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Take the little book which is open - Learn from this angel what should be published to the world.
And the voice which I heard from heaven - Revelation 10:4. This is not the voice of the angel, but a direct divine command,
Said, Go and take the little book which is open, … - That is, take it out of his hand, and do with it as you shall be commanded. There is a very strong resemblance between this passage and the account contained in Ezekiel 2:9-10; Ezekiel 3:1-3. Ezekiel was directed to go to the house of Israel and deliver a divine message, whether they would hear or forbear; and in order that he might understand what message to deliver, there was shown to him a roll of a book, written within and without. That roll he was commanded to eat, and he found it to be “in his mouth as honey for sweetness.” John has added to this the circumstance that, though “sweet in the mouth,” it made “the belly bitter.” The additional command Revelation 10:11, that he must yet “prophecy before many people,” leads us to suppose that he had the narrative in Ezekiel in his eye; for, as the result of his eating the roll, he was commanded to go and prophesy to the people of Israel. The passage here Revelation 10:8 introduces a new symbol, that of “eating the book,” and evidently refers to something that was to occur before the “mystery should be finished”; that is, before the seventh trumpet should sound.
“Which is open in the hand … ” On the symbolical meaning of the word “open,” as applied to the book, see the notes on Revelation 10:2.
Verse 8
In verse 8, John himself is brought in to act a part as a representative of the church, probably on account of the succeeding peculiar experience of the church, which the Lord of the prophecy would cause to be put on record, but which could not well be presented under the symbol of an angel. When only a straightforward proclamation is brought to view, without including the peculiar experience which the church is to pass through in connection therewith, angels may be used as symbols to represent the religious teachers who proclaim that message, as in Revelation 14; but when some particular experience of the church is to be presented, the case is manifestly different. This could most appropriately be set forth in the person of some member of the human family; hence John is himself called upon to act a part in this symbolic representation. And this being the case, the angel who here appeared to John may represent that divine messenger, who, in the order which is observed in all the work of God, has charge of this message; or he may be introduced for the purpose of representing the nature of the message, and the source from which it comes.DAR 495.2
There are not a few now living who have in their own experience met a striking fulfillment of these verses, in the joy with which they received the message of Christ's immediate second coming, the honey-like sweetness of the precious truths then brought out, and the sadness and pain that followed, when at the appointed time in 1844 the Lord did not come, but a great disappointment did. A mistake had been made which apparently involved the integrity of the little book they had been eating. What had been so like honey to their taste, suddenly became like wormwood and gall. But those who had patience to endure, so to speak, the digesting process, soon learned that the mistake was only in the event, not in the time, and that what the angel had given them was not unto death, but to their nourishment and support. (See the same facts brought to view under a similar figure in Jeremiah 15:16-18.)DAR 495.3