“And they overcame him because the blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even unto death.” Revelation 12:11.
What is “the
word of their testimony”? In one sense the book of Revelation is a book of
witnessing, of testimony. It is a wonderful manual on witnessing. Consider how
the book begins: “The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show to
His bond-servants, the things which must soon take place; and He sent and
communicated it by His angel to His bond-servant John, who testified to
the word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, even to all that
he saw.”
Then we have
1:9, “I, John, your brother and fellow partaker in the tribulation and the
kingdom and the perseverance which are in Jesus, was on the island called
Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.”
Let’s then look
at how the book concludes: “I, Jesus, have sent My angel to testify to
you…I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this
book…He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming quickly.”
(Rev. 22:16 – 20).
John is
testifying, Jesus is testifying, and we see in the following passages that the
people of Christ are testifying:
“When the Lamb
broke the fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the souls of those who had
been slain because of the word of God, and because of the testimony
which they had maintained” (6:9).
“When they have
finished their testimony, the beast that comes up out of the abyss will
make war with them, and overcome them and kill them” (11:7).
“So the dragon
was enraged with the woman, and went off to make war with the rest of her
children, who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of
Jesus” (12:17).
“Then I fell at
his feet to worship him. But he said to me, ‘Do not do that; I am a fellow
servant of yours and your brethren who hold the testimony of Jesus;
worship God. For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy” (19:10).
But there is
still more, for let’s not forget that our word “martyr” in English is “witness”
in Greek, and while we use the word “martyr”, in its Christian context, to
refer to someone who dies for Christ, in its Biblical context it can mean not
only someone who dies for Christ, such as Stephen or Antipas, but also one who is
a witness for the truth of God in Christ. For example, in Revelation we see
Jesus Christ as a “faithful witness” (1:5); Antipas, “My witness, My faithful
one who was killed” (2:13); Jesus Christ as “the faithful and true Witness”
(3:14); “My two witnesses” (11:3); “the witnesses of Jesus” (17:6).
The point in all
of this is that we might “see” the overwhelming theme of “witness” and “testimony”
(interchangeable words in English for the same NT Greek word) in the book of
Revelation. And yet there is more, for if we consider the storyline of
Revelation we see that within its central message of the unveiling of Jesus
Christ, that there is the theme of faithfulness to Jesus Christ and His testimony
in the midst of tribulation and intense opposition. In the Gospels we see that
Jesus Christ maintained His testimony to the Father unto death (see especially
the Gospel of John where Jesus’s confession of the Father is relentlessly
attacked), and in Revelation we are taught that we are to maintain our testimony
to Jesus even unto death (“As the Father has sent me, so I send you”).
Revelation is written, in part, to equip us to not simply hold fast our
testimony of Jesus, but to proclaim that witness even unto death.
The book of
Revelation, a letter to the Church, was not written to satisfy our desires
for special knowledge of the future, it was not written to cater to our
fanciful speculations; it was written to reveal Jesus Christ, to equip
us to be witnesses as Jesus is a witness, and to help us see reality as
it really is; to see the Kingdom for what it is and the world for what it is.
We’ll pick the “the
word of their testimony” back up in the next post in this series.
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