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And another angel came
out of the temple which is in heaven, he also
having a sharp sickle. And another angel came
out from the altar, which had power over fire;
and cried with a loud cry to him that had the
sharp sickle, saying, Thrust in thy sharp
sickle, and gather the clusters of the vine of
the earth; for her grapes are fully ripe. And
the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth,
and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it
into the great winepress of the wrath of God.
And the winepress was trodden without the city,
and blood came out of the winepress, even unto
the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand
and six hundred furlongs. Revelation
14:17-20.
Part I
by Brother
Emerson A. Wilson
Knowing Your
Enemies
I realize that I am
dealing with a Scripture that many have tossed
'way out into the future. They are looking for
the fulfillment of this somewhere beyond the
second coming of Christ. We have already shown
you, however, that the appearance of Christ in
this chapter is as a LAMB. When He appears the
second time, He will NOT be dealing with sin.
No, when He comes the second time, He will come
as a JUDGE, and ALL nations will be gathered
before His judgment seat. We are considering
something which is going on right in this very
time in which we are living.
Paul said
that God ...will have all men to be saved,
and to come unto the knowledge of the truth.
I Timothy 2:4. Beyond salvation, there is truth
to be understood. There is truth to be
understood about the great battle of Armageddon,
that battle of truth against error, which has
been going on ever since the Garden of
Eden.
I say it with kindness, but many
people who profess to be Christians are enemies
to the cause of Christ. The words of Paul in
Philippians 3:17-19, warned the Church of God at
Philippi that there were people right among them
who claimed to be Christians, but were actually
enemies to the very cause of Christ.
Brethren, be followers together of me, and
mark them which walk so as ye have us for an
ensample. (For many walk, of whom I have told
you often, and now tell you even weeping, that
they are the enemies of the cross of Christ:
Whose end is destruction, whose God is their
belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who
mind earthly things.) He ended up by saying
that they "mind earthly things". They work on an
earthly level. They refuse spiritual
things.
Just as in Paul's time, the same
is true today. There are people who profess
Christianity, but when we begin to drop the Word
down on them to check them out, we find they are
actually enemies to the cause of Christ! This
condition has been magnified until there are
countless thousands out there in the religious
world who claim to be Christian, but when you
put the Word of Truth down on them, you will
find they are actually enemies!
Now
friends, if we are going to carry on in the
battle of Armageddon, we must know who our
enemies are. How are we going to fight in the
battle if we don't even know who our enemies
are? This is the very reason the devil has made
the inroads he's made: he keeps mankind in
darkness about who their enemies really are! The
Word of God is given to let us know who our
enemies are. Certainly, even when we know who
our enemies are, we must pray for them and love
them. At the same time, if we are going to go
safely through this battle, we must understand
who our enemies really are.
God wants all
men to be saved. Understand this: read it
right--it doesn't say that all men WILL be
saved--it says God WANTS all men (and women, of
course) to be saved. It is not His Will that ANY
should perish. If He had His way, all men would
be saved, and beyond being saved, He wants them
to come to a knowledge of truth. What knowledge
of truth does He want them to come to? That
there is just ONE God and ONE mediator between
man and God, the man Christ Jesus. Now, you
don't need a preacher to tell you that there are
many supposed intervening mediators between man
and God. It is sad to say, but these mediators
are leading mankind further and further AWAY
from God.
The
Sharp Sickle
Now as we get
right into the lesson, Revelation 14:16 lets us
understand that He that sat on the cloud thrust
in this sharp sickle, the Word of God. Hebrews
4:12 lets us know that the Word of God is
sharper than any two-edged sword. It can come
right down between the marrow and the bone,
right down where you really are. It comes down
between soul and spirit, and is the discerner of
the thoughts and intents of the heart. Everyone
is naked before the Word of God; it works on
every one of us.
There is no way you can
hide from the Word of God. You may be
hypocriting and fooling everybody around you,
but the Word of God knows the intents of your
heart. Brothers and Sisters, it not only knows
it, but if you get around where the True Word is
preached, it will tell on you! The first thing
you know, you'll be thinking that everybody
knows about you. Friends, it isn't the fact that
somebody ran and told the preacher about your
sins; you're just not giving enough credit to
the Word of God. Some people seem to forget that
God knows you altogether. The light and the
darkness are the same to Him. There is nowhere
you can go to hide from Him. He has your number
every day, and He keeps it up to date. He knows
your thoughts from afar off, before they ever
register in your brain.
So the sharp
sickle is the Word of God, and it's gathering
the wheat and it's binding the tares. We are in
the harvest period. The fields are ripe for
harvest. Jesus said in Matthew 13:30, about His
planting the good seed and the enemy sowing
tares among the wheat. Let both grow together
until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I
will say to the reapers, Gather ye together
first the tares, and bind them in bundles to
burn them: but gather the wheat into my
barn.
Some feel this must mean the
second coming of Christ, but in verse 40 of that
same chapter, He explains: As therefore the
tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so
shall it be in the end of this world. Every
Bible student knows that "in" the end of this
world is NOT the same as "at" the end of this
world. Hebrews 9:26 tells us that Christ
appeared on Calvary "in" the end of the world.
When is "in" the end of the world? The last
days, beginning A.D. 33--it is "in" the end of
the world.
When a train goes by, the
engineer is in the engine and the brakeman is in
the end of it, the caboose. Now, when does the
end of the train go by? After it is gone? No,
the end of the train is the last car. So, the
end of the world is the last days. Once in the
end of the world He (Christ) appeared. When did
He appear? On Calvary's Cross to put away sin by
the sacrifice of Himself. The end of the world
is the last days. THESE are the last days. The
Holy Ghost dispensation is the LAST PERIOD OF
TIME.
The
Gospel Binds or
Looses
Now, Jesus
said to let the tares and the wheat grow
together until the harvest. In the harvest, in
the end of the world, He will send for His
angels, or the Greek says, "the messengers".
Somebody might say, "Oh, I think He is sending
angels out of Heaven." Angels out of Heaven
can't tell a saint from a sinner. WE will judge
the angels--they don't judge us! Read 1
Corinthians, the sixth chapter. When it comes to
spiritual things, WE WILL JUDGE THE ANGELS. Who
are His angels? His ministers.
Now what
did He do. Beginning at Pentecost, there was a
morning time harvest. Were the tares bound? Yes!
God expects the saints and sinners to live
together out in the world, but not in the
kingdom. Remember, this is in the kingdom (or in
The Church). When the Day of Pentecost came, God
sent forth His ministers ministering, and they
began to bind the tares. Just follow through the
Acts: Annanias and Sapphira were the first two
bound; and from there right on through, my
friends, the tares were bound and the wheat was
loosed. There was a morning-time
harvest.
Then Jesus began to prophesy of
an evening-time harvest. He said the kingdom
would be likened unto a man who sowed good seed
in his field, and when the wheat came forth, so
did the tares. In Matthew 16:19, Jesus told His
disciples, nd I will give unto thee the keys
of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou
shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven:
and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall
be loosed in heaven. What power did He give
them to bind and loose men? The
Gospel!
Friends, when you hear the
Gospel, if you believe it, it will loose you
from every bondage. It doesn't make any
difference how much you are bound in sin, how
many habits of life have you bound, how much
false religion you're bound with, how many
spirits of the devil have hold on you--if you'll
believe and meet the conditions of the Gospel,
it will loose you! On the other hand, when you
disbelieve it and rise up against it, it binds
you. You will be eternally bound if you don't
change your mind, start believing the Gospel and
meet the conditions of it. So the binding and
loosing power was through the Gospel, as Jesus
sent people forth.
Angels,
Angels, Angels
Revelation
14:17 tells us, And another angel came out of
the temple which is in heaven, he also having a
sharp sickle. The reason it says "another
angel" is because there already have been three
angels mentioned. In verse 14, we saw a picture
of that pillar of a cloud with one like the Son
of man sitting on it with a sharp sickle in His
hand. In verse 17, the ministry also had a sharp
sickle. Every time we talk about this sickle, we
are talking about the Word of God. When it says
that it is a sharp sickle, it means it will
cut.
It merely is a picture of the sickle
in the hand of a man who is in the hand of the
Lord. In Revelation 1:20, it refers to the seven
stars, or angels, which are the pastors of the
seven congregations of The Church in Asia. They
were all in Christ's hand. "In His hand" means
that He can control them: He tells them what to
preach and when to preach it. What the people
"want to hear" doesn't affect them one bit. So
we have a picture of a ministry with a sharp
sickle in his hand, as he is in the hand of the
Lord.
In verse 18, we read of another
angel: And another angel came out from the
altar, which had power over fire; and cried with
a loud cry to him that had the sharp sickle,
saying, Thrust in thy sharp sickle, and gather
the clusters of the vine of the earth; for her
grapes are fully ripe. This sickle is
two-edged. Hebrews 4:12 tells us, For the
word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper
than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the
dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the
joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the
thoughts and intents of the heart. Romans
11:22 tells us to Behold therefore the
goodness and severity of God... Here are the
two sides of the sword, and God can use either
of them. Some people just "cannot
believe" that God could be hard on anyone or
cut people off. There is none who can be as good
as God, and there is none as severe as God when
He decides to turn to severity.
Now, this
last angel talks about putting people in the
winepress of the wrath of God. I realize this
type of preaching doesn't catch the applause of
the kind of world we are living in, but it is
necessary that you hear it and understand it so
that God can bring you to a just judgment. Man,
in his earthly thinking, is trying to bring God
down to his level. It is difficult for some
people to accept the fact that God would send
anyone to hell. We tend to forget that He is
God; we want to bring Him down to man's level.
God is just. Certainly, He is love, but He is
just. We need to behold the goodness and the
severity of God in God's eternal
Word.
Power
Over Fire
This angel of
the 18th verse had power over fire. In Jeremiah
23:29, God asks, Is not my word like as a
fire?...and like a hammer that breaketh the rock
in pieces? He goes right on in Jeremiah
50:23 and says, How is the hammer of the
whole earth cut asunder and broken! how is
Babylon become a desolation among the
nations! How did the hammer of God's Word
get broken so that it lost its force? How has
Babylon become a desolation? When they added to
and failed to preach God's Word, soft-peddled it
and took the hammering qualities out of it, God
moved out and it became a desolate
state.
The same thing will happen to you
and me, individually or collectively, if we
desire to remove the harsh qualities from God's
Word. We can be just as old Israel and ask for
smooth things to be preached to us. Some people
have the idea that they can do about anything
they want to, that God is like a rubber doll
which they can twist around any way they want to
and fit Him into their mold. They are just
deceiving themselves. "Power over fire" merely
means that this angel, or ministry, was already
measuring to the truth which he was preaching.
Do you know why so many preachers don't preach
about so many things? Because they would burn
themselves! A preacher who smokes cigarettes
doesn't preach on the sinfulness of the tobacco
habit!
The three Hebrew boys who were
thrown into the fire had power over fire. They
had power over fire because they wouldn't bend;
they wouldn't compromise. They stood for the
Word just as it was, and when they stood for it
squarely and honored God, then God honored them.
When they threw them in the fire, they stood
right in the fire and praised God. That One
walking in there with them looked like the Son
of man. They had power over fire. Power over
fire means you have been square with God; you
stood straight with God; you would not bend or
bow, but you stood squarely. So, this ministry
had power over fire.
Someone might say,
"That was just the ministry; the people don't
have that power." Well, let's consider
Revelation 15:2, which gives us a picture of the
saints standing on a sea of glass mingled with
fire, a type of the Word of God mingled with the
fire of the Holy Ghost. Here is a picture of a
whole lot of saints standing right in the fire;
they have power over this fire.
Too many
times, the reason we don't see a greater work
done for God is because many people who claim to
be Christians can't sit under fire-and-brimstone
preaching without getting burned. Too often, the
sinner sits and watches the saints get scorched.
In any case, God has a people who can stand
right in the fire, or the burning messages of
God's Word.
Do you remember how God is
going to take away the filth from the daughters
of Zion? With the Spirit of judgment and the
Spirit of burning. So here were people who stood
right on the sea of glass, God's Word, mingled
with the fire of the Holy Ghost. They not only
accepted it, but they were also happy about it.
They were harping on their harps right in the
fire. They were singing songs, rejoicing in the
great privilege that God had given
them.
Whenever you lay hold of this
experience, where you get to the place that you
can sit under the straight preaching of God's
Word, rejoice in it and not get burned by it,
you are ready to go out with victory over every
circumstance. The preaching of God's eternal
Word--straight, hot and heavy--will produce a
people who can stand
something.
The
Vine Of The
Earth
This angel
which came out from the altar, that had power
over fire, cried with a loud cry to Him that had
the sharp sickle, saying, "Thrust in thy sharp
sickle, and gather the clusters of the vine of
the earth; for her grapes are fully ripe." Now
what is He going to do with the sickle this
time? What are the clusters of the vine of the
earth? Jesus said in John 15:5, I am the
vine, ye are the branches... Christians who
have been inducted into The Church through a
born-again experience, or have been grafted into
the true vine, are the branches.
When
John talks about the vine of the earth, he is
talking about the old dragon. He is spoken of as
the vine of the earth, and the many religious
organizations springing off of this vine are
branches. Coming through the Revelation, we
found that paganism (the dragon) was cast down
when Roman Catholicism came up under the papal
state (the beast). He spake as a dragon because
he is a branch-off. We came right on over to
Protestantism; he looked like a lamb, but spake
as a dragon. Right over in our day and time, we
hear dragon talk.
What is dragon talk?
What was the herald and cry of the pagan Roman
Empire? Why did they fight Christianity so? The
cry of the Roman Empire was, "All religions are
all right--one is as good as another." They
would not have bothered Christianity at all if
she would have taken her place right along with
nominal religion, but God is a jealous
God!
Jesus came teaching that there is
only ONE way; every other way is false. Jesus
came teaching that I am the way, the truth,
and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but
by me. John 14:6. Be sure to note in
particular the article "the". He didn't
say "a way"; He didn't say, "one of many
ways"--He said, "I am THE way, THE truth, and
THE life." He also said, "NO man cometh unto the
Father but by ME." True Christianity is just as
narrow today as it was then, and that is what
gets the true Christians in trouble. So when we
talk about the vine of the earth, my friends, we
are talking about this dragon power that reached
clear through the Gospel day with the many
clusters (different religions) springing off of
it.
Their
Rock is Not Our ROCK
Revelation 15:2,3 pictures the
saints standing on a sea of glass, singing the
song of Moses. What is the song of Moses? The
entire song is found in Deuteronomy 32, verses
1-43. Let's consider verses 31-35:
For their rock is not as
our Rock, even our enemies themselves being
judges. For their vine is of the vine of Sodom,
and of the fields of Gomorrah: their grapes are
grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter: Their
wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel
venom of asps. Is not this laid up in store with
me, and sealed up among my treasures? To me
belongeth vengeance and recompence; their foot
shall slide in due time: for the day of their
calamity is at hand, and the things that shall
come upon them make
haste.
Let's consider what they
were singing about. The Revelation tells us this
was the song which the saints sung when they
stood on the sea of glass, the Word of God.
Moses' song lets us know that their vine is the
vine of Sodom, talking about the vine of the
earth. People who will not have Christ as their
rock, or their foundation, choose their own
foundation. Their rock is not OUR ROCK. What
happens when temptation comes? They break down
and sin. They turn around and teach that you
sin, more-or-less, every day. Everybody and
anybody who says that has not found the RIGHT
ROCK. When the trial or temptation comes, their
rock fails them, and is not able to keep
them.
Moses said that their vine ...is
of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of
Gomorrah: their grapes are grapes of gall, their
clusters are bitter. In the previous
message, we found that Babylon is spiritually
called Sodom because of the lewdness and
ungodliness that goes on under the cloak (guise)
of religion. Brothers and Sisters, there is more
filth and corruption going on under the cloak
(guise) of religion today than there is in the
nightclubs and honky-tonks. My friends, when it
goes on under the cloak of religion, it is much
blacker in the eyes of God. So their vine is the
vine of Sodom, and Babylon is spiritually called
Sodom.
We have a picture of an
anti-Christ system of religion stretched clear
out through the Gospel day. It is an anti-Christ
system of religion into which millions have been
grafted without a real experience of Christ.
Because of it, my friends, they are not able to
live holy, not able to live any differently.
They are forever endeavoring to do better, but
never able to because they lack this power that
we talked about a little bit ago.
So, the
clusters of this vine are the various religious
organizations. From this vine of the earth came
forth Roman Catholicism; from this vine of the
earth came forth Protestantism; and the cluster
continues to reach right on out. The further
Protestantism goes, the more division there is.
The dragon, my friends, is working through every
one of them in one way or another to hinder them
from finding the truth of God's eternal
Word.
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