Pastor Luther Walker continues teaching through Revelation chapter 1, emphasizing that believers form a kingdom of priests (Revelation 1:6; 1 Peter 2:5,9), offering spiritual sacrifices as a holy, separated priesthood rather than Levitical ones. The church will perform priestly service in heaven during the Tribulation, as seen with the 24 elders offering the prayers of the saints (Revelation 5:8).
Revelation 1:7 describes Christ’s return “with clouds,” interpreted as clouds of saints, not water vapor. This echoes Jude 14 (Enoch’s prophecy of the Lord coming with ten thousands of His saints) and 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17, detailing the Rapture: the dead in Christ rise first, followed by living believers caught up together in the air to meet the Lord, receiving resurrected bodies. This event precedes Christ’s visible return to earth, where every eye will see Him, including those who pierced Him, causing the tribes to mourn.
Revelation 1:8 affirms Christ as the Alpha and Omega, the Almighty who knows the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10), gathering all things in heaven and earth in Himself in the dispensation of the fullness of times (Ephesians 1:10)—the Millennial Kingdom, the final dispensation where King David stewards under Christ’s reign from Jerusalem.
John, exiled on the rugged island of Patmos for the word of God and testimony of Jesus, receives the vision “in the spirit” on the Lord’s Day (Sunday), meaning deep rational thought in his human spirit, focused on worshiping God in spirit and truth (John 4:23-24). He hears a trumpet-like voice commanding him to write what he sees to the seven churches in Asia: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea.
John sees seven golden lampstands (the churches) with one like the Son of Man in their midst, holding seven stars (the messengers/pastors of the churches) in His right hand. Christ, alive forevermore with the keys of Hades and death (having stripped Satan’s power over death, Hebrews 2:14), instructs John to write the things seen, the things that are (the seven periods of church history), and the things that will take place after (Tribulation events).
The seven churches represent successive predominant conditions of the church age on earth after the apostolic period. Ephesus, the first, receives commendation for labor, patience, and intolerance of evil/false apostles but is warned to repent of losing its first love or have its lampstand removed—the only church threatened with removal.
