Commentary on the Apocalypse

Contents

Reading pages: 1.1–5.3 · 6.1–20.2 · 21.1–21.6

1. 1.1Victorinus comments on the opening blessing and greeting of Revelation, the seven spirits, and Christ's first and second comings.
2. 1.2Christ, glorified after his victory over death, walks among the churches, and his white head shows his eternity.
3. 1.3Christ's face is likened to the sun because, like the sun, he rose, set, and rose again.
4. 1.4The two-edged sword from Christ's mouth is the word of the two testaments, by which all will be judged.
5. 1.5Christ's voice is the peoples and the gift of baptism; his feet are the apostles, and the saints will gather in Judea.
6. 1.6The seven stars in Christ's right hand are the sevenfold Spirit given to him by the Father.
7. 1.7The seven churches addressed stand for the one catholic church, as do Paul's letters to seven churches and the seven women of Isaiah.
8. 1.8The seven letters address seven kinds of Christians, calling all to repentance.
9. 2.1The letter to Ephesus praises their labor and hatred of the Nicolaitan heresy but warns them to return to their first love.
10. 2.2The letter to Smyrna praises the poor who endure slander and promises that the persevering will escape the second death.
11. 2.3The letter to Pergamum warns those who, like Balaam, permit idol food and immorality, and promises the conquerors immortality and adoption.
12. 2.4The letter to Thyatira rebukes those who grant forbidden reconciliation and heed new prophecies, and promises the conquerors the first resurrection.
13. 3.1The letter to Sardis rebukes Christians in name only who lack works.
14. 3.2The letter to Philadelphia praises the humble and unlearned who hold the faith firmly.
15. 3.3The letter to Laodicea rebukes lukewarm, learned, wealthy believers without works and calls them to repentance.
16. 4.1The open door in heaven is the preaching of the New Testament, opened by Christ's ascension, and the voice John hears is the same that spoke through the prophets.
17. 4.2The jasper and sardius around God's throne signify the judgments by water and by fire; the sea of glass is baptism offered before the judgment.
18. 4.3The four living creatures are the four Gospels; the twenty-four elders are the books of the law and prophets, or the apostles and patriarchs.
19. 4.4Victorinus matches each Gospel to a living creature (John lion, Matthew man, Luke calf, Mark eagle) and applies the four images to Christ himself.
20. 4.5The eyes of the living creatures are spiritual foresight, and their twenty-four wings the Old Testament books that give the Gospel credibility; heretics and Jews each keep only half.
21. 4.6The lightnings, voices, thunders, and torches from the throne signify Christ's coming, the Gospel, and the gift of the Spirit restored by the cross.
22. 4.7The elders casting their crowns before the throne mean that all victories yield to Christ's, as the palms strewn at his entry into Jerusalem showed.
23. 5.1The sealed book is the Old Testament, which only Christ, the slain Lamb and conquering lion, could open by his death.
24. 5.2Christ, the lion and the slain Lamb, unseals the testament veiled in Moses' law, which becomes plain after his death and victory.
25. 5.3The new song of the elders is the Christian confession of the new things done in Christ.
26. 6.1The first seal's white horse is the preaching of the Gospel with the Holy Spirit after Christ's ascension; the other horses are famine, war, and pestilence.
27. 6.2The black horse is famine and the red horse war, both foretold in the Gospel.
28. 6.3The pale horse is plague and death, followed by hell.
29. 6.4The souls under the altar are the martyrs resting under the earth, awaiting the final judgment, comforted meanwhile by the Spirit.
30. 7.1The angel from the east is Elijah, who will come before the Antichrist to restore the churches and turn the Jews to faith.
31. 8.1The church's prayers and the seven trumpets mean the archangels sent to strike the Antichrist's kingdom, as the Gospel foretells.
32. 8.2The trumpets and bowls describe the same events twice, since the Spirit recapitulates; one must seek the sense, not the order.
33. 8.3The eagle in mid-heaven is the Holy Spirit warning through the two prophets.
34. 10.1The mighty angel with the open book is Christ, the messenger of great counsel, with all things under his feet.
35. 10.2John is forbidden to write what the thunders said because interpreting prophecy belongs to the later rank of prophets in the church, not to the apostles.
36. 10.3Eating the little book means memorizing the revelation; John, condemned to the mines on Patmos under Domitian, was released and published it.
37. 11.1The measuring reed is John's authority, shown when bishops asked him to write his Gospel against the heretics, and the measure is the rule of faith.
38. 11.2The court left to the nations is the useless members of the church; the two witnesses will preach for three and a half years, and the Antichrist will reign as long.
39. 11.3The two witnesses are Elijah and Jeremiah, who did not die and must still fulfill Jeremiah's call to be a prophet to the nations.
40. 11.4The Antichrist, rising from the abyss, will kill the two witnesses; he was once among the Caesars, as Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Paul show.
41. 11.5The witnesses rise on the fourth day, not the third, and Revelation must be read by its sense, since the Spirit repeats and reorders events.
42. 11.6The opened temple is Christ's appearing, for his body is the temple, and the ark is the Gospel with the forgiveness of sins.
43. 12.1The woman clothed with the sun is the ancient church of patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, longing for Christ's birth from her people.
44. 12.2The dragon is the devil, who could not hold Christ in death because Christ, not born of seed, owed nothing to death.
45. 12.3The child caught up to God is Christ's ascension; the red dragon is the devil, a murderer from the beginning, and his heads and horns are kings.
46. 12.4The woman's flight on eagle's wings is the church's flight in the last time, aided by Elijah and his fellow prophet, for three and a half years.
47. 12.5The serpent's flood is the Antichrist's army; the woman's childbirth is past, but her flight is still to come.
48. 12.6The war in heaven marks the beginning of the Antichrist's coming, after Elijah's three and a half years of preaching.
49. 12.7The third of the stars drawn by the dragon's tail are the angels who fell with him.
50. 13.1The leopard-like beast from the sea is the Antichrist's kingdom of mixed peoples, bloodthirsty in its commands.
51. 13.2The seven heads are Rome's hills and the emperors from Galba to Nerva; the beast, of the seven and the eighth, is Nero returning as Antichrist.
52. 13.3The head healed of its mortal wound is Nero, who will return under another name as a false Christ to the Jews, with the number 666.
53. 13.4The beast from the earth is the false prophet, who will work false wonders, set up the Antichrist's image in the Jerusalem temple, and impose his mark.
54. 14.1The angels flying in mid-heaven are Elijah and his companion prophet; the fall of Babylon is foretold.
55. 14.2The harlot drunk with the blood of the saints is Rome, whose senate decreed the persecutions; Babylon in Isaiah and Tyre in Ezekiel are the same city.
56. 14.3The vintage of the earth is the destruction of the nations at Christ's coming, which ends the Antichrist's kingdom and opens that of the saints.
57. 19.1The rider on the white horse is Christ coming to reign; the nations fall, some being kept to serve the saints until the devil's final release.
58. 20.1The devil is bound for the thousand years in which the saints of the first resurrection reign with Christ, then released before the universal judgment.
59. 20.2Paul's trumpet in Thessalonians is the first resurrection of the saints, and his last trumpet in Corinthians the resurrection of the rest after a thousand years.
60. 21.1The holy city of the first resurrection, with its river and tree of life, needs no sun, for the Lamb is its light.
61. 21.2The holy city is the land promised to Abraham, from the Euphrates to Egypt, which will be cleansed and covered with heavenly light at Christ's coming.
62. 21.3Isaiah, the Psalms, and Daniel's stone that becomes a mountain foretell the everlasting kingdom of the saints.
63. 21.4The kingdom of which Paul speaks is where those who kept their baptism and confession will rejoice.
64. 21.5In the kingdom Christ will repay the saints and martyrs a hundredfold, and creation will yield its riches to them.
65. 21.6Christ's promise to drink new wine in the kingdom, the precious stones, and the pearl gates signify the faithful, the apostles, and the grace given through them.