Hank Smith: 00:00:03 Hello, my friends. Welcome to another episode of followHIM. My name’s Hank Smith, I’m your host. I’m here with my divine co-host, John Bytheway. Hi, John.

John Bytheway: 00:00:13 A blasphemy.

Hank Smith: 00:00:16 Well, I opened up to the Book of Revelation, John, and it said “The revelation of St. John, the divine.”

John Bytheway: 00:00:21 People who know me are laughing out loud right now, but yeah, thank you.

Hank Smith: 00:00:25 In the Book of Revelation, I know you’ve read it before. What are you thinking about over the next couple of weeks? Are you excited? Are you nervous?

John Bytheway: 00:00:33 Well, I’m really excited, because we have access to such amazing scholars. I love to use this word because it makes me sound smart. This book is written in a different genre. See? Did I sound smart right there? It’s written in apocalyptic. It’s like a different language almost, and that requires us to look at it differently, and I am ready to just learn on this one, because I know what I think it means, but I do not think it means what I think it means.

Hank Smith: 00:01:00 I think I’m going to do the same thing, probably adjust what I thought was happening to what probably is happening. I read this from Elder McConkie this week. He was talking about the Book of Revelation. He says, “If you have already fallen in love with John’s presentation of the plan of salvation as set out in this apocalypse, you are one of the favored few in the church. If this choice experience is yet ahead of you,” which it might be for a lot of our listeners, “the day and hour is here to launch one of the most intriguing and rewarding studies in gospel scholarship in which any of us will ever engage.”

  00:01:36 Now, that’s Elder McConkie leading us into this great book. John, we’re joined by a Bible scholar this week, and also a good friend of mine. His name is Dr. Nick Frederick. Nick, what are we looking forward to? I know this is one of your specialties, the Book of Revelation.

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:01:51 Over the next couple of weeks we’re going to really get into what is one of the more fascinating books, at least for me, in the Bible. This is one of those books that’s very different than the Gospels. It’s very different than the letters of Paul. You can pick up and read the Sermon on the Mount and get some great insight from it. You can pick up a letter of Paul and get a snapshot of what’s going on in the first century. The Book of Revelation is doing something else entirely. To call this a unique experience with the Book of Revelation is a fair one. What we’re going to try to do today is talk about some ways of reading this book responsibly, how to approach it in a way that hopefully will be uplifting and edifying while also helping us ground ourselves in what the book is doing, and importantly, what the book isn’t doing.

  00:02:32 The Book of Revelation gets a lot of press, a lot of its fame because of how it’s been interpreted over time. Someone once said that the only thing scarier than the beasts of the Book of Revelation are the interpreters of the Book of Revelation, because the book has been interpreted in so many different ways over time. We shouldn’t expect to spend the next amount of time giving you the definitive interpretation of the Book of Revelation. That would be a mistake. What we’ll try to do is go through here and suggest some possible ways of reading it, talk about who John was, what this text may have meant in the first century, and how we can draw from it in the 21st century today.

Hank Smith: 00:03:11 That’s exciting. I am really looking forward to this. John, one of my favorite quotes is from Richard L. Evans. He said, “It is good to be faithful. It is better to be faithful and competent.” As I approach the Book of Revelation, I want to be faithful, but I also, over the next couple of weeks, want to learn. I want to worship God with my mind and really dig into this so I can understand what it’s meant to say and, like Dr. Frederick said, what it’s not meant to say.

  00:03:37 John, Dr. Frederick is new to our podcast. He’s not new to me. He’s a good friend, but our audience might not know who he is. Can you introduce him?

John Bytheway: 00:03:45 Absolutely. Dr. Nick Frederick is an associate professor at Brigham Young University. He was born in Provo and raised in Delta, Utah. Go Rabbits.

Hank Smith: 00:03:57 What? I didn’t know that.

John Bytheway: 00:03:57 I love Delta. They’ve invited me down there a few times and I love those folks down there, and they have their own airline. No, just kidding.

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:04:06 If only that were true.

John Bytheway: 00:04:08 After returning from a mission in Brussels, Belgium, which is French speaking, isn’t it?

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:04:13 It was, yep.

John Bytheway: 00:04:14 He attended Brigham Young University where he received his bachelor’s in classics, a master’s in comparative studies. Then he attended Claremont Graduate University where he completed a PhD in the history of Christianity with an emphasis on Mormon studies, after which he returned to BYU to teach full-time in religious education.

  00:04:35 His research focuses primarily on the intertextual relationship between the text of the Bible and Latter-day Saints scripture, specifically the Book of Mormon. He enjoys teaching courses on the Book of Mormon and the New Testament, particularly the writings of Paul and the Book of Revelation. He has been married to Julie Parker Frederick for 18 years, is the father of four children, Miranda, Samuel, Kassandra, and Madelyn. Welcome, Nick. Thank you so much for bringing yourself and your expertise today.

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:05:05 Hey, happy to be here. Happy to be here. Big fan of you guys. In fact, I’ll share a brief anecdote. Again, small town, Delta, Utah. Pretty cut off from everywhere else in Utah. Kind of do our own thing down there. Didn’t really hear much about the broader Latter-day Saint cultural things like EFY and things like that, so there I am, my first semester up at Ricks College, everyone in my apartment complex, my ward, gets super excited because there’s going to be a special guest that’s going to appear in Rexburg.

  00:05:32 And they’re all going around saying, “You’ve got to come watch this guy. You’ve got to come watch this guy.” And I’m like, “Well, what’s his name?” They’re like, “John Bytheway.” This is my first introduction to you, John. Blew my mind, I thought it was fantastic, but ever since then, I still remember your “Oh, and Bytheway” joke even 25 years later. “Oh, and Bytheway.” And you’re also amazing on guitar.

Hank Smith: 00:05:52 That’s fantastic.

John Bytheway: 00:05:53 It was a Delta ticket agent who said, “Are you going to name your son Owen?” When he looked at my ticket, and I went, “Owen Bytheway, oh.” I had literally never thought of it before, so I actually laughed.

Hank Smith: 00:06:06 You’ve heard all of them.

John Bytheway: 00:06:08 I thought I had until I heard that one. I was like, “Ha ha, give me that ticket.”

Hank Smith: 00:06:14 That’s funny. Let’s get started here. Nick, how should we approach this book? I’m guessing we need some background. Before we hit Revelation 1:1, what do you want to talk to us about before we get started?

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:06:26 Can I start with a story?

Hank Smith: 00:06:27 Please do.

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:06:28 Turn of the 19th century, there’s a young man named William Miller who’s coming of age. He fights in the war of 1812 and comes out of that war a little bit disillusioned. So he turns to the Bible, starts reading the Bible. He’s a Baptist by tradition, and he becomes particularly engaged by the Book of Daniel in the Book of Revelation. He begins to study it, looking for some of the patterns, looking for it for clues, and in the year 1818, he decides he can predict the date of the second coming. “It’s going to happen in 25 years,” he says, “in the year 1843.” As we roll closer to about 1840, he begins to attract thousands of followers to come be present for the second coming of Jesus Christ, and this is, again, quite a popular event.

  00:07:13 Gather in 1843, Jesus doesn’t show up, so he says, “Well, maybe I did my computations wrong. Maybe I need to use a different calendar.” 1844, Jesus doesn’t show up. And by the end of 1844, this has become known amongst Miller’s followers as the Great Disappointment. Well, Miller’s followers fracture into several different groups. A woman named Ellen White leads one of the groups of Miller’s followers and founds the Seventh-day Adventist Church. A little bit later on, the Jehovah’s Witnesses will spring off from this group.

  00:07:46 And if we jump ahead to about the 1950s, there’s a third group known as the Branch Davidians who come from the Miller tradition. And as their name indicates, they believe that the branch, the Messiah, the heir of David, the son of David, is going to be revealed through their faith tradition, and a young man named Vernon Howell, who’s a disaffected Seventh-day Adventist, joins up with these Branch Davidians. He begins to read the Book of Revelation. He begins to think that he is the lamb who’s going to break the seals, on the seven seals, and usher in the last days.

  00:08:21 He changes his name to David Koresh, and again, representing as the heir of this Messianic line. And of course, as I’m sure the two of you remember, as I remember well, 1993, Waco, Texas, tragically, 80 people, about a third of them children, are killed in an unfortunate standoff with the FBI. The Book of Revelation is a dangerous book. There’s literally a body count attached to this book, and not just here in America, but I mean, all the way from the second century AD with the group known as the Montanists who believed that they knew the date to the second coming, all the way up to the modern age. The stakes have run high with the Book of Revelation. There’s something about this book that draws people’s attention to it, and has changed the course of religious history in America.

  00:09:15 Here’s part three. We go back again to the 19th century, 1805. A young man named Joseph Smith was born in Vermont. Over the next few years, his family moves along the Atlantic coast up into New York. 1820, has a vision of the Father and the Son. 1823, see’s an angel. 1827, he’s given some gold plates. In 1830, he publishes the Book of Mormon. Now consider, what’s the first story in the Book of Mormon? Prophet named Lehi finds himself transported into the throne room of God in almost an exact representation of Revelation 4, where John finds himself transported into the throne room of God. 1 Nephi 8, Lehi has a vision of the tree of life, which again hearkens back to Revelation 2 and Revelation 21, Revelation 22, where you have this image of the tree of life in a very prominent position and the new kingdom of God.

  00:10:06 Then in 1 Nephi 11-14, Lehi’s son Nephi has a vision that we’re told has connections with the Book of Revelation, and this is what, to me, is remarkable. Nephi’s even told the name of the person who’s going to write the Book of Revelation. It’s one of the disciples of the lamb. It’s a man named John. That doesn’t happen for any other book in the New Testament. No other author in the New Testament is mentioned in the Book of Mormon, not Matthew, not Paul, not Luke, but John is mentioned specifically, not once but twice, because then you go to the Jaredite record, where the brother of Jared has a vision likened to the revelation of John. And then Ether 4, again we’re told to watch out for the revelation of the Apostle John.

  00:10:52 The second most often cited New Testament text in the Book of Mormon is the Book of Revelation. So clearly the Book of Mormon is telling us, “Read the Book of Revelation, study the Book of Revelation.” Well, Joseph Smith, after he publishes the Book of Mormon, 1832, devotes time to studying the Book of Revelation. He even produces a question and answer document with questions he has for the Lord about certain signs and symbols in the Book of Revelation.

  00:11:20 It’s unfinished. He only gets through Revelation 11. He doesn’t include it in the 1833 Book of Commandments. He doesn’t include it in the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants. But in 1876, Brigham Young canonizes it as, you can’t make this stuff up, D&C 77. If there’s any number you’re going to connect with the Book of Revelation, it’s going to be seven, and what better way than 77, right? You won’t forget that one. And if you look at the revelations in the Doctrine and Covenants, again, they cite and they quote all the time from the New Testament. The Book of Revelation is, again, the second most often cited New Testament text in the Doctrine and Covenants, so that’s two books of scripture where the Lord and his prophets seem to be saying, “Study this book. This book has something to say.”

  00:12:06 Joseph will continue all the way up through 1844 to give sermons on the Book of Revelation, to give clues onto some of the symbols in the Book of Revelation. D&C 130, for example, contains some of those hints. What is the sea of glass mentioned in Revelation 4, right? I think you could argue that in a way, in 1842 when Joseph introduces the endowment ceremony, what is the endowment but a chance for not just the prophets but all of us to find ourselves transported into the presence of God conversing with his angels?

  00:12:41 In a way, it’s democratizing the Book of Revelation so that all of us can have that experience. The history of the Latter-day Saint tradition is one that is very much informed by the interpretation of the Book of Revelation, and this book has an incredible impact for both good and bad in the history of religion in America, history of religion in Europe, the last 2000 years of Christianity, the Book of Revelation has been a key player in that drama.

Hank Smith: 00:13:08 One thing I’m hearing, John, I don’t know about you, is we need to probably be careful in our classes in the way we discuss this with our children. There’s a way to read this responsibly. This isn’t one to go crazy with and to start reading things that really aren’t there.

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:13:23 Things can go off the rails quickly. If there’s any way of attaching a PG-13 rating or putting some caution tape around the Book of Revelation, that’s what I would do.

John Bytheway: 00:13:34 What a great introduction. That is so fascinating, the impact this book has had on all those movements. That’s amazing.

Hank Smith: 00:13:42 Yeah, that’s pretty incredible.

John Bytheway: 00:13:44 We got the right guy, Hank.

Hank Smith: 00:13:46 Nick, I would like to know a little bit of what’s happening to the people this is written to. As we’ve heard from many of our guests, these books don’t just fall out of the sky and say, “Read me.” They have context. There’s an author, there’s an audience, and there’s a lot of things happening to those people that are going to help us understand what’s said and why it’s said.

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:14:09 Yeah, those are great questions. We should start with authorship. Book of Revelation, in the early church, up until about the third century, it was generally accepted that this was written by the Apostle John. That changes in the third century. You start to get some arguments that John the Apostle can’t be the same as John the Revelator. The main reason is because of the text itself. The Greek of the Gospel of John. It’s simple Greek, but it’s pretty good Greek. The Greek of the Book of Revelation is the worst Greek in the entire New Testament. There’s just no other way to say it. There’s mistakes all over the place. It’s like if you were reading a paper and they used words like “ain’t” every few words, that’s the kind of vibe you get from the Book of Revelation, to the point where today, most people don’t associate the Apostle John with John the Revelator.

  00:14:58 Now again, Latter-day Saints, we have the advantage of the Book of Mormon where in two places we’re told that the Apostle John is the author of the Book of Revelation. We can pretty safely say that the Apostle John is the one who has this experience. He has it, we’re told, on an island called Patmos, which we can talk about when you get to chapter one. As far as the dating of this goes, when was this book written? Is it contemporary with the letters of Paul? Is it later? Because Hank, this goes to your question of, what are the people experiencing at the time? There’s two dates that get thrown around with the Book of Revelation. It’s written in the sixties or it’s written in the nineties, and there’s good arguments for both, but they both revolve around the questions of what the Christians are going through. Are the Christians being persecuted?

  00:15:43 Because this type of literature, what we call apocalyptic literature, tends to become popular when things are bad. Like when a people’s undergoing persecution, what they want is a type of literature that gives them vindication, where they can watch their enemies get literally trampled under the hooves of horses. Chapters 13 through 17 very clearly bring the Roman Empire into the forefront, and it seems like it’s events in the Roman Empire that are happening in the 80s and 90s. My best guess for a date of this would be sometime during the 90s where the Christians are experiencing certain things and the Book of Revelation’s responding to certain pressures that they’re under. There’s our authorship, there’s our dating.

  00:16:28 The big one, to go back to a word that John used at the beginning of the podcast here, is genre. We have to understand the Book of Revelation and its genre. Different genres of books, as you know, have different rules. When we were done here, the three of us were to meet at Barnes & Noble, and we would all pick out a book. Hank picks out a book on the history of World War II and John picks up a book on John Grisham, he likes fiction. And I pick up a fantasy book by Brandon Sanderson. All of our books have different genres. We have history, we have fiction, we have fantasy, and there are certain rules that apply to those.

  00:17:06 Hank would expect that his history of World War II would have footnotes, that it would be an accurate portrayal of events during World War II, and that the author of that would be unbiased, for the most part, in their opinion, that he could read that and he could find out accurately what would happen to real men and real women during World War II. John, your book, your John Grisham thriller, you would expect that it would not be about real people, but these would be real circumstances in the sense that they are people that you could meet on the street in any town in America. They’re going to drive cars. They’re going to buy food at the supermarket, they’re going to live lives likened to yours.

John Bytheway: 00:17:45 It’s plausible.

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:17:46 Plausible, exactly. That’s a good word for it. You’re not all of a sudden going to find yourself on Mars shooting laser guns or something like that. All of a sudden you would say, “That’s not the type of book this is.” Mine on the other hand, fantasy, has its own rules. You would expect something to happen on a world far, far away. You would expect a magic system of some sort to be in place. You would expect that these are people who have names that you haven’t seen before who are doing things that you haven’t seen done before, and I would not expect that this is a factual retelling of an actual thing that happened, like Hank would be expecting for his book.

  00:18:22 If we tried to apply the rules of my genre to Hank’s or vice versa, the book all of a sudden makes no sense, and that’s the same way the Book of Revelation is. The Book of Revelation is complicated, that it is actually three separate genres. The first is, it’s an epistle. There’s very clearly parts of this book that are a letter. It’s going to have some of the same rules you would expect a letter of Paul to have. It’s located in the first century with real churches, with real people, to whom are getting written a letter, and all the things that that genre expects.

  00:18:58 Number two, the Book of Revelation is a prophecy. Prophecy has its own genre and its own requirements. A prophet stands up and says, “Thus saith the Lord.” It usually revolves around moral issues. You’ve descended into sin, the Lord expects you to repent or you’ll be destroyed. Think Abinadi or something like that here, Jeremiah. Prophecy is also predictive. Prophets can stand up and say, think Isaiah. Isaiah 7:14: “Behold, a young woman will conceive and bring forth a son, and you will call his name Emmanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat, but before he knows to choose the good from the evil, the land that thou abhorrest shall be rid of both your kings.”

  00:19:39 Within eight or so years, King Ahaz, “A young woman will give birth and a young boy will grow up,” and then “These kings that you’re worried about are going to be gone.” Okay, that’s a prediction.

Hank Smith: 00:19:49 These two smoking firebrands.

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:19:51 Exactly, and we can look and we can say, “Okay, who’s the fulfillment of that prophecy? How long until that comes to pass?” Is this Hezekiah? Is this a son of Isaiah? How does this play out with the Gospel of Matthew when Gabriel appears to Joseph and says, “You’re going to see the fulfillment of this prophecy”? A prophecy is predictive.

  00:20:10 The third genre here is a complicated one. It’s what’s known as apocalyptic literature. Apocalyptic literature, the word itself literally means “to unveil”, and the sense is that what you’re going to do is you’re going to unveil. Apocalyptic literature unveils things from God’s perspective. Often apocalyptic literature will have a tour of the heavens. Someone from earth gets transported to heaven and gets a guided tour. An angel will show them around, because you’re seeing things from God’s perspective.

  00:20:41 A prophet is on earth. Apocalyptic literature takes place in heaven, so the rules are going to be different, and what you’re often going to see is apocalyptic literature is concerned with the end of the world. A prophet speaks to you somewhat about what applies to you and your time. Apocalyptic literature is concerned about the end. What does the end look like? Because again, this is God and God’s perspective and God’s plan, so what is God’s end goal here?

  00:21:09 But this is different than prophecy. Apocalyptic literature isn’t trying to predict what’s going to happen in a few years. Apocalyptic literature wants to show you the big picture from God’s perspective with the idea that you will have confidence and trust once you see he’s in complete control. So you can maybe start to see, this is where the problem comes in. If I take the rules of prophecy, that it’s predictive and it’s going to tell me what’s going to happen in a few years, which the Book of Revelation is, chapters two and three, and chapter 22, are prophecy.

  00:21:43 But the vision itself is apocalyptic. Chapters four through 21 are doing something different, and I can’t take the rules of prophecy and apply them to the genre of apocalypse, or else I have the same problem as if I try to take the rules of fantasy and apply them to Hank’s history of World War II. It just doesn’t work, and that’s why I say this book has to be read responsibly. You’re dealing with three genres, each of which have their own rules, and where we run into problems is when we try to apply the rules of one genre to a different genre that exists in the Book of Revelation.

Hank Smith: 00:22:16 So well said. I feel like I’m creating some boundaries as I enter each chapter, what lens I’m putting on the text as I go in. I’m seeing a lot of yellow tape, caution tape around the book.

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:22:29 Exactly.

John Bytheway: 00:22:30 Yeah. I love what you’ve done here. Your first statement about reading the book responsibly made me laugh, but when you went through history to see what has happened for people taking this in a futurist or literalist type of a thing, it’s “Whoa, this can be downright dangerous.” I’m excited to read it responsibly.

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:22:50 Yeah, the number 666 has always drawn their attention. So back in the 1980s, well, it was Ronald Wilson Reagan, six letters, six letters, six letters. “Okay, I’ve done it. I’ve cracked the code. I’ve figured out it’s American democracy that’s the mark of the beast” or something like that. Well, then you get into the 1990s and we’re all still here and people say, “Well, the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet is the letter W. WWW. What are we thought? Oh, it’s the internet. It’s the worldwide web, is how Satan’s going to infiltrate everybody and introduce the chaos of the end times.” It’s very easy to just let this get off the rails if we read this without just some general guidelines, some general caution in place.

John Bytheway: 00:23:34 So interesting.

Hank Smith: 00:23:35 I know you’re saying there’s some fluid ways to look at this, be careful, but are you saying as a hard and fast rule, don’t try to look for things John hid in the numbers and the symbols that, really we’re talking about the United States in 2023. Is that a hard and fast rule, stay away from that area?

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:23:55 Great question, and when it comes to other texts, again, letters of Paul, I would say there are hard and fast rules you have to maintain. Book of Revelation, again, I get much more cautious, but one of the hard and fast rules that I would say we need to maintain is don’t try to give everything a one-to-one correlation. Don’t assume that John is telling you about one specific thing that is in a code that you then have to crack. I think that’s where it becomes problematic.

  00:24:23 I think the Book of Revelation uses images because images have polyvalent meaning. You can extract different meanings to those symbols. There are some exceptions. I think the lamb is Jesus. I don’t think there’s any other way to take the lamb. The dragon is Satan. I don’t think there’s any other way to take that. But the rider on the black horse from Revelation 6 or the two witnesses in Revelation 11… That’s the one thing I’ve noticed among Latter-day Saints is every time we hear about apostles traveling to the holy land, we get super-duper worried, because Revelation 11 predicts that two witnesses are going to lie dead in the streets of Jerusalem for three and a half days.

  00:24:57 We look for the one-to-one meaning there. “Well, that must mean two apostles are going to go to Jerusalem and they’re going to die and be resurrected after three and a half days,” so we get a little bit anxious when we hear about apostles traveling. I don’t want to say that’s not what it means or that’s not what’s going to happen. I just think if that’s all we’re looking for is that one-to-one hard and fast correlation, we’re missing what the book is trying to tell us.

Hank Smith: 00:25:19 Yeah, what an excellent limit. I like that.

John Bytheway: 00:25:22 If we were to describe apocalyptic, apocalyptic means revelation. It has lots of symbolic, could we call them strange characters, symbols, animals, beasts, things like that. Would that be a way to describe apocalyptic? Because I know people have read the Book of Daniel and we studied that last year. Can you tie how Daniel is apocalyptic and how Revelation is apocalyptic?

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:25:48 Yeah, and for those exact same reasons that you mentioned, the extreme use of numbers, the extreme use of animal imagery, those are all part and parcel of the apocalyptic tradition. It’s almost like it’s a different language that you have to learn. I mean, it’s written in English or whatever language you’re reading it in, but it uses numbers 7, 12, 4, 10, 144,000, 1,000. And these numbers, if you take them literally, you miss the point of what the number is trying to say. The numbers are metaphorical, they’re symbolic. They’re a language unto themself. You got four horsemen that are white, red, black and pale. Those colors mean something symbolically. There is a second language of sorts, the language of symbolism when it comes to apocalyptic literature that you see in the book of Daniel, that you see in Ezekiel to some extent, and that you see in the Book of Revelation.

  00:26:40 Again, another thing you have to do before you start is remember that the book is symbolic, and these symbols mean something. What does seven mean? It could mean that it’s one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, or seven could mean something like completion or perfection. If something has seven eyes and seven horns, you could imagine something with literally seven eyes and seven horns, or you could say horns represent power, eyes represent wisdom. Seven represents perfection or completion, so I’m looking at something that is complete or perfect in its wisdom and power. And those are two very, very different things. You almost have to learn a second language when you deal with apocalyptic literature, and that’s the case for Daniel, and that’s the case for the Book of Revelation.

Hank Smith: 00:27:24 Excellent. Nick, I’ve heard it said that in order to grasp the Book of Revelation, you need to have a background or an understanding of the Old Testament, almost as if John is saying, “I hope you know your Old Testament, or else you might miss quite a bit that’s in this book.” Is there anything to that?

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:27:44 Oh, absolutely. Just like symbolism itself is a second language you have to learn to understand the Book of Revelation, the third language you have to learn is the Old Testament. Of all the verses in the Book of Revelation, probably 75% of them contain at least one allusion to an Old Testament text. The language of the Book of Revelation is Old Testament scripture. John is taking images from Ezekiel, he’s taking images from Daniel. He’s taking references to Exodus and Genesis, and he’s, in a way, extracting them from the Old Testament and re-situating them in a new context.

  00:28:20 That new context is Christ and Christianity. You have to understand the meaning, and we’ll see that especially in chapters two and three. Chapters two and three is all about these references to things from the Hebrew Bible, from the Old Testament, and so if you don’t know your Old Testament, there’s entire messages in this book that are going to whisk right over your head. John is demanding that before you read this book, make sure you brush up on the Old Testament.

Hank Smith: 00:28:45 It’s a good thing that we have someone here to guide us. Thank you for being here. With that, I think we’re ready to take a look at chapter one.

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:28:53 Well, let’s just start at the beginning here. Hank, would you just mind reading the first verse for us?

Hank Smith: 00:28:59 Absolutely. “The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to show unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass, and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant, John.”

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:29:13 This verse, there’s a lot to unpack. The name of the book is The Book of Revelation or the Apocalypse of St. John. The Revelation, that second word there, right? The word is apocalypse. And the unveiling of what? Jesus Christ. There we get our theme, there we get our topic. It’s going to be about the unveiling, not of the future, not of what’s going to happen. It’s the unveiling of Jesus Christ. John’s primary direction to us is, as you read this book and you look for a lens of interpretation, you need to ask yourself, “What does this have to do with Jesus Christ? What does this teach me about Jesus Christ?”

  00:29:51 There’s another way you could take that. You could take “of” as “from”, the revelation from Jesus Christ. Both of them work fine, the revelation about Jesus Christ, but the sense of verse one here, I think, is John saying, “Look, before I even get started, it’s going to get crazy. It’s going to get crazy quickly. Let’s not lose sight of what matters here, which is the Savior.”

Hank Smith: 00:30:11 The point.

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:30:12 Exactly. And then of course, “Things which must shortly come to pass.” We can argue about, does that mean 10 years? Does that mean 100 years? Does that mean 1,000 years? And that’s one of the arguments is, what does that mean? To me, it seems to mean shortly. This has to have application to John’s audience in the first century. And of course our first reference to his servant John, which again, Christians today see John the Revelator and John the Apostle as two different Johns. Book of Mormon tells us this servant John, is John the Beloved.

  00:30:45 Hank, do you want to just continue on, verse two?

Hank Smith: 00:30:47 “Who bear record of the word of God and of the testimony of Jesus Christ and of all things that he saw.”

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:30:55 “Record” here literally meaning “witness, a statement of truth.” What John is going to tell you is almost his testimony in court, as if he’s standing up, raising his arm, putting it on the Bible and saying, “I’m going to tell you what I saw. This is my witness, and it’s a witness of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ,” which again, you could take a couple different ways. Is this John’s testimony of Jesus, or is this Jesus Christ’s witness of God? And I tend to lean towards the latter there. What John is going to say is, “Here’s how Jesus Christ witnesses of the Father.” So we’re going to see God the Father’s plan unveiled through his son Jesus Christ. Okay, we’re going all the way to the top here.

Hank Smith: 00:31:35 Excellent.

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:31:35 Want to keep going, verse three?

Hank Smith: 00:31:37 “Blessed is he that readeth.” Hey, that’s good news.

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:31:40 There you go.

Hank Smith: 00:31:40 “Blessed is he that readeth and they that hear the words of this prophecy and keep those things which are written therein for the time is at hand.”

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:31:49 Here we get, in verse three, the first of a pattern of sevens that’s going to appear in the Book of Revelation. We’re going to have seven blesseds that will occur over the course of the Book of Revelation. In chapters two and three, we get seven churches. In chapter six, we get seven seals. In chapter eight, we get seven trumpets, to be followed by seven bowls. We get our first indication of this importance of seven occurring early on here in the Book of Revelation, so that’ll be something to track, this use of seven throughout the book.

  00:32:18 I like that, “they that hear the words”. In the first century context, this would be read orally. You don’t have a written text, so to speak, so someone’s getting up in sacrament meeting, reading this out loud. It would take about 90 minutes to read the Book of Revelation from beginning to end. You can imagine, again, just a congregation, as somebody stands up there reading the Book of Revelation to them, as they’re hearing themselves and their experiences represented in the text.

  00:32:44 It’s mentioned as a prophecy, so we have our second, now, indication of genre, first one, apocalyptic, now what’s called a prophecy, and “the time is at hand.” The important things are happening now. This is again why I always get suspicious if people want to say, “Well, this is about the future, this is about things thousands of years in the future.” John says, “The time is at hand. Something important is happening now. We need to figure out what that is.”

Hank Smith: 00:33:10 Excellent. Do you want to go to verse four? Because it starts with John, so we probably ought to have John.

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:33:17 John. Oh, there you go.

Hank Smith: 00:33:18 John. That’s a big J there for you.

John Bytheway: 00:33:21 Verse four. “John to the seven churches which are in Asia: ‘Grace be unto you and peace from him which is, and which was, and which is to come, and from the seven spirits which are before his throne.”

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:33:35 Here we have John now introducing this proper. Notice it takes the form of a letter at this point. Remember Paul would write his letter, “Paul, an apostle, to the saints who live in Galatia,” or something like that, right? John to the seven churches. So now we’ve entered into that epistle genre that we talked about, so again, where it gets confusing. Seven churches. We’ll meet those seven churches in chapters two and three, and again, the question becomes, is this seven specific churches, or is this seven symbolically?

  00:34:06 Is he addressing this to the complete or perfect or universal church? Anybody who considers themselves a part of God’s complete and perfect church, I have a message for you, or is it perhaps both? Are both meanings implied there? “From him which is, and which was, and which is to come,” we get our first reference back to the Old Testament. Remember Exodus 3:14, “The name of God, I am that I am. I am the one who is, or I am the one that exists.” We seem to be saying that, connecting this divine being here in verse four, who John’s going to talk about with that Jehovah figure in Exodus 3:14, the one who is, the one who was, and which is to come.

Hank Smith: 00:34:47 Exodus 3:14. John, you’re a good reader. Let’s have you keep reading.

John Bytheway: 00:34:53 Verse five. “And from Jesus Christ who is the faithful witness and the first begotten of the dead and the prince of the kings of the earth unto him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood.”

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:35:09 Beautiful imagery there, right? To put this in a first century context, one of the questions that Christians would be asking, “Is Jesus powerful enough to be able to save me? I mean, I’ve got the Roman emperor and he’s pretty powerful. You talk about this fellow named Jesus. Is he powerful enough to beat the Roman emperor? Is he powerful enough to beat these other divine beings that you might’ve heard about?”

  00:35:39 What we’re going to start to do is we’re going to start to build Jesus Christ up as a God in whom you can trust. He’s the first begotten of the dead, the prince of the kings of the earth. He’s the Messiah, essentially. He’s God’s anointed one. What did he do? He loved unto him that loved us, and in Greek, this is actually present tense, even though in King James it sounds like it’s a past tense or perfect tense. He loves us, he continues to love us, he loves us in the present, and he washed us. That’s a past tense, that’s a completed action. He washed us. The Atonement has been performed, it’s been completed, and you are made clean by a God who’s powerful and loves you and wants to help you and wants to help you make it through this world that is perilous and dangerous and scary.

John Bytheway: 00:36:28 It’s always interesting to me that blood is, for us, a stain that needs to be washed and clean, but Christ’s blood is a cleansing agent.

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:36:39 The Book of Revelation is going to play on that image. We get to chapter seven, we’re going to see that 144,000 are washed clean, they’re made white through the blood of the lamb, and that’s not how it’s supposed to work. Blood does not make things white, blood stains things. But somehow, in Jesus’ case, makes you clean. The Book of Revelation has paradoxes that run all the way through, and one of those paradoxes is blood turns your clothes, your garments, white.

John Bytheway: 00:37:05 Wow. Okay, verse six?

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:37:08 Yep.

John Bytheway: 00:37:09 “And hath made us kings and priests unto God and his father. To him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.”

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:37:18 Yeah. These verses, four to five and six, are the thesis statement of sorts. This is what you expect when you get to the Book of Revelation. You’re going to be introduced to Jesus Christ. You’re going to understand that he’s the one who loves you and saves you, and then what does Jesus want to do? He wants to make you kings and queens, priests and priestesses.

  00:37:38 We have another allusion to Exodus here, in this case Exodus 19, where we’re told that Moses wants to take the Israelites and make them a kingdom of priests, or as King James translates it, kings and priests, but it’s more literally a kingdom of priests. You’ll start to see that why Joseph Smith was so attracted to the Book of Revelation, that you’ll start to see language like kings and priests. You’ll start to see seals become a very big deal in subsequent chapters. You’ll start to see echoes of our own tradition as we work our way more and more into the Book of Revelation.

  00:38:11 The cool thing about this is when you get to chapters two and three, the churches are promised images that have to do with kingship and priesthood. So here we’re told Jesus makes you kings and priests, queens and priestesses, and then in chapters two and three we’ll actually see the promises and how the promise of becoming a king and a priest is actually brought about. And then in chapter five, we’ll revisit this exact same image again, come full circle.

Hank Smith: 00:38:38 Let’s keep going here. Verse seven says, “He cometh with the clouds. Every eye shall see him. They also, which pierced him, and all the kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, amen.” We’re getting a couple of “amens” here.

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:38:55 Cometh with clouds. What does that bring to mind? Daniel 7, “The prophecy of one like the son of man.” Who is this guy Jesus? Well, he’s also the powerful son of man. He is going to come on the clouds of heaven with the angels behind him and conquering the earth. We get a passage from Zechariah 12 here. “They also, which pierced him.” You got to be fluent in the language of the Old Testament to understand all these illusions that are coming through here. This is a good example of how John adopts and adapts a language from Jewish scripture, Daniel 7, Zechariah 12, things like that.

John Bytheway: 00:39:29 Is this the first time we see that name title for Christ being alpha and omega?

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:39:34 Yeah, this is where we start to see the description of God and Jesus in these absolute terms. Alpha and omega, the first letter in Greek and the last letter in Greek, the beginning and the end. The first and the last. The idea here is we want to situate Jesus and Jesus’s father as having absolute power. You can put your trust in them because they can overcome this Roman Empire that has all this power on earth. This is one of the ways the Book of Revelation is going to do this is with those titles that stretch from one end all the way to the other.

John Bytheway: 00:40:07 I like how in verse eight, it says that like three times, “I’m alpha and omega. I am the beginning and the ending. I’m that which is, that which was, that which is to come. Are you getting this?”

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:40:22 Yeah. “You can trust me. I’ve seen it all. I can do it all.”

Hank Smith: 00:40:27 Okay, let’s keep going.

John Bytheway: 00:40:28 I’ll read nine. “I, John, who also am your brother and companion in tribulation and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ was in the isle that is called Patmos for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.”

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:40:44 This is where we can situate things a little bit more historically. One of the things the Romans would do, especially with astrologers and soothsayers, if you had people that were predicting gloom and doom upon Rome, they would relegate you to an island to cool off for a while. We shouldn’t see John as being in prison here. He’s not being sentenced to hard labor. They’re just saying, “Go cool your jets for a while since you’ve been predicting this stuff, kind of doom and gloom about what’s going on here in Rome.”

  00:41:13 And he says while he’s there on this island of Patmos, which is about 13 square miles, you can walk from one side to the other in about half a day, it’s an island in the Aegean Sea. While he’s there, he says, “I was put there for the testimony of Jesus Christ.” Christians are still this nebulous group. There’s really no clear idea what to do with them. Are they Jews? Are they something else? Later on, there’s going to be more of a policy in place, but right now it’s just, “Look, we don’t know quite what to do with them. They’re saying things, let’s send them over here, wait for things to cool off a little bit.” We don’t know how long he’s there, then he comes back, but this seems to be at the instigation of Rome, specifically for what he’s saying about Jesus Christ.

Hank Smith: 00:41:52 Nick, when he says, “I am your companion in tribulation,” what’s the audience? The people he’s writing to, what have they been through?

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:42:00 We’ll see this more when we get to chapters two and three. What used to be said about the Book of Revelation, about early Christianity, was there was this myth of persecution, that Christians to the lions, that the Christians in the first century had all these terrible things happen to them. There probably was some persecution. Paul mentions persecution, say, for example in 1 Thessalonians, but it’s probably overplayed a little bit as far as Christians being killed, Christians being fed to the lions, things like that.

  00:42:29 It’s probably more, not an imperial persecution of sorts, although Nero, the emperor Nero, did have a reputation for persecuting Christians, and the emperor who’s currently in charge at the time of this, if we assume a later date for the Book of Revelations, the emperor Domitian, who reigns from 81 to 96 AD, perhaps doesn’t look very fondly upon the Christians, but it’s probably the tribulation is coming from their neighbors. It’s coming from the fact that Christians, who live in cities like Corinth, like Ephesus, aren’t playing along with the other members of society. They aren’t attending the temple. They aren’t eating the food that’s offered to idols that everyone’s expected to eat.

  00:43:10 We might say today in America we have a civil religion. We stand up for the pledge of allegiance. We take off our hats when the flag enters the room, we have holidays that reflect patriotism and things like that. The ancient world was the same way, and all of a sudden the Christians aren’t playing along. They’re not standing up for the pledge of allegiance. They’re not putting their hands over their hearts. They’re not doing the things you expect them to do. People are saying, “We don’t know what to do with you. You’re unpatriotic.”

  00:43:36 So the Christians are stuck between, “Do we go along with what the world wants us to do and accommodate as best we can, or do we stick to our beliefs and hold our ground even though we risk upsetting our neighbor, upsetting people in our community?” That seems to be more the case of what’s happening here at the end of the first century. When John says, “My companion tribulation,” it’s probably something more like this. They’re having a very hard time carving out their identity in society.

Hank Smith: 00:44:06 That’s really helpful.

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:44:06 Why don’t we look at verse 11 saying, “I am alpha and omega, the first and the last.” We get repetition of those ideas again. “What thou seest, write in a book.” We’re being told now that what John is going to see he’s going to write in a book, in this case it would be a scroll. “And then send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia.” And then we’re given, again, we talked about seven blessings earlier. Now we’re going to be introduced to the seven churches, and they are Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea.

  00:44:41 Thing about these seven churches is they all form a semicircle of sorts in Asia Minor, so they’re all churches that are next to each other. All of them are within a couple of days travel from one another. John may very well have been familiar or maybe founded some of those churches. What we’re going to see in chapters two and three is each of these seven churches is going to get their own specific message. Some of those churches are doing well. Others of those churches are not doing very well, but each of them will be promised something specific. Verse 11 really sets the stage for John to write down his vision and then brings these seven churches into the conversation.

Hank Smith: 00:45:18 And Nick, you said earlier, are the seven churches symbolic, or are they real? These are real congregations, though.

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:45:25 These are real congregations. There were churches at these places. The question is, should we interpret this today as… I mean, seven, were there more than seven churches? Absolutely. It could be eight or nine or 10, but he chooses seven, because seven has a specific meaning. And so as we look at this and say, “How should we interpret it?” First century context, these are real churches, but does it have meaning to us today?

  00:45:45 In other words, when we read chapters two and three and we get these really cool blessings, can we apply them to us because we are “part of the seven churches” in the sense that they are God’s universal or complete or perfect church, which just goes to a question of application, but absolutely these are real first century congregations with real people who would be undergoing real problems.

Hank Smith: 00:46:08 Let’s keep going here, because it seems that John sees the Lord himself. He describes him in ways that we’re maybe not used to.

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:46:16 Yeah. Should we just go to verse 13, then?

Hank Smith: 00:46:19 Yeah.

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:46:19 “In the midst of the seven candlesticks, one like unto the son of man,” which again, controversial phrase. Does it mean someone who’s like a human being, or does this mean somebody, the son of man in the sense that Jesus is this messianic semi-divine figure? Probably more the latter in this case, probably closer to Daniel’s son of man than Ezekiel’s son of man. “Clothed with garment down to his foot and gird about the paps with a golden girdle.” There’s something majestic about this. You’re supposed to see him as well-dressed, likened to, say, an emperor or something like this. There’s majesty in this description here, but you could also see priesthood in this as well.

  00:46:59 “His head and his hairs were white like wool,” echoes of the ancient of days in Daniel 7, “as white as snow, and his eyes were a flame of fire,” signifying divine power. “His feet like a defined brass as if they burned in a furnace. His voice is the sound of many waters. And he had in his right hand,” connoting strength. We’ll see the right hand again in chapter five. Notice the seven stars. “He uses the right hand, his strong hand, to protect the seven stars,” and that’s going to come into play later on.

  00:47:35 God, in his role as a protector. You can trust him. You are in his right hand. “And out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword,” the image here being one of defense, God can defend you. He can protect you. God’s word being like a two-edged sword. We see this in Hebrews. We actually see this very prominently later on in Revelation 19, what comes out of God’s mouth, right? A sharp two-edged sword. “And his countenance as the sun shineth in his strength.”

  00:48:03 John’s reaction. “When I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead.” He’s overwhelmed by this image. It’s unlike anything John has ever seen before, and I love this passage. “He laid his right hand…” Again, he’s been holding, protecting the seven stars in his right hand. He takes that same right hand, that same hand that represents power, and lays it on John, offering him that same protection. “Fear not. I am the first and the last.” Again, you can trust me. Literally, I’ve got your back. I’m the one you should be following.

Hank Smith: 00:48:39 “I have the keys of death and hell.”

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:48:41 Yep.

Hank Smith: 00:48:42 “You’re okay.” When I read this, should I say, “Oh, this is how the Savior literally looked,” or should I say, “This is John symbolically describing the Lord”?

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:48:55 I would lean more towards the last. Again, symbolism is his language unto itself. Fire means something, right hand means something, and so John is using symbols to describe certain ideals, certain features, certain characteristics of the Lord, and symbols can just carry more meaning than, say, just a word can. He was powerful, and I’ll relay that to you by saying his eyes were like fire or something like that. His voice was, out of his mouth came out, a two-edged sword, right? He just had this incredible power of speech.

  00:49:29 He’s relying on you as a reader understanding how symbols work. I would actually say more often than not, when you’re reading the Book of Revelation, err on the side of metaphor and symbol before you take a literal meaning. If metaphor or symbol doesn’t work and you want to take it literally, that’s good, that’s helpful, but more often than not, John’s assuming, I think, you’ll read this metaphorically.

Hank Smith: 00:49:53 Figurative first, literal second.

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:49:55 Exactly. Maybe even figurative first, figurative second, figurative third, literal fourth. We get into trouble the more literally we take the Book of Revelation.

  00:50:04 Close out chapter one, “Write the things which thou has seen.” Revelation chapter one, “The things which are.” Revelation two and three, “These seven churches that you have contact with and the things which shall be hereafter.” Revelation 4 through 22. Here we get the structure in verse 19.

Hank Smith: 00:50:24 Fantastic. “Things which you have seen, things which now are, things which shall be hereafter.” So we could watch for those.

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:50:32 Yes, exactly. Gives you an outline of what things are going to be, where they’re going to be, why they’re going to be, in this particular order, and how to interpret them. Revelation 2 and 3, take it as present circumstances. Revelation 4 through 22, we’re going to have a different picture. Now we’re dealing with apocalyptic. What’s the endgame from God’s perspective?

Hank Smith: 00:50:53 I noticed in chapters two and three that there’s breaks along the way as he talks to the angel of the Church of Ephesus, and then that’s verse one. Chapter 2:8, the angel of the church of Smyrna. You go along and there’s these individual letters to these congregations.

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:51:12 Yep, that’s absolutely right. This is the epistle part of this, is each church is going to get their own short letter, which gives them commendation. In some cases, it gives them condemnation. And then it leaves them with a promise. “If you can turn things around or if you continue on your course, you’ll be blessed in some fashion.” This letter, chapters two and three, or maybe the whole vision, would be taken to these churches specifically, but the idea that each of them is individually addressed here. This is maybe an itinerant route that a missionary would take. You can hit all these churches in about a two-day walk from each other.

Hank Smith: 00:51:49 Oh, okay. Each one starts with “To the angel of the church of,” fill in the blank, and then it finishes with “He that overcometh,” like you said.

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:51:58 There’s a fixed structure for each one of these. They’ll all follow the exact same pattern. Each one has its own problems. Each one is very unique. Each one is given its own unique blessing. We could hit on all seven of them quickly, maybe just talk about what the problem is, and then maybe what they’re promised. Because I think that’s where the application will come in is, what is this church dealing with, and then what is this church promised by overcoming what’s going on?

Hank Smith: 00:52:25 Is this to be seen as, here’s the Lord speaking to this congregation?

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:52:31 Yeah, because what John is going to do is John is going to write essentially what God is telling him to write. He’s a scribe for these couple of chapters. These are individualized blessings from the Lord.

Hank Smith: 00:52:43 So the Mapleton 6th Ward gets a letter from the Lord.

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:52:47 Yes. Essentially, something like that.

Hank Smith: 00:52:50 “I know what problems you’re having.” Which ones you want to look at, Nick?

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:52:55 Well, we could start with the first one, Ephesus here, in 2:1. “Unto the angel of the Church of Ephesus.” One of the largest cities in the world, Ephesus was famous for the worship of the goddess Artemis. One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World was the temple of Artemis, a problem that’s identified in verse two. He says, “First of all, I know your works. I know your labor. I know your patience and how thou canst not bear them which are evil. Thou has tried them, which say they are apostles and are not, and has found them liars.”

  00:53:26 So he’s like, “You’ve been patient. You’re doing the best you can. There are some that have come among you and you’ve recognized who they are, that they aren’t necessarily what they say they’re going to be, but unfortunately,” verse four, the Lord says, “I do have a problem with what you’re doing. You’ve left thy first love.” Don’t know quite what that means. Maybe the love you had at first, maybe this was a congregation that originally was very open, very welcoming, but over time has become more closed off. They’ve stopped loving their neighbors because their neighbors have been giving them grief.

Hank Smith: 00:54:02 “You’re not where you used to be”?

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:54:04 Yeah, something like that. “There’s behavior you used to have that was good. You’ve lost that specific behavior.” I think kind of that outreach, we might say today. You were a congregation that had some outreach, but you’ve tapered off in that. I want you to turn it around.

Hank Smith: 00:54:19 It feels like an Alma 5 type.

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:54:21 That’s that same sense. Go back to the basics. And then verse six, “Thou hatest the deeds of the Nicolaitans.” Probably, this is a theme we’re going to see throughout here, this has to do with eating food offered to idols. They’re feeling pressure to go to the temple of Artemis, for example. From 1 Corinthians 8, Paul has this conflict about what to do with meat offered to idols, and the issue was, this is where the parties were held. This is where your socials as a community would be, and you were expected to be there and participate in this. And people are looking at you sideways because you’re not going to the big community parties anymore.

  00:54:59 And there’s people in Ephesus who are like, “Well, is it such a big deal? Can’t we do this? Can’t we accommodate a little bit? Can’t we go to the temple of Ephesus just to have a party on Saturday, then go to church on Sunday?” So the challenge here is accommodation. Assimilating with religion. God’s saying, “No, you can’t.” And he’s like, “Good for you for not doing it. You hate the people who are doing that. Keep that up.” This is, I think, the biggest problem for these churches, is how do they live in the world but not of the world?

  00:55:29 If we kind of look for a modern takeaway, I mean, this is something Latter-day Saints. You’re going to get a lot of pressure socially, a lot of pressure politically. A lot of people might look at you sideways because you’re not doing the things that people think you should be doing. So what should you do? Should you accommodate a little bit, or should you hold your ground and do what you know you’re supposed to do? That’s a age-old conflict here. And some of these churches are doing better than others.

  00:55:53 Some churches are doing, “Yeah, we’re good. We’re not accommodating.” Other churches are unfortunately accommodating. The Lord is going to have some harsh things to say. Then he closes out, every one of these closes out on a positive note. But verse seven, “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the spirit saith unto the churches to him that overcome.” And that’ll be a constant theme. There’s something about overcoming here. “Will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.”

  00:56:22 So we have this first promise of, in some fashion, hearkening back to Genesis, back to Ezekiel, but also ahead to the end of the Book of Revelation where we’re told that in God’s new kingdom, when Zion’s built on the earth, on both sides of the street was a tree of life. And so there’s something about “Eternal life rests with me and I offer it to those who can overcome the challenges that the world offers you.”

Hank Smith: 00:56:47 Got it. Who’s next in line for the letters?

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:56:50 Next in line is the Church of Smyrna, and all is well at the Church of Smyrna. These guys are doing great. Verse nine, he says, “I know thy works in tribulation and poverty.” Smyrna was traditionally a very rich, prosperous city, but he says, “Your poverty, I know the blasphemy…” This is probably the slander. People are saying things about Christians because they won’t go to the temple, which is not necessarily about worship, but it’s just eating at the temples is a civic responsibility, and Christians won’t do it.

  00:57:19 “Of them which say they are Jews and are not,” because they’re not true Israel in a sense, is the idea here because they haven’t accepted Jesus, and acceptance of Jesus, as Paul says, is the mark of true Israel, but “They are the synagogue of Satan,” which is kind of harsh. We want to be careful here. This could very easily become anti-Jewish a little bit. The idea is there’s the congregation of the Lord where the righteous are, and there’s something called the synagogue of Satan where the wicked are. And in apocalyptic literature, this is one of the hallmarks. Everything’s very dualistic. There’s good and there’s bad, and there’s no middle ground. There’s black and there’s white, but there’s no gray area. You’re either in the congregation of the Lord or you’re in the synagogue of Satan. Church of the lamb, church of the devil.

Hank Smith: 00:58:08 That’s very Book of Mormon, 1 Nephi 11, 1 Nephi 14.

John Bytheway: 00:58:12 Yeah, it’s the same “this or that.”

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:58:14 Yep, absolutely. He says, “Look,” verse 10 “be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee a crown of life.” So here we have another nice image of, call it exaltation, if you want to bring a Latter-day Saint lens into it, that’s the idea. “You will have a space in my new kingdom.” Probably the image here is of a laurel wreath. In the ancient world athletic competition, the winner would be given a laurel wreath to wear like a crown. And that’s probably the image.

  00:58:43 We shouldn’t see like a crown that a king would wear, but someone who’s triumphed in a competition, is the idea. You’ve made it through. Like Paul says, “I’ve ran the race, I’ve finished my course. I won the wrestling match.” And here, that same idea. You overcame the obstacles, and so you get what winners get, which is a laurel wreath. But in a sense, dying is its own victory. You die, you move on. And what do you get? You get a laurel wreath, you won the competition. The people at Smyrna, they’re doing okay.

Hank Smith: 00:59:13 Yeah, these have been individualized. Ephesus, it’s “You were doing well, you’re not doing as well as you used to.” Smyrna, it’s, “Hey, you’re doing really well. Keep going.”

Dr. Nick Frederick: 00:59:22 Yep, absolutely. Verse 12 we get our third church, which is the church in Pergamum. Verse 13, “I know thy works where thou dwellest, even where Satan’s seat is.” In Pergamum, there was a humongous alter to Zeus. That’s probably what he means here, on their acropolis, this big altar to Zeus, he calls Satan’s seat. And he tells us that “A man named Antipas was slain among you,” probably as a result of persecution. So that’s probably why he says, “Satan dwells in your city because one of my disciples, Antipas, was killed there.” So he has some harsh things to say about what’s going on in Pergamum. We don’t know who Antipas is, but something bad happens to him, and as a result, again, the Lord has some harsh things to say about this. Verse 14, “I have a few things against thee,” he says, “because thou has there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam.”

  01:00:23 This takes us back again to Balaam in the Old Testament. He lures Israel into apostasy by convincing them to worship the Moabite gods. And what the problem is, assimilation. They start to indulge in Moabite practices because of the Moabite women. And that seems to be the case here, that people in Pergamum are assimilating into common cultural practices like eating things offered unto idols. “You’re going along with it.” Maybe they’re even participating in the ritual and the sacrifice, which for the Lord is a big no-no.

  01:00:55 “To commit fornication,” he says, and that’s probably idolatry, not fornication, the sense of anything immoral sexual sense. But in the Book of Revelation, I think when we’re talking about fornication… And you’ll see this with the image of the prostitute in Revelation 17 and 18, probably more about idolatry than about anything else. And they’re feeling the pressure. It’s something we can relate to, right? You feel the pressure from society to act in a certain way. Your neighbors are expecting you to act a certain way. Your coworkers expect you to act a certain way. And in Pergamum, they’re doing it. They’re going along with what their neighbors and coworkers wanted to do, and God has to step in here and say, “You can’t do it.”

Hank Smith: 01:01:36 “You’re different. When you chose Christianity, you chose to be different. Stay different.”

Dr. Nick Frederick: 01:01:41 Yeah. So verse 16, “Repent or else I will come unto thee quickly,” which does not sound like a good thing. “Will fight against them with the sword of my mouth.” That’s a promise that only applies to… Some people read this and say, “Well, this is the Lord saying the second coming’s going to happen fast.” It’s just this church. He just says, “This church, I will come unto you quickly.” But notice what they get. This is fun. In verse 17, “To him that overcome will I give to eat of the hidden manna.” Not entirely sure what that means, but it suggests something secret that the Lord is going to reveal. Are there echoes here of the messianic banquet? “When I come and establish my kingdom, you’re going to be part of it.” Is it a reference to the manna that’s traditionally in the Ark of the Covenant? “You’ll be brought into the presence of the Lord in some aspect.”

  01:02:30 Of course, “I will give him a white stone.” This is familiar to us from D&C 130. What this perhaps means in context is, when someone would be put on trial, the way that you would decide if they were acquitted or they were condemned, usually have a white stone and a black stone. And if you cast the white stone, it was for acquittal. If you cast the black stone, it was for a verdict of guilty. God is saying, “Here, I’ll give you a white stone,” meaning “You will be acquitted, you’ll be declared not guilty, you’ll be vindicated. You’ll be judged as not guilty.” “And in that stone, a new name will be written,” perhaps Jesus’s own name, as we’ll see. It could be a different name, “Which no man knoweth save he that receiveth it.”

  01:03:11 So there’s a lot of fun things there. If we’re using our Old Testament reference here, Isaiah 62, “The Gentiles shall see thy righteousness, all kings of thy glory and now shall be called by a new name.” Perhaps something akin to that. “And you’ll be given a crown of glory, a royal diadem in the hand of thy God,” Isaiah says. So perhaps something again like that is in mind here.

  01:03:37 To go back to Alma 5, “You have his image in your countenance.” It’s his name written on your forehead, so to speak. That’s kind of the idea. “Declare this day whom you serve. You can serve the broader community or you can be my disciple and serve me. If you serve me, I’ll claim you as my own. I will be there for you when you need me.”

Hank Smith: 01:03:56 Yeah, that is a different promise than the first two.

Dr. Nick Frederick: 01:03:59 Yeah, there’s a lot of fun stuff there, right? Not that all of them aren’t nice promises, but those are a little bit more intriguing than just of a generic crown of righteousness or something like that.

Hank Smith: 01:04:10 Yeah, you’re right. Something you would pause and say, “Oh, what does he mean?”

Dr. Nick Frederick: 01:04:14 And it takes some time to figure that out. What is this hidden manna? What is this white stone? And of course, D&C 130, Joseph specifically addresses this. The white stone mentioned in Revelation 2:17 will become a Urim and Thummim to each individual who receives one. A white stone is given to each of those who come into the celestial kingdom, whereon a new name is written. Joseph gives us that interpretation of this specific verse in D&C 130. So again, a lot to play with there.

Hank Smith: 01:04:41 That’s interesting. I’m reading on Bible Hub the pulpit commentary. He’s referencing Trench. Trench’s explanation of the white stone as an allusion to the Urim and Thummim, which the high priest wore. So this isn’t something that’s unique just to Joseph Smith?

Dr. Nick Frederick: 01:04:55 It is not, that’s the case. You think of the high priest, he has the breastplate, and in the pouch is the Urim and Thummim. And the Urim and Thummim would work because the priest would ask a yes or no question, and then if he pulls out the white stone, it’s a yes. He pulls out the black stone, it’s a no, or something like that. And that’s how you would divinate in ancient Israel. That’s that idea.

  01:05:16 There’s a priestly significance to this in the sense that the white stone is the Urim and Thummim, and we saw in chapter one where he says, “I’ll make you kings and priests,” crown of righteousness, now a white stone. We’re getting these images of kingship and priesthood that are being stressed in these chapters. The idea of this being a Urim and Thummim is not necessarily unique for Latter-day Saints. There’s a long interpretation, actually, of the white stone having Urim and Thummim implications.

John Bytheway: 01:05:43 Wow, that’s great.

Hank Smith: 01:05:45 Yeah, that’s a lot of fun. All right, so we’re on our fourth church here in verse 18.

Dr. Nick Frederick: 01:05:50 Yeah. This is the longest of these individual letters, and it’s the most severe, the most serious. This is addressed specifically to Thyatira, and as we can see in verse 20, this is the reason why. “Notwithstanding, I have a few things against thee because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel.” Probably not her real name, and using symbolism here, Jezebel brings up images of what?

Hank Smith: 01:06:15 She’s like the wicked woman of the Old Testament, right?

John Bytheway: 01:06:18 Yeah.

Dr. Nick Frederick: 01:06:20 Yeah, idolatry. Introducing idolatry to the Israelites. She calls herself a prophetess, which is not unusual. The Old Testament’s full of prophetesses. Miriam, Huldah, Isaiah’s wife, is called a prophetess. “To teach and seduce my servants to commit fornication,” probably not sexual, but religious infidelity, “and to eat things sacrificed to idols.” We see the same problem occurring. Do we accommodate with society or not? Not just about eating at Texas Roadhouse. Right? I know Hank’s favorite restaurant.

Hank Smith: 01:06:53 Hey.

Dr. Nick Frederick: 01:06:54 There’s more implied here when it comes to eating meat offered to idols. And he says, “I gave her space to repent, but she repented not.” And then verse 22, which is a difficult verse, “But I will cast her into a bed and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds, and I will kill her children with death.”

John Bytheway: 01:07:15 This is the PG-13 part you were telling us about.

Dr. Nick Frederick: 01:07:19 Yeah, this is part where it gets a little bit tricky, and depending on how you interpret this, you could say that anybody is the Jezebel and talk about what’s going to happen to them and have some vindication in punishing them. The bed here probably just means a sick bed. That’s how it’s used in the Old Testament, and “I will kill her children with death,” probably meaning plague or sickness, again. “I, the Lord, will bring a plague upon them if they don’t repent.” That’s not that unusual, but the language itself just casts her on a bed and “I’ll kill her children.” I mean, that’s pretty intense.

  01:07:54 But the promise is made to Thyatira just as it’s made to the other churches in verse 27. “If you overcome, I’ll give you power over the nations.” In other words, “I as the Messiah will share my authority,” and “He shall rule them with a rod of iron.” Even though things are problematic in Thyatira, they have their problems, and they’re big problems, the Lord still holds out hope. There’s still a time to repent. There’s still a time to turn around. What’s the promise? “You can co-rule at my side as the Messiah.” That’s pretty cool.

Hank Smith: 01:08:27 Nick, with this letter, I can see my children going, “Wow, is the Lord really going to wipe out these people who sin?” Could I take this to be just a contrast of sin versus righteousness and what sin brings and what righteousness brings?

Dr. Nick Frederick: 01:08:45 It goes to how you interpret the Old Testament as a whole. When we see the Lord bringing plagues upon people, right? Are those literal plagues, or are those more symbolic of the sinful behavior of a community?

Hank Smith: 01:08:58 The consequences of sin? Yeah.

Dr. Nick Frederick: 01:09:00 Exactly.

John Bytheway: 01:09:01 The absence of the spirit or something.

Dr. Nick Frederick: 01:09:03 Yeah. I’m more comfortable with that, I think.

Hank Smith: 01:09:06 Yeah, me too.

Dr. Nick Frederick: 01:09:06 Than strictly saying the Lord is going to specifically kill your children. Just more that, be aware that what you do has implications upon your family.

Hank Smith: 01:09:15 Generations.

Dr. Nick Frederick: 01:09:16 The behavior you demonstrate has implications upon your children and their children and their children. There’s implications if you follow Jezebel. If you follow idolatry, then your kids are going to have to struggle with that, and a plague will come upon them, and they’ll have to deal with the consequences. I would probably lean more towards that interpretation here.

Hank Smith: 01:09:34 Yeah, me too. All right, we have three more churches.

John Bytheway: 01:09:40 Please join us for part two of this podcast.