The Interpretation of

St. John’s Revelation

BY

R. C. H. LENSKI

Augsburg Publishing House

Minneapolis, Minnesota

The Interpretation of

ST. JOHN’S REVELATION

Copyright 1943 and 1963 by Augsburg Publishing House

Πᾶσι τοῖς ἠγαπηκόσι τὴν

ἐπιφάνειαν αὐτοῦ

2 Tim. 4:8

ABBREVIATIONS

Note: The translation of the text is an effort in some measure to indicate the Greek wording and the Greek constructions for readers to whom this may be helpful. The following abbreviations are used:

R. = A. T. Robertson, A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research. 4th edition.

B.-D. = Friedrich Blass’ Grammatik des neutestamentlichen Griechisch, vierte, voellig neugearbeitete Auflage, besorgt von Albert Debrunner.

C.-K. = Biblisch-theologisches Woerterbuch der Neutestamentlichen Graezitaet von D. Dr. Hermann Cremer, zehnte, etc., Auflage, herausgegeben von D. Dr. Julius Koegel.

B.-P. = Griechisch-Deutsches Woerterbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen Testaments, etc., von D. Walter Bauer, zweite, voellig neugearbeitete Auflage zu Erwin Preuschens Vollstaendigem Griechisch-Deutschen Handwoerterbuch, etc.

M.-M. = The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament Illustrated from the Papyri and other non-Literary Sources, by James Hope Moulton and George Milligan.

G. K. = Kittel, Theologisches Woerterbuch zu dem Neuen Testament.

C. Tr. = Concordia Triglotta, Libri symbolici Ecclesiae Lutheranae. German-Latin-English. St. Louis, Mo. Concordia Publishing House.

INTRODUCTION

In Revelation the Apostle John presents the prophetic visions that were given him to see and to hear on a certain Sunday in the year 95 while he was in exile on the small island Patmos opposite the southern coast of the Roman province Asia, toward the end of the reign of the great persecutor of the church, the Emperor Domitian. The apostle wrote Revelation by the Lord’s own order (1:19); divine Inspiration guided his pen.

This is a summary of what we should know about the last book of the New Testament.

John had lived and labored in and out of Ephesus since the days of the Jewish War which destroyed the Jewish nation. Domitian died September 18, 96. This date makes it necessary to place the visions of Revelation in the year 95. John was not exiled by the emperor himself; he was condemned to exile by the proconsul of the province of Asia, “who would not have been able upon his own authority to punish in this way a preacher of the gospel and an adherent of the Christian faith if he had not felt himself authorized so to act by some decree issuing from the Imperial Government, or some regulation tolerated by it, by which the propagation of the Christian religion was to be checked by the courts or the police,” Zahn, Introduction III, 409. How long the exile continued we do not know. There is nothing to prevent us from dating Revelation in the year 96, the actual year of Domitian’s death. Nerva ruled until 98, then followed Trajan. John was released after Domitian’s death and died during Trajan’s ...