Revelation: Opening and greeting

In the first three verses, we learn some very important things about this book. It is for all the servants of Jesus Christ, and its purpose is to show them what must soon take place. The nearness of these events is mentioned twice in three verses: "Must soon take place" and "the time is near." This cannot be a matter of John being mistaken about this, and thinking that Jesus was returning sooner than He would. There is certainly evidence in the Gospels that the apostles expected Jesus to return in their lifetime, but this entire book is a revelation directly from Jesus to John, who is expected to pass it on to all the Church. Given that scripture is inspired by God, it would be a strange thing to presume that John would be allowed to so mislead us as to twice state that the events were near, if they weren't.

Furthermore, the blessing is to all who read, hear, and keep (or heed) this book. In these musings, I shall try to keep this in mind: we are not finished with our understanding of Revelation until we have come to understand how we should "keep it", how we should act and think and speak as a result of what we learn here. To me, this makes it very clear that the purpose of this book is not to allow us to predict future events, but to understand our current events as they unfold, whether in the first century or the twenty-first, and know "how we should then live."