1:9 In the second half of his greetings (vv. 9–20), John expands his earlier prescript (v. 4a) by relating the remarkable christophany by which the Risen Christ commissions him to write Revelation. Such a commissioning vision is not unique to John; it is the normal vehicle by which God commissioned the OT prophets, and then Paul, who received his call through a christophany while traveling on the Damascus Road (cf. Acts 9:1–9). The function of such visions is twofold: the first and more explicit function is to clarify the nature of the prophet’s task, while the second and more implicit function is to confer divine authority upon the prophet for the task at hand. The latter function would have been especially important for Paul, for example, whose apostolic authority derived not from his as…