“At this the whole assembly said, ‘Amen,’ and praised the LORD.” Nehemiah 5:13
There is an old spiritual in which the chorus is made up of five words: “Amen, amen, amen, amen, and amen.” That’s a word we use to end every prayer. Many of our hymns end with that word, and pastor always ends his sermon with an “amen.” But what does it mean?
Amen is used many times in Scripture. Did you know that amen is the very last word of the Bible? It also ends many of the books in the New Testament. If we look at the history of God’s Word, we find it has the same meaning as “verily” or “truly,” or “I tell you the truth.” Although we find this term usually at the end of a statement such as a prayer, Jesus often began with an amen, or verily, or I tell you the truth. Over 75 times Jesus began speaking with the words, “I tell you the truth.” In John 10:7 Jesus says: “I tell you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep.” That is as if to say: “Amen! I am the gate for the sheep.” These words say to everyone around, “Yes, I am saying that this is true,” “I agree with what was said,” “So shall it be.”
So, when we end a prayer with the word amen, we are saying that we believe that the words and thoughts of the prayer are true. And when a pastor ends his sermon with the word amen, he is saying that everything he preached about is also true.
In the book of Deuteronomy, twelve times the people answered “amen” to what was being said. Three times a psalm ends with two amens as in Psalm 41:13: “Praise be to the LORD, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Amen and Amen.” Once when God was speaking to Jeremiah, Jeremiah interrupted the Lord and shouted “Amen, Lord!” The apostle Paul often ended his books with the word “amen.” He wrote in Romans 11:36: “For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be the glory forever! Amen.” And in the book of Revelation we find that Jesus calls himself the Amen, or “the truth” when it says: “These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation” (Revelation 3:14). That book also makes it very clear: “He who testifies to these things says, ‘Yes, I am coming soon.’ Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people. Amen” (Revelation 22:20,21).
The next time we end a prayer with that little four letter word, we must remember that we are saying, “I believe this to be totally true!” Amen!
Amen, that is, so shall it be, confirm our faith and hope in Thee
That we may doubt not, but believe what here we ask we shall receive.
Thus in Thy name and at Thy Word we say: Amen. Oh, hear us, Lord! Amen.
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