Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #8 of Revelation, chapter 14, and we are going to be reading Revealtion14:6-7:

And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, Saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.

This angel or messenger flying in the midst of heaven is, undoubtedly, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Messenger of the Covenant.  He is the one who determined that it was the season to send the flood in the days of Noah; then it was time for Christ to come into the world and walk among the people of the world; then came the season of the church age; then came the end of the church age; then came the time of the Great Tribulation.  God is the determiner of His “times and seasons” and this proclamation was made by the messenger flying in the midst of heaven. 

If we look up the word “fly,” we see it often refers to God.  God flies upon the wings of the wind.  He is the one that can send forth His Word every quickly and “to fly” is a good illustration of the speed the Word of God can make.  Here, in Revelation 14, there has been a change in program.  We had read of the 144,000, the firstfruits unto God, in the first few verses, but now there is another angel flying “in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them.”  It reminds us of what we read back in Revelation, chapter 7.   Let us turn back there.  It says in Revelation 7:4:

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.

Then it goes on to list 12 tribes with 12,000 per tribe, for a total of 144,000.  After that, it says in Revelation 7:9:

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;

This other group is a very large group, a great multitude, and they just suddenly appear in heaven, seemingly, out of nowhere.  By God’s grace and through His opening of our spiritual eyes to understand His Word, we see the 144,000 as the firstfruits saved during the church age and then they are followed by the great multitude.  A little further on in verse 13, the question is asked, “From whence came they?”  Where did these come from?  The answer is, “These are they which came out of great tribulation.”  Once God says that, He is identifying the great multitude with a particular “time and season,” and they cannot identify with any other time period.  It is just like the 144,000 are connected to “firstfruits” and that pinpoints the time in which they were gathered – the firstfruits relates to Pentecost and Pentecost relates to the church age.  So now we have it all laid out.  God made sure that we had the necessary information to see that God first saved the firstfruits during the church age and then during the last 6,100 days of the Great Tribulation, He brings in the final harvest that identifies with the Feast of Ingathering.  These are the great multitude that comes out of Great Tribulation. 

Even though it is not the kind of detail that Revelation 7 lays out, we have a similar picture here in the first five verses of Revelation 14, followed by another messenger flying in the midst of heaven, “having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth.”  And notice that the everlasting Gospel is taught to “every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people,” four groups in all.  Compare this to Revelation 7:9: “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.”  Four groups are also mentioned there.  That is because in verse 6 we are given a glimpse into the counsel of the Godhead – it is now time (because the 144,000 are safe and secure) to progress to the next stage, the Great Tribulation; it is the time to send forth the Latter Rain, the second outpouring of the Holy Spirit or the second Jubilee period.  So the everlasting Gospel is preached unto the people of the earth to every nation, kindred, tongue and people.  That is where the great multitude is located outside the churches and since the gospel is preached to them at a “time and season” in which God is determined to save so many, there is a great result: a great multitude is saved as God finishes His salvation program in a glorious way. 

Truly, the Lord saved the best until last, which was said of the water that was turned into wine; after all the wine was gone, then Christ did a miracle of transforming water to wine and it was given to the wedding guests and everyone loved it – it was the best wine imaginable and it was said, “You saved the best until last, which is unusual.  Men usually serve the best at the beginning and save the worst until last.”  But in God’s salvation program He determined, “I will save some in the Old Testament.  I will save more during the New Testament church age, but not as many as man might think.  Then at the end, when the world’s population has exploded and the churches are all dead and under my wrath (unable to be utilized), then I will save the greatest number of elect that I had selected for salvation.  I will reserve the vast majority of them to be born at that time, into a world in which the beast has been loosed and iniquity is multiplied and there is great apostasy in all churches.  It will be a time when sin is at its zenith and iniquity abounds, then I will use my “few people” to accomplish the purpose of sending forth the Gospel into all the world so billions of people will hear it.  Through this, I will save tens of millions and complete my salvation program.” 

What a glorious plan that would give God great glory because He had the huge “arm” of the corporate churches of the world that had represented Him and they numbered about two billion people in a world of about seven billion people.  Certainly, if you wanted to reach a world of seven billion people, having a great resource of two billion people would have been a good start.  But God said, “No, I am not going to use even one church within this corporate body.  I am not going to use the Catholics or the Protestants or any denominations.  I am not going to use the Pope, the bishop, the pastor, the elder or the deacon.  I will use none of them because they are all an offense unto me.  They have all rebelled against me.  I am going to judge them and there will be no one saved of the great multitude that is within a church or congregation.” 

When we think about that with our human understanding, we would conclude, “Well, it is just an impossible task.  It is an outright impossibility for the Gospel to go out into all the world where the population is so enormous.  It is the greatest population that has ever lived on the face of the earth and you want to save the great multitude at a time when you are finished with the churches?  These churches have ideal locations in just about every nation of the world, but you do not want to use them?  Instead, you are going to use your few elect people outside of the churches and congregations?”

Of course, with man, it would have been impossible, but not with God.  With God, all things are possible and the Lord raised up the electronic medium to grow and bloom in a tremendous way in all the earth at that particular point in time.  He had held the technological knowledge back from man for thousands of years.  Then, according to His infinite wisdom, He opened up some of the secrets of the earth to give man insight into these things and mankind slowly developed the technology until precisely the time it was needed.  The churches were finished, but now just a few elect could ban together, pool their resources and send forth the Word over radio waves and over the internet and satellite broadcasts.  It was just incredible and it was primarily through these means that God would get His Word out so the great multitude could hear: “Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God.”  What a glorious God He is to have mapped out all these things to showcase His mighty power and ability wherein He gets all the glory.  He not only did the work of redemption from the foundation of the world, but He gets all the glory at the final end as He applies that redemption to the great multitude and they became saved.

In our verse in Revelation 14, this other messenger is flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting Gospel to preach.  It is very similar to what we read back in Revelation, chapter 8.  This was the chapter that focused on the judgment on the corporate church and God spoke of the churches as the “third part,” time and again, as they came under judgment.  At the end of the chapter, in the last verse, in says in Revelation 8:13:

And I beheld, and heard an angel flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice, Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth by reason of the other voices of the trumpet of the three angels, which are yet to sound!

Then in Revelation, chapter 9, God goes into detail describing Judgment Day.  Judgment Day began on May 21, 2011, and we are still living in the Day of Judgment, so the “three woes” had to do with judgment on the nations.  Revelation 8:13 is a transition verse between the judgment on the churches, now expanding and enlarging, to include all the unsaved inhabitants of the earth.  So we see the similar language.  There is an angel, or messenger, flying through the mist of heaven, saying, “Woe, woe, woe, to the inhabiters of the earth.”  This is the Lord Jesus making a change in “times.”  The Great Tribulation period is over and now judgment on all the world begins. 

Revelation, chapter 8, was primarily focused on judgment on the “third part.”  We did not read of the 144,000 being saved or anything like that.  It was the judgment on the churches.  Then it transitioned to the judgment on the world, but we have a similar transition verse in Revelation 14:6.  God is looking at it from the more positive angle of “salvation.”  There was first the salvation during the church age of the 144,000 and then there was the transition to another salvation program and, again, the “angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach.”  So, in a sense, this language signals a transition from one stage to another stage and, in this case, it is the transition from the end of the church age into the Great Tribulation.  And it was within that Tribulation period (after the 2,300 evening mornings) that God begins to evangelize the world, once again, to save the great multitude which Revelation 7 declared “came out of great tribulation.”