Revelation 3:10

For as lawlessness increases, they will hate and persecute and betray one another. And then the deceiver of the world will appear as a son of God and “will perform signs and wonders,” and the earth will be delivered into his hands, and he will commit abominations the likes of which have never happened before. (5) Then all humankind will come to the fiery test, and “many will fall away” and perish [emphasis added]¹⁵

“Awake, O sword, against My Shepherd, against the Man who is My Companion,” says the LORD of hosts. “Strike the Shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered; then I will turn My hand against the little ones. And it shall come to pass in all the land,” says the LORD, “That two-thirds in it shall be cut off and die, but one-third shall be left in it: I will bring the one-third through the fire, will refine them as silver is refined, and test them as gold is tested. They will call on My name, and I will answer them. I will say, ‘This is My people’; and each one will say, ‘The LORD is my God.’ ” (Zec. Zec. 13:7-9)

Notes

¹ Renald E. Showers, Maranatha, Our Lord Come (Bellmawr, NJ: The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry, 1995), 209-210.

² “To be kept in temptation, not to be exempted from temptation (τηρεῖν εκ [tērein ek] not being here==τηρεῖν ἀπό [tērein apo] , Jas. Jas. 1:27; Pr. Pr. 7:5 cf. 2Th. 2Th. 3:3); a bush burning, and yet not consumed (cf. Isa. Isa. 43:2).”—Richard Chenevix Trench, Commentary on the Epistles to the Seven Churches in Asia (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1861), 178. “The words τηρήσω ἐκ [tērēsō ek] are to be understood from John John 17:15: God’s people shall receive special protection in the trial rather than exemption from it (ἀπό [apo] ; cf. also 2Pe. 2Pe. 2:9).”—Colin J. Hemer, The Letters to the Seven Churches of Asia in Their Local Setting (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1989), 164.

³ “The idea of the saints being shielded from the testing while living within and through its time period also would have been expressed more clearly through the use of another preposition, either en (meaning ‘in’) or dia (meaning ‘through’) [thus, ‘I will keep you in or through the time period of testing’] rather than ek.”—Showers, Maranatha, Our Lord Come, 212.

⁴ Ibid., 211.

⁵ Jerome Smith, The New Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1992), Rev. 3:10.

⁶ Steve Gregg, Revelation Four Views: A Parallel Commentary (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1997), 76.

⁷ “If Gundry’s view of Rev. Rev. 3:10+ is correct [that the church will be guarded and preserved during God’s testing of earth-dwellers during the Tribulation], then one is left with the colossal problem of reconciling the fact that multitudes of believers will die under the fierce persecution of Antichrist during the Tribulation and yet God supposedly will preserve His people physically through the Tribulation.”—Keith H. Essex, “The Rapture and the Book of Revelation,” in Richard L. Mayhue, ed., The Master’s Seminary Journal, vol. 13 no. 1 (Sun Valley, CA: The Master’s Seminary, Spring 2002), 29-30.

⁸ Showers, Maranatha, Our Lord Come, 212.

⁹ Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum, The Footsteps of Messiah, rev ed. (Tustin, CA: Ariel Ministries, 2003), 155.

¹⁰ Robert L. Thomas, Revelation 1-7 (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1992), 288.

¹¹ Gregg, Revelation Four Views: A Parallel Commentary, 77.

¹² Showers, Maranatha, Our Lord Come, 214.

¹³ Grant R. Osborne, Revelation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2002), 8.

¹⁴ Thomas, Revelation 1-7, 225.

¹⁵ J. B. Lightfoot and J. R. Harmer, The Apostolic Fathers, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1989), 158.

¹⁶ The idea that the trial is also to refine believers is contradicted by this verse which states that the ones to be tested are the ones who “dwell upon the earth”—a technical term in the book of Revelation for those who remain unrepentant during the events of the end. “This same expression occurs in Revelation Rev. 6:10+; Rev. 11:10+; Rev. 13:8+, Rev. 13:12+, Rev. 13:14+; Rev. 14:6+ and Rev. 17:8+. In its usage it is not giving us a geographical description but rather a moral classification.”—J. Dwight Pentecost, Things to Come: A Study in Biblical Eschatology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1958), 197.