Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #32 of Revelation, chapter 14, and we are going to be reading Revelation14:12-13:

Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus. And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them.

Before we continue on with our study tonight, I would like to make a correction as far as I have been pronouncing a Greek word in the last couple of studies.  I have been misplacing the vowel and pronouncing it wrongly.  It is the Greek word, Strong’s #3306, which should be pronounced “men-o.”  I have been pronouncing it “mon-e,” and that is not a good thing to do, so please be aware of that.  I hope I do not cause you to say it incorrectly, also.  Again, the Greek word is “meno,” rather than “mone,” so please make a note of that.

Now let us go to Revelation 14:12.  We have been looking at the word “patience,” where it says, “Here is the patience of the saints.”  In an incredible way, God is letting it be known right here in the midst of a chapter focused on Judgment Day, God’s people, the elect, will remain on the earth and they will have a need of “patience.”  It says in Hebrews 10:35-39:

Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompence of reward. For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise. For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry. Now the just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him. But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul.

This passage relates to the coming of Christ, as verse 37 indicates: “and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry.”  In the context of the coming of Christ, God speaks of having a need of “patience after ye have done the will of God.” We wonder: “Why would God speak of “having done” the will of God?  Doing the will of God is an ongoing, daily occurrence for the child of God.  So in what way can it be said that we have done it and then have a need of patience after having done the will of God, in the context of the Lord Jesus coming and not tarrying?  God also speaks of living by faith and not drawing back, and so forth. 

It is only because of our vantage point in living in the days after the Tribulation in the Day of Judgment itself that we can understand that it has to do with having done the will of God concerning “evangelization,” or bringing the Gospel to the world in order that the lost sheep of Israel hear and become saved.  That whole program of salvation, where God moved in His people to “will and to do of his good pleasure” in going forth into the world with the Gospel is now complete.  The day of salvation has ended and the “seasons” of rain and the “seasons” of fruitfulness in bringing in the precious fruit of the earth have ended.  The will of God concerning the program of salvation is complete.  After that is done, then you have a need of “patience” and that is exactly what it is speaking of in our verse in Revelation 14:12: “Here is the patience of the saints.”  Judgment Day is a time after the program of evangelization and the completion of God’s salvation plan for the elect has taken place.  Now there is a period of trial and testing and a need for “patience,” of abiding under or continuing under the teaching of the Word of God.  This is really what the next part of the verse is saying, in Revelation 14:12:

Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.

So, here, in this Day of Judgment at the time of the end of the world, are “they that keep the commandments of God.”  Of course, this statement reminds us of several other statements.  Let us take a look at one of them, in particular, in John 14:15:

If ye love me, keep my commandments.

Here is the Biblical definition of love.  How do you know you love God?  “If you love me, keep my commandments.”  Love, according to the Bible, is not so much a feeling.  It is not a sentiment.  It is not an emotion.  Love is “action.”  Love can be measured by the degree that an individual keeps the commandments of God.  It can also show a lack of love.  Someone might say, “I love the Lord,” and they speak very highly and very passionately of the Lord and, yet, they fail to keep His commandments.  For instance, God commanded everyone in the churches to come out.  That was a commandment of God.  The church age was over and they were to flee to the mountains.  We know the vast majority of people within the churches remained there.  They did not hearken.  “To hearken” means to hear and then to act with obedience.  They failed to listen and they did not obey God.  They did not keep that commandment, demonstrating their lack of love for the Lord Jesus Christ and a lack of love is a serious matter because the Bible tells us that He first loved us, in order that we could love Him; that is, love is not something that saves us; love is really a result of salvation.  Because He first loved us in dying for our sins from the foundation of the world, God demonstrated by His action His love for His people.  More than that, the Lord Jesus entered into the human race and demonstrated, once again, through suffering and going to the cross, the things He had done from the point of the world’s foundation.  This demonstrates tremendous love, to go through all of that just to “reveal” and to “show forth” those things He had already accomplished, because all the works were finished from the foundation of the world.  So it was truly an act of great love.  And why did Jesus do it?  He always did what the Father commanded Him to do, demonstrating His love for His Father and God’s love for His people. 

Likewise, the people of God love God and that love will be seen in obedience to the commandments of God.  That is why it is not a minor thing when God says, “Sunday is mine holy day and here is how I want you to conduct yourself on that Sunday Sabbath.”  But people go to work or to the football game or cut the grass and other things on Sundays.  None of those things are in accord with the spiritual activities God would have us to do on His holy day.  Therefore, I have to ask, “If I love the Lord, my love has to be more than saying that I love Him, but showing that love through obedience, so do I love the Lord if I am continuing to sin in this way?”  It should make us wonder.  So the Bible’s definition of love is to keep God’s commandments.  It says in John 14:21:

He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.

Again, this is basically saying the same thing: “If you love me, keep my commandments.”  It is significant, in Revelation 22, in a passage where we find the very helpful Scripture that says, “He which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still,” we also read of keeping God’s commandments, in Revelation 22:9:

Then saith he unto me, See thou do it not: for I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them which keep the sayings of this book: worship God.

I wanted to read that verse because I just noticed it is basically saying, “Keep my commandments.”  Then it goes on to say in Revelation 22:10:

And he saith unto me, Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book: for the time is at hand.

Now we know that once we read that the sayings of the prophecy of this Book, which is the Bible, are not to be sealed, that means it is the time of the end because Daniel was told to seal the Book until the time of the end.  Here, in the last chapter of the last Book of the Bible, God is letting it be known that the Bible is not sealed and, therefore, it is the time of the end.  Then it says the time is at hand and then it says in Revelation 22:11:

He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still.

This is not the thing that God would say during the time that salvation was still possible.  For instance, let us use the example of the Latter Rain, which fell during the second part of the Great Tribulation for about 17 years, in which God saved a great multitude of people from all the nations and tribes and tongues of the world.  And was it God’s will at that time that people that were “unjust” be “unjust still” or those that were “filthy” be “filthy still”?  Would that kind of statement fit with any “season” in which God was saving?  No, it would not, because God’s elect were also “unjust.”  We were “children of wrath even as others.”  God’s elect were also spiritually filthy and we are all witnesses that can give testimonies to the tremendous depths of sin that we have sunk into in our own lives.  We are dirty, rotten sinners and filthy in the things we have done and thought, just as others, but it was not God’s will that the “unjust” and the “filthy” remain “unjust” and “filthy” in a time when He was still saving.  If that was His will, no one could have become saved and that reveals to us that this statement must be made at a time when the door of heaven is shut.  First of all, it has to be the time of the end because the sayings of the prophecy of this Book are not to be sealed, which only happened at the time of the end.   Secondly, once the spiritual condition of mankind – saved and unsaved – has been fixed and established, that is then the only time that God could make such this kind of statement about unsaved people “remaining” or “continuing in” a condition of being unjust or filthy and the righteous and holy people continuing in that condition and, of course, the latter is the best possible condition because we have had our sins washed away.  Again, the Lord could only make this statement in a situation in which salvation had come to a close. 

I am going to continue on in Revelation 22:12:

And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.

This reminds us of 1Corinthians, chapter 3, where the fire of Judgment Day will try every man’s work to see what sort it is and this would relate to that as well.  Then it goes on to say, in Revelation 22:13-14:

I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.

Here, we see the statement, “Blessed are they that do his commandments,” just as it said, “If you love me, keep my commandments.”  That will provide “right to the tree of life” and it will allow entry into the gates of the Holy city.  Again, let us not forget to mention this: doing God’s commandments and showing love for Him is only possible in a way that is pleasing to God when God has first saved us and given us a new heart and a new spirit.  What does that new heart and new spirit desire and long to do and is able to do?  It desires to the will of God.  Remember what we read in Ezekiel 36:24-25:

For I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out of all countries, and will bring you into your own land. Then will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you.

That reminds us of the statement where the “filthy are filthy still,” because of their sins, but God’s people are holy because they have been cleansed from the filthiness of sin. Then it says in Ezekiel 36:26-27:

A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.

Here is why God says blessed are they which do His commandments, because they have already been saved.  Anyone who thinks, “I will do the commandments of God in order to get saved,” has it backwards.  They are under a “works gospel” and they are trying to become justified by the works of the law and the Bible is absolutely clear that “man is not justified by the works of the law.”  That will never justify anyone by trying to do the commandments of God, but if God has first saved you and given you a new heart, then He causes you to do His commandments perfectly from the heart.  Within the person, he still has his physical body, but he will more and more be able to do the things that are pleasing to God, according to His written will, the Bible.  These are His commandments.  This is what God is saying here, in Revelation 22:14-15:

Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city. For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.

Everyone else in the human race that has not become saved and for whom God has not paid for their sins are the “unjust” and these are the “filthy.”  They are contaminated by their own iniquity and their sin is upon them because there is no Saviour for them.  This is what God is saying here and it is why He is bringing this up in Revelation 14:12:

Here is the patience of the saints: here are they that keep the commandments of God…

Here, it is being emphasized even more who these people are, for they are those that “keep the commandments of God” and it can only be referring to those God has saved.  Only someone that has experienced that new heart and the transformation that God has worked in them through salvation can “keep the commandments of God.”