Revelation 1:4

2. The dedication to the Seven Churches, Revelation 1:4-8.

4. John Adverse, and we may add, perverse criticism asks, If this were truly St. John, why does he nowhere style himself apostle? We reply that he does not write himself apostle just because he was St. John. There may have been, in the seven Churches, many Johns, but everybody knew that to the Churches there was but one John in Asia. Had any other John than he attempted thus to address, admonish, rebuke, command, and threaten these seven Churches, he would have gained no audience.

Seven The best treatise in English on the apocalyptic numbers is in Stuart’s first volume, largely taken, with due credit, from Bahr, a condensation of which we have given at the end of our notes on Luke 6:0.

It has been argued that the Apocalypse was written at an early date, because this address shows that there were as yet but seven Churches in Asia. It might as well be assumed that but “seven trumpets” were sounded because but seven were within reach. Seven Churches, like numerous other apocalyptic sevens, are selected under the symbolic seven-form law that rules in the book. Says Stuart: “Whether the Churches of that day, in Asia, were limited to that number is a question easily solved; for in Colossians 4:13 the Church at Hierapolis is mentioned in connexion with that at Laodicea, and the former is in the neighbourhood of the latter. Colosse also was in the immediate neighbourhood of Laodicea. So, in a few years later than when the Apocalypse was written, we know there were large and flourishing Churches in Tralles, where Ignatius lived, and at Magnesia in its neighbourhood, both in Lydia, and but a moderate distance from Ephesus.” Stuart, be it remembered, maintained the Neronian date of the Apocalypse, but he here fully refutes those who maintain that early date on the ground that there were as yet but seven Churches in Asia when the book was written.

Asia Proconsular Asia, so called because ruled by a Roman proconsul at Ephesus. Matthew Arnold, in a note to one of his poems, says: “The name Europe ( Ευρωπη , the wide prospect) probably describes the appearance of the European coast to the Greeks on the coast of Asia Minor, opposite. The name of Asia, derived from ( ασιος , fatal, again comes, it has been thought, from the muddy fens of the rivers of Asia Minor, such as the Cayster or Maeander, which struck the imagination of the Greeks living near them.” Proconsular Asia, as may be seen upon our map, embraces the three provinces of Mysia, Lydia, and Caria, bordering upon the Hellespont. The seven Churches were mostly in Lydia. The different extensions of territory covered by the term Asia are thus well defined by Elliott: “The word Asia was used by the Romans in four senses:

1 . For the whole Asiatic continent, as opposed to Europe and Africa; 2. For Asia Minor in its largest sense, including Cilicia and other districts beyond the Taurus; 3. For the same in its smaller sense, embracing only the provinces within the Taurus; 4. For Lydian Asia, or, as it was called towards the end of the first century, Proconsular Asia, extending along the coast from Pergamos to Caria, and inland to the Phrygian frontier, or a little beyond it.

Grace… peace This Pauline form of benediction was familiar both to Ephesus and the other Asiatic Churches from the epistles of that great apostle, and John’s adoption of it clearly indicates that there was no antagonism between the two apostles and their friends, as was imagined by such writers as Baur and Renan. Is…

was… to come The threefold divisions under which our minds are obliged to think all time, and so used to express the eternity of Him. The threefold phrase expresses the import of the word JEHOVAH. The elevation of the prophetic style induces the seer to refer to this name for God; and from the reverence with which the utterance of the divine name was avoided by the Jews, he gives the import, and not the name itself. The phrase, though dependent on the preposition from, is sacredly preserved by John as a nominative, thus attaining an expressive emphasis above the ordinary rules of grammar.

The seven spirits Stuart and others maintain that these are “the seven presence angels,” in regard to which see our note on Revelation 8:2. But it seems inadmissible to make grace and peace proceed from mere creatures, and that in position between two of the persons of the Trinity.

As seven is the number of completeness, the one spirit is styled seven in allusion to the perfect manifoldness of his operations. The one Spirit is the seven spirits, as the one atmosphere is “the four winds.” These spirits do not “stand” before Him, like serving waiters or watchers, as Revelation 8:2: they are before his throne, as also is the Lamb.