And he said to me, "Do not seal up THE WORDS of THE PROPHESY of THIS BOOK,
Nothing is hidden in the Revelation of Jesus Christ except for the utterances of the peals of thunder (Revelation 10:4). Otherwise, what you READ and HEAR is what John was told to write (Revelation 1:11). Prior to Jesus' earthly life, Daniel had been given visions which he was told to SEAL UP (Daniel 8:15-26-27 and Daniel 12:1-4-9-13). With the purpose for Jesus Christ's coming to earth completed, there is no need to SEAL up the Revelation. Jesus Himself opens the seals on the BOOK (Revelation 5:5) which is the contents of much of the Revelation. He wants us to know what is to come so that we may HEED the WORDS of THE PROPHESY of THIS BOOK (previous two verses).
for THE TIME IS NEAR.
We started this study (Revelation 1:3) with these same words. Again we are reminded that THE TIME IS NEAR. We have a tendency to think in terms of the time elapsed since John wrote the Book of Revelation and thus shrug off the urgency of this warning. The Revelation is thought to have been written sometime between A.D. 70 to A.D. 95. However, this warning must be taken personally in light of the next verse. That is, the TIME-IS-NEAR time frame is the time frame of each person's life. The decision whether we will be a resident of the new Jerusalem (verse 5), must be made while a person is alive. Given how short a person's lifetime is compared to forever and ever, truly