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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 II
by Brother
Emerson A. Wilson
Grapes Of
Gall
The Revelation said that
"her grapes are fully ripe." The song of Moses
said that "their grapes are grapes of gall." The
"grapes of gall" is an expression of people who
have no real experience with God.
In
Acts, Chapter 8, Simon thought he could buy the
power to give the Holy Ghost to people. Verses
20-23 tell us, But Peter said unto him, Thy
money perish with thee, because thou hast
thought that the gift of God may be purchased
with money. Thou hast neither part nor lot in
this matter: for thy heart is not right in the
sight of God. Repent therefore of this thy
wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought
of thine heart may be forgiven thee. For I
perceive that thou art in the gall of
bitterness, and in the bond of
iniquity.
I want you to see that
false religion is loaded down with people who
have never been born again. Certainly, we want
all the sinners you can bring in, but we are not
going to bring a sinner in and make a Sunday
School teacher out of him (or her); we knowingly
are not going to bring a sinner in and let him
lead the choir or sing in the choir; we are not
going to have a sinner stand behind the pulpit
and preach. In false religion today, however,
preachers are standing there, as Jude said, and
foaming out their own shame by saying, "I sin
every day." Well, if they sin every day, they
are still in the gall of bitterness and the bond
of iniquity; they do have have lot or part in
The Church of the Living God. So, her grapes are
fully ripe; they are the grapes of
gall.
Let us read Joel 3:12,13: Let
the heathen be wakened, and come up to the
valley of Jehoshaphat: for there will I sit to
judge all the heathen round about. Put ye in the
sickle, for the harvest is ripe: come, get you
down; for the press is full, the fats overflow;
for their wickedness is great. (The word
Jehoshaphat means "judgment".) When God
brings us to preliminary judgment, He is doing
it in love. If He would let us go on to a final
judgment without this preliminary judgment, many
would be lost. Through His love and concern,
though, He gives us the preliminary judgment, or
a chance to see our true condition while there
is still life, time, and opportunity to do
something about it.
Revelation 14:19
says, 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. I want to make it plain again
that this is not a final judgment, because a man
is doing it. This was an angel, a messenger, who
took the sickle and cast the vine of the earth
into the winepress of the wrath of God. This is
symbolic talk, merely telling us that the Word
of God will put the pressure on you. The Word of
God will see what is in
you.
The
Winepress
The winepress
consisted of an upper vat and a lower vat, with
a screen inbetween. The grapes were put in the
upper vat, and then they were trampled. As they
were trampled on (by people), the juice (the
fruit of the vine) went down through the screen
and into the lower vat. When you get around
where the preacher is taking the sickle and
putting you in the winepress, you are liable to
get trampled on. You are liable to get some
pressure put on you, and you are liable to get
screened.
God uses the same Word to bring
about unity. Isaiah 2:2 tells us, And it
shall come to pass in the last days, that the
mountain of the Lord's house shall be
established in the top of the mountains, and
shall be exalted above the hills; and all
nations shall flow unto it. God brings about
unity the same way He separates. Let's say that
we are Christians, and He puts us into the
winepress and treads the winepress. Brothers and
Sisters, if we are truly Christians, the fruit
of the vine will flow out. He liquidizes us, as
it were, into real unity.
When you get
into real unity, you will find that we lose our
fleshly recognition. Paul said, in II
Corinthians 5:16, Wherefore henceforth know
we no man after the flesh... In salvation,
we are brought through an experience where we
are all baptized by ONE Spirit into ONE BODY,
the Church of the Living God (the body of
Christ). Well, God puts us in the winepress and
puts the pressure on us. If we are not grapes of
gall, if we are good, sweet grapes, nothing but
sweetness will come out of us. If you squeeze an
old sponge, you only get out of it what is in
it!
In Isaiah 63:3 we read that Jesus has
...trodden the winepress alone; and...there
was none with me... Why? He was God's only
Begotten Son. All men were in sin until He came,
but when He shed His blood on Calvary's Cross,
ascended and sent the Holy Ghost, He perfected
(completed) a plan of salvation whereby people
can be holy.
He now has people to help
Him tread the winepress of the wrath of God. We
studied in the last message about people who
will stand the Spirit of judgment and the Spirit
of burning. Isaiah 62:12 tells us, And they
shall call them, The holy people, The redeemed
of the Lord: and thou shalt be called, Sought
out, A city not forsaken.
I do not
want you to lose the thought that this is the
winepress of the wrath of God. In other words,
this is the part of the preaching of the Bible
that reveals things which stir God's wrath,
things which God definitely hates. Many things
are highly applauded today, but when they are
put in the winepress of the wrath of God, they
begin to show forth what is really there. In
Deuteronomy 32:35, God said, To me belongeth
vengeance and recompence...
What is
God actually putting in the winepress here?
Something that claims to be God's church.
All these abominable idolatries, all these
images built to the beast, say they are all
God's church. Well, God puts them in the
winepress and puts the squeeze on to see what
comes out. If they are really God's church, they
can stand the Word. There will be nothing about
the Word that crosses them up. There will be
nothing about the Word that makes them bitter.
There is no Christian anywhere who gets bitter
at the Word. If you get bitter at the Word,
there is something the matter with YOU, not the
Word of God! This is the message that God is
trying to get to you. When God puts a Christian
in the winepress of His Word, if he is part of
the true vine, Jesus Christ, then the fruit of
the Spirit, the fruit of the vine, will flow
out. If he is not, something else will
happen.
"Without The
City"
Let us go
just a little further. Revelation 14:20 tells
us, And the winepress was trodden without the
city... Here He is speaking about that great
city, Babylon, the vine of earth. It is trodden
without the city because you cannot preach these
messages in Babylon. Why? It would put them out
of business!
Paul said in Hebrews
13:8-12,
Jesus Christ the same
yesterday, and to day, and for ever. Be not
carried about with divers and strange doctrines.
For it is a good thing that the heart be
established with grace; not with meats, which
have not profited them that have been occupied
therein. We have an altar, whereof they have no
right to eat which serve the tabernacle. For the
bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought
into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin,
are burned without the camp. Wherefore Jesus
also, that he might sanctify the people with his
own blood, suffered without the
gate. The priests
could eat the bodies of some sacrifices. After
they killed the sacrifice and shed its blood,
they lived on the meat of the sacrifice, except
for the sacrifice that the high priest killed as
a sin offering--it could not be eaten. It had to
be carried without the camp and burnt up. That
is a type of Christ; He was our sin offering. He
is The LAMB of God that takes away the sin of
the world, and we can eat of our sacrifice. Back
then, they could not partake of the sin
offering, but our sin offering, The LAMB, says,
...Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man,
and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.
John 6:53. Not only did He lay down His life to
redeem us, not only did He shed His blood to
cleanse us, but He ever lives for us to partake
of His life. You eat His flesh when you eat His
Word, and you drink His blood when you drink
into His Spirit.
In Hebrews 13:12,13,
Paul said, Wherefore Jesus also, that he
might sanctify the people with his own blood,
suffered without the gate. Let us go forth
therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his
reproach. As the perfect type of the
offering for sin, Christ went without the city
of Jerusalem, on Calvary's Hill, to die alone.
He did it without the camp, or without the
city.
Paul therefore tells us, Let us
go forth therefore unto him without the camp,
bearing his reproach. For here have we no
continuing city, but we seek one to come.
Hebrews 13:13,14. In Babylon (false religion)
you have no continuing city. You look for no one
to come. Every human organization is looking for
a millennium; they are looking for this city to
come.
You and I have come to the truth,
according to the 12th Chapter of Hebrews, have
already come to that continuing city, the one
that Abraham looked for. Where have we come?
Unto the knowledge of truth. I don't just mean
having the understanding--it's one thing to
receive the knowledge of truth and another thing
to "come into it". The Word of God will get the
message to you of where you truly belong; then
it is another thing for you to have the right
attitude and be submissive enough to move
accordingly to the knowledge of truth which God
has given you.
"In Her
Was
Found...Blood"
What came out
of the winepress when the vine of the earth was
pressed? Had they really been the fruit of the
vine, there would have been juice come out, but
when He put those "professing" Christians into
the winepress, blood came out instead. According
to Joel 3:13, the reason blood came out was
because their wickedness was great. The second
reason blood came out when the vine of the earth
(Babylon) was put in the winepress of God's Word
was because her sins had reached unto heaven
(Revelation 18:5). Revelation 18:24 tells us,
And in her was found the blood of prophets,
and of saints, and of all that were slain upon
the earth.
False religion won't own
that they are the same organization which killed
the prophets. Roman Catholicism won't own the
fact that she is the same organization which
killed sixty to ninety million Christians, but
she is the same. It all has been covered up, but
all you have to do is put her in the winepress
of God's eternal Word, and the guilt will show
up. When He put this vine of earth in the
winepress of the wrath of God, instead of the
sweetness of the fruit of the vine coming out,
blood came out; glood guiltiness, the guilt of
killing the prophets, the guilt of slaying the
saints.
There is much hypocrisy going on
in religion today that is well covered up, but
Jesus knows all about it. When you get around
where the truth is declared, Jesus is going to
tell you all about it. Whether it's in your
individual life or in the organization you are
in, you'll hear about it.
In Matthew, the
23rd chapter, we have a picture of Jesus dealing
with this very thing in the Scripture: Woe
unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and
garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, And
say, If we had been in the days of our fathers,
we would not have been partakers with them in
the blood of the prophets. False religion
purports the same thing today, but what did
Jesus say? Wherefore ye be witnesses unto
yourselves, that ye are the children of them
which killed the prophets. Matthew 23:31.
Those people were garnishing the sepulchres of
those of their past, saying they wouldn't have
killed them, yet they were witnesses to
themselves because they had the same spirit
their fathers possessed. It is the same spirit
that exists yet today.
In the next verse,
He said, Fill ye up then the measure of your
fathers. Matthew 23:32. How were they
witnesses against themselves? They were rising
up against Him, and in a few days, they were
going to kill Him, the Only Begotten Son of God.
How does it go on today? I don't leave it all in
Catholicism--it goes on right in the reformation
movement. They garnish the sepulchres of past
reformers, and fight God's ministers of today.
They are witnesses against
themselves.
You can always tell
hypocrisy: it praises God's men of past ages,
and has no use for God's men of today. Jesus,
the Son of God, preached to these hypocrites,
and they said, "Abraham is our father."
Jesus answered them, "If ye were Abraham's
children, ye would do the works of Abraham."
(John 8:39). The hypocrisy of religion today is
always supposedly praising the holy men of past
ages, but they don't really love them. If they
did, they would take them for an example and
follow their
teachings.
The
Governing Power
Revelation
14:20 says, ...blood came out of the
winepress, even unto the horse bridles...
Oh, what a Scripture for millennialists to take
off with. They tell us that in the "Battle of
Armageddon", there will be such a slaughter that
the blood will run in the streets--clear up to
the horses' bridles. Friends, first of all,
there is no such day coming. The "Battle of
Armageddon" is in a heated stage right now, in
its most deceptive period. We are in that most
deceptive time. Jesus said that if it were
possible, the very elect will be deceived in
these days (Matthew 24:24).
When John
talked about the blood running up to the horse
bridles, we must not go out of the Revelation.
He is referring to the symbolic horses of the
Revelation: the red, black and gray horses. The
Revelation shows the red horse symbolizing
Paganism in another way that came against
Christianity.
The True Church is
symbolized as going forth on a white horse. He
that sat on him had a bow in His hand. The bow
is a symbol of the new covenant. Just as God
made a covenant with Noah when He hung the bow
in the sky, He here is making a covenant with a
lost and dying world: if you will repent and
confess your sins, I will forgive and save you.
Then the red horse came against her, then the
black horse and then the gray horse. Death and
hell followed that apostasy, or the gray
horse.
Now, the blood came up to the
horse bridles of the red, black and gray horses.
Why did it come up there? Rome said she didn't
kill the Christians. Protestantism said she
didn't kill the Christians. Both of them say the
empire, or the civil forces, did it. Yes, my
friends, the civil forces carried it out, but
just as the horse's bridle governs the horse,
even so the church governed the civil powers and
gave the dictation for the killing to be
done.
James said, Behold, we put bits
in the horses' mouths, that they may obey us;
and we turn about their whole body. James
3:3. Even so, when the blood ran out, the
guiltiness of the blood which had been shed came
up to the horse bridles, letting us know that
the horse may have done the warfare, but the
bridle was the guiding force. Rome and false
religion are hiding today. They say that the
woman is riding the beast. It is true that the
eighth beast is ferocious, but the woman is
riding, guiding and controlling
it.
Revelation 14:20 says that the blood
flowed out for sixteen hundred furlongs. That's
150 miles in American measurements. When we
think of 150 miles in length, and remember that
even as it is long, it is immense. It takes a
wide area. This thing in the sight of God is
terrible. This blood reaches from the time that
martyrdom began all the way up to our day. It is
not only long, but it is immense, or wide. God
isn't getting excited over some little
thing.
I am not saying that everybody in
Protestantism has that spirit; I am talking
about the spirit of the system. The Bible says
if you stay there, according to Revelation 18,
you'll get that spirit. God has good people in
some of those organizations, where there has
been enough truth preached for a man to get
saved. In Revelation 18:4, He calls them "His
people" and says, ...Come out of her, my
people, that ye be not partakers of her sins,
and that ye receive not of her plagues. God
not only would have all men to be saved, but He
also would have all men to come to a knowledge
of the truth. You will know the truth and the
truth will make you free!
I want to say
again, as I said in the very beginning: we need
to know who our enemies are. In the military,
before we went overseas, we had to study all
kinds of airplanes so we wouldn't shoot at our
own. The enemy would paint their planes just
like ours! They wanted to come right in our area
and make everybody think they were American
planes, then bomb us. We had to study what our
enemy looked like, what kind of uniforms he
wore, and all about him.
Now, this is all
God is doing. You may feel it is wasted time,
but God is doing you a favor. Everybody out
there who "claims" to be a Christian is NOT a
child of God. Some of them are deceived, and
some of them are deceivers. Some of them are in
darkness as to what the truth is. All of them
need to be prayed for, treated right, loved, and
helped. Reach every one you can, but friends, we
need to understand what kind of a system is
working against us. We need to take a look at it
as God looks at it. For too long, we have formed
our own conclusions about too many things. Or we
have blindly followed along with what has become
mere "tradition" and ritual instead of seeking
the Lord and His wisdom. We can profess what we
want, but it is how we stand up against the
straight Word of God that determines what we
really have or do not
have.
Are You
Bound Or Free?
This Word of
Truth will loose you. When Jesus gave the
disciples the keys to the kingdom, He said,
And 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. Matthew 16:19. In the 20th
chapter of John, He said, hose soever sins ye
remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose
soever sins ye retain, they are
retained.
A lot of people say the
disciples had a special power. No sir. The
Gospel is the power that remits man's sins or
leaves him bound in them. He gave them the
Gospel to preach. It binds and it loosens; it
remits or it leaves you in the sad condition
that you're in. I'm glad to tell you that the
Gospel can still loose you. It makes no
difference how bound you are: the Gospel can
still loose you if you are ready to meet His
teachings and humble yourself before the Word of
God, allowing it to work in your heart and life
the way that God sees fit.
God is love,
and there is no love like the love of God. But
let me tell you something: there is no wrath to
be felt or seen like there is when love turns to
wrath. You can talk all you want, but God is
stirred more deeply by religious conditions than
He is with the filth and corruption that is
going on in the streets of our
cities.
When Jesus walked here on earth,
He met people bound with legions of devils and
deep in sin. He had compassion on them and
delivered them. On the other hand, when He
confronted the hypocrites, fire got in His eyes.
He became so stirred one time that He took a
whip and ran them clear out of His Father's
house! There is a nother side to the story. May
God help us to know that our lives are free from
hypocrisy.
Make your commitment. Give up
to God and let Him take over your life to the
place that you have power over fire where you
can stand on the sea of glass mingled with fire.
God expects you to reflect the truth of God's
Word out from your life, as you stand on the sea
of glass mingled with fire and rejoice in God's
goodness. | | |
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