Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation. Tonight is study #47 of Revelation, chapter 14 and we are going to be reading Revelation14:17-18:
And another angel came out of the temple which is in heaven, he also having a sharp sickle. And another angel came out from the altar, which had power over fire; and cried with a loud cry to him that had the sharp sickle, saying, Thrust in thy sharp sickle, and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth; for her grapes are fully ripe.
I will stop reading there. Now some of the language here is very similar in some of the wording we read in verses 15 and 16. Actually, the similarities are:
The word “thrust” is the Greek word “pempo,” which is often translated as “send” in relationship to God sending His messengers. We took a look at the word “sickle” in the Old Testament and we saw in previous studies how it is related to the Hebrew word for “roll” or a “scroll” upon which the Bible was written. In Jeremiah 36, the Lord moved Jeremiah to declare the things that are in the Book of Jeremiah and Baruch the scribe wrote them upon a roll of a book. That is how the Bible was written. The word “roll” is very closely related to the Hebrew word for “sickle,” so God is helping us to understand something about the “sharp sickle.” Remember, the word “sharp” is related to the Word of God, as it says in Hebrews 4:12: “For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword.” God uses that word “sharp” a few places to describe His Word and, here, it is a sharp sickle that is to put into the earth to reap. It is an instrument of harvest. God is still using His Word, but it is the Word that is specifically tailored to Judgment Day, as the Word of God is all judgment and all wrath because it is the Day of the Lord. The Word also serves to feed the sheep of God, since it is now not necessary that the Word “cut” to salvation because they have already become saved and, therefore, the people of God are simply feeding upon the truth of the Scripture which continues to come forth in the Day of Judgment.
But for the rest of mankind it is a sharp instrument of wrath for the harvest. They are being harvested for destruction and that is what is in view here. Again, verses 17 and 18 repeat some of the same language. It is one messenger commanding another messenger, but they are both God Himself, the Lord Jesus as the Judge of all the earth.
The angel came out from the altar and we saw how the altar related to Christ and He had “power over fire,” as the Lord Jesus has power over the Word of God. God has given Him all authority in regard to judgment and then it says, in Revelation 14:18:
…and cried with a loud cry to him that had the sharp sickle, saying, Thrust in thy sharp sickle…
Again, the word “thrust” in verse 18 is the same word “pempo” that was translated in verse 15. It is Strong’s #3992 and it is only translated as “thrust” here, but elsewhere it is always translated as “send” or “sent.” So God is sending forth His messengers who are the reapers, as it is declared in Matthew 13:41-42:
The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
This is the language of judgment, as God paints a picture of His wrath a little differently here. Here it is a “furnace of fire,” but in our passage in Revelation 14, it is a winepress, but both pictures are teaching the same thing: the destruction of the unsaved people of the world.
Revelation 14:18 is describing the unsaved people of the world, but the earlier verses back in verse 15 had to do with the harvest that was ruined within the churches and congregations during the Great Tribulation. That was where the harvest would be expected to be seen and, yet, as soon as God ended the church age and removed His Spirit, it completely ruined the harvest and it withered away. They had no water. There was no root because Christ had abandoned the churches and the “sun” scorched them; the wrath of God dried them up and they are branches that did not abide in the vine, which is Christ, so they are only good for burning. The harvest of the earth is withered and the two billion, or so, people located in the congregations of the world are completely withered.
That leaves approximately five billion other people in the world that are unsaved. We know that God saved tens of millions of people out of the world population. Even if He had saved 200 million or 190 million people, that would still leave about 4,850,000,000 people that are also unsaved – they are not professed Christians or they have no religion; it really makes no difference as far as God is concerned because there is “one way, one Truth and one Saviour” and if they were not saved by the Lord, then they have not followed that “narrow way,” but they have gone the “broad way that leads to destruction.” On that broad way, you can go to the left or to the right; you can go really far out or you can keep close to the narrow way, but you can still go on the broad path that leads to destruction. The Muslim path leads to destruction. The Hindu path leads to destruction and the Buddhists and the atheists and the agnostics and every other path in the world. There is a world full of people that think, “I can go this way and it seems like a right and good way that will lead me to heaven and this is the way I want to live my life.” But every path outside of Christ will finally lead to either the “furnace of fire” or the “winepress of the wrath of God,” and it will lead to utter and complete destruction (annihilation) for evermore. The “end” of the wicked will reveal their error. It will reveal their foolishness. It will reveal they were wrong in all that they did and all that they said in all their religious statements, in all their “other gospels” or in all their proud thinking that lifted themselves up above the Word of God, the Bible. They thought they did not need the Bible and they thought that they should be the ones that would govern and rule their own lives and, yet, the “end” will prove and show forth the terrible error of every unsaved person. This is what Judgment Day is bringing out. It will show that God’s way is not only the true way, but the right way – it was the worthwhile way. Yes, there was tribulation, which is normal for all the people of God and there was Great Tribulation that came at the time of the end. With much tribulation, the people of God will enter into the kingdom of heaven, but at that point (and that point is getting closer and closer at hand) God will finally fulfill His Word and show He is a faithful God and that His Word is true and faithful and can be trusted, wholeheartedly. When God has finally done what He said He will do and destroys this world and creates a new heaven and a new earth and He equips His people with new resurrected bodies in which they live eternally with Him in a glorious state, then every one of the people of God will greatly praise Him, glorify Him and lift up His name for evermore. What the Bible says about the troubles of this life not being worthy to be compared to that glorious future will show itself and be proven correct.
God says in 2 Corinthians 4:16-18:
For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal.
This is commentary from the Eternal, Everlasting God whose habitation is eternity. He dwells in the entire spectrum of existence; He knows the end from the beginning. Therefore, knowing the “end” and the final destruction of this world and knowing the ultimate exultation and glorification of His people as He will lift them up (as He lifted up the Lord Jesus Christ) into the heavenlies, and knowing the abundant spiritual riches which He will lavish upon His people for evermore, God makes this statement: “Our light affliction, which is but for a moment,” and how long is a moment? Well, snap your fingers, or count to “1,” and before you can do so, the moment is past; it is as short and quick a period of time as we can think of…of course, in our modern day, they speak of “nano-seconds,” but this is the Bible and God does not need that kind of language. He is simply illustrating a very important point that this whole life is but for a moment. This life may seem very long to us if we are going through difficulties, trials and tribulations and afflictions, physically or emotionally or financially. Perhaps we are tormented in the sense of being disturbed and things are so troublesome for us, but no matter how great some of these things may be…and we cannot deny that some people do go through an incredible amount of affliction and tribulation. (Just look at Job.) Yet, if you picked the greatest amount of tribulation that anyone has ever experienced or the most tremendous amount of affliction that anyone has ever lived through and you might say, “This is the life this poor soul lived,” but if they are a child of God, should we pity them? Not for even a second, and that is why the Lord Jesus gave us the parable of Lazarus, who was a beggar, full of sores, and the world pitied poor Lazarus. And, yet, God did not pity him and neither should we and we should not pity ourselves, because God says that whatever amount of difficulties we are presently experiencing and for however long we may be experiencing them (whether 10 or 50 or 90 years), it “worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” The “weight” is sort of like the idea of comparing all the sand on all the seashores with just one grain of sand. There is glory. There is eternity, with the trillions, upon trillions, upon trillions of grains of sand upon all the beaches and then there is this temporal earthly life as typified by that one grain of sand or by that one drop of water in the ocean. This is not an exaggeration. It is an accurate comparison because eternity goes on, and on, and on, without end for evermore and, here, we have only lived a few short years and then it will come to an end. So God tells us to keep our thoughts and our eyes on things above – on things that are unseen, because they are true. Just because you cannot see them does not mean they are not true and cannot be counted on, because they are very true. You just have to lay your life upon Christ and lean back and trust on the everlasting arms of Almighty God who has spoken these things, the God that cannot lie. He has declared them in His Word and, therefore, we look to them and trust in them, rather than the things that you can “see” in this world. The things of this world are very deceptive and deceitful things. The world tries to present itself like it is everything, but in reality, it is of extremely little importance.
Again, it says in Revelation 14:18:
And another angel came out from the altar, which had power over fire; and cried with a loud cry to him that had the sharp sickle, saying, Thrust in thy sharp sickle, and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth; for her grapes are fully ripe.
Some of the words appear the same here, but they are different. The word “ripe” where it says, “fully ripe” is a different word than the word “ripe” in verse 15, which should have been translated as “withered.” The Greek word that is translated into two English words (fully ripe) is a translation of one Greek word, Strong’s #187, and it is only used in this verse. This is also the case for the word “clusters,” which is only found here, also, so that makes it a little more difficult because we want God to define words for us. When a word is found elsewhere, we can search the Bible and compare Scripture with Scripture and a definition begins to come forth. But, here, we have to go to the Old Testament in order to try to understand the word “clusters.” It says in Numbers 13:21-25:
So they went up, and searched the land from the wilderness of Zin unto Rehob, as men come to Hamath. And they ascended by the south, and came unto Hebron; where Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, the children of Anak, were. (Now Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt.) And they came unto the brook of Eshcol, and cut down from thence a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bare it between two upon a staff; and they brought of the pomegranates, and of the figs. The place was called the brook Eshcol, because of the cluster of grapes which the children of Israel cut down from thence. And they returned from searching of the land after forty days.
Here, the Hebrew word “cluster” is related to the Hebrew word for “Eshcol,” and “the place was called the brook Eshcol because of the cluster of grapes.” “Eschol” means “cluster” and it is spelled exactly the same in the Hebrew. We can see the picture as they came into the Promised Land and they saw the children of Anak and it caused 10 of the 12 spies (except for Joshua and Caleb) to return with an evil report. They were afraid because the sons of Anak because they were giants and the Israelites felt as caterpillers in their sight and they did not dare to go in and take the land. So the Lord will judge Israel and cause them to wander forty years in the wilderness, a year for each day they searched the land. But they also brought back the fruit of the land or the harvest. They found a “cluster of grapes,” and notice that they “bare it between two upon a staff,” so this was not a little cluster. It had to be pretty big in order for it to take two men to carry it on a staff. That is the idea of a “cluster.”
In Revelation 14, we read, again, at the end of verse 18: “Thrust in thy sharp sickle, and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth; for her grapes are fully ripe.” This is speaking of gathering the clusters of the vine of the earth. Normally, we associate the vine with Christ, because of what Jesus said, in John 15:1:
I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.
Then it says in John 15:4-6:
Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.
The Lord likens Himself to the “vine” and the fruit grows on the vine. The branch cannot bear fruit of itself, if it does not abide in the vine. It may as well fall to the ground and wither. Of course, here, Christ is really speaking of abiding in, or continuing in, the Word of God, as John 8:31 says: “If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed.”
Jesus said he is the “true vine,” but that does not mean He is the only vine. It says in Deuteronomy 32:32:
For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah: their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter:
Here we have the word “clusters,” again, and notice that “their vine is the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah.” In Deuteronomy, chapter 32, the Lord is mainly addressing the people of Israel that have gone after other gods and developed other gospels, as it does picture what the New Testament churches would do when they would go after other gospels – they have another “vine” and it is not the vine of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Since Revelation 14 describes people that are under the wrath of God (that is certain, since they are cast into the winepress of the wrath of God to be trodden under foot) and not true believers, it cannot be speaking of the “true vine,” but it must be “another vine.”