Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #23 of Revelation, chapter 22 and we are going to read Revelation 22:19:

And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.

In the previous verse, God had declared, “If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book.”  And now God is further protecting His Word, the Bible.  That is what these verses are doing; they provide protection to the Word of God and help to the people of God.  Everyone is to understand and know that the holy Word of God is the Bible.  It is the entire Bible and that would mean all 66 Books.  It is the Bible from Genesis through Revelation and every word in between and it is not to be added to, as some do when they attempt to pervert and alter the Word of God by adding to it. 

There are others that take a different approach and they are also emissaries of Satan as they come against the Bible, but instead of adding to it, they want to “diminish” or “take away” from it.  In some cases it may appear to be a “little thing,” and the tendency is that when someone accepts the majority of a truth from the Bible, we are more open to them and we let them get away with a “little error” like a little adding or a little subtracting to the Bible.  After all, if they have accepted 99.9% of the Bible, is that not enough? 

Or, what if they come out with a Bible that changes just a “little word,” like the Jehovah’s Witnesses have done?  They come forth and they alter just one little word and they change John 1:1 to read: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a God.”  They add the word “a” to the text and it is not in the original Greek, but it is something they added because they do not believe that Jesus Christ is God.  They realize that in verse 14 of the same chapter it says, “The word was made flesh, and dwelt among us,” and, therefore, if they say, “The word was God,” that teaches something they do not like.  In order to fit their erroneous doctrine, they alter the Word of God by adding the word “a” to the verse.  After all, it is just a “little thing” and, yet, God condemns them because they have added a word: ““If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book.”  So they have come under the wrath of God for adding just a word.  On the one hand, they “add” to the word and, on the other hand, they “diminish” because they take away from the glorious Person of the Lord Jesus Christ who is God Almighty.  So on both counts they are guilty and they have offended God by violating His Word and they have come under the wrath of God.

God’s word is holy.  It is set apart and it is protected by God.  He watches over it carefully and He did so all through history as it was being compiled and after its completion, He has watched over it and protected it down through the centuries of the church age.  There are always people that say that you cannot trust the Bible because the churches have mishandled it by adding books or by taking away books that should be there but are not.  We do not have to worry about any of that.  The 66 Books of the Bible that we have are perfect and complete in the Hebrew and Greek original languages and God said this in Psalm 12:6-7:

The words of JEHOVAH are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O JEHOVAH, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.

The Word of the Lord is kept and preserved by God for ever from this evil generation of man.  Prompted by Satan, man has tried again, and again, down through history to come against the Word of God in every way possible.  They have tried to assault the Bible.  The Bible is like a great mountain kingdom.  You can picture Satan and the emissaries of Satan and the armies of his dark kingdom coming against that mountain and looking for a weakness or looking for a “foothold” to take against it.  There are scholarly skeptics that criticize the Bible and they have done this for centuries, but the mighty fortress of the Word of God stands strong and those men come and go and the little books they write to criticize the Bible come and go and they mean nothing.  The Bible stands strong.

There are also attacks from within the churches and denominations and theologians that think they have found an error or fault in the Bible.  It is just incredible how consistent the enemies of God’s kingdom have been as they try to destroy the Bible.  It is a tremendous testimony to the fact that the Bible is still here after thousands of years.  It has been the most hated book ever written because it is the only Book written by God.  It is despised (and has been despised) by millions and millions of people.  Atheists hate it and have vowed to stamp it out.  The Bible has been attacked from within the church by popes and pastors and bishops.  Every attack, whether it has been a frontal attack or a sneak attack, has been put down by God and the people of God have in our possession His holy Word.  It is still here.  It has not been stamped out.  It has not been confiscated and it has not been rid from the earth.  The holy Word of God, the Bible, remained even into the evil day of the Great Tribulation when Satan was loosed and took his seat as the man of sin in the churches and congregations of the world.  He then did everything he could to trample upon the Word of God and, yet, God’s Word endured and continued on through the Great Tribulation and it lasted beyond Satan’s time of rule as the man of sin and the beast that ruled over the churches and the world.  The Word of God was triumphant and defeated Satan.  Satan was put down and he fell on May 21, 2011, but the Word of the Lord was lifted up in victory over that tremendous assault of the 23 years of the Great Tribulation. 

Now we have entered into the Day of Judgment and the peoples of the world are openly, blatantly and arrogantly rebelling against the Word of God and its decrees concerning marriage and divorce are completely disregarded.  Its decrees concerning the Sunday Sabbath are ignored.  The Laws of God are being trampled upon by the world and, yet, the Word of God has risen above this worldwide assault by the masses of the unsaved people of the earth to bring judgment upon them and to pronounce their fall and destruction.  “Babylon has fallen” and not the Word of God.  The kingdoms of this world that God had given to Satan are the ones that are now under the wrath of God and under “the judgment written,” as the Lord says of His saints that partake in the judgment process, in Psalm 149:9: “To execute upon them the judgment written: this honour have all his saints.”  It is the written Word that God has opened up at the time of the end and it pronounced the judgment on the churches and congregations and it was the Bible that brought about the fall of the corporate church and ended the church age.  The Bible did that and it was the Bible that shut the door to heaven, as the Bible proclaimed that May 21, 2011 would be Judgment Day and the day that the door would shut.  And it is the Bible’s insistence that the Word of God continues to declare “no more salvation” into this prolonged period of Judgment Day and God’s Word will endure to the end of this world and into eternity future. 

God will keep and preserve His Word forever.  The Word of the Lord is what lasts forever and not the sinner, as God says in 1Peter 1:24-25:

For all is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: But the word of the Lord endureth for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.

This is the mighty Word, the voice of the Lord that thundereth marvelously “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit.” 

The Bible has withstood the forces of the enemies for thousands of years and it is still a source of comfort, strength, inspiration and encouragement to the cast down soul of the child of God.  God’s people endure because of the Word of God, the Bible.  God’s Word is everything to us.  It is through the Word of God that He saved us.  It is through the Word of God that we continue on, day by day, cleaving unto His Word.  We certainly would have perished in our affliction were it not for the glorious statutes, judgments and laws of God.  It is the Word of God that has kept us and preserved us and it will see us through, as God says of His people: “But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.”  And who can endure but those that are attached to the continuing and enduring Word of God?  Those that turn back from the Word of God do not endure.  They will be destroyed.

In Revelation 22, where God says, “And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy,” 

The Greek word translated as “take away” is Strong’s #851 and it is found about 10 times in the New Testament.  In at least three verses it is translated as “cut off” or “smote off” in regard to someone’s ear.  It says in Mark 14:47:

And one of them that stood by drew a sword, and smote a servant of the high priest, and cut off his ear.

We know from another Gospel account that this one that drew a sword was Peter and he smote off the ear of a servant of the high priest.  The word “cut off” is the same word translated as “take away” in our verse.  It carries the same idea because the man’s ear was taken away by the smite of a sword and that is a very good illustration of what God is telling us about His Word, the Bible, because the Bible is one cohesive whole.  It is a “living organism” that God has compiled and it is “one,” just like our bodies are one body but our ears are part of our bodies.  When Peter took a sword and cut off the ear of the servant, he removed an integral to the man’s body.  It does not matter how small the piece is that was “cut off,” does it?  If the tip of your finger is cut off in an accident and a little piece of the finger is removed, that person has lost a piece of his body.  That is exactly how it is with the Bible.  It does not matter where someone is trying to “cut off” from the Word of God or what portion they are coming against by removing a word, a verse, a passage or even a “jot or tittle.”  It is part of the whole of the Bible and it is not to be touched. 

This is the reason why these “modern” Bibles are so terrible.  They have dared to put forth their hand against the Word of God and remove verses or, in some cases, entire passages.  Some other Bible translations cast doubt upon the Word of God by saying, “In the more reliable manuscripts, this passage about Jesus’ encounter with the woman found in adultery is not found.”  These are things that some translations have put in the Bible and they have done something very wrong and anyone that removes a part of the Bible is wrong.  The Bible says, “And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life,” and God will “cut off” his part in the Book of Life, because this word “take away” can be translated as “cut off.”  God will cut off that person or that church or denomination from His kingdom.  For individuals, He will take away their part out of the Book of Life from the creation standpoint.  That is what is in view, as we were all “in Adam” and, in that sense, we were all created with life and if we sin, it is as if we are removed from that Book of Life.  Of course, God has another Book of Life for the elect.  It is the Lamb’s Book of Life and no one can ever be removed from that Book.  Only the elect have their names written there, while the other book has all the names of every human being and their names are blotted out when they sin. 

So this is language indicating that an individual comes under the wrath of God and they lose eternal life and they lose life itself, but they are also cut off from “the holy city.”  The people that typically add or subtract from the Bible are identified with the kingdom of God as part of the corporate church and earthly Jerusalem and they have professed to be true believers and, therefore, they profess to be part of heavenly Jerusalem.  But when they alter God’s word, they give themselves away and it reveals their true heart condition and they are “cut off” out of the holy city and they are not part of the New Jerusalem we read about in Revelation 21 and 22.  We read there that this city is the wonderful, beautiful and glorious city of God that is made up of everyone God has saved.  But these professing Christians are “without the gates” and they are “without the city” and they are “cut off” from the promises written in this Book; and that would mean they are cut off from inheriting the land and they are cut off from the promise that God would wipe away the tears from their eyes.  They are cut off from that.  They are cut off from the promise of no more death.  They will experience death.  They will weep and have sorrow and pain.  They are cut off from all the wonderful promises of the Bible and the faithful declarations of God to His people.  They are cut off from all of it.  They will not live forever and they will not enter into the new heaven and new earth. 

Do you see how God has protected His Word and how jealous He is of the whole Bible?  It is not a little thing to mishandle the Word of God.  Great care must be taken when the reader comes to the Bible, especially when anyone attempts to teach from the Bible.  That is why God warns those that would teach of greater damnation because they are taking upon themselves a task that is a very sacred thing.  The Bible is a holy Book and it must be handled extremely carefully.