THE APOCALYPSE EXPLAINED.

CHAPTER 1

[Note: The text from the Book of Revelation is shown first, followed by an explanation of its meaning.]

1. THE Revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave unto him, to show unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he signified [this], sending by his angel unto his servant John,

2. Who bare witness of the Word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, whatsoever things he saw.

3. Blessed is he that readeth, and they that hear, the words of the prophecy, and keep the things which are written therein; for the time is at hand.

4. John to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace to you, and peace, from him who is, and who was and who is to come; and from the seven spirits which are in sight of his throne;

5. And from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the first born from the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. To him that loveth us, and washeth us from our sins in his blood,

6. And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father; to him be the glory and the strength (robur) unto the ages of the ages. Amen.

7. Behold, he cometh with the clouds; and every eye shall see him, and they who pierced him; and all the tribes of the earth shall wail over him. Even so; Amen.

8. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, saith the Lord, who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.

9. I John, who also am your brother and companion in affliction, and in the kingdom and patient expectation of Jesus Christ, was in the island called Patmos, for the Word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.

10. I was in the spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet,

11. Saying, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last; what thou seest write in a book, and send to the churches which are in Asia; unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos, and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea.

12. And I turned to see the voice that spake with me. And, being turned, I saw seven golden lampstands;

13. And in the midst of the seven lampstands one like unto the Son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about the breasts with a golden girdle.

14. And his head and his hairs were white as white wool, as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire;

15. And his feet like unto burnished brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the voice of many waters.

16. And he had in his right hand seven stars; and out of his mouth went forth a sharp two-edged sword; and his face was as the sun shineth in his power.

17. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the First and the Last;

18. And am he that liveth, and was dead; and behold I am alive unto the ages of the ages, Amen; and I have the keys of hell and of death.

19. Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter.

20. The mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in my right hand, and the seven golden lampstands; the seven stars are the angels of the seven churches; and the seven lampstands which thou sawest are the seven churches.

MANY have expounded this prophetical book which is called the Apocalypse; but none of them have understood the internal or spiritual sense of the Word, therefore they have applied the particulars which it contains to the successive states of the church, which they have learnt from history; and in addition to this they have applied many things to civil affairs. Consequently such expositions are mostly conjectures, which can never appear in such light that they can be approved as truths; and therefore they are cast aside as mere opinions as soon as they are read. The reason why the current explanations of the Apocalypse are of this description is, as just observed, that their authors know nothing of the internal or spiritual sense of the Word; when, nevertheless, all things in the Apocalypse are written in a style similar to that of the prophetical parts of the Old Testament, and of the whole Word. And the Word is natural in the letter, but in its inner content spiritual; and consequently it contains a sense within, which does not appear at all in the letter. The nature of the difference between these two senses may be seen from what is said and shown in the small work concerning "The White Horse", and in the Appendix there, taken from Arcana Coelestia. ¹

Footnotes:

255. From Secrets of Heaven

The necessity and excellence of the Word. From earthly light, we know nothing about the Lord, heaven and hell, our life after death, or the divine truths that are essential for our spiritual and eternal life: 8944, 10318, 10319, 10320. Evidence for this is the fact that many people, including scholars, do not believe in these things even though they were born where the Word is present and have been taught from it about these matters: 10319. That is why it became necessary for there to be some revelation from heaven, since we are born for heaven: 1775. For this reason there has been a revelation in every era: 2895. Information about the various kinds of revelation in this world over time: 10355, 10632. The earliest people, the ones who lived before the Flood, whose era was called the Golden Age, ¹ had direct revelation and therefore had divine truth written on their hearts: 2896. The ancient churches that existed after the Flood had a Word containing both historical and prophetic material: 2686, 2897. (On these churches, see §247 above.) Its historical materials were called The Wars of Jehovah and its prophetic materials were called Pronouncements: 2897. This Word was like our own Word as far as its inspiration was concerned: 2897. It was mentioned by Moses: 2686, 2897. However, this Word has been lost: 2897. There were also prophetic revelations among other peoples, as we can see from Balaam's prophecies [Numbers 23-24]: 2898.

[2] The Word is divine throughout and in every detail: 639, 3305, 10321, 10637. The Word is divine and holy down to the smallest letters and the tip of every letter ² : 9349 (which includes evidence from eyewitness experience). How people nowadays explain the claim that the Word is inspired down to the smallest letters: 1886.

[3] The church takes a particular form where the Word exists and the Lord is known by means of it, and therefore where divine truths have been revealed: 3857, 10761. Still, though, this does not mean that people are part of the church by merely being born where the Word exists and the Lord is known by means of it; people are part of the church only if they are being regenerated by the Lord by means of truths from the Word-that is, they are living lives of love and faith: 6637, 10143, 10153, 10578, 10645, 10829.

Footnotes:

10632. 'And He said, Behold, I am making a covenant' means the chief things through which the joining of the Lord to the human race by means of the Word is brought about. This is clear from the meaning of 'a covenant' as a joining together, dealt with in 665, 666, 1023, 1038, 1864, 1996, 2003, 2021, 6804, 8767, 8778, at this point the joining of Jehovah, that is, of the Lord, to the human race by means of the Word; for this joining together is the subject in what immediately follows. The fact that this is the meaning is also clear from the train of thought in the internal sense. For the subject in what went before was the Law which was laid down and declared from Mount Sinai. That Law serves in a broad sense to mean the Word, 6752, 7463; but also it was the beginning of the Word, for the Word was declared afterwards, first by Moses, then by all the others. The subject in what came next was the Israelite nation, who were not by nature such that the Word could be written among them as it could have been in other circumstances. This was because no Church could be established among them, and where the Church is, so is the Word. See what has been stated and shown on these matters in Chapters 32, 33, and up to here in the present chapter.

[2] But because Moses insisted on the people's behalf that Jehovah should be in their midst and that they should be accepted as an inheritance, and should accordingly be led into the land of Canaan - all of which means in the internal sense that the Church was to be established among that people, and thus that the Word was to be written there - and because these demands were accepted on account of Moses' insistence, the subject now is the chief commandments which had to be kept fully in order that those demands might be met. These commandments required them to worship the Lord alone and no other, and to acknowledge that He was the Source of everything good and true, besides a number of other commandments that form the subject in what immediately follows.

[3] When it is said that these form the subject in what immediately follows it should be recognized that those commandments are contained in the internal sense, whereas the kinds of things that represent them, thus that serve to mean them, are what the external or literal sense contains, as will be clear from the explanation of the things stated next in this chapter of Exodus. But since this covenant which Jehovah made with Moses is said to mean the joining of the Lord to the human race by means of the Word, something must be stated here regarding the nature of such a joining together. In most ancient times members of the Church possessed no Word, only direct revelation; and through this revelation a joining together was accomplished. For when direct revelation exists heaven is joined to those in the world; and the joining of heaven to those in the world constitutes a joining of the Lord to them since that which is Divine and the Lord's among the angels constitutes heaven.

[4] When this direct revelation came to an end, which happened when people turned aside from the good which had governed them, another kind of revelation took its place. This was accomplished by means of representative signs, through which members of the Church at that time knew what was true and good; consequently this Church was called the representative Church. In that Church a Word also existed, but it served that Church alone. When however this Church too was laid waste, which happened when they began to venerate in idolatrous ways those representative signs through which the Church in those times was joined to heaven, and in many lands when they began to use them for magic, the Lord provided for a Word to be written that would be Divine in every single part, even each syllable. It would consist of pure correspondences and so would be suited to the perception of angels in all the heavens, and at the same time to people in the world. And this Word was provided to the end that through it the Lord might be joined to the human race; for unless He had been joined to them through such a Word heaven would have completely departed from mankind, who as a consequence would have ceased to exist.

[5] The subject in what follows therefore is that joining together by means of the Word; and the chief commandments which ought to be kept by a person in order that this joining by means of the Word may exist in him are opened up.

The most ancients possessed direct revelation, see 2895, 3432.

Regarding the representative Church which subsequently took its place, and its Word, 2686, 2897, 3432, 10355.

The Word is the means by which the Lord is joined to the human race, in the places referred to in 10375, 10452.