Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #24 of Revelation, chapter 14, and we are going to read Revelation14:10-11:

The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of his name.

In our last study we were talking about the “presence of the holy angels” or “holy messengers.”  We saw last time (and I will read it again) that God said in Psalm 37:34:

Wait on JEHOVAH, and keep his way, and he shall exalt thee to inherit the land: when the wicked are cut off, thou shalt see it.

This is said in a slightly different way in Psalm 91:7:

A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.

God is speaking of His elect and the unsaved are falling by the thousands and tens of thousands.  Those numbers point to completeness; it is every unsaved person that is falling under the wrath of God.  They are experiencing the severe anger of God, but it will “not come nigh thee,” and you will see “with thine eyes” the payment for sin, the reward of the wicked.  This is what God has in view in Revelation 14:10.  The cup of the wrath of God is given to those that worship the beast.  And who worships the beast?  It is all those whose names are not written in the Lamb’s Book of Life, according to Revelation 13.  So they are all falling at the side of the believers and at the right hand and all around us – in our families, our neighbors, our friends, our coworkers and those that despise us.  All around us the wicked have “fallen” in the Day of Judgment; God has sealed their fate by shutting the door to heaven and they are guaranteed to die the eternal death of annihilation.

The true believers were not raptured and taken out of the world first.  They were not removed, but they were “hid,” as God says in Isaiah 26:20:

Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast.

Then it speaks of God punishing the wicked of the world.  We are “hid,” as it tells us in Colossians, in salvation.  That is how we are “hid” in the day of the wrath of God.  It is the saving work of the Lord Jesus Christ on our behalf that is our refuge.  It is our protection.  It is our “hiding place” in the day of God’s fierce anger.

That very thing is also said in another Psalm.  It says in Psalm 9:7-9:

But JEHOVAH shall endure for ever: he hath prepared his throne for judgment. And he shall judge the world in righteousness, he shall minister judgment to the people in uprightness. JEHOVAH also will be a refuge for the oppressed, a refuge in times of trouble.

This “trouble” is the trouble of Judgment Day.  God is our refuge and we can see why it is that He has left His people on the earth to live during this period of Judgment Day, a prolonged period of time.  He has several purposes for this: to try us; to make manifest that we were judged in Christ from the foundation of the world; to bring glory to Himself as we endure to the end and to give glory to the rock we were built upon, Christ.  God will protect His people and He will keep them safe.  He is our refuge through the salvation He has already granted us and we will endure – it is guaranteed. 

There is no possibility that God’s elect will be burned up, but the “fire” only serves to purify them, as gold and silver is purified.  God will bring them through unto the point of eternity, when God will destroy this world and create a new heaven and a new earth.

All these things are done “in the presence of the holy messengers,” and “in the presence of the Lamb.”  Then it says in Revelation 14:11:

And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever…

The “smoke of their torment” reminds us of what we looked at in the previous verse in regard to those that worship the beast, in verse 10:

…and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone…

Naturally, smoke goes with “fire and brimstone.”  Fire and brimstone represent the wrath of God and the “smoke” of that torment or the “smoke” of that fire and brimstone that “ascendeth up for ever and ever.”  This language is found in a couple of places, so let us turn to Isaiah, chapter 34.  Isaiah 34 is a major chapter that deals with Judgment Day and we read in Isaiah 34:8:

 For it is the day of JEHOVAH’S vengeance, and the year of recompences for the controversy of Zion.

It is interesting how God speaks of Judgment Day as “the day of JEHOVAH’S vengeance,” but He also uses the figure of “the year of recompences.”  This is very similar to what we find concerning salvation, where the Bible refers to “the acceptable year of the Lord” as the period of time in which God was saving and it also refers to “the day of salvation.”  Basically, God uses the same kind of language to describe salvation as a “year” or as a “day.”  In both cases, the actual duration of the period of salvation lasted for centuries and centuries and centuries.  Likewise, He speaks of “a day of judgment” or a “year of recompences” (judgment).  God’s judgment on the churches was typified by “seven months” (in 1Samuel) when the ark was taken by the Philistines and that pictured the entire Great Tribulation period.  God’s judgment on the entire world is represented by “five months,” in Revelation, chapter 9.  When we put the two figurative time periods together, it equals 12 months or one total “year” of judgment.

Then it goes on to say in Isaiah 34:9-10:

And the streams thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and the land thereof shall become burning pitch. It shall not be quenched night nor day; the smoke thereof shall go up for ever: from generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it for ever and ever.

This is very similar language.  It mentions “brimstone” and “burning pitch,” which would be “fire and brimstone.”  It also says “the smoke thereof shall go up for ever.”  Does this mean that when God punishes the wicked man that this man will suffer for ever and ever?  No – it does not mean that.  We learned, by God’s grace, a wonderful truth that He revealed during the time of the Great Tribulation when judgment had begun at the house of God.  God opened up the Scriptures that had been sealed to the time of the end to reveal many things.  One of these things was that the judgment of God is eternal destruction.  This is why the Bible speaks of man “perishing” or being “destroyed” or being “cut off.”  All of these things point to the end of the wicked man, not an eternal suffering that goes on, and on, and on.  For instance, it says in Isaiah 51:6:

Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath: for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner: but my salvation shall be for ever, and my righteousness shall not be abolished.

Notice what God is saying here.  He is saying that “the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment.”  What is our understanding of the destruction of this earth?  God created the heavens and the earth as He spoke into existence the world, the sun and the moon the stars and the universe.  He created the creatures, including His supreme creation of mankind who was to have dominion over all He created in this earth.  We know that God brought corruption upon the entire creation – the earth, the animals, the plants and even the universe – when man fell into sin; God could not have a perfect earth ruled over by imperfect, sinful man, so He brought corruption upon the entire creation.  Since it is corrupted, we know that God will destroy it.  He speaks of destroying it by fire in 2Peter, chapter 3.  What is our understanding of the destruction of this earth and its creation?  We understand that God will burn it up, as it says here: “for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment.”  They will not burn for evermore.  They will not be continually destroyed in an ongoing way, with the fire burning and the smoke going up and it would never cease and if you could look at this creation somehow, you would always see it ablaze and eternally burning. No theologians that understand the Bible have ever thought that; we realized that God said He would destroy it and we understood what He meant by destroying it – they are gone for ever.  They are annihilated.  The heavens are completely annihilated.  All it will take is a Word from God.  He just spoke the Word and created this creation, so it is not too much for Him.  God will just remove it.  These things are part of this world that we read about in Hebrews 12:26-29:

Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this word,” Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: For our God is a consuming fire.

The earth will be shaken and the heaven, also.  They will disappear and vanish away and then God will create a new heaven and new earth that cannot “be shaken” or removed.  This is what is in view with the language in 2Peter, chapter 3, and in Isaiah 51:6: “For the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth shall wax old like a garment.”

You are probably thinking, “Yes, we know that.  So what is the significance of that?”  The significance is what it says after making the statement about the vanishing away of the heavens like smoke and the earth waxing old as a garment, because it then goes on to say, “and they that dwell therein,” and who dwells on the earth?  It is the people.  They dwell in the earth.

… and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner: 

They will “die in like manner,” just as God will destroy and remove the heaven and earth and they will disappear and will be no more.  In like manner, He will destroy the sinner.  The Lord mentions this in many places in the Bible.  For instance, it says in Job 20:4-9:

Knowest thou not this of old, since man was placed upon earth, That the triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment? Though his excellency mount up to the heavens, and his head reach unto the clouds; Yet he shall perish for ever like his own dung: they which have seen him shall say, Where is he? He shall fly away as a dream, and shall not be found: yea, he shall be chased away as a vision of the night. The eye also which saw him shall see him no more; neither shall his place any more behold him.

What a terrible description of the end of (unsaved) man.  Man was created in the image and likeness of Eternal God, who is from everlasting to everlasting.  Man was created to live for ever and they would have if Adam and Eve would have obeyed God and kept His commandment.  But Adam and Eve sinned and brought ruin to their own souls and ruin to mankind and ever since then men are under the wrath of God and subject to destruction.  When unsaved men die, their thoughts are no more; they are like the beasts that perish.  Job says, “He shall perish for ever like his own dung.”  Comparison is also made to “a dream.”  We live our life and it is like a dream, if we are unsaved; it is a dream that seems exciting and full while you are dreaming, but when you awake, it is gone from you.  Sometimes you cannot remember anything that took place in that dream, no matter how hard you try – it just “flies away.”  And that is the life of the person that has no Saviour.  There will come a time when they either die or the world ends and they are destroyed and there will be no remembrance of them for evermore.

We also read in Psalm 104:35:

Let the sinners be consumed out of the earth, and let the wicked be no more. Bless thou the JEHOVAH, O my soul. Praise ye JEHOVAH.

Now how is God to explain to us “annihilation”?  How can He explain to us what “nothingness” is when the sinner experiences His wrath and is destroyed?  Has God not tried to explain it to us when He speaks of perishing like one’s own dung, or when He talks of being cut off, or when He speaks of man being destroyed by fire?  Of course, God has explained it perfectly, but the fault lies in our weakness and our frailness of mind to understand the Word of God. 

God has written throughout the Bible using this kind of language and, yet, mankind (inside and outside the churches) have gotten it wrong.  There has been a misunderstanding of God’s judgment and wrath and what it would entail, so there has been much teaching about a placed called “Hell,” where God will cause the sinners to suffer and burn for ever and ever.  Verses like Revelation 14:10-11 are pointed to and they say, “Well, there it is.”  Yet, that conclusion is only derived as a result of carelessness in searching the entire Bible and failure to look closely at all God has to say about it.  When God says, in Revelation 14:11, “And the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever,” and we search that phrase, we realize it cannot refer to eternal suffering of the wicked.  The Bible will not allow it and God’s Law prohibits “overmuch” punishment.  There must be a limit, according to the Law given in Deuteronomy, chapter 25, where a judge can prescribe “forty stripes” (and no more) and that indicates there must be a limitation for punishment.  God follows His own Law.  God can prescribe degrees of wrath and it is sometimes severe, but God could never condemn a sinner to unlimited punishment, without end.  That would go contrary to other Scripture in the Law of God, according to the Bible.