I. INTRODUCTION
A. Summary of Past Studies
- John’s Introduction, Greeting, and Vision of the Son of Man (Rev 1)
- Jesus’s Letters to the Seven Churches (Rev 2-3)
B. Revelation 4:1-6a
“1After this I looked, and behold! There was a door open in heaven, and the first noise which I heard was like a trumpet sound to me saying: ‘Come up here and I will show you what is necessary to happen after this. 2Immediately I was in the spirit and behold! A throne was standing in heaven and there was someone sitting on the throne. 3The one sitting on the throne was like jasper and sardius in appearance. An emerald-colored rainbow was around the throne. 4Around the throne I saw twenty-four thrones. On those twenty-four thrones were elders wearing white clothes and golden crowns on their heads. 5Coming from the throne was lightening, noise, and thunder. There were seven lamps of fire burning in front of the throne which is the seven-fold Spirit of God. 6aIn front of the throne was something like a sea of glass resembling crystal.” (Rev 4:1-6a)
“The Four and Twenty-Four Elders” by John Henry Stock (1853-1930)
C. General Remarks about Rev 4:1-6a
“’Heaven’ and ‘earth’, as I have often said, are not, in biblical theology, separated by a great gulf, as they are in much popular imagination. ‘Heaven’, God’s sphere of reality, is right here, close beside us, intersecting with our ordinary reality. It is not so much like a door opening high up in the sky, far away. It is more like a door opening right in front of us where before we could only see this room, this field, this street. Suddenly, there is an opening leading into a different world – and an invitation to ‘come up’ and see what’s going on.” (Wright, Revelation for Everyone, 42-43)
“The view that the book of Revelation beginning with 4:1 is future, from the standpoint of the twenty-first century, is a broad conclusion growing out of the lack of correspondence of these prophecies to anything that has been fulfilled.” (Walvoord, Revelation, 97)
II. THE TRIP TO HEAVEN (4:1)