Yahweh’s Covenant People part 1

Weekly Sermon, 1 May 2022

The Revelation of Yahshua Christ opens thus: “A revelation from Yahshua Christ which God had given to Him to show to His servants the things which are necessary to happen quickly, and He having sent explained through His messenger to His servant Iohannes, who bore witness to the Word of God and the testimony of Yahshua Christ, as many things as he had seen. “

It is clear from John 1:1 that John believed Yahshua Christ to be God come in the flesh. Where the Revelation testifies that it is written by “His servant Iohannes, who bore witness to the Word of God” that can only mean that this John who wrote the Revelation is the same John who wrote the Gospel, the “Word of God” mentioned here.

The intent here is to demonstrate that John the apostle wrote the Revelation, as the Revelation itself clearly informs us that he did, and that he was indeed confined to Patmos for a time during the reign of the emperor Domitian. After the death of Domitian, John was able to leave Patmos and retire to Ephesus. Since Domitian ruled from 81 to 96 AD, we see that John was indeed quite aged when he wrote the Revelation. Since he was a very young man during the ministry of Christ, I think we could estimate his age to be around 84 years in 96 AD. This destroys Preterism, a view of prophecy adopted by medieval Jesuits for political reasons, since Preterists insist that all prophecy was fulfilled by 70 AD. V.S. Herrell should take note, that while he claims to be a separatist, his doctrine is that of the jews who sought to protect the papacy from the true historicist interpretation of prophecy!

The following excerpts are all taken from The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325 from Logos Research Systems. By “Fathers” here they mean all of those early Christian bishops and other writers whose works have been preserved to one degree or another. Some of these writings are, of course, of greater import than others. While we may not agree with all of their doctrines, Christianity at this time was quite different than what the organized Roman church later professed, and the historical accounts found in these documents cannot be lightly dismissed.

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