And if anyone takes away from the
words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the tree
of life, and from the holy city, which are written in this book. (Rev 22:19
NASB)
Rev 22:19 is a common "proof-text" used against
Latter-day Saints and in favour of Sola Scriptura and/or the doctrine that
public revelation ceased with the inscripturation of the final book of the New
Testament. On this, see the discussion in Not
By Scripture Alone: A Latter-day Saint Refutation of Sola Scriptura.
Notwithstanding, this text is actually problematic for many flavours
of Protestantism as it teaches that one can lose their salvation: note
how God will “take away” their promised inheritance—it is something they had
but forfeited.
Disciples of Jesus need to guard
the words of the prophecy in order to retain their place in the city and their
access to the tree of life (22:19). If they take away the words of the book,
God will strip them of their citizenship rights. They will end up like Dan,
excluded from the register of tribes; their names will be erased from the book
of life. The warning against tampering with the words of the prophecy is in
part a warning about the importance of preserving the actual book of Revelation
intact. John claims to be recording words of God. Those who alter the book have
not simply edited the words of John but the words of God. Jesus discloses
himself in the words that John writes. John’s book is the means by which Jesus
is unveiled to the church, disclosed in the consummation of his love for his
bride. To take away the words of the book is to take away that disclosure. It
is to disfigure the unveiled Christ, to deprive the church of the full glory of
her Lord. (Peter J. Leithart, Revelation, 2 vols. [The International
Theological Commentary on the Holy Scripture of the Old and New Testaments;
London: Bloomsbury, 2018], 2:428)
Reformed Protestant G. K. Beale, himself an advocate of the “Perseverance
of the Saints,” noted that
the warnings in 22:18–19 are directed not primarily to
those outside the church but to all in the church community, as the warnings of
Deuteronomy were addressed to all Israelites. Those who do not heed the
warnings profess to be Christian, but their allegiance to other gods betrays
their confession. As a result, the inheritance they lay claim to by their
apparent testimony will be withheld because they deny by their actions the
faith they profess. Not only will they not receive their purported inheritance
at the end of the age, but they will also suffer “the plagues that are written
in this book” (v 19). These “plagues” include not merely the suffering of the
last judgment in the “lake of fire,” as v 19 implies, but penal inflictions incurred
by the ungodly throughout the time prior to that judgment. In line with this
are uses of the πληγή (“plague”) word-group elsewhere in the book, which
are applied to the era preceding Christ’s last coming (e.g., 8:12; 9:18, 20;
11:6; 13:3, 12, 14ff.; cf. also 16:21).
Therefore, the whole range of plagues recorded in the
book will come on the apostate, in agreement with the allusion to Deut. 29:20:
“every curse that is written in this book will rest on him” (likewise Deut.
29:21; 28:58–61; Jer. 25:13). One Armenian version makes the all-encompassing
reference in Rev. 22:18 explicit with “all
the plagues that have been written in this book” (likewise JB: “every plague
mentioned in the book”). The possible allusion to Deut. 28:58–61 also suggests
an all-encompassing reference to the plagues in Revelation (G.
K. Beale, The Book of Revelation: A Commentary on the Greek Text [New
International Greek Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1999],
1152-53)
This is another example of a commonly used proof-text used against
Latter-day Saints that, when exegeted properly, refutes the false theology of
many of our Protestant critics.
On the book/tree of life textual variant, see:
Kevin L. Barney, A
Book or a Tree? A Textual Variant in Revelation 22: 19
