Revelation 4:1

1. After this Rather, after these things; that is, the revelations of the entire previous chapters. There has been a brief cessation of the state expressed by the phrase in the Spirit, Revelation 1:10; which state is now resumed in Revelation 4:2. In that interval the seer is merely susceptible to impressions from the spiritual world, but not receiving them until the door opened appears; the entering of which is becoming in the Spirit. This inspired visional state continues uninterrupted through Parts Second and Third.

Behold, a door was opened Rather, there was an opened door. The door was already open when the seer’s eye first rested upon it. It was the symbolic entrance into the heaven of symbolic exhibition. For the scope of that heaven see note to Revelation 4:11. Dusterdieck denies that the door implies a temple, but rather God’s residential house. Our own view is, that the door implies that we in this physical world are outside, and that there is an inner, more real world, into which the spirit can be made to enter, where the limitations of sense and matter may be diminished and even fully removed, and the truths of eternity may be cognized. We attain this spiritual scene through the door of death: John entered it while in the body, yet being in the body he entered it only so far as to be capable of cognizance of truths through divinely-presented figures and sounds.

Dusterdieck thinks that there is a clear distinction made by St. John between the formula After these things I saw, and, And I saw; the former being the introduction of a new scene, the latter an additional phase or point of the same scene. The distinction, however, cannot be very broadly made. The former phrase is used in Revelation 7:1; Revelation 7:10, but at Revelation 4:10 there is certainly a continuance of same scene. Same phrase at Revelation 15:5; Revelation 18:1. And I saw, is used Revelation 5:1; Revelation 5:6; Revelation 5:11; Revelation 6:1; Revelation 6:5; Revelation 6:8-9; Revelation 6:12; Revelation 8:2; Revelation 8:13; Revelation 9:1; Revelation 10:1; Revelation 13:11; Revelation 14:6; Revelation 14:14; Revelation 15:1-2; Revelation 17:6; Revelation 19:11; Revelation 19:17; Revelation 19:19; Revelation 20:1; Revelation 20:4; Revelation 20:11; Revelation 21:1. Revelation 13:1; Revelation 17:3, introduce a new scene with, And I saw.

Behold… the first voice which I heard Rather, Lo, the voice which I heard at first; namely, at Revelation 1:10. The same unknown voice that introduced St. John to the Christophany, introduces him now to the Theophany.

Come up hither Ascend from the earth’s surface, at least in spiritual conception, and enter the scene of show.

Which must be A compound necessity is implied in this must be. They must be, partly because there will be free agents who will bring them into existence, and this is a dependent necessity, dependent on the free will of the agent possessing power to do otherwise. They must be, also, because the free nature of the agent and his free act being foreknown and assumed, the divine will has determined its own infinitely wise action in reference thereto. There is no absolute predestination in all this, except that divine predetermination to act wisely in view of the freedom. See notes on Romans 9:0.

Hereafter Literally, after these things; the these things differing from the these things in the first clause of the verse, and meaning the things of the present time.