Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #2 of Revelation, chapter 14, and we are continuing to look at Revelation14:1:

And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father's name written in their foreheads.

We saw last time that Christ, of course, is the Lamb and His standing on mount Sion relates to what we read in Psalm 2, where it says He would stand upon His holy hill.  Also, God defines mount Zion in Psalm 74:2:

Remember thy congregation, which thou hast purchased of old; the rod of thine inheritance, which thou hast redeemed; this mount Zion, wherein thou hast dwelt.

So Zion is a name that can identify with God’s elect and it does in Psalm 74 and in our verse in Revelation 14, it does identify with God’s elect.

It says in Psalm 125:1:

They that trust in the JEHOVAH shall be as mount Zion, which cannot be removed, but abideth for ever.

So God’s people are the only ones who will trust in JEHOVAH because the Lord gives His people that trust when He places within us a new heart and a new spirit.  We will be “as mount Zion” which “abideth for ever.”  It is a representation of the eternal kingdom of God.

It says in Psalm 132:13:

For JEHOVAH hath chosen Zion; he hath desired it for his habitation.

The word “chosen” denotes “election.”  God “chose” or “elected” Jacob, but Esau He hated, so JEHOVAH hath chosen Zion, which pictures all of those predestinated to salvation before this world began.  He has desired them for His habitation and He will dwell in them, the Bible tells us.  God speaks of the house of God as being built for His habitation and, therefore, that spiritual house of God that the Bible speaks of consists of every individual believer that is saved and added as a “living stone” to that house.  It says in Ephesians 2:21-22:

In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.

Zion is built.  Zion is for God’s habitation and so is the temple or the house of God, as they are all synonymous in that sense.

Let us look at just one more verse concerning Zion.  It says in Psalm 147:12:

Praise JEHOVAH, O Jerusalem; praise thy God, O Zion.

Here we see the similarity and the “interchangeableness” of “Jerusalem” and “Zion.”  They are the same statement, just reworded so we can better understand how Zion is used.

Let us go back to Revelation 14:2:

And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the mount Sion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father's name written in their foreheads.

There were with Him “an hundred forty four thousand,” and that is a special number.   It has spiritual meaning.  Every number in the Bible has spiritual meaning because every number in the Bible is a word.  For example, when we look in the Bible we are not going to see a number written as numerals (like “144,000”) but we are going to see words that say a “hundred forty four thousand.”  God wrote it out in words and every word of the Bible has spiritual meaning.  We may not always understand the spiritual meaning.  There are some numbers we do not know the meaning of, spiritually, at the present time.  It is not clear.  Other numbers are clear and that is because God has made it a point to add certain emphasis and to highlight it for us so we can get the meaning He is trying to relate. 

For example, when Jesus went to the cross, the number “three” was in view, again, and again.  There were three crosses, three people on the crosses, three inscriptions, and so forth.  The number “three” comes through, repeatedly, as we see God identifying the number three in this way and as we search the Bible, we see that the spiritual meaning of the number “three” represents “purpose.”  It was the purpose of God that Christ would go the cross; in the Book of Acts, the Lord speaks of Christ being delivered up to the cross, according to the “determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.”

The number “144,000” is a special number because we can break it down to “12 x 12” and then we add “10s” to get to “144,000,” so it points to the “complete fullness” of whatever is in view.  The 144,000 represent God’s elect that were saved during the church age.  We did not just grab that out of a hat.  How do we know that?  We know it from what the Bible tells us elsewhere, in Revelation 7:3-4:

Saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads. And I heard the number of them which were sealed: and there were sealed an hundred and forty and four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel.

The 144,000 is broken down for us by tribe, as it goes on in the next few verses to name 12 tribes with 12,000 per tribe, so it is “12 x 12,000.”  So it is the “fullness” (the number “12”) and the “completeness” (the number “10”) of the 144,000, which we are told about in Revelation 14:4:

These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth. These were redeemed from among men, being the firstfruits unto God and to the Lamb.

The “firstfruits” is a very important term to help us identify the 144,000.  It is a term that leads us to the Feast of Pentecost and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, in Acts, chapter 2.  It is a term that identifies, therefore, with the church age and the 144,000 are all those that God saved – the complete fullness of everyone saved during the church age, which lasted almost 2,000 years.  A good number of people were saved (there were 3,000 saved on that first day on the day of Pentecost in 33 AD), but we do not know the exact number.  It was likely a good number over the course of many centuries, but not what we would probably have thought it would be.  God indicates in some passages that it may not have been what we might have expected, but people were saved and it was typified by the 144,000.  It does not represent all that God saved.  Some people try to present that idea, but we have to remember, in Revelation 7, after the Lord lists 12,000 from each of the 12 tribes of Israel, He says, in Revelation 7:8:

After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands;

Then, in Revelation 7:13-14, it tells us that the great multitude came out of great tribulation.  Once we understand that, then we understand what God is doing.  The 144,000 are the firstfruits.  If we go back to Exodus, it says in Exodus 23:16:

And the feast of harvest, the firstfruits of thy labours, which thou hast sown in the field: and the feast of ingathering, which is in the end of the year, when thou hast gathered in thy labours out of the field.

The feast of harvest is a two-part feast: there are the “firstfruits” at the first and then there is the feast of ingathering at the end of the year, which identifies with the seventh Hebrew month when the Feast of Ingathering would be held along with the Feast of Tabernacles.  It would begin on the fifteenth day of the seventh month.  But there are two periods of bringing in the fruit and the two combined make up the feast of harvest.  If you just have just the firstfruits (the 144,000), then you do not have the complete harvest.  You also have to wait for the final gathering of fruit to come in at the end of the year and the Lord tells us about this in another way in the Epistle of James in the New Testament.  Speaking of God as the husbandman, it says 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.

The precious fruit of the earth would be the elect.  Why are there two rains?  It is because there are two harvests.  The early rain identifies with the firstfruits and pictures the Word of God going forth into the world to save the 144,000 throughout the church age.  Then after the 144,000 are all sealed, the end of the church age comes and the beginning of the Great Tribulation.  We know from other Scripture that the Lord had a period of famine of 2,300 evening mornings between the end of the period of firstfruits and the beginning period of the Latter Rain.  God had patience until He received that early rain and He saved all the elect via the churches during the church age and then He sent forth the Latter Rain and it accomplished its purpose of bringing in the final harvest during the feast of ingathering, the last 6,100 days of the Great Tribulation, which concluded on May 21, 2011. 

Then the rain ceased to fall, the Great Tribulation ended and Judgment Day came.  God is no longer patient.  God is no longer longsuffering and holding back his wrath until He receives the rain to bring in the fruit.  The rain has fallen and the fruit has been brought in.  The wrath begins – the door is shut and the light of the Gospel goes out, and so forth. 

Just because we cannot see these things does not mean that God is not punishing the world.  Keep in mind that God punished the churches for 23 years and no one saw that with their eyes.  It was a spiritual judgment and you cannot see a spiritual judgment.  You can see the effects of it, once you “see” it from the Bible and then you can see the madness in the churches and you understand why.  And now we see that same madness in the world and we understand why, but we cannot physically see the actual wrath of God; we cannot see the door shut; we cannot see the light of the gospel gone from the earth.  But we know these things are true because the Word of God declares it.

Let us go to Revelation, chapter 22, the last chapter of the Bible.  It says in Revelation 22:3-4:

And there shall be no more curse: but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and his servants shall serve him: And they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads.

I think I jumped ahead a little bit.  This is a verse that went along with the last part of Revelation 14:1:

…and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father's name written in their foreheads.

The verse I read in Revelation 22, verse 4, tells us that they will have “his name in their foreheads.”  The forehead is where the mind is located and it identifies with the soul of man and to have the Father’s name in their foreheads is a big contrast to what we read in Revelation, chapter 13, where certain people had the name of the beast in their foreheads, as they identified with Satan because they were sold in sin and owned by Satan.  Likewise, God has purchased His congregation; He has purchased and redeemed us.  He bought us with the tremendous price of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ.  We are no longer our own.  We do not belong to our selves.  He owns us and we have His name written in our foreheads.  It indicates that we have the mind of Christ and we desire to do the will of God.  God’s people are given an ongoing desire to do the will of God.  All these things are in view when we find a statement like, “having his Father’s name written in their foreheads.”