Apocalipse 1

BLIVRE · Chapter 1/22

¹Revelação de Jesus Cristo, a qual Deus lhe deu, para mostrar a seus servos as coisas que devem acontecer em breve; e as enviou por meio de seu anjo, e as informou ao seu servo João.

²O qual deu testemunho da palavra de Deus, e do testemunho de Jesus Cristo, e de tudo o que ele viu.

³Bem-aventurado [é] aquele que lê, e [também] os que ouvem as palavras desta profecia, e guardam as coisas nela escritas; porque o tempo [está] próximo.

⁴João, às sete igrejas que estão na Ásia. Graça e paz sejam convosco, [provenientes] daquele que é, e que era, e que virá; e dos sete Espíritos que estão diante do trono dele;

⁵E de Jesus Cristo, que é a fiel testemunha, o primogênito dos mortos, e Chefe dos reis da terra; àquele que nos amou, e em seu sangue nos lavou de nossos pecados;

⁶E nos fez reis e sacerdotes a Deus e seu Pai; a ele [seja] a glória e o poder para todo o sempre, Amém!

⁷Eis que ele vem com as nuvens, e todo olho o verá, até mesmo aqueles que o perfuraram; e todas as tribos da terra lamentarão sobre ele. Sim! Amém!

⁸“Eu sou o Alfa e o Ômega, o princípio e o fim”,diz o Senhor, que é, e que era, e que virá, o Todo-Poderoso.

⁹Eu, João, (que também sou vosso irmão, e companheiro na aflição, e no Reino, e [na] paciência de Jesus Cristo), estava na ilha chamada Patmos, por causa da palavra de Deus, e por causa do testemunho de Jesus Cristo.

¹⁰No dia do Senhor, eu fui [arrebatado] em espírito, e atrás de mim eu ouvi uma grande voz, como de trombeta,

¹¹Dizendo: “Eu sou o Alfa e o Ômega, o primeiro e o último; e o que tu estás vendo, escreve em um livro, e envia às sete igrejas que estão na Ásia: a Éfeso, e a Esmirna, e a Pérgamo, e a Tiatira, e a Sardes, e a Filadélfia, e a Laodiceia”.

¹²E eu me virei para ver a voz que tinha falado comigo; e ao me virar, vi sete castiçais de ouro;

¹³E no meio dos sete castiçais, um semelhante a [o] Filho do homem, vestido até os pés de uma roupa comprida, e o tórax envolvido com um cinto de ouro;

¹⁴E a cabeça e os cabelos dele eram brancos como a lã, brancos como a neve; e seus olhos como chama de fogo;

¹⁵E os pés dele semelhantes a um metal valioso e reluzente, e ardentes como em fornalha; e a voz dele, como de muitas águas.

¹⁶E tinha em sua [mão] direita sete estrelas; e de sua boca saía uma espada aguda de dois fios; e seu rosto como o sol brilhando em sua força.

¹⁷E quando eu o vi, cai aos pés dele como que morto; e ele pôs sua mão direita sobre mim, [e] me disse: “Não temas; eu sou o primeiro e o último;

¹⁸eu [sou] o que vivo, e fui morto; e eis que eu vivo para todo o sempre; Amém. E eu tenho as chaves do Xeol e da morte.

¹⁹Escreve as coisas que tens visto, e as que são, e as que estão para acontecer;

²⁰O mistério das sete estrelas, que viste em minha [mão] direita, e os sete castiçais de ouro: as sete estrelas são os anjos [ou mensageiros] das sete igrejas; e os sete castiçais que viste, são as sete igrejas.

📖 Chapter study

Summary

John, exiled on the island of Patmos, receives a vision of the glorified Jesus standing among seven golden lampstands, radiant and powerful in appearance. Jesus identifies himself as the first and the last, the one who lives and was dead, and commands John to write everything he sees to the seven churches of Asia.

Explanation

Patmos was a small island the Roman Empire used to exile political and religious prisoners, and it is there that John receives this vision while suffering for his faith. The description of Jesus — hair white as wool, eyes like a flame of fire, a voice like many waters, a sword coming out of his mouth — uses symbolic language common to prophetic visions of the Old Testament (as in Daniel 7 and 10) to convey majesty and divine authority, not a literal physical description. From the very start the book declares itself a 'revelation' (in Greek, apocalypse literally means 'revelation' or 'unveiling'), meant to encourage persecuted Christians by showing that Christ reigns as sovereign even in the midst of suffering. Today's application is that even in exile or extreme hardship, God can reveal himself powerfully and bring purpose to trial.

Fun facts

The Greek word 'apokalypsis,' which gives the book its name, literally means 'revelation' or 'unveiling'; it originally had no connection to 'destruction' or 'catastrophe,' the sense the term has come to carry in popular use today.

Verse-by-verse explanation

Apocalipse 1:1“Revelation,” from the Greek “apocalypse,” simply means something hidden that gets uncovered. The verse already traces a chain of transmission - from God to Jesus, from Jesus to an angel, from the angel to John - a common way at the time to guarantee the authority of a vision.
Apocalipse 1:2John presents himself as an eyewitness: everything he is about to describe, he saw firsthand - a way of reinforcing that the book is not speculation, but an account of a lived experience.
Apocalipse 1:3This is the first of seven blessings scattered throughout the book; it also reveals how the text was originally used - read aloud to a gathered community listening together, not just read silently by individuals.
Apocalipse 1:4The number seven appears dozens of times in this book as a symbol of totality and completeness, not as an exact count of separate beings. Here it describes the fullness of the Spirit of God, the same way there are soon seven churches, seven lampstands, and seven stars - everything conceived in blocks of seven.
Apocalipse 1:5This reinforces the greeting from the previous verse with titles for Jesus: faithful witness, the first to rise from the dead never to die again, and someone with authority over the kings of the earth - even though no empire recognized that at the time.
Apocalipse 1:6“Kings and priests” repeats an expression from the book of Exodus, used there for the whole people of Israel: the idea is that the Christian community, even though small and persecuted, carries that same status before God.
Apocalipse 1:7This combines two images from the Old Testament - someone coming with the clouds from the book of Daniel, and a people looking at the One they pierced from the prophet Zechariah - forming a scene of public, universal recognition.
Apocalipse 1:8Alpha and Omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, a way of saying that something covers everything, from beginning to end. The expression echoes language already found in the prophet Isaiah describing God as the One who existed before everything and continues after everything.
Apocalipse 1:9Patmos was a small rocky island off the coast of present-day Turkey, used by Rome as a place of exile for people considered troublesome. It is from there, alone and set apart because of his faith, that John says he received these visions.
Apocalipse 1:10“In the Spirit” describes the state of visionary rapture in which John receives the revelation; “the Lord's day” probably refers to Sunday, already recognized as a day of worship by the earliest Christian communities.
Apocalipse 1:11The seven cities named were real places in the Roman province of Asia, present-day Turkey, connected by a postal and trade route of the time - the order of the list follows exactly that circular path between them.
Apocalipse 1:12The seven golden lampstands echo a vision of the prophet Zechariah about a symbolic lampstand; here, as the text itself explains later in verse 20, they represent the seven churches mentioned before.
Apocalipse 1:13The figure described among the lampstands wears clothing that recalls both a priest and a king, a deliberate blending of religious and political authority in the same image.
Apocalipse 1:14This description comes straight from the prophet Daniel, who saw God with hair white as wool, on a throne of fire. John uses that same well-established image to show Jesus with eternal authority, without describing a literal physical appearance.
Apocalipse 1:15Feet like polished bronze and a voice like many waters are images borrowed from Ezekiel and Daniel to describe beings with divine authority, without intending a literal physical description.
Apocalipse 1:16A sword coming out of the mouth is not a real weapon: it is an image for the power of the spoken word, the weight of a verdict that cuts and decides. The same figure returns later, in chapter 19, tied to the same idea of authority that judges.
Apocalipse 1:17Falling down as if dead in reaction to this vision is common in prophetic accounts of a direct encounter with the divine; the response “fear not” and the title “the first and the last” echo the same language used by God in Isaiah.
Apocalipse 1:18The declaration of holding “the keys of hell and of death” means total control over that territory, something that only someone who has already died and risen again, as described at the start of the verse, could truly claim.
Apocalipse 1:19This verse works as an outline for the whole book: what John has already seen (chapter 1), what is already happening with the churches (chapters 2 and 3), and what is still to happen in the future (from chapter 4 onward).
Apocalipse 1:20John hands over the key to this riddle right in the verse itself: the stars are the angels, or messengers, of the seven churches, and the lampstands are the churches themselves. It is one of the few symbols in the book that the text explains without leaving any doubt.

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