Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Revelation 1:19

"Write therefore the things which thou sawest, and the things which are, and the things which shall come to pass hereafter;" — Revelation 1:19 (ASV)

John is told to “write, therefore, what you have seen.” This verse faces us with an important exegetical problem concerning the sense of the words and the relationship of the three clauses: “what you have seen, what is now and what will take place later.” Does Christ give John a chronological outline as a key to the visions in the book? Many think he does. If so, are there three divisions: “seen,” “now,” and “later”? Or are there two: “seen,” i.e., “now” and “later”? In the latter case, where does the chronological break take place in the book? For others, v.19 simply gives a general statement of the contents of all the visions throughout the book as containing a mixture of the “now” and the “later.” While no general agreement prevails, the key to the problem may lie in the middle term “what is now” (lit., “which [things] are”). There are two possibilities. (1) The verb can be taken temporally (“now”), as NIV has done. This would refer to things that were present in John’s day, e.g., matters discussed in the letters to the churches (chs. 2–3). (2) The verb can be taken in the sense of “what things mean.” This explanation agrees with John’s usage of the verb “to be” throughout the book (cf. v.20; 4:5; 5:6, 8; 7:14; 17:12, 15). “What they are [mean]” is then immediately given in the next verse, i.e., the explanation of the mystery of the lamps and stars.

Most commentators understand the phrase “what you have seen” as referring to the first vision (1:12–16); but it may refer to the whole book as the expression “what you see” in v.11 does. In this case the translation could be either “what you saw, both the things that are and the things that will occur afterward,” or “what you saw, both what it means and what will occur afterward.” “What will take place later” clearly refers to the future, but to the future of what? Some have taken the similar but not identical phrase in 4:1 to mean the same as here and have rendered it “what shall take place after these present things,” i.e., after the things relating to the seven churches (chs. 2–3). This results in either the historicist view of chs. 4–22 or the futurist view of them. But if the future is simply the future visions given to John after this initial vision, then the statement has little significance in indicating chronological sequence in the book. While v.19 may provide a helpful key to the book’s plan, on careful analysis it by no means gives us a clear key to it.

In my understanding, John is being told here to write down a description of the vision of Christ that he has just seen, what it means, and what he will see afterward—i.e., not the end-time things, but the things revealed later to him. Whether these other things are wholly future, wholly present, or both future and present depends on the content of the vision.