Revelation 4:11

Worthy art thou, our Lord and our God, to receive the glory and the honor and the power: for thyself didst create all things, and because of thy will they were, and were created.

Worthy art thou, our Lord and our God ... "These are the words that greeted the emperor in triumphal procession; and `our Lord and our God' was introduced into the cult of emperor worship by Domitian,"[46] the exact words of this passage being used. With characteristic `wisdom' the scholars immediately proclaim that John borrowed this expression from Domitian! Indeed, indeed! Our book says that John heard the heavenly chorus "saying" this; are we to suppose that they copied it from Domitian? It is evident that Domitian borrowed this from the Christians,' not the other way around.

Thyself didst create all things ... Repeatedly, the broadest and most fundamental doctrines of Christianity are given dramatic and powerful emphasis in this prophecy. This chapter is full of this. Note the description of God in Revelation 4:3, where the likeness of God is mentioned. "In the author's refusal to describe God in anthropomorphic terms, he declares that "God is Spirit,'"[47] exactly as the author does in John 4:24. The Christian doctrine of Creation is explicit here.

Because of thy will, they were, and were created ... God only is exalted upon the throne. The universe and everything in it came into being because of his will. "This is a conception basic to Jewish-Christian monotheism."[48] Since the world, with all of its marvelous complexity, was made by God, and made according to his will, it follows that much must be right with it. As Caird expressed it:

We shall be misled by the cumulative visions of destruction that follow unless we do full justice to this opening affirmation that the world is God's world and fundamentally good.[49]

Of course, there are also terrible things wrong with it; but God has addressed himself to that problem also. The great redemptive plan of the Father for the salvation of his human creatures appears in the person of the Lamb in the very next chapter; and it is most appropriate that, in view of the epic destructions about to take place, that this initial emphasis upon the merciful God and his plan of human forgiveness should be made.

Great and wonderful and terrible as the throne of God appears in this chapter, the really good news is in Revelation 5. Without the vision of what is revealed there, despair would wipe out every human hope.

[46] Ibid., p. 140.

[47] Edward A. McDowell, The Meaning and Message of the Book of Revelation (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1951), p. 75.

[48] G. R. Beasley-Murray, op. cit., p. 119.

[49] G. B. Caird, op. cit., p. 68.