1This is the Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things which must happen soon, which he sent and made known by his angel to his servant, John, 2who testified to God’s word and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, about everything that he saw.
3Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy, and keep the things that are written in it, for the time is near.
4John, to the seven assemblies that are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from God, who is and who was and who is to come; and from the seven Spirits who are before his throne; 5and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us, and washed us from our sins by his blood— 6and he made us to be a Kingdom, priests to his God and Father—to him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen.
7Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, including those who pierced him. All the tribes of the earth will mourn over him. Even so, Amen.
8“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”
9I John, your brother and partner with you in the oppression, Kingdom, and perseverance in Christ Jesus, was on the isle that is called Patmos because of God’s Word and the testimony of Jesus Christ. 10I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a loud voice, like a trumpet 11saying, “What you see, write in a book and send to the seven assemblies: to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.”
12I turned to see the voice that spoke with me. Having turned, I saw seven golden lamp stands. 13And among the lamp stands was one like a son of man, clothed with a robe reaching down to his feet, and with a golden sash around his chest. 14His head and his hair were white as white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire. 15His feet were like burnished brass, as if it had been refined in a furnace. His voice was like the voice of many waters. 16He had seven stars in his right hand. Out of his mouth proceeded a sharp two-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining at its brightest. 17When I saw him, I fell at his feet like a dead man.
He laid his right hand on me, saying, “Don’t be afraid. I am the first and the last, 18and the Living one. I was dead, and behold, I am alive forever and ever. Amen. I have the keys of Death and of Hades. 19Write therefore the things which you have seen, and the things which are, and the things which will happen hereafter. 20The mystery of the seven stars which you saw in my right hand, and the seven golden lamp stands is this: The seven stars are the angels of the seven assemblies. The seven lamp stands are seven assemblies.
In 1:3 Moses refers to God's creation of light, but not the creation of darkness. This is true also of evil. God, who created good, also did not create evil. Thus, neither darkness nor evil is a creation. Evil is the absence of Good 1 and darkness is the absence of Light. The prophet Isaiah speaks of God bringing the light into the darkness, and dispels it (See Isa 9:1, 2), and the apostle John speaks of the time when there will be no longer any darkness or of the sun and moon but God will provide the light (Rev 21:23). Interestingly, the "light" in 1:3 is followed by the creation of two great lights to rule the day and the night on the fourth day of creation. One biblical scholar who views Genesis 1 as a myth due to the mention of light on day 1, whereas the luminaries of day 4, has a conundrum because the new heavens and new earth have just the opposite issue with no sun or moon because God is the light, and yet it clearly is not a myth.
An important feature of the Mosaic account is that God evaluates His creative work and declares it good. As well, His command caused reality, and unlike the pagan mythology, demonstrated His sovereignty over the created order of Genesis 1 by naming the different days of creation. In the ancient Near East, to name was to exercise authority. The naming motif is carried over in chapter two where Adam is given the responsibility to name all of the animals of the earth, and also the naming of the woman that Yahweh made as a helper for him.
St. Augustine seems to agree with this definition, with some refinement: "Augustine further restricted evil. He said that evil, rather than existing on its own, was a 'loss of good.' Augustine was criticized (accurately) for this definition. Not every absence of good is evil. The medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas helped solve this problem. He said that evil is a lack of some good that something should have. So a lack of sight is [natural] evil in a man, but not a rock. In the end, evil cannot exist without something to corrupt. So the logical argument given above fails because its second premise (evil exists) is wrongly understood." H. Wayne House, Does God Feel Your Pain? Finding Answers When Life Hurts. (Navasota, TX: Lampion House Publishing, 2022, 2nd ed.), p. 59. ↩︎