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Tell and bring forth your case; yes, let them take counsel together. Who has declared this from ancient time? Who has told it from that time? Have not I, the LORD? And there is no other God besides Me, a just God and a Savior; there is none besides Me. (Isa. [[45:21|bible.23.45.21]])
God's existence outside of time is a unique identifying feature of His character which God challenges any other to try and duplicate:Let them bring forth and show us what will happen; let them show the former things, what they were, that we may consider them, and know the latter end of them; or declare to us things to come. (Isa. [[41:22|bible.23.41.22]])
This is but one of many reasons why we choose to trust the text of Genesis over after-the-fact and error-prone interpretation of distant history by modern science.See commentary on Revelation 1:8.write what you seeThe epistolary form of address immediately distinguishes this book from all other Jewish apocalyptic works . . . None of the pseudepigraphical works contains such epistolary addresses. John writes to actual, historical churches, addressing them in the same way the NT epistles are addressed.1
(See The Genre of the book of Revelation for more on the literary genre of apocalyptic.)The seven churches are listed in the same order as their respective letters appear in Revelation [[2|bible.87.2.1]]+ and [[3|bible.87.3.1]]+. It has been suggested that their order indicates the natural route messengers would take to deliver copies of the letter to the seven churches.2 See Seven Churches of Asia.which are in AsiaIn the New Testament, as generally in the language of men when the New Testament was written, Asia meant not what it now means for us, and had once meant for the Greeks, one namely of the three great continents of the old world. . ., nor yet even that region which geographers about the fourth century of our era began to call "Asia Minor;" but a strip of the western seaboard containing hardly a third portion of this . . . its limits being nearly identical with those of the kingdom which Attalus the Third bequeathed to the Roman people. Take "Asia" in this sense, and there will be little or no exaggeration in the words of the Ephesian silversmith, that "almost throughout all Asia" Paul had turned away much people from the service of idols (Acts [[19:26|bible.65.19.26]]; cf. ver. [[10|bible.65.19.10]]); word which must seem to exceed even the limits of an angry hyperbole to those not acquainted with this restricted use of the term.3
The "Asia" of which the Scriptures speak is not the great continent of Asia, or even of Asia Minor, but only the western part of Asia Minor, directly south of the Black Sea. The whole of it does not include a larger territory than the single state of Pennsylvania.4
Notes
1 Alan F. Johnson, Revelation: The Expositor's Bible Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1966), 23.
2 Henry Barclay Swete, The Apocalypse of St. John (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1998, 1906), 14.
3 Richard Chenevix Trench, Commentary on the Epistles to the Seven Churches in Asia (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1861), 4.
4 J. A. Seiss, The Apocalypse: Lectures on the Book of Revelation (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1966), 56.
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