Reading Revelation: A Literary and Theological Commentary

"It is a commentary with two parallel goals: to read Revelation as literature and to read Revelation theologically. This double interpretative focus has a number of entailments, which I will outline in this introduction. Revelation bears repeated witness to Christ as 'the coming one.' He is the Son of Man who comes on the clouds of heaven (1.7 cf. Dan 7.13), the one who warns the seven churches that he will come to them (2.5, 16, 25; 3.3, 11, 20), and the who closes the book with his thrice-repeated promise 'I am coming soon' (22.7, 12, 20). Again, whatever this 'soon' means, we must not attempt simply to plot it on the chronology of this world but seek to understand it with the life of God who is 'the coming one,' who came in the incarnation of Jesus, comes to us now by the Spirit, and will come again as sovereign of the world"