Revelation; Project complete, index, summary

The new name

What is meant by the "new name"?

Jesus has a "new name" in ch3 v13.
He has a name "known only to himself" in ch19 v12
And the believer is offered a new name known only to himself in ch2 v17.
So I'm inclined to think that "new name" and "name known only to self" have much the same meaning, and that they relate to a spiritual nature which can only be known spiritually.

Sometimes a mystery has been made out of the "new name" of Jesus.
My primary opinion is that the above is probably sufficient explanation.
But if it has to relate to a literal new name, I don't know that we need to look any further than "Lord".
Paul describes how Christ received a new name as a consequence of the crucifixion and acsension;
"...obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed upon him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow...and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord"- Philippians ch2 vv8-11
This seems to hold good for the rest of the New Testament. Jesus is not normally described as "Lord" during his lifetime, either by the disciples or by the evangelists (this is one of the reasons why we know that Jesus was not the "lord" who commended the unjust steward). The title "Lord" is one that is applied to Jesus in Acts, the various epistles, and Revelation. In other words, it is given to him after the Resurrection. In other words, it is a "new name". So I think it could be the "new name" which is on offer in ch3 v12.

reply to post by DISRAELI


Hi, DISRAELI

Great work you did here, very meticulous, although I don't agree with some of what you wrote about Revelation, I like your dedication. How long did it take you to do all the research, typing, collating, and formatting?

Originally posted by atpacc How long did it take you to do all the research, typing, collating, and formatting?

Thank you for those comments.
I don't expect total agreement, but I've been trying to offer good reasons for the conclusions I've been putting forward.
How long? It depends on what aspect of things we're talking about.
The basic research was tracking down the relevant OT references to help in the interpretation, and that was done a couple of decades ago.
The basic ideas of interpretation were embodied in a manuscript I've had sitting around for nearly as long as that.
The threads were put up on a weekly basis since last April; the actual typing, say a couple of hours each time. The drafting, on and off during the previous week.
It took another week to collate and type up the Index material itself, out of the information gathered from the threads. After that, it was just a rapid copy/paste task to get it all onto the thread.
It helps that my time is my own.

I stopped by the other day and you were still working on it--WOW--what an impressive OP! Tremendous amount of work and organization let alone your excellent commentary.

I'm going to start at the beginning and dig my way through. Thank You!.

reply to post by The GUT

Thank you for that comment.
You must have dropped in during those hectic minutes when I was copy/pasting the material from the various places where I'd been hiding it.

What a wonderful service you have done us! Thank you so much for all your hard work and dedication.

You've given me much to study, and I look forward to reading the chronological order of chapters.

I'm so glad the naysayers reinforced your determination.

reply to post by TNTarheel

Thank you for that encouragement.
Yes, I thought that many people would find the "order by chapters" more useful. It fits in with the way we're used to reading the book.

ch22

The last thread in the series purports to cover chs21&22.
This is a little misleading, because I made no comments on anything beyond the second verse of ch22.
The reason was that I felt most of the rest of the chapter was just rcapitulating things which had been said earlier.

For example;
The first statement in v3 is that "There shall no more be anything accursed".
This comment is foreshadowed at several points in ch21.

In ch21 v1, John says "The sea was no more". As I observed, "the sea" in Revelation is one of the metaphors for the original source of evil. So it follows, from the abolition of "the sea", that evil things in will disappear.

In ch21 v3, John says that "death shall be no more, nor shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away". All these things are understood to be the product of the Genesis "curse". If the source of evil has diappeared, then its consequences will also disppear.

In ch21 v27, John says that neither unclean things, nor unclean people, will be allowed to enter the new Jerusalem. This comes to much the same thing as saying there will no longer be anything accursed.

Finally, in ch22 v2, there is the promise of unbroken access to the tree of Life.
Since part of the point of the Genesis curse was that the human race was to be denied access to the tree of Life, this promise means, in itself, that the curse has been removed.

The category of "accursed things" has ceased to exist.

ch 22

Similarly from v3, "the thorne of God and of the Lamb".
This phrase has been used already in v1.
The two of them together are "the temple" of the city in ch21 v22.
And in the speech from ch21 v5, as I observed in the relevant thread, the comments of the speaker associate him with God and the Lamb simultaneously.

ch22

v3; "His servants shall worship him".
This was previously implied by, amongst other things, ch21 v22;
"I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb".

ch22

v4; "his servants shall see his face".
We now from ch21 v3 that they will be in the presence of God.;
"Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He shall dwell with him, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them."
The "seeing his face" will follow from that, to the extent that it is possible. It certainly implies a more direct view than is possible at the moment.

ch22

"His name will be on the foreheads of his servants".

This has not been stated before, in exactly that form, but it would have been a reasonable deduction from other statements in the book.
Ch6 tells us that his servants will be given a mark on their foreheads.
Ch13 tells us that the followers of the Beast will accept a mark in the same place, and in their case it indicates the name of the Beast.
It is natural to assume that the two marks are counterparts, showing the two opposing sides.
Therefore, from the information given, we would have guessed that God's mark was supposed to carry his name, even if it was not now specifically stated.

ch22

v5; "And night shall be no more".
ch21 v25 said there would be no night "there", i.e. in the City.
If the City is now all there is, then the two statements amount to the same thing.
From another angle, the conjunction of the two statements confirms that there is now no world remaining outside the New Jerusalem.
In other words, when the end of ch21 affirms that no unclean people will be allowed to enter, we're not meant to understand that there is a world of unclean people living outside the city, who could have entered it if they had been permitted.

ch22

v6; "no need of lamp or sun, for the Lord God shall be their light".
A briefer paraphrase of what has already been stated in ch21 v23

ch22]

v5 "And they shall reign for ever and ever".
This belongs to the class of statement not prevously made in that form, but clearly implied as the corollary of other statements.
We know from ch3 v21 that those who conquer will "sit with me on my throne".
We know from Psalm 45v6, as interpreted in Hebrews ch1 v8, that the Son's throne lasts "for ever and ever".
It is reasonable to suppose that the promise to those who conquer is for the same period.
In any case, we know from ch3 v12 that thosw who conquer will never go out of the presence of God.

ch22

v6; "These words (LOGOI) are faithful (PISTOI) and true (ALETHINOI)".

This comment has been made before, in ch21 v5. In the earlier speech, it seems to relate to the speech from the throne in vv6-8. In this place, the implication is that it covers the whole book.

This "faithful and true" description is also found in two other places in Revelation.
In ch19 v11 the rider on the white horse is identified as "faithful and true". A little later, he is given the name "The Word (LOGOS) of God". This is significant. We must inevitably see a connection between the faithfulness of the two kinds of LOGOS.
In ch3 v14, Christ descibes himself as the "faithful and true" Witness, the Amen.
It can hardly be a coincidence that the same Greek phrase is used in all four cases (apart from switching between the singular and plural forms)
.
It's a little unfortunate, then, that some modern translations have chosen to vary the translation and so obscure the common thread of these passages.
In the RSV. Christ is described as "faithful and true", but the "words" in the last two chapters are called "trustworthy and true".
In the Jerusalem Bible, the variance is even more pointed and unnecessary.
ch3- "the trustworthy, the true witness".
ch19; "trustworthy and true".
ch21 "is trustworthy and will come true"
ch22; "is sure and will come true"
One would not think, from these translations, that all four passages are describing the same quality in exactly the same words.

I too share your passion for eschatology and I appreciate your research.

Here is an interesting take on Daniel’s Timeline that may augment your work. It takes about 1 ½ hours to get through but is very thought provoking.

www.waytozion.org...

reply to post by curtisthebull

Thank you for providing that link.
I will try to find time to listen through it.
I must admit, though, that I'm not really a fan of presentations which are so time intensive, when I could have read through the material myself in a tenth of the time if only the text had been placed in front of me. The spoken word is such an inefficient way of communicating information.

reply to post by DISRAELI


I agree that text would be more efficient so here is the punch line in a picture that may help for the time constrained.

From www.danielstimeline.com

As I stated before, I found the presentation very thought provoking. I find value in looking at how others interpret the Bible. It helps me in my journey.

reply to post by curtisthebull

Thank you for adding in that picture. It certainly makes things clearer.

I note that this is another attempt at precise calculation. I'm not convinced that God intends us to make precise calculations.
Amongst other things, I would suggest caution about the periods of time mentioned in prophecy, like the "seven years", as literally exact intervals. I've got my doubts about whether they were intended to have that meaning.

By way of comparison, think about the "seventy years" predicted by Jeremiah. It seems to begin with the fall of Jerusalem, and the prophecy is that Babylon will be destroyed seventy years later. So if this is meant to be a literally exact interval, we should expect to see the fall of Babylon exactly seventy years after the fall of Jerusalem. But this is not the case. The dates were actually 587 B.C. and 539 B.C., which is not seventy years.

The most sensible explanation is that the "seventy years" was never intended to be understood as a literally exact time interval. It is a symbolic figure; "7," the sacred number of God, is combined with "10", the number of completeness, to produce a number which means "These things will happen when the fullness of God's time has been completed".
I would suggest that the seven years" of Daniel have the same meaning. It is not meant to be understood as a literally exact time interval. It means "The final prince will reign for the time God allows him, and no longer. And in the later part of that reign he will be openly setting himself against God".

As for the particuar calculation on that website; they claim that the "seven years" began at the end of 2009. Which ought to mean that the great "hostile prince" of Daniel actually began to rule at that point. So where is he? If they're insisting on exact time intervals, Obama was elected twelve months too early. It needs to be someone who took power at the end of 2009, and strictly speaking (since they're so insistent on exact days), it should have been November 27th 2009. So where is he? Do they try to identify him?
I think these date-predictuons fail because they're based on false assumptions. If God is not running a slide-rule over history, trying to make things happen on an exact number of years and days after something else happened, then there's no point in trying to reproduce his calculations.