Exposition of The Revelation of Jesus Christ and Prophetic Outlines

The publishers are to be thanked for re-issuing Walter Scott’s classic work on Revelation, thus making it available to another generation. Although in some minor ways this commentary may be showing its age, nevertheless its clarity, its depth, the stimulus to further study, and its capacity to generate devotional thought give it a claim to a place on the bookshelves of all believers.

From a pre-millennial rapture stance, the author demonstrates a clear understanding of the message of Revelation, which enables him to offer his readers the results of his learning and meditation in words that are trenchant and edifying. Moreover, Scott has a lively capacity to provoke his readers to search the scriptures ‘to see if these things are so’. To these qualities must be added his commitment to an accurate text and to a faithful handling of that text. All in all, this book is a model of expository writing.

One example may be sufficient to illustrate the style of this work. On the first two verses of chapter 19 there are, in quick succession, comments on God’s dealings with all His creatures in truth and righteousness ‘whether in grace or judgement’; there is a comment on the text, comparing the KJV and RV translations and referring to the original text; a reference to the true church being hid in heaven until the harlot has been destroyed: then follows a remark on the four ‘Hallelujahs’ in verses 1-6, noting the absence of that word in the rest of the New Testament and its occurrences in the last five Psalms, and suggesting that ‘in their united character (these) express the millennial praise of Israel’. In the space of a few sentences, the reader has been alerted to matters doctrinal, devotional, textual, and dispensational.

Given the subject matter of this book, no one will agree with everything Scott writes, but no one who reads this book can fail to be enriched by it.

[Our thanks to Ed Hotchin, Hucknall, Nottingham, UK for this review]