“I Am Coming Soon”
“I AM COMING SOON”
REVELATION 22:6-15
The decisions we have made about God and his goodness will be confirmed and made permanent.
For 22:6:, see 19:11; 21:5. We meet a crux in interpretation in 22:6-7; “what must soon take place … I am coming soon,” see also 3:11; 22:20. It is increasingly being claimed that the apostles were mistaken about Christ’s teaching on his return, or even that they projected their own ideas into his teaching. It is therefore suggested that we do not need to take seriously the New Testament teaching on Christ’s second coming. The one answer we may not give is that the time measure used is God’s: see 2 Peter 3:8. The answer lies in another direction. If our explanation has achieved its purpose, it will have made clear the timelessness of so much in Revelation, so that people were justified in thinking that its prophecies were going into effect in their day. It is not important when Christ comes but that he comes, and that there has never been a time since the destruction of Jerusalem when he could not have come. It is our attitude to the coming that matters (see also 2 Timothy 4:8) and we are meant to be on the watch.
“I fell down to worship” (22:8; see also 19:10): the Greek word is used of any act of profound respect, especially prostration, to high-ranking people as well as gods. It is therefore used frequently in the New Testament in settings where “worship” is misleading. John, the Jew, could never have thought of worshiping an angel. It is his extreme respect that is being rejected. Those entrusted with the word are apt to expect undue honor from people (see John 5:43f.).
In 22:11 we have neither indifference to human salvation, nor a suggestion that there is no hope for those mentioned. Those who have taken in the warnings of “this book” (22:10) and have gone their way unchanged have little hope of changing. While we may not exclude hope so long as there is life, we should have little for those who have repeatedly heard and repeatedly rejected. Theoretically “the gates” should come before “the tree of life” (22:14), but since both are pictures of Christ, it represents the normal order. Those who practice falsehood will come to love it (22:15). “The dogs”: see Matthew 7:6; Philippians 3:2, a description often applied by the Jews to the pagans. It refers to the person without a sense of values or morals: the dog was the scavenger of the ancient city.