The Book of Revelation

I know many people like Revelation, including my professor who has the class to do an exegesis of several passages of the text. Personally, I don't really like the Book of Revelation very much. I find that it is kind of hard for me to relate the meaning of the text with our everyday living.

Though every book in the Bible is canonical and authoritative and should be given the same weight and attention, most of us in some way have developed our own canon within the canon - a tendency for loving certain books more than the others.

I am no exception to the above nature as well. I often find myself quoting more frequently from the gospel of John and the Johannine epistles in the NT. In the Old Testament, I like Exodus and Deuteronomy the most.

I recalled one of my pastors (who is really good at preaching and interpreting Daniel & Revelation) said many years ago that Revelation was written by the same author of the gospel of John. But, I am now pretty convinced they were two different authors. The literary style and the language used in both the books truly did not resemble each other. These two books of course are of different genre, and thus they should not be expected to look similar; however, they are simply too far apart! If you read John's Gospel and the epistle of first, second, and third John, you'll agree with me quickly they were all written by the same author, but different from the one wrote Revelation.

The big question here is, if Revelation was not written by Apostle John, who was the one on the island of Patmos (Rev 1:9) ? What happened to Apostle John? If Revelation was written by Apostle John, then who wrote the gospel of John and the epistles? Who was "the disciple whom Jesus loved" described in John 13:23? Unfortunately, no one seems to have an answer ready for this series of question. Most theologians, nowadays, instead of confirming one or the other, they generally say there is a lack of evidence to even pinpoint the books in questioned were written by Apostle John. Perhaps, the safest way to say it is they were both come from the Johannine community, and it is possible that Apostle John could have asked someone to write on his behalf.

I know any answer offered here would fail to satisfy one's desire to know the fact. But the truth is, there is no concrete information available for us to make any claim. The best thing is to leave the matter to individual interpretation. What we must know and believe is, in my opinion, there was an apostle by the name of John in Scripture rather than so much of a deal now as who wrote the scripture. Amen.