Here’s today’s Installment of “The Power and Presence of the Holy Spirit“:
The Spirit in Revelation
In Revelation, the four times John says he was “in the Spirit” appear at the beginning of major sections in the book’s structure (1:10; 4:2; 17:3; 21:10).[1] One of the distinctive ways John refers to the Spirit appears in the four places where he refers to the “seven Spirits” (1:4; 3:1; 4:5; 5:6). There are a number of places where John records something “the Spirit says” (2:7, 11, 17, 29; 3:6, 13, 22; 14:13; 22:17), and these references underscore the fact that God is speaking through John by the Spirit in Revelation. Twice the Spirit is directly connected to prophecy (19:10; 22:6).[2]
[1] Richard Bauckham, The Climax of Prophecy: Studies on the Book of Revelation (London: T & T Clark, 1993), 3.
[2] For an excellent treatment of the Spirit in Revelation, see Richard Bauckham, The Theology of the Book of Revelation, New Testament Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 109–25.
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To see all the posts in this series, go to the category “The Power and Presence of the Holy Spirit.”