Confusion from misreadings:
and time shall be no more? Rev 10:6

Clearly there will be radical differences between the world to come and our present universe. It even clearly says things which we cannot imagine. For instance,

“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away; and there was no more sea.”
Rev 21:1 KJV

We really cannot imagine this, even though it does speak at times of something “like a sea of glass,” Rev 4:6 WEB. So I have heard all my life, that in the world to come that “time would be no more.” Revelation 10 pictures mighty and beautiful angel standing on the sea and the land, and he,

“… sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, … that there should be time no longer:”
Rev 10:6 KJV

I mulled these things over for many years.

I have even talked in sermons about the Second Coming of Christ as “the end of time,” and it was phrase I used in my everyday thinking about the Second Coming. It did seem to clearly say that in Rev 10:6 in the KJV. And if God said so, well it must be, even if I didn’t understand why? But there were disquieting voices going on within me.What does that mean? Time will be no more?

Something did not seem to set right.

Of course that happens all the time when we really read and study all of Scripture. Even so I was still trying understand what this meant for this new country to which we were going. No time? I even read some physics articles and some mushy philosophical articles on time. Then I thought: does one thing often happen after another, even in heaven? And I must say, it does seem so in both Testaments when talking about eternity. Well, if one thing happens after another … isn’t that time? At least in some sense! Duh!

Then I went back and took a closer look at Rev 10:6.

(I mean, we don’t have time to take a closer look at everything in Scripture, do we? We only live a few decades). But then I took a jolt. The WEB and the New American Standard and many other translated it along the lines of, “that there will no longer be delay.”

My goodness, that is quite a difference.

It is like when you and the kids are about the house, and you say, come on kids, we are out of time.” But we don’t mean that literally. Even if we miss our appointment, time still goes on. Then comes the next question.

Is the King James Version at fault?

I think not! On thinking it over, I think they are saying the same thing as these other translations, only in words that perhaps many of us took more literally than we should have.

Misreadings can cause a great deal of unintended confusion, and end up in our day to day traditions, that often lead us astray. Further, none of us are immune to these things. We all start somewhere.

KJV is the King James Version, 1611.

WEB is the World English Bible, a copyright free revision
of the original ASV American Standard Version 1901