this book to speak of the physical death. Where Hades would be more in line with the idea of spiritual death and the place of the spiritual dead who do not know Christ. So, He has the keys to both of them and He is in charge of all things including death and Hades.
Then Revelation 1:19, as we saw last week, is the index or table of contents you might say of the book, “Therefore write the things which you have seen, and the things which are, and the things which will take place after these things.” So, this is our table of contents. He said write the things of which you have seen – these are the things in Revelation 1 that John is seeing right now, and the things which are – those will be the things we will see in Revelation 2 & 3, and perhaps Revelation 4 & 5, depending on how you look at that. We will see that later. And then, I want you to write about, “…the things which will take place after these things.” Those are the future events after Revelation 5, after the church age and the things that will happen in the Tribulation period and ongoing. So, that would be the table of contents, and this would be what is coming up in the book . . .
