Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #45 of Revelation, chapter 14 and we are going to read Revelation14:15-19:

And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to him that sat on the cloud, Thrust in thy sickle, and reap: for the time is come for thee to reap; for the harvest of the earth is ripe. And he that sat on the cloud thrust in his sickle on the earth; and the earth was reaped. And another angel came out of the temple which is in heaven, he also having a sharp sickle. And another angel came out from the altar, which had power over fire; and cried with a loud cry to him that had the sharp sickle, saying, Thrust in thy sharp sickle, and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth; for her grapes are fully ripe. And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God.

I will stop reading there.  We have been discussing God’s program of judgment or His plan of “times and seasons” and how He uses people as reapers in the Day of Judgment.  That is why He uses the word “pempo,” translated as “thrust” in verse 15.  It really should read, “Send in thy sickle,” and it relates to the Lord sending His messengers, the people of God, with His Word to the world and, as they do so, they are a reaping instrument: “for the time is come for thee to reap; for the harvest of thee earth is ripe.”

We should recognize that this verse says it is the harvest of the earth and when we hear that we tend to shy away a little bit from the idea of the typical harvest that God has produced in the world through the seasons of rain, with the firstfruits and then the Latter Rain bringing in the final harvest of believers, but let us go to James, chapter 5, and see how God speaks of His harvest.  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.

This verse has tremendous amounts of information concerning God’s plan of reaping a harvest of souls.  He is the husbandman that waited; He was patiently waiting and was longsuffering in putting up with the sins of the world “until he receive the early and latter rain,” because those rains produced the precious fruit of the earth, which can only be a reference to the elect, those that God would save.  But notice that it is said to be “the precious fruit of the earth,” and that is the same word “earth” that we have in Revelation 14:15, where it says, “The harvest of the earth is ripe.”  We have to consider then, is it possible God is speaking of the elect?  Are they the ones that are “ripe”? 

And the answer is, no, it is not possible because of the word that is translated there as “ripe.”  The Greek word is Strong’s #3583 and I would encourage everyone to look up that word.  By the way, that is why I give these Strong’s numbers, so you can easily look up the words.  If you do not have a concordance, you can go online and you can search for “Strong’s Concordance,” and I am sure you will find a site where you can look up these numbers and see how God translates particular words.   For instance, this word, Strong’s #3583, is found in Matthew 13, in the parable of the sower.  It says in Matthew 13:5-6:

Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth: And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away.

We can glean quite a bit of information from these verses.  The “seed” is the Word of God and the seed falls upon the hearts of men and God tries the people that hear the Gospel to see if they are true believers, or not.  Did the seed fall upon good ground, or not?  In this case, it fell upon stony places and the roots did not go deep, so “when the sun was up,” or when God began to bring the fiery trial, “they were scorched” because they had no root.  If we were to search out the word “root,” it leads to Christ; He is the root of Jesse.  The Bible says they did not have Christ.  Perhaps they had a church and they responded to the Gospel call and they had a Bible and they had a profession of faith, but they “had no root.”   They did not have the Spirit of Christ within them and that is always, ultimately, the difference between the saved and the unsaved: “And because they had no root, they withered away.”  The phrase “withered away” is Strong’s #3583, which was translated as “ripe” in our verse.  So it is not good fruit, but it was fruit that was no good. 

In Matthew, chapter 21, the same Greek word is used a couple of times in connection with the Lord cursing the fig tree.  It says in Matthew 21:19-20:

And when he saw a fig tree in the way, he came to it, and found nothing thereon, but leaves only, and said unto it, Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever. And presently the fig tree withered away. And when the disciples saw it they marvelled, saying, How soon is the fig tree withered away!

We can see that the curse was, “Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward for ever.”  In response to the curse of Almighty God, the Lord Jesus Christ, the fig tree immediately withered away.  Therefore, the Lord is defining this as a word that means there is no fruit – not a little fruit, but absolutely no fruit.

It says in the parable of the sower in Luke 8:6:

And some fell upon a rock; and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away, because it lacked moisture.

This is helpful because this account gives a bit more information.  There was no moisture.  The sun comes up and scorches it and it needs moisture, but due to where the seed fell, it had no access to water and that led to it withering away.

You can look at other places this word is used and it is always translated as “withered away” or “dried up,” and we will just look at one more place, in John 15:5-6:

I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.

Once again, we see that there is a failure to abide in Christ; there is no relationship or connection with Him.  It is the case that there is no root; it is the case that there is no moisture.  These things point to the Word of God and He is the essence of the Word of God.  There is no abiding in Him and, therefore, there is no fruitfulness.  It is necessary to abide in Him in order to bring forth fruit and anyone not abiding in Him will not bring forth fruit. 

So we can be absolutely sure of the meaning when it says “the harvest of the earth is ripe.”  It is not a good thing.  It would probably be helpful to draw a line through that word “ripe” in your Bible.  The translators used it because it was the final harvest and Christ was coming and they saw other language in the Bible that God was waiting for the precious fruit of the earth, so maybe they were trying to be helpful, but it is really a wrong translation.  It should be translated as withered away or dried up: “The harvest of the earth is withered away.”  There is no fruit. 

How can that be?  How is it possible?  Where is the great multitude?  This is happening at the time of judgment that followed immediately after the Tribulation.  God saved a great multitude out of Great Tribulation, so there is a tremendous amount of good fruit, but where is it?  Well, the Lord is not looking at the overall picture, but in this passage (verses 14 through 20) God is looking at the harvest of those that are brought forth for destruction. 

First of all, it is looking at the harvest of the churches and that is why we read in Revelation 14:15-16:

… for the harvest of the earth is ripe. And he that sat on the cloud thrust in his sickle on the earth; and the earth was reaped.

Okay, so that explains it all, but then God says another angel came out of the temple and another angel came out from the altar and there was a cry made to the first angel that had the sharp sickle, “Thrust in thy sharp sickle, and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth.”  It seems like a repeat of what had been said, except there is a difference (which we will look at later).  But, basically, it is saying there is second reaping or a second harvest, but this harvest is also no good because the second time the command is given to send in the sharp sickle and gather the clusters of the vine, they gathered and thrown into the great winepress of the wrath of God.  So this is not talking of believers in either case, so why does God break up Judgment Day into two events in which the sickle is sent in to reap in one instance and then He does it again?

First of all, as soon as May 21, 2011 came, there was a portion of the harvest of the earth that was a ruined harvest, as we read in Joel 1:10-12:

The field is wasted, the land mourneth; for the corn is wasted: the new wine is dried up, the oil languisheth. Be ye ashamed, O ye husbandmen; howl, O ye vinedressers, for the wheat and for the barley; because the harvest of the field is perished. The vine is dried up, and the fig tree languisheth; the pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree, even all the trees of the field, are withered: because joy is withered away from the sons of men.

What does “joy” relate to in the Bible?  What does God tells us in the Gospel account in that wonderful parabolic statement?  When one sinner repents, we are told, there is joy in heaven.  But, here in Joel 1, “joy is withered away from the sons of men.”  This is because Joel 1 is a chapter that concentrates on God’s judgment on the New Testament churches.  This is what it is spiritually describing, when at the end of the world, judgment began at the house of God.  When the Holy Spirit abandoned the churches and Satan and his evil spirits entered in, the harvest of the churches and congregations was ruined.  Not one soul was saved within them from the beginning of the Great Tribulation on May 21, 1988 to the end of the Great Tribulation on May 21, 2011, a full twenty three years.  Not a single individual in any church in the world was saved, but God did have a process under way because there were some souls there that were to become saved and God had to draw them out of the churches into the world in order for them to become saved.  So the Lord started the process of separating the wheat from the tares by opening up the Scriptures to reveal the end of the church age and by issuing the command for all to leave the churches.  This was the commandment of God – if you were going to be faithful to the Bible and what the Lord was saying, you must leave the churches because the Latter Rain was falling outside of the churches and there was no Latter Rain within the congregations of the world.  Therefore, it was necessary for someone to come out with their family, in order to be in a location where there was the possibility that this person or his family could have become saved.  So the “wheat” was coming out of the churches in this process of separating the wheat from the tares and God waited until the very end and, as we read in Matthew 13, the process was under way and continued during the period of the Great Tribulation, especially during the last several years, but it was a process.  There was never a final separation until the very end of the Great Tribulation and God made sure that His people heard the warning, loud and clear, and a very certain trumpet blast was made to get out of the churches, because if any were caught in the churches and refused to hearken to God by the appointed day of May 21, 2011, the door to heaven would shut and the Latter Rain would cease to fall in all the world. 

I am sure that some of God’s elect may have gotten out very close to that last day, but all the wheat was finally separated from the tares by the time that day arrived which had been proclaimed to all the nations of the world.  Then God shut the door upon the world and He ended His salvation program, thereby bundling all those remaining in the churches as tares.  Again, there had been no Latter Rain within the churches and no salvation taking place.  No one could have become saved apart from the Spirit of God and God’s Spirit had departed out and left the churches to Satan.  Therefore, anyone staying within the churches could not have become saved and they could not have experienced the Latter Rain which was falling only outside of the churches.  That means that all that remained were unsaved and, immediately, on May 21, 2011, the sickle was put in and the Lord Jesus Christ, through His Word, cast all of those within the corporate churches into the spiritual fire of Judgment Day, just as it says in Matthew 13:38-42:

The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one; The enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world. The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

This took place immediately at the very moment when the door of heaven was shut.  We discussed this before how the Lord breaks up Judgment Day, in Revelation 9, where it says concerning God’s messengers, the 200 million horsemen, in Revelation 9:18:

By these three was the third part of men killed…

The “third part” identified with all those in the churches, just as Revelation 8 spoke of the judgment falling on the “third part,” but the judgment in chapter 8 was the judgment of the Great Tribulation.  But, in Revelation 9, the “third part of men” was killed and it is speaking of the final judgment and the final separation of the wheat and tares; all the tares are now bundled and they are isolated from the true believers – they are “known” now.  Jacob has received the blessing and these are “Esaus” and they have not received the blessing of God and, it goes on to say in Revelation 9:18:

… by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouths.

Then it goes on to say in Revelation 9:20:

And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues…

Who are they?  Who are “the rest of the men”?  It is speaking of the rest of mankind, the unsaved people that were not in the churches.  They were Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists or secularists and any other unsaved individuals, but they were not killed as the tares had been immediately spiritually killed on May 21, 2011, because outside of the churches the Latter Rain had been falling.  There existed some hope and possibility for these, looking at it from man’s perspective. 

For instance, let us say there was an atheist and he had nothing to do with any of the churches, of course.  He did not believe in God and he was in the world where the Latter Rain was falling.  This atheist began to hear that God ended His salvation plan on May 21, 2011.  Let us say there was some desire within him to go to God and to see if he were saved.  He could pray, “I have not believed in you, but I hear that I can still come to you with the prayer that, perhaps, you might have saved me, without me even knowing it.  The Word fell all over the earth and I heard about May 21, 2011, so is it possible you could have saved me prior to shutting the door on May 21, 2011?”  Now the likelihood is that God had not saved that atheist, but he can still approach God with a little hope.  It is not a great deal of hope, at this point, but a little hope is better than no hope.  He can go to God, saying, “Having had mercy, have mercy.”

But someone in the churches cannot pray that way.  They cannot go to God and say, “Maybe you saved me before you shut the door to heaven,” because where they were (in the churches) the door had already been shut for twenty three years and there had been no salvation taking place.

So “the rest of the men” are the second group that is in view in Revelation 14.  The first was “the withered harvest” and they are reaped.  Then there is this other group that comes into view.  God has broken up unsaved mankind into these two categories.