this barren spot, the emperor no
doubt thought he had effectually cleared the world of this preacher of
righteousness. Doubtless the persecutors of John Bunyan[2] thought the
same when they had him shut up in Bedford jail. But when men think the
truth is dead and buried out of sight, God suddenly gives it a
resurrection with thirty-fold greater glory. It was so in this case. The
giving of the book of Revelation--the writing on this spot of the
history of the church in advance--has changed the name of this rocky
island from deepest infamy to one of sacred interest and holy
recollections. The death of Domitian occurred in A.D. 96, and his
successor, the humane Nerva, recalled those who had been exiled because
of their faithfulness to Christianity; and John returned to Ephesus,
where he spent the remainder of his days, dying a natural death at the
advanced age of about one hundred years.

[Footnote 2: John Bunyan (1628-1688) was a Puritan. After the
restoration of the Stuarts to the throne, at the close of the English
Revolution and the failure of the Commonwealth, he was imprisoned for
twelve years "on account of non-conformity to the established worship."
It was during this dreary confinement that he wrote his "Pilgrim's
Progress," the most admirable allegory in English literature.]

The humble manner in which John speaks of himself is affectionate. He
does not represent himself to the churches as some great apostle or
prophet, but as "your brother and companion in tribulation," a sharer
with them in the trials and the persecutions that they were all called
upon to endure. He also testified that he was "in the kingdom and
patience of Christ," of which we will speak more hereafter.

It was on the first day of the week, or the Lord's day, that the vision
recorded in this chapter was given John, while he was "in the Spirit,"
or under the influence of the spirit of prophecy. He was commanded to
write in a book the things that he saw and to send it unto the seven
churches of Asia. It is important to bear in mind the fact that these
visions are things that John _saw_, all the actors and events passing
before him as a moving panorama--the most stupendous scene that human
eyes have ever beheld, containing the future political history of
various nations and kingdoms and also the history of the church in her
different phases from the beginning until the final consummation. Of the
seven churches we will speak more particularly h