Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #23 of Revelation chapter 19 and we are looking at Revelation 19:17:

And I saw an angel standing in the sun; and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in the midst of heaven, Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God;

Last time we were looking at the language of the “fowls” that came to feast upon the dead carcases and we saw that this is the picture that the fowls represent – there is death.   God sent the fowls to feed upon the carcass of the church at the time of the church age and now He is sending the fowls to feed upon the carcases of the unsaved people of the earth in the Day of Judgment.

Again, it says in the last part of the verse in Revelation 19:17:

… Come and gather yourselves together unto the supper of the great God;

We have seen before that the word “supper” is used in the New Testament concerning the marriage supper of the Lamb.  You can look back Revelation 19:9:

And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he saith unto me, These are the true sayings of God.

The Gospel call that went out into the world bid mankind to come to this supper of the great God.  It is a New Testament word that we do not find used in the same way in the Old Testament.  In the Old Testament God speaks of Judgment Day, the great supper of the Lamb, as a “sacrifice.”  For instance, we read this last time in Ezekiel, chapter 39, concerning the defeat of Gog and Magog, in Ezekiel 39:17-19:

And, thou son of man, thus saith the Lord JEHOVAH; Speak unto every feathered fowl, and to every beast of the field, Assemble yourselves, and come; gather yourselves on every side to my sacrifice that I do sacrifice for you, even a great sacrifice upon the mountains of Israel, that ye may eat flesh, and drink blood. Ye shall eat the flesh of the mighty, and drink the blood of the princes of the earth, of rams, of lambs, and of goats, of bullocks, all of them fatlings of Bashan. And ye shall eat fat till ye be full, and drink blood till ye be drunken, of my sacrifice which I have sacrificed for you.

What is that sacrifice that God has sacrificed?  It is “Gog and Magog,” the enemies of His kingdom or the unsaved people of the world.  God is slaying them.  He “killed” them, for all intents and purposes, when He shut the door of heaven.  God sealed man’s fate and established each individual’s spiritual condition.  If you were unsaved when the door of heaven shut, then it is just a matter of time before Judgment Day expires and you are completely annihilated.  There will be no change in anyone’s spiritual state, so it is guaranteed destruction.  God has brought “death” to the world and it is the sacrifice of the unsaved that God is sacrificing; that is, God is killing them.  This is what a sacrifice is and when something is sacrificed, it is killed.  Jesus was the Lamb of God that was sacrificed from the foundation of the world.  This is where we get the tie-in between “supper” and “sacrifice.”

In the New Testament there is the parable of the king that made a marriage for his son and it says in Matthew 22:2-3:

The kingdom of heaven is like unto a certain king, which made a marriage for his son, And sent forth his servants to call them that were bidden to the wedding: and they would not come.

We are not going to go through this entire parable again, but it says in Matthew 22:11-14:

And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there a man which had not on a wedding garment: And he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding garment? And he was speechless. Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. For many are called, but few are chosen.

I wanted to read this because we see there is a wedding feast or a marriage ceremony in view and it is related to the Gospel call that went out into the world.  Here, God is painting the picture of a wedding and in Revelation 19 it is the “marriage supper of the Lamb.”  Well, let us turn back to Zephaniah 1:7-8:

Hold thy peace at the presence of the Lord JEHOVAH: for the day of the JEHOVAH is at hand: for JEHOVAH hath prepared a sacrifice, he hath bid his guests. And it shall come to pass in the day of the JEHOVAH'S sacrifice, that I will punish the princes, and the king's children, and all such as are clothed with strange apparel.

This relates to the parable of the wedding feast which we just read.  When the king came in to inspect his guests, he saw a man without the proper wedding attire and the man was cast out, so that man was “clothed with strange apparel,” just as it says in Zephaniah.  And that ties in the “marriage supper of the Lamb” with the sacrifice of Judgment Day.  God wants us to make that connection and understand it.  Why would God tie in the sacrifice of the unsaved with the marriage supper?  God has slain the wicked for the “supper” that is to be partaken of in the Day of Judgment. 

The word “supper” was related to “sacrifice” even earlier than Judgment Day.  Remember what we read of the Lord Jesus in Luke 22:13-20:

And they went, and found as he had said unto them: and they made ready the passover. And when the hour was come, he sat down, and the twelve apostles with him. And he said unto them, With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer: For I say unto you, I will not any more eat thereof, until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and said, Take this, and divide it among yourselves: For I say unto you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine, until the kingdom of God shall come. And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me. Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you.

Here we see the word “supper.”  It is the “Last Supper” and that is exactly how it is known.   It was held in the upper room before Christ went to the cross and there was bread and drink and Christ related the bread to His body being broken for them and the cup was likened to the testament in His blood.  So it related to his body and his blood and it was His sacrifice that was served at the Last Supper, so the sacrifice of Christ is identified with the “supper” that the disciples were to partake of and it was not only then they were to partake of it.  God did not want the disciples of Christ to partake of that “supper” just that one time.  How long did the Lord command that the “supper” of His bread and His blood were to be eaten, spiritually?  Let us turn to 1Corinthians 11:20-26:

When ye come together therefore into one place, this is not to eat the Lord's supper. For in eating every one taketh before other his own supper: and one is hungry, and another is drunken. What? have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye the church of God, and shame them that have not? What shall I say to you? shall I praise you in this? I praise you not. For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread: And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death till he come.

The Lord’s Supper was to be observed as a ceremonial law within the churches and congregations during the church age.  God gave authority to certain individuals to oversee the congregation and to oversee the ceremonial laws, like baptism and the Lord’s Table.  The Lord’s Supper was carried out for 1,955 years during the church age to remember Christ and to remember His death and sacrifice that He gave for His people.  Even after the end of the church age, God’s people would read these Scriptures and what the Bible has to say about the death of Christ and they were brought to remembrance of Christ’s death.  In that sense we were spiritually partaking of the Lord’s Supper.  Christ’s supper was to be eaten and drunk when that was possible, spiritually, throughout the New Testament church age.  Notice what is said in 1Corinthians 11:26: “For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death till he come.”  It say, “till he come,” and on May 21, 2011 Christ did come in judgment upon the world and, immediately, the bride (who had been made ready through the completion of God’s salvation program) was ready for the marriage.  Judgment Day came and it was time to slay the “sacrifice” and God slew the wicked, spiritually, when He shut the door of heaven.  He had already prepared the sacrifice that we read of in regard to all the unsaved inhabitants of the earth and He called for the “fowls” to gather because there was “death” all over the earth; now it was their bodies and their blood that would be the “meat and the drink” for the supper of the great God. 

It is the sacrifice of the unsaved for their sin.  Christ died and He was the sacrifice for the sins of His people.  He paid the penalty, which was death.  He was the acceptable sacrifice on their behalf and throughout the entire day of salvation that was the “supper” that God focused on.  It was the “supper” of the Lord Jesus Christ and God called all to that supper.  Yet, when Judgment Day came, no one could partake of Christ again, if they had not already become saved.  God changed the sacrifice in the sense that now He has slain all the unsaved inhabitants of the earth and they must now pay for their sins by giving up their lives.  In so doing, they would become the “meat and the drink” of the “marriage supper of the Lamb.”  Remember the language that God used in Isaiah, chapter 34, which is focused on the day of wrath.  It says in Isaiah 34:3-6:

Their slain also shall be cast out, and their stink shall come up out of their carcases, and the mountains shall be melted with their blood. And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll: and all their host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling fig from the fig tree. For my sword shall be bathed in heaven: behold, it shall come down upon Idumea, and upon the people of my curse, to judgment. The sword of JEHOVAH is filled with blood, it is made fat with fatness, and with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams: for JEHOVAH hath a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Idumea.

Idumea is “Esau” or “Edom.”  It represents those that did not receive the blessing: “Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.”  God is sacrificing them in the day of His wrath and that is why He uses the language of “the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams,” because they are sacrificial animals.  Now it is unsaved mankind that God is slaying for their sins.  A sacrifice always pointed to the offering for sin and Christ was the only sacrifice that could make sufficient payment for sin when He offered up Himself from the foundation of the world.  Now the unsaved are making payment for their own sins; God is crushing the lifeblood out of them.  That is the vivid illustration in Revelation 14.  Also, in Revelation 19, where the Lord is treading the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God, what comes out the winepress?  In Revelation 14, it is blood, but typically you would get “wine” out of the winepress and that represents the “blood” or the “drink” of this Gospel – it is their life being crushed from them as God is sacrificing them and exacting their blood as the drink of the supper of the great God.  This is the Gospel for the world.  The sacrifice of Christ and His blood and His body was the food and drink for those that God would save as the Gospel went forth.  They came to the supper, but now it is no longer the sacrifice of Christ, but it is the supper of the unsaved. 

Now the Gospel goes into the world and it is a Gospel that declares that they are under the wrath of God.  If you did not become saved before May 21, 2011, you have been slain by God and God is destroying you.  You are going to remain filthy in an unsaved condition until you are obliterated on the very last day, the final day of this period of judgment.  That is the Gospel declaration for the unsaved of the world at this time and it is a Gospel of the sacrifice of their blood and flesh.  It is because they are being sacrificed in the Day of Judgment.