Revelation 22:10

John has just seen the new heaven and the new earth (Revelation 21:1), the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God (Revelation 21:2), and the river of the water of life with the tree of life (Revelation 22:1–2). The “he” who speaks in verse 6 is the angel who has been showing him the city since that vision began (Revelation 21:9–27). This is the angel’s last great word to John, and it sets a seal of truth on all the visions before it.

The words echo the book’s first verse, which speaks of “things which must shortly come to pass” and tells how they were sent by an angel to John (Revelation 1:1). The same assurance stands at the beginning and at the end of the prophecy, and everything between is framed by it. After this passage come Jesus’s last promises, the open invitation to “take the water of life freely” (Revelation 22:17), and the book’s closing blessings and warnings.

John wrote to churches living under the Roman Empire, likely in the reign of Domitian around AD 95, when believers in Asia Minor, where the seven churches stood, were pressed to join in the worship of the emperor and could lose their livelihoods or their lives for refusing. For them, “These sayings are faithful and true” meant that God’s promised justice and deliverance were sure, and that their suffering would count for something.

Three Greek words carry the angel’s assurance. “Sayings” is lógos, something said: a word, a message, a discourse. Here it takes in the whole body of visions and words that John has received and written down. “Faithful” is pistós, trustworthy and deserving of belief, and “true” is alēthinós, true, genuine and real, as opposed to what is false or only an appearance. Together they tell us that the prophecy can be relied on and that what it shows is real.

God himself has already said this of his words, from the throne of the new creation: “these words are true and faithful” (Revelation 21:5). The angel’s assurance rests on who God is. “God is not a man, that he should lie” (Numbers 23:19), Paul calls him the “God, that cannot lie” (Titus 1:2), and Hebrews tells believers to hold fast their hope because he who promised is faithful (Hebrews 10:23). Because God is truthful, what he has spoken about the end of all things will be done, and his plan from creation to its completion will be carried through.

In verse 7 the voice changes, and Jesus himself speaks. “Behold” is idoú, “lo!” or “see!”, a word that calls for full attention to what follows. “Come” is érchomai, the everyday verb for coming or going, and here it is his own return. “Quickly” is tachý, from the adjective tachýs, “swift”, used as an adverb: quickly, soon, without delay, suddenly. It is a related word to the táchos of verse 6.

Jesus makes this promise again and again in Revelation. He made it earlier with the call to hold fast (Revelation 3:11), he makes it here, and he makes it twice more before the book ends (Revelation 22:12, Revelation 22:20). The promise comes from the one who has the authority to keep it.

With the promise comes a blessing. “Blessed” is makários, “blessed, happy”, and it declares God’s favour on a person. The book opened with a blessing on those who read, hear and keep the words of this prophecy (Revelation 1:3), and near its end Jesus blesses those who keep them.

“Keepeth” is tēréō, to guard something by keeping an eye on it, to take note of a prophecy, or to carry out a command. To keep the sayings of this book is to hold on to them and live by them: to heed its warnings against compromise, trust its promises of victory, obey what it commands, and endure hardship with its vision of the new creation before us. Jesus said that the one who has his commandments and keeps them is the one who loves him (John 14:21), and James calls believers to be “doers of the word, and not hearers only” (James 1:22).

What is kept is “the sayings of the prophecy of this book”. “Sayings” is lógos again. “Prophecy” is prophēteía, prediction, the inspired foretelling of what is to come and the declaring of God’s will. “Of this book” is toútou biblíon, “of this” with the word for a book or scroll. The phrase takes in the whole of Revelation, all of which is given to be kept. Its sayings all lead to Christ, to his triumph over sin and death, his holy city and his everlasting reign with his redeemed people (Revelation 21:1–7).

John now speaks in his own name: “And I John saw these things, and heard them.” He is the eyewitness who received the revelation and wrote it down. “Saw” is blépō, to look at, perceive or behold, and “heard” is akoúō, to hear, to give audience, to understand. “These things”, taûta, are all that he has been shown, above all the new heaven, the new earth and the holy city of Revelation 21. He both saw and heard, for the visions came with words that declared and explained them, so his witness is complete.

“When I had heard and seen”, the weight of it all brought him to the ground. “Worship” is proskynéō, built from pros, “toward”, and a verb for kissing. It means to bow low or lie face down in homage, and so to adore. Among the Greeks and Romans of John’s day this bowing down, proskynesis, was a common way to honour emperors, gods and powerful men. Israel and the church kept worship for God alone.

John has done this once before. Earlier in the book he fell at an angel’s feet and was stopped in the same way (Revelation 19:10).

The angel stops him at once with a firm command, “See thou do it not”, and gives his reason: “for I am thy fellowservant”. The word is sýndoulos, a fellow slave, one who serves alongside another under the same master. However glorious he is, the angel is a created being who serves the same Lord as John.

He then widens the circle. He belongs with John’s “brethren the prophets”, who received God’s word and delivered it, and with “them which keep the sayings of this book”, every believer who holds to it. Angels, prophets and ordinary believers who keep God’s word all serve one Master together, and each has his calling from God. True greatness in God’s kingdom lies in humble service, and the angel shows it by turning away honour that belongs to God.

Last comes “worship God”. The verb for worship returns, now with its right object. Theós is the common word for a god, and with the article it means the one supreme God, the Creator. This short command is the heart of the verse. It stands with the first commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3–5), and with Jesus’s answer to Satan, that the Lord God alone is to be worshipped and served (Matthew 4:10). Peter did what this angel did when Cornelius fell at his feet: he raised him up and told him that he too was a man (Acts 10:25–26). Paul warned the Colossians against the “worshipping of angels” (Colossians 2:18), a sign that some in the early church were drawn to it while the world around them honoured many gods.

Verse 10 brings the angel’s next command. “Seal” is sphragízō, to stamp with a signet or private mark to secure or preserve something, and by implication to keep it secret or to attest it. In John’s day a scroll or letter was sealed, often with wax and a signet ring, to show that it was genuine and to keep its contents closed until the time came to open it. To leave it unsealed was to make it public.

Daniel received the opposite command. He was told to shut up the words and seal the book until the time of the end (Daniel 12:4), and was told again that the words were sealed till then (Daniel 12:9). John is told to leave his book open. Revelation is given to be read, heard and kept (Revelation 1:3), by the churches it was first sent to and by every generation after them. Earlier in the book the Lamb alone was found worthy to open the scroll of God’s purposes (Revelation 5:1–7), and the prophecy that comes from him stays open for his servants. The book closes with a warning against altering it (Revelation 22:18–19), so what God has disclosed stays whole and open to all.

“For the time is at hand” gives the reason. “Time” is kairós, an occasion, a set or proper time, a season. “At hand” is engýs, near, used of place or of time. The season in which these prophecies are fulfilled has drawn near, and so the book has to be open to God’s people now. The apostles wrote in the same way. Paul says that it is “high time to awake” (Romans 13:11–12), and James tells believers to be patient because the coming of the Lord is near (James 5:8).

Verse 11 sounds like four commands, and it is a solemn declaration. It looks to a decisive moment when the time for repentance and change is over and each person’s moral and spiritual character is fixed for ever. The four clauses fall into two pairs set against each other, the unjust and the filthy on one side and the righteous and the holy on the other, and every clause ends on “still”.

“Unjust” is adikéō, from adikos, to be unjust, to do wrong, to injure. It describes a life marked by wrongdoing against God’s righteous standard. “Filthy” speaks of moral defilement, the uncleanness of a life lived in rebellion against God’s purity. On the other side, “righteous” is díkaios, from dikē, just and upright, keeping to God’s standard. “Holy” describes those who have been set apart for God. “Still” is éti, “yet” or “still”, and here it speaks of each state going on unchanged.

The moment in view is Christ’s return and the judgment that comes with it. His promise “Behold, I come quickly” stands on both sides of this verse, in verse 7 and again in Revelation 22:12, and Scripture teaches that it is appointed to men once to die and after this the judgment (Hebrews 9:27). God will render to every man according to his deeds (Romans 2:6), and Jesus said that the unrighteous go away into eternal punishment and the righteous into eternal life (Matthew 25:46). Daniel’s closing chapter, which verse 10 has just recalled, speaks of the wise being cleansed and refined (Daniel 12:10). At that moment God confirms the choices people have already made, and the character formed in this life becomes what each one is in eternity.

The urgency belongs to the present. A few verses later the gracious invitation goes out to take the water of life freely (Revelation 22:17), and Paul says that now is the accepted time and the day of salvation (2 Corinthians 6:2).

These six verses give us a word to stand on. God, who cannot lie, has set his seal of truth on everything in this book, and the Son who speaks in it is himself the faithful witness of its first chapter (Revelation 1:5) and “the faithful and true witness” (Revelation 3:14). He is the Word who was with God and was God (John 1:1), the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end (Revelation 22:13). His coming is certain, and his promises lead to the new creation where God dwells with his people (Revelation 21:3–4).

The passage also shows who God is in his worship. Angels who stand in his presence call themselves servants alongside us, and the glory of worship belongs to him alone, to God and to the Lamb. It shows his patience and his justice together. The book stays open, the invitation to the water of life still stands, and a day is coming when every life will remain as it is. Over all of it stands the blessing Jesus gives: “blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of the prophecy of this book.”