The Second Coming of Christ
Four Studies on Interpreting Prophecy
by David Gooding
How are the terms in Revelation being used? Are they to be taken figuratively, symbolically or literally? David Gooding timetables the prophetic events as recorded in Revelation and elsewhere in Scripture, examining how the symbols are dealt with and the moral and spiritual lessons to be learned from them. He also discusses the different phases of our Lord’s kingdom: this present phase of the kingdom being set up spiritually; and the future kingdom in its outward form, the millennial reign of Christ. Prophecy, far from being irrelevant and impractical to the Christian life, gives us assurance that our Lord will one day return for his people and bring them home to reign with him forever.
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1: Prophecy: An Integral Part of the Gospel
Let us begin by reading some verses from John’s Gospel and chapter 14. It is our Lord speaking and he says,
Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. (vv. 1–3)
We have reached the stage in our thinking about the Lord’s coming and prophetic matters in general where we’re perhaps beginning to feel that everything is becoming complicated. I don’t know what reaction it has on you when things get complicated. Sometimes when things get complicated, I feel like going to bed! And I do notice in some of my fellow Christians that when spiritual things get complicated, they begin to despair. That’s very understandable, I suppose, but there are some spheres in which when things get complicated, we don’t despair.
Imagine I’m at breakfast one morning and the postman brings me a letter. I undo the envelope and find a letter with a heading that says ‘Moneymore and Dolittle Solicitors.’ What do they want with me? It informs me that my Uncle Malachi has died in the United States of America and if I will go along to their office I will hear things to my advantage. So I proceed there and I hear that this good man has died in America and he’s left me his fortune. ‘Sit there,’ says Moneymore, ‘and I will read you the will.’ So he starts. I’ve been left $5 million, and 230 preferential shares in the Big Tyre Company in Chicago and some stock, plus some ordinary shares to the tune of about 3,000 shares in another firm, five ocean-going yachts, two country estates . . . Do I interrupt him and say ‘Now you’re becoming complicated.’ No, I don’t do that. Even though it’s enough to make my head burst and I don’t understand it all, the more complicated the better!
I’ll read you the will of Jesus Christ our Lord, signed, sealed and settled the day he went to the cross.
I assign to you, as my Father assigned to me, a kingdom, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom. (Luke 22:29–30)
The word he uses for ‘assign’ is the legal term for leaving something in a will. ‘I leave it in my will to you, a kingdom, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom.’ I don’t want that to be too simple. I want that to be complicated. I want there to be enough of heaven to last, and we should expect the marvellous treasures—the golden streets and sea of glass and many more amazing things. Would you want all that has been left to us by the will of our Lord to be simple? So then if we find things becoming complicated, let’s be honest and admit it to ourselves and to the Lord, and say, ‘Lord, it’s getting beyond me but I’m glad it’s all true.’
Let’s start by believing it and then, as we can manage, understanding it. You will see that this is what our Lord invites us to do in these words that we have just read from John’s Gospel. They are a tremendous prophetic statement in which our Lord informs us that in the Father’s house there are many rooms. Now of course, if he hadn’t told us, we wouldn’t have known. There is no philosopher, saint, or anyone else on earth who could possibly tell us what there is in the Father’s house. You can’t arrive at it by reason, nor deduce it from any philosophical argument. If ever you’re going to know about it, you’ll have to know by simply believing what Jesus Christ says. If you asked him to elaborate and said, ‘Please, what are the bricks made from in your Father’s house?’ or ‘How many rooms are there in your Father’s house?’, you won’t get any answer. For in the very nature of things, the Father’s house and what it comprises is something that goes far beyond what we could understand, even if we were told.
Our Lord, you notice, prefaces his words to us with this tremendous appeal that we believe him personally, ‘Believe in God; believe also in me.’ It is essential in any right approach to prophetic statements that we put our belief first and foremost, and when the Lord says something, we say, ‘Amen. That’s it. From now on, I believe it with all my heart and I believe it just because you said so.’ Where we don’t always understand, we should have the grace to admit it to ourselves and to others. But we must draw a distinction between understanding prophecy and believing prophecy. We mustn’t let ourselves get into that state of mind where an acquaintance of mine, a Christian preacher, has got himself when he says, ‘Well I know the New Testament talks about prophecy. I’m not interested in it really. I’m interested in the here and now.’
To say that we are not interested in prophecy is to call into question the deity of Jesus Christ our Lord. He says, ‘Look, I’m going away and I’m preparing a place for you, and I’m coming back and I’m taking you to myself that where I am, you may be in one of those rooms in the Father’s house. Believe me.’ We don’t turn round and say, ‘Well I hear what you say, but I’m not interested in that. That’s a lot of impractical stuff that doesn’t really help us. I’m interested in the practical side of Christian life.’ What blasphemy. The Lord says he’s going away and he’s coming back again and he’s going to do this, that and the other when he comes back again. We don’t turn round to the King himself and say, ‘That’s rather impractical: I don’t bother about those things.’ We turn round to the King and we say, ‘Hallelujah, Your Majesty. How marvellous. I do believe it as implicitly as if God the Father had spoken.’ You believe in God and you believe also what his Son says.
Distinguishing between Scripture and human interpretation
What can we be sure of? We can be absolutely sure of everything that holy Scripture teaches. Another cautionary tale before I proceed. There are dangers in becoming middle aged—dangers of becoming fat, dangers also of becoming cynical and sceptical! Not only do the middle aged become cynical and sceptical sometimes about things in general, but alas sometimes Christians in their middle years become cynical and sceptical about prophecy, and I’ll tell you why. In their youth, they were absolutely certain of this particular scheme of prophecy, and then later on they read a bit and they listened to some arguments and they found out that some of their ideas weren’t quite scriptural. Then they heard somebody else expound another system of prophecy altogether and they said, ‘Goodness me, that must be true,’ and they nearly believed that. Then another chap came along and he had a third one, and they couldn’t decide which was right.
We should try and avoid that difficulty, and one way of avoiding it is to distinguish between what Scripture explicitly says on the one hand and, on the other, what we ourselves infer from what Scripture says. Good Christian folks have not always been careful to distinguish between what Scripture actually and explicitly says in so many words, and the deductions and inferences that we have drawn from them. Now please, it is not wrong for us to draw inferences from what Scripture says. Two people on the road to Emmaus were very gently but very firmly rebuked by Jesus our Lord for not drawing inferences (see Luke 24:25). The Old Testament had talked about the coming of Messiah and certainly it had talked about his coming and the glory that should accompany that coming. The Old Testament also had talked about the sufferings of Messiah. Well, that was a problem which the Old Testament didn’t very explicitly work out for you. How can you resolve the problem that some Old Testament Scriptures spoke of the coming of Messiah to suffer and other Old Testament prophecy spoke of the coming of Messiah to reign?
Many Jews, when faced with that, gave up trying to think or settled for the prophecy that appealed to them most—particularly the ones about the glory—and left the others out. There wasn’t any verse in the Old Testament that says that when Messiah comes, he will first come, then he’ll be crucified at Calvary, then he will rise again and then he’ll come again in glory. Not quite as explicit as that, so it was right and proper therefore that the Old Testament saints should have drawn some inferences. ‘O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken’—instead of just choosing to believe some. We too mustn’t just choose those Scriptures which appeal to us about what is now future and then leave those under the carpet that we don’t understand. We must try to put them together. We must try to understand. But we’d do well still to distinguish between what Scripture actually says and the inferences that we draw from it. Our inferences may prove to be wrong as time goes by. No Scripture will ever prove to be wrong.
Things that are clear
There are wonderful things I may be absolutely certain of if I’m prepared to believe them. For example, 1 Thessalonians 4 talks about our Lord’s coming for the believer.
Coming for us
For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. (vv. 16–17)
Amen, I believe it. I feel absolutely certain of it. The Lord is coming to take us home, either raising us from the dead or changing us without our dying for, says 1 Corinthians,
We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. (15:51–52)
Amen, I believe it. There’s no doubt about it. It’s as clear as anything; the Lord is coming and taking us home to glory.
Coming in judgment
Then 1 Thessalonians 5, and 2 Thessalonians 1 and 2 tell us that the Lord is coming to execute judgment on an ungodly world that has rejected him and his gospel.
when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. (2 Thess 1:7–8)
There is no doubt about it. It’s as plain as a pikestaff: you may believe it with all your heart right now. So now we’ve got two things we can believe: the Lord coming for his people to take them home and the Lord coming to judge this ungodly world. What else can we believe?
Coming to reign
The Lord is going to reign and we with him.
If we have died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him. (2 Tim 2:11–12)
So we’re going to reign with the Lord. We can be absolutely certain of it.
Coming to a new heaven and a new earth
What else can I be certain of about the Lord’s coming? The Lord’s coming will involve the burning up of this world altogether. Let me quote you from 2 Peter 3.
But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved. (vv. 10–11)
And then the book of Revelation says that there’s going to be a new heaven and a new earth.
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. (21:1)
Thank God for that and I believe that as well.
These are vast things and important things. There is no doubt about them and if we haven’t done it thus far, let us take a second and tell the Lord right now, ‘Right, Lord, you said it. I believe it and I know therefore that the Lord is coming to take the believers home, and I know the Lord is coming to judge the world, and I know the Lord is coming and when he comes, he’s going to reign, and I know that through his coming, heaven and earth that are now will be burnt up and there will be a new heaven and a new earth.’ You may say to yourself that you don’t know how to put it all together, but before you start putting it together, let me say it again—believe it and you’ll find it remarkably simple in fact. Although there will be other things that are more complicated, there is much that Scripture says and we may believe them and therefore know them.
Things to ponder
But somebody’s going to tell me now about two problems. How do you fit all those things together? Coming to take the believers home, coming to judge the world, coming to reign, coming to blow the earth to smithereens, all at once? And anyway, what do you mean by ‘coming’? Well here comes one of those deliciously complicated things! The Old Testament looked forward to the coming of Messiah. What does it mean by ‘coming’? Let’s take the Gospel of Luke for a moment and see how Luke sketches in three ‘comings’. We will begin with some selected verses from chapter 19. I want you to notice the word ‘coming’ and the little phrase ‘draw near’.
And when he had said these things, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. When he drew near to Bethphage and Bethany, at the mount that is called Olivet, he sent two of the disciples, saying, ‘Go into the village in front of you, where on entering you will find a colt tied,’ . . . And they brought it to Jesus, and throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. . . . As he was drawing near—already on the way down the Mount of Olives—the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen, saying, ‘Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!’ . . . And when he drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, ‘Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.’ (vv. 19:28–30, 35, 37–38, 41–42)
One set of ‘drawing near’. If we ask Luke what he means by ‘coming’ he will say, ‘I mean this. Our Lord Jesus got as far as Bethany and Bethphage. He told his disciples to go and get a colt. They got this colt, put their garments on it and Jesus sat on it and he drew near to the city, Jerusalem.’ It was the coming of Messiah. Zechariah prophesied it long centuries before.
Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. (Zech 9:9)
Now the crowd meet him as he comes down the side of the mountain, sitting on the donkey, and they say, ‘Hosanna, blessed is the King who comes.’ This was the coming of the Lord Jesus. But, says Luke, that isn’t the end of the story. He wept over that city because this was the day when Messiah would visit them in his official capacity as the coming Messiah. But they rejected him and cast him out.
Then in chapter 21 Luke records what the Lord himself said about another ‘coming’ and some of the signs associated with it.
But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near. (v. 20)
‘And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.’ And he told them a parable: ‘Look at the fig tree, and all the trees. As soon as they come out in leaf, you see for yourselves and know that the summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. (vv. 27–31)
Says our Lord, ‘When you see these things happening, you can expect to see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven.’ This is the coming of Messiah. This too is a coming. None would, I hope, confuse the two. Please don’t tell me I have invented the term ‘second coming’ and it isn’t in the Bible and therefore it’s invalid. Will you seriously argue that when he came on the donkey, it’s the same thing as coming on the clouds of heaven? No, Scripture itself makes it abundantly clear that these are two, call them separate stages if you like, or call them the first and second coming, but they’re two different events. They are both the coming of Messiah.
But Luke uses the term in a third sense. After our Lord died and rose again, there were two believers walking on the road to Emmaus and they were talking about all the things that had happened. Luke records that as they walked,
Jesus himself drew near and went with them. (24:15)
What was so special about that? It was nothing to be surprised at during the days of his flesh before the cross, but Christ had died and now he’s risen again. Already with a body no longer subject to the laws of gravity and such like things, he could go through doors without their opening. He could disappear out of sight immediately. He was already, so to speak, belonging to and in that other world and yet, as alive from the dead, he came to these two people, fulfilling what he had promised. John 14 tells us about it. The Lord said,
I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. (vv. 18–19)
And we recall that Judas, not the Iscariot one, scratched his head and said, ‘Lord, please, that’s all right to talk like that, but how on earth are you going to show yourself to us and not to the world?’ He promised that he would come to them, and might he be pleased to do that while we sit here talking about his first coming! But as we have seen, that first coming is not to be confused with the second one. So let’s stretch our minds a bit and see that Scripture uses these terms in different senses. Let’s believe the whole lot, because they are in Scripture. Not only does he come to commune with us and comfort us, but he warned a certain church, in a letter he had personally written to them, that if they didn’t repent and behave, he would come to them and discipline them, long before the second coming.
Well now you say, that means we will have to sort out in our minds, particularly when reading the Old Testament and it’s talking about the coming of Messiah, which ‘coming’ it is referring to. It makes it more interesting—more complicated, admittedly! But we’re not dealing with children’s stories or Aesop’s Fables: we’re dealing with the plan of the almighty God. We’ve seen already that there are many aspects to it—coming for the believer, coming to judge the world, coming to reign, coming to burn the whole world up. So does Scripture give us any help to put all these things together, any help to see when they’re going to happen?
Brief overview of the chronology
Yes, there is some help, and now I ask you therefore to attend upon a little reading of the Bible in the book of Revelation for the purpose of trying to get in our minds some things about the timetabling of prophecy. I want us to start in Revelation 21 and I’m going to work backwards. (Part of the reason for that is that I’ve now been living in Ireland nearly fifteen years and so it appears to me quite a sensible thing to do!) What I’m going to do is to start where the Bible ends, here at the end of this world and the coming of the new heaven and the new earth, and I’m going to work backwards to the events that precede it and see how far we get. Let me hasten to add that I do not believe that the whole of the book of Revelation is in chronological order. Indeed there are big parts of it which go over the same ground from different points of view. But my argument is now going to be that what we have here must be strict chronological order, and when we’ve mapped it out, we will have before our eyes a scriptural timetable of the order of events.
New heaven and new earth
Chapter 21 speaks of a new heaven and new earth. When is that going to happen? Well obviously the old heaven and old earth will have to be done away with before we can get the new heaven and new earth. That’s not just an inference on my part: the Bible tells us that. I know you’ll tell me perhaps that the book of Revelation is full of symbols. So it is. That doesn’t mean you can’t trust it and the Bible says it is the fact that the first heaven and the first earth flee away before the new heaven and the earth come, which isn’t surprising but needs to be said. Some people think you can take the book of Revelation, just because it’s a book of symbols, and mishmash the chronology up just as you please, because it’s symbolic. That’s nonsense. The new heaven and new earth are painted for us in symbols, but they can’t exist before the first heaven and first earth are passed away. Why do they pass away? The previous chapter tells us.
The final judgment
Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. (20:11)
So the ‘great white throne’ leads to heaven and earth fleeing away, the sea gives up the dead which are in it and the earth likewise, and death is finished as an institution and is cast into the lake of fire. And the great judgment, that day of the final judgment, has arrived.
The final rebellion
When does the final judgment take place? Revelation obliges us and tells us, if we look to chapter 20.
And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations that are at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle; their number is like the sand of the sea. And they marched up over the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, but fire came down from heaven and consumed them, and the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulphur where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night for ever and ever. (vv. 7–10)
We have described for us what many call the final rebellion. When does that happen?
The thousand years
After the thousand years. Revelation can be as full of symbols as it can possibly be, but ‘after’ will still be ‘after’ and won’t mean ‘before’. That’s moderately simple! The final rebellion takes place after the thousand years. This, my dear good brethren and sisters, is not my inference you’re required to believe here: it is inspired holy Scripture. This much you must believe, that there’s going to be a final rebellion after the thousand years. The book says so, and after that final rebellion is dealt with, the great white throne. You’ve got to believe that bit: the book says so.
You may ask, ‘When do the thousand years start from then?’ Let’s read back and look at the beginning of chapter 20.
Satan imprisoned
Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he might not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were ended. (vv. 1–3)
He had been deceiving the nations before then, but it won’t happen any longer. So Scripture says, ‘threw him in, chained him in, sealed him in.’ You get the point, don’t you? He’s not there theoretically. He’s not there because believers prayed hard enough to put him there. It was an angel with the chain who put him there and sealed the pit over him that he shouldn’t deceive the nations anymore. Had he been deceiving them before? Yes, that happened before the thousand years. If you’d seriously like to suggest that when the Bible says he was put in the pit so that he shouldn’t deceive anymore, but actually in fact he still goes on deceiving, that would make utter nonsense of holy writ. That he should stop deceiving means that he should stop deceiving, so the thousand years comes after that deceiving business.
What was he deceiving about? A lot of things, but it reached its pinnacle just before the thousand years, because if you look backwards to chapter 19 we read,
And I saw the beast and the kings of the earth with their armies gathered to make war against him who was sitting on the horse and against his army. And the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who in its presence had done the signs by which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast and those who worshipped its image. These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulphur. And the rest were slain by the sword that came from the mouth of him who was sitting on the horse. (vv. 19–21)
What’s going to put a stop to the deceiving? Are all the believers praying hard and trying to bind Satan? No, the verses tell us how it is done.
The man on the white horse
I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies gathered to make war against him who was sitting on the horse . . . And the rest were slain by the sword that came from the mouth of him who was sitting on the horse. (vv. 19, 21)
But who is he? We’d better go back and find out who he is.
Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords. (19:11–16)
Now some have drawn mistaken inferences from these verses. They say that a man coming out on a white horse with the name ‘The Word of God’ written on him, must be a picture of our Lord carrying the gospel to the world; and the armies that followed him are all the evangelists and personal witnesses. They’re coming out with The Word of God in order to do away with the deceptions of Satan. They say this is a picture of the church with the Lord preaching the gospel to the uttermost ends of the earth. But this is not correct, because you will notice it says what he’s going to do with this sharp sword. Convert the nations? No, strike the nations. Save them? No, rule them. How? With a rod of iron.
So let’s look at Revelation 2, which tells us when it will happen that Christ is going to rule the nations with a rod of iron.
The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron, as when earthen pots are broken in pieces, even as I myself have received authority from my Father. (vv. 26–27)
Are we going out with the gospel? No, it’s a description of our Lord coming out in judgment and breaking the nations like earthen pots. And the verses we read from chapter 19 add that he treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of almighty God. Note that this is not a description of Calvary, when he was oppressed. The figure is of the winepress filled with grapes; and in order to produce the wine, men had to get into the winepress and stamp it with their feet and make the blood of the grape run out. So Christ will come to the great winepress of God’s wrath and with his holy feet he’ll stamp it and tread it. The wrath of God will flow out, coming in flame and fire, taking vengeance on those who do not know God and executing the holy wrath of God.
So let us recap briefly. That only happens when the old heavens and old earth have passed away.
When do they pass away? At the great white throne.
When does that happen? After the final rebellion.
When does that happen? After the thousand years reign.
When does that happen? When the beast and false prophet and Satan are stopped from deceiving people.
When does that happen? At the second coming of Christ, in power and great glory to execute the wrath of God.
And what happens before that? Well you will see that chapter 18 describes the judgment upon Babylon and chapter 19 tells us about the marriage supper of the Lamb. And there I must leave it for the moment but like the other things we have considered, these are things we can believe.
Christ’s millennial reign
You ask whether that means there’s going to be a period in the future of a thousand years’ reign of Christ, literally. Well how else could you take it? But you’d better believe it first and then take it whichever way you think you ought to take it! There are some people who say, ‘This is a book of symbols and you can’t take it just like that. It’s only to be understood as a spiritual thing.’ Well let’s see if we can understand the thousand years as a spiritual thing then. With that, we come to chapter 20 once more, for a description of this millennium.
Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom the authority to judge was committed. Also I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God, and those who had not worshipped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years. (vv. 4–6)
To get our bearings in this passage of Scripture, what is said to be happening during this one thousand years on God’s side is that our Lord Jesus Christ is reigning and that these people here mentioned are reigning with him. One way of checking when that is, is to consult your Epistles and your Gospels to find out when it should be that the church reigns with Christ. ‘Are you reigning now?’ Paul asked the Corinthians, with some sarcasm in his voice, ‘and would that you did reign so that we might share the rule with you’ (see 1 Cor 4:8). Paul goes on to describe his current situation to show that neither he nor the church in general could be described as ‘reigning’. On the contrary he says, ‘We have become, and still are, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things.’ (4:13)
Let me read you another Scripture, this time in Revelation 11.
Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, ‘The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever.’ And the twenty-four elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshipped God, saying, ‘We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, who is and who was, for you have taken your great power and begun to reign.’ (vv. 15–17)
That Christ will reign in that sense—when he takes his kingdom power—is yet future. He has not yet ‘begun to reign’ but when he does, we will reign with him. But to be factual, these particular folks who are mentioned here had their heads cut off: the beast had beheaded them. How will they reign with Christ? The answer is they’ll be raised: they ‘came to life’. They lived after they had been beheaded—so they lived again, they arose.
The first resurrection
But some would say, ‘No, I dispute that: there’s another way of looking at it.’ There are many serious scholars whose views are largely founded on other parts of Scripture who, when they come to this passage, find it a little difficult to fit it into their theological scheme and feel that it would be lawful therefore to say that this ‘first resurrection’ is a spiritual resurrection. It is being born again and when a man is born again, that is the first resurrection, a spiritual resurrection, and then he lives and reigns with Christ. But we know that when Romans 5 talks about those who receive the gift of grace ‘who reign in life through Jesus Christ’ (see v. 17), it is referring to victorious Christian living in the present period of the church, not reigning with Christ in his kingdom.
Then we read that the rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were ended, and we know they are raised to stand before the great white throne to be judged. That is a literal physical resurrection. And that is a view very commonly held—that the first resurrection before the thousand years is a spiritual resurrection, but the rest of them being raised is a physical resurrection. It is utterly impossible. It matters not that this is a book of symbols from end to end, but Greek still means Greek and English still means English. But let’s try to make it mean first the spiritual resurrection and then a literal resurrection. So first of all, we get a spiritual resurrection of the spiritual dead. Never mind they’ve been beheaded by the antichrist, which would be rather literal! We’ll take it that it really meant the spiritual thing and they were spiritually raised. It is a figure of speech that our Lord uses: ‘an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live’ (John 5:25)—a spiritual resurrection. Yes, you can describe being born again as a spiritual resurrection, but let’s try to put that in here.
We are explicitly told in these verses that at the beginning of the thousand years, some of the dead are raised and the rest of the dead are not raised until the thousand years are ended. Now that means that to start with, the dead are all dead in the same sense: the expressions are quite clear. Some of that great company are raised, the rest are not raised. So then let’s put our suggested interpretation into these verses. Let us suppose that the first company who are raised, are raised in the sense of being raised to a spiritual life, in the sense of which our Lord speaks in John 5. That will give us the following result. ‘I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God, and those who had not worshipped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years’ (Rev 20:4). That is, they lived spiritually. They were born again. They received eternal life.
Now at once that gives us an extraordinary result because these people, we are told, had already been alive once and had been beheaded under the beast’s rule, and now they are raised again and they live. But if we are going to say that their resurrection is a spiritual resurrection, this then is the moment in which they are raised to walk in newness of life, they receive eternal life and apparently, even before they received eternal life, they had been witnessing for Christ and had been beheaded by the beast. That at once shows us that something has gone awry.
But leave that difficulty aside and let’s just suppose it could possibly mean that these people, after having lived physically and been beheaded by the beast, are now enjoying the receipt of eternal life and are raised to walk in newness of life. They have experienced, in other words, a spiritual resurrection. They have been born again. ‘The rest of the dead’—which must now mean the rest of the spiritual dead—are not raised until the thousand years are ended, and that must mean that the rest of the spiritual dead are not born again until after the thousand years. Why wait so long? Does it imply that these people for some reason—perhaps that they didn’t hear the gospel or that they rejected the gospel—were not born again like the others until the millennium is over? And then what? They are born again when the millennium is over? It is of course quite absurd and fantastic.
A scriptural interpretation
When we argue the thing logically through in this fashion, it cannot mean that the people that are raised at the end of the millennium are raised in a spiritual resurrection, that is to say that they are at that point born again. But just let us see that the Scripture itself indicates that this cannot be so. In Revelation 20:11–15, we are told in what sense the rest of the dead are raised. They are raised to stand before the great white throne and the sea gives up the dead, and death and hades give up the dead which are in them. That surely must be a physical resurrection. The sea does not give up the dead which are in her in order that they may be born again in a spiritual sense, and certainly hades doesn’t give up the dead that they may be born again in a spiritual sense. It is then impossible to think, and all seem to agree in fact upon this, that the rest of the dead, when they are raised at the end of the millennium, are raised in a physical sense.
But now working backwards once more, that must mean that those who are raised at the beginning of the millennium are also raised in a physical sense, because I recur to the point I made earlier that you start off with a general body of those that are dead, and all are dead in the same sense. And if those that are raised at the end of the millennium are physically dead and are physically raised, then the others likewise must be understood as having been physically dead and having been physically raised. And of course that makes excellent sense of the ideas with which verse 4 begins. These people who are raised at the beginning of the millennium are physically dead for the simple reason that they had been beheaded for the testimony of the Lord Jesus.
I submit to you therefore that to try and interpret the first resurrection at the beginning of the millennium as a spiritual resurrection makes nonsense of the whole passage. A nonsense which you can only avoid if you are prepared to argue that the first resurrection at the beginning of the millennium is a spiritual resurrection and that the resurrection at the end of the millennium is a physical resurrection, in spite of the fact that both the dead at the beginning and the dead at the end are all dead in the same sense. That leads us on then to a final question.
Consistency with other Scripture
Some people will argue that if this is the true interpretation of Revelation 20, namely that there are two resurrections, one at the beginning of the millennium and one at the end, why is it that this is not taught us clearly in the Epistles? But the fact is that if we read carefully what Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 4, for instance, we will find that he is in total agreement with what John is saying in Revelation 20. Paul does not preach a general resurrection at the last day of both believers and unbelievers. He preaches a resurrection that is selective. Let me read you his words from 1 Thessalonians 4.
For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words. (vv. 16–18)
Will you please notice that he does not simply say, ‘the dead will rise first,’ but, ‘the dead in Christ will rise first.’ Not all the dead, but a selection of the dead, namely the dead who are ‘in Christ’. And again, I want to urge that we are not entitled to read into those words more than they say. It is not all the living who are at that stage caught up to meet the Lord in the air. It is ‘we who are alive, who are left’—the ‘we’ referring to the Christian community about whom the passage is concerned. What Paul is saying is that when the Lord comes, dead believers will be raised physically. Living believers, at that same moment, will then be caught up and together they will meet the Lord in the air. He is not talking about what will happen to the impenitent dead or the unbelieving living. He is preaching a resurrection which is selective, every bit as much selective as the resurrection that John is talking about in Revelation 20.
We are told that it is only those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus during the reign of the beast who are raised at that point. It seems to me that the verses themselves explain to us why it is that only these are mentioned here. When verse 5 says, ‘This is the first resurrection’, it is referring specifically to this group who are now raised to reign with Christ. That is to say this group now completes the first resurrection. After this, no more companies of dead will be raised until the thousand years are ended. In other words, this comparatively small number of people, those who had been beheaded under the beast, are raised and complete the first resurrection. They are, so to speak, the final gleanings of the great harvest of those who have been raised at the Lord’s coming, which is the one referred to in 1 Thessalonians 4. The verses do not mean that the first resurrection only comprises those that had been beheaded under the beast, but simply that when those who had been beheaded under the beast are finally raised, then they complete the great number of those privileged to take part in the first resurrection.
2: When Does Christ Reign?
Let us read in the Gospel by Luke and chapter 22.
You are those who have stayed with me in my trials, and I assign to you, as my Father assigned to me, a kingdom, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. (vv. 28–29)
Principles of interpretation
We are now at the midpoint of our conference together and some of you may be thinking, ‘When are these fellows going to begin to talk about prophecy? They haven’t so much as mentioned Gog, let alone Magog, nor Meshech and Tubal, and they haven’t said a word about Armageddon. When are they going to begin to talk about prophecy?’ Well I take your point if you feel like that. There is to be a list on which you may put down the questions that particularly interest you, and my colleagues and I will try to deal with them. But for my part, I do confess more concern in this conference to talk with you about the principles of interpretation of prophecy, rather than the more startling details.
It would be pretty useless for you if we go on at great length about Gog and Magog and get you all excited and saying, ‘It’s marvellous that the Russians are going to get knocked on the head,’ and then you discover in ten years’ time that our interpretation has been built on very shaky foundations and that equating Meshech with Moscow is not possible! So forgive us if we seem to be dealing in vague generalities rather than in striking, concrete events. You may come to see—I hope you will come to see, even before you get grey hairs like us—that perhaps the principles of interpretation are the things of permanent value which will help you in your study of the detail. We are not thereby saying that it is invalid to study Gog and Magog. God has written about them in his word and all that he has written is to be studied and all is valuable. But at this particular conference if we have to choose, for my part I will choose to talk about the principles of interpretation.
The millennial reign of Christ
Now apparently I did not make myself clear in my first talk. We talked about the chronology of the end times and we worked backwards and came across the reign of our Lord Jesus Christ of a thousand years, normally called by its Latin term ‘the millennium’. I didn’t make myself clear, because I didn’t apparently state in so many words that I believe it is to be a literal reign of Christ of a thousand years at least, in the future. So now let me make it clear, I believe there will be a literal reign of Christ in the future, before the end of the world.
But somebody will come back at me and say, ‘But that is a very arbitrary interpretation of that passage of Scripture. There is only one passage of Scripture in the whole of the Bible that mentions the thousand years. Why should we attach so much importance to it?’ The immediate answer to that is that if God says a thing once, it is true. God doesn’t have to say things three times before they become true and important. But somebody will say, ‘That passage about the thousand years is in the book of Revelation, which is a book full of symbols and it is not right to take those symbols as though they were statements of literal fact.’ Well just let’s examine that particular argument, because it is a serious argument.
Symbolic or literal?
How are we to interpret this book of Revelation? Let’s come to chapter 1 verse 1.
The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show to his servants the things that must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John.
It used to be said in my youth—I don’t know if it is still said by any reputable theologian—that the Greek word which is here translated ‘made it known’ (‘signified’ kjv) means that he showed it by symbols and therefore indicates that nothing is to be taken literally in this book. Well let’s test that theory—does it mean he’s indicated it by symbols and therefore nothing is to be taken literally in this book?
Let us turn the pages back to John’s Gospel, chapter 12, to meet that very same word.
‘And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ He said this to show [‘signifying’ kjv] by what kind of death he was going to die. (vv. 32–33)
It was of course the same Greek word. What did he say then? He said, ‘when I am lifted up’. Would you care to argue that this word means he indicated it by a symbol and therefore it isn’t to be taken literally? We know of course that he did mean literally ‘lifted up’. The fact is that the Greek word means ‘to indicate’, to indicate by some manner of sign, but the nature of the sign isn’t necessarily specified. It does not necessarily mean it is a symbol that cannot be taken literally.
Or let us come at it another way. Let us take some of the symbols that are used in the book of Revelation and see how they are dealt with. So let’s take the first that occur, starting at the beginning in chapter 1. John tells us that on the Lord’s Day on the Isle of Patmos, he heard a great voice behind him.
Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash round his chest. (vv. 12–13)
Lampstands
So here you have some symbols. Lampstands are symbols, obviously. It’s not talking about literal lampstands made of brass or gold or silver with oil lamps in them. These then are symbols. Let’s have a go at interpreting the symbols and let’s suppose that because they’re symbols, they don’t refer to anything literal. What are they? You say, ‘Well, nothing literal. They refer to the spiritual principle of life.’ Do they? Let’s hear our Lord interpret the symbols. Does the last clause in the chapter read ‘and the seven lampstands are principles of life’ (v. 20)? No, the seven lampstands are seven churches, literally so. You could have pinpointed their location on the map. You could have gone down the street in Ephesus, for example, knocked on the door of a building and found literal people inside, who were the church at Ephesus. Yes, very literal.
A lion and a lamb
Let’s think again, this time the famous symbols of Revelation 5. This is the great scene in heaven.
And one of the elders said to me, ‘Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.’ And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a Lamb. (vv. 5–6)
And it represents? Well not a literal lamb with wool on its back. Nor a lion such as you would see in Longleat Zoo. Then you say, ‘It’s a symbol and symbols must not refer to anything literal, so it’s a principle.’ You might say, ‘I saw there the principle of meekness.’ Really? No, when he saw the lion and the lamb, the symbols indicated something, someone exceedingly literal—not a principle but a man, thank God. A man of flesh and bone, even Jesus Christ our Lord. It is altogether a false principle to assert that just because symbols are used in the book of Revelation, you must not take them to refer to anything literal. Generally speaking, the symbols are used to help us to see the significance of what is literal.
A key and a chain
Let’s come to one further example. The very passage that I was talking about when we asserted that there would be a literal reign of Christ in the future is in chapter 20, and that one thousand years is introduced in this fashion:
Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he might not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were ended. (vv. 1–3)
Some theologians who hold that there is no millennium to come—we call them amillennialists, the Greek word plus a Latin word which means ‘not a millennium’—some of them, not all of them but the less responsible among them, argue thus. ‘This thousand year reign of Christ is mentioned in a paragraph that mentions other things as well, and those other things can’t be literal, therefore the thousand years reign isn’t literal.’
What are the other things that aren’t literal? Well they say, ‘when it says an angel came down out of heaven, having a key in his hand, it wasn’t a Yale key, was it? You can’t take it literally. And it had a chain, but it can’t be a literal chain like you find in Harland and Wolff. Therefore it isn’t literal, and because the key and the chain aren’t literal, the thousand years can’t be literal.’ That of course, is to confuse the principles of language, let alone anything else. Let me give some illustrations of the way language is used.
Flowing with milk and honey
The Israelites were promised that when they got to Palestine they would find a land flowing with milk and honey. Not literally, surely, with a sticky mess of honey and milk! ‘No,’ you say, ‘spiritually: they were to find a land full of the milk of the word of God and the honey of the Holy Spirit.’ On the contrary, they were to find a land where there was lots of green grass with lots of lovely cows who gave a rich supply of milk, and flowers from which bees made honey. With poetical licence and exaggeration, the Scripture says it would be a land flowing with milk and honey, but please don’t take the word ‘flow’ in some literal sense that it flowed down the street. And don’t spiritualize it, because it wasn’t meant to be spiritualized. It is simply a metaphorical way of talking, which is another way language is used.
Messengers
I am concerned to explain to eight-year-old Tommy why he shouldn’t devour his beefsteak in half a minute and then run out to play. I say, ‘When we start to eat, we need to give our stomachs time, because when we sit down to eat at the table and we see some food, then there are some little messengers that go down from the mouth, all the way down to the tummy, and they tell the tummy to get ready and make the necessary acid and they in turn tell the liver to get ready and make some other stuff, so that it can digest the food.’ And Tommy sits there open mouthed. He never knew that before—that actual messengers run down from the mouth to the stomach. He’s thinking of telegram riders on motorcycles, with their crash helmets on. Silly chap, he’s taking it literally: he oughtn’t to take those messengers literally. Of course it wasn’t that kind of messenger, but they’re very real messengers. Ask the medical experts and they’ll tell you they’re very real messengers—bits of chemistry and electricity and goodness knows what else. There would be no point using the technical names: Tommy wouldn’t know what you were talking about, so I had to use the word ‘messenger’. It is exceedingly shallow thinking to say that because this key with which the angel locked up Satan isn’t a Yale key, then it cannot in any sense be understood literally. We need to do some deeper thinking in the use of language when we come to the interpretation of the language of Revelation.
Why does it matter if there’s a millennium?
You say, ‘Why is it important anyway? Won’t we all get to heaven whether there’s a millennium or not? Why is it important to establish whether the millennium is literal or not?’ Here, we come to an exceedingly important and practical problem. The question is, when will Christ reign? Those who hold that this millennium is not to be taken literally, advance the view that the millennium is now. That when it talks of Satan being bound, it is talking of what Christ did at Calvary. They have some strong arguments, because Christ bound Satan by his death, or even earlier than his death. For in Matthew 12, our Lord in the course of arguing with the Pharisees said,
How can someone enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man? (v. 29)
Our Lord was talking about the miracle he had just performed of casting out an evil spirit. The Pharisees said that it was by Beelzebub, prince of the evil spirits, that he cast out this evil spirit. Our Lord in reply said, ‘Nonsense, gentlemen. Satan has not turned to fight against Satan,’ or, to take another narrative argument, ‘You won’t enter into a strong man’s house and spoil him of his goods, except you first bind the man. I have spoiled him of his goods: I have delivered this prisoner of his. Therefore I must have bound the strong man.’
You say, ‘There you are, couldn’t it mean that our Lord bound the strong man when he was here on earth, and this was the beginning of the millennium: this is what Revelation means by Satan being bound?’ And so they argue that the millennial reign of Christ is now, whereas if you have been listening to what I have been saying, you will understand that the millennial reign of Christ is future. You say, ‘Does it matter?’ Yes, it matters exceedingly. There is a very real sense in which the Troubles in this province these last years have sprung from the view that the millennium is now. You say, ‘Well how on earth do you arrive at that?’
Repercussions of a wrong interpretation
The great majority of the early church fathers believed that the millennium lay in the future. Then Origen came along and turned the tide and lent great weight and popularity to the view that the millennium was to be understood as in the present. With the joining up of the church and the state under Constantine, the view that our Lord’s millennial reign is now, gathered to itself great strength. It follows that if our Lord’s millennial reign is now, then what should be happening is what is prophesied of that reign. He will break the nations in pieces as a potter breaks earthen pots (see 2:27). Moreover, the promises that our Lord gave to his people—that in his millennial reign they would reign with him—would have to be fulfilled now as well. That promise he gave to the church at Thyatira, for example, ‘The one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations’ (2:26). That ought to be now. Thus said generations of popes, that because Christ is reigning and the church is reigning with him, then the church should control the governments of the earth—to put up some and put down others; and those who opposed Christ in the last analysis must be put down.
Distinguishing between Israel and the church
Alongside that notion, you will find constantly the idea that the church is Israel. That also has lent great strength to the view that the church should be doing now what Israel did in the past. When the kings of Judah sat on the throne, they were God’s anointed, they were God’s immediate representatives on earth, his viceroys, and they ruled in the last analysis by armies, with swords and staves and bows and arrows. And in those days, God’s king was victorious over the other kings in the manner of King David, by cutting people’s heads off. The book of Deuteronomy instructed the Jewish kings and elders that if idolatry was reported in a nearby city of Israel, they were to warn that city and if it didn’t repent, they were to take out their armies and destroy it, and thus put away idolatry from their midst.
You can see how serious is the philosophy that lay behind medieval Christendom, when they put two and two together and said that the millennial reign of Christ is now. Thousands were tortured and massacred as a result, in the name of the present reign of Christ. The Protestant churches kicked out from Rome and the reformed churches scarce changed their theology. What they objected to was the pope doing it. They still adhered to the notion that the church ought to be doing it—that is, the Protestant church—and adhered to that notion that the church is Israel, that the millennium is now, that Christ is reigning now and the church ought therefore to be enforcing his reign. The Protestant church equally has taken out its armies. Here in Ulster, there are Protestants who, on the excuse of defending the faith and fighting for the cause of Christ, will take out the armies and fight. It is a matter of no small importance whether the reign of Christ is now or not. But if the millennium isn’t now, all this fighting has been a ghastly mistake.
A kingdom
Christ will come one day and slay the beast with the sword of his mouth, but let us get clearly in our minds that in that sense of his reign, the reigning is yet future. So I come back to the Scripture with which we began. When is this occasion that he makes the following promises to his disciples?
and I assign to you, as my Father assigned to me, a kingdom, that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. (Luke 22:29–30)
Scripture itself will tell us when it is.
Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.’ (Matt 19:28)
It is the judging of the twelve tribes of Israel by the apostles sitting upon their thrones. It is specifically stated to be in the new world (‘regeneration’ kjv) when the Son of Man is sitting on the throne of his glory. Further to mark out that time when he sits on the throne of his glory, look what else should happen then. Chapter 25 of Matthew tells us that when the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will gather all the living nations before him in judgment (vv. 31–32). And, as I indicated the other night, Paul himself is witness to this fact that, for the church, the time of reigning isn’t now. Rather it is a time of persecution and suffering (see 1 Cor 4:8–13). The promise of our reigning with Christ is ever held out to be in the future, ‘If we suffer, we shall also reign’ (2 Tim 2:12 kjv). Our Lord has not come with the angels yet. In that sense, he has not sat on the throne of his glory. As the hymn puts it, ‘Our Lord is now rejected, and by the world disowned’. 1
A foretaste of millennial rule
Let us turn again to Luke 22, and notice what Christ says to his disciples.
And he said to them, ‘When I sent you out with no money bag or knapsack or sandals, did you lack anything?’ They said, ‘Nothing.’ He said to them, ‘But now let the one who has a money bag take it, and likewise a knapsack. And let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one. For I tell you that this Scripture must be fulfilled in me: “And he was numbered with the transgressors.” For what is written about me has its fulfilment.’ (vv. 35–37)
Notice this very big distinction that our Lord is laying down between the state of affairs as it had been when he was on earth, and the state of affairs that is going to be from this point onwards. When he came to Israel, he came as their Messiah and, because he was the nation’s Messiah, he exercised the right to commandeer everything he would need. When he sent his apostles out on their missionary journeys, he expected the nation to pay their travelling expenses and put them up in their hotels and homes free of charge, for he was Messiah and had right to the nation’s goods. When he wanted a donkey on which to ride into Jerusalem as King, he simply sent his apostles down the road and they untied a donkey and her colt and took them. And he said, ‘If the owners ask why you are taking them, tell them that the Lord needs them’ (see Matt 21:1–3). For he was Israel’s Messiah and had a right to commandeer all they had. ‘But now it’s going to be different,’ said Christ. ‘Now you’ll have to finance your own gospel missions. You cannot any longer expect the nation to finance you.’ What has made the difference? Because the Scripture is now to be fulfilled, ‘he was numbered with the transgressors’ (Isa 53:12), and he accepted the nation’s rejection. The apostles are not at this moment sitting on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
There was a time when King David was anointed king but had not yet been allowed by God to come to the throne. He had been put into the very court of Saul, as one of the mercies of God, destined to be king and marked out as God’s man. Saul had the sentence already passed on him: his royal line would not continue. Nonetheless David was asked to wait and suffer his period of rejection, as he was hunted as an outlaw upon the mountains. There was a figure called Jonathan and he loved David. Jonathan should have been the crown prince, but he loved David. He said, ‘David, I know that you’re going to be king,’ and he gave him all his royal regalia. When David was hunted as an outlaw and valiant men gathered to David to share David’s rejection, Jonathan came out to the wood and said, ‘David, I know you will be king. When you’re king, I shall be second to you’, but he never was (see 1 Sam 23:17). Why not? Because instead of staying with David and sharing David’s rejection with him, he went back into the palace. He never actually reigned with David.
If we would reign with Christ in the sense of holding active, responsible offices in that reign—as distinct from just being there lining the pavements with our confetti and streamers and shouting, ‘Long live the king’—if we would actually reign in the sense of having office and responsibility in the coming regime, the terms are that we suffer now with him.
The church and the kingdom
Well then you say, ‘You seem to be saying that Christ isn’t reigning at all now in any sense and there is no present reign of Christ.’ No, I’m not saying that at all. So now I must come and deal with an opposite extreme which is found in some prophetic commentaries and that is the proposition that wherever you read of the kingdom, it has nothing to do with the church. That is, wherever you read of the kingdom in the New Testament it either belongs to Israel in the past or Israel in the future, and has nothing to do with the church. That is seriously in error, for now let us look to a brief few passages in the New Testament where we read of the kingdom in relation to the church.
We might start, for instance, in 1 Corinthians.
Some are arrogant, as though I were not coming to you. But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people but their power. For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power. (4:18–20)
Notice that Paul is talking to the church at Corinth, a predominantly Gentile church, and he is talking of the kingdom of God as being a present, practical reality that affects the life of that Christian church at Corinth. They were misbehaving and some of them had got the idea that Paul was a moral coward and daren’t come to Corinth to face them out, but kept away and wrote strong letters rather than say the same thing face-to-face. Says Paul, ‘Don’t you get that into your heads. I will be coming to you presently and if I come, you will find out that the kingdom of God isn’t a matter merely of words. It is a matter of present power that you will feel and feel very unpleasantly, for the kingdom of God will take the form of discipline in your church, here and now, in the present Christian age.’ And that verse is enough, let alone all the other verses in the New Testament that deal with this matter, to show that in a very real and practical sense, the kingdom of God is a present reality.
Distinguishing between two kingdoms
You may well feel that things are getting complicated because I’ve just spent several minutes saying that the kingdom of Christ lies in the future and now I’m saying it’s a present reality! So let us turn to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 17, and notice something that is of fundamental importance when we think of the term kingdom. In the first place, the term ‘kingdom’ probably to us conjures up the idea of so much geographical territory, like when we refer to the United Kingdom. But ‘kingdom’ in a geographical sense is very rarely used in Scripture. Mostly when you read of the term ‘kingdom’, you are thinking of the power that a king exerts—his rule, his government. When Paul says, ‘the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power’, he’s talking about the rule, the power that God exerts.
When our Lord was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, he replied,
The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed, nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or, ‘There!’ for behold, the kingdom of God is in the midst of you. (Luke 17:20–21)
That surprised the Pharisees for sure, because they had thought that when the kingdom would come, it would come with great signs and wonders and powers, so that you would be able to watch for the signs and see the kingdom of God coming. What did Christ mean? He was saying that the kingdom of God is a present reality. The kingdom of God had come because in their presence, standing already among them, was the King himself. Where the King is, there is the kingdom. That was the message which the Lord Jesus had preached and John the Baptist preached, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand’ (Matt 4:17). It came with the King himself. They had not recognized the King, that is true. They were looking for signs and wonders and so they missed the King, but the King was there. The kingdom had drawn near.
So you say, ‘That verse contradicts what you were telling us yesterday about the signs of the coming kingdom—all sorts of signs that you could see—and here our Lord strictly denies it.’ But then you need to read the verses which follow:
And he said to the disciples, ‘The days are coming when you will desire to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it. And they will say to you “Look, there!” or “Look, here!” Do not go out or follow them. For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of Man be in his day.’ (Luke 17:22–24)
So what we have are two different aspects or phases of that kingdom. There is of course the future kingdom which will come with the signs we thought about yesterday. When the Lord comes in power and great glory to set up that public phase of his kingdom by force and power it will be so visible that you won’t need anybody to say, ‘Lo here,’ or, ‘Lo there.’ When he comes on the clouds of heaven, in power and great glory, and destroys the beast and sets up his millennial reign, that phase of his kingdom will be visible.
But there is another phase of his kingdom, which is a present thing—the present kingdom rule of God in the life of a believer and in the life of the church. So when you hear the New Testament saying things about the kingdom of God and saying it isn’t this and it isn’t that, you must be careful to understand exactly what the Scripture is saying. Many things about the kingdom of God are taught us by negative statements. ‘Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God’ (John 3:3); ‘flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God’ (1 Cor 15:50); ‘For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit’ (Rom 14:17); ‘For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power’ (1 Cor 4:20); ‘The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed’ (Luke 17:20).
Don’t misunderstand the ‘negatives’!
The negatives are not to be taken as absolute negatives. They are correcting an unbalanced point of view. ‘The kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking’—so then I can eat and drink what I like and I can get drunk? No, the rule of God in your life will control the fact that you must eat to the glory of God and not become a drunk. But in a context where people were thinking that the rule of God was concerned with little things—as to whether you should eat lettuces or beef, or not, or both—Paul says, ‘No, the rule of God, the kingdom of God, is not concerned with little things like that nowadays. He’s concerned with big, broad spiritual principles.’
‘The kingdom of God does not consist in talk’—so then we don’t have to read the Bible? No, the real God is laid down in his words, but he’s not only and simply words.
‘Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God’—so then Jesus Christ isn’t in it, because he’s flesh and blood? Well what phase of the kingdom of God are you talking about? There is that glorious phase of the kingdom of God when the Lord will come in power and great glory and set up his great kingdom. In that sense of the kingdom, flesh and blood cannot inherit it, because before a person will ever get into that kingdom, they’ll have to be changed or raised from the dead and given a body like our Lord’s glorious body. But as far as the rule of God is concerned now, within a spiritual sphere in which God rules and Christ is Lord, then every believer is in it.
‘Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God’. Of course not, but when a person _is_ born again, he does enter it.
We must learn to distinguish, therefore, different phases of our Lord’s kingdom. There is that coming kingdom when he will come in the glory of his Father and the holy angels and then he will sit on the throne of his glory, and then the apostles will sit on thrones and they will judge the twelve tribes of Israel, and then they will judge angels and judge the world. But there is a present phase of his kingdom that doesn’t come with visible signs. You can’t see it coming.
The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. (John 3:8)
A kingdom deferred?
You say, ‘You’ve still got it wrong. Our Lord came along with John the Baptist and they preached that the kingdom of God is at hand, and they were announcing the coming of the kingdom to Israel, but Israel rejected the King, so God packed up the idea of the kingdom pro tem, and then he’ll reintroduce the kingdom after the church is gone.’ Well what was Paul talking about the kingdom for then, in the church at Corinth, and why did he go out about everywhere, preaching the kingdom, as he tells the elders at Ephesus, and what’s a Jew like Paul doing in the kingdom now, by getting born again? The answer to the matter is given us by our Lord, recorded by Matthew in his chapters 11–13. The King came, he was indeed rejected, but he took his disciples aside down by the sea and taught them what was the divine strategy for the setting up of his kingdom.
He was rejected, his own forerunner was cast into prison. Matthew 11 tells us that John the Baptist seemed to have been disappointed, because Christ didn’t raise an army and come and slaughter Herod and deliver John out of the prison. In fact, so far from that, our Lord allowed John to stay in prison and at length be executed. It was a great stumbling block to the apostles. ‘If Jesus is the King and he cares about moral right and wrong and he has come to put an end to the world’s evils, what he’s doing letting John stay in prison? Why doesn’t he get him out?’ John the Baptist had walked up to Herod and put his fist in his face. ‘It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife,’ he had said. And, in the name of the coming Messiah, he had demanded that Herod repent of his sin, because the King was coming and the King wouldn’t put up with that kind of iniquity. Herod put him in prison but John thought, ‘Well Jesus is the Messiah, so he’ll come and get me out, and he’ll put Herod in his place and he’ll deal with evil.’ He didn’t do anything of the sort and John the Baptist had his head cut off.
We are told in chapter 12 that our Lord was in a synagogue one day and he did a miracle and the Pharisees’ reaction was to take counsel that they might kill him. And our Lord, instead of gathering an army and destroying those wicked men, meekly turned round and quietly withdrew from the synagogue. You say, ‘How on earth can he have any claim to be God’s King, come to set up the kingdom of God? This is absurd.’ Of course, the Jews say it still. ‘Your Jesus is not the King, because the Bible said that when the King came, he would deal with evil and he would put down wicked men and he would reign, and your Jesus did nothing of the sort. In fact, he got crucified himself.’
How can you explain it? As our Lord quietly withdraws from the synagogue and does not execute judgment upon evil, Matthew’s comment is this, quoting Isaiah the prophet:
Behold, my servant whom I have chosen, my beloved with whom my soul is well pleased. I will put my Spirit upon him, and he will proclaim justice to the Gentiles. He will not quarrel or cry aloud, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets; a bruised reed he will not break, and a smouldering wick he will not quench, until he brings justice to victory; and in his name the Gentiles will hope. (Matt 12:18–21)
In other words, what Isaiah was prophesying, and what Matthew now repeats, is that this was the deliberate strategy of God that when Messiah came the first time, he would not proceed at once to the judgment. There would be a period covered by this conjunction ‘until’, when he was not proceeding to judgment, but adopting altogether different and opposite tactics—when he would not be crying aloud, when he would not be breaking the bruised reed or quenching the smoking wick, but with great patience doing other things, until the time came when it would be right for him to begin his work of judgment.
This, I say, was deliberate strategy on the part of God. Matthew therefore is pointing out that when our Lord allowed John the Baptist to be executed, and when he himself appeared to yield to the opposition of the Pharisees and quietly retreat from the synagogue, it was not because he could not do otherwise, nor was it because he was weak, and certainly it was not because he was not after all the Messiah. It was in fact because he was deliberately fulfilling the strategy that God had laid down for the Messiah. He was not now proceeding to judge; he was about to turn to those other duties that God had given him and he was prepared to wait until God’s time would come for him to rise up and judge and put down evil.
The church—a spiritual kingdom
Does that mean then that between the time when our Lord was here on earth and allowed himself to be crucified, and the time when he will come in power and great glory to judge, that he is doing nothing whatsoever about the setting up of God’s kingdom? Is the kingdom altogether in abeyance? Of course not, for now we will turn to chapter 13 and notice what our Lord says about this intervening time, the time covered by the ‘until’. It is a time when he is not judging, but it is a time on the other hand when, like a sower going out to sow, he is sowing the word of God through his servants in the field of the world. It is a time also during which his enemy, Satan himself, attempts to confuse the issue by sowing weeds among the wheat, but again we have our lesson confirmed when we hear the Lord’s servants questioning him about these weeds that the enemy is in process of sowing. ‘Lord,’ they say, ‘do you want us at this time to root up these weeds?’ And he says, ‘No, certainly not. You are not to root them up. Let both grow together until the harvest’ (see Matt 13:24–30). Would you notice that conjunction again? That is to say, during this time covered by the ‘until’, the word of God is going forth, men and women are receiving it, they are being born again, they are entering the spiritual phase of the kingdom. At that same time, Satan is attempting to confuse the issue by sowing false seed, by sowing weeds, by sowing false professors among the genuine children of the kingdom, and God is not immediately proceeding to root them up and bring in the judgment. He is letting both grow until the harvest.
So now we are in this period when the kingdom of God is being set up in its spiritual sense. That is not to deny that one day the judgment will come. The kingdom in its outward form, the millennial kingdom of our Lord, will not come by gradual stages—by the world gradually becoming Christianized, or by everybody getting converted. The Scripture makes it clear that, while at this period many are being saved and born again and entering into the spiritual kingdom, not all the world is going to get saved. The kingdom in its outward form is going to be set up by our Lord’s second coming, in power and great glory, executing the judgment of God upon the impenitent and wilfully unbelieving, and causing then the wheat, the true sons of the kingdom, to shine forth in the kingdom of their Father.
The ‘until’ of grace and an opportunity for repentance
One final observation along this line. You might say to yourself, or at least if you were an unbeliever, a Jew for instance, you might say to yourself, ‘But this question of a spiritual kingdom interposed, so to speak, between the Messiah’s first coming and his second coming, is this not something that the Christians have made up themselves? They were so dreadfully disappointed by the rejection of Christ by the nation and by his crucifixion that they invented this idea of a present spiritual kingdom to cover their disappointment.’ The answer is no, the Christians have not made it up. Matthew is quoting to us Isaiah’s prophecy. It was the Old Testament that said that there should be this period of the ‘until’ and not only Isaiah said it, but the Psalms said it as well. Look at Psalm 110:1, where it is God speaking and addressing Messiah:
The Lord says to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.’
That is, Messiah has been on earth—otherwise there would be no point in telling him to rise and sit at the right hand—but being bidden to rise and sit at the right hand of God at the ascension, he is thereafter told that he must now wait until his enemies are made his footstool. The Old Testament then is quite clear that there was to be this period of the ‘until’ between our Lord’s ascension and his coming again to judge.
Secondly, it was absolutely necessary that God should have this period of the ‘until’. It is the only way a satisfactory kingdom could be set up. The Jews had a very simplistic idea and many people still have. They thought it would be enough if, when the Messiah came, he behaved like their Maccabean heroes and set up the kingdom of God by going around Palestine with an army and cutting off the heads of everybody who opposed the Messiah and his followers. We now, I hope, can see what a shallow idea that was. Simply by cutting the heads off a few thousand people will not get rid of the power and principle of evil in this world. Indeed, if that were the way to get rid of evil, it is not only the heads of our and Christ’s enemies that would have to be cut off, but surely our heads would have to be cut off too, because in our hearts there resides that same principle of evil.
Therefore, before Christ comes to destroy in judgment those who refuse to be converted and to be regenerated, there must be this period when God deals with this problem of evil at the spiritual level. And since it is a spiritual problem, it can only be dealt with by spiritual means. That is to say, not by cutting people’s heads off but by reconciling them to God, by putting within them a new life, by introducing them into the kingdom of God at the spiritual level, by giving them a new nature, a nature which is the very nature of God and which, like God himself, is holy. And therefore there is this present period in which God would be long suffering with evil men and not willing that any should perish, and prepared even to allow evil to go ahead, to grow, to increase, to appear to triumph, a period in which evil men would be allowed to continue, while God would offer men mercy and regeneration.
That period was absolutely necessary if God were going to end up with a kingdom of priests who could satisfy his heart, and would be qualified to reign with Christ when he comes again in power and great glory. And so we see that while on man’s side, Christ was rejected and his kingdom rejected, on God’s side this was no unforeseen disaster that put his plans awry. On the contrary, Christ being delivered up and crucified by evil men was according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God (see Acts 2:23). This too was in God’s plan. He has turned the very wrath of man to praise him, and the devices of the devil, he has turned against the devil himself and is now using this present period, deliberately and by predetermination, to be the time in which he sets up the kingdom in its spiritual phase.
When this time runs out, Christ will come in power and great glory and set up his kingdom in open, physical form. Then it is that, as the Epistles promise us, we will reign with Christ. Now is the time of suffering with him. Now is the time of preaching the Gospel. Now is the time when men may repent, be born again and enter the spiritual kingdom. This time will not last forever. When Christ comes, that period will be over. Christ will come in judgment, then he will reign, and those who have trusted him and followed him will reign with him.
1 D. W. Whittle (1840-1901), ‘The crowning day.’
3: Second Coming of Christ—The End of Earth’s History
The passage that will mark our starting point is to be found in Revelation 11. Let us read it together.
Then I was given a measuring rod like a staff, and I was told, ‘Rise and measure the temple of God and the altar and those who worship there, but do not measure the court outside the temple; leave that out, for it is given over to the nations, and they will trample the holy city for forty-two months. And I will grant authority to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth. These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth. And if anyone would harm them, fire pours from their mouth and consumes their foes. If anyone would harm them, this is how he is doomed to be killed. They have the power to shut the sky, that no rain may fall during the days of their prophesying, and they have the power over the waters to turn them into blood and to strike the earth with every kind of plague, as often as they desire. And when they have finished their testimony, the beast that rises from the bottomless pit will make war on them and conquer them and kill them, and their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city that symbolically is called Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord was crucified. For three and a half days some from the peoples and tribes and languages and nations will gaze at their dead bodies and refuse to let them be placed in a tomb, and those who dwell on the earth will rejoice over them and make merry and exchange presents, because these two prophets had been a torment to those who dwell on the earth. But after the three and a half days a breath of life from God entered them, and they stood up on their feet, and great fear fell on those who saw them. Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, ‘Come up here!’ And they went up to heaven in a cloud, and their enemies watched them. And at that hour there was a great earthquake, and a tenth of the city fell. Seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the rest were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven. (vv. 1–13)
This, by general consent of students of prophecy of whatever shade of opinion, is a difficult passage. How then are we to understand it? In the first verses, we are told that someone in the vision was told to, ‘Rise and measure the temple of God and the altar and those who worship there, but do not measure the court outside the temple; . . . for it is given over to the nations, and they will trample the holy city for forty-two months.’
If we would understand it, we must first of all understand that the phrase or the phrases used are a Jewish way of referring to the temple and their city. As you will know, the great temple was in Jerusalem on the Temple Mount. The temple building itself was surrounded by a large court, but for certain purposes, the Jews of our Lord’s time extended the sanctity of that court to include the whole city of Jerusalem. Therefore it came to be that in Jewish parlance, Jerusalem city itself was at times referred to as the court of the temple. It is that usage which you see here, when in the vision someone is told to measure the temple but to leave out the court because the holy city has been given over to the nations. You will see that the vision equates the court of the temple with the city. Thus far then, we have Jewish parlance and usage as the language of the vision; now our task is to interpret it. How are these terms being used? Are they being used figuratively, symbolically or literally? In other words, are we to take the temple and the court and the holy city to mean some literal kind of temple in the literal city of Jerusalem in the Middle East? Or are we intended to take these terms figuratively and to think of the church as the temple of God?
Is it the church?
First Corinthians 3:16 refers to the church in Corinth as the temple of God, and Ephesians 2:21–22 informs us that we are being built together as a dwelling place for God to form a great temple, a spiritual temple. Could it be then that here we are meant to interpret this reference to the temple in a spiritual sense, as referring to the church? And similarly with the city, the holy city, are we to understand this literally or figuratively? In Galatians, Jerusalem is used in a spiritual sense—‘the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother’ (4:26). It is talking there of a spiritual Jerusalem and you will not need me to tell you that at the end of the Revelation, we have the vision of the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven as a bride adorned for her husband, certainly including the church and, in my opinion, many more beside. It is there, a spiritual and heavenly Jerusalem.
If we come to Hebrews 12:22, the writer uses the phrase ‘you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem,’ and it is immediately evident that he is not talking of the literal city of Jerusalem in Israel, but of the heavenly Jerusalem, because he explicitly says so. So it is the fact that Scriptures in the New Testament do use the term ‘Jerusalem’ symbolically, spiritually of the church, and of that great spiritual congregation in the day to come that is described as the new Jerusalem. But our question is, how we are meant to understand the terms here in Revelation 11, or are we here meant to understand them in a literal sense? The only way to find out is to try. Let’s try and interpret it spiritually and see what results we get.
Chapter 11, verse 1: ‘Rise and measure the temple of God’. Well we’ll interpret it spiritually; the temple of God equals the church: ‘Rise and measure the church’. Verse 2: ‘the court outside the temple; leave that out, for it is been given over to the nations, and they will trample the holy city for forty-two months.’ And now we’ll try to interpret that spiritually. The holy city is the church, which is being given to the nations and therefore you’re not to measure it. It will be downtrodden of the nations. So now we’ll put the two verses together: ‘Rise and measure the temple, that is the church, but leave out the court, that is the city, which is the church.’ It would be a very difficult operation! It therefore becomes actually impossible to interpret it spiritually. We must choose the only other alternative and that is to understand that the writer here is using the terms quite literally. He is talking of the literal temple in Jerusalem and the literal court, which is the literal city—precisely as the Jews of our Lord’s time would have understood the terms. But we have another check upon our exposition.
Literal meaning
Let us look at verse 8. The witnesses that witness before this temple are eventually destroyed, we are told, and their bodies are left to ‘lie in the street of the great city that symbolically is called Sodom and Egypt’. The writer tucks in the little word ‘symbolically’, because now he doesn’t want you to be misled. Their bodies don’t lie in a literal Sodom or in a literal Egypt, but they lie in the great city that symbolically is called Sodom and Egypt. What city is that? It is the city ‘where their Lord was crucified’. He is talking about the literal city, Jerusalem. But now we have another check upon our exposition. Look at the end of verse 2: this holy city, Jerusalem, will at this time be given over to the nations and they will tread it underfoot for ‘forty-two months’. And here we meet that other element of chronology that I promised you I would deal with in the book of Revelation.
The three and a half years
What is this curious piece of time, forty-two months? It adds up, as you see, to three and a half years, if there are twelve months in a year. It is a period of time that you will meet more than once in this context in Revelation.
and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which she is to be nourished for 1,260 days. (12:6)
And again later in that same chapter:
And when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. But the woman was given the two wings of the great eagle so that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness, to the place where she is to be nourished for a time, and times, and half a time. (vv. 13–14)
A time and times and half a time add up to three and a half times, so do those days and so do those months add up to three and a half years. And then we are told in chapter 13:
And they worshipped the dragon, for he had given his authority to the beast, and they worshipped the beast saying, ‘Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?’ And the beast was given a mouth uttering haughty and blasphemous words, and it was allowed to exercise authority for forty-two months. (vv. 4–5)
So here we have a piece of chronology and it tells us that the beast, from his rise and public manifestation, that is the time when he is revealed as distinct from what he might have been doing before (see 2 Thess 2:3–10)—the time when he is revealed with all false signs and wonders, to the end—will be this period of forty-two months. That is also the period in which, as the instrument of the dragon, he will persecute the woman of chapter 12, who gave birth to the male child.
The woman and child
Who then is this woman? Who is this male child? The male child is described for us in Revelation 12:5, ‘She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron’. I submit to you that the plain, straightforward interpretation of the verse is that the male child is our Lord. I’m aware that there are some who say that that is impossible, because the book of Revelation is a prophecy and when it came to be written, the Lord Jesus had already been born years before and therefore, this child who is born of this woman cannot be the Lord Jesus, but must be someone else. That would be a valid argument if it were the fact that prophecies and prophets are never allowed to refer to the past, but prophecies do refer to the past. We’ve just had one, with one small detail: the city where the Lord was crucified (11:8). This is of course the flashback technique so well known to viewers of television, by which in order to understand what is happening now, you suddenly get a flashback to see what happened in the past.
And to understand what the dragon is up to now, you must understand his vast attempts all down history to stop the birth of the promised offspring of the woman, culminating in his tremendous battle to destroy Jesus our Lord, born of the Virgin, born of Israel, according to the flesh. His dastardly scheme was defeated and our blessed Lord was called up to the throne of God. But the woman who gave birth to our Lord was not the church: it is Israel of course, and in particular the virgin Mary, a Jewess. The dragon at the end time will persecute Israel, the nation that produced the Messiah, and his persecution will come to its crescendo with the manifestation of the beast with all powers and false wonders and signs. It will last that period of forty-two months, a time and times and half a time, three and a half years.
That is also the period during which, chapter 11 says, Jerusalem city will be trodden down by the nations. You will remember one of the talks the other day referred you to the Gospel of Luke and one of the signs of our Lord’s coming was that ‘Jerusalem will be trampled underfoot by the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled’ (Luke 21:24). When those times are fulfilled, said our Lord through Luke, ‘then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory’ (v. 27). But until those times are fulfilled, Jerusalem would be trodden down by the nations. The last three and a half years will be a period of terrible treading down. As those years begin, the beast will be revealed with his false wonders and signs, and will attempt to crush Jerusalem city. The beast himself will do it for three and a half years, though during the course of those three and a half years, he will be frustrated for some months by two witnesses before that temple, who will miraculously defy him with power given them by God. But in the end, the beast will overcome even them and reign for his three and a half years. The end of that time marks the end of ‘the times of the Gentiles’. ‘Straighten up,’ says Christ, ‘and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near’ (Luke 21:28). The Lord Jesus will come and defeat the beast and deliver Jerusalem.
The three and a half years—first mention
But to see whether we’ve got the right end of the stick and are interpreting this passage rightly, we’d better turn to another prophet. We have been saying that in Revelation 11, the temple is a literal temple, the city is the literal city of Jerusalem which will be trampled down for these three and a half years. Where do we get this curious three and a half years from anyway? To find the answer to that, we will have to read the prophecy that John the apostle read, the prophecy which the same Holy Spirit who inspired John, gave to Daniel. It is Daniel 9—the famous prophecy of the ‘70 sevens’—the seventy weeks of years. That famous prophecy was prompted by Daniel’s praying, so we’d better look at the beginning of chapter 9 to see what Daniel was praying about.
In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, by descent a Mede, who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans—in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, perceived in the books the number of years that, according to the word of the Lord to Jeremiah the prophet, must pass before the end of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years. (9:1–2)
I needn’t pause to tell you that what Jeremiah was concerned about was not the desolation of the church. He was talking about the desolation of literal Jerusalem city and the period that the prophet Jeremiah had prophesied that Jerusalem would be desolate was seventy years. The Jews had been taken away by their conquerors from Jerusalem, taken down to Babylon, where Jeremiah in the name of God had promised them that they would be, while their city was made desolate by Nebuchadnezzar. Now the time was drawing near when those seventy years were nearly finished, so Daniel, who believed in prophecy and in the chronology of prophecy, took his Bible to God, like all good men should do, and enquired of the Lord. (It’s always a good plan to pray about your prophecy: if it does no other, it will stop you getting angry with your fellow believers who may disagree with you!) And let’s read what God said.
Seventy weeks are decreed about your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to put an end to sin, and to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal both vision and prophet, and to anoint a most holy place. Know therefore and understand that from the going out of the word to restore and build Jerusalem to the coming of an anointed one, a prince, there shall be seven weeks. Then for sixty-two weeks it shall be built again with squares and moat, but in troubled time. And after the sixty-two weeks, an anointed one shall be cut off and shall have nothing. And the people of the prince who is to come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary. Its end shall come with a flood, and to the end there shall be war. Desolations are decreed. (9:24–26)
The prophecy was fulfilled. There was a period first of the seven weeks, followed by that period of sixty two weeks, after which Messiah, our Lord, was cut off. Jerusalem was destroyed but in fulfilment of God’s word through Jeremiah, the city was restored, under men like Zerubbabel and Joshua and Zechariah the prophet, but restored in troubled times.
Restoration of Jerusalem
It was not by any means the final restoration, for in spite of that restoration and the rebuilding of the city after the exile, Israel continued in her sin and became more flagrant. So evil did their sin become that when their very Messiah arrived, it blinded them to his identity and they cut him off. And because of his cutting off, ‘desolations are decreed,’ said God to Daniel, ‘and right to the end there will be desolations and war.’ Thus did Jesus Christ our Lord read in his Bible and thus he taught himself. He came officially as Messiah to Jerusalem, riding on a very literal donkey to a very literal city and when he saw the city he wept over it. It is not recorded that he wept over Nazareth, but he wept over that city.
Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade round you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation. (Luke 19:42–44)
Our Lord is reiterating what God said to Daniel, that after the sixty-nine weeks, not only would Messiah be cut off, but Jerusalem would come to desolation. To desolation it came, in ad 70. And looking out right to the end of time in a far fuller sense, Jerusalem will be trodden down by the nations until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
The final ‘week’
That leaves us with a week. You say, ‘Does that week follow immediately after the other sixty nine?’ Apparently not. Half of that week will be three and a half years and the Bible itself tells us when those three and a half years are going to happen. It is the period of the manifest reign of the beast and of the final desolation of Jerusalem, terminated by the coming of the Lord Jesus. What’s so special about the three and a half? Why is that week divided into half? Well, let’s read.
And he [that is the prince of that people who are to come] shall make a strong covenant with many for one week, and for half of the week he shall put an end to sacrifice and offering. And on the wing of abominations shall come one who makes desolate, until the decreed end is poured out on the desolator. (Dan 9:27)
He will make a covenant with Israel, and the apostate Jews will gladly make it with him in the manner that the Hellenising Jews, under the Seleucids, made their covenant with Antiochus Epiphanes, whereas the godly Jews refused such apostasy. So in this time, apostate Israel will make their covenant, but in the middle of the week the prince who is to come will cause sacrifice and offering to cease, and the abomination that makes desolate will be set up in the temple. Said our Lord, ‘When you see that, get out of Jerusalem’ (see Luke 21:20–21). It will happen under the beast when, according to 2 Thessalonians 2, that man of sin takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God and exalting himself against every so-called god, whom our Lord Jesus will destroy with the breath of his mouth and the brightness of his appearing, when he comes in power and great glory to judge him (see vv. 1–8).
That three and a half weeks then is the second half of that final week, when the abomination of desolation will be installed. That is what Daniel says, that is what Matthew says. Mark says it, Luke says it, Christ says it, Paul says it, and John says it. Please, it wasn’t first thought of by the early brethren!
We have then been checking up on our exposition. We found it impossible to take these words as a symbolic Jerusalem city and a symbolic temple, namely the church, because it made nonsense. We found we had to take it literally of Jerusalem and a literal temple. Then we have now checked it by looking at this chronology in Revelation 11, referring to the final piece of the times of the Gentiles, the three and a half years, and we traced it back to where it comes from, Daniel 9, and we found Daniel 9 was not about the desolations of the church but about the desolations of Jerusalem. So Daniel 9 and Revelation 11 are talking about the same thing.
The two witnesses
But we could have another check on the exposition. We notice in this vision given to John in Revelation 11, we have in the city of Jerusalem this temple and, in those days, two special witnesses raised up by God.
I will grant authority to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for 1,260 days, clothed in sackcloth. These are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth. (vv. 3–4)
That too is a way of talking that finds its first expression in the Old Testament, so let’s take ourselves over to that Old Testament passage and see what we can make of it. We find it in the prophecy of Zechariah 4.
And the angel who talked with me came again and woke me, like a man who is awakened out of his sleep. And he said to me, ‘What do you see?’ I said, ‘I see, and behold, a lampstand all of gold, with a bowl on the top of it, and seven lamps on it, with seven lips on each of the lamps that are on the top of it. And there are two olive trees by it, one on the right of the bowl and the other on its left.’ And I said to the angel who talked with me, ‘What are these, my lord?’ Then the angel who talked with me answered and said to me, ‘Do you not know what these are?’ I said, ‘No, my lord.’ Then he said to me, ‘This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts.’ (vv. 1–6)
Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying, ‘The hands of Zerubbabel have laid the foundation of this house; his hands shall also complete it. Then you will know that the Lord of hosts has sent me to you.’ (vv. 8–9)
Then I said to him, ‘What are these two olive trees on the right and the left of the lampstand?’ And a second time I answered and said to him, ‘What are these two branches of the olive trees, which are beside the two golden pipes from which the golden oil is poured out?’ He said to me, ‘Do you not know what these are?’ I said, ‘No, my lord.’ Then he said, ‘These are the two anointed ones who stand by the Lord of the whole earth.’ (vv. 11–14)
I trust you see immediately the similarity between the figures used and the language used here in Zechariah 4 and in Revelation 11. In Revelation, a temple in the city, under pressure and attack from the beast, with these two witnesses that stand before the Lord of the whole earth—two olive trees, two lampstands. In Zechariah 4, a beautiful lampstand and two olive trees, the anointed ones who stand by the Lord of the whole earth. What’s it all about? Well the one in Zechariah was a message through the prophet to Zerubbabel. His name incidentally is composed of two Hebrew words which together mean ‘returned from Babylon.’ Zechariah was a prophet who ministered in Israel after the Jews had come back out of the nations into Palestine. Therefore, when he talks about the restoration of Israel to their land in the future, you can’t possibly interpret him to mean the return from the exile in Babylon, for he’s already returned. When you hear Ezekiel or Jeremiah talking about the regathering of Israel, it is possible to argue, and some theologians do, that all they are talking about is the regathering of Israel out of Babylon and Medo-Persia, back into their land under people like Haggai and Ezra and Nehemiah. But when you hear Zechariah talking about Jerusalem in the future, that can’t refer to the return from the exile. They’ve already returned. They’ve been back some years.
For that reason, he’s a very interesting prophet. And what is he interested in? Let’s turn to chapter 1 of Zechariah.
Then the angel of the Lord said, ‘O Lord of hosts, how long will you have no mercy on Jerusalem and the cities of Judah, against which you have been angry these seventy years?’ And the Lord answered gracious and comforting words to the angel who talked with me. So the angel who talked with me said to me, ‘Cry out, Thus says the Lord of hosts: I am exceedingly jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion. And I am exceedingly angry with the nations that are at ease; for while I was angry but a little, they furthered the disaster. Therefore, thus says the Lord, I have returned to Jerusalem with mercy; my house shall be built in it, declares the Lord of hosts, and the measuring line shall be stretched out over Jerusalem. Cry out again, Thus says the Lord of hosts: My cities shall again overflow with prosperity, and the Lord will again comfort Zion and again choose Jerusalem.’ (vv. 12–17)
The nation has returned after the seventy years of the exile down in Babylon, as Jeremiah had prophesied. ‘But, Lord,’ says the prophet, ‘we’re back in the land and you don’t seem to have eased your hand and Jerusalem is still a bit desolate. What are you going to do?’ So the Lord speaks these words of comfort and reassurance. The temple was rebuilt in Zerubbabel’s days and the city was restored. Zechariah was interested in Jerusalem city, not the church—God hadn’t had anger against the church for seventy years in the time of Zechariah! He’d been angry against Jerusalem and the city had been desolated and now they’d come back to rebuild it.
But come now to the end of Zechariah, because there too he’s interested in Jerusalem.
The burden of the word of the Lord concerning Israel: Thus declares the Lord, who stretched out the heavens and founded the earth and formed the spirit of man within him: ‘Behold, I am about to make Jerusalem a cup of staggering to all the surrounding peoples. The siege of Jerusalem will also be against Judah. On that day I will make Jerusalem a heavy stone for all the peoples. All who lift it will surely hurt themselves. And all the nations of the earth will gather against it. On that day, declares the Lord, I will strike every horse with panic, and its rider with madness. But for the sake of the house of Judah I will keep my eyes open, when I strike every horse of the peoples with blindness.’ (12:1–4)
This is now a prophecy of the far future, given through Zechariah. In that day Jerusalem is going to be a heavy stone: ‘All who lift it will surely hurt themselves.’ Jerusalem city is going to be a burdensome stone. It tends to be that now, doesn’t it? What Zechariah is talking about is a time when the nations are going to be gathered against Jerusalem. Did you ever hear of a time when all the nations of the world were gathered against the church? I never did yet. It’s been through various experiences, but not yet, as far as I know. They will be gathered against Jerusalem. It will be a heavy stone and, says the Lord, ‘On that day I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem’. What day is that?
Behold, a day is coming for the Lord, when the spoil taken from you will be divided in your midst. For I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city shall be taken and the houses plundered and the women raped. Half of the city shall go out into exile, but the rest of the people shall not be cut off from the city. Then the Lord will go out and fight against those nations as when he fights on a day of battle. On that day his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives that lies before Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall be split in two from east to west by a very wide valley, so that one half of the Mount shall move northwards, and the other half southwards. . . . And this shall be the plague with which the Lord will strike all the peoples that wage war against Jerusalem. (14:1–4, 12)
This is the great day when the Lord comes in power and great glory and his feet will stand on the Mount Olives as, with his majestic power, he destroys those that have come against Jerusalem.
Battle of Armageddon
Does Revelation say anything about that? Well of course it does, and for our final observations we will turn now to consider the subject of this great battle that Zechariah informs us will be fought. You will find several references to that great battle in the prophecy of Revelation: let us take the one, for instance, that occurs in Revelation 16.
The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up, to prepare the way for the kings from the east. And I saw, coming out of the mouth of the dragon and out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet, three unclean spirits like frogs. For they are demonic spirits, performing signs, who go abroad to the kings of the whole world, to assemble them for battle on the great day of God the Almighty. (‘Behold, I am coming like a thief! Blessed is the one who stays awake, keeping his garments on, that he may not go about naked and be seen exposed!’) And they assembled them at the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon. (vv. 12–16)
So the great assembled host of the kings of all the earth, assembled with their contributions to the army, are in that great plain up there in Jezreel, ready to swoop on Jerusalem. How are they brought together? By demonic lies and deceptions, through the beast and his false prophet doing these lies and wonders and signs and marvels, and deceiving the nations. These spirits go forth to bring these nations together to the war of the great day of God the Almighty, because behind their demonic intention lies the providential government of God. For this cause, God will send them a strong delusion that they believe the lie. Men’s own schemes, suggested and promoted by Satan himself, will be used by God to deceive the nations and bring them to their judgment.
Chapter 17 mentions the battle, ‘They will make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them’ (v. 14); and a fuller description is given in chapter 19:
From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords. Then I saw an angel standing in the sun, and with a loud voice he called to all the birds that fly directly overhead, ‘Come, gather for the great supper of God, to eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, the flesh of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all men, both free and slave, both small and great.’ And I saw the beast and the kings of the earth with their armies gathered to make war against him who was sitting on the horse and against his army. And the beast was captured. (vv. 15–20)
And that was the end of his deception.
We do well to remind ourselves that the book of Revelation isn’t some little peculiarity that John got into his head in his old age and therefore is not to be relied upon. On the contrary, John says what Christ says, what Daniel says, what Zechariah says—as we move to this, the colossal crisis and climax of our age.
Final remarks
God’s purposes for Israel
Why shouldn’t God scrap Israel now that he has the church? Why must Israel be restored? Well for sundry reasons, I give you two. Look, please, now at Ezekiel 39.
As for you, son of man, thus says the Lord God: Speak to the birds of every sort and to all beasts of the field, ‘Assemble and come, gather from all round to the sacrificial feast that I am preparing for you, a great sacrificial feast on the mountains of Israel, and you shall eat flesh and drink blood. You shall eat the flesh of the mighty, and drink the blood of the princes of the earth—of rams, of lambs, and of he-goats, of bulls, all of them fat beasts of Bashan. And you shall eat fat till you are filled, and drink blood till you are drunk, at the sacrificial feast that I am preparing for you. And you shall be filled at my table with horses and charioteers, with mighty men and all kinds of warriors,’ declares the Lord God. And I will set my glory among the nations, and all the nations shall see my judgement that I have executed, and my hand that I have laid on them. The house of Israel shall know that I am the Lord their God, from that day forward. And the nations shall know that the house of Israel went into captivity for their iniquity, because they dealt so treacherously with me that I hid my face from them and gave them into the hand of their adversaries, and they all fell by the sword. I dealt with them according to their uncleanness and their transgressions, and hid my face from them. Therefore thus says the Lord God: Now I will restore the fortunes of Jacob and have mercy on the whole house of Israel, and I will be jealous for my holy name. They shall forget their shame and all the treachery they have practised against me, when they dwell securely in their land with none to make them afraid, when I have brought them back from the peoples and gathered them from their enemies’ lands, and through them have vindicated my holiness in the sight of many nations. Then they shall know that I am the Lord their God, because I sent them into exile among the nations and then assembled them into their own land. I will leave none of them remaining among the nations any more. And I will not hide my face any more from them, when I pour out my Spirit upon the house of Israel, declares the Lord God. ( vv. 17–29)
What are the reasons God will do it? First, to convert Israel and to show them that he is the Lord and they may know him from that day forward. Secondly, he will do it because the nations have got to be taught the reason why the Israelites, the Jews, were banished from their land. You say, ‘Why do the nations need to be taught that reason?’ Well if you want to find out, I beg you to take your Old Testament and get to the Kremlin and have a word, if you can, with those who sit there, and say to Kosygin 2, ‘You’ve got a very funny idea of history, and you don’t believe there’s a God, do you? You’re wrong. There is a God.’
‘Oh, and how do you know?’
‘Well, God chose Israel and said that Israel were his special people. They were going to be the head of the nations of the earth, and Messiah was going to come through the line of David. And God told the Israelites that if they disobeyed him, they would be scattered in the nations. So that proves it: there is a God, because he chose Israel.’
‘Do have another glass of vodka, my boy. Your intelligence needs to be strengthened. That’s all silly old mythology. We’ve got beyond that. In those days, people had their gods and the kings who sat on the throne imagined they were sons of the gods. That was a lot of old piffle, opium for the masses. It’s tanks, not God, that decides it.’
‘Is that so? Well now I will have to teach you a lesson and teach you why Israel was scattered among the nations.’
Christianity itself is not built on cunningly devised fables. It comes from Christ, who was of the seed of David, according to the flesh, and it is in fulfilment of these Old Testament prophecies. If these Old Testament prophecies were nonsense, then Christ is a nonsense. It must therefore be proved that Israel was the people of God and the reason why they were scattered among the nations was because God was chastising them for their sins, and when the time comes, God will restore them to prove that the whole thing was of God.
And finally, Israel will be restored. Let us read why in Romans 11.
I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! For I myself am an Israelite. (v. 1)
For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. (v. 29)
So they hadn’t been cut off completely. There is a remnant of Israel, even now. And the gifts that God gave to Israel, he will maintain and the calling with which he called them, he will fulfil, for God does not change his mind. So one day, all Israel will be saved.
What does it mean then, ‘all Israel will be saved’? You needn’t turn to it, but to help you see that all Israel is a technical term, I read you from 1 Kings 12:1.
Rehoboam went to Shechem, for all Israel had come to Shechem to make him king.
All Israel is the nation as a whole. There is a remnant of the literal Israel at the present time. There are very many people—like Saul and Peter and John and Philip and Bartholomew and Andrew—and others since, who have found faith in Christ. They are a remnant, not of the spiritual Israel, but of the literal Israel. But God isn’t going to be content with a remnant of the literal Israel. He’s going to have the whole literal Israel, all Israel. Multitudes in Israel will perish in God’s judgments in the times of tribulation—ungodly, apostate people. But when the Lord comes, ‘he will banish ungodliness from Jacob’ (Rom 11:26). As Zechariah tells us:
I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him. (12:10)
On that day there shall be a fountain opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and uncleanness. (13:1)
And they will say, ‘We thought he was smitten by God and afflicted, but he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities’ (see Isa 53:4–5). ‘This is our God; we have waited for him’ (Isa 25:9). Israel as a whole will be saved.
2 Alexei Kosygin, a former Premier of the Soviet Union.
4: Lessons For Us from the Last Days
In studying the book of Revelation in other sessions, I have emphasized very strongly the matter of chronology and I have argued strongly, I trust with due deference to those who disagree with me, that chapter 11, in speaking of Jerusalem temple and city, is meant to be interpreted literally; and that, therefore, distinction is to be made very clearly and definitely between the literal Jerusalem and its literal temple, and the church which in some sense might be called spiritually a temple, and the Jerusalem that is above, mother of us all.
Tonight, I approach the book of Revelation again and I wish to approach it from a completely different angle, seeking to point out some of the broad moral and spiritual lessons that are to be learnt by us now from these prophecies. I haven’t forgotten the earlier distinctions that I have sought to make as between, for instance, Israel of the future and the church. But we can afford to forget that for a while and look at the picture presented, in order to cull from it general principles relating to the ways of God with men, for these simple reasons.
Judgment and forgiveness
Sin is always sin and, wherever it is found, will bring its ultimate harvest; and God being God will always eventually deal with sin. Moreover, God being God, will have salvation for people and be it emphasized very strongly that in whatever age God saves people, in the spiritual sense of that term, he always saves them on exactly the same fundamental principles. Salvation is always and ever through the sacrifice of Christ. For people living since Calvary it is thus. For people living before Calvary, it was thus. The sacrifice of Christ is the sole basis upon which forgiveness was ever, is ever, or will ever be granted to mankind. It is to be wholly denied that there is any special kind of salvation at the end of this age that doesn’t depend on the blood of Christ, but depends rather on the merits of the particular people that get saved. That is false doctrine. Salvation is always and solely through the blood of Christ, and to the very last, this book of Revelation insists that they who come out of the great tribulation, crying salvation to our God, declare the basis of their salvation—they have been saved because they’ve ‘washed their robes . . . in the blood of the Lamb’ (7:14). So we can approach this book and glean from it principles not only of human sin and its inevitable harvest, principles of those judgments by which God deals with human sin, but also principles according to which God saves people of different times and places.
The judgments
The middle chapters of Revelation, as we know, are occupied broadly speaking with three series of judgments. Those judgments come in the first series as the Lamb opens the seal of a much written-upon scroll, and in the second series those judgments come as seven angels blow upon seven trumpets, and in the third series the judgments come as seven angels upturn seven shallow dishes or bowls, emptying thus their contents upon the earth.
An important distinction
There is to be noticed at once, a very big difference between these judgments and the final judgment. Let them not be confused, and let us not confuse the final judgment with our Lord’s coming to execute the wrath of God. Our Lord’s coming in power and great glory to execute the wrath of God, is a vastly different thing from the final judgment. To execute the wrath of God at the end of this age, our Lord Jesus comes in power and great glory, but there is no word of his coming to the final judgment. On that solemn occasion when he mounts the great white throne to hold the final assize, he will not come to where the criminals are. Indeed, there will not be an earth left for him to come to, for at the setting of that great white throne, heaven and earth flee away.
Just as an earthly judge would not rise from his court to seek the offender but would get the police to summon him to the court, so at the final judgment, Christ will not come to our earth to seek the sinner, but sinners will be called to come to meet the judge upon his throne. Let it be quite distinct in our mind. Our Lord’s coming in power and great glory at the end of this age involves him coming to earth, whereas the final judgment at the end of history is an entirely different thing.
There is also this observable difference between the three series of judgments that lead up to our Lord’s coming in power and great glory, and that final judgment. The final judgment is described for us in Revelation 20: five verses and only five verses are devoted to it. Five verses, be it said, in which every word is written with accuracy and deliberate intention, but simply five verses. God does not revel in the description of judgment for the sake of producing gory and ghastly effects. Nothing can come out of that judgment but its sentence, and God will describe the matter as briefly as possible and pass to happier things. But the broad judgments that proceed in the loosing of the seals, the blowing of the trumpets and the upturning of the bowls, these series of judgments are described at great length and in massive detail, because here there are things to be learnt within history.
The three series of judgments
So profitable is it to learn those lessons that before those judgments even begin, we are told about them so that we ourselves may profit from the lessons they would teach. Approaching them very broadly and not in detail, we will find that the three series of judgments have certain elements in common. On each occasion, before the judgments start, we are taken, so to speak, behind the scenes and given a glimpse into heaven, and we are taken thus to these heavenly scenes in order to be shown by God himself why the judgments that are about to fall, must fall. It is a remarkable thing that the Almighty doesn’t just issue his judgments, but stays to explain himself like a great merciful father to the child he must chastise, so that God’s judgments, though they are of course reasonable, may appear reasonable and command the assent of every believing heart. Then on each occasion, after we have been taken behind the scenes to observe certain things in heaven, we are told about the judgments themselves. Had we time to look at them individually, we would find evidence that each time the judgments are fitted to the crime. And then, likewise, invariably in the three series, after we have first been taken behind the scenes to see why the judgments must come, and secondly, had described to us in detail those judgments coming, we are treated to paragraphs that describe for us God’s salvation in the light of those judgments. For they are providential judgments, during the course of which it is still possible for men to repent and be saved. The witness of this book is that, right up until the end, there will be thousands of people saved—a glorious thing it is. They will come, a multitude that no one could number, crying salvation to our God. And they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb (see 7:9, 14).
The seal judgments
Let us follow then this line of thought in these three series of judgments, and we come to the first, which are the series of judgments that come under the opening of the seals. Chapters 4 and 5 take us behind the scenes, before the judgment comes in chapter 6, and then what I have called the salvation chapter, in chapter 7. Next we should notice that in each of these three series, when we are taken behind the scenes, we are shown certain pieces of temple or tabernacle furniture. For part of the symbolism of the book of Revelation is based on the ancient Jewish symbolism of tabernacle and temple. Here’s hoping that you are well acquainted with the symbolism that John borrows here for the purpose of his inspired message! The particular piece of heavenly furniture that is now described in chapter 4 is the throne of God. Let us read some things from chapter 4.
After this I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven! And the first voice, which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet, said, ‘Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this.’ At once I was in the Spirit. (vv. 1–2)
I wish I could have this revelation played out on the stage by a company of actors so that we could all see it happening! ‘I went up into heaven,’ said John, ‘and went through this door where there sat a throne, and there was somebody sitting on it.’ It was no empty throne—a wonderful reminder that God sits still on his throne and still has the last word in the affairs of men.
The throne is thereafter described in a series of geometrical prepositions and would that we had the time to consider their significance, for they show us the principles of the government of the one who sits on that throne, and marvellous principles of government they are. But time forbids that we think about those details, for we’re looking for the reasons why the judgments must come, and we hasten to the crucial point. So here in chapter 4 we are told that around about and in the midst of the throne, there are living creatures and around about the throne, in the full circle of the throne, there are twenty-four thrones and elders sitting upon them.
And whenever the living creatures give glory and honour and thanks to him who is seated on the throne, who lives for ever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who lives for ever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne saying, ‘Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.’ (vv. 9–11)
What a glorious anthem! The throne of God is seen resting upon four living things. They are living things, possessed of different kinds of life, living and in the zeal and power and enjoyment and thrill of living, and exercising all the manifold types of life that God has given them. As they thrill with life, they cry, ‘Worthy are you, our Lord and God.’ You mustn’t picture the throne of heaven from which those judgments will proceed as a throne occupied by some elderly gentleman who has grown sick of life and turned sadistic, and rejoices in stamping out life wherever he finds people enjoying it. The throne is the very source of every conceivable kind of life—the God that lives for ever and ever. Judgments must come because of sin, for sin is the thing that murders life. Satan has put it about that it’s the other way round—that if you really want to see life, you must break the restraints of the throne of God and swim out all alone. It is the utter reverse of the truth, but then the living creatures observe,
Worthy are you, . . . to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things. (v. 11)
That’s why God has the right to receive from his manifold creation all the glory, honour and power, because he made the creation. My self-centred heart says, ‘He made it for me and I’ve got to have a good time’, and I judge everything by whether I’m having a good time. The holy living things beneath the throne of God have a different idea. They say that he made it for himself.
Worthy are you, . . . to receive glory and honour and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.
I don’t need to tell you how far creation has wandered from the purpose for which it was made. It was made that it might serve the will and pleasure of the creator, but as the prophet lamented, ‘All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way’ (Isa 53:6). It is not the most lurid thing you can say of a man, but it is the most fundamental thing you can say of human sin. It is the creature going his own way. Why must the judgments come? They must come because of the creatorial rights of him who sits on that throne, so that creation can be brought back to serve the purpose for which it was originally made. It was made for his will and not until in every part, from every butterfly’s wing and human brain and angelic spirit, that will is done, not until then will the rights of the throne be satisfied.
Do you know why there is chaos in the world and in the church? It is because men put themselves at the centre. The world does it unrepentantly and then thinks it can run its economic system on the principle of competitive greed, or the tyranny of some bureaucracy or capitalist system. The result is an ever-increasing law of the jungle and we who are Christians, though we have basically repented of it, still have to struggle against the old sin. It is too easy for us likewise to make the criterion whether we enjoy it—it’s so much easier to go in for feeling good rather than being holy. We like those meetings best that make us feel good, rather than those meetings that help us to be holy. It is still a danger, if we make ourselves and our enjoyment the centre and goal of our spiritual experience. We who are saved will have to be turned inside out and learn to live primarily for his will, and let him give us such feelings as he may see fit. Judgment therefore must come to put an end to the chaos and the death that has resulted from man going his own way, instead of serving the will of the creator.
But then there arises a problem. In the hand of him who sits upon the throne, that is in the hand of the Father, in the hand of the creator, there is a scroll heavily written on the inside and the outside. It is sealed at the moment with seven seals, but when those seals are broken one by one, the breaking of them will unleash not only the scroll, but unleash a series of judgments that will deluge earth. And the cry goes out, ‘Who is worthy to loose those seals?’ ‘Worthy’, mark you—not just able but worthy. Any fool could press the button that sets going the chain reaction that would blow the world to smithereens. We’re not talking about who is able to set the judgments going. The question is, who is worthy to set the judgments going? Will any be found worthy? What man or woman amongst us would be worthy to judge our fellow man for having lived selfishly for his own will, rather than the will of God? John says, ‘I wept much’ (see 5:4), as well he might, for if nobody is found worthy to execute these judgments, then this world must do one of two things. It must go on, getting ever more chaotic as human selfishness reaps its terrible harvest; or else almighty God must blot it out and write it off as one complete and utter loss.
‘I wept much at that prospect,’ says John. ‘It was too dismal to behold’. Who wouldn’t weep who has felt, in spite of his sin, some glimmer of the wonder of just being alive? Who wouldn’t weep who has felt some glimmer of wonder at all the glory and colour, the song of the ocean and the bird and the wind and the sun and the rainbow? Who wouldn’t weep if the whole thing had to be consigned to oblivion as one disastrous and ghastly failure? But who will be found worthy to set going the judgments that will bring earth back to God and make a success of it?
And one of the elders said to me, ‘Weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.’ And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain. (5:5–6)
It won’t please the Kremlin or many others to hear those words. The solution to the problem of earth is found in a Jew. Not somebody who comes at this moment, unheard of before, from outer space to solve earth’s problems from the outside, but one who has lived here and lived through it, and is bound to us by human ties. He is the Lion of the tribe of Judah—God in Christ, in the world and in humanity to save it. Wherein is his worthiness to let loose the judgments? It is in this:
And they sang a new song, saying, ‘Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.’ (vv. 9–10)
Man will never be able to complain of any judgment issuing from the hand of Christ. Did not man slay Christ? But his death was not one more example to add to the millions of others of the triumph of brutal sadism, of earth’s cruelty—though envy, as Pilate saw, was the force that directed the scourge that lacerated his back. Though the thorns of Calvary seemed to spell the utter triumph of the ugliness of human self-will, Christ turned that very death into a sacrifice that will be the basis of a fairer world. He is worthy to set loose the judgments on this ungodly world, for see what he has done. Before those judgments deluged the place, he has, by his being slain, brought back to God what sin had stolen from him. It was made for God’s will, but it went astray and in his sacrifice he has brought it back to God. Not only brought it back to God, but made it something for God. ‘You have ransomed people for God’, and made them what for God?
You have made them a kingdom—people who have learnt to obey God’s will and to do God’s will. You have made them priests—people that have learnt to live as priests live, or should live, to serve God, their sacred and permanent duty, and after and through God, to serve their fellow men. We need now to dry our tears. Judgments that should just have wiped out the world and left nothing but empty space would have been a defeat not merely for us, but a defeat for God. For God to have started a world that then ran away and he couldn’t master it and had to write it off as a total waste, would have been a defeat for God himself. But earth’s history will not end with defeat for God, not even this poor old planet. When you find yourself at last transferring to the new heaven and the new earth, you won’t be saying to yourself, ‘Well that was a poor show.’ Do you think God is going to end planet earth like that? Not the Almighty. He will end it showing what a tremendous success Christ has made of this one and then he’ll say, ‘That was glorious, wasn’t it? Well, we’ll fold that one up now and we’ll move on to something more glorious still!’
The worthiness of Christ
But let me examine our Lord’s worthiness to see whether I’ve got it the right way round. His worthiness to set loose the judgments is that he has redeemed to God certain people, made them a kingdom who obey God and live like priests to God. Who are these people? Me? You? Do I understand it right that Christ’s worthiness to set loose the judgments is to be found in you? That he’s made something of you and that he’s turned you into people that obey God and, curing you of your selfishness, he has made you priests that serve God? Is that true? How else can we read it? I wonder what heaven thinks as it waits and waits, waiting for the full worthiness of Christ to be manifest in those whom he has redeemed. So that all heaven and earth and hell will see and acknowledge, when he rises up to judge, that he is worthy to judge, because he has produced a kingdom of people that obey God and serve God. ‘For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God’ (Rom 8:19). Let me look to my ways and you to yours, my good fellow Christians. Pray God that his Holy Spirit speed in my heart that work of turning me into an obedient member of God’s kingdom and a true and selfless priest in his service.
Restraint taken away
The judgments will come and when the Lamb eventually begins to unloose those seals, he’ll not only unloose the book, not only unloose divine judgments, but he will unloose them by letting the restraint go (see 2 Thess 2:7). You read the judgments that come—aggressive conquest, war, grasping more territory and more commodities with consequent famines and disease and death. These things have always happened, for sin always in its selfishness produces this aggressive spirit that leads to wars, that leads to famines, that leads to plagues, that leads to persecutions. But in that day restraint will be removed and man’s selfishness, like a herd of Gadarene swine, will bring it to the terrible final harvest of sin. For man must yet be taught what sin is and where self-centredness leads them.
Salvation
Then there is a chapter of relief, chapter 7, where two examples of salvation are given to us in this context and therefore aptly chosen. There is a company—please don’t ask me who they are, we’re interested solely in what’s happening to them by way of salvation—who are sealed with the seal of the living God, for the angels are told:
Do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads. (7:3)
To be a redeemed servant of God means security from the wrath of God. Sealed, so that they will not be harmed. No drop of God’s wrath will descend on them.
Then we see this other company who come crying salvation (7:9–10), so we have the sealed and the saved, crying salvation because they have come out of the great tribulation and they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. But see where salvation leads them. It is not only a negative thing—saved from the wrath of God; it’s a positive thing: sealed and saved and therefore they are going to heaven to rest from all their labours, never to do a stroke of work again, but to put their feet up on holy divine sofas and sing choruses for the rest of the day! Isn’t that lovely? But that’s Sankey’s .3 version, and Scripture mercifully has a much fuller view of life than that! Don’t worry, you won’t feel old when you get there. You won’t want to sit too long. Possessed with untrammelled life, unspoilt and unfrustrated by sin, you’ll be living every twenty-four hours of a day! What doing? Serving him.
You say, ‘There’s a thing that’s often interested me: why does God have all those stars up in heaven? I mean to say, they’re not a lot of use are they? Why does God do all these works?’
Well what would you do if you were God? He doesn’t have to work to earn his living, does he? He does it for the fun of it—for the sheer, downright joy and gladness of living and being and doing. What a funny notion sin has put into our heads. We don’t want too much work, we don’t want to think too much. Well perhaps that’s understandable: sin has infected our bodies and our brains. But in that day, they will serve him, and because they have learnt to serve him day and night in his temple, then he will make the universe serve them.
Now at the moment the universe has a way of not always serving me! When I want the sun, it goes in; and when I don’t want it, it comes out. Sometimes there isn’t enough water and sometimes there’s too much. But we are told that, in that world,
They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. (7:16–17)
For he that sits on the throne will spread his tabernacle over them, shielding them from every potential danger in this vast and intricate universe. He will make the very universe in all its elements serve them, because they learnt to live as they were designed to live—in serving him. It’s not bad for prophecy, is it!
The trumpet judgments
More briefly, I must take the second series, and they begin in chapter 8 and extend largely through the middle sections of the book. They are the series of judgments that come when the seven angels blow upon seven trumpets. We are expecting chapters that take us behind the scenes. Do you get them? There’s chapter 8 and subsequently, for another series, chapter 11. Two chapters that take us behind the scenes to explain the judgments that now proceed, and now when we have finished those judgments and come at length and finally to chapter 14, we will have once more the salvation chapter.
Why must these judgments come? Chapter 8 begins to tell us, as we are taken behind the scenes and in verse 3 have our attention called to the altar, that is the golden altar of incense, which is before the throne. Now anybody who deserves the name of ‘Christian’ knows all about the tabernacle! The incense altar stood before the veil, and the throne of God with the cherubim on it was just on the other side of that veil. Those twin vessels went together, because when the priest came to minister at the incense altar, he was in fact facing toward God, who deigned to localize his presence above the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat. He came to pray at the altar, directing his prayer to the throne. That throne was the ark, of course, and it contained the covenant and was therefore called the ark of the covenant. So in chapter 8, to explain certain features of these judgments, your attention is called to the incense altar. At the end of chapter 11, your attention is called to the ark.
Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple. (11:19)
Those two heavenly scenes therefore call our attention to the twin functions of the golden altar of incense and the ark of the covenant.
And another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer, and he was given much incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne, and the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before God from the hand of the angel. Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth, and there were peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake. (8:3–5)
Why must the judgments come? These judgments come because of the prayers of the saints. This tells us a lot of interesting things, but particularly what happens to prayers that don’t get immediately answered. Some of them get stored up. ‘With the prayers of the saints’ means all the saints, right down from Eve after she got converted, to Abel and onwards, and many a widow, an unfortunate businessman unjustly dealt with by unscrupulous and ungodly men, many a persecuted saint in a prison or condemned cell, and they prayed. Like that widow who came to the unjust judge (Luke 18:1–7) they prayed not for revenge, but simply to be granted the ordinary, common rights of human kind—that the enemy should be got off their backs. They come crying for justice and God has waited long and not immediately come to their aid, until sometimes they have wondered whether God has forgotten them, or whether there is still a God to hear their prayers. Prayers of the saints, not just born out of intolerable sufferings at the hand of the wicked, but prayers that have fastened themselves to the covenants of God, where God has covenanted to give certain territories, and indeed the whole world, to Abraham and to his offspring. And yet, though the covenants of God have proclaimed that the world should be given to Abraham and his offspring—that is to Christ and those who follow him—centuries have gone by when the heirs to the promise have been kicked from pillar to post, and the offspring himself had nowhere to lay his head until finally he rested it as he reclined it on a cross.
There are dear godly saints, this night tortured in Russian cells and in Chinese dungeons, and harassed businessmen in England, beset with the unscrupulous and illegal and immoral doings of ungodly men and secret societies, worried stiff to know how to keep their businesses going justly before God. Their hearts cry, spoken or unspoken, to God for the day when he will fulfil his covenant and rid the earth of those who destroy it and give it as covenanted to Abraham and his offspring. And though God is long suffering, yet he will avenge his elect that cry to him day and night. Indeed, ‘he will give justice to them speedily,’ said Christ (Luke 18:8).
You will find this section therefore much taken up with claims of territory. In chapter 10, we read of a majestic angelic figure putting one foot on the sea and another on the land, he bestrides them both and claims them both for God. God is beginning to have enough of the Hitlers and others of this world. But you will understand that God is prepared to go a long way to let evil apparently triumph, to let Satan have his fullest fling, until even Satan himself can go no further. So in this section you will see Satan at his dastardly work of trying to get world dominion and bag it all for himself, through his beast and false prophet. ‘And [the dragon] stood on the sand of the sea,’ says John (12:17); and then in chapter 13 he watches as the beast arrives, empowered by Satan to come at length to apparent universal dominion, pushing the saints here and pushing them there, and beheading this lot and torturing the other lot, and making life impossible—they can’t buy, sell or do anything unless they receive the mark of the beast. A ‘closed shop’ tactic to claim the whole world for the beast and his followers and thus for Satan.
How far will God let him go? Right to the limit, until Satan seems to have collared the lot and the only opening for any that won’t bow to him is to be killed. What a strain of faith it will be, still to believe that there’s a God out there and that the promises of his word mean anything. ‘When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?’ (Luke 18.8). Thank God, he will. And this prophecy is given to help them, for whereas in chapter 13 God shows you Satan come to the full flood tide of his worldwide empire, seemingly successful, chapter 12 takes you behind the scenes to show you certain things, by which you will know that the whole of Satan’s empire is built on rotten props.
If a general wishes to seize and hold certain territories, there are generally certain strategic points which that general must take and hold. If he cannot take them and hold them, then however much territory he gains, inevitably he will lose it, for these are strategic, commanding points and whoever holds them holds the key to eventual possession of all the rest. And thus it is with universal dominion: if you aspire to it, there are at least three points that you must get, seize and hold, and if you can’t get them or you can’t hold them, you are doomed. So before Satan gets to his final work, let’s think of three major strategic points given us in chapter 12.
The woman and child
John tells us he saw a woman who was ‘clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth’ (12:1–2). Who’s she? Ever since the old serpent beguiled Eve, God said that the woman’s offspring would bruise the serpent’s head. And all along the centuries, he persecuted her and the royal line that came of her through the Sarahs of this world, and the kings and queens of Judah. But see now, the woman stands ready to be delivered of a child and Satan—typical of him—comes at a woman in that state with all his hideous forms of horror put on. Some enemy, isn’t he? Watch it if you ever get mental or other depression as a result of childbirth or some great disease: Satan is like enough to try and use the physical thing to give you all sorts of doubts about your salvation. That’s typical of him, and he stands there waiting for this babe.
Why is he so anxious? Well, because the babe that is to be born is destined to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, and Satan is wise enough to see they both can’t rule. Either the child will rule or Satan will rule, but they won’t both rule. So he waits for the babe to be born and, just at the very moment when he thought he had his prey, the offspring was gone to the throne of God. Satan has lost already, you know. It wasn’t merely that he sent Herod’s swordsman to kill the infant Jesus but, in all his ghastly horror, he stood around that cross and thought he had him, silencing him in death forever. But he arose and Satan’s battle, his war, is lost.
The Jews
But there’s another thing that you must take and hold if you would have worldwide dominion. That is, you must get rid of the Jews. Satan’s at it and a lot of people try to help him, including some theologians, but God has destined that he will, through Israel in considerable part, rule this world. We are told, not surprisingly, that there broke out war in heaven. Who was fighting? Well verse 7 says, ‘Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back’. Why Michael? Michael has special responsibilities in the angelic world, as Daniel himself was informed. He is the great spirit prince that stands up for the people of Daniel’s nation, that is the Jews. For there are mighty princes of world authority who behind the scenes control the politics of men, as Daniel was given to see. Real fights go on in that realm, which I gather we can join if we wish. If we pray for all who are in authority and as we preach our gospel, we are not wrestling against flesh and blood ‘but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places’ (Eph 6:12). For be it known that Satan isn’t yet cast out: he stalks the heavenlies yet. He has lost the war, but he’s fighting a good many battles.
Now here’s Michael, struggling against the dragon and the dragon against Michael, for it’s never a one-way thing when you fight the devil. Some dear believers are a little unrealistic: they think they’re going to take Sunday school classes and be elders in the church, and fight against the devil and the devil’s going to give them a beautiful, soft time and they’ll enjoy it immensely. And when they get cracked across the head, they get upset. They say, ‘I didn’t want a war like that, where you get your toes stamped on.’ But take it as a compliment, my brother and sister, that the enemy thinks you’re worth fighting against. They fought to obliterate Israel, and Michael prevailed. He will yet prevail and Satan will be cast down from influence in those heavenly places. When he is cast down, he will know that his time is short and his end is sure.
Christ’s brothers and sisters
The third bit of territory to be grasped and obtained and kept, certain people call ‘the brethren’!
And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, ‘Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.’ (12:10)
He is of course referring to believers, both brothers and sisters. Why does Satan bother to accuse them, do you think? Well for a very good practical reason. God is proposing one of these days to take the world out of the hands of wicked men and give it to those ‘brothers’. We read of that in chapter 5: those whom Christ has redeemed, Abraham’s offspring of all ages and at all levels. And Satan is aware of God’s sense of moral rightness and he thinks he sees a weak link in this chain.
If God were going to hand the whole thing over to Christ, there is no weak link. But if God is going to hand it over to you and me, Satan sees an opportunity. He says to God, ‘I was watching her behaviour the other Wednesday afternoon. And look at him, look how he’s running his business.’ It was a happy occasion when God himself was able to say to Satan, when he turned up for the daily inspection, ‘Have you considered my servant Job? Remarkable man’ (see Job 1:8) I wonder how often, if ever, God is able to say to Satan, ‘Have you considered David Gooding?’ And how often God has to pull the curtains. But it is said of these ‘brothers’ that they conquered him, that is Satan, ‘by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony’ (12:11). Satan couldn’t shut them up. He threatened them and he blew all the fire he could and he tried to shut their mouths like he did to Peter and sometimes he succeeded, but they had a high priest who interceded for them as he interceded for Peter. Satan couldn’t shut their mouths: they would talk and they would keep talking about Jesus Christ, dead and risen again to the throne of God.
Has Satan shut you up? Don’t let it ever be, please God, that I do something that so compromises my morality in the eyes of the world that I cannot thereafter ever preach the gospel to you. Satan will get me there if he can, and if I’ve done it, let me remember the value of Christ’s blood and the efficacy of his priesthood and let me come repenting to God, confessing it all and confessing it to my fellow men and mentioning the name of Jesus, who is the answer to my sin. Satan comes, and he knows his time is short, but putting all his bluff on; he engineers the beast coming out of his sea and his final fling to try and grab earth. But those who read this know, even before he starts, that he’s doomed before he begins.
Salvation
And the salvation? There are 144,000 who are redeemed—‘bought’ the word is—and they ‘have been redeemed from mankind as firstfruits for God and the Lamb’ (14:4). I like God’s sense of humour, for in chapter 14 we are bidden to listen to a company singing their lovely psalms and hymns, and when we enquire who they are, God says, ‘I bought them.’ What’s the significance of that? Well he says, ‘Let me explain. You know Satan set up a system in this world and it was a heavily closed shop system where nobody was able to buy or sell anything unless they had the mark of the beast. But I don’t trouble about those things. I’ve got these people. I bought them.’
Oh, the triumph of men and women who have learnt to get their values right, and know that the blood of Christ can purchase things that no money can buy. God knows what this world can give him and he uses his values to get the biggest thing. You won’t buy friends with money: you might buy a lot of sugar, but not friends. Let Satan have his closed shop, but God bought people from this world by the blood of the Lamb. And even those who were required to go through the fierce persecution of these final hours and come at last to the full harvest. The wind blew and the sun shone and it scorched the corn relentlessly, and what did it manage to do other than to ripen it, as the firstfruits ready for the harvest! Satan put all his forms of terror on sun, wind and hail, snow and relentless heat, but where there is a true faith in Christ, they will but ripen the believer for eternal glory.
The bowl judgments
The final series of judgments are those which come under the bowls or vials, call them what you will. In Revelation 15, we are taken first, as usual, behind the scenes and there we are shown two things. We are shown first of all a glassy sea, mingled with fire.
And I saw what appeared to be a sea of glass mingled with fire—and also those who had conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name, standing beside the sea of glass with harps of God in their hands. And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb. (vv. 2–3)
And then, later in the same chapter we read,
After this I looked, and the sanctuary of the tent of witness in heaven was opened, and out of the sanctuary came the seven angels with the seven plagues, clothed in pure, bright linen, with golden sashes around their chests. And one of the four living creatures gave to the seven angels seven golden bowls full of the wrath of God who lives for ever and ever, and the sanctuary was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power, and no one could enter the sanctuary until the seven plagues of the seven angels were finished. (vv. 5–8)
Here then you meet no specific object within the tabernacle, except that it is the tent of his witness. And what you see is the Shekinah glory of God, the sanctuary filled with smoke, as Isaiah saw it on another occasion—filled with the smoke of the glory and majesty of the personal dignity of God. And outside, a sea of glass. Those who stand around it sing the song of Moses, and therefore the sea may well recall the Red Sea through which Moses took the Israelites, when the Israelites were baptized to Moses in the cloud and in the sea. But the sea also conjures up another piece of tabernacle furniture which stood outside in the court, for the great big laver that stood on the backs of twelve oxen, that too was called a sea. It stands for cleansing by water—for holiness, for sanctification, for regeneration. The two together tell us of the holiness that befits God’s house—the personal dignity of God and the cleansing that he demands of all who approach him.
Why must the judgments come in this area? For these reasons, for now we are not merely thinking of creation made to serve God’s will, we are thinking of the personal honour of the person of the Godhead. And down on earth at this time are the filthiest couple you ever set eyes on. There’s a blasphemous beast, not just going his own way like some we know—going his own little residential, suburban way, not interested in God but not against him, as they say—but a beast on earth whose purpose it is to defy the living God and block out the name of God, and be God. And there’s a filthy, indescribably compromised, evil woman. She had never been near the sea, bath, basin or anything. Babylon, riding the beast and in the name of God, mixed up and trying to control this godless political system.
Why must the judgment come? For the sheer honour and personal dignity of his divine majesty. You know that our Lord taught us to pray not only ‘Thy kingdom come’, but ‘Hallowed be thy name’ (Luke 11:2 kjv). God is the most sacred treasure I have. Outraged by this woman and this beast, God’s judgments fall, not on the earth merely, but on men’s persons, for if men will dishonour the person of God, God will dishonour the person of man. For what are you, the lot of you, with all your cosmetics? If there is no God, you’re a lot of little worms creeping through the dust—or as one melancholy student put it, ‘You’re an eczema on the face of the earth.’ But if there is a God, all glorious and all holy, and you are related to him and a partaker of his holiness, how glorious you are! How would we sinners ever become holy by getting through that labour of regeneration, and not bypassing it by the old pagan doctrine of baptismal regeneration of infants—Babylonish in its origin and to its core. Rather it is by the laver of personal regeneration that we are made fit to partake of the very holiness of God.
Salvation
The judgments come and is there any salvation in that series? There is indeed. See its fruit in this. When Babylon the old whore was judged, John heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude saying, ‘the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready’ (19:6–7). For Christ loved this bride and gave himself for her that he might ‘cleanse her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present her to himself in splendour, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing’ (see Eph 5:25–27). And to her was granted that she should in addition be arrayed in ‘fine linen, bright and pure—for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints’ (19:8). To her basic salvation given her by Christ, she was allowed in his presence to add the adornments and multitudinous other works that, by his grace, she did for his glory as she passed through this dirty, filthy world.
That marriage supper of the Lamb comes near. He has given us the robe that qualifies us to attend. My dear fellow Christians, how many ornaments have you got to adorn yourself with, in addition to the basic salvation he gave you? Now is the time to make them. Now is the time for nimble fingers to stitch their works for God and build a trousseau that will make glad the heart of Christ in the day of his espousals.
3 Ira D. Sankey (1840-1908), American gospel singer and composer.