A Door Standing Open in Heaven
4 1 After this I looked, and there was a door standing open in heaven! The first voice I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, "Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this."
2 At once I was in the Spirit, and there was a throne standing in heaven, with one seated on it. a a v2 The one on the throne is our Father. Rev 5:7 — the Lamb takes the scroll from the right hand of the throne-figure — confirms Father and Son are distinct here. By Rev 22:1, they share the throne. 3 The one sitting there looked like jasper and carnelian, and around the throne was a rainbow that looked like an emerald. 4 Around the throne were twenty-four thrones, and seated on the thrones were twenty-four elders, clothed in white garments, with golden crowns on their heads.
5 From the throne came flashes of lightning, and rumblings and peals of thunder, and seven torches of fire were burning before the throne, which are the sevenfold Spirit of our Father. b b v5 The seven Spirits of our Father name the Holy Spirit in his sevenfold fullness — echoing Isaiah 11:2, where the Spirit rests on the Messiah in seven dimensions of wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge, and reverence. 6 Before the throne there was something like a sea of glass, like crystal. And around the throne, on each side of the throne, were four living creatures, full of eyes in front and behind: 7 the first living creature like a lion, the second living creature like an ox, the third living creature with a human face, and the fourth living creature like an eagle in flight. 8 And the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, were full of eyes all around and within, and day and night they never cease to say, "Holy, holy, holy is the Sovereign Father, the Almighty, who was and is and is to come!" c c v8 Christian tradition has long heard the threefold "holy" as worship of all three Persons — our Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Our Father is on the throne here; the Son joins the worship in the next chapter as the Lamb; the Holy Spirit is the sevenfold Spirit named in v.5.
9 And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to the one seated on the throne, to the one who lives forever and ever, 10 the twenty-four elders fall down before the one seated on the throne and worship the one who lives forever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne, saying, 11 "You are worthy, our Sovereign Father, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created."