REVELATION 14
Read Revelation 14:1-20
Revelation continues with its peculiar visions and imagery. There are echoes of Psalm 2 here with the contrast between the heathen who rages against God and the faithful who stand with God. “I have enthroned my king on Zion, my holy hill” says God (Psalm 2:6) and here we have a picture of that, drawing on the language that we have seen earlier in Revelation. Here is the lamb, identified as Jesus earlier, standing on that holy hill of Zion (v1) alongside the faithful bearing his name on their foreheads as well as the four living creatures and elders we met in Chapter 4. We are told that the faithful number 144,000 and we remember that in Revelation, numbers are often symbolic. Twelve is the number of fullness and completeness. There were twelve tribes of Israel in the Old Testament, so twelve often represents the fullness of God’s people. So, twelve times twelve emphasises that fullness. Who is in heaven? Who is in the company of Jesus on God’s holy hill? All of his people – all of God’s faithful are promised the eternal company of Jesus in heaven.
The next vision (vv6-13) is of three angels bringing a message to all the people of this world, “every nation, tribe, language and people” (v6). The first is a message of who God is and why he should be worshipped. It says, ‘fear God’; and in the Bible to fear God is not to be scared of him, but rather to give him the proper place in our lives, to treat him with the respect due to him. And why do we do that? We should worship him because he “made the heavens, the earth, the sea and the springs of water” (v7). He is the creator God and furthermore, he is the God of judgement. The second angel speaks of the sinful people of the world, portrayed in Revelation as the city of Babylon. But Babylon, the sinful world, has already fallen – it has been defeated by Jesus on the cross. The message of the third angel is that those who oppose God, those who have a sinful nature are clearly seen – they have the mark of their evildoing on their forehead (as opposed to the faithful who have God’s name on theirs), and judgement for them is a certainty.
This idea of judgement is addressed in the third vision, John, in this vision, sees, on a cloud, one ‘like a son of man’ with a crown and a sickle. The ‘son of man’ is an image of God that we first see in the Book of Daniel (Daniel 7:13). The crown indicates kingship, an image of God which we have seen earlier, and the sickle is a tool for reaping. It is a picture of God about to bring in the harvest. The angels will be sent to bring in the harvest of both the wicked and the righteous (Matthew 13:30,39). The picture here, though, is of the harvest of the wicked with the powerful image of blood flowing like wine from a winepress.
The message of the chapter is clear. Judgement is a reality for both the righteous and the unrighteous, but God can see clearly which is which. It is as if their natures were written on their foreheads. Those who are sinful, those who are opposed to God will not escape destruction. On the other hand, the faithful are promised eternity with God.