The
Spirit of prophecy
In post-biblical Judaism, as is
well known, the Spirit is especially the Spirit of prophecy, the Spirit who
speaks through the prophets. In Revelation also the Spirit is almost
exclusively the Spirit of prophecy. This observation, however, is not
especially helpful without an understanding of the meaning of ‘prophecy’ in
Revelation. We shall see that it carries probably rather broader connotations than
might at first be thought.
Parts of the Apocalypse are
explicitly said to be the words of the Spirit: the seven messages to the
churches; 14:13b; and 22:17a. The seven messages are ‘what the Spirit says to
the churches,’ equated with the words of the exalted Christ. The significance
of 14:13b would seem to be that the words of the Spirit are the Spirit’s
response, speaking through John, to the heavenly voice. As John obeys the
command to write the beatitude, the Spirit inspiring him adds an emphatic endorsement
of it. In 22:17a, ‘Ερχου is certainly (pace the majority of commentators)
addressed by the Spirit and the Bride not to the one who thirsts, but to
Christ. It is the response to Christ’s promise in 22:12, just as the same
promise and response recur in 22:20. Again in all probability ‘the Spirit’ is
equivalent to the inspired utterance of the Christian prophets, here in the
form of Spirit-inspired prayer.
Thus the Spirit of prophecy speaks through the
Christian prophets bringing the word of the exalted Christ to his people on
earth, endorsing on earth the words of heavenly revelations, and directing the
prayers of the churches to their heavenly Lord. These are the special functions
of the Christian prophets, whom Revelation distinguishes as a special group
within the churches (11:18; 16:6; 18:20, 24; 22:9). The doctrine of the spirit
in the Apocalypse has sometimes been felt to be deficient in that the Spirit is
only the Spirit of prophecy, rather than moral or life-giving power in Christian
life. There is a real distinction here from some other New Testament writers
(notably the Fourth Gospel and Paul), but it should be remarked that the Spirit
of prophecy is envisaged as having life-giving and life-changing effects. For
the Spirit brings to the churches the powerful word of Christ, rebuking,
encouraging, promising and threatening, touching and drawing the hearts, minds
and consciences of its hearers, directing the lives and the prayers of the
Christian communities towards the coming of Christ.
Is Spirit-inspired prophecy a function which the
Apocalypse confines to the Christian prophets or is there a sense in which the
church as a whole has a prophetic vocation? One reason for suspecting the
latter is the relationship between prophecy and the phrase ‘the witness of
Jesus’ (μαρτυρια ‘Ιησου), which, along with some related
expressions, is very frequent in the book. In this expression ‘Ιησου seems to
be always a subjective, not an objective genitive, so that the phrase always
means, in some sense, ‘the witness Jesus bore’ Thus, when 19:10 says that ‘the
witness of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy’, this difficult statement must mean
that the witness Jesus bore is the content of Spirit-inspired prophecy. It is
therefore also the content of John’s own prophecy, the Apocalypse itself (1:2):
the word of God which John’s prophecy communicates is attested primarily by
Jesus himself (22:20), as also by the angel who communicates it to John (22:16)
and by John (1:2). In essence, this word of God is also that to which Jesus
bore witness in his earthly life (1:5) and to which his followers now bear
witness in the world (1:9 etc.). Witness in Revelation is verbal (see
especially 11:7; 12:11), though it is linked with obedience to God’s commandments
(12:17; cf. 14:12) and its consequence, in the circumstances envisaged
in Revelation, is expected to be martyrdom (2:13; 6:9; 17:6; 20:4). Those who
bear the witness of Jesus are certainly not just the prophets (19:10) but
Christians in general (12:17). Yet in 11:3, where the faithful church in its
witness to the world is portrayed under the mage of ‘my two witnesses’ who ‘prophesy’
(cf. 11:10), prophecy and witness seem to be equated. The characterization of
the Christian community as ‘those who bear the witness of Jesus’ seems
therefore to attribute a prophetic role to the whole church.
Probably a distinction is to be drawn between the
special vocation of the Christian prophets to declare the word of God within
the Christian community, and the general vocation of the Christian community as
a whole to declare the word of God in the world. The former will then subserve
the latter. The Spirit speaks through the prophets to the churches and through
the churches to the world. (Richard Bauckham, “The Role of
the Spirit,” in The Climax of Prophecy: Studies in the Book of Revelation [London:
T&T Clark, 1993], 160-62)
