John's Spiritual Experience
In spirit on the Lord's Day
I was in a spiritual state on the Lord’s Day and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet saying: “What you are seeing write down in a book and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyateira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodoceia.” Revelation 1:9–11
What actually occurred on that fateful Lord’s Day on Patmos when John received visions and prophetic oracles from the Lord?
John gave us a few details, but every one seems to plead for more explanation.
Let’s dig in.
“I was in a spiritual state”
A look at fifty or so English translations will have something like, “I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day.” Most capitalize “Spirit” and most of those have “the Spirit.” Seven have “the spirit,” and several others just “spirit.” The CEB has “a Spirit-inspired trance,” the GNV has “ravished in spirit,” the TLB has “I was worshipping,” the NAB “caught up in spirit,” and the NLT “worshipping in the Spirit.”
As I have always taught my Biblical Interpretation students, if the translations are different, something is going on.
Although I understand why translators want to say, “in the Spirit,” the Greek phrase en pneumati likely means “in spirit” referring to John’s spiritual state (“a Spirit-inspired trance” is close).
One scholar, David Aune, translated it “a prophetic trance.”
When John referred to the Holy Spirit (thirteen times) he put a definite article (Greek to) in front of spirit: “the Spirit” or “the seven spirits”—referring to the Holy Spirit—he never uses “holy.”
But the four times John used “in spirit” he referred to his out of body state when he was experiencing a vision (1:10, 4:2, 17:3, 21:10).
That “spiritual state” was likely one where he had lost a sense of where he was and what was going on around because he was in a state of pure worship.
In that state, his spiritual senses were on high alert for what God was doing.
And at that moment God revealed himself in the visions and in this case an “audition” before the vision. (continued)
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“On the Lord’s Day”
This reference to Sunday as “the Lord’s Day” (Greek: ē kyriakē ēmera), is the only one in the entire New Testament, though some other early Christian works do contain the phrase.
Kyriakos is the same word we get the term “church” from (in the New Testament, ekklēsia is the term for church).
We know from Acts 20:7 and 1 Corinthians 16:2 that Sunday (the first day of the week) was the day Christians gathered, but Revelation is the only New Testament book to give the name “the Lord’s day.”
The earliest Christians moved their day of worship from Saturday—Sabbath—to Sunday because of the Resurrection.
There is no particular reason why John would have included this time information unless it happened that way.
Though his visions could have come anytime, they happened then.
But on that particular day, John was poised for what would happen.
John’s encounters with the incarnate Jesus, his witness of Jesus’s death and resurrection, his many years of reflection on those events, the work of the Spirit in his life, and the sufferings that he witnessed and went through himself, all prepared him for that moment on that day.
“… and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet saying …”
While worshipping, John heard a voice.
Not any voice, but a loud voice like a trumpet.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve never heard a voice like that! But in his spiritual state, that is what John heard.
So his first experience was not a “vision” but an “audition”—he heard a voice.
Despite its loud and trumpet-like character, John understood what was spoken, and soon he would know that Jesus himself was the one speaking.
And what did that voice say?
“Write down in a book what you are seeing”
The audition quickly turned to a vision and John was to record what he saw (and heard).
Whether John had writing material with him, we don’t know, though all of the art depicting the scene has John with book and pen or shows John dictating Revelation to his secretary Prochorus, the deacon mentioned in Acts 7 (see the mosaic above and this illuminated manuscript).
This is another tradition unattested in the Bible.
Here is what we can say:
John’s visionary experience was so vivid that he was able to recall every detail. How he recorded that detail so that we could understand it is for another day, but what he experienced in his spiritual state was so indelibly etched in his mind that it was as real as anything physical he had ever experienced.
“… and send it to the seven churches …”
Unlike Daniel, who was told to “shut up the words, and seal the book, until the time of the end” (Daniel 12:4), John was not only to write what he saw, but to publish it for the seven churches in Asia.
To publish and send a document like Revelation in the current time was very different from all of the non-biblical apocalyptic works before it.
They had been written in the name of long dead Biblical figures like Adam or Enoch or Moses or Ezra or Baruch and then “found” at the time they were written from the third century BC and after.
John was to write down his own visions and send his work in his own name to the very churches he knew and who knew him. (cont.)
“to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyateira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodiceia.”
That John wrote to actual named churches with actual named believers (as I have said before) puts Revelation in the remarkable position of not predicting the future (as other apocalypses claimed to do), but of speaking then and there to their current situation.
As we will see, Revelation is a theological and political commentary on the eternal God and his people on the one hand and the satanically driven world on the other (over whom God will ultimately defeat along with sin and death).
For the churches listening to the words of Revelation then, those words were just as relevant to their own situation as they are to ours today.
There were other churches in Asia (and of course in many other places) but as we will see, the number seven has a huge significance in Revelation (hint: it is the number of perfection or completeness).
These seven churches in all of their glory and in some cases shame represented the entire Church—and still do.
The specific prophetic oracles to those churches in Revelation 2 and 3 still resonate today, and not just Laodiceia as so many preachers claim.
Of course, John obeyed the command to write what he saw and heard and to send it to the seven churches. And for that obedience we have Revelation today.
In my next post we will observe John’s first vision of Jesus—and what a sight it was.
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