We are getting into the part of Revelation where your eschatology (view of the End Times) is going to have a big impact on how you interpret what is happening. I mentioned in Message+ last week that you are probably not going to hear me land on any one view. I’m going to try to get to the underlying truths that are present no matter the view.
The Song of the 144,000
Then I looked, and here was the Lamb standing on Mount Zion, and with him were 144,000, who had his name and his Father’s name[1] written on their foreheads. I also heard a sound coming out of heaven like the sound of many waters and like the sound of loud thunder.[2]
Zion
In Psalm 76 Zion symbolizes the defeat of God's enemies and the salvation of his people.
Zion is the entire city of Jerusalem (Isaiah 4:3–4; 52:1–2) or the temple mount, considered the dwelling place of God
In Hebrews, Zion is viewed as a heavenly city where God, angels, and the church reside (12:22–23; also 2 Esdras 2:42), and Christ has begun his messianic reign (Psalm 2:6).[3]
The 144,000 are destined for the celestial city with a wall of 144 cubits (21.16–17),[4]suggesting Zion here could be the church.[5]
So is it a geographic location, a symbol for heavenly realities, the church? Sure - as long as the conclusion is that the crucified and resurrected Lamb is enthroned, and those who follow him repeat His victory over the dragon and the beast by following the commandments of God and holding fast to the testimony of Jesus
Now the sound I heard was like that made by harpists playing their harps, and they were singing a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and the elders. No one was able to learn the song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth.
This is a new song of redemption[6] sung by those who have been redeemed.[7] It is a hymn to the Lamb (Christ) who has inaugurated the new age (see also 21:1, 5), rescuing people by his death so that they could participate in God’s purposes as ‘kings and priests’ in the world. No one else can sing it, not even the 4 living creatures and the elders: they aren’t human beings who have experienced the glorious redemption Jesus provides.
[The 144,000] are the ones who have not defiled themselves with women, for they are virgins. These are the ones who follow the Lamb wherever he goes. These were redeemed from humanity as firstfruits to God and to the Lamb, and no lie was found on their lips; they are blameless.[8]
The 144,000
Numbers in Revelation are weighed rather than counted; I suspect a lot of descriptions are the same – they should be treated as symbols rather than literal descriptions. Revelation is apocalyptic literature, and pretty much everything is an icon we click to take us to a deeper reality.
The 144,000 males were first introduced in Revelation 7:4 as "sons of Israel."[9] We talked then about it being a census for the mustering of an army. A battle is going on in Revelation; these are the people who signed up.
Taken literally, it’s 144,000 male virgins. So the ability to follow the Lamb wherever he goes would be limited to 144,000 men who have not had sex. Since the Bible nowhere else suggests that having sex ruins the holiness of a person,[10] I’m going to opt for seeing this as a symbolic group. What does virginity symbolize?
The 7 churches were not to cheat with Jezebel or "Babylon the Great, the Mother of Prostitutes" (17:5), who "made all the nations drink the maddening wine of her adulteries"(14:8; compare 17:1-6). They have not defiled themselves through spiritual fornication. Paul once wrote, "I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him" (2 Corinthians 11:2).
Communities are personified as women in Revelation: the church is a mother (chap. 12), Babylon is a prostitute (chap. 17), the church is a bride (chap. 21). Personifying redeemed individuals as male and redeemed communities as female says nothing about their actual gender. [11]
So this group should be weighed. It’s a group of faithful followers of Jesus[12] who are the firstfruits…..
Firstfruits
“Firstfruits” point toward the much greater harvest to come (think of the first portions of the harvest given as an offering to God in Exodus 23:16 and Nehemiah 10:35, for example. A couple examples:
Paul used ‘firstfruits’ to describe Israel as the spiritual root of the church (Rom. 11:16), as did James (1:18) and Jeremiah (2:3)[13]
Paul described his first converts in Asia and Achaia as the ‘firstfruits’ (Romans 16:5; 1 Corinthians 16:15)
James said that God “gave us birth by the word of truth so that we would be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.” (James 1:18)
“But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep… For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him.” (1 Cor. 5: 20-23)
John presents the 144,000 as the first installment of redeemed humanity,[14] along with the "great multitude that no one could count" from 7:9-17.[15] This is sometimes seen as those redeemed from Israel (the faithful remnant[16]), and then the multitude of Gentile converts. However you want to parse that out, it’s faithful followers of Jesus whose entrance into heaven is the beginning of a much greater harvest.
So far…. Jesus is enthroned; the faithful, the firstfruits of the redeemed, are having a glorious time.
Three Angels and Three Messages
Then I saw another angel flying directly overhead, and he had an eternal gospel[17] to proclaim to those who live on the earth—to every nation, tribe, language, and people. He declared in a loud voice: “Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has arrived, and worship the one who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water!”
A second angel followed the first, declaring: “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great city![18] She made all the nations drink of the wine of her immoral passion.”
A third angel followed the first two, declaring in a loud voice: “If anyone worships the beast and his image, and takes the mark on his forehead or his hand, that person will also drink of the wine of God’s anger that has been mixed undiluted in the cup of his wrath, and he will be tortured with fire and sulfur in front of the holy angels and in front of the Lamb.[19]
And the smoke[20] from their torture will go up forever and ever, and those who worship the beast and his image will have no rest day or night, along with anyone who receives the mark of his name.”
This requires the steadfast endurance of the saints—those who obey God’s commandments and hold to their faith in Jesus. Then I heard a voice from heaven say, “Write this: ‘Blessed are the dead, those who die in the Lord from this moment on!’” Yes,” says the Spirit, “so they can rest from their hard work, because their deeds will follow them.”
Then I looked, and a white cloud appeared, and seated on the cloud was one like a son of man! [21] He had a golden crown on his head and a sharp sickle in his hand. Then another angel came out of the temple, shouting in a loud voice to the one seated on the cloud, “Use your sickle and start to reap, because the time to reap has come, since the earth’s harvest is ripe!” So the one seated on the cloud swung his sickle over the earth, and the earth was reaped.
Then another angel came out of the temple in heaven, and he too had a sharp sickle. Another angel, who was in charge of the fire, came from the altar and called in a loud voice to the angel who had the sharp sickle, “Use your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of grapes off the vine of the earth, because its grapes are now ripe.”
So the angel swung his sickle over the earth and gathered the grapes from the vineyard of the earth and tossed them into the great winepress of the wrath of God.[22] Then the winepress was stomped outside the city, and blood poured out of the winepress up to the height of horses’ bridles for a distance of almost 200 miles.[23]
Judgment
Those who drink Babylon's wine cup of idolatry will eventually drink the cup of God’s wrath.[24] Considering that during this time God’s people are called to “patient endurance,” and that later we will see this cup is filled with the blood of the martyrs, I tend to see the primary (though not only) reason for God’s anger as the killing of his children.[25] Those who poured out the blood of His people will reap what they have sown; [26] “Those who live by the sword will die by the sword.”[27] What was planted will be harvested.
Apparently – since this cup is unmixed - the cup of God’s wrath is usually diluted. I think (?) this means that throughout human history, God has diluted the full strength of judgment. He has not intervened as maximally as He justly could have:
Egypt (though idolatrous) could have avoided God’s anger and carried on if they hadn’t enslaved God’s people.
God could have destroyed violent Ninevah instead of warning them about the upcoming punishment for their violence.
The nations Israel fought in Canaan had to have “their cups full” of evil doing before God brought judgment to them.
Historically, God let cups get pretty full before people drank the wine of their own brewing. Eventually, “the time has come to destroy those who destroy the earth” (Revelation 11:18). It’s grim.
“thoroughly corrupt, totally degenerate; waste away by the decaying influence of moral (spiritual) impurity; utterly corrupt; becoming morally depraved all the way through’ (‘utterly decayed’).” (HELPS Word Studies)
As they did unto others, it will be done unto them. They corrupted others; they encouraged them toward depravity; they decayed them. God will make Babylon drink her own mixture, experienced as the wine of his wrath in retribution for her immoral deeds.[28] [29] [30] One of the most sobering things God can do is “give them over to themselves” (Romans 1).[31] We’ll see this later when the nations mourn that Babylon the Great has fallen even while they are the one tearing her apart.
The wording of ‘those who worship the beast’ suggests not only that they worship the beast, but they “persist in worshipping him, even to the end. This characteristic is so strongly marked that they are here represented as keeping it even after their death."[32] Sometimes we get what we want - and it’s a terrible thing.[33]
[Babylon’s] sins are piled up to heaven, and God has remembered her crimes. Give back to her as she has given; pay her back double for what she has done. Pour her a double portion from her own cup... God has judged her with the judgment she imposed on you.” (Revelation 18:5-6; 20)”[34]
Now, to the bloody imagery. This was how people of that time consistently described times of judgment and death.
Ancient descriptions of wars spoke of rivers flowing with blood.
Blood obstructed ships; trees dripped with gore dropped on them when satiated birds grew weary of feasting on corpses.
In 1Enoch, sinners’ blood covers chariots; horses walk up to their chests in the blood.
rabbis lamented horses drowning in blood and blood rolling huge boulders 40 miles out to the sea.[35]
This passage says blood will stretch out for 200 miles - on a flat plain. It’s clearly not literal. It is, however, devastating and final.
Fire and Smoke[36]
Throughout Revelation, fire has been a symbol of judgment: 1:14, 2:18, 3:18, 4:3, 8:5, 15:2, 19:12.[37] The language is drawn from the description of the overthrow of the cities of the plain under the rain of brimstone and fire; cf. Gen. 19:24, 28; Isa. 34:9 f.; Jude 7.[38] It also draws from Isaiah 34:9-10, the judgment of Edom:
Edom’s… dust will turn to brimstone, and the land will ignite with burning pitch. Edom’s fiery judgment will burn day and night for all time; the smoke from it will ascend forever.[39] For generations to come it will be a wasteland, and no person will make it their home ever again…When God measures the land, desolation will be its width and chaos will mark its length. (Isaiah 34)
Notice what the fire does and for what the smoke stands as a memorial: utter desolation and chaos (or emptiness, as some translations say). And this note of desolation, chaos and emptiness brings us to our final point.
Rest vs. Restlessness (for their deeds will follow them)
In Revelation 6:11, the souls of the martyrs were told to "wait" (literally "rest") until their number was complete. In both passages those who die in Christ are said to be at rest, in contrast to the worshipers of the beast, for whom "there is no rest day or night" forever (14:11).[40] “Those who worship the beast and his image….have no rest day and night” is an almost verbatim repetition of how the cherubim worship God in heaven.[41]
While the Bible uses vivid imagery to describe hell as a place you don’t want to go and heaven as a place you do, the role of rest stands out to me in this particular passage. The Bible is thick with the discussion of rest.
Ex. 33:14 And he said, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”
Jeremiah 6:16 “Thus says the Lord: ‘Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls.’”
Psalm 116:7 “Return, O my soul, to your rest; for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.”
Jer. 31:25 “I will satisfy the weary soul, and every languishing soul I will replenish.”
Matthew 11:28-29 “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.[42] Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”
Matthew 12:43; Luke 11:24 “When an unclean spirit comes out of a man, it passes through arid places seeking rest[43] and does not find it.”
1 Corinthians 16: 17-18 “I rejoice at the coming of [a few dudes]; they have made up for your absence, for they have refreshed[44] my spirit and yours.”
Philemon 1:7; 20 “Your love has given me much joy and comfort, my brother, for your kindness has often refreshed[45] the hearts of God’s people... Yes, brother, let me have some benefit and joy from you in the Lord; refresh my heart in Christ.”
Hebrews 4:9-11 “There still remains a place of rest, a true Sabbath, for the people of God because those who enter into salvation’s rest lay down their labors in the same way that God entered into a Sabbath rest from His. So let us move forward to enter this rest, so that none of us fall into the kind of faithless disobedience that prevented them from entering.”
If the righteous rest from their hard work because their deeds will follow them, then the unrighteous can’t rest, because their deeds have followed them also.
“But the wicked are like the storm-tossed sea, for it cannot be still, and its waves churn up mire and muck.” (Isaiah 57:20)
What if, in the next life, we have chosen a path to a place where our wants and needs and desires are never satisfied? What if we can never rest?
That affirmation we crave? Never happens.
That sense of self-worth? Eternally elusive.
The pleasure of actually feeling good enough? Never felt.
Rest from needing to earn the love or admiration of others? Failure after failure.
The desire to be seen and known? Not going to happen in a world of the relationally blind.
Moments of tranquility and peace? Ever elusive.
Being loved? Never.
The relentless, addictive nature of sin? Unrelenting.
The gnawing sense that there is another person who can make me happier than the one I am with, another job that will fulfill me, another house in which I will be happy, another vacation that will finally relax me…. “How much money does it take to make a man happy? Just one more dollar.” — John D. Rockefeller.
The despair of hopelessness? Every present.
Every increasing cravings with ever diminishing returns? Constant.[46]
“Our heart is restless until it find its rest in thee.” – Augustine
That is in sharp contrast with those who have rest. The deeds that followed them were that they kept God’s commandments and clung to the testimony of Jesus. There is a Someone standing between us and that curse. The trajectory of a life that finds its fulfillment in Christ in the end has already begun. We find rest now when…
we accept that Jesus affirms our status as image bearers and children with dignity and worth. We don’t have to earn that; God has given us that
we realize Jesus grounds our identity in Him as redeemed and made holy when Jesus gave us love simply because He loved us; we don’t have to be good enough to be loved; we are loved because God is good enough to love even us.
we accept that Jesus fully know us and fully loves us; nothing is hidden, yet grace is still offered
we experience the peace of God keeping our hearts and minds in the storms of life; they may be hard, but we are never alone
we discover that Jesus is enough to satisfy us in the midst of our lack – his grace is sufficient for us even when stuff around us crumbles
the light of the empty grave illuminates the darkness at the end of our despairing tunnels.
There will be a day – the ‘not yet’ - when everything that we experienced in part we will experience in whole as we drink fully from the cup of the love of Jesus.
_______________________________________________________________________________
[1] The names written on the foreheads fulfills the promise given to the victors (3:12).
[2] The sounds of judgment. We’ve heard this sound several times already in Revelation.
[3] Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary of the New Testament
[4] NRSV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible
[5] Orthodox Study Bible
[6] This song was sung in Chapter 5 also.
[7] Zondervan Bible Commentary (One Volume)
[8] In contrast to the Beast and those who follow it, who spew lies.
[9] Well, not Dan, but Levi steps in to take Dan’s place. It’s complicated.
[10] See Song of Songs. Sex was God’s idea. He intends for it to be a wondrous thing within His design.
[11] IVP New Testament Commentary Series
[12] The Lamb was first seen as if "slain" or "slaughtered" (5:6), and to follow the Lamb wherever he goes is to be "slain" as he was and for his sake (6:9), [12] suggesting the 144,000 are martyrs (6:11). This seems to suggest (?) the song may be even more specific than simply the song of redeemed: it may be that those who have given their lives for the sake of their faith have had such a terrible experience on earth transformed into a uniquely glorious experience in heaven.
[13] Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary of the New Testament
[14] Zondervan Bible Commentary (One Volume)
[15] IVP New Testament Commentary Series
[16] Isaiah 10:20, Jeremiah 31:7, Micah 2:12 and Zephaniah 3:13
[17] Reminder: it was said that Augustus “was the beginning for the world of the good tidings (euangeliōn; gospel) that came by reason of him.” This directly challenges that claim notion: it is God who is the source of euangelion,not the emperor. The angel flying in mid-heaven seems to correspond with Matthew 24:14: “And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to all the nations, and then the end will come.” Expositor's Bible Commentary (Abridged Edition): New Testament
[18] “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great…” is from Isaiah 21:9, which adds, “and all the carved images of her gods [God] has shattered to the ground.” In Daniel 2, the kingdom made without hands is the kingdom of God that shatters the other kingdoms. This was inaugurated by Jesus. Its inevitable demise is now in progress. Again, this is the “already, but not yet” sort of thing that you see going on in the New Testament. (Michael Heisser)
[19] This suggests this is still part of temporal judgment rather than eternal. There is no other indication in Scripture that those in eternity with Jesus are aware of what is happening to those who are not.
[20] In Chapter 7, the smoke is “the prayers of the saints.” In Chapter 15, the temple is filled with the smoke of God’s glory and power. There is something about the smoke that is an icon for a message ‘behind’ the smoke.
[21] “The language is derived from Dan. 7:13 (and Rev. 1:13).
[22] Wine was sometimes called the “blood of grapes” (Gen 49.11) NRSV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible
[23] Writing against the background of America's own Civil War bloodbath, Julia Ward Howe captured something of the spirit of this graphic vision in her famous lines: “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He has loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword; His truth is marching on.” IVP New Testament Commentary Series
[24] Expositor's Bible Commentary (Abridged Edition): New Testament
[25] This would correlate with the Horsemen as being primarily (though not only) about what Christians will experience in terms of persecution.
[26] There is an ironic parallel between Christ (through his angels) treading the bloody winepress of God's wrath here, and Christ enduring God's wrath against sin on the cross by shedding his own blood. The further irony that both this judgment and the judgment of sin at Jesus' crucifixion took place outside the city (see Hebrews 13:12 and perhaps Mt 21:39) may well be intentional. IVP New Testament Commentary Series
[27] Matthew 26:52
[28] Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary of the New Testament
[29] Joel located this final judgment in the valley of Jehoshaphat (Joel 3:2), or Hinnom, which lies south of Jerusalem. This was the traditional valley of judgment in the Old Testament (Jer. 7:31–32; 19:5–6) that was the model for Gehenna seen in Jewish intertestamental literature (cf. 2 Esdras 7:36) and the New Testament (Matt. 5:22). Later traditions believed it to be the valley as the Kidron, east of Jerusalem. John places the location outside of the city of Babylon: basically, outside of the secular city in a broader sense. Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary of the New Testament
[30] Yet the remark that the vintage was trodden outside the city may remind us of one who absorbed in His own person the judgment due to mankind, and did so outside the city (cf. Jn 19:20; Heb. 13:12)Zondervan Bible Commentary (One Volume)
[31] “Revelation does not contain two competing Christologies and theologies—one of power and one of weakness—symbolized by the Lion and the Lamb, respectively. Revelation presents Christ as the Lion who reigns as the Lamb, not in spite of being the Lamb. This means also that Revelation presents God as the one who reigns through the Lamb, not in spite of the Lamb. All of this means that judgment by God/Christ in Revelation must be an expression of divine identity that is not in conflict with Lamb power. The judgment of the world originates in its failure to believe and be faithful to this God. When it creates its own deities, it suffers the natural consequences of deifying the non-divine. In this sense, judgment proceeds from the throne of God and from the Lamb (6:16–17) because the rejection of the divine gift of life carries with it inherent deadly consequences…when humans reject Lamb power they experience it as imperial disaster—disordered desire, death, and destruction. The first tidal wave of violent imagery expresses the apocalyptic insight that the world’s suffering is allowed by God, but is more fundamentally a result of sin. We would of course be misguided not to see these also as divine punishment, similar to the snowball effect of sin unleashed in the world according to Paul in Rom 1:18—32. The question “human sin or divine punishment?” presupposes a false dichotomy and asks for an unnecessary choice; the answer is of course, “both.” (From Reading Revelation Responsibly)
[32] Pulpit Commentary, https://biblehub.com/commentaries/revelation/14-11.htm. Check out C.S. Lewis’s book The Great Divorce for a novelized version of this idea.
[33] We may sow the wind, but who can stand the whirlwind? See Hosea 8:7
[34] “Sometimes, God’s judgment in Revelation takes the form of imperial practices themselves, or the consequences of such practices. War, famine, pestilence, death, injustice in the marketplace, and rebellion are all…human evils rather than cosmic events… We would be misguided not to see these also as divine punishment, similar to the snowball effect of sin unleashed in the world according to Paul in Rom 1:18-32. The question “human sin or divine punishment?” presupposes a false dichotomy and asks for an unnecessary choice; the answer is of course, ‘both.’” Michael Gorman, Reading Revelation Responsibly
[35] NRSV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible
[36] Smoke shows up everywhere: there are constantly smoky things rising to God.
· Smoke means the glory (greatness) of God (Revelation 15:8).
· The smoke of the incense purified the prayers of the saints, ((Revelation 8:4)
· A symbol of destruction (Revelation 9)
· A sign of spiritual pollution (Revelation 9)
[37] “The heads of the horses looked like lions’ heads, and fire, smoke, and sulfur came out of their mouths. A third of humanity was killed by these three plagues, that is, by the fire, the smoke, and the sulfur that came out of their mouths.” (Revelation 8)
[38] Zondervan Bible Commentary (One Volume)
[39] In the context of Edom, ‘forever’ either means ‘people will never forget this’ or ‘it stretched so high into the sky it looked like it went on forever.” Or both.
[40] IVP New Testament Commentary Series
[41] Revelation (Beale)
[42] HELPS Word-studies: 372 anápausis – inner rest (tranquility). “Rest, cessation from labor, refreshment.”
[43] Ibid
[44] HELPS Word-studies 373 completing a process…" properly, to give (experience) rest after the needed task is completed; to pause (rest) "after precious toil and care."
[45] Ibid
[46] HT C.S. Lewis for that phrase