Revelation: a New Covenant Commentary

John himself is in exile, apparently for his faith; others are at the same time experiencing various degrees of suffering. John first keeps his narrative going with the temporal referent after this (lit. “after these things”), but his interest here is not with time as such, but with the next event in the sequence of visions that he received as he was “in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day” (1:10). So even though the decisive battle won by Christ through his death and resurrection guarantees the outcome of the war, final salvation, though guaranteed, is in fact “not yet.” Thus the war itself is not over, even though victory has already been fully and finally decided. Thus even though God will finally save his own and judge the enemy, the present and near future will not be a bed of roses.