Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #50 of Revelation, chapter 14 and we are going to be reading Revelation14:20:

And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs.

We have seen that the “winepress” identifies with the wrath of God.  God actually makes that connection in verse 19, where it said, “And cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God.”   So, this “winepress” is a picture of God’s wrath and then it goes on to say, at the beginning of our verse: “And the winepress was trodden without the city.”   This is what we want to look at in tonight’s study.  First of all, we want to look at what it means to be “trodden,” and then look at what it means to be “trodden without the city.” 

The idea of being “trodden” under foot fits with the Bible’s idea of judgment which began on the churches.  For instance, the same word translated as “trodden” here is found in Luke 21, which is the parallel chapter to Matthew 24.  It says in Luke 21:22-24:

For these be the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. But woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give suck, in those days! for there shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this people. And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.

Jerusalem is a figure God is using to represent the New Testament churches and He says, “Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles,” and remember that the word translated as “Gentiles” in both the Greek and the Hebrew can also rightfully be translated as “nations.”  So it would read: “and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the nations, until the times of the nations be fulfilled.”  God speaks of a time in relationship to the Gentiles treading the holy city Jerusalem under foot in Revelation 11:2:

But the court which is without the temple leave out, and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles: and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months.

Again, the “holy city” is the same figure as Jerusalem; Jerusalem was the holy city and it typifies the churches.  The holy city, likewise, typifies the churches.  God says, “And the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months,” and the “forty and two months” represents the entire duration of the Great Tribulation period, which worked out to be an actual 23 years.  But the churches were given to the “Gentiles” and in both Luke 21:24 and Revelation 11:2 the city itself is trodden.  Here it says it is trodden under foot and that would represent the “will” of the nations or the “will” of man, as contrasted with the “will” of God.  The churches ought to have been in the will of God, but, instead, they will be trodden under foot by the will of man – every wish and desire and want of the wills of those unsaved individuals that come into the congregations as the emissaries of Satan.  They will develop their own doctrines out of their own minds and out of their own wills and not of the will of God.  This will serve to crush the life out of the churches and destroy them as they are “trodden under foot.”  Satan and his forces (the Gentiles or the nations) are the ones God used to accomplish His purpose of bringing spiritual destruction upon the churches and congregations of the world.

But, in our verse in Revelation 14:20, the treading is taking place “without the city,” and not within the city itself.  Those being trodden in the winepress are being “trodden without the city.”  Let us look at one more place in the New Testament, in Revelation, chapter 19.  We have gone here several times because it speaks of treading the “winepress,” and in this chapter the Lord Jesus is coming with His armies (the whole company of the elect) against the world, the kingdom of Satan, in the Day of Judgment.  It says in Revelation 19:15:

And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.

Now this is the focus of God in the Day of Judgment.  It is the smiting of the nations or the Gentiles, just as Satan and his kingdom of Babylon (as he is typified by the evil king of Babylon) came against the churches.  Now God turns the tables when the Great Tribulation period ends and He comes against the Gentiles.  The holy city had been given to the Gentiles, but now Christ is smiting the nations.  It is just like language we have seen concerning Babylon.  God first turned His people of Judah over to the Babylonians and then at the end of seventy years He says He will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, which represents all the nations or all the unsaved people of the world.  It is tied together with the “treading of the winepress,” which, again, is referred to as the “fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.”

I just want to look at one place in the Old Testament in Jeremiah, chapter 25, and Jeremiah 25 is a chapter where God lays out His plan to first give His cup of wrath to the people called by His name (pointing to judgment on the house of God, the New Testament churches) and then take that identical cup of wrath and give it to the nations of the world for them to drink.  This is picturing the judgment of God upon all the unsaved people of the world.  It says in Jeremiah 25:29:

For, lo, I begin to bring evil on the city which is called by my name, and should ye be utterly unpunished?

It is as though God is talking to the rest of the people of the world, since He has begun to bring evil on those called by His name.  Then it goes on to say, in Jeremiah 25:29-30:

… Ye shall not be unpunished: for I will call for a sword upon all the inhabitants of the earth, saith JEHOVAH of hosts. Therefore prophesy thou against them all these words…

This is another verse indicating that God’s people are to prophesy in the Day of Judgment, just as it says in Jeremiah 50:2 and Revelation 10:11.  Just as the Lord sends in the sickle to reap, He sends His people with the message of judgment to declare to whoever will listen in the world.  That will serve the double purpose of feeding sheep and publishing the information of Babylon’s fall and God’s judgment on the world.

Then it goes on to say in Jeremiah 25:30:

Therefore prophesy thou against them all these words, and say unto them, JEHOVAH shall roar from on high, and utter his voice from his holy habitation; he shall mightily roar upon his habitation; he shall give a shout, as they that tread the grapes, against all the inhabitants of the earth.

So, here, we see God is picturing Himself as one that gives a shout as He “treads the grapes, against all the inhabitants of the earth.”  This fits very well with Revelation 14, which indicates that it is the time of the harvest of the world, a time of reaping and a time of the wrath of God where God is punishing the unsaved.  He is doing this spiritually, but He is doing this in a very real way.  The unsaved people are under the wrath of God and these things are to be declared.  The treading of the winepress is against all the inhabitants of the earth.  It is not just the people in the churches, but it is all the unsaved people of the world and when we read that language (“the inhabitants of the earth”) God has in view the final judgment of mankind.  Remember the transition verse, which goes hand-in-hand with Jeremiah 25:30.  In the last verse of Revelation 8, a chapter in which God had been describing judgment on the “third part” (which is the churches) and there is the transition verse, 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 Revelation 9 begins the “woes” and the final three trumpets sounds against the inhabiters of the earth.  It is the time of harvest, the time to tread them under foot and to crush the life out of them.  This is what is in view in this last verse of Revelation, chapter 14.

Let us also look at the idea of this happening “without the city.”  Let me read the first part again, in Revelation 14:20:

And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles…

The location of the winepress is not in the city.  Remember when we were reading about the vineyard and God said there was a winepress built in the vineyard.  He used that figure to tread under foot the holy city of Jerusalem and the city itself was trodden under foot, but now this language is taking place “without the city.”  The first thing we are reminded of is what the Scripture tells us about the judgment of the Lord Jesus Christ, in Hebrews 13:11-13:

For the bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin, are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate. Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach.

Now that last verse relates to coming out of the churches, on one hand, and may also have other spiritual application, but we can see in verses 11 and 12 that Christ suffered “without the gate.”  The bodies of the sacrificial animals were burned “without the camp,” and it is indicating that God’s wrath is upon those “without the gate” or “without the camp.”  God’s wrath is abiding upon them.  It is a place of punishment because God punished the Lord when He was experiencing the wrath of God a second time and suffered “without the gate,” as that is where He was crucified.  He was not paying for sin, but it was a legitimate punishment of God and that is why He was suffering and in agony; He was experiencing the wrath of God.  So that means that “without the city” is a place of wrath.

In Revelation 22 I think we will see what city is in view.  This is in the context of the statement where the Lord says, “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 verse has to do with our present time in which everyone’s spiritual condition is fixed and established and will not change, because God shut the door to heaven, ending His salvation program, after saving all the elect whose names were written in the Lamb’s Book of Life – they are the righteous and holy that will remain righteous and holy.   All the rest are the unjust and the filthy, the ones that have been caught in their sins and now there is no remedy.  There is no hope because no mercy remains in this Day of Judgment for anyone else because God had already predestinated all the ones to be saved and He had applied redemption to each one and now there are simply no more.  That is why the Bible says that in the Day of Judgment the Books are open.  It as though God opens the Lamb’s Book of Life and He searches the names; it is very thorough and accurate search of the Lamb’s Book of Life and God finds none of these unsaved written in that Book and elected to salvation.  All those whose names are written there have been found.  All the lost sheep of the house of Israel have been discovered and brought into the fold and, therefore, the search for the lost sheep has come to an end.  There is no need to go into the world with the Gospel to proclaim the Word of God in order to find sheep that are not already a part of spiritual Israel and part of that number God predestinated to receive salvation.  Of course, God is the only one that knows who those people are and God is the one that made sure that each one of them heard the Gospel and became saved before He finalized things and shut the door to heaven.

In this context, we read in Revelation 22:14:

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.

The only way someone can “do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life” is that they first had become saved and God has given them a new heart and a new spirit with that perfect desire to do the will of God, plus perfect ability to perform the doing of it from the heart.  That is the nature of the one that God has saved.  There is perfection and holiness and righteousness within their new hearts and new spirits that always does the will of God and always desires to do the will of God.  So they do His commandments from the heart and, of course, those that are not saved do not have that kind of heart; their heart is desperately wicked and deceitful above all things, gushing forth with all manner of iniquity.

Basically, we can summarize Revelation 22:14 by saying that those God has saved (the elect) have had the blood of Christ applied to them through the “hyssop” of the Word of God and cleansed them from all iniquity and these “may enter in through the gates into the city,” into Jerusalem above, that heavenly city where we have our citizenship and where we are residents in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Remember the Bible says that we “are seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”  Even though that statement is true and accurate in the very moment we become saved, yet, our physical bodies remain on the earth.  God views an individual that has become saved as an inhabitant of Jerusalem above and as a citizen of the kingdom of God, or as someone that has entered into the gates.  When we read this language of entering into the gates, it is teaching the identical thing as Matthew, chapter 25, when the bridegroom comes.  It says in Matthew 25:10:

And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came; and they that were ready went in with him to the marriage: and the door was shut.

Remember what it says in Isaiah 26:20:

Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee…

Then God says He will go forth and punish the inhabitants of the earth, the unsaved inhabitants of the world and, yet, God’s people are protected.  They are in the safe chambers of the Lord Jesus Christ during the wedding feast which is the time of the wrath of God as the unsaved are being punished until the completion of the wedding feast and the completion of the spiritual destruction of all the unsaved people.  Then God will literally destroy the world and its unsaved inhabitants and create the new heaven and the new earth.  The people of God that have been in the safe chamber will be “taken up” and given new resurrected bodies to match their souls.  They will then enter the “city” in a different sense, but according to the Bible God’s elect have already gone into the city.

Then the next verse in Revelation 22 tells us how we can know that this is taking place right now, because it says in Revelation 22:15:

For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie.

This is talking about people.  Who is a sorcerer, but one that involves himself in magic, or whatever?  Who is a whoremonger, but a person that lusts and involves himself in fornication and adultery?  Who is a murderer, but a man that kills another man?  Who is an idolater, but a man that bows down to other gods?  Who is it that loves and makes a lie, but man?  These things apply to people and it is the unsaved people that are still in their sins that are “outside the city.”  Yet, how can that be?  What place is this in which they are found “without”?  In times past, theologians and church doctrine taught that this was the place called “Hell,” while these others that are God’s elect are in heaven.  Yet, we have learned there is no place called “Hell,” and, therefore, it must be upon the earth that these liars, murderers, whoremongers and idolaters are living and existing, because they are “without the city.”  It is only during the time of Judgment Day and it is the understanding we have now that Judgment Day is a prolonged period of time that is unfolding upon the earth and God’s people are right here.  They are “safe” in the city, spiritually speaking, but “without the city,” there are all these unsaved without the kingdom of God.