Come, Lord Jesus

Revelation 22:20 - We have the hope and anticipation of the second coming of Christ; believers need to remain faithful and vigilant.

Sep 06, 2025

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“He who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.”
‭‭Revelation‬ ‭22‬:‭20‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Eschatology alert! I always feel shaky and out of my league when God points me to Revelation. He mercifully picked the penultimate verse of the Bible this time, which is much easier to understand than many of the other verse in this book (example: “They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.” Rev 22:4).

The verse begins with the words, “He who testifies to these things says”, referring to Jesus Christ, who is called “the faithful witness” in Revelation 1:5. In the Book of Revelation, Jesus is the revealer of divine truth, the witness to events still to come. Throughout the Bible, a witness plays an important role in giving emphasis to the trustworthiness and authority of whatever message is being conveyed. Having Jesus as the witness to the prophetic visions John has documented in Revelation gives us the proof that they will all come to pass.

The message of Jesus in this verse is direct and simple: “Yes, I am coming soon.” We have the promise of His return to establish His kingdom and fulfill God’s plan, although we do not know precisely when that will happen. In terms of the eternal timescale of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, soon could be in the next 30 seconds or it could be 30,000 years from now. We have the hope and anticipation of the second coming of Christ; believers need to remain faithful and vigilant.

John uses a very familiar word next — “Amen,” a word that is the same in modern English as it was in Hebrew (אָמֵן) and Koine Greek (ἀμήν). It has nearly the same pronunciation and meaning in all of these languages as well. From Blue Letter Bible:

at the end - so it is, so be it, may it be fulfilled. It was a custom, which passed over from the synagogues to the Christian assemblies, that when he who had read or discoursed, had offered up solemn prayer to God, the others responded Amen, and thus made the substance of what was uttered their own.

So it is.

The verse concludes with a hat tip to an Aramaic (the language Jesus spoke) phrase that was well known in the church at the time: Maranatha! (מרנאתא - meaning “Come, Lord!” John has finished documenting a number of prophetic events, and now at the end of the Book of Revelation he expresses his emphatic longing for the return of Jesus to His people.

This short commentary by American New Testament scholar Robert H. Mounce closes this investigation into Revelation 22:20 nicely:

“At the very close of the book is the confession that the answers to the problems of life do not lie in man’s ability to create a better world but in the return of the One whose sovereign power controls the course of human affairs.”1

Heaven On Wheels Daily Prayer:

Father in Heaven, we anticipate the coming return of our Lord Jesus with excitement. We know that this will happen as Jesus has testified to its occurrence through the Apostle John, and it will be a blessed day when He takes His Church to live with Him forever. Thank You for the blessed assurance found in these final words of the Bible. AMEN.

"Revelation 22 (NIV) - He who testifies to these." Blue Letter Bible. Web. 1 Sep, 2025.

BibleHub was accessed on September 1, 2025 for commentary on Revelation 22:20

Commentary quotations from Enduring Word are used with the written permission of the author

Mounce, Robert H. "The Book of Revelation" (The New International Commentary on the New Testament) (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1997)