158. When Does The Apocalypse Begin?

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the podcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode 158, Apocalypse Then. Buddy, I am back, and you are back. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm back from Myrtle Beach, where my family was down in South Carolina where we were soaking up some beautiful 80-degree sun.

Now I'm back in 38-degree Massachusetts. But I'm excited, and I'm excited to be back because I'm eager to jump back into this incredible book called The Book of Revelation. Now, as you know, we've already covered a couple episodes here, and what we've done basically is we've laid a sort of theological and eschatological foundation for everything that we're gonna see in this book moving forward.

So if you missed those, I would highly encourage you to go back, check them out, because they're gonna be foundational for what we're gonna cover moving forward. But if you did miss it, here is a very brief recap.

In episode one, we kind of shattered the myth that Revelation is a book about future doom, gloom, despair, newspaper prophecies, and all of the rest. Instead, we saw that it's actually a book about hope, a book about dominion, and a book about victory through Jesus Christ.

And after spending 19 weeks in the glorious chapter of Matthew 24, we demonstrated last, in one of the first episodes of this series, that Revelation is not a cryptic code for 21st century dorks that are hiding away in their bomb shelters.

No, it's a symbolic book. It's a first century prophecy about first century events written to real churches, seven, in fact, that were anchored in the Asia Minor Providence. They're not announcing future judgments, but imminent judgments on the apostate Jews who had become enemies of Christ through crucifying Christ and murdering his bride.

So we highlighted that. And we also, in that first episode, highlighted the timeframe markers, which will come into play next week a little bit more fully, things like soon, quickly, and near, which are words that actually tell us when the book of Revelation occurs.

If John is saying in AD 68, let's say, that's when he wrote it, I don't know, maybe it was 67, maybe it was 66. My point is, if he said that in the 60s, that these things are gonna happen soon, Jesus is coming quickly, behold, the time is near, then 2 ,000 years later is a little bit ridiculous.

I think we all can agree that words mean what they mean. Now, we also saw that in addition to the book of Revelation being understandable, the book of Revelation having these timeframe references, we also looked at how Revelation is John's Olivet Discourse.

It's his apocalyptic version of what Matthew does in chapter 24, Mark does in chapter 13, and Luke does in chapter 21. It's John's Olivet Discourse, which means that it's not about modern-day chaos and planes falling out of the sky.

It's about Christ's first-century battle against his enemies, the Jews, and in so defeating them, setting up his kingdom that won't ever end. So we saw that in episode one of this Revelation series. Now, in episode two, before we got too far into things, because let's be honest, you could cover Revelation for years.

I'm reading Ken Gentry's book right now, The Divorce of Israel. 300 pages before he even gets to verse one. 300 pages before he even opens up the book of Revelation. It's all background material, and we could do that.

We could look at how Revelation is about the kingship of Jesus, how it's about a worship service, how Ezekiel's themes that he covers in his book is what Revelation is. We could cover episode after episode after episode, but my goal in this is not to make scholars, but to make saints who love this book.

So we did cover one theme before we got started, though, and that is the kingship of Christ. And we looked at the entire biblical narrative, all the way from Adam's failure in the garden to God's unrelenting promise that he is going to raise up a human king that's gonna be better than Adam, that's gonna inherit the covenant promises of Adam and Noah and Abraham, who's gonna wear the scepter and the crown that was promised to Judah.

He's gonna be the coming prophet that Moses prophesied about. He's gonna be the king in the line of David who's gonna sit upon his throne, and he's gonna be the hope of the prophets. And what we saw is from Genesis to Revelation, the testimony of God is unanimous.

God is going to install a real human king descended from the line of David who will crush the serpent, who will command the nations, who will bring the world under his reign and authority and rule, and he will transform the world into the garden paradise of Eden that Adam was supposed to but failed to.

And we see that that's not ethereal, that's not allegorical, not metaphorical. That is the boots-on-the-ground reality of the book of Revelation. That's the throne in Zion, the government resting on the shoulders of this new Adam Jesus.

It's the book that doesn't punt his kingdom into the future 2 ,000 plus years. It's a book that heralds the inauguration of his kingdom now. It erupts with this theme in time and space in the Gospels, and when the king comes and steps onto the scene in the book of Revelation, we see that he is going after his enemy, he sits down on his throne, and he reigns through his royal bride, the church on earth until all the world is under his dominion and authority.

Revelation is about the kingship, the climactic kingship of Jesus. So, that's our first two episodes. Now, today, we're gonna be moving forward. And we're gonna be moving forward on the back of those two episodes, and we're gonna be now opening the book of Revelation, chapter one, verse one, and that's all we're gonna accomplish today.

But we're gonna see how Revelation is rooted in the Old Testament, we're gonna see how it's fulfilled by Christ, we're gonna see how it is the marching orders for the church, we're gonna see how Christ is not waiting to reign, he's reigning now, and all of that is gonna help you and I understand this book more clearly so that it comes alive.

I don't want, I don't want this channel to produce a bunch of egg-headed nerds who just sit in their ivory towers. If I wanted to do that, I could leave the ministry and I could go get my PhD, and I could just go teach at a seminary.

I don't wanna do that. I want average Christians, moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas, teenagers, children, I want people to be able to see these videos and think, man, Revelation seems really confusing, but these videos are really helping me understand it.

They're helping this book come alive to me. It's not a confusing, Gordian's not puzzle anymore, but I'm seeing that Jesus is having dominion here. I'm seeing how this affects and intersects with my own discipleship and my love for my wife and my love for my family and my desire to live out the great commission in my own life.

I want Revelation to matter to the church of Jesus again. I want Revelation not to be the book that you skip at the end of your yearly, your year-long reading plan. I don't want Revelation to be lumped into the same category as Leviticus and Ezekiel.

I love those books. What my point is, is I want to see people love the book of Revelation, because the book of Revelation teaches us so much about who we are in Christ. We're not victims, we're victors.

We're not dominated, we're bringing the dominion. This is what this book is talking about, and this is why this book is so needed right now in the church, because we've adopted for way too long a loser mentality that needs to end, because we are not the losers of history, folks.

We're the victors, and we're more than conquerors because of him who loved us, because of the lamb that was slain, because of the king that reigns, because of Jesus. The book of Revelation does not throw a Greg Maddox curve ball that leaves you standing confused in your cleats.

The book of Revelation climaxes what the entire Bible has been saying all along, that our God reigns. So that's why we took a week to focus on that. Now, in today's episode, we begin the long and glorious task of walking our way through the book of Revelation, one verse at a time, and today, quite literally, one verse, but each week, we're gonna be taking a particular portion of scripture, and we're gonna be expositing it.

That word exposit means to draw out. So we're gonna be drawing out what the original author John meant to say to the original audience, those seven churches in Asia Minor, and we're gonna see how that message fits perfectly in the eschatological hopes and dreams of the first century world, how it has nothing to do with B -52 bombers or Apache helicopters.

We are going to see how it affects Israel, not modern Israel, but ancient Israel, and we're gonna see how it affects us, the bride of Christ, the church. Again, not my goal in this series. We did it in Matthew 24, where we went really, really deep with two hour-long episodes and 19 episodes for a single chapter.

My goal with Revelation's a little different. But my goal is not to do two and a half hour-long episodes, although those are great, and I think that everyone enjoyed them and were benefited by them, but because Revelation is so much more complicated, I wanna now make it so much more simple.

I wanna take this passage, or this book, passage by passage, verse by verse, and I wanna break it down in a way that's helpful, in a way that's encouraging, and in a way that actually builds your confidence that whether you're a scholar or a layman, you're an old man or a young boy, you can open up the book and you can glean something from it because you've now understood the key to understanding this book.

It's not a cipher code for you to interpret 21st century geopolitical politics. That's why you're confused about it. Instead, it's a window into a moment in time where the old covenant world was failing and falling apart and fading into oblivion, and Jesus is rising a new covenant world, a world where His bride, the church, will spread His dominion to the ends of the earth, and His glory will cover the earth as the water covers the sea.

I want you, I want me, and I want the church to be able to see that, to be able to taste that, to be able to rejoice in that. That's why we're doing this series. Not so that we can puff up our chest and think, oh, look how smart we are.

We've mastered revelation. That's not the point. I don't care about that. If you want an exhaustive treatment on it, go read Gentry, go read Chilton, go read James Stewart Russell. There's plenty of people.

My goal is to bring it down and to make it beautiful and to take away the complexity and to help people really truly understand this very complicated book. So I hope that if this is encouraging to you and it helps you, praise God, that's my point.

Also, before we get started, I want to say thank you to everyone who's been watching these videos, everyone who's been sharing it, everyone who's been helping in any way, liking, sharing, subscribing, clicking the bell icon, or being a member of this show.

All of your support has been super helpful. 95 of the comments have been super encouraging. And I really believe that God is blessing this effort. I believe it with all my heart. That's why we do it every week.

So thank you from the bottom of my heart. And now let's jump into today's episode by talking about what revelation actually says. So with that, this is how the book begins. The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his bondservants the things which must soon take place.

And he sent and communicated it by his angel to his bondservant, John. And now with that, let's begin with part one, revelation as apocalypse. Now, the very first word of this book is where everything begins.

And it's such an important word, the revelation of Jesus Christ. Now, in the original, there's not an article. So it doesn't say the revelation. It just says revelation. And the Greek word for that, I know I said that this is gonna be easy, and I promise you when I use Greek and when I use grammar, I'm gonna make it understandable to you.

The Greek word for the word revelation is the word apocalypsis. Now, apocalypsis is not what you think and what I think when we hear the word apocalyptic. When we hear that, we think of chaos. We think of hunger games.

We think of mushroom clouds and atom bombs and Mad Max movies and the book of Eli. And we think about all of that sort of end of the world apocalyptic scenario. And that is just not what the word apocalypsis means.

It doesn't mean war. It doesn't mean plague. Doesn't mean famine. Doesn't mean death. Doesn't mean disaster. Doesn't mean any of that. That's a vision of a genre, the apocalyptic genre that Hollywood has sold us.

It's definitely a vision that dispensationalism has poisoned the well of the American or Western church with, absolutely. But the word apocalypsis doesn't mean disaster and it doesn't mean end of the world and it doesn't mean nuclear bombs.

It's not that. In fact, it's pretty ironic. The word apocalypsis, where we get our word apocalyptic, means an unveiling. It means a pulling back of the curtain. It means, the word actually means that when you see something for the first time, when it's always been there, but now it's with clarity.

It's that moment where, maybe you've watched one of these videos. It's so, they're so cute. When the baby, and they know that the baby has like eye issues so that he can't, or she can't see clearly and they'll put the glasses on the baby and then the baby sees his mother for the very first time and it unveils, it takes away the confusion in his eyes and he sees his mother and he smiles.

If you've ever seen one of those videos, they are so cute, they're so beautiful because what those eyeglasses are doing is unveiling the truth, revealing the truth. That's what the book of Revelation is designed to be.

It's not meant to be a stained glass window that you can't see through. It's meant to be crystal clear. It's meant to reveal truth. It's meant to unveil the confusion that was going on in the first century church.

But here's the real irony in that. The very book that was designed to bring clarity, that was designed to bring truth, that was designed to reveal what was about to happen is the very book that now we think is the most confusing, the most unclear and the most secretive and the most esoteric.

But John didn't call the book a great mystery. He didn't call it a sealed up secret scroll. He called it an apocalypsis, which in the original Greek language meant that it's a book that is designed by its very fabric to reveal things, to make things clear, to end confusion.

It is not a labyrinth of pictographic imagery. It's a lamp unto the feet of the first century church. And John's intention was to make the truth clear to the people. And he says that in the first verse, using the word apocalypsis, but he also says it in the first two verses and even in the third verse, where he says, blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy and heed the things which are written in it.

John says, and we'll talk about this more next week, John says that you're blessed if you read this, not confused, not broken, not upset, not discouraged, not frustrated, not whatever else. He says that you're blessed if you see and you read and you hear and you observe the things that were in this book, because this book is never meant to obscure truth.

It's meant to reveal it. He says, heed this book that's meant to reveal the truth. John expects the church to understand this book. He expects the church to be blessed by this book.

Why?

Because they needed its truth in their day in a way that we bring confusion to it today when we apply it to our day. It was applied to them. It was written to them. It was an unveiling for them. It was bringing clarity for them.

But when we rip it out of its first century context and world, and we put it into the 21st century, and we think that it's about our world, untold amounts of confusion happen. This word apocalypsis, it shows us that it's meant to be helpful to the people that it was written to, not to us.

So your first assumption when you come to this book is I have to enter back into their world and not just read this book and make it about me and my world, because if you do that, the book makes no sense.

The hermeneutical key, which means the interpretive key, is that you and I have got to go back into their world to see what unveiling this book is talking about. Because when we see what it means for them, then the application is gonna make so much more sense for us.

Now, this word apocalypsis doesn't just show up in the book of Revelation. In fact, we'll talk about this more in a little bit. It only shows up once in the book, in the very first word of the book. So this word is not just native to John.

But it is a book that shows up elsewhere in the Bible, and it really does actually mean what I just said it means. For instance, in Luke 12 too, Jesus says, there is nothing covered up that will not be apocalypsis.

Revealed, same word. So English translators know what this word means. It means revealed. Amos 3, 7, God promises not to act without first revealing his secrets to his servants, the prophets. Again, same word.

Paul uses it in Romans 16, 25, and in 2 Corinthians 12, 1, to describe mysteries that God has made known. And now, in Revelation, the same word is being used that God is shining his revealing light on dark things so that they will be revealed.

This book is not a roadmap for modern America. It's not a blueprint for how to interpret World War III. It's not a barcode on your wrist or on your forehead so that you can buy groceries. What's being unveiled is a first century reality where the old covenant world was waning and the new creation kingdom of Jesus is waxing.

What's being uncovered by this book, what this book was designed to do is to help Christians living in the first century understand that judgment was coming to Jerusalem, that destruction was coming to the temple, and that the ascension of Jesus's kingdom was rising.

John is not writing to people who are wondering about what Vladimir Putin is gonna do next. That's a joke. He's writing to people who are watching the smoke rise from the chimney stacks of downtown Jerusalem.

His audience isn't worried about microchips and Neuralink and satellites and AI. They're worried about survival. They're worried about what's gonna happen to my life when the temple's not there. What am I gonna do?

Where am I gonna worship God? What am I gonna, how am I going to be right with God without a temple? They're asking, is this really the plan? Jesus promised that the plan was to end the old covenant, to end the mosaic economy, to end the temple, the sacrifice, the priest, the feast, all of it, but I don't see any evidence of it.

They lived for 35 years clinging to the promises of Christ and they were confused. Why hasn't it come yet? Why hasn't the old covenant mosaic economy been torn down yet? Jesus told them that that mosaic world was a scaffolding that was meant to unveil the true building.

It was temporary. It was never built to last. The priesthood always pointed to something better. The temple always pointed to something better. It was a bandaid on a broken people that was meant to hold them over until Christ, the true healer, arrived.

And after 35 years of waiting for Jesus to return, waiting for him to destroy that old covenant world, people in those churches, those seven churches in Asia Minor, they were starting to get discouraged.

So this book was written to give them hope that the promises of Christ have not failed, that Jesus really was going to come back again. And he was gonna tear down the entire system of temples and priests and sacrifices and feast and clean and unclean food laws and all of it was gonna be torn down to make room for the real, for the real temple.

Christ is our temple, John 2, 19. So the old temple that existed in Jerusalem had no more use. He came to eliminate the sacrificial system.

Why?

Because Christ is the final sacrifice. He's the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. He came to eliminate the Levitical priesthood. Because why? Christ is our great high priest, Hebrews 4, 14.

He came to eliminate the festivals.

Why?

Because Christ is our eternal feast. He's our eternal Passover at the Lord's table, 1 Corinthians 5, 7. The apocalypse isn't just about the salvation of the world out of the clenches of defeat in the future.

It's not about that at all. It's about the putting down of that old world so that a new world could rise with Christ at its center, with him being our temple, our priest, our king, our feast, our sacrifice, our prophet, our everything.

The book of Revelation is about the fall of Jerusalem because we needed a better Jerusalem. It's about the fall of the whore because we needed a better bride. It's about the final grains of the old covenant sand slipping through the biblical hourglass so that Jesus's kingdom, the kingdom that had been promised from the very beginning would come on earth as it is in heaven.

Don't miss this. They were waiting, the first century church, they were waiting for an entirely new world to dawn. And they had come to Christ and they had abandoned the temple and they had rejected the priesthood and they had declared allegiance to the king of kings and the Lord of lords.

And they were dying for that. Their family members were being hunted down for that. Their synagogues were turning them over to the Romans who were crucifying them. And in the midst of all of that, yeah, erase that part.

And in the midst of all of that, they were asking themselves, did we get it wrong? Is Jesus really gonna fulfill everything that he said? Can we possibly even make it to the collapse of Jerusalem, much less survive in a world where Jerusalem doesn't exist?

You have to remember that you and I don't have an affection for Jerusalem like these first century Christians did. Every Christian who converted from Judaism to Christianity, every Christian who was a Jew, who held on to the Mosaic types and shadows, but then gave them up for Jesus, who is the true and better.

They grew up with Jerusalem being at the center of their universe. Jerusalem is where you go to meet with God. Jerusalem is where you go to offer your sacrifices. Jerusalem is where you go to offer your tithe.

Jerusalem is where you go to meet with the priest who represents you before the father. Jerusalem was everything to them. So 40, almost 40 years after Jesus makes these stunning promises, you can kind of empathize with the church for asking the question, did I misunderstand what Jesus was saying?

My family's dying because I'm holding onto this belief. Is this really what Jesus said? And in Jesus's mercy, he inspires John to write this book to show his people exactly what is getting ready to happen to the Jews who've become his enemies, to the old system that is now out of date and ready to be put on the shelf.

And this book is about to encourage them, hang on because I'm coming quickly, soon, and the time is near. That is why the book of Revelation begins with the word apocalypsis, because Jesus is not wasting time.

He is getting to the point immediately. I am writing this book so that you will not be confused anymore. I am writing this book so that you will not be unclear about what I am doing. I am writing this book to anchor you, to buffet you, to encourage you, to strengthen you, to build you up.

I'm writing this book to unveil and reveal what you've been asking. That question that was in your heart of hearts, that doubt that was starting to linger, I'm writing this book for you. We do this book a great disservice when we make it about us instead of our brothers and sisters in the first century who were the first generation of Christians, the very first church who was struggling and who was barely hanging on and they needed this book.

And in that sense, we exist as Christians because of their faithfulness and their faithfulness is in large part because of this book that Jesus wrote to encourage them and to reveal things that were happening to them.

Let us not rip this book out of its context any longer, but let us enter back into the moment that our brothers and sisters were in 2000 years ago and see how Jesus very lovingly, very beautifully, very graciously spoke these words to them to make it clear what he was about to do for them.

That's what apocalypsis means. And all of this leads us now to our second consideration, which is part two, the context of the apocalypse. Now we already seen that apocalypse doesn't mean kaboom, but it means unveiling.

And now in part two, we need to ask ourself, well, what exactly is being unveiled and why is that really that important? Because listen, if we misunderstand what this word means in its biblical context, then we're gonna misread the entire book of Revelation as if it's some fear-drenched horror Hollywood movie for the modern West, instead of a hope-drenched battle plan for the first century church and beyond.

So we need to begin with what does this word mean? And here's a really surprising twist. Even though the book of Revelation is literally named the apocalypse from the Greek word apocalypsis, that word only shows up one time in the entire book, like I said before, just once, that's it, one time.

And with that being the namesake of the book, you would expect it to have been peppered all over the place, but no, it opens the book and then it steps off the stage and it's the only time the word is mentioned.

And I think that's intentional. It doesn't mean that it's unimportant. And it really is in fact the opposite. That one word in verse one sets the theological atmosphere for the entire book. It's loaded.

It's a loaded term. It's like one sperm cell meeting with one egg cell makes a baby. This one word is pregnant with purpose. And to understand what's happening in the book of Revelation, we need to know how this word behaves and the trajectory that it sets.

And the only way that we're gonna know that is if we actually look at other uses of the word in the scripture, because John only uses it once. So for a moment, let's look at Paul and how Paul uses this word, apocalypsis.

He uses this word more than anyone. 13 times in the noun form and 26 times in the verbal form. And it's never random for Paul. In fact, in the book of Galatians 1, verse 12, Paul says that he didn't receive the gospel from men, but from apocalypsis.

He received the unveiling of the gospel of Jesus Christ from Jesus Christ himself. And when you compare what Paul says in Galatians especially with what John says in Revelation, something remarkable begins to emerge because both Galatians and Revelation is dealing with the exact same covenant enemy.

It's the Jews. Both are confronting the same problems. Both are proclaiming the same victory. Galatians, just like Revelation, is a war declaration against the Jewish apostate unbelief and covenant arrogance.

Paul is speaking of the persecution of the church by the Jews, Galatians 1, 13 through 14. He's talking about the pride of the circumcision party, Galatians 2, 15 and 6, 13, and the false hope of the Jerusalem that is below, which is destined to be destroyed.

Galatians 4, 25 through 30. Do those themes sound familiar? Well, they should because that's the exact same thing Revelation is talking about. And it's exposing the spiritual rot of the Jerusalem that is below, Revelation 2, 9, Revelation 3, 9.

It's declaring that she's gonna be trampled by the Gentiles, Revelation 11, 2. She's gonna be replaced by a Jerusalem that is from above, Revelation 21, 2. And in both Galatians and Revelation, we are told that the true people of God are the ones who live by faith and not by bloodlines, buildings, or old covenant rituals.

The parallels are striking, not subtle, but overt even. And that's where we get to the point, especially the context of the word apocalypsis. You may be asking yourself, okay, so why is all of this important?

What does it all mean? Well, it means that when John uses the word apocalypsis at the start of the book of Revelation, he's not just pulling out a poetic device out of his pocket in order to confuse Bible scholars for thousands of years, because it doesn't just signal that God is giving a revelation.

That word is too generic. Revelation applies to any scripture, divine revelation. We think about scripture as God breathed revelation. The book of Psalms is a revelation. The book of Leviticus, the book of Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth,.

First and second Samuel,.

All of them are revelation. They're divine revealed messages from God. But the word revelations doesn't actually go far enough to describe what Paul and John are talking about with apocalypsis. Apocalypse is a specific kind of divine revelation that reveals mysteries and uncovers truth for people who are confused.

And they're confused because the old age is passing away right before their very eyes and the church is being told to lift her eyes to Christ so that she can see the truth. Christ is bringing the apocalypsis.

He's bringing the unveiling, the revealing. He's bringing clarity where there's confusion. That is why this word is used by Paul and why it's used by John. It's not about nuclear war. It's not about a technological collapse.

It's not about the end of civilization. And it's not about the end of the world. It's about the end of a world, the old covenant world, the end of bulls and goats being sacrificed, the end of gold temples, the end of feast and priest.

It's Jesus saying through Paul in Galatians and through John in Revelation, dear church, let me show you what's really happening. Let me uncover what's really going on right now. I am going to vindicate you.

I'm going to free you. I'm gonna save you. I'm gonna spare you from your pain by crushing my enemies, by elevating you to the status of royal bride and by building my kingdom to the ends of the earth.

That is what the word apocalypsis is getting at in the book of Revelation. And if we don't get that straight, then we're never going to understand when we get to the beast or the trumpet or the bull or the any of that.

So what we have to do, what we have to do when we get started in this book is we have to understand that the word revelation, the revelation of Jesus Christ, the apocalypsis is the unveiling of Jesus's judgment against the Jews and Jesus's exaltation of his kingdom through the church's bride.

That is the revealing that is happening in the first century world so that the church will no longer be confused. That, if we don't understand that, we won't understand the book of Revelation. That's what the word apocalypsis means.

And that takes us to part three, the origin of the apocalypse. Now, if revelation is an unveiling, and if it's an unveiling, that's meant to comfort a suffering church and to expose the collapsing old covenant world, then we have to ask ourself the question, where did this message come from?

What is its origin? And why does it matter? And it matters because the authority of the message is bound up in the one who sent it. In Revelation 1 .1, the origin of this message is spelled out unmistakably clear when John says, the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his bondservants the things which must soon take place.

And he sent and communicated it by his angel to his bondservant, John. Now, what we find out immediately is that this unveiling that is happening is not a man-made document. It's not speculative mysticism.

It's not an attempt by John to interpret his geopolitical events through apocalyptic imagery, like many of the end-time charlatans are doing today. This is not him trying to soothe the fears of the early church with personal anecdotes and spiritualized images.

No, the revelation doesn't come from John. It doesn't come from a man. It comes from the triune God. That is clear from the chain of transmission in this verse. It comes from the father to the son, through the messenger to John for the church.

That chain of transmission matters because it means that the content of the book does not originate from the imagination of John. It does not arise from the speculative imaginations and mystical feelings of a man who's high on peyote or ayahuasca.

It's a product, not of spiritual euphoria or psychological trauma, but it is divine triune communication that is sent from heaven to earth to encourage God's people. God, in the first century, is sending a message to his people from himself, which means that they don't have to guess at what the meaning of the words are.

They only have to receive them as being from God, fully true for them. They understood that God was sending them a first century message about what was going to happen in a first century world, about how the old world that they were living in was going to die.

And revelation doesn't call upon them to guess.

Or to speculate.

It calls upon them to understand what God is doing, why God is doing it, and what it means for them. The chain of communication here guarantees that this is not John just trying to guess what God might do in the future, but God is telling him exactly what he is going to do.

He is going to destroy the unfaithful Jews. He is going to burn down their temple. He is going to set their city on fire. He is going to leave it, like Jesus proclaimed in Matthew 24, as an ash heap in the Judean landscape.

It is a certainty because it's communicated from the mouth of the triune Godhead, the revelation of Jesus Christ from God, which gives it absolute certainty. Now, the phrase from Jesus Christ or of Jesus Christ in Greek is apocalipsis Iesu Christu, which means the revelation of Jesus Christ.