Useful Bible Studies > Revelation Commentary > chapter 1
The first Christians, including John, were Jews (from the family of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob). Jews keep one day each week, Saturday, as a special day for rest and prayer. Later, many people who were not Jews became Christians. The Christians who were Jews continued to keep Saturday as a special day; but they did not insist that other Christians should do this (Acts 15:5-21).
The Christians chose Sunday as the day for their main church meeting (1 Corinthians 16:2). Perhaps that was because Christian Jews would not walk far on Saturday (Acts 1:12); it was their day for rest.
Sunday seemed a good choice for a church meeting, because Christ rose from death on that day (John 20:1). So, they called it ‘the Lord’s day’, that is, Christ’s day. Perhaps the Christians also liked the fact that they considered Sunday the first day in the week; they were giving the first day of the week to God.
Acts 20:7-12 describes one such meeting. It was probably not unusual for meetings to happen by night or to be very long.
John was unable to go to a church meeting on this Sunday; probably, there were no Christian churches on the island. Instead, he chose to pray alone. He knew that he did not have to be in a particular place to worship (give honour to) God (John 4:19-24). So, he prayed and the Holy Spirit came upon him.
Then John heard a voice that was like a trumpet. A trumpet is a loud musical instrument. So, the voice was loud, but beautiful.
John would hear this voice again in Revelation 4:1. It seems that this was the voice of an angel (a special servant of God). God had sent this angel to show John the things that he describes in his book.
Next part: The 7 churches of Revelation (Revelation 1:11)
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© 2016, Keith Simons.