Revelation 4:2

“After this” (meta tauta) opens a new part of the book. In Revelation 2–3 the risen Christ spoke to seven churches in Asia about their own state, their trials and their faults. Now John is taken from the churches on earth to the throne room of heaven, and the vision that begins here fills the rest of Revelation 4. Everything that follows in the book, its judgments and its redemption, is seen from this room, so all of it comes from God’s purpose and carries his authority.

John received these visions in exile on Patmos, most likely in the reign of the emperor Domitian, when believers were suffering for their faith. Domitian demanded to be addressed as “Lord and God”, and the emperor’s throne stood for rule over the known world. To churches pressed by that power, John’s first sight in heaven is a throne, and someone is sitting on it. Whatever Rome claimed, the one who rules all things sits in heaven, and the whole vision rests on that.

“I looked” translates eídō, the common verb for seeing, used literally or figuratively. John looks, and “behold” (idoú), a word that calls attention to something remarkable, draws our eyes to what he sees: a door opened in heaven. The verb anoígō means to open or unlock, and the door already stands open when John sees it. God has opened it, and John sees into heaven because God gives him the way in. Ezekiel’s visions began the same way: “the heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God” (Ezekiel 1:1). Jesus promised Nathanael, “Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man” (John 1:51).

The “first voice” is the one John heard at the beginning of the book, when he was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day and heard behind him “a great voice, as of a trumpet” (Revelation 1:10). “As it were of a trumpet” (hos salpingos) describes a voice loud, clear and full of authority, a voice that calls for attention. Trumpets in Scripture announce God’s presence and great events, and they call his people to gather. At Sinai, when God came down to give his law, “there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud; so that all the people that was in the camp trembled” (Exodus 19:16). Yet this voice is “talking with me” (lalōsa met’ emou). The God of Sinai speaks to his servant personally.

“Immediately” is euthéōs, meaning immediately, at once, directly. John hears the call, and at once he is “in the spirit” (en pneumati), as he was in Revelation 1:10. It is a state God gives, in which the Holy Spirit enables a prophet to see and understand what God reveals. The word pneûma means breath or wind and, by extension, a spirit, whether human, angelic or divine. Here the Spirit of God is at work, as he was with the prophets before John: “Then the spirit took me up,” says Ezekiel (Ezekiel 3:12).

So the visions John writes down came from God, as Amos says: “Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7). Jesus promised his disciples the same Spirit: “when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth” (John 16:13). The God who sits enthroned far above us is also the God who draws near, opens his counsel to his servant and gives him eyes to see it.

The first thing John sees in heaven is a throne. Thrónos comes from a word meaning to sit and names a seat of authority, a royal chair. The New Testament uses it for the thrones of God and Christ, and also for the seats of Satan, the beast, the apostles and the elders, so a throne’s meaning lies in who holds it. In this chapter it is God’s, and it appears more than forty times in Revelation. Everything in these verses is placed by it: round about the throne, out of the throne, before the throne. “Was set” translates keîmai, the throne standing in its place in heaven. “And one sat on the throne” uses káthēmai, to sit, and the throne is occupied by the living God who reigns. He is the Father, unnamed here, and the next verse describes him only by his brightness.

The God who rules sits in heaven, and his rule reaches everything below it: “The LORD hath prepared his throne in the heavens; and his kingdom ruleth over all” (Psalm 103:19). He showed his throne to prophets before John. Isaiah “saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up” and cried out before his holiness (Isaiah 6:1–5). Daniel watched as “the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment was white as snow”, on a throne “like the fiery flame”, with thousands upon thousands standing before him (Daniel 7:9–10). Ezekiel saw “the likeness of a throne” above the living creatures, and one upon it surrounded by brightness (Ezekiel 1:26–28). John’s vision gathers up what they saw and carries it to its height. From this throne the rest of Revelation proceeds: the judgments go out from it, the worship rises to it, and in Revelation 5 the Lamb comes to it.

John describes God by likeness alone: “to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone.” He reaches for precious stones because the glory before him can only be told by comparison, and he speaks only of light and color. The jasper, íaspis, is a gem whose name probably came from another language, and in the ancient world it was known as clear and brilliant, like rock crystal or even a diamond. Its light speaks of God’s purity and holiness, a brightness too pure for any eye to bear. The sardine stone, also called carnelian, is fiery red, and its color calls to mind the fire of God’s holiness and his judgment of sin: “For our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29). Together the two stones show a God who is perfectly pure and perfectly just, before whom awe is the right response.

Precious stones also belonged to holy things in Israel. They were set in the breastplate the high priest wore when he served before the LORD (Exodus 28:15–21).

The twenty-four elders are best understood as the whole people of God, redeemed under both covenants, seated in honor in his presence. Their exact identity has long been discussed among believers, and this is the reading with the strongest support. Twenty-four is twelve and twelve, the twelve tribes of Israel and the twelve apostles. Jesus told the apostles, “ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matthew 19:28). In the next chapter the elders sing as people who have been redeemed: “thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation; And hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth” (Revelation 5:9–10). Their white garments and crowns, which Revelation promises elsewhere to the faithful, point the same way. On this reading they are glorified people and not angels, and in them we see God’s people already enthroned beside him.

The KJV calls their places “seats”, but the Greek word is the plural of thrónos, the word used for God’s own throne. These elders are enthroned. Their thrones stand round about his, which keeps his at the center and gives them a place of honor near it. Presbýteros means an older man, a senior, and it was used for the elders of Israel’s council and for the elders who led the early churches. The word speaks of maturity, wisdom and trust, and it fits those who represent God’s people in his court, as Daniel saw a court seated before the Ancient of days. Their sitting shows a settled place of honor and rest.

Out of the throne “proceeded lightnings and thunderings and voices.” Ekporeúomai means to go or come out, so these come forth from the throne itself, from God’s own presence. Brontḗ is thunder, from a word meaning to roar, and in Scripture thunder goes with God’s voice, his power and often his judgment. Lightnings, thunders and a voice together recall Sinai again, where they shook the camp when God came down to make his covenant with Israel. Here they show the holiness and might of the one on the throne, and his readiness to act, in judgment and in revelation. The same authority belongs to the Son, whom all shall see “coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory” (Matthew 24:30).

The seven Spirits of God are the Holy Spirit in the fullness of who he is and the perfection of all his works, and John tells us so himself when he explains the seven lamps. Seven (heptá) is the number of completeness in Scripture, so “seven Spirits” speaks of the one Spirit present and at work in full. John has already greeted the churches “from the seven Spirits which are before his throne” (Revelation 1:4). “Spirits” is pneûma, the same word as “spirit” in verse 2, where the Spirit carried John into the vision.

The lamps burn “before the throne”, enṓpion, right in front of it and in its presence. A lamp, lampás, gives light, and fire, pŷr, speaks of purity, judgment and the intensity of God’s presence. So the Spirit gives light to God’s truth, makes his people pure, and carries out God’s purposes with burning zeal.

In the next chapter the seven Spirits are joined to the Lamb as well. John sees “a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth” (Revelation 5:6). The Spirit who burns before the Father’s throne is sent out by Christ into the world, as he was at Pentecost, when the ascended and enthroned Christ poured out the Spirit on his disciples to make them his witnesses (Acts 2:1–4).

These five verses show the Father on his throne, and they prepare for the Son. In the next chapter the Lamb is found worthy and takes the book out of the right hand of him that sat upon the throne (Revelation 5:5–7). The authority John sees here is the authority Jesus claimed: “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth” (Matthew 28:18). He is “the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person”, and he “sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Hebrews 1:3) after he was taken up into heaven before his disciples’ eyes (Acts 1:9–11). At the end of the book the river of life flows “out of the throne of God and of the Lamb” (Revelation 22:1).

The rainbow points to him too. The covenant mercy around the throne is made sure in Christ, “the mediator of a better covenant” (Hebrews 8:6), for “all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen” (2 Corinthians 1:20). All that comes out of this throne moves toward the day when heaven proclaims, “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever” (Revelation 11:15), and toward the new heaven and new earth of Revelation 21–22.

God gave this vision to churches living under an empire that claimed to rule the world, and the first thing he showed them was his own throne with himself upon it. Before any judgment falls in the chapters that follow, we are shown who sits over all of it. Whatever comes to pass happens under his eye and by his word, and it “must” come to pass because he has determined it.

The passage also shows that knowing God begins with God. John saw heaven because a door was opened and a voice called him up, and the Spirit carried him there. The God he saw is blazing in holiness like jasper and fire, and his throne is circled by the bow of his covenant. Both are true of him at once, and both are true of the God his people pray to today.

Around him sit his people, robed in white and crowned, with every part of their honor given by the Lamb. Before him burns his Spirit, whom the Lamb sends into all the earth. The door John saw stands open on the God who reigns, and all that Revelation goes on to show comes from his throne.