These words are trustworthy and true

Twenty weeks of writers have said what they were doing. This is the last statement any of them makes, and it is the last thing the Book says about itself.

These words are faithful and true.

And then a chain of custody that runs in a single sentence: the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, sent His angel to show His servants what must soon take place.

God, to an angel, to a servant, to servants. Four links, named, in the last chapter of the canon.

It is the same claim the volume met in Week Four, where John was told to write, and the same warning follows it a few verses later: add nothing, take nothing away.

And the phrase is not new here. The angel says it again in verse 8’s neighborhood, and it appeared already at 21:5, where the One on the throne says: I am making everything new. Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.

That is the only place in Revelation where God Himself gives a dictation instruction, and the content of it is the reason to write.

Which is a fitting last testimony, because it is what every writer in this slot has done for twenty weeks, each in his own way.

Moses wrote the words and deposited them beside the ark as a witness against a people he would not live to see drift. Jeremiah dictated to a scribe, watched a king cut it up and burn it, and dictated it again longer. Isaiah was told to inscribe it on a scroll for a later day. Habakkuk was told to make it plain so a runner could carry it. A chronicler named his archives. Hezekiah’s men copied. Psalmists headed their songs with the worst weeks of their lives. Luke investigated and wrote so a man could be certain. John selected, and said so. Paul signed against forgers and said what he wrote was the Lord’s command. Peter wrote so they would remember after his departure and called another apostle’s letters Scripture. Jude wrote the letter he did not want to write. A council wrote it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us. And the prophets searched their own writing without understanding it, and were told they were serving somebody later.

None of them behaved like men producing something to be taken on trust alone. Every one of them left the process on the page.

One more thing belongs in the last entry of this slot, and it is about what none of them claimed. Not one writer in Scripture says his book is beautiful, original, or his own achievement. They say where it came from, who carried it, what it is for, and what will happen to anyone who alters it. That is a consistent set of concerns, and it is not the set a man has about his own work.

And the last of them, on an island, writes down four words about the whole enterprise: faithful, and true.

The formula appears at 19:9, 21:5 and 22:6, and the same adjectives are given to Christ Himself at 3:14 as the Amen, the faithful and true witness, and at 19:11 as Faithful and True. The words describing the book and the words describing its subject are identical.

The chain in 22:6 — God, angel, John, servants — matches the chain in 1:1–2 almost exactly, which brackets the whole book. Revelation opens and closes with the same statement of provenance.

The phrase the God of the spirits of the prophets is unusual and appears only here. It has been read as God who inspires the prophets’ spirits, which fits the argument of 2 Peter 1:21 from Week Two.

Verses 18–19 give the warning against adding and subtracting, studied in Week Four, and verse 20 gives the last promise and the last prayer. The final page of the Bible contains a claim about the text, a warning about the text, and an invitation.

Revelation 22:10 reverses Daniel 12:4 explicitly. Daniel was told to seal up the words until the time of the end; John is told not to seal up the words of this book, because the time is near. The two instructions are the same idiom pointed in opposite directions.

Look it upG4103 πιστός pistos, faithful, trustworthy · G228 ἀληθινός alethinos, true, genuine · G1166 δείκνυμι deiknumi, to show, make known · G1401 δοῦλος doulos, servant, slave

Where this touchesRevelation 22:6–21 · Revelation 1:1–3 (Week Fourteen, Day Seven) · Revelation 21:5 · Revelation 3:14 (Week Seven, Day Three) · 2 Peter 1:21 (Week Two, Day Three). Every writer this slot has heard from across twenty weeks is named in today's Wells.