Revelation 1:1 - 3

1 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants—things which must shortly take place. And He sent and signified it by His angel to His servant John, 2 who bore witness to the word of God, and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, to all things that he saw. 3 Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written in it; for the time is near.

The book of Revelation holds a mystical value to most people, one of fear and anxiety about the future, an aura of supernatural riders, avenging angels, bowls or vials of plagues and destruction of stars and mountains. But it doesn't need to be a fearful future for us. We can see through careful study most of the prophesies of this book have already happened. Most concerned the dragon and the beasts which had a lot to do with the Roman empire and the Roman-Catholic union of church and state. Chapters 4 through 20 are written in symbolic language and the symbols must agree with the history they cover. Chapters 1 through 3 and 21, and 22 are written as the the rest of the New Testament and will be considered as such.

The word “revelation” occurs 12 times in the King James/New King James Versions of the Bible and come from the Greek word: APOKALUPSIS. The word means, according to Thayer: "An uncovering; 1. properly a laying bare, making naked." is written as an expose' or explanation of things to come. They were all in the future when John wrote this book.

This explanation is from Jesus Christ and is given to Him by God the Father to show us what was to happen.

This message was sent to man via an angel from God and given to John, the same John who wrote, John, 1 John, 2 John, and 3 John.

It was sent and signified, which is from SEMAINO and means: "To give a sign, to signify, indicate."(Thayer) This has to do with the symbols given in the chapters which are largely symbolical.

John was one of the 12 apostles but uses the term of servant out of an attitude of modesty.

John says he is witnessing or writing the message which was given to him from Christ by the angel. It is also the word of God because God gave Christ the authority to release this information to John, and John to man.

Revelation is not a book to be ignored by Christ's believers because John writes we are to be blessed or happy that we have read and seen the information in this book. In order to be blessed by reading this book we must understand and heed what we read in this book.

“For the time is near” means the prophesies written in this book were to be fulfilled soon.