Good evening, and welcome to EBible Fellowship's Bible study in the Book of Revelation. Tonight is study #5 of Revelation, chapter 5, and we are going to be reading Revelation 5:6:
And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth.
We are continuing to look at this glorious vision that God has given to His servant John on the island of Patmos (we read way back in Revelation, chapter 1) in the Day of the Lord or the Lord’s Day. So we are not surprised as we read the Book of Revelation that there is much to say about judgment because the Bible often speaks of judgment day as the Day of the Lord.
Here, in Revelation 5, we have seen that the Lord is seated upon His throne and there was a book that is written within and on the back side and sealed with seven seals and there is a “strong angel” or Messenger, who is God Himself, proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open the book and loosen the seals thereof?”
And it was revealed that no man was worthy – no man could be found – to loose the seals of this book. But after the Apostle John began to weep, one out of the elders (who would have been Christ, again) said unto him, “Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book.” That word prevailed is a word that is often translated as overcome. He hath overcome – He has been victorious to open the Book and to loose the seven seals thereof.
And I beheld, and, lo, in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain…
So the “Lamb as it had been slain” was “in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders” and, of course, we know exactly who the Lamb who had been slain is referring to, as we read in the Gospel of John 1:29:
The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.
And it also says in John 1:35-37:
Again the next day after John stood, and two of his disciples; And looking upon Jesus as he walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb of God! And the two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus.
There is no doubt who is “the Lamb of God.” It is the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is the Lamb and it says in our verse in Revelation 5, there stood a Lamb in the midst, of the throne, the four living creatures and the elders. Now we are not surprised by that because, of course, Christ is in the midst of the throne of God. He is eternal God; He is Emmanuel, “God with us.” He is the everlasting Father; there is no separating them, so He is in the midst of the throne.
And we are also not surprised that He is in the midst of the four living creatures because the four living creatures are a representation of the glory of God. They are also a type and a figure of God; and, again, Christ is God so, of course, He is in the midst of the four living creatures.
And, as well, He is in the midst of the twenty four elders that were round about the throne. In chapter 4 these cast their crowns before the throne of God; and these twenty four elders typify all of God’s elect from all time: twelve representing the Old Testament saints of God and twelve representing the New Testament saints of God. There are twenty four in all which represents the fullness of all those whom God had saved. The number “12” is further illustrated later in the Book of Revelation when we get to Revelation 21 and we read about New Jerusalem descending down from heaven from God and, again and again, the number “12” is spoken of in regard to its foundation, its gates and its walls, and so forth. The number “12” identifies with the elect, with the complete city of God and the fullness of all of whom God saved out of the Lamb’s Book of Life; all of whose names were recorded by God from the foundation of the world and all of those that Jesus died for from the foundation of the world.
And we need to discuss that because Revelation 5:6 is saying that the Lord Jesus, spoken of as a Lamb, stood “as it had been slain.” Now most people, as soon as they read that, think of the cross in 33 A.D.; that is when Jesus was slain (they believe). That has been the traditional teaching of the churches throughout the church age: Christ died on the cross for the sins of His people.
And, of course, Jesus did die on the cross; no one is disputing that, but when we read of the “Lamb of God,” the Lamb is a reference to the sacrificial offering of God on behalf of those He intended to save. For instance, in Genesis 22, we read of the time when God commanded Abraham to offer up his son, his only son Isaac, and Abraham was obedient. He took his son and the wood and was about to offer him as an offering to God and he raised the knife to bring it down to slay his son; and he did that (the Book of Hebrews tells us) because he accounted God was able to raise him from the dead, if he did follow through; he trusted God and God moved in Abraham to perform this deed – to do this good work. But God interrupted Abraham and it says in Genesis 22:7-8:
And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together.
And that is exactly what happens and before Abraham can bring down the knife, God stops him and he is shown a ram caught in the thicket. And, yet, the statement here should not be overlooked or missed, when Isaac says, "Where is the lamb?” and Abraham says, “My son, God will provide himself a lamb.”
That is exactly what God did. He Himself, eternal God, the Lord Jesus (as it says in John 1:1: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was Go.” And it says in John 1:14: “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.”
It is Christ, the Word, who was with God and was God, and they are one; the Father and the Lord Jesus are one. We cannot understand it; it is mysterious. It is beyond our ability to comprehend how God can be One God and He is (there is not two or three or more). “Know, O Israel, the LORD thy God is one God.” There is One God and, yet, He reveals Himself as three Persons. And Christ, the Son, was made flesh and entered into the human race to demonstrate and to show forth and to reveal what He had done from the foundation of the world; and it was at that point (the foundation of the world) that He made payment for the sins of His people. We are not making that up; that is what the Bible says in Revelation 13:8:
And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him…
And this is referring to the beast during the time of The Great Tribulation.
…whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
When was the Lamb slain? Well, God just told us: “from the foundation of the world.” Before God created the world, the universe and before He created man and before the fall of man (and before the need of a Saviour, in that sense), God laid the sins of all that He would save on the Lord Jesus and He died for them at that point, from the foundation of the world, and made payment in full. The Bible is clear that this is the point at which all the sins of all those that God saved were paid for. Then Jesus entered into the human race, born of the virgin Mary in 7 B.C., and later when He went to the cross He was demonstrating what He had done and He did suffer a second time, but He did not make payment; there was no need for Him to pay for sins already paid for. His one and only offering of Himself for the sins of His people was completely satisfactory; it was not wanting anything at all, where He had to complete it in some way. No, it was a perfect payment for the sins of each one that He died for, so the Bible tells us that Christ was “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.”
Now in Revelation 5, Jesus is the Lamb who stood in the midst of the throne, in the midst of the four living creatures and in the midst of the elders, God’s elect, and He stood “as a Lamb as it had been slain.” And, so, this is indicating that the Lord Jesus, from the foundation of the world, has been identified by God as the sacrificial Lamb, the one who made offering. But, if that is so, what are the twenty four elders doing there? Well, we have to realize that this is a vision that is teaching us certain truths. Were all of God’s elect with God from the foundation of the world? Well, yes, in the sense that all their sins were paid for and the Lord Jesus now had guaranteed that they would eventually, in time, be redeemed and they all would end up as one with Him and the Father in the kingdom of God. It says in Revelation 5:6:
… a Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth.
Now the “seven eyes” reminds us, once again, of the four living creatures that had eyes before and behind. It indicates the all-seeing nature of God, the perfection of God’s ability to see and understand all things: “…all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.” Nothing is able to be hidden from him, no matter how hard a man might try. Nothing is able to be covered over so His all-knowing gaze will not see it or understand what happened, but everything is known unto God.
What about the “seven horns?” We would expect a lamb, as the Bible indicates, actually, a ram to have horns (like the one that was caught in the thicket) and it says in Genesis 22:11-13:
And the angel of JEHOVAH called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I. And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me. And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son.
There was the lamb that God provided and that lamb, of course, points to the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world – the only Saviour that is able to save a sinner from sin was the Lord Jesus Christ. Only through Him can an individual enter into heaven and live for evermore.
We can see how the horns relate to the ram – to the fact that God speaks of Christ as a sacrificial animal. Let us just look at how the word horn is used in the Bible. It says in Psalm 18:1-2:
I will love thee, O JEHOVAH, my strength. JEHOVAH is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.
JEHOVAH is the “horn of my salvation.” You know, that statement does not stand alone. Remember in the New Testament in the Gospel of Luke where Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, was so thrilled when God had finally opened his mouth, and we read in Luke 1:64:
And his mouth was opened immediately, and his tongue loosed, and he spake, and praised God.
And then in Luke 1:67-69:
And his father Zacharias was filled with the Holy Ghost, and prophesied, saying, Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people, And hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David;
The “horn” can be used to blow like a trumpet and, actually, in the Book of Joshua when they were dealing with Jericho, God uses the same word horn there. So it has that aspect to it, but they would also use a horn like the prophet Samuel. We read in 1st Samuel 16:1:
And JEHOVAH said unto Samuel, How long wilt thou mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel? fill thine horn with oil, and go, I will send thee to Jesse the Bethlehemite: for I have provided me a king among his sons.
And then in 1st Samuel 16:13:
Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the midst of his brethren: and the Spirit of JEHOVAH came upon David from that day forward. So Samuel rose up, and went to Ramah.
Now we can see a little bit more clearly what God is doing here – why it is that he would have a horn filled with oil in order to anoint David king. Of course, David is a great type of Christ, but he also is a true believer and we understand from Psalm 18:2 and Luke 1:69 that God references a “horn of salvation” that can only be the Messiah, the Saviour Jesus Christ. He is the “horn of salvation.”
And when someone is anointed with oil in the Bible (whether we read it in the Epistle of James or whether we read about this anointing of David), it points to the Holy Spirit. Remember in Matthew, chapter 25, with the ten virgins? The five wise virgins had oil in their lamps and the five foolish virgins did not, indicating that the five wise virgins possessed the Holy Spirit which enlightened them to understand the word of God, the Bible, while the foolish were left in darkness and ignorant (even though they possessed lamps – the Word – and they had the Bible also), but it did not help them without the oil to enlighten their eyes, without God to show them the truths hidden in His Word.
So the horn carries the oil: Christ’s salvation brings the Holy Spirit. It is through the salvation that Jesus has provided for His chosen people that they are anointed. Let us see that again in 1st Samuel 16:13:
Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the midst of his brethren: and the Spirit of JEHOVAH came upon David from that day forward.
It is as though here is God’s salvation and the oil is taken from the “horn of salvation” and applied to David, in this case, and the Holy Spirit enters in; and now he has received from the oil of salvation the spirit of God. This is really a wonderful picture that God gives us.
You know, this is also why we read concerning Satan in the Book of Revelation that he has horns. It says in Revelation 13:1:
And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.
And a little further on in verse 11:
And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon.
Now we know that Satan is the great impostor. He comes looking like Christ, as an angel of light and his emissaries as ministers of righteousness. And that is why, here, as the beast, he has “two horns like a lamb,” but how does he speak? Does he speak the words of eternal life? No. He spoke as a dragon. And how does Satan speak? Satan is a liar and the father of it.
And this is revealing to us God’s end time program of loosing Satan, as he entered into the churches as the man of sin and as the beast to rule over the churches and congregations. They continued to be called Christian churches; they did not change their name to the “house of the beast”; they continued to call themselves the house of God. They did not change their name to the church of Satan; they continued to call themselves the church of Christ. Yet they were completely under the power and authority of Satan, at the allowance of God, as God utilized the devil in loosing him to bring destruction upon the unfaithful churches and congregations of the world.
And, so, the horns were also part of the sham as Satan tries to mimic Christ and tried to pretend: “Oh, we have salvation. We have salvation readily available. You can “accept” Christ and become saved. You can speak with tongues which is evidence of salvation. You can be baptized in some of my churches and that is good enough for salvation – just quick and easy and plentiful salvation – and it is just abundantly available in every church in the world.”
And it is all a lie. During the time of the Great Tribulation, there was no salvation there. These horns were empty of oil, we could say. They looked like the true Gospel, but they were not the true Gospel. It is only Jesus Christ – the actual Lamb of God, the genuine Lamb of God, the genuine sacrificial offering of God Himself for the sake of His people – who possesses oil.
And that oil was poured out all through history wherever God’s elect were found born into the world; they were anointed with oil from the “horn of salvation” at some time before they died. And all the “oil” to anoint those individuals has been poured out because God has saved them all – all have been redeemed; all have had the saving, atoning work of Christ applied to them.
And, here (in our verse), God pictures the Lamb standing in the midst of the throne, in the midst of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders “as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes;” that is, having the fullness of salvation, as the Lord Jesus is the very essence of God’s salvation, so within Him is the perfection of the salvation of God.