The Book of Revelation: A Transfigured Form of the Olivet Discourse

Below is the fifth of multiple excerpts of commentary on the Book of Revelation from The Parousia, the late 19th-century masterpiece on the Second Coming by James Stuart Russell: 

"THE TRUE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE APOCALYPSE [BOOK OF REVELATION]. 

"We are now better prepared to grapple with the question, What is the real meaning of the Apocalypse [Revelation]? The fact that, by its own showing, the action of the book must necessarily be comprehended within a very short space of time, and the knowledge (approximately) of the date of its composition [i.e., before the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, as shown in previous excerpts], are important aids to a correct apprehension of its object and scope. To regard it as a revelation of the distant future, when it expressly declares that it treats of things which must shortly come to pass; and to look for its fulfilment in mediaeval or modern history, when it affirms that the time is at hand, is to ignore its plainest teaching, and to ensure misconception and failure. We are absolutely shut up by the book itself to the contemporary history of the period [i.e., the 1st century, as indicated by Rev. 1:1, 1:3, 1:7, 1:19, 3:11, 16:15, 22:6, 22:7, 22:10, 22:12, 22:20] and that, too, within very narrow limits [as evidenced by Matthew 10:23, 16:28, 23:36, 24:34, 26:64; Mark 9:1, 13:30, 14:62; Luke 9:27, 21:32, 22:69].

"And here we find an explanation of what must have struck most thoughtful readers of the evangelic history as extremely singular, namely, the total absence in the Fourth Gospel [John] of that which occupies so conspicuous a place in the Synoptical Gospels [Matthew, Mark, and Luke],---the great prophecy of our Lord on the Mount of Olives [as recorded in Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21]. ...But the difficulty is explained if it should be found that the Apocalypse is nothing else than a transfigured form of the prophecy on the Mount of Olives. And this we believe to be the fact. ... 

"Even a slight comparison of the two documents, the prophecy [on the Mount of Olives, also known as the Olivet Discourse] and the Apocalypse, will suffice to show the correspondence between them. The dramatis personae, if we may so call them,---the symbols which enter into the composition of both,---are the same. What do we find in our Lord’s prophecy [on the Mount of Olives]? First and chiefly the Parousia [Second Coming]; then wars, famines, pestilence, earthquakes; false prophets and deceivers; signs and wonders; the darkening of the sun and moon; the stars falling from heaven; angels and trumpets, eagles and carcas[s]es, great tribulation and woe; convulsions of nature; the treading down of Jerusalem; the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven; the gathering of the elect; the reward of the faithful; the judgment of the wicked. And are not these precisely the elements which compose the Apocalypse? This cannot be accidental resemblance,---it is coincidence [correspondence], it is identity. What difference there is in the treatment of the subject arises from the difference in the method of the revelation. The prophecy [on the Mount of Olives] is addressed to the ear, and the Apocalypse to the eye: the one is a discourse delivered in broad day, amid the realities of actual life,---the other is a vision, beheld in a state of ecstasy, clothed in gorgeous imagery, with an air of unreality as in objects seen in a dream; requiring it to be translated back into the language of everyday life before it can be intelligible as actual [historical] fact."


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