What a journey this has been! I have loved every minute along the way. But before I close out my three months' study of the Book of Revelation, I need to address two final, oft-quoted verses. These verses are often used against members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by other Christians as a way to dismiss the Book of Mormon and all latter-day revelation. Let's look at the verses and at what is really happening:
For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book:
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. (Revelation 22: 18-19)
People who argue that these verses refer to the entire Bible don’t really understand the Bible or know much about its history. In these verses, John is not referring to the entire Bible;
he is referring to this particular prophecy. True
Bible scholars know that for many reasons.
First) The Bible is not one book, it is a collection of
books. In fact, the root word for Bible is bibliotheca which refers to a library. God did not sit down and write the Bible from
start to finish. The Bible is a
collection of manuscripts, mostly parchment scrolls (similar to those found at
the 
The Torah contains only the 5 books
written by Moses (Genesis through Deuteronomy) and the writings of the prophets
(roughly our Old Testament). It is usually referred to as the Hebrew Bible.
The Bible used by the Catholic Church is the Latin Vulgate translated by
The King James Version of the Bible was translated in 1611 by a group of scholars commissioned by the King of England. They drew heavily on the Bible translations done by William Tyndale in 1525. Tyndale, unlike St. Jerome, went back to the original Hebrew when he translated the books of the Old Testament. He translated the New Testament books from the original Greek. He became a martyr to his Christian faith.
There have been many modern translations of
the Bible today, some of which contain only certain portions of what we
consider to be the Bible. This is a picture of a children's study Bible based on the NIV or New International Version. There are many other new versions in addition to the NIV, but they are too numerous to mention.
There are many
manuscripts still in existence that have not been included in the Bible. The Bible itself refers to some of these books
or writings even though they are not included in the Bible. Many of these were found in the Nag Hammadi Library in Egypt in 1945 and are considered to be scripture by the Coptic Christian Church. These scrolls contain over 50 additional books.
So when John wrote the Book of Revelations,
he didn’t know where it would be placed when Christian doctrine was finally
codified. John’s admonition in
Revelations 22 relates only to that
particular book: the Book of Revelation.
He was putting his copyright on his own written account of his wonderful
apocryphal vision.
Second) John actually
wrote Revelations before he wrote
his own testimony of Christ, which we know as the Gospel of John. Even later, he wrote three letters to the
churches which are his Epistles (1 John, 2 John, 3 John). So if John were
talking about the entire Bible in Revelation 22:18 - 19, he himself broke his
own commandment when he wrote his additional books.
Third) The Book of Revelations almost didn't get placed in the New Testament at all. That’s because it didn’t fit neatly into any of the categories the composers had used to organize the rest of the New Testament. The categories are: The 4 Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John); the Acts of the Apostles (written by Luke); the Epistles of Paul to various branches of the church (
Finally) John isn’t the only writer who put a heavenly copyright on one of his books. Moses did the same thing in the Book of Deuteronomy, chapter 4, verse 2: Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you. If we were to use the same reasoning on that holy copyright as some people do on Revelations 22, we wouldn’t accept anything as scripture much past the 10 Commandments!
God has
taught us that He is no respecter of persons, which means we are all equal in
His sight. Who are we to say that God can talk to this group of people in
this time, but that he can’t or
won’t talk to other of His children in other places or times? The Pharisees rejected Christ because they
thought they had God’s word – all of
it – in the Torah. We look back at that and think “How
arrogant!” Wouldn’t we be equally
arrogant to think that God couldn’t talk to His children in the Americas or to a young man in a grove of trees
in upstate New York
Text copyright Gebara Education April 2013
Pictures of Revelation, the Scroll of Isaiah from the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Torah, and the Latin Vulgate from multiple sources
Picture of King James Version from www.kingjamesversion.org
Picture of Nag Hammadi Scroll from www.coptic-cairo.com
Picture of King James Version from www.kingjamesversion.org
Picture of Nag Hammadi Scroll from www.coptic-cairo.com
Picture of the Precious Moments children's Bible, NIV, from www.squidoo.com
Picture of the Apostle John from www.witnessforjesuschrist.com
Picture of Jesus with the children from www.turnbacktogod.com
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