While earlier prophets and also angels had accepted obeisance, Peter stopped Cornelius from rendering such to him, and the angel or angels of John's vision twice stopped John from doing so, referring to himself as "a fellow slave," and concluding with the exhortation to "worship God . . ." (Ac 10:25, 26; Re 19:10; 22:8, 9) Evidently Christ's coming had brought in new relationships affecting standards of conduct toward others of God's servants. He taught his disciples that "one is your teacher, whereas all you are brothers . . . your Leader is one, the Christ" (Mt 23:8-12), for it was in him that the prophetic figures and types found their fulfillment, even as the angel told John that "the bearing witness to Jesus is what inspires prophesying." (Re 19:10) Jesus was David's Lord, the greater than Solomon, the prophet greater than Moses. (Lu 20:41-43; Mt 12:42; Ac 3:19-24) The obeisance rendered those men prefigured that due Christ. Peter therefore rightly refused to let Cornelius make too much of him.
So, too, John, by virtue of having been declared righteous or justified by God as an anointed Christian, called to be a heavenly son of God and a member of the Kingdom, was in a different relationship to the angel(s) of Revelation than were the Israelites to the angels that had earlier appeared to them. The angel(s) evidently recognized this change of relationship when rejecting John's obeisance." Compare 1Co 6:3; see DECLARE RIGHTEOUS.
Now, "the doing of obeisance" is quite a different act than "the rendering of worship" when "worship" is used in that phrase with the sense of "sacred service." Still, if John had in mind "obeisance" (i.e., something less than what the word "worship" normally conveys in modern-times theological discussions), then the angels were yet having none of it from John because they knew that a change of relationship between themselves and God's servants was now upon them so that any acceptable act of obeisance rendered by a servant of God must now be performed to Jesus Christ or to his Father, but no longer to any other persons. So, even if the angels to whom John was prostrating himself were perceptive of something more than "obeisance" in John's prostration of himself before them, then even that perception would not have been the critical, deciding factor as to why they disallowed John's prostration to themselves. It was quite simply enough for them to know that whereas before Jesus' exaltation a few of them had acted in the role of a proxy for Jehovah when it was evident to them that Jehovah's devotees were not compromising exclusive devotion to Jehovah by some activity on their part (see Acts 7:30, 38, 53) -- this so so that they might allow prostration before them on such occasions -- to God's glory, yet all of that had now changed/ceased with exception to what the archangel Michael (Jesus Christ) could allow for himself to God's glory (see Php. 2:9-11; Revelation 5:8). Jesus is God's one and only proxy now, and even he does not perform that role any more by materialisations in a fleshly body. But were it possible for him to do so, then, Yes, we would prostrate ourselves before him in an act of relative worship to the Father's glory.
