John wrote Revelation after Jesus ascended, using coded language like "let him who has ears hear" to help scattered Christian communities recognize their moment of persecution without openly condemning Rome. The prophecies were cryptic enough to hide from Roman authorities while remaining clear to believers who knew the context.
Chapters
When you think about when this story is told, it's told after this has already happened. It's told after Jesus is already back in heaven. So therefore, um, it's to help the people that are reading and hearing the story go, oh, I know where we are in time now because I know when the baby was almost destroyed, when the devil tried to kill the baby, and I know what story we're talking about now. Um, they were not able to just write letters to each other saying, um, look, this is what the Roman occupiers are doing to us, and this is what they're doing in this part of Judea, and this is what they're doing in this part, and this is how they're affecting us. So this letter that John pens with all these prophecies embedded into it, he writes it to all these churches, and all these churches are in different parts of the places where Christianity has spread. But many of the places, you're not allowed to just go out and say, you know, Rome was evil and Rome was hurting people and Rome killed Jesus and things like that. You could get in trouble for that. So packaging it in this framework of a story, and then people reading it go, oh, I know what he's talking about. Pretty cool. It's a way to make the story understandable only to those who are listening. Jesus said, let him who has ears hear. That's actually a very common phrase in Revelation. Let him who has ears here. And Jesus was also asked by his disciples, you know, these stories you tell, why do we not understand them sometimes? And he said, well, some of them are told not to be understood yet. They're only meant to be understood by the people that they're told for.
