What about Revelation 1:7? – Age Without End … Living Beyond the Time of the End

Revelation 1:7 says "every eye shall see him". How can you say this has already happened?

“BEHOLD, HE IS COMING WITH THE CLOUDS, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him; and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him. Even so. Amen.” (Rev. 1:7 NAS)

Yes, the English words say that but we need to see the Greek construct to understand the meaning. The King James Version has “…and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him, and all kindreds of the earth….” Notice the “and” before “they also which pierced him.” Notice too, that the NAS translation at the top has the word “even” at this point.

Why?

A literal word for word translation would require “and” (kai) but it is not that simple. Our tendency in English is to see “and” as a simple connective which makes the different clauses here something of a list with the “those who pierced him” denoting a sub-group of “every eye.” The Greek is more expressive than English so, not surprisingly kai is used in a variety of ways.

Check a good Greek grammar and you will find one usage to be “explicative.”¹ This simply means that what follows the “and” explains what went before. That is the reason the NAS uses the English “even” but that word can also be confusing because our futurist environment tends to read it as “especially those who pieced him.” Just because we read it with that understanding does not make it so!

John is emphatically saying Christ is coming and those who pierced Him are going to see Him. Instead of being evidence of a future coming, this passage is actually strong support for fulfillment in Christ’s generation as the scripture clearly teaches.

In his account of the crucifixion, John mentions prophecies which were fulfilled. Among those he notes, “And again another Scripture says, “THEY SHALL LOOK ON HIM WHOM THEY PIERCED.” At Pentecost, the crowd “from every nation under heaven” heard Peter’s message and mourned. They had murdered their Messiah. What were they to do now!

Those who repented rejoiced in the salvation which grace purchased with Christ’s blood. Remorse was the order of the day and those who hardened their hearts would “wail” soon enough when Christ came in judgment on the clouds in A.D. 70.

Josephus records reports of armies and chariots in the heavens at that time, but even so the text does not demand an optical event. Just as in English, the Greek “see” can have the meaning of “understand.” When Christ came on the “cloud” of the Roman army, those who pierced Him knew for certain that God had “made Him both Lord and Christ.”

¹Concerning this usage, Bauer/Arndt-Gingrich says, “. . . a word or clause is connected by means of kaí w[ith] another word or clause for the purpose of explaining what goes before it . . . .” The remarks continue with examples of how kaí might be translated in such instances including, so, namely, and even (among others). A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, Bauer/Arndt-Gingrich, The University of Chicago Press, Copyright 1957, p. 393.