Scripture Text: Revelation 1:9-20
David Bast
Quotes for Reflection
G. B. Caird, The Revelation of St. John the Divine
The description of the Son of Man is full of Old Testament phrases, which we may track
down to their various sources. . . But to compile such a catalogue is to unweave the
rainbow. John uses his allusions . . . for their evocative and emotive power. . . His aim is
to set the echoes of memory and association ringing. . . John has seen the risen Christ,
clothed in all the attributes of deity, and he wishes to call forth from his readers the same
response of overwhelming and annihilating wonder which he experienced in his
prophetic trance.
James Denney, Studies in Theology
There is not in the New Testament from beginning to end, in the record of the original
and genuine Christian life, a single word of despondency or gloom. It is the most
buoyant, exhilarating and joyful book in the world. The men who write it have indeed all
that is hard and painful in the world to encounter; but they are of good courage, because
Christ has overcome the world, and when the hour of conflict comes they descend
crowned into the arena. All this is due to their faith in Christ’s exaltation, and in his
constant presence with them in the omnipotence of his grace.
Richard Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation
Revelation . . . reminds us that the church’s witness to the world is authentic only as
primarily a witness to truth – to the one true God and the truth of his righteousness and
grace. In western societies today this witness to the truth . . . faces a relativistic despair of
the possibility of truth and, even more, a consumerist neglect of the relevance of truth. . .
Revelation . . . shows the power of a theocentric vison to confront oppression, injustice
and inhumanity. In the end it is only a purified vision of the transcendence of God that
can effectively resist the human tendency to idolatry. . . The worship of the true God is
the power of resistance to the deification of military and political power and economic
prosperity. In the modern age we may add that it is what can prevent movements of
resistance to injustice and oppression from dangerously absolutizing themselves.
