Revelation Unveiled - Part 21
“Fighting The Spiritual Battle With Evil – Part 2”
Main Text: Revelation 14
Understanding the Symbols and Images of Revelation
Revelation is a book filled with symbols and images that people in the churches of Asia Minor understood because they heard and read Revelation from a Hebrew, Jewish, Eastern perspective of what the symbols and numbers meant, rather than western literalism.
Meaning Over Amount: In ancient prophetic visions, numbers represented a specific meaning rather than a literal quantity.
The "1260 Days" / "42 Months" / "3 ½ Years" are half of 7 which represents divine completeness. The shorter amount of time signifies that Satan's persecution of the church is real and intense, but ultimately limited and temporary. It has a definite end.
We will see later that the shorter timeframe represents the period between Jesus' first coming and His return to bring the new heaven and new earth.
Recapping the Allies of the Dragon in chapter 13…
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The First Beast (Out of the Sea): Represents worldly power, governments, and empires opposed to God and His people.
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The Second Beast (Out of the Earth): Represents worldly propaganda used to convince people to put their trust, allegiance, and sense of security in worldly empires.
Revelation 13:18…
Gematria
Gematria: A traditional ancient practice of assigning numerical values to letters in a word, name, or phrase. It was highly popular in Jewish, Greek, and Roman cultures. It was used to teach students both the alphabet and how to count.
For example, when archaeologists excavated the ancient city of Pompeii (buried by Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD), they uncovered graffiti on a wall reading: "I love her whose number is 545."
This demonstrates that using riddlelike numbers to represent a person's identity was a familiar and widely understood custom in the 1st century.
The Number 666
The Number 666 has led to all kinds of speculation of who the Anti-Christ will be and when he will be on the earth. Examples…
Anti-Christ: The term does not appear in Revelation, and only four times in the Bible (See 1 John 2:18-27; 4:1-6; 2 John 1:7). It is always used by John to refer to what is going on in his day regarding opposition to God and followers of Jesus through the presence of evil in people and empires.
The number for perfection is 7 and the number for sinful man is 6 (short of perfection). Since 3 represents the Trinity of God (God in all of his fullness) three 6’s (666) represent man in the fullness of his utter sinfulness and evil.
666 is not representative of one individual who will come at the end of time, but the entire worldly anti-Christian power under Satan’s control. This includes many individuals who will be an Anti-Christ, such as the Caesars who represented Worldly Power, and people who represent Worldly Powers throughout history and until Jesus comes again at the end of the age.
666 being a mark on the hand or forehead is not referring to a literal mark or as some futurists say, a computer chip that is put under the skin on our forehead or wrist. John is using a symbolic image to say that their thoughts (forehead) and their actions (the hands) are in Satan’s control as they give allegiance to the Beast.
The word for Beast in Greek is therion, and when translated into the Hebrew, it adds up to 666. This is the simplest explanation of the meaning of Revelation 3:18.
It makes even more sense in the context of chapter 14:1, which says that God’s people had the name of the Lamb and the Father written on their foreheads.
Using Gematria and transliterating the Greek words for "lamb" (arnion) and "God" (Theon) into Hebrew, the number adds up to 777. This is the number for divine perfection (7) three times over (3 is the number for the fulness of God – Trinity).
Phylacteries as an Analogy
Phylacteries as an Analogy: Just as Deuteronomy instructs God's people to metaphorically or physically bind scriptures to their foreheads and hands, a person's lifestyle naturally displays who they belong to —either Jesus or the worldly system.
The 144,000 Redeemed…
In Hebrew Numerology, the number 144,000 breaks down as 12 (representing the 12 tribes of Israel) x 12 (representing the 12 apostles) x 1,000 (representing absolute completeness – 10x10x10).
It is a symbolic number representing all of God's people—both Old and New Testament saints living on the earth.
Revelation 14:2-4a….
The Character of the 144,000…
Spiritual Purity: They are described as "virgins" who did not defile themselves, meaning they did not participate in the corrupt system of worldly compromise through the trade guild feasts in that day that included gorging on meat, being drunk with wine, and participating in orgy behavior with sex slaves.
They also did not participate in spiritual adultery through idolatry and worshiping false gods like their ancestors (see Hosea 4:12)
Revelation 14:4b-5…
Blameless: No lie was found in their mouths; they lived with honesty and genuine faith.
Revelation 14:6-10a… The Proclamations of Judgment
The Three Angels
First Angel: Proclaims the eternal gospel to every nation, tribe, language, and people, calling mankind to repent, fear God, and worship Him.
Second Angel: Announces the fall of "Babylon the Great," which serves as a symbol for Rome in John's day, and a symbol for the entire anti-Christian world system throughout history which kills God’s people (“drunk on the blood of the saints”).
Third Angel: Warns of the severe judgment facing those who worship the beast, receive its mark, and drink the unmixed wine of God's fury.
Wine in that day was usually mixed with water and unmixed wine was rare and extremely strong. This is a picture of the intensity of God’s wrath.
Revelation 14:10b-12….
Judgement is portrayed through the imagery of a conquered, completely destroyed city with smoke rising forever. It represents the utter loss of community, relationships, friendship, and the presence of God.
God wants to give people time to repent and come to him for forgiveness and eternal life, even if His people must suffer longer.
That is why he says in verse 12, This calls for patient endurance on the part of the people of God who keep his commands and remain faithful to Jesus.
Patient endurance characterizes Christians who remain loyal to Jesus and obey His commandments, even in the midst of extreme persecution.
Revelation 14:13…
Another beatitude in Revelation and this one teaches us to live for Jesus in what we do.
Revelation is not just about how to face persecution when the time comes, but it is about an ethic. It is about living the ethic of Jesus when it comes to how we treat the poor, the disenfranchised, people in need, etc. (Read Matthew 25:31-46 and the judgment story Jesus tells to understand just how serious Jesus is about what we do.
Revelation 14:14-20… The Final Judgement
The Grain Harvest: Represented by the first sickle, used for gathering wheat or barley, signaling the gathering of God's people.
The Grape Harvest: Represented by the second sickle, where grapes are gathered and thrown into the great winepress of God's wrath outside the city.
The phrase “outside the city” is similar to chapter 11, when John is told to measure the temple but not the “outer courts”. This “outside” language describes people in opposition to God who are destined for judgement.
The Distance of 1,600 Stadia: Symbolizes the complete judgment of the earth (4 corners of the earth x 10 squared representing human completeness), showing that the final judgment will cover the entire scope of the world
Recapitulation
We have another recapitulation of the final judgement.
The theological framework of much of the American church when it comes to understanding Revelation leads many to interpret it linearly and as a future timeline in “the last days”.
John wrote from a Jewish perspective, which means Revelation is not a linear timeline. It is written using Recapitulation (Cyclical Thinking).
Recapitulation in literature is the retelling of the same events from a different perspective with a different purpose, commonly involving intensification.
The end of the world in Revelation is not described just once at the very end of the book. It is recapitulated with intensifying imagery across multiple visions:
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The 6th & 7th Seals (Chapters 6 & 8)
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The 7th Trumpet (Chapter 11)
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The end of the Interlude (Chapter 14)
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The 7th Bowl (Chapter 16)
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The Defeat of Satan and Great White Throne of Judgement (Chapter 20)
The picture of judgment in the image of the winepress is an intense image of violent judgement with the crimson liquid of the grapes symbolizing blood.
This is similar to the judgement text of Isaiah 63:1-6…
Takeaway / Application
Live the Ethic of Jesus: Let your beliefs show through your actions in a way that draws others to Jesus, living out the reality of Matthew 5:14-16.
Do that to B.L.E.S.S people as we don’t want anyone to die outside a relationship with God and experience His judgement.
