Already and Not Yet

REVELATION Number 27
Already and Not Yet

Revelation 1:19 (NASB 2020)
“Therefore write the things which you have seen, and the things which are, and the things which will take place after these things.”

Verse 19 begins with the word, therefore. As you have no doubt heard many before say, when we see the word therefore, we need to be careful to see what it’s there for. In the preceding verse, the Lord Jesus told the Apostle, “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.” (NASB 2020)

Since these things are true of Him, John is instructed to write. It is the Lord Jesus who holds the keys to the place of the dead and indeed to death itself. Hebrews 2:14–15 makes this clear, saying, “Therefore, since the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise also partook of the same, so that through death He might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who through fear of death were subject to slavery all their lives.” (NASB 2020)

What the Lord Jesus says can be trusted. There is no higher authority than God. Jesus has been given the name that is above every name and His enemies have been placed under His feet. Therefore, what He says is the Truth and The Revelation He gives is Life to those who hear it and heed it.

John is to write the things he has seen, the things that are, and the things that will be. The Revelation is an uncovering of the promise and plan of God for the entirety of history. The entire time period between the first coming of Jesus and His return. These are the things John has seen and is charged with recording.

Seven churches are the audience current at the time of his writing. The letters written to them are the things that are. These things warn, correct, give strength, and prepare the churches of John’s day. They also serve the Church in every time period until God’s plan is realized in fullness.

The final consummation of the plan of God for His people has not yet taken place. It is as good as done, however. God operates in the eternal above and outside the limits of time. Consequently, what He says, while not yet accessible in the temporal, is finished in completeness in the eternal. This final consummation and eternal Life apart from evil are the things to come.

Some have used this verse as a sort of outline for the structure of The Revelation. As I detailed earlier in our study, there is strong internal evidence for viewing The Revelation as seven viewpoints on the same scene in much the same way that Hebrew thought views time as a spiral rather than an arrow. I agree with Jim Fowler, who quotes G. B. Caird in calling this idea a “grotesque oversimplification.”