Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #35 of Revelation, chapter 21 and we are going to read Revelation 21:24:

And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it.

God is speaking of the heavenly Jerusalem.  In the previous verse He had stated in Revelation 21:23:

And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.

Then God goes on to say in our verse, “And the nations of them which are saved,” so He is not referring to everyone in the world or all the people of the nations, but everyone that has become saved.  Then God characterizes who He is referring to when He says, “Of them which are saved.”  This qualifies this to mean the nations of the saved and they are the ones that will walk in the light of it.  They are the ones that enter into the city through the gate, which is Christ, and they will dwell in the Light of God eternally.  They will have all the blessings God has spoken of poured out upon them for evermore. 

We are going to take a closer look at the Greek word translated as “nations.”  I think we will see something interesting and something we may not have understood all that well in the past.  We have had some idea about it, but not a clear understanding, but I think we will see much more clearly what God is doing with the nations of the world today in the Day of Judgment. 

First of all, this Greek word translated as “nations” is Strong’s #1484.  It is the Greek word “ethnos.”  You can hear that we get our English word “ethnic” from this word and when we speak of ethnic groups, it means that this group of people is from Italy and this group of people is from Africa and this group of people is from South America, and so on.  They are the various nations and they are the “ethnos.”  This Greek word is translated in the New Testament as four different English words.  It can be translated as “Gentiles” or “heathen” or “nations” or “people.”  That means we could have a verse with this same Greek word and it can be translated as it is in our verse as “nations,” but in another place it could be translated as “Gentiles,” or “heathen” or “peoples.” 

The word “ethnos” can refer to unsaved “Gentiles” or it can refer to saved “Gentiles,” so the word, by itself, does not reveal to us which is in view.  God helps us in this verse by qualifying it to say, “the nations of them which are saved,” but in other places it cannot be the saved that are in view when this same word is used.  For instance, it says in Matthew 6:32:

 (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:)

This statement refers back to eating and drinking and clothing, which are things the world seeks after, so it is not being used in the sense of God’s elect.  In Luke, chapter 12, the parallel verse, it is more specifically stating that it refers to the (unsaved) world.   It says in Luke 12:30:

For all these things do the nations of the world seek after…

Notice how God makes a point of saying “the nations of the world,” but in verse 21 He is saying, “the nations of them which are saved.”  These are the two groups that the “nations” can be broken down into in the Bible.  They are either the nations of them that are saved or the nations of the world and it is only the context which determines which “nation” is in view.  Look at Luke 21:24:

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.

Here we have “nations” and “Gentiles” in the same verse.  In this verse, Jerusalem is being used as a picture of the church at the time of the end of the world and they were “trodden down of the nations.”  That is because when Satan was loosed, it says in Revelation 20:8:

And shall go out to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to battle: the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. 

When Satan was loosed, he deceived the “Gentiles” of the nations of the world, but he did not deceive the “nations of them which are saved” because that is not possible because it says of Satan and his false prophets in Matthew 24, verse 24: “if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect,” but it is not possible.  So Satan was loosed and went out to deceive the nations and that can only be the nations of the world and they are the “Gentiles” that came against the camp of the saints, the battle we read about in Revelation, chapter 20; Satan overcame the corporate churches because God had given them up into his hand. In a chapter where we read of Satan as the beast coming up out of the sea, it says in Revelation 13:7-8:

And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations. And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. 

Here it is very clear that the beast is given power over the “nations” or all the unsaved of the world.  There is a distinct difference between the nations of the world and the nations of them which are saved.  Both are “Gentiles” and both are of the “nations” and both dwell together.  That is a very important point that needs to be made.  Remember when God established the churches and congregations and the “church age.”  God then spoke of an enemy that sowed tares among the wheat.  Throughout the New Testament church age, a period of 1,955 years, the Gospel was primarily concerned with the events that took place within the congregations of the world.  That was the focus because that was the “place” that God chose to bring the Gospel.  When people went forth on mission trips and shared the Gospel with the nations of the world, they would direct them to the churches: “Come with me this Sunday to church.”  That was a very good thing for a child of God to do during the church age.  It is where God wanted people to be because when they came to church, there would be preaching and the Word of God and it would be the atmosphere in which God was saving people.  As God saved through the churches, the “firstfruits” would come in over the course of almost 2,000 years.

Yet, in those churches Satan was busy sowing “tares” among the “wheat.”  God’s command was to let them both grow together until the “harvest” or until the judgment was come upon the churches and congregations.  Judgment began at the house of God in 1988, so even then most of the wheat and tares were still together within the congregations.  When God ended the church age, He put into the motion the process of separating the wheat from the tares when He opened the Scriptures to reveal that the church age was over and His command was issued, “Come out of her, my people.”  Thereby, He set in motion the sifting process that would eventually separate the wheat from the tares, but that process was not finalized until the Great Tribulation was complete.  On May 21, 2011, there was the final separation as the wheat had all come out and the tares remained and were bundled for the spiritual fire that began at that time.

We can learn from the process that God used from our vantage point and we can see the entire manner in which God went about separating the wheat from the tares.  Amazingly, that matches very well with the current process God is using in the nations of the world.  The Word of God had been centralized in the churches and God did His saving work there and that is why Satan concentrated on sowing tares there.  Now we know that when Satan was loosed he gathered the “nations” or the “Gentiles” to come against the corporate church, but God also had a plan for the nations.  Satan gathered them as “Gog and Magog” and they became his army to attack and overcome the churches and congregations of the world.

Before we look at God’s plan, let us first look at a couple of verses that show that there are “nations” or “Gentiles” of the world that belong to Satan and there are the “nations” or “Gentiles” of those that are saved that belong to the kingdom of God.  It says in Acts 11:18:

When they heard these things, they held their peace, and glorified God, saying, Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life.

God also granted repentance unto the “ethos” or “Gentiles.”  This teaching about God saving the Gentiles is all over the Old Testament, but the Jews were ignorant of it.  Yet, this is what God said in Galatians 3:8:

And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed. 

All the “Gentiles” or “nations” were blessed, but were all Gentiles in the world blessed through Abraham?  No, it is referring to the “nations of them which are saved.”  It is the elect.  Then it says in Galatians 3:14:

That the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. 

The blessing is the “faith of Christ” and salvation is the blessing of all the “nations of them which are saved.”   They are all the individual Gentiles that were predestinated to become saved.  It is similar to what God says in 2Peter where He says He is “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”  Some people read this and they say, “You see, God wants everyone to become saved.  He wants all people to come to repentance.”  They completely misunderstand because it is only “all” the elect that God wants to save and, of course, His will is always done because He is the Mighty God.  He is not the weak-kneed, feeble God that the churches preach, a God who desperately needs help from the individuals of the world.  God is not saying, “Oh, please, let me save you because I am not willing that any should perish.”  When God was still saving people, did He come to people that way, making request of the sinner?  Was salvation just an offer?  No, God drew the sinner: “No man cometh to me, except my Father which hath sent me draw him.”  That word “draw” is a violent verb.  It was by force of His will that God would grab hold of one of His elect and begin the process of drawing that person to Him, whether they liked it or not.  Eventually, of course, they will more than “like” it.  They will love what God has done as God gives them a right mind to see what has taken place.

There is also a verse in Revelation, chapter 7.  Actually, there are many verses where God speaks of saving the “Gentiles,” but the Lord speaks of a very significant time (the Great Tribulation period) and the great multitude He would save out of the Great Tribulation.  It says in Revelation 7:9-10:

After this I beheld, and, lo, a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands; And cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.

It was a great multitude out of all nations, as it said in our verses in Revelation21:24: “And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it.” And here are the vast majority of those spoken of in our verse, as God saved the greatest number of people in the little season of the Great Tribulation.  Actually, it was not the entire Great Tribulation, but only the second part of the Great Tribulation, after the first 2,300 evening mornings had elapsed, and God began to pour out the Latter Rain in September 1994 and evangelized the earth the “second time.”  It was the second outpouring of the Holy Spirit.  It was, as the Bible says, a second Jubilee period during which the captives were set free and Christ would deliver His people.  It would be the grand finale of God’s magnificent salvation program.  The Gospel would go forth in an unprecedented way to every nation, because God had made complete preparation through the raising up of the electronic medium and a faithful ministry and man (Family Radio and Mr. Camping) that were sound in the Bible.  God sent forth the pure Gospel that was more accurate than ever before in history because He also made preparation by opening the Scriptures to reveal many truths that had previously been hidden.  With the electronic medium (radio, internet, short wave and television) opening up, the Gospel went out into all the world and the nations were blanketed with the message of Judgment Day, May 21, 2011.  The message was, “Seek the Lord while he may be found,” and God used this message to emphasize the urgency of the Gospel message so people knew they had to go to God and not wait because that “day” was getting closer and closer.  The message was everywhere and the teaching was that the door would be shut and there would be no more salvation, so now was the time to go to God.  And God saved the great multitude from all the nations. 

At the same time, God ended the church age and revealed that information to His people.  He revealed that His Holy Spirit was no longer operating in the corporate church.  He revealed that within the churches there would be no Latter Rain – there was no salvation taking place.  The arena of the Gospel that had been in the churches for almost two millenniums changed.  The arena moved from the churches and congregations to the nations where the “Gentiles” were located.  God sent forth His Word and saved the nations of them that are saved.  They began to live together. 

Now, consider this carefully.  What was the problem within the churches?  God’s Word is always pure and true, so there was no problem at all with the Bible, but the problem was that there were enemies within the churches and the tares grew among the wheat and you could not tell one from the other, so both were allowed to grow together until the harvest and then God set in motion His separation process.  It accomplished His purpose, but now God had scattered the Gospel seed all through the nations in the entire world in a way that had never before been seen.  The nations did not go to churches, but the message was on buses and billboards, websites and radio or people were handing them Gospel tracts.  They began to listen as the Gospel seed was falling to various degrees upon the peoples of the earth.  The nations heard and God used the message to save a great multitude, although it was only a remnant of the whole of mankind, just like what happened in the churches. 

We have learned relatively recently that over the course of about 2,000 years, the saved out of the churches and congregations were relatively few.  The majority was tares and they were not saved people.  But now the entire world was a much larger arena where the Gospel was being sown.  What would God do?  If He followed the first pattern of the churches, He would not just sow the seed and say, “I saved the ones I wanted to save and I will leave the rest.”  Instead, He made a point of separating them.  Would God do the same with the Gentiles?