theWord Commentaries

Wallace, Foy Revelation CMT

• WLue777
• November 5, 2025September 2, 2025
• 0

THE BOOK OF REVELATION
AN APOCALYPTIC PREVIEW

The current phrase “the book of revelation” is at once connotative of the apocalypse of John on Patmos–but the whole Bible is the book of revelation from God to man, and is the culmination of a divine pattern and policy of God’s communication with man.

The first two verses of the Hebrew epistle in the New Testament states the whole policy of divine revelation: “God who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds.” This One who was the agent of the creation of the universe and of man became the heir of all things in God’s revelation to man, the culmination and fulfillment of the scheme of divine revelation. This chain of revelation, from the voice of God in the garden of Eden to the voice of the blood of Christ on the cross, follows a divine pattern from its first forms of communication to the completion of the divine purpose in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Primitive revelation was oral, when God addressed the patriarchs in direct verbal communication. Then revelation took the form of theophany–the manifestation of God in symbols and types and visions, inclusive of the long series of representations of God in the early ages. After this, revelation assumed an ethnic character in the formation of the Hebrew race, the existence of which was but an early form of divine revelation, from which developed the national feature of revelation in the establishment and organization of the nation of Israel, the whole history of which was a phase of divine revelation. Finally, revelation reached its documentary culmination and was committed to the records of the Old and New Testaments.

This gradual course and progressive policy of revelation is the meaning of Heb 1:1-2. God spake in time past (the old dispensations) unto the fathers (from Adam to Moses) by the prophets (the agents of ancient revelation) in sundry times (in various parts or portions) and in divers manners (employing many methods of communication), but in the last days (the gospel dispensation) God has spoken unto us by his Son (Jesus the Christ), whom he appointed heir of all things (spoken by the prophets). The various parts and portions were gathered into one, the many methods merged into the completed revelation, and the Bible thus becomes the longest thread of thought ever woven in the loom of time. This course of divine revelation is a basic principle of the present treatise.

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