The eternal gospel

The last place in the Bible where any of the gospel’s words stand is Revelation 14. John sees an angel flying in mid-heaven.

In Greek the angel has an eternal gospel ‘to gospel’: the noun euangelion and the verb euangelizomai stand side by side. Nowhere else in the New Testament is the gospel called aiōnios, eternal; the KJV has "the everlasting gospel". What the angel cries is a call to "Fear God and give Him glory" and to "Worship the One who made the heavens and the earth and the sea and the springs of waters" (Revelation 14:7).

The Greek has no article before this gospel, and readers have taken it in two ways. Wesley reads it as "Not the gospel, properly so called; but a gospel, or joyful message, which was to have an influence on all ages" Wesley. Matthew Henry reads it as the gospel of Christ itself: "The gospel is the great means whereby men are brought to fear God, and to give glory to him" Matthew Henry.

First Peter takes up Isaiah 40 to say the same. All flesh is grass and its glory falls, "but the word of the Lord stands forever", and then: "And this is the word that was proclaimed to you" (1 Peter 1:25). The Greek verb is again the gospel’s, which the KJV keeps: "the word which by the gospel is preached unto you". In Isaiah, too, the word that "stands forever" is followed at once by Zion, "herald of good news" (Isaiah 40:9). The word that lasts is the news that is told.

One gospel, four Gospels

This word was preached before it was written down. Around 180 Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, wrote of the apostles and the gospel "which they did at one time proclaim in public, and, at a later period, by the will of God, handed down to us in the Scriptures, to be the ground and pillar of our faith" Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.1.1. He goes on to tell how Matthew wrote, how Mark set down what Peter preached, how Luke put in a book the gospel Paul preached, and how John published his Gospel at Ephesus. Elsewhere he says that the Word "has given us the Gospel under four aspects, but bound together by one Spirit" Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.11.8. The titles the old manuscripts give the books are often read the same way: not ‘the gospel of Matthew’ but ‘the Gospel according to Matthew’, one gospel in four witnesses.

Earlier in Revelation the mystery of God is to be fulfilled "just as He proclaimed to His servants the prophets" (Revelation 10:7); the verb there is the gospel’s too.