Not something we English speakers would expect, but time and time again, we bumped into the need to ask this question in our translation of John's Revelation – where is John in relation to this? Well, of course, he is seeing all of this in a vision, but what does that mean? Was he given 3D glasses to enhance the experience? Or, rather was John actually a part of the action at times? Indeed in chapter 10, there is one section when he is told to go, ask an angel, and then eat a scroll. So if John is a part of the action, where is he located as he is describing what he is seeing? Four options:
1. Outside of Everything (like watching a movie);
2. In Heaven (watching the events in Heaven unfold and the resulting effects down on earth)
3. On Earth (looking up in Heaven to see the throne room, but experiencing the effects all around him)
4. He is located in different places as he describes various scenes.
From my perspective, it seems as though John is describing most of the events as though he is in Heaven (option 2), however, there are certain passages which suggest other locations as well (option 4) For example, it is likely that the opening image of Rev 1 (Jesus among the lamp stands) did not occur in Heaven, given the first mention of seeing Heaven open in chapter 4:1. In addition, in chapter 21, as the New Jerusalem is descending from Heaven, it is said that an angel took John away in the Spirit to a huge mountain. So, recognizing that some other locations for John are mentioned, I would place John's default location as in the Heavenly throne room.
Who cares? Why does it matter? The Gmz language has what are called deictic markers, that is suffixes that we can put on the verb that indicate whether the action is happening either toward or away from the speaker. We have it a little bit in English in contrasting the words “come” versus “go”. In Gmz however, these suffixes can and often do occur on many, many verbs and so the question of “where is John?” becomes very relevant. For example, when the first trumpet sounded, when hail and fire mixed with blood was thrown to the earth, was John on earth seeing it come down, or in heaven watching it go down? We cannot be ambiguous in how we state that in Gmz, and therefore had many, many discussions arising out of disagreements as to where John was located in relation to the events being described.
