204 - Answered Prayer - The End Judgment of Evil [B]

Answered Prayer: The End Judgment Of Evil. Revelation 14:14 – 20

One of the great themes in dealing with adversity and suffering that has been voiced by believers from the earliest days down through all of the ages and will up to and into the Tribulation period is, why is it that the evil seem to prosper and those who do good, the righteous, suffer? And why is it that there doesn't seem to be real justice for the evildoer in this life? It seems at times that the bad guys get away it and the good guys don't. That is a question that plagues even the martyrs as pictured in Revelation chapter six during the fifth seal judgment as they are calling upon God to bring judgment upon the earth dwellers, upon the evil doers. God's reply is that it is not time yet. But what we see now in our passage is that it is now time. That tells each of us that no matter what we see going on around us today the reason people seem to get away with it is the extension of God's grace, and as long as we are in the church age God will continue to extend His grace the wicked, the evil, in many different ways. Part of it gives them enough rope to hang themselves, we might say; another part of it is that it gives them time to be reached with the gospel, and God will not bring judgment upon evil until it is time to bring history to a close. As much as we desire that to take place in our own lives in terms of certain circumstances and situations we have to understand from a biblical timeline that this will only take place at the end. But when it takes place it will be a sure and certain judgment

This chapter is a forward looking scene, a proleptic vision. The writer is looking forward from the mid point of the Tribulation and focuses on things that occur during the last half of the Tribulation and how they will end. 

Now we come to the third scene which depicts the Lord Jesus Christ as the one who brings judgment upon the earth, and what we see in this vision is three more angels. These additional three angels are the intermediary agents that he uses to execute judgment on the earth during this horrendous period in the second half of the Tribulation period. 

Revelation 14:14 ^NASB "Then I looked, and behold, a white cloud, and sitting on the cloud {was} one like a son of man, having a golden crown on His head and a sharp sickle in His hand." Even though the article is not there the term "son of man" has a definiteness to it in the Greek, it is "the son of man" and that phrase is found in several places in the New Testament referring to Jesus where it does not have the article in the Greek because of the way Greek grammar functions. Therefore Son of Man should be upper case because it is a title for the Lord Jesus Christ, emphasizing His humanity. [15] "And another angel came out of the temple, crying out with a loud voice to Him who sat on the cloud, 'Put in your sickle and reap, for the hour to reap has come, because the harvest of the earth is ripe.' [16] Then He who sat on the cloud swung His sickle over the earth, and the earth was reaped."

As we look at this it is obvious this is a depiction and a summary picture of judgment. We see two different pictures that occur here. One is depicted through the imagery of the harvest of grain (putting in the sickle) and then the next is seen in the depiction of the grape harvest, starting in verse 17. Two different harvests are used to depict two different aspects of judgment during the Tribulation period, and the intensity of that judgment.

We need to look at who is doing the judging and why. Why is the Son of Man on this cloud? To understand this we have to look at the title Son of Man and how that was used in one of the other verses in Revelation: Revelation 1:13. John is on Patmos and it is there that the revelation from Jesus Christ comes to him. John hears a loud voice and turns around and looks, and he saw one like the Son of Man is the midst of seven lamp stands, clothed with a garment down to the feet, and girded across His chest with a golden sash. The garment of white indicates purity, holiness and righteousness. The garments depict a priest but also a judge, and He is functioning as a judge; that is related to the gold band/sash around the chest. When did Jesus Christ become the judge?

In the Gospel of John chapter five Jesus gives a discourse to the disciples related to the fact that God the Father is going to delegate to Him judgment of the human race.  

John 5:22 ^NASB "For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment to the Son." The Father is not going to be the ultimate judge of all mankind and that is because the Son, having successfully lived His life during the time of the incarnation without sin, and going to the cross and dying on our behalf, being incarnate as a genuine human being and because of His identification with us, He is our peer. We are going to be judged by a peer and not by the Father, someone who is truly human and yet without sin. [23] "so that all will honor the Son even as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him." When He uses the term "Son" here the question we should ask is: is he talking about the Son of God or the son of man, or the Son of David? We think here He is talking about Son of God, but He shifts specifically to Son of Man in verse 27. The sending of the Son by the Father takes us back to before the incarnation and so this brings into focus more His deity than His humanity. Son of God means he is God; Son of Man means He is fully human. Son of David is the only title that really relates to His background, His heritage, His ancestry; the other two titles focus on who He is. This is a typical idiom in Hebrew.    

John 5:24 ^NASB "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life." There is something very interesting because He is using the word "judgment" here in a negative sense, in the sense of condemnation.

John 5:25 ^NASB "Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live." We would say "the time is coming." It is a non-specific use of the word "hour," it is just the idiom of the language. In saying "the time is coming and now is" He is talking about the immediacy of His coming and the fact that he is still offering the kingdom to them (it is still the early part of His ministry) and there is this orientation to the fact that if they accept Him then the kingdom would come and this would be a present reality, the end of time. [26] "For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself" Notice that this depicts the distinction in roles in the Trinity. They are equal in every aspect of their character. [27] "and He gave Him authority to execute judgment, because He is {the} Son of Man." The Father has a role; He is the authority. The Son has a delegated role as the Son, and so the Father grants the Son to have life in Himself. This granting of life to Him seems to be related to His humanity—based on John chapter one. The Father has given Him authority to execute judgment as well because He is the Son of Man. That last phrase us causal—because He is the Son of Man, because he is truly human God has delegated the authority to Jesus to be the one to execute judgment at the end time. [28] "Do not marvel at this; for an hour [time] is coming, in which all who are in the tombs will hear His voice…" This speaks generally of end-time judgments. [29] "and will come forth; those who did the good {deeds} to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil {deeds} to a resurrection of judgment." In the context of John the good is believing that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, and the evil is rejecting that. [30] "I can do nothing on My own initiative. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me." He has been delegated judgment, so when he appears to John on the Isle of Patmos He appears as a judge because that is His role Revelation. Revelation is a book about judgment and how evil is going to ultimately be judged and condemned at the end-time.

So in John chapter five, just by way of summary, we see that Jesus is presented as both the Son of God (fully God) and Son of Man because He identifies with us because He has a true human nature; He is our peer and we will be subject to peer judgment. As the Son of God he has all of the attributes of deity and as the Son of Man he has all of the attributes of humanity. As a man, therefore, He is fully qualified because He lived without sin to judge human beings at the end of time.   

In Revelation 14:14 the first thing we should note is the color of the cloud. It is a white cloud because it emphasizes purity. Just as he was dressed in a white robe He is sitting on a white cloud, emphasizing purity and righteousness, and that qualifies Him to judge. It should be understood to be a literal cloud. Just as we think of Jesus coming in the clouds, the clouds are in the atmosphere, and so this is a picture of Jesus immediately involved in the events on the earth, sitting over the earth as the one who is overseeing the judgments upon the earth. The first thing we think of when we think of Jesus wearing a crown is that He is the King of kings and Lord of lords, but that is not what is pictured here. This is not the diadema [diadhma] crown, this is the stephanos [stefanoj] crown which is given as an award for victory. Jesus had victory over death in the resurrection, as stated in 1 Corinthians 15 and in Hebrews 2:7; and so this qualifies Him to be the judge. The golden crown is the sign of His qualification as the judge. In His hand is a sharp sickle, but he is not judging yet, He is just holding the sickle. He is waiting. What is He waiting for? What did Jesus say? He said he doesn't know the time, the hour, the day; only the Father knows when that judgment will come. He is there prepared, ready, waiting for the signal to initiate the judgment, and that comes in verse 15: "Put in your sickle and reap, for the hour to reap has come, because the harvest of the earth is ripe." He has been waiting; He does not know the time.

This is a very interesting verse because it pulls together several different threads that go back to different sections revealed earlier in the Scripture. This is "another angel" mentioned, indicating another of the same kind—the angels that are participating and executing the judgment on the earth—and he comes out of the temple. The temple is the heavenly temple of God, the dwelling of God; this is where God the Father is sitting on His throne in heaven overseeing the judgment. This began when he made the scroll available to the Lamb who began carrying pout those judgments. The last time we saw the temple was in Revelation 11:19. Remember in chapter 10 we saw John being told to eat the little book. The judgment is going to happen, it is sweet. But then when it is seen as to how horrible that is and the extent of that judgment it is almost revolting; it is a time of horrible violence and blood shed on the earth which is the result of sin. Then chapter eleven talks about the two witnesses and the earthly temple. Then we come to a heavenly scene in vv. 15-19 when the seventh angel blows a trumpet. The blowing of the trumpet is the beginning of the last series of judgments that are the bowl judgments. The bowl judgments don't start until chapter fifteen. They cover the last part of the Tribulation but they don't start right after the mid-point, there is a pause. But when the seventh angel blows his trumpet that announces the culmination of God's judgments on the earth. Then at the end of that eleventh chapter we read: ^NASB "And the temple of God which is in heaven was opened; and the ark of His covenant appeared in His temple, and there were flashes of lightning and sounds and peals of thunder and an earthquake and a great hailstorm." What comes out of that temple is this angel. He is coming from the throne of God with the announcement. He has the order now to execute the final judgment, and so the Son is depicted here as sitting above the earth waiting for the order in order to begin the judgment.    

In Revelation 14:14 we are told that this is a sharp sickle. The reason for the emphasis on it being sharp is because it emphasizes the severity of the judgment and the certainty of the judgment. A sharp knife cuts deep and it is painful. When the angel comes out and says "Put in your sickle" it is not an imperative. It is not an order in the sense of a superior to an inferior, there is a relaying of the order from the throne of God to the Son of Man to now begin the judgment. The reference for the Son not knowing the day or the hour and neither do the angels is in Mark 13:32. So this relates to the final series of judgments, the bowl judgments, and the final half of the Tribulation period. In verse 15 we read, "Put in your sickle and reap, for the hour to reap has come, because the harvest of the earth is ripe." Some translations say "fully ripe" and that really captures the idea better than "ripe." When something is ripe it is time to pick it an eat it; when something is fully ripe and overripe it is past time, and that is the meaning of the Greek word here—xeraino [chrainw] which means when the fruit has dried up it has become overripe or withered. It emphasizes the fact that God has given man more than enough time to respond to Him. xeraino is used 16 times in the New Testament and in not one of them does it have a positive sense. John 15:6, the vine that is not producing is cut off and it withers up. Everywhere this word is used in the New Testament it is a negative.  Then we have verse 16 ^NASB "Then He who sat on the cloud swung His sickle over the earth, and the earth was reaped." The verb is an aorist tense which simply summarizes the action. So this is a summary of what is going to take three to three and a half years to cover, and it is a passive voice which indicates that the earth receives the action of the judgment. The Lord Jesus Christ is going to use there intermediate agents of the angels in order to bring about this judgment. The first judgment has to do with this overripe harvest which is literally a dried and withered harvest. This depicts the inhabitants of the earth as now withered, lifeless, no longer productive as human beings, and no longer of value and are fully ready for judgment. When we come to verse 17, the grapes, they are going to be fully ripe at their prime, full of juice and ready to be harvested.     

Revelation 14:17 ^NASB "And another angel came out of the temple which is in heaven, and he also had a sharp sickle." The source is the justice of God, the Supreme Court of Heaven. The sharp sickle indicates the severity and the certainty of the judgments. [18] "Then another angel, the one who has power over fire, came out from the altar; and he called with a loud voice to him who had the sharp sickle, saying, 'Put in your sharp sickle and gather the clusters from the vine of the earth, because her grapes are ripe.'" This introduces this whole imagery of the gathering of the grapes and the mashing of the grapes, getting the juice from the grapes, and all of this depicting judgment. It is a picture of blood.

Note, the angel comes out from the altar. What altar is this? The bronze altar is the cross, so it is unlikely that there would be a bronze altar in heaven. We do have the altar of incense, and this is depicted in Revelation chapter 6. In 6:9 ^NASB "When the Lamb broke the fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God, and because of the testimony which they had maintained; [10] and they cried out with a loud voice, saying, 'How long, O Lord, holy and true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth?'" What altar are they under? This is a prayer. The altar of incense is the place of the ascending smoke which depicts the prayers of the saints. Then we connect this to what happens in chapter eight, the interval between the seal judgments and the trumpet judgments, where we have, v. 3 "Another angel came and stood at the altar [of incense], holding a golden censer; and much incense was given to him, so that he might add it to the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar which was before the throne." The prayer goes back to understanding the fifth seal judgment, the prayer that God would finally bring judgment upon the wicked. Then in v. 5 "Then the angel took the censer and filled it with the fire of the altar, and threw it to the earth; and there followed peals of thunder and sounds and flashes of lightning and an earthquake." So the angel mentioned in 14:15 would be the angel we saw in 8:3. It is now time. 

What we see here is this whole depiction of judgment built on the imagery of the wine press. Revelation 14:19 ^NASB "So the angel swung his sickle to the earth and gathered {the clusters from} the vine of the earth, and threw them into the great wine press of the wrath of God." There is this tremendous imagery here of the gathering of the grape harvest. The grapes are ripe, they are just about to burst they are so full of juice, and all of the grapes are brought into the vats and the workers will stomp out and mash the grapes. The juice flows down from the upper vat to the lower vat where it is collected and taken to make the wine. The picture here is of the angel as one of the harvesters taking his sickle and going through the vine of the earth in order to harvest the grapes.

What is going on here with the vine? The vine is a frequent image throughout Scripture. In the Old Testament it is used of Israel, e.g. Psalm 80:8. The purpose of the vine is to produce something. It is a picture of production and of fruit and so there is the image of productivity, blessing, growth. We have passages like Isaiah 5:2-7; Hosea 10:1 and many others where the vine is used to depict Israel. Then in the New Testament Jesus uses the vine to depict the production of the believer who is in fellowship with Him in John 15. So the key for us is to understand the vine as a picture of production. Production can either be from the sin nature and produce a carnal, worldly culture and all of the ideas and values and philosophies and religions of that worldly culture, or it can produce that which comes from the Holy Spirit, that which is honoring and glorifying to God. The vine here is stated to be the vine of the earth. How is this phrase "the earth" used in Revelation? Is the earth a good place or not? We have earth dwellers. Is that good or bad? These are the people who never respond to the gospel all the way through the Tribulation period. The second beast comes out of the earth. So the production of the earth is not a good thing in the book of Revelation. This is human culture that is produced by the vine of the earth. 

To go further with this we have to go back into the Old Testament. There are three key Old Testament passages that give us a clue as to what is going on as the background for this imagery. Joel 3:12-16 ^NASB "Let the nations be aroused And come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat, For there I will sit to judge All the surrounding nations. [13] Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come, tread, for the wine press is full; The vats overflow, for their wickedness is great." The idea again is that God has given them a lot more time than necessary in order to deal with them in grace and allow them time to respond to the gospel. [14] "Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision. [15] The sun and moon grow dark And the stars lose their brightness. [16] The LORD roars from Zion And utters His voice from Jerusalem, And the heavens and the earth tremble. But the LORD is a refuge for His people And a stronghold to the sons of Israel."

Isaiah 63:1 ^NASB "Who is this who comes from Edom, With garments of glowing colors from Bozrah, This One who is majestic in His apparel, Marching in the greatness of His strength? 'It is I who speak in righteousness, mighty to save.' [2] Why is Your apparel red, And Your garments like the one who treads in the wine press? [3] 'I have trodden the wine trough alone, And from the peoples there was no man with Me. I also trod them in My anger And trampled them in My wrath; And their lifeblood is sprinkled on My garments, And I stained all My raiment. [4] For the day of vengeance was in My heart, And My year of redemption has come.'"

Jeremiah 25:30, 31 ^NASB "Therefore you shall prophesy against them all these words, and you shall say to them, 'The LORD will roar from on high And utter His voice from His holy habitation; He will roar mightily against His fold. He will shout like those who tread {the grapes,} Against all the inhabitants of the earth. [31] A clamor has come to the end of the earth, Because the LORD has a controversy with the nations. He is entering into judgment with all flesh; As for the wicked, He has given them to the sword,' declares the LORD."

Revelation 14:20 ^NASB "And the wine press was trodden outside the city, and blood came out from the wine press, up to the horses' bridles, for a distance of two hundred miles." The winepress pictures the battle zone of this campaign of Armageddon. It is the winepress outside of Jerusalem that is depicted here, and it should be translated, not "up to the horses bridles"—it is the Greek preposition achri [a)xri] meaning to or as far as and indicates that the blood splatter goes that high. The imagery here is of a bloody, violent period that extends for 1,600 furlongs. A furlong translates the Greek stadion [stadion], about 607 feet = 183.9 miles. How do we describe the extent of the land of Israel? From Dan to Beersheba—200 miles. The whole area is going to be turned into a violent battle zone that is going to be so bloody because the Lord Jesus Christ is going to destroy the armies of the Antichrist. No area will remain untouched.  

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