Because you have kept my word of patient endurance: this means little if anything in English (New Revised Standard Version is the same). Here word means “command, instruction, order, teaching,” and the genitive phrase of patient endurance means “to endure patiently.” For the verb “to keep” see 3.8, “kept”; and for patient endurance see 1.9. New International Version has “Since you have kept my command to endure patiently”; Revised English Bible is the same, except that it uses “to stand firm.” One may also say “Because you have endured patiently as I commanded you” or “… been patient and endured, as I commanded you.”

I will keep you from the hour of trial: this is a promise that the believers in Philadelphia will not be defeated by the suffering that will soon come upon all people in the world. This hour of trial is the time of distress and suffering which, in apocalyptic theology, will precede the end of the age, before the Messianic coming. The promise here is not that they alone, of all the world’s population, will be exempt from these sufferings; rather the promise is that God will keep them firm during this period of hardship and calamity (see the similar thought in John 17.15). So it may be better to translate “I will keep you safe (or, protect you) in the time of distress that is coming on the world.” New Jerusalem Bible translates “I will keep you safe in the time of trial,” and Beckwith comments: “The Philadelphians … are promised that they shall be carried in safety through the great trial, they shall not fall.”

Which is coming on the whole world may be rendered as “that the people of the world will undergo” or “during the time when the people of the world suffer terribly.”

The rest of the sentence—which is coming on the whole world, to try those who dwell upon the earth—shows that this hour of trial will affect everyone (see 7.14; 13.10; 14.12; Matt 24.7-13, 22). Should hour give the idea of only sixty minutes, it is better to say “period,” “time.” And for trial, something like “suffering,” “distress” is better than Good News Translation “trouble.” Revised English Bible has “the ordeal that is to fall upon the whole world.” The related verb “to try” means “to put to the test” (as in 2.10).

In this book those who dwell upon earth is often used of the followers of Satan, the enemies of the people of God (6.10; 8.13; 11.10; 13.8, 12, 14; 17.2, 8). Here it means all people, as the preceding clause makes clear.

An alternative translation model for this verse is:

• You have endured patiently as I commanded you. So I will protect you during the time when I test all the people of the world by causing them to endure great suffering.

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on The Revelation to John. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1993. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .