Revelation 3:14

The Church in Laodicea. 14 22

14. the Amen See the last note on Revelation 1:7. Here the name is used, (i) because this is the last of the seven Epistles, that it may confirm the whole: (ii) as synonymous with the title "Faithful and True" that follows: for which see the latter group of references on Revelation 3:7; Isaiah 65:16 is specially noticeable, where "the God of truth" is in the Hebrew "the God of Amen": in the other O. T. passages a different but cognate form is used.

the faithful and true witness See Revelation 1:5.

the beginning of the creation of God Exactly equivalent to Colossians 1:15, as explained by the words that follow: in both places the words are such as might grammatically be used of the first of creatures, but the context there, and the whole tone of the Book here, proves that the writer does not regard Him as a creature at all. But St John is not here, as in the first verses of his Gospel, describing our Lord's Nature theologically: it might be enough to say that here and in Proverbs 8:22 (where the words "the Lord possessed" or "created Me" lend themselves more easily than these to an Arian sense), the Word coming forth to create is conceived as part of His earthly mission, which culminates in the Incarnation, so that in a sense even creation is done by Him as a Creature.