Revelation 10:5

And the angel that I saw standing upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his right hand to heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created the heaven and the things that are therein, and the earth and the things that are therein, and the sea and the things that are therein, that there shall be delay no longer:

Lifted up his right hand and sware ... Here is another reason for holding this angel to be someone other than Christ. A vision of Christ taking an oath would not fit in here, or anywhere. In this oath, sworn by the eternal God himself (by the angel), it is inherent that some great truth of universal and everlasting significance is about to be announced; and it is exceedingly important to realize this, because of its bearing on the meaning of the last clause in Revelation 10:6, "that there shall be delay no longer."

If there is to be no delay, why then do we seem to get exactly that, a delay?

The delay is only apparent. What we have in Revelation 10 does not intervene chronologically between the sixth and seventh trumpets. It is simply a description of the present dispensation from a different viewpoint.[25]

Barclay thought that the meaning here is as the writer of Hebrews had it, "Yet a little while, and the coming one will come, and shall not tarry."[26] However, the great oath was not that the delay would be brief, but that there would be "no delay." We must go back to the last two verses of Revelation 9 to find what this means. When, after all of God's warning judgments have fallen upon people, and when their state of rejection against God is final and complete, the final judgment of the Second Advent will occur then. Therefore, the events of Revelation 10 are not an "interlude" in time, but only in a literary sense. "The sounding of the seventh trumpet would usher in the finish of God's mystery."[27] "Redemption will be finished at the Second Coming of Christ."[28]

We have interpreted this verse as it stands in our version (ASV), but before leaving it, the fact should be noted that the KJV should be followed here, that "there should be time no longer." Roberts pointed out that "the word from which delay comes is [@chronos], which literally means time."[29] It would appear that the reasons behind the change are theological and philosophical, rather than textual. All of the manuscripts and cursives that have come down through the ages to us have time instead of delay except the Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, and a few cursives, of which there are hundreds.[30] In this connection, it should also be remembered that both Sinaiticus and Vaticanus are of the same family of manuscripts, thus being practically but one witness instead of two. This shows the superiority of the KJV above subsequent versions in a very important particular, namely, that the KJV scholars believed they were translating God's word and accordingly had a higher regard for the text; whereas, in subsequent versions and translations, the translators took into consideration their own theological and philosophical views in choosing a rendition. This is a prime reason why the KJV must never be abandoned as a checking device against subsequent renditions. In this instance, the interpretation is not affected, because there being "time no longer" would also include the meaning that there would be no delay; but the awesome grandeur of the angel's words in the KJV are lost in our version.

The commentators who keep explaining why this should be rendered "delay" overlook the simple truth that the state of rebellion evident in Revelation 9:20,21 is represented as continuing until the very end; and thus the pronouncement that there should be no delay between that state and the end is meaningless.

None of these commentators attempts to say why this fact should be announced with an oath (and such an oath). What is announced is that time itself shall cease to exist. The clock of time shall stop.[31]

As Eller expressed it:

Sorry, the time has run out. The ball game is over. John is decidedly not one of those modern scholars who believes that human history never will involve an accounting but will simply go on forever.[32]

[25] William Hendriksen, op. cit., p. 151.

[26] William Barclay, The Revelation of John (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1976),p. 55.

[27] Ray Summers, Worthy is the Lamb (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1961), p. 161.

[28] Ralph Earle, op. cit., p. 560.

[29] J. W. Roberts, The Revelation of John (Austin, Texas: The R. B. Sweet Company, 1974), p. 85.

[30] A. Plummer, op. cit., p. 275.

[31] R. C. H. Lenski, op. cit., p. 318.

[32] Vernard Eller, op. cit., p. 113.