Revelation 3:14

Jesus is the Amen because he guarantees the truth of any statement, and the execution of any promise, made by himself. He is consequently the faithful and true witness, whose counsel and rebuke (Revelation 3:18-19) however surprising and unwelcome, are therefore to be laid to heart as authoritative. A faithful witness is one who can be trusted never to misrepresent his message, by exaggeration or suppression, (ἀληθινός practically = ἀληθής as often, since a real witness is naturally a truthful and competent one) his veracity extending not only to his character but to the contents of his message. In point of sincerity and unerring insight (as opposed to “false” in both senses of the term), Jesus is the supreme moral critic; the church is the supreme object of his criticism. He is also absolutely trustworthy, and therefore his promises are to be believed (Revelation 3:20-21), or rather God's promises are assured and realised to men through him (cf. π. καὶ ἀ. in 2MMalachi 2:11). Compare the fine Assyrian hymn of Ishtar (Jastrow, p. 343): “Fear not the mind which speaks to thee comes with speech from me, withholding nothing.… Is there any utterance of mine that I addressed to thee, upon which thou couldst not rely?” (also, Eurip. Ion 1537). The resemblance of ἡ ἀρχή κ. τ. λ., to a passage in Colossians is noteworthy as occurring in an open letter to the neighbouring church of Laodicea (Philonic passages in Grill, pp. 106 110). Here the phrase denotes “the active source or principle of God's universe or Creation” (ἀρχή, as in Greek philosophy and Jewish wisdom-literature, = αἰτία origin), which is practically Paul's idea and that of John 1:3 (“the Logos idea without the name Logos,” Beyschlag). This title of “incipient cause” implies a position of priority to everything created; he is the first in the sense that he is neither creator (a prerogative of God in the Apocalypse), nor created, but creative. It forms the most explicit allusion to the pre-existence of Jesus in the Apocalypse, where he is usually regarded as a divine being whose heavenly power and position are the outcome of his earthly suffering and resurrection: John ascribes to him here (not at Revelation 12:5, as Baldensperger, 85, thinks) that pre-existence which, in more or less vital forms, had been predicated of the messiah in Jewish apocalyptic (cf. En. xlviii.). This pre-existence of messiah is an extension of the principle of determinism; God foreordained the salvation itself as well as its historical hour. See the Egyptian hymn: “He is the primeval one, and existed when as yet nothing existed; whatever is, He made it after He was. He is the father of beginnings.… God is the truth, He lives by Truth, He lives upon Truth, He is the king of Truth.” The evidence for the pre-existence of messiah in Jewish Christian literature is examined by Dr. G. A. Barton, Journ. Bibl. Lit. 1902, pp. 78 91. Cf. Introd. § 6.