(4) The witness of the visions. 1. “ Who bare record of the word of God"--1:2. The word of God, to which John was to be the witness, was the message of the revelation itself, the word which God gave unto Jesus Christ (verse 1) at this time and in this apocalypse, not the word of God which had already been preached by the other apostles or that which was in the general epistles. This was the word of God in the special sense, belonging to the special message, for the special time. These were the special things which Jesus Christ signified to John, which did not belong to the revelation of the gospel contained in the other epistles. It was an apocalyptic revelation to the churches that were on the threshold of their peril--in that period called the hour of trial. 2. “ And of the testimony of Jesus Christ"--1:2. As previously intimated, this is a specific reference to the testimony of Christ to John, not John’ s testimony of or concerning Christ. It was the testimony of this apocalypse, as stated in the first line of the first verse, the testimony of Jesus Christ. 3. “ Even of all things that he saw"--1:2. Thus it is that both the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ refer to the things that John saw, of which John bare record, not the past witness of the word which all the other apostles had made, nor the testimony of Christ in the sense of the gospel which they had preached. It was the word of God and the testimony of this apocalypse only of the things to which John was bearing witness and of which he was making a record.