Book of Revelation Chapter 1 Vs. 2

Prologue 

Rev. 1:2 Who bare record of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw.


To bare record indicates that John actually saw these things. John proclaims in his books that he is an eyewitness testifying of all he saw and heard.

Bare record (ἐμαρτύρησεν)

See on John 1:7. Rev., bear witness. The reference is to the present book and not to the Gospel. The aorist tense is the epistolary aorist. See on 1Jhn. 2:13, and compare the introduction to Thucydides' History: Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote ξυνέγραψε the history of the war, etc.; placing himself at the reader's standpoint, who will regard the writing as occurring in the past.

John could easily bear record of the Word Jesus. He was a daily companion of Jesus. This particular Scripture however is speaking of the things that John sees in his visions. The testimony of Jesus is salvation to all who believe.

Word of God

Not the personal Word, but the prophetic contents of this book.

The Lord God (Κύριος ὁ Θεὸς)

Rather, as Rev., the Lord, the God.

Of the holy prophets (τῶν ἁγίων προφητῶν)

For ἁγίων holy substitute πνευμάτων spirits, and render, as Rev., the God of the spirits of the prophets.

Be done (γεγέσθαι)

Better, as Rev., come to pass.

The authenticity of the Revelation is based upon the testimony of God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and John who was moved upon by the Holy Spirit to record all things that he saw past from the Father and the Son.

Testimony (μαρτυρίαν)

For the phrase to witness a witness see John 4:32. For the peculiar emphasis on the idea of witness in John, see on John 1:7. The words and the ides are characteristic of Revelation as of the Gospel and Epistles.

And (τε)

Omit. The clause all things that he saw is in apposition with the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ, marking these as seen by him. Rev. adds even.

All things that he saw (ὅσα εἶδεν)

Lit., as many things as he saw. In the Gospel John uses the word εἶδεν saw, only twice of his own eyewitness (John 1:40; 20:8). In Revelation it is constantly used of the seeing of visions. Compare Rev. 1:19. For the verb as denoting the immediate intuition of the seer, see on John 2:24.

Such is the general character of that revelation which Jesus Christ sent and signified through His angel unto His servant John. And that Apostle faithfully recorded it for the instruction and comfort of the Church. Like his Divine Master, with whom throughout all this book believers are so closely identified, and who is Himself the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the disciple whom He loved stands forth to bear witness of the word of God thus given him, of the testimony of Jesus thus signified to him, even of all things that he saw. He places himself in thought at the end of the visions he had witnessed and retraces for others the elevating pictures which had filled, as he beheld them, his own soul with rapture.



Again, John faithfully described what he saw as the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. What John saw was a communication from and about Jesus Christ Himself.