‘And he said to me, These words are faithful and true, and the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, sent his angels to show to his servants the things that must shortly happen.'
The speaker is concerned that John will recognise the divine validity of what he has seen. All is totally reliable and completely true. But who is the speaker? At first sight we would assume it is the angel of Revelation 21:9, but in the next verse it is clearly Jesus Who is the speaker, and it is He Who is faithful and true (Revelation 19:11). (However we must compare how postscripts in letters skip from one thought to another). Whoever it is he is saying that the angels have come to John from the God Who Himself guides the spirits of prophets, with Spirit inspired words. Therefore John as a prophet can be sure of the things that he has seen, for God wants His servants to know what will be. Again it is stressed that these things will ‘shortly happen', as indeed they did. And they have gone on happening. For the ‘thousand years', that indeterminate but complete length of time before His coming, still continues, and is still ‘a short time' to God.