The angel who spoke with John told him that everything he saw and heard was faithful and true (Revelation 22:6), and the summation of it all was that the Lord was making all things new (Revelation 21:5), which he who sat upon the throne declared was true and faithful.[1] This angel who spoke with John was the very angel whom the Lord had sent to bring John the message of the Apocalypse at the beginning of the book (Revelation 1:1), the whole of which John had now both seen and heard. He may have had a difficult time putting it all into words that men could understand (2Corinthians 12:2-4), but the Apocalypse was now finished and the angel told John all these things would shortly come to pass (Revelation 22:6).
The imminence of the Apocalyptic message is further emphasized in Revelation 22:7, where the Lord speaks in the first person, declaring he was coming quickly and pronounced a blessing upon those who kept or obeyed the prophetic words written in this book. The nearness of its fulfillment is the very theme which the Apocalypse sets for itself (Revelation 1:1, 3; 3:11; 22:6-7,10, 12, 20). Moreover, the message about the nearness of the Lord’s coming was taught by the other New Covenant writers (Romans 13:11-12; 1Corinthians 7:29; 1Peter 4:7), and when the word of God says these things would shortly come to pass, this is exactly what it means (cp. Genesis 41:32). If one removes the imminence of the Apocalyptic message, by pointing to presumed events 2000 years away, one does damage to the text. One simply cannot be faithful and true, by placing what John wrote 2000 years or more into the future.
In times past the prophets were told to seal up the words of the prophecy they recorded, because the timeframe of those events were far into the future (Isaiah 8:16; 29:11; Daniel 8:26; 12:4, 9) and none of those men who recorded those events could expect to live and see the fulfillment of what they said would occur. In fact, Peter wrote that it had been revealed to the ancient prophets that they spoke not to the people living in their own times but, rather, to the people in the first century AD to whom Peter wrote (1Peter 1:12). Although those prophets tried diligently to understand the times in which Christ would suffer and the glory that would follow, they desperately failed to satisfactorily understand what they, themselves, wrote (1Peter 1:10-11). The reason being, Men’s eyes have never seen, nor have their ears ever heard what God had prepared for us (1Corinthians 2:9). As I mentioned above, John, himself, after he had seen and heard, he still had trouble putting those things into words men could understand (2Corinthians 12:2-4). Therefore, John was forbidden to seal the words of the Apocalypse, because the time was at hand. What John wrote was, indeed, for the days of the first century AD.
Then, as if to place his signature upon what his angel told John, Jesus reiterated: “I come quickly! My reward is with me.” In other words, Jesus’ Parousia was about to occur. He would have come in the first century within the expected lifetimes of those who preached the Gospel. In fact, this is exactly what Jesus said he would do in Matthew 16:27-28. He would come in the glory of his Father with all his holy angels and judge every man according to his works, and he would do this before that generation to which he spoke those words would die out. He would sit upon his throne and judge the world, which would include raising the dead to appear before him, in the first century AD.
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[1] See my earlier study: I Make All Things New.
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