The Grandeur and Confusing Complexity of Christ's identity in the Apocalypse

The Apocalypse does not want to permit its readers a position of wise neutrality: it pronounces blessing on those who keep the words of the prophecy (Rev 22:7) and dire warnings to those who fail to hear what the Spirit is saying. The Apocalypse summons readers to enter sympathetically into the intertextually rich symbolic world of the story it tells, in all its grandeur and confusing complexity. Only by doing so will we come to understand its depiction of the identity of Jesus.

–Richard B. Hays, "Faithful Witness, Alpha and Omega: The Identity of Jesus in the Apocalypse of John," in Revelation and the Politics of Apocalyptic Interpretation, 70.