Darrell W. Johnson - Discipleship on the Edge: An Expository Journey Through the Book of Revelation

discipleship on the edge

Discipleship

on the edge

An EXPOSITORY journey through

tHE BOOK OF REVELATION

Darrell W. Johnson

Canadian Church Leaders Network

Vancouver, British Columbia

Discipleship on the Edge

Copyright 2021 by Darrell W. Johnson

All rights reserved.

Published 2021 by Canadian Church Leaders Network

512-1529 W 6th Ave, Vancouver, BC V6J1R1

www.ccln.ca

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from the New American Standard Bible, Copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission .

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

Johnson, Darrell W., 1947

Discipleship on the edge : an expository journey through
the Book of Revelation / Darrell W. Johnson.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-7774556-1-3

eBook ISBN 978-1-7774556-3-7

1. Bible. N.T. RevelationSermons. 2. Sermons, American21st century. 3. Presbyterian ChurchUnited StatesSermons. I. Title.

BS2825.54.J63 2004 228.06 C2004-901258-4

Contents

Appendices

Notes 397

Acknowledgements

I owe gratitude to so many people for helping me study Revelation and then teach, preach and write what I have learned.

Thank you to Rev. Dr. Glen Thorp, who when he was on staff with me at St. Johns Presbyterian Church in West Los Angeles, California, demonstrated that the book could be taught in a sane way.

Thank you to Rev. John R. W. Stott, in my mind the premier expository preacher of the twentieth century, for making Revelation make practical sense for the here and now in his book, What Christ Thinks of the Church.

Thank you to Rev. Michael Wilcock, author of I Saw Heaven Opened , the first commentary on Revelation I read cover to cover, for showing me that we are not to ask, what happens next? but, what did John see next? I was reading his book in a coffee shop and was so stirred by what he was showing me that I wanted to jump up and hold a preaching service!

Thank you to G. B. Caird, whose commentary took me deeper into the central message of the book, namely, the victory of God over evil in the suffering of the Lamb. His work helped me understand what was happening in the People Power Revolution of 1986 in Manila, Philippines.

Thank you to the Wednesday Morning Womens Bible Study at Union Church of Manila for giving me my first opportunity to teach the whole book. Did I feel in over my head!

Thank you to OMF Literature Inc. for publishing my first attempts to preach Revelation 1-5, 21-22 for the people of Union Church of Manila in late 1986.

Thank you to the Tuesday Evening Bible Study Class of Fremont Presbyterian Church, Sacramento, California, and the Wednesday Evening Bible Study Class of Glendale Presbyterian Church, Glendale, California, for working through the book with me. Your questions sent me back to the text and precipitated further discoveries!

Thank you to Dr. Richard Bauckham, whose insights published in The Theology of the Book of Revelation helped me see how apocalyptic literature works and why it is so spiritually transforming.

Thank you to the congregation of Glendale Presbyterian Church, Glendale, California, for letting me preach the whole book for the whole of 1999. It was the most transformative time of preaching I had yet experienced or witnessed.

Thank you to Judy Anderson, who served me as Secretarial Assistant in Glendale, for typing up the manuscripts of those sermons which allowed me to build on the material in subsequent years.

Thank you to Rev. John DElia for combing the sermons for all the bibliographical references.

Thank you to the members of the Studies in Revelation class during the Regent College Summer School of 2002. Those two weeks were the most wonderful time of study and teaching I have ever known. Many of the essays written as assignments for the course blew me away.

Thank you to Michelle McFadden, Ian Panth, Bill Reimer, and Dal Schindell, and for their proofreading. Any remaining mistakes are, of course, my responsiblity.

Thank you to Rob Clements of Regent College Publishing for his patience in my bringing the writing and editing to completion, and for his conviction that what I have to say about Revelation needs to be said beyond any one classroom or pulpit.

Thank you to the Board of Governors of Regent College for their generous sabbatical leave policy, granting me the time to focus on this project for months without other responsibilities.

Thank you to my wife, Sharon, who carries so much of the weight of caring for our family so that I can soak in the text of Scripture, and who patiently listens to me share exciting new insights and agonize over questions and implications. She had captured and lived the message of Revelation long before I began to understand it.

I dedicate Discipleship on the Edge to our children David (born in Los Angeles, California) and his wife Tara (born in Vernon, British Columbia), Christy (born in Pusan City, South Korea) and her husband Al (born in Squamish, British Columbia), Marissa (born in Manila, Philippines) and her husband Anthony (born in Vancouver, British Columbia), and Alexei (born in Moscow), who went to heaven in 2009. In many ways you represent the vision that Revelation has for the new humanity in Jesus. May this book help you fall more deeply in love with the One who breaks through in it, and may you see it all fulfilled in your lifetime.

Darrell W. Johnson

2004

Preface

I f it ever became illegal in my part of the world, as it actually is in other places at this very moment, to own a complete copy of the Bibleand if the authorities, as an act of mercy, allowed me to possess just one book of the Bible for personal useI would, without hesitation, keep the last. I would keep the book of Revelation.

Why? Because no other book of the Bible presents the gospel as powerfully as the last book does. No other book of the Bible, in the face of all that threatens to undo us, proclaims the good news of Jesus Christ the way the last book does.

More particularly, in no other book of the Bible do we see Jesus as clearly and compellingly as we do in the last book. That is quite a statement coming from someone who has spent all of his adult life soaking in the gospel of John! Yet I am convinced that no other book helps us see Jesus as he is right now as clearly and compellingly as the last book John wrote. No other book helps us see Jesus relative to the movement of history the way the last book does. No other book helps us see Jesus relative to the powers at work in our time the way the last book does. No other book helps us see him in a way that overcomes our fears and frees us for radical faith.

And no other book, in all of human literature, crystallizes what it means to belong to and follow Jesus in this world.

Though traditionally the last book of the Bible has been called The Revelation to John, it actually begins with the words The Revelation of Jesus Christ. Keep this description before us and we will not lose our way as we read the book. The title is not Revelationsalthough in it we do have a series of dramatic revelations. The title is not even Revelationalthough in it we do have one long, sustained revelation. The title is The Revelation, The Revelation of Jesus Christ.

Literally, the title is The Apocalypse. Sadly in our time the word apocalypse has come to mean Oh no! Something terrible is about to happen! Thus we sadly speak of storms and natural disasters as being of apocalyptic proportion. I say sadly because that is not at all what first-century people would have thought when they heard the word apocalypse. They would have thought of something more inviting, something immediately impacting the way they lived 24/7. The word simply meant unveiling. It was used of lifting a cover off a box or pulling back a curtain in the theatre. The word meant opening up. Or more dynamically breaking through. (The Apostle Paul uses the word in his letter to the Romans claiming that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation because in it the righteousness of God is revealed, literally, the right-related-ness of God breaks through ).