2025/08/25

210. Jesus Christ's Revelation and the Book of Spiritual Training

After Pentecost, the witnesses who had known Jesus personally saw with their own eyes that what Jesus had testified to through his words and deeds was being fulfilled as new prophecies. The Holy Spirit, sent in the name of Jesus, established the New Testament and included the Book of Revelation in it to impart the memories of the witnesses' experiences to those who do not see Jesus but believe in him. As it states, "For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy" (Rev 19:10), Revelation is a book of spiritual training in which what Jesus testified is instilled into believers’ memory as new prophecies. 

The descriptions of Revelation allude to the contents of other books in the New Testament, connecting with them and putting what Jesus testified to in them in believers' memory as new prophecies. The Holy Spirit then teaches and guides believers when they revisit the other books of the New Testament, enabling them to understand that what Jesus testified becomes new prophecies in Revelation and is fulfilled (cf. Jn 16:13). When believers read the other books of the New Testament closely, continuously engaging in this spiritual training of Revelation, a cycle will be generated within them, whereby they come to understand that what Jesus testified becomes new prophecies in Revelation and is fulfilled. This cycle becomes tacit knowledge that creates and preserves within the trainees the memories of the experiences the witnesses who had known Jesus personally had retained. We can also see that from the Letter to the Hebrews, which we have been examining. 

The writer of Revelation, John, described the speaker of the voice that had first spoken to him as "in his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth issued a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength" (Rev 1:16). In addition, in the letter to the angel of the church in Pergamum, he wrote, "The words of him who has the sharp two-edged sword" (2:12). Regarding this "sharp two-edged sword," the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews also wrote, "For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart" (Heb 4:12). Believers who repeatedly practice the spiritual training of Revelation will understand that what the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews wrote, that is, what is written in the other books of the New Testament, becomes, as what Jesus testified to, new prophecies in Revelation and is fulfilled. 

The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews attempted to somehow place Jesus, the Son of God who now sits at the right hand of the Father, at the centre of the "assembly" of the Church community as the eternal priest. Jesus, at the last Passover meal, showed the Apostles, who had prepared the bread and wine, the priesthood of the new covenant. Jesus conferred the priesthood on the Apostles at the same time as instituting the Eucharist, and the office has been passed down from the Apostles. In this way, the priesthood has become an eternal priesthood. This testimony of Jesus is fulfilled in Revelation as a new prophecy. Thus, the latter half of Revelation begins as follows: "And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars" (Rev 12:1). 

As shown in the diagram, Revelation consists of seven prophecies. The latter half begins with the "Prophecy of the Fate of the Church, with the Mysteries of the Priesthood and the Eucharist Hidden in the Wilderness and Heaven." What the spiritual training of Revelation requires us is simply to read Revelation aloud and try to concentrate on our own voice as we read, believing in the words, "Blessed is he who reads aloud the words of the prophecy, and blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written therein; for the time is near" (Rev 1:3). However, we can often only do a little each day. Even so, if we decide to do even one line and continue doing so, the day will come when this habit of reading Revelation will become the “blessing” itself. The Book of Revelation, with its grand prophetic structure as “The revelation of Jesus Christ” (1:1), works on each believer who accepts it as a book of spiritual training, leading them to the prophecy of the spirituality of the Holy Spirit (cf. Prophecy No. 7 in the diagram) and enabling them to experience what it means to be a perfect Christian. We will discuss this process in the next issue. 

Maria K. M.