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pg. 405
When we open the Book of Revelation we discover, at once, a marked difference between it and any other portion of the New Testament. It is not history like the gospels and Acts, nor practical discussions and instructions like the epistles, but we at once seem to breathe the atmosphere of prophets like Ezekiel and Daniel. As Ezekiel and Daniel were permitted to behold visions which revealed certain great events of the future, in a series of symbolic images, so there passes before the eyes of John a series of wonderful visions of which he makes record, and has left that record to the church for interpretation. The book is a book of prophecy. “God gave to him to show unto his servants the things which should shortly come to pass.” In order to any clear understanding of the book we must never lose sight of its object, as stated in the opening sentence. Its object is to reveal the future. Nor is its aim to reveal some limited events of the future, but to show the things which must come to pass. In other words, its aim is to unfold the outlines of coming history as far as that history affects the fortunes of the church.
There is, unfortunately, no portion of the New Testament concerning which there has been more disagreement, and which has been less understood. The plan of The People's Testament will not allow me to occupy much space with these discussions, and I will confine myself to certain points which cannot well be passed over without prejudice to the correct understanding of the text. Among these questions are those of the Author, the Date when the work was written, the Place where it was written and the Principles of Interpretation.
I have alluded in the introductions to John's epistles to the theory of certain rationalistic critics that these were written by a “Presbyter John,” whom they assume to have lived in the times of John, the apostle. There is no real evidence that such a personage ever lived. That John should speak of himself as an elder is no more strange than that Peter should so describe himself, and the fragment from Papias, which speaks of John the elder, who was a disciple of Christ, is more satisfactorily explained by the hypothesis that he alludes to the apostle, especially in view of the facts that seven apostles are named in the same paragraph, and all are spoken of as “elders,” and that Irenæus says that Papias was a disciple of John, the apostle. Yet there has been an effort to show that this mythical John is the John named in the first verse of Revelation.
Without discussing whether the “Presbyter John” had any separate existence, it is a sufficient answer to this hypothesis to state that there is no book of the New Testament to whose authorship the testimony of history is more definite. Only a few years passed after the death of John, the apostle, until it was quoted and ascribed to him by writers who either knew him in person or who derived their information from those who sat at his feet. Among those early witnesses is Papias, born about a.d. 70, a disciple of John himself (“a hearer” of John, according to Irenæus) of whose writings only fragments have been preserved, but who is known to have quoted Revelation as the work of John.
pg. 406 To him may be added Irenæus, born between a.d. 115 and a.d. 125, who tells us that he was long a pupil of Polycarp, of whom he states that Polycarp had learned many things of the aged apostle at whose feet he had long sat. Of course, with such opportunities he could not be ignorant of what John had written, yet he declares explicitly that he is the author of the Apocalypse. Several more fathers of the second century are quoted as giving the same testimony, but it will suffice to add that it is named in the Canon Muratori, the first canon of the New Testament Scriptures, dated about a.d. 170, and all doubts concerning its genuineness seem to belong to later times. Nor is any fact of history better established than that John's last years were spent in that part of Asia with which the Book of Revelation is locally associated.
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