The Strong Messenger and the Scroll

Six trumpets have sounded. The last unleashed an army of two hundred million. And then, nothing. The sequence pauses. Where the seventh trumpet should be, John sees something else entirely, and it raises an unavoidable question: who is this figure?

And I saw another strong messenger come down out of heaven, clothed with a cloud, and the rainbow was on his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire: and having in his hand a diminutive-scroll open. And he placed his right foot on the sea, and the left on the earth, and cried with a great voice, as a lion roars. And when he cried, the seven thunders spoke their own voices.

— Revelation 10:1–3 (URV)

The driving force of this chapter is the oath in verse 6, that the season of waiting for judgment will come to an end at the seventh trumpet. But how much weight that oath carries depends entirely on who is swearing it, and answering that question requires care with the language itself.

Start with the word itself. ἄγγελος simply means "messenger." It does not inherently denote a winged heavenly being, which is why this translation renders it "messenger" throughout. Revelation uses the word freely: it covers the seven messengers of the churches (Revelation 2–3), heavenly beings carrying out judgments, and this figure clothed in a cloud with a rainbow on his head. The word is generic as to identity. It can refer to an angel in the traditional sense, but Revelation does not restrict it that way. Keeping this in mind is essential, because the details of this scene press the reader toward a much more specific identification, one that the rest of this article will build toward.

The Strong Messenger Is Jesus

The strong messenger of Revelation 10 is Jesus, and four converging lines of biblical evidence establish it. A fifth consideration sits alongside them: in the next chapter this same speaker continues, "And I will give unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred sixty days, clothed in sackcloth" (Revelation 11:3, URV), making the witnesses his own. But the four lines carry the argument.

The Divine Oath

First, God swears an oath grounded in His own eternal life. In Deuteronomy 32:40, God declares:

For I lift up my hand to heaven and swear, As I live forever.

— Deuteronomy 32:40 (ESV)

The same oath posture and language appear in Daniel 12:7:

And I heard the man clothed in linen, who was above the waters of the stream; he raised his right hand and his left hand toward heaven and swore by him who lives forever that it would be for a time, times, and half a time, and that when the shattering of the power of the holy people comes to an end all these things would be finished.

— Daniel 12:7 (ESV)

And again in Revelation 10:5–6, the strong messenger does the same:

And the messenger whom I saw stand on the sea and on the earth lifted up his right hand to heaven, and swore by him who lives unto the ages of the ages, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things that therein are, that there shall be season no longer:

— Revelation 10:5–6 (URV)

Three passages, one gesture and one formula. In Deuteronomy the oath comes from God's own mouth. In Daniel 12:7 and Revelation 10:6 it comes from a figure whose identity is debated in both places. That repeated pattern ties this act to God rather than to angelic mediation.

The Rainbow

Second, the strong messenger bears the same rainbow imagery associated with God's throne. Around the throne of God:

And he who sat was in appearance like a jasper stone and a sardius, and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in appearance like an emerald.

— Revelation 4:3 (URV)

And in Ezekiel's foundational throne vision, the rainbow marks the visible glory of YHWH:

Like the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud on the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness all around. Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD.

— Ezekiel 1:28 (ESV)

Revelation 10:1 gives this figure the same rainbow, and it does so with the definite article: not a rainbow, but the rainbow was upon his head. That is a consistent visual marker of divine presence rather than incidental symbolism.

The Lion's Voice

Third, the roar belongs to the LORD. Joel and Hosea both put it there:

The LORD roars from Zion, and utters his voice from Jerusalem, and the heavens and the earth quake.

— Joel 3:16 (ESV)

They shall go after the LORD; he will roar like a lion; when he roars, his children shall come trembling from the west.

— Hosea 11:10 (ESV)

And Revelation identifies Christ with the same image:

And one of the elders said unto me, Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has overcome so as to open the scroll and the seven seals thereof.

— Revelation 5:5 (URV)

When the strong messenger cries out "as when a lion roars," the imagery aligns with that pattern rather than with angelic speech.

The Scroll

Fourth, the scroll deepens the case further. In Ezekiel 2:8–9, God Himself causes the prophet to eat the scroll:

But you, son of man, hear what I say to you. Be not rebellious like that rebellious house; open your mouth and eat what I give you. And when I looked, behold, a hand was stretched out to me, and behold, a scroll of a book was in it.

— Ezekiel 2:8–9 (ESV)

Prophetic internalization there belongs to divine initiative rather than angelic mediation. When the same action appears in Revelation 10, it follows that precedent:

And I went unto the messenger, saying unto him to give me the diminutive-scroll. And he said unto me, Take and devour it; and it shall make your belly bitter, but in your mouth it shall be sweet as honey.

— Revelation 10:9 (URV)

The Cumulative Case

Together, these four lines of evidence form a unified and cumulative case. No single piece stands alone. The oath, the rainbow, the lion's voice, and the scroll all converge on the same conclusion.

The Connection to Daniel 10

These four proofs point to Jesus in Revelation 10. But this figure has also been connected to the angel of Daniel 10, and that connection matters, because the two identifications reinforce each other. If the Daniel 10 figure shares the same actions, symbols, posture, and authority as the strong messenger of Revelation 10, then identifying one strengthens the case for the other. Conversely, if the Daniel 10 figure is stripped of any connection to Christ, the identification here weakens as well. The two passages might stand or fall together, and the weight of the shared evidence — the oath, the linen garment, the heavenly stance, the divine authority — presses both identifications in the same direction.

Some object to identifying the figure in Daniel 10 as a Christophany, a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ, on the grounds that he is described as being delayed or withstood:

The prince of the kingdom of Persia withstood me twenty-one days, but Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, for I was left there with the kings of Persia.

— Daniel 10:13 (ESV)

The argument goes that God cannot be resisted or hindered. However, the Bible repeatedly shows that God, without surrendering sovereignty, freely chooses to work within time, process, and delegated order.

If God could not allow Himself to be engaged or restrained in any sense, then Jacob wrestling with God and refusing to let Him go until receiving a blessing (Genesis 32:24–30) would be difficult to account for. Likewise, the incarnation shows that God can truly enter limitation without ceasing to be God; Christ is fully divine, yet truly suffered and died. None of this dethrones God. It magnifies His patience and His willingness to involve humans and angels in the outworking of His purposes.

Within that framework, the conflict described in Daniel 10 with the prince of Persia should not be reduced to mere weakness or "needing help," but understood as a divinely permitted ordering of events in which spiritual conflict and timing play a real role.

Crucially, the chapter makes Daniel's significance explicit: Daniel is told he is "greatly beloved," and he is assured that his words were heard immediately "from the first day" he set his heart to understand (Daniel 10:11–12). The point is not, "Daniel, you weren't heard," but rather, "Daniel, you were heard at once — yet larger matters were unfolding that required time." The delay concerns the delivery and unfolding of revelation within that broader conflict, not God's awareness, favor, or authority. The delay functions to confirm Daniel's righteousness and belovedness while also teaching him that even answered prayer may be caught up in a bigger divine timetable.

Can a Messenger Swear?

The Daniel 10 objection handled, a related question presses the point further: where else does a messenger swear an oath? By what authority will a messenger make an oath happen? Is it not the one who swears who is the one who executes?

In Daniel 10–12, the figure deliberately presses the reader toward a higher one: Christ. He is testifying that it will happen as He is saying. He is declaring it. This is why He moves to swear. If this were a message from God and the speaker were only delivering it, then He should say "God swears to you," yet this speaker makes Himself the authority. Hebrews makes the principle explicit:

For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself.

— Hebrews 6:13 (ESV)

Conclusion

A divine oath sworn by God's own eternal life. A rainbow that marks God's throne. A lion's roar that Joel and Hosea give to the LORD. A scroll that God gives the prophet to eat. Four lines of evidence, all pointing in the same direction. With all of this laid out — the oath, the rainbow, the voice, the scroll, the posture shared with Daniel's figure, the authority to swear without appealing to anyone higher — is it not worth asking whether this strong messenger is more than just another angel? Perhaps what John saw descending in that cloud, planting His feet on sea and land, was not a servant delivering someone else's message, but the Lord Himself, stepping into the scene to declare that the time for mystery is over.

And if it is the Lord, then the oath He swears is no secondhand report. It is a direct, personal guarantee from the one who has the authority to fulfill it. The season of waiting will end. The seventh trumpet will sound. Judgment will come. And the one who says so is the same one who will bring it to pass.