Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #33 of Revelation, chapter 11, and we are continuing to look at Revelation 11:15-17:

And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever. And the four and twenty elders, which sat before God on their seats, fell upon their faces, and worshipped God, Saying, We give thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art, and wast, and art to come; because thou hast taken to thee thy great power, and hast reigned.

This is just a wonderful point in history.  It is the time of the end and the time when God has completed His salvation program.  I know we are not accustomed to think of Judgment Day as a wonderful thing.  It certainly is not wonderful that people are under the wrath of God, but it is wonderful that God has saved all those He had predestinated to become saved.   It is wonderful that God has accomplished His salvation program. 

We are used to thinking of this time period as the day the door shut and remains shut and how sorrowful this is.  It is grievous and extremely sorrowful for the unsaved people of the earth.

But there is another side to this.  It is not “no salvation,” but it was actually “great salvation.”  Certain individuals are very critical of the Bible’s teaching on this subject.  They are extremely upset at the teaching that God has saved all His elect.  They do not like that idea at all, so they do speak very badly of these things.

When we look at this properly from the perspective of the Bible and the perspective of God, we do know that God planned to save a people for Himself.  We know that God arranged and designed that plan before the world was ever created.  Ephesians, chapter 1, verse 4, tells us that the Lord predestinated a people before the foundation of the world.  We know that God accomplished the salvation of these elect from before the point of the world’s foundation.  It was at that point that Jesus was the Lamb that was slain and He died for these people from the foundation of the world.  He rose victoriously from the dead before the world began. 

The entire history of the world is basically a time in which God was applying that redemptive work of the Lord Jesus Christ to each one of His chosen people whom He had elected to salvation – from Abel, to Noah, to David, and so on – and God sent forth His Word, found each elect soul and saved all these individuals, down through time, until centuries and millenniums had passed.  We finally reached the end of the nation of Israel and then the church age began and then we reached the end of the church.  Then the final season, the “little season” of Great Tribulation, began and during the last part of this period the Lord poured out the Latter Rain to save a great multitude of men, women and children all over the face of the earth.  And with that, God finished His salvation program; He saved everyone whose names were recorded in the Lamb’s Book of Life and this is a glorious thing!  It is an exciting thing.  It is truly wonderful and God should be praised and greatly thanked and honored by His people for the completion of His salvation program, insofar as finding all the lost sheep of the house of Israel. 

We know there is still the matter of completing salvation in the sense of God’s people receiving their new resurrected bodies, but the major task of sending forth the Word of God to seek all the elect was complete.  It was determined by the wisdom of God to first save the souls, or the spiritual nature of man, and they had to be “born again.”  Well, that task is done.  It is finished and God has completed that tremendous aspect of His salvation program.

That is what we find here in our verses in Revelation 11 when “the seventh angel sounded.”  The seventh angel sounded at the beginning of Judgment Day, May 21, 2011, the last day of the Great Tribulation period and the last day, therefore, of the pouring out of the Latter Rain and the last day of that second Jubilee.  It was a glorious Jubilee in which the Lord was setting the captives free and then came that last day of salvation when God shut the door.

Some people react very negatively to the fact that God shut the door at the beginning of the Day of Judgment and they somehow feel this is horrible because they (apparently) think He shut the door on some of the elect.  Actually, I do not think they are considering it that way at all because, of course, God has not shut the door on any elect individuals that had yet to have the Word of God applied to their souls.  That did not happen.  God would not shut the door unless He first saved every one that was to become saved.  Remember, we read a very significant statement in the context of Judgment Day, in 2Peter 3:12-13:

Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.

The true believer who is continually looking into these things is being obedient to what God just said here: “We, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth.”  So a child of God should not listen to anyone that attempts to dissuade him from looking into end time information as if there were something wrong with that.  It is the nature of the one that God has saved to desire God to bring to pass the completion of all things, according to His promise.  So we look in a very intense way for the new heaven and new earth and that is why we are interested in the timeline and the duration of the Great Tribulation and the completion of Judgment Day, and so on.  This is completely in line with what the Bible says. 

Then it goes on to say in 2Peter 3:15:

And account that the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you;

This is a very significant statement.  We account (or reckon or figure) that “the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation;” that is, God did not bring His judgment upon the unsaved people of the world (until now) for a particular reason – for salvation.  That is the reason God did not punish the world and pour out His wrath until salvation was complete.  Some people look at this and they say, “Well, you see, that means God is still saving today.  We are still here and that means salvation is still ongoing.”  They do not understand what the wrath of God is.  We read in James 5:7:

Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.

Here, God is setting Himself up as “the husbandman.”  It is a figure He is using.  He is a husbandman who plants His crops and waits for the precious fruit to come in.  Of course, the elect would be the “precious fruit,” and He has “long patience for it,” and this would identify with the statement in 2Peter 3:15, where it says the Lord is “longsuffering” and His longsuffering equals salvation.  Likewise, the husbandman has “long patience” for the fruit as He waits for the crops to come in.  What is He waiting for?  He is waiting for two periods of rain: the “early rain” and the “Latter Rain.”  The “early rain” is that which the Bible relates to the “firstfruits” during the church age.  As we read in Revelation 14, the “144,000” were likened to the “firstfruits unto God.”  It is a spiritual number to represent the fullness of all those God saved during the 1,955 years of the church age.  Then the Latter Rain relates to only one period in history and that is the “little season” of the Great Tribulation – not the entire Great Tribulation, but only the second part of it that came after the 2,300 evening mornings that ended in September 1994.  In 1994 (in a Jubilee year) God began to stretch forth His hand a second time to recover the remnant of His people; He sent the Latter Rain which fell in the second part of the Great Tribulation up until May 21, 2011 and then the rain stopped.  The precious fruit had come in and all to be saved were now saved.  The husbandman had waited until that point – God was longsuffering and patient up until the end of the Great Tribulation and the end of the Latter Rain.   That is what James 5:7 is saying, when it says, “Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.”  The implication is that once the two periods of rain have fallen, He will no longer be patient.  He will then bring judgment, which is exactly what God did when He shut the door of heaven and ended His salvation program for this world.  Now no one can be saved.

People are looking for a physical manifestation of the wrath of God.  Believe me, when God shut the door of heaven and ended the prospect of salvation (from man’s perspective) for every unsaved individual on the face of the earth, that was an act of wrath; that was an act of punishment; that was an act from an angry God.  Every day since (May 21, 2011) all unsaved individuals have been under the wrath of an angry God.  So people that fail to understand the spiritual nature of the judgment do not see this.  They see the world continuing on just as it did before and, therefore, they wrongly assume God is still being longsuffering and patient.  God stopped being longsuffering when He shut heaven’s door.  On that day and every day since, God is no longer putting up with the sins of man.  This time of judgment is a response to the rebellion of mankind and God is pouring out His wrath.  We cannot turn to 2Peter 3:15 and say, “You see, God is still longsuffering.”  He ceased to be longsuffering on May 21, 2011.

Let us go back to Revelation 11.  We read: “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever.”  Then it says in Revelation 11:16:

And the four and twenty elders, which sat before God on their seats, fell upon their faces, and worshipped God,

Here is the response from the people of God.  We have seen the twenty four elders twice before in the Book of Revelation, but let us go back to Revelation 7, when the great multitude makes that appearance and the question is asked, “From whence came they?”  The response was that they came “out of great tribulation” and in the context of God completing His salvation and the great multitude appearing in heaven (in the person of Christ), they stood before God and it said in Revelation 7:10-12:

And cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb. And all the angels stood round about the throne, and about the elders and the four beasts, and fell before the throne on their faces, and worshipped God, Saying, Amen: Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honour, and power, and might, be unto our God for ever and ever. Amen.

Here, we see the elders and the living creatures fell before the throne at the point the great multitude made their appearance in heaven; they came out of the Great Tribulation, which ended on May 21, 2011, and that was the end of God’s salvation program.  This is why there is great praise and honor being given to God, as they are crying with a lout voice, saying, “Salvation to our God.”  He has done what He said He would do.  He has elected these people and He was fought by Satan and his emissaries and dark spiritual forces every step of the way.   There was nothing easy and nothing simple about God’s delivery of His people out of the clutches of Satan, where they were held in dark, spiritual dungeons.  Satan fought the sending forth of the Word of God into the world every step of the way. 

Think of all the Bible records of tremendous spiritual warfare as Satan and his kingdom came against the people of God, again, and again.  Just think of what we know from church history over the last several centuries.  God would put the Bible in the language of the common people and the church would burn people at the stake for daring to translate the Bible and share the Bible with the common people.  They would kill and torture them and many lost their lives for the sake of carrying the Word of God to others.  It was a constant battle.  There was nothing easy at all as God sent forth His Word into a world ruled over by Satan since the Garden of Eden.  Yet, God was faithful and He utilized and mobilized His people to carry His Word to all the nations of the world, with that great climax when there was a worldwide declaration of Judgment Day leading up to May 21, 2011.  The Lord saved the best until last and, certainly, that was fought against.  The church, under the rule of Satan, did everything it could to deter and dismiss this teaching of the Word of God and, yet, God completed His salvation program.  This is worthy of praise!

You know, it is difficult for the child of God because the Lord is “trying” us severely and we are under extreme testing throughout this Day of Judgment.  We sometimes find it hard to be thankful, perhaps, and to praise God, but here is an excellent reason for us to do so today and tomorrow and every day of “these days after that tribulation.”  We can thank God.  We can praise Him.  Oh, how great our God is, that He has finished His salvation program and found all of His lost sheep.  He has searched for them and He has saved all He intended to save.  It is great salvation and it could not be any greater salvation; it cannot be covered any more thoroughly because there cannot be salvation given to individuals that are not elect. 

And, you see, that is the difficulty people have.  When God has finished finding all His elect and He shuts the door to heaven, then they are upset.  What do they want Him to do?  Do they want Him to save individuals that were not elect?  Or, do they just want the “offer” of salvation to be available to non-elect individuals so they can have some psychological well being?  The Gospel was never for the purpose of the non-elect.  It was not designed by God as something to keep man psychologically fit or to allow them to live somewhat more comfortably during their life.  Now this hope is removed and now they are not as comfortable; they are troubled in mind.  Yet, the fact is that they are non-elect and they are unsaved because God did not elect them to salvation.  God has no obligation to them.  He has no responsibility to them and neither does the child of God.  We were commanded and obligated and it was our duty to go forth with the Gospel into the world until God found the last of the company of the elect.  He has done that and, therefore, that task is finished.  We have done the will of God in that area and that is why there is now a need of patience throughout this period of time.

Well, it is just a tremendous and glorious thing and this language in Revelation 11:16 is reminding us when it mentions the four and twenty elders; that is, twelve representing the Old Testament saints and twelve representing the New Testament sets – the fullness of his saints.  They sat before God in Christ Jesus.  As Ephesians 2:6 tells us, we are made “to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”  They sat before God in their seats.  The word “seats” is the Greek word “thronos,” and can also be translated as “thrones.”  We reign with him as “kings.”  God has made those He has saved “prophets, priests, and kings.”  Notice that all twenty four elders got up from their thrones, where they were seated with Christ, and they “fell upon their faces, and worshipped God, Saying, We give thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty.”

That word “Almighty” is a Greek word that is also translated as “omnipotent,” or the one possessing all might.

Then it goes on to say in Revelation 11:17:

…Saying, We give thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art, and wast, and art to come; because thou hast taken to thee thy great power, and hast reigned.

He has shown Himself as King of kings.  He has conquered Satan and all the kingdoms of this earth now come under the rule of the one true deity, the one true ruler over all.