Who Holds the Keys
"When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. Then he placed his right hand on me and said: “Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades."
— Revelation 1:17-18
John wrote this from Patmos, a small rocky island in the Aegean. He was there because of what he had preached. His readers lived in seven towns on the mainland opposite. Their letters later mention poverty, slander, prison and a man already killed. The double title he hears here is a name God uses of himself in Isaiah. A key in that world was not a household item. It belonged to a jailer or a steward. Holding it meant deciding who went in and who came out. Hades was the Greek word for the underworld, and the Greek Bible used it for Sheol. It named the whole realm of the departed, not simply a place of punishment. Soon after, John is told to write to a town facing arrest, and that letter opens with the same voice that had just spoken to him. So the courage here does not come from nerve; it comes from who holds the lock.