Doctrine of Imminency. Revelation 21:9 - 22:6-7
What begins in
Revelation 22:6 is the conclusion to the book. It goes back and picks up the
same themes that are introduced in the first chapter of Revelation. Cf. 1:1
with 22:6, NASB “The
Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show to His bond-servants,
the things which must soon take place … And
he said to me, “These words are faithful and true”; and the Lord, the God of
the spirits of the prophets, sent His angel to show to His bond-servants the
things which must soon take place.”
In Revelation
1:3 is the first of seven blessing statements in the book NASB “Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words
of the prophecy, and heed the things which are written in it; for the time is
near.” In 22:7, 10 NASB “And behold, I am coming quickly. Blessed is
he who heeds the words of the prophecy of this book…And he said to me, ‘Do not
seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near.’” What
exactly does it mean that he is coming quickly and the time is near? Does that
mean that Jesus should have come very close to the time that Revelation was
written, or does it indicate something else?
Revelation 1:8 NASB “I
am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God [The Father], “who is and who
was and who is to come, the Almighty.” 1:17, Jesus is speaking, “…Do not be
afraid; I am the first and the last…” So these are applied to both the Father
and to the Son. Then in Revelation 22:13 it is the Son speaking, NASB
“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the
end.”
The parallels here between
the beginning and the end show us that we are coming to the conclusion where we
can expect the writer to issue a challenge by way of application to those who
read Revelation. What is interesting is that he also puts a curse in here for
anyone who messes with the text or misapplies it.
Revelation 22:6 NASB
“And he said to me, ‘These words are faithful and true’; and the Lord, the God
of the spirits of the prophets, sent His angel to show to His bond-servants the
things which must soon take place.” This is just a summary taking us back to
the initial statements in chapter one that God had given the revelation first
to Jesus Christ—it is the revelation given to Him, He doesn’t originate it—and
then it is mediated to John through an angel. That fits a pattern that we see
throughout the Old Testament: when God reveals Himself He doesn’t just leave it
up to us to try to figure out what it means in terms of these prophecies and
dreams and visions, but there is an interpretation that is given along with the
dream. For example, in Daniel chapter two Nebuchadnezzar has the dream but then
God gives Daniel the interpretation. In Daniel chapters seven and eight Daniel
has the dream/vision and then an interpreting angel explains what everything
means. So we don’t just go to those dreams and visions and just guess at what
the symbolic value is of the various animals and features of the dream, and the
same thing is true for John. All of these images that are seen in Revelation
are explained. If they are not explained in Revelation then they are probably
explained somewhere else, like in the Old Testament where that particular
symbol originated, and so it is expected that the person who is reading
Revelation would have a knowledge of these Old Testament precedents.
So in verse 6 this
interpreting angel is now going to bring this to a conclusion and he reminds
John that these words, the words of the Revelation disclosed to John, “are faithful
and true.” This is an interesting phrase and it is used in two or three other
places in Revelation, notably in 21:5, “And He who sits on the throne said,
‘Behold, I am making all things new.’ And He said, ‘Write, for these words are
faithful and true’”; and
These two words “faithful”
and “true” are important to understand, especially if we go back to an Old Testament
context. They are based on two Hebrew words in the Old Testament. The first is emuna; the root is aman,
the verb, from where we get our word “amen.” It means to confirm something, it
has the root idea of support, that which is stable, dependable, unshakeable,
that which you put your faith in, that which you depend upon. And that is how
it comes to mean various things related to belief or faith, because we put our
faith in something that is dependable, something that is faithful—also true,
because something is faithful, dependable, it is true. Those are all aspects of
the same basic word group. Yet, when it comes over into Greek it picks up
different Greek words that don’t express that same idea but as in 3:14 the Lord
Jesus Christ is depicted by these three adjectives—the amen, which means the
faithful one, the dependable one, and then He is defined further as the
faithful and true witness, indicating His testimony to the grace of God.
This leads us into the whole
doctrine of inspiration and infallibility of Scripture. Revelation 22:6 NASB
“And he said to me, ‘These words are faithful and true’; and the Lord, the God
of the spirits of the prophets…” This is the God who oversees or is the one in
control of the spirits of the prophets. What does the word
“spirits” refer to? The Greek word that is translated “spirit,” pneuma [pneuma], as
well as the Hebrew word ruach, are words that have a huge range of meaning. They can refer
to the wind, to the immaterial part of man—in which case it would be a synonym
for the soul. They can refer to a sub-part of the immaterial makeup of man
which we sometimes refer to as the human spirit, the term which describes that
component of a human being that was lost by Adam when Adam sinned and entered
into spiritual death—separation from God, an inability to have fellowship or
communion with God because of sin. One of the basic errors that people can make
in dealing with languages is trying to make a word that is technical in one
place technical in every place. That particularly has caused problems in trying
to understand the basic components of the immaterial part of man.
There are two passages of
Scripture that are very clear about the immaterial makeup of man, showing the
distinctions between two aspects of man’s makeup. The first is Hebrews 4:12 –
“dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit.” The Word is going to make a
distinction between the soul and the spirit. Then 1 Thessalonians
But then there are other
passages, such as in Genesis and Exodus which talk about the spirit of the
Pharaoh. That is not talking about the spirit in the same sense that we see in
Hebrews 4:12 where it is something distinct from the soul. The spirit is used
as virtually a synonym for the soul because Pharaoh was not a believer, he was
spiritually dead. Paul says in Ephesians 2:1 that we were all born dead in our
trespasses and sins. So what part of us is dead? We are physically alive but
there is some component of man’s immaterial part that is dead, non-functioning
and separated from God, and that is what we refer to as the human spirit. But
every time we see the word “spirit” we can’t just automatically think that
means the Holy Spirit or the human spirit, when it can refer to wind or breath
or it can be a synonym for the immaterial part of man, including both soul and
spirit, even a synonym for soul, for emotion, and in some passages it can be a
synonym for mind or thinking. We have to look at the context. In 1 Corinthians
chapter three the word pneuma [pneuma] is used in about six verses with four different
meanings.
Here we have “the spirits of
the prophets.” If it was a singular spirit then we would be talking about the
Spirit of God who is involved in the communication and transmission of God’s
revelation through the prophets. But since it is a plural word it is not
talking about the singular Holy Spirit, it is talking about something in the
individual makeup of these prophets. The best way to understand the meaning of
the word “spirits” here isn’t in the sense of the human spirit but is just a
synonym for their immaterial makeup, probably focusing on their mentality
because God does not disengage the mentality of these prophets when He reveals
His Word to them. Support for that is found in 2 Peter
2 Peter
2 Peter
Definition of Inspiration:
God so supernaturally directed the writers of scripture that without
waving their human intelligence, their individuality, their literary style,
their personal feelings, or any other human factor, his own complete and
coherent message to man was recorded with perfect accuracy in the original
languages of scripture, the very words bearing the authority of divine
authorship.
Revelation 22:6 NASB
“… sent His angel to show to His bond-servants the things which must soon take
place.” This is where we start getting into some of the really important
aspects of understanding these two verses. There is the word “soon,” which is
the Greek word engus [e)gguj], and then another word, “quickly,” a translation of the
Greek word tachus [taxuj] which means quickly, at a rapid rate, or sometimes
it can mean soon. It can indicate that once something starts the progress is
going to take place very rapidly. It can also means
that it is going to happen very soon in close temporal proximity to the present.
It doesn’t always say which; we have to look at the context. When Jesus says He
is coming back quickly He doesn’t necessarily mean that there is not much time
to elapse before He comes back. What He can also means by the use of tachus is that when the process begins,
when the dominoes start to collapse they are going collapse quickly. Once we
come to the end times and things begin to happen they will all happen very
rapidly, and that is what we see really in the book of Revelation.
This language in verse 6
comes right out of the Old Testament. In Daniel
The doctrine of imminency simply means that something is hanging over the
head and it could drop at any moment. This has been a major doctrine in
Christianity since the earliest days of the church, i.e. that nothing has to
happen before Jesus comes back; there is no prophecy that has to be fulfilled
before Jesus returns. We see this in various statements from the early church
fathers. For example, Clement of Rome said: “Of a truth, soon and suddenly shall
His will be accomplished as the Scripture also bears witness, saying, “Speedily
will He come [tachus] and will not
tarry. The Lord shall suddenly come to His temple, even the holy one for whom you
look.” So there is this sense that it could happen at any moment. Irenaeus in Against Heresies says, “And therefore
when in the end the church shall suddenly be caught up from this it is said
there shall be Tribulation such as has not been since the beginning and neither
shall be.” So there was a sense of imminency that
Jesus could come at any moment. The next major event that we see in God’s
timetable is Jesus coming at the Rapture, and we don’t look for anything else—not
the Antichrist, not the seven seal judgments, or any of those things. Imminency means that Jesus Christ can return at any moment.
It is important to
understand the pre-Tribulation return of Jesus Christ at the Rapture. The
Rapture is the return of Jesus Christ in the air for all church age believers. Nothing
precedes that, it could happen at any moment. The
post-Tribulation Rapture view contends that all believers go through the entire
Tribulation. That would mean that a lot of things have to happen before Jesus
came back, so it can’t be imminent at all.
The purpose of the
doctrine of imminency is to keep each believer in a
constant state of expectancy. We are to be ready, not just sitting around getting
distracted in whatever other things we might want to do but to be looking,
waiting, watching, hoping for the return of Christ that we might be ready and
prepared and that we might not be ashamed at His coming, 1 John 2:28. This has
to be a reality for us. Believers are challenged to look for the blessed hope.
We are to watch for the Savior, 1 Thessalonians 5:6;
Luke 12:37; and we are to wait for the Savior, 1
Corinthians 1:7; 1 Thessalonians 1:10.
Luke 12:36-42 NASB
“Be like men who are waiting for their master when he returns from the wedding
feast, so that they may immediately open {the door} to him when he comes and
knocks.
The point is, the person who is put in a position of responsibility and
fulfils his responsibility without immediate oversight is someone who has
matured and learned to handle responsibility, and are able to handle
responsibility and leadership in the future kingdom.
Luke 12:43-46 NASB
“Blessed is that slave whom his master finds so doing when he comes.
No prophecy, then, must be
fulfilled between the baptism of the Spirit and the Rapture; this means that
the Rapture is imminent. That doesn’t mean that as we get to the end of the
church age some things happen that are either fulfilment of prophecy related to
the next stage, or begin to set the stage for the next stage. While the Rapture
is imminent, the Second Advent is not. Before the second
advent occurs there are many prophecies which must occur.
Revelation 22:7 NASB “And behold, I am coming quickly. Blessed is he who heeds the words of the prophecy of this book.” This is the sixth blessing statement in Revelation, it is a parenthetical statement reminding John that Jesus said when He comes He will come rapidly and so it is important to read the words of the prophecy of this book.