Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #2 of Revelation chapter 19 and we are going to read Revelation 19:3-5:

And again they said, Alleluia. And her smoke rose up for ever and ever. And the four and twenty elders and the four beasts fell down and worshipped God that sat on the throne, saying, Amen; Alleluia. And a voice came out of the throne, saying, Praise our God, all ye his servants, and ye that fear him, both small and great.

I will stop reading there.  We see in these verses that “Alleluia” is mentioned two more times, in verse 3 and verse 4 and in this chapter “Alleluia” or “Hallelujah,” as it is sometimes expressed, is found four times and only in this chapter.  In the whole Bible you are only going to find it in Revelation, chapter 19.

Again, it comes from the Hebrew and it is a compound word made up of two Hebrew words meaning “praise,” and “Yah.”  The Hebrew word “hil-layl” is Strong’s #1984 and “Jah” is Strong’s #3050.  It is a transliterated compound word here in the Greek: Alleluia.

Of course, we want to be reminded, once again, that we should be praising God.  Actually, praising God is a sign of life.  It is really something that only the “living” do because the Bible says, in Psalm 115:17-18:

The dead praise not JEHOVAH, neither any that go down into silence. But we will bless JEHOVAH from this time forth and for evermore. Praise JEHOVAH.

The dead do not praise JEHOVAH.  Of course, it is very possible for someone who is spiritually dead, like in the churches, to “mouth” the words of praise.  That happens all the time; people are praising the Lord and lifting up their hands and they are just full of wonderful things to say about God, but praising the Lord is not only done through the things we say, but it is something that we truly do from the heart.  There has to be agreement with praising God within, as well as with the words of our mouth.  So the true children of God do praise the Lord and we sing, “Alleluia.” 

You know, it would be a very wise and helpful thing to do and it is very good for us.  Some people have a tendency to think negatively and negative thinking can lead to depression and being cast down in spirit, so there are some in the “gospel arena” that have become preachers of “positive thinking,” and they just use the Bible to get people to think positively.  Of course, we do not want to have anything to do with that because it is not a self-improvement book like men write to help give us a positive outlook and keep us from feeling depressed.  That is not the purpose of the Bible – the Bible is the Word of God.  God sent it to save His people, but there is an element of truth to the idea that our cognitive thinking relates to how we “feel.”  We can be cast down and we may even think we have good reason to be cast down; there may actually be things going on in our lives that would cause us to be cast down, as we live in a time of testing and, spiritually, it is a very wearisome time.  We went through Great Tribulation, only to find ourselves continuing to live on the earth during the time of God’s wrath on the unsaved people, so there is severe testing, a fiery trial of faith and affliction, which could manifest itself in numerous ways in our lives.  We have a tendency to go to God and say, “O, Lord, I am so tired.  I am so weary.  I am so cast down.  Help me, O God.”  Our prayers may constantly be along those lines and, again, it is appropriate to go to God when we are cast down.  God does tell us, “Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.”  It says, “with thanksgiving,” and often the child of God is able to go to God with supplication, but we may tend to leave out the thanksgiving or the praise, the “Alleluia” to God, as we “praise Jah.”  Yet, God tells us this is what the people of God do, when He says, “The dead praise not the JEHOVAH,” but the “living” do, indeed, praise the Lord and it is also for our benefit and welfare.  It is very helpful to us to remind ourselves that when we go to prayer, it would be a good idea to put aside whatever is troubling us (the financial concerns, the physical health, the family situation, the trouble at work) and just spend some time thanking God and praising Him: “Praise JEHOVAH.”  If you need help to do this, get out the concordance and look at all the places where the word “praise” is found.  Read Psalm 136.  In every verse it says, “For his mercy endureth for ever,” and it is a wonderful Psalm to give us reasons to praise God.  We can start with His great mercy toward us in granting us forgiveness of sins and we can say, “Praise ye JEHOVAH, for forgiving us our sin.”  And praise Him that He did not just forgive one or two sins or hundreds of sins, but multitudes of sins in the tens of thousands.  Our sins are so numerous we cannot even count them – it is a sea of iniquity.  We have been forgiven all, so we can praise JEHOVAH that our sins have been removed from us as far as the East is from the West.  We can praise JEHOVAH that our sins have been cast into the depths of the sea and will be remembered no more.  We can start there and we can praise God for His wonderful salvation program that He has completed.  We can praise God for sending the Lord Jesus Christ to die for our sins.  He died from the foundation of the world and made full and complete payment for all iniquity, but if that were not enough, God came into this world in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ and, once again, endured the wrath of God and He suffered and died a second time to demonstrate the things He had done.  Praise ye JEHOVAH.

Do you see how we could spend just a few minutes praising Him?  God is deserving of praise the entire time of our prayer, but it would be good for us to at least begin our prayer by praising the Lord.  Then we can get to our supplication for help and by that time we are probably going to be feeling much better about our situation because we just reminded ourselves that God is great and He is merciful.  He has blessed us with tremendous and abundant blessings that will be for evermore.  We could praise JEHOVAH for eternal life; we could praise JEHOVAH for the new heaven and new earth; we could praise JEHOVAH for the new resurrected bodies we will receive that will no longer experience sorrow and sickness and death.  What an incredible amount of blessings we have for which we can praise God.  He is worthy.  He has done great things for us in granting us His grace and mercy. 

In our verse in Revelation 19, we find all the elect (and this would include us) praising JEHOVAH.  Remember back in verse 1 it was the “great voice of much people in heaven” or the great multitude that came out of Great Tribulation.  These are the ones that are praising God and saying, “Alleluia.” Then verse 3 says, “And again they said, Alleluia.”  Is it too much to do so a second time?  No, it is not too much.  In the next verse, there will be a third time and shortly after that there will be a fourth time to say “Alleluia” to the great God who is only worthy to be praised.

Do we have to lift up our hands?  No, we do not have to do that.  We do not have to shout it from the rooftops.  But if there was anything worthy to be shouted from the rooftops, it would be praise to God, but we do not have to make a “show” of it.  This is something inward, in our innermost being.  When we go quietly into our “prayer closet” and there is no one around, it is there that we begin to say these things in prayer to our God and sing, “Alleluia” to Him.

One of the problems that the unsaved have is that they want to be “seen” praising God.  They want others to hear them praising God, but that is not the characteristic of the true child of God.  This is something personal and intimate between the Lord and us. 

Let us go on and read the second part of Revelation 19:3:

And again they said, Alleluia. And her smoke rose up for ever and ever.

Of course, this is referring to Babylon.  In the previous chapter Babylon was burning.  It said in Revelation 18:9:

And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning,

We also read this in Revelation 18:18:

And cried when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, What city is like unto this great city!

So the time of this praising of God is at the point of Babylon’s burning.  It is at that time that the saints of God, that great multitude, are offering up praise to JAH or praise to the Lord.  Notice how God joins the praise of His people with the final end of the kingdom of Satan and the unsaved inhabitants of the kingdom of darkness; it is the time of their judgment and it is time to “Praise ye JEHOVAH.”

You know, on one hand, we all have families and friends and we care for our fellow man.  Of course, we are not rejoicing because judgment is upon them.  But on the other hand, we are rejoicing because God has saved us and He has instilled within each of His people a tremendous desire to see the things of God accomplished and a tremendous desire to see the promises of God fulfilled.  In order for God to complete all of His promises to His people, there must be a final judgment of mankind and there must be an end of the world.  Then there can be the time of resurrection and the time of the new heaven and new earth and the glorious eternal future.  But it must follow the complete and final judgment of all unsaved inhabitants of the earth.  So the people of God do praise the Lord for these things at the time He is bringing about that judgment.

In Psalm 149, God also ties the final judgment of mankind with praises to Him.  It says in Psalm 149:5-6:

Let the saints be joyful in glory: let them sing aloud upon their beds. Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, and a twoedged sword in their hand;

As the saints of God come in judgment with Christ, this is what should be in their mouth: “high praises to God.”  And in their hand is a twoedged sword, which is a reference to the Word of God.  So this ought to be what the saints are speaking at this time (praise to God) because He has completed His salvation program and saved the last one to be saved.  There are no more to be found and every one whose name was written in the Lamb’s Book of Life has been found and brought safely into the fold.  So we praise the Lord because He has put down Satan from ruling over the nations.  And praise the Lord that the Lord Jesus Christ reigns with a “rod of iron” at this time.

It goes on to say more about the purpose of the twoedged sword in the hand of the saints, in Psalm 149:7-9:

To execute vengeance upon the heathen, and punishments upon the people; To bind their kings with chains, and their nobles with fetters of iron; To execute upon them the judgment written: this honour have all his saints. Praise ye JEHOVAH.

Here, again, is the grand finale of the judgment of God upon this world through the written Word which the saints of God are executing through the declaration of the Word.  The saints are still alive and remain on the earth in the Day of Judgment, and, therefore, they continue to do what they have always done: read the Bible, study the Bible, and share what they learn.  In doing so, they are carrying out “the judgment written,” and God has written of the final judgment of the world in many places in the Bible and now in our time the judgment that was written is being fulfilled.  Christ is judging the world and all the saints with Him.  Remember the question that was posed in 1Corinthians 6:2: “Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world?”  God asks that question of the child of God.  Do you not know that you are going to judge thee world?  This is exactly what God had in mind and it would be executed through the Word of God and notice how it all concludes with “Praise ye JEHOVAH.”  We have the high praises of God in our mouth and the twoedged sword in our hand.