A REVELATION ENCOUNTER WITH JESUS
John, the apostle of Jesus, tells us in the book of the Revelation of a remarkable encounter with his Lord. He sets the scene: "I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering and kingdom and patient endurance that are ours in Jesus was on the island of Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. On the Lord’s day, I was in the Spirit" (1:9,10). There are three little phrases that stand out, and linked together as they are, demonstrate quite simply the essential meaning and message of the Christian church - On the Lord’s Day, in Patmos, in the Spirit. They answer the questions: When, Where, How the revelation came – and how it still comes. Notice first: When the revelation came - it was:
ON THE LORD’S DAY
If John the apostle was asked which day of the week meant most to him we can be fairly sure he would reply "Sunday, the Lord’s day". It was the day on which three of the most wonderful events in his life took place. The first he shared with his fellow disciples. They had sought refuge from the hostile religious Jewish authorities in a safe house in Jerusalem immediately following the crucifixion of their Lord. They were a group of somewhat bewildered men, loyal to Jesus, but ashamed of their failure to stand up and be counted for him. They didn’t really know what to believe because their hopes and aspirations had been cruelly shattered when he allowed himself to be ignominiously put to death the preceding Friday.
But then came Sunday, the first day of the new week, and the first day in a new era in their lives, for it was the day of resurrection of the risen Christ and his revelation to them that he was risen indeed. "On the evening of the first day of the week, when the disciples were gathered together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ’Peace be with you’" (John 20:19). John, himself, wrote these words in his Gospel, and could do no other than to record: "the disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord" (20).
That was a Sunday to remember, but it was followed by another memorable occasion, seven weeks to the day, on the Feast of Pentecost. This time John was one of a larger group of 120 disciples and followers of Jesus. They were believers to be sure but feeling somewhat at a loss because, although Jesus had revealed himself to them a number of times, in the meantime he had surprisingly ascended from before their eyes, leaving them alone once more. Before Jesus left them he gave them clear instructions not to leave Jerusalem but to wait for God the Father’s promise of the Holy Spirit. Jesus had told the disciples of his coming ministry but its reality had yet to be experienced. Then the day of Pentecost came when the Holy Spirit descended upon them and baptised them with spiritual power and gifts. The signs from heaven of the sound of the blowing of a violent wind and what seemed to be tongues of fire were symbolic of a revolution which took place in their lives. The Holy Spirit illuminated their understanding of Jesus and the significance of his life and ministry, his death and resurrection.
That too was a day to remember. John could remember a good many more Sundays because he was probably the longest living member, of the original band of disciples. Right at the end of his life came the third of these memorable Sundays. Writing to the churches in Asia, he specifically states that this particular vision took place on the Lord’s day. It was on this occasion, on the Lord’s day, that the Lord Jesus revealed himself and his purposes for the church as never before. This is the only occasion recorded in the New Testament when this day is mentioned as "the Lord’s day" and so we have the first reference to a Christian Sunday. There are a few earlier references to the observance of the first day of the week as a day for Christian assembly and worship, but now it was to be known as "the Lord’s day". No wonder that Christians want to "keep Sunday special". Do we honour and respect the Lord’s day? Do we come to it with a sense of expectancy that the Lord will reveal himself?
It’s helpful to reflect for a moment on how the Christian church left the observance of the Sabbath, Saturday, and came to observe the Lord’s day, Sunday, as their holy day. After all, the church sprang from the Jewish faith that laid down that the Sabbath, the seventh day was the day, which commemorated the rest that God took after the creation of the world. Christians wouldn’t have lightly abandoned that holy tradition, indeed, God given commandment. But the fact is that they did so because the former revelation was fulfilled in the new. In commemorating the rising of Jesus from the dead on the first day of a new week it demonstrated that they had moved on from the limited and symbolic revelation given to the Jews through the prophets. They were now in a new era, a new order had arrived, for God had spoken through his Son.
In the eastern part of the Roman Empire there was a day of the month and a day of the week known as the "Emperor’s Day. How fitting that the Christians decided that the first day of the week must be dedicated to their Lord, as "the Lord’s Day". Sunday is a wonderful day for the Christian. It has so many associations but in God’s special wisdom the seventh day is set apart as a day of rest and blessed in body and mind is the person who keeps it, but for the Christian believer it’s especially precious. It’s a constantly recurring reminder and link with those two great momentous days for the Christian without which he would have no faith the resurrection of Jesus and the coming of the Holy Spirit whose express work it is to reveal the Saviour. It’s certainly true that God can reveal himself to his people on any day of the week, but there’s a special sacredness and expectancy about worshipping him on the Lord’s day, and so it proved for John. It meant a lot to him. But what does it mean to us? Is Sunday just the end of the previous week? Like an extra day tagged on as in many diaries? Or is it the first day of a new week in our pilgrimage to heaven, the starting point of a new experience with God?
The second significant part of the setting was that John was:
IN PATMOS
This is an island about the size of Alderney, Channel Islands, off the coast of Asia Minor. It’s now a popular tourist Greek island but in the first century under Roman rule it was no paradise. Banishment to a remote island was a common form of Roman punishment, with a prisoner losing his civil rights and most likely involving hard labour in the quarries. John was an acknowledged leader of the Christians and the wonder is that he wasn’t executed straight away, but clearly God had stayed the hand of evil men because John’s work was not yet completed.
Visitors from cruise ships are taken to the hillside cave where John is reputed to have been banished but Satan made a big mistake in having John exiled in Patmos. He may have congratulated himself when he succeeded in having John shut away. But the plot boomeranged. Instead of getting an obituary notice announcing John’s death, the churches of Asia received messages of Christ’s future victory. God allowed his faithful disciple to see further from his island prison than Caesar was able to see from his palace in Rome!
Jesus warned his disciples, "In this world you will have trouble" (John 16:33). The Apostle Paul told his new converts, "We must go through many hardships" (Acts 14:22). There are trials and troubles that are the common inheritance and portion of all mankind and can be traced back to the fallen state of the world. Disease and pain, natural disasters, grief and disappointment, economic hardship some or all of them at so me time are the common lot of human beings, and come irrespective of whether we be in the faith or not. But what John was facing was something different he was enduring tribulation because he was a Christian. In becoming a faithful follower of Jesus, it is inevitable that the treatment meted out on the Lord should also fall on his disciples, for they will be believers in the midst of an ¬unbelieving world.
The tradition of Christians suffering for their faith, of having their own personal Patmos is long and honourable. The early church was a despised minority, a living rebuke to the moral pollution of the Roman way of life and although the believers didn’t attack the system, the heathen majority felt threatened by the purity of the Gospel, and they ruthlessly persecuted the church. It soon became illegal to be a Christian and if persevered with, a criminal offence calling for the death penalty. Over the centuries Christianity eventually triumphed in many parts of the world and so the outright persecution halted but never entirely ceased. Whenever evil was in the ascendancy, those who opposed it would be sorely tried for the Christian principles they upheld.
In our own time, the stories of suffering believers in Communist and Muslim countries are legion. The Christian believers who are sent to labour camps for the crime of worshipping in churches not approved by the authorities or teaching the Bible to their children they are "in Patmos" just as much as John the Apostle was in Patmos. The New Testament makes no apology for declaring to converts to Christianity that it’s through many an affliction that they would enter into the kingdom of God. No easy way is offered. In our own nominal Christian society we can thank God that personal freedom of religion is respected, but that isn’t to say that there’s not a price to be paid for being true to Christian convictions and standards.
Many a Christian has found him or herself despised by the world for daring to swim against the tide, of not conforming to worldly values. "This is the way the Master trod, should not the servant tread it still?" ¬ In fact if things are going too smoothly for us perhaps we should consider if it’s because the devil doesn’t consider us worth troub1ing because our devotion to the Lord is so marginal. But if we are called upon to suffer for our faith, and many discerning Christians believe that even in the privileged British Isles that time may yet come, we shall be sharing in the tribulation that Jesus knew, which John knew with countless others of the fellowship of believers. If we’re truly his companions we shall share the same experience. Are you going through a "Patmos" experience? If you are, you can be sure that the Lord Jesus is standing with you. In Patmos we suffer, but thank God there is a further aspect, for John tells us that he was:
IN THE SPIRIT
We’ve already seen that John was in the position to receive revelation from Jesus. The place was right: he was in the place of sacrificial service, in Patmos. The time was right: it was the day he had come to identify with meeting for spiritual exercises, on the Lord’s day. Yet, another dimension was required: it was necessary to be "in the Spirit". This principle is seen throughout scripture. At the creation of mankind, God created Adam from the dust of the earth; his body was perfect but it lacked the vital part, it had no life until God breathed into him the breath of life, and man became a living being. Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones progressed in the same way, only coming to fruition when the Spirit of God came into them. There’s a vital question we have to ask ourselves: "Are we in the Spirit? Is he guiding and empowering our lives?"
We need the life of the Spirit to live victorious Christian lives. We need a strength that’s beyond our own. Ours alone isn’t sufficient to meet the demands that Jesus makes on our lifestyles. We need his power to take on the right attitudes to life, to meet the challenges that are beyond our capacity. John had already received the Holy Spirit, yet he needed a fresh infilling. At conversion we receive the Spirit of Christ as a promise of what he longs to achieve in us, but we need to receive his fullness. The Spirit will release us from our fears, enable and equip us for service. But it isn’t sufficient to live on a past experience. Paul urged the Ephesian believers to "be filled with the Spirit" - the words are better expressed as "continue to be filled."
D L Moody was once asked why he urged Christians to be filled constantly with the Holy Spirit. "Well," he said, "I need a continual infilling.” Why was that? He pointed to a water tank which had sprung a leak. "I’m like that!" he said. It’s a fact that living in this sinful world we do need to be replenished by the Spirit. A friend of mine, an evangelist, was asked if he believed in the "second blessing". "Of course I do," he replied, "and in the 3rd, 4th , 5th blessing, and so on." It was being "in the Spirit" that made the difference to John, for then his awareness of God heightened and he was attuned to the spiritual dimension, lifting him beyond the things of space and time into the world of eternity.
Up to the time when he heard the trumpet voice, John’s banishment must have seemed more like the sharing of Jesus’ tribulation than the sharing of his Kingdom. The mountains and quarries of Patmos were surroundings calculated to depress, not to encourage, but though John was physically in Patmos on this particular Lord’s day, he was also "in the Spirit", and it proved to be for him the very gate of heaven. The voice spoke, the saint turned, and before him opened the vision of another kind of reality altogether - the vision of the risen Christ standing triumphant amidst his churches. Through his message to the churches and the visions that followed, Jesus would reaffirm his lordship of the church, the enduring struggle with evil and its ultimate overthrow.
"In Patmos" we suffer, but "in the Spirit" we reign. As Christians we know the troubles of this world, but earthly understanding isn’t sufficient to know what it means, where it is going, why it can be so uncertain. Our understanding needs to be related to the spiritual world. It’s only then we begin to appreciate that there’s a master plan of history, and to grasp what is really happening, where we fit in and how it will all end. A piece of tapestry seen from the wrong side is a tangle of crossed threads and loose ends, and all too often that’s all we can see of life here in Patmos. But add the dimension of being in the Spirit and it’s possible to perceive the grand design on the right side of the tapestry that explains all that previously baffled.
The churches that John knew over long years as their pastor and to whom he wrote were frail. They were like lamps that gleam here and there across the dark world, ever seemingly threatened by extinction. But then the vision showed them as Christ knew them - a cluster of inextinguishable stars in the hand of their Creator. John is able to face the tribulation of Patmos because of what he knows of God’s eternal Kingdom. It’s true that Jesus told his disciples that in the world they would have trouble, but he went on, "but take heart! I have overcome the world."
Like John the Apostle, we need a revelation encounter with God … On the Lord’s Day, in fact, every day … - In the Patmos experiences of life. And how do we get it? It’s by being In The Spirit. But there’s a difference about knowing about it and doing it.
There’s a story told of a husband and wife both of who were doctors - one a doctor of theology and the other a doctor of medicine. When their doorbell was rung and the maid answered, the inquirer would often ask for "the doctor". The maid’s interesting reply was: "Do you want the one who preaches or the one who practices?" We know the theory of Christian living but what we must do is to practice it!
Please God, John’s testimony will be ours too: “On the Lord’s day, on the island of Patmos, I was in the Spirit.”
