WORD AND WORSHIP: THE PROPHETIC SPIRIT AND THE SEVEN CHURHES IN JOHN'S REVELATION

John's Revelation serves as a prophetic commission for the Christians in the seven churches in Roman Asia – and by extension to Christians everywhere and at all times. As such it is not merely informative, but "edifying" in the NT prophetic sense of life empowered by the Spirit for God's gracious purposes. Encounter with Jesus Christ leads to worship, which leads to commission and empowerment. John's own commission experience of chapter 1 follows Jesus' own mission, and is a paradigm for the mission put before the churches. While not excluding individual prophetic commissioning, Revelation speaks to the corporate commissioning of God's people for the task of sacrificial witness unto the conversion of the nations Revelation is "an experience of prophecy," and of John's role communicating New Testament prophecy in the context of "congregation, ekklesia, the gathered church." John's sophisticated writing calls for extensive exegesis, and likely did in his own time as well as ours. But this letter was also, perhaps primarily, intended for public reading in Christian gatherings. How in this way does it work as "prophecy"? How in this setting would public reading serve the purposes of "apokalypsis" and bring blessing to the one who reads, and to those who "hear and keep"? This paper will provide a very preliminary exploration of these questions, in three phases: 1. A brief explication of the nature of New Testament shared life in the Spirit – especially in its prophetic, "charismatic" aspect 2. A reading of Revelation 1 – 5 within that context as the "prophetic commissioning of the churches" 3. A brief exploration of the place of subsequent scenes of vision, worship and utterance of the Spirit from chapters 6 – 22, emerging from this "commissioning" reading