God’s Name Written

 

Revelation 14:1:  “On Mount Zion stood the Lamb, and with him a hundred and forty-four thousand who had His name and His Father’s name written on their foreheads.” (RSV)

 

            The Name of the Lamb and his Father’s name written in their foreheads is not a mark in their flesh, but rather in their spirit and soul:

Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the Lord.  (Lev. 19:28).

 

Ye are the children of the Lord your God: ye shall not cut yourselves, nor make any baldness between your eyes for the dead. (Deut. 14:1).

 

 

 

 

                                                         Not Defiled with Women

 

Revelation 14:4:  “These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth.”

 

            “Not defiled with women” may have as its referent the question of racial purity, which was very much an issue in that era.  For example, there had been much unrest and political dissatisfaction in Judea stemming from the fact that Herod (the Great) was of mixed blood and yet was made king in conflict with their Law.  He was contemptuously called “Herod the Idumean,” because of his mixed blood.  Indeed, he burned the ancient genealogical records so that no one could boast of purer blood than he could.

            Those Jews who lived in Judea prided themselves on being more racially pure than those in the dispersion.  Those in Babylon also laid claim to superior racial purity saying that when Ezra returned to Judea with the exiles that he rendered Babylon as pure racially as fine flour.

            The “sealing” of this remnant of genetic Jews indicates that they still carried the Name of God, even though their genealogical records no longer existed.  It should be stated that, even before Herod destroyed the records, few official records existed for families other than the priests and the lineage of David.  The priestly records had to be maintained in such a way that the wives of the priests were also enrolled in order to show that they were legally qualified as priest’s wives.  It is probably this purity of the marriages of the priests that is indicated by the phrase: “not defiled with women“. (14:4).

            The only truly pure were those who were “born again” by the indisputably pure blood of Jesus Christ.

 

Firstfruits

 

Revelation 14:4:  “These were redeemed from among men, [being] the firstfruits unto God and to the Lamb.”

 

            The Talmudic tradition was that the first-fruits of the barley harvest could only be brought in from the land of Judea and that as near as possible to the city of Jerusalem.  We understand, therefore that these one hundred forty-four thousand who are the “First-fruits” represent those who were redeemed from the land of Judea and believed in Jesus Christ (CNT, vol. 1, 23).

            Lightfoot gives the following:

The sheaf of first-fruits was reaped from the Ashes’-valley of the brook Kedron.  The first day of the feast of the Passover, certain persons, deputed from the Sanhedrim, went forth into that valley, a great company attending them; and very many out of the neighbouring towns flocked together, that the thing might be done, a great multitude being present.

 

The sheaf of first-fruits was reaped with great pomp and ceremony attended by great crowds of people.  A ritual was recited, part of which was:

‘I will reap;’ and they answered, ‘Reap.’– ‘I will reap;’ and they answered, ‘Reap.’  This he said thrice; and they answered thrice, ‘Well,’ (ibid., vol. 1: 84-5).

 

                                                   Gospel Preached before the End

 

Revelation 14:6-7:  “And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, 7 Saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.”

 

            The Lamb has safely sealed the 144,000 from the Land/earth.  The judgments that were pending in 7:1-3 have been held at bay until these were safely sealed by receiving the precious Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost.  This represents those Jews who lived in the “Land” of Judea in the time of Christ and who were the first to be confronted with the Gospel.  We find in the book of Acts that many thousands of these were saved and filled with the Holy Spirit.

            These, symbolically designated as the “144,000,” were then sent into “all the world to preach the Gospel“.  We see this represented in Revelation 14:6.  The Gospel was fully preached to the fleshly Israel in Paul’s lifetime, as declared in Colossians 1:23:

If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and [be] not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which ye have heard, [and] which was preached to every creature which is under heaven; whereof I Paul am made a minister.

 

            The “Firstfruits,” (see verse 4), have been presented to God, so it is time for the full harvest to begin and for the Gospel to go, not only to those who dwell on the land of Judea, (or earth), but to every nation, kindred, tongue and people.  From this point on there is no difference for the pattern of “the Jew first” has already been carried out.

            Verse 8 then declares that the “Holy Land” and the “Holy City” are no longer holy but rather have become “Babylon“:

And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication

            The “Son of Man” upon the white cloud first reaps the harvest of His precious grain, the Firstfruits, and gathers them into His garner. (Revelation 14:13-16).  This is those whom the Lord translated either through death, or catching away, either to heaven or to another location on earth.

            After this, the other reaper is allowed to gather those who have incurred the wrath of God and to cast them into the winepress of His wrath.  This winepress consists of the seven last plagues, which are begun to be poured out in 15:1.

            The period of time between the crucifixion of Christ, about AD 30, and the destruction of the Temple, about AD 70, was about 40 years.  It was this 40-year period that represented the time of testing in order to allow all of the “Jews” of the world to hear the Gospel and make their decision.  Since they had had the full revelation of God they were now held accountable and either must accept God’s promised Redeemer or be cut off and cast into the fire. 

            Paul declared that the Gospel had been fully preached in the “whole world“, Romans 15:19 and Colossians 1:5-6.  This sense of the “whole world” is the same as is used in Luke 2:1 that the “whole world should be taxed”.  It indicated the area of Roman domination.  It represented the extent to which the Jewish people had been dispersed at that time.  Every Jew in the whole world had been confronted with the Gospel by AD 70.  Then the end came for the Jewish nation and fleshly identity.  After that time, those claiming “Jewishness” did so on the basis of their anti-Christian religion called “Judaism.”  This was the “end” foretold by the prophet Daniel in Daniel 9:24-27.  From the time of the destruction of the Jewish nation, the term “Jew” is only rightfully applicable to those in Christ and the term “Gentile” to those without Christ.

            This is the example and pattern for the fact that the Gospel must be preached to the whole Gentile world, which represents the entire planet earth, and then the end will come for the Gentile world also.

 

The Hour of Judgment

 

Revelation 14:7:  “Saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.”

 

            Since the fleshly Israel had fully received the Gospel, the hour of judgment had come.  Since the “Firstfruits” were gathered, that is, those Jews who believed in Christ, only the chaff and stubble were left to be burned. (Isaiah 47:14; Jeremiah 13:24; Matthew 3:12; Luke 3:17.)

            The time has come to worship the universal Creator God, Who made the universe, not merely a local tribal God Who is only concerned with the fleshly Israel.

 

Babylon Is Fallen

 

Revelation 14:8:  “And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.”

 

            The “hour of judgment” announced in verse 7 is the judgment of “Babylon…that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication,” (verse 8).  The earthly Jerusalem is called Babylon because she has fallen into that spiritual category of ‘confusion’ and the name of Jerusalem, “Foundation of Peace”, no longer applies for she has rejected her God and has persecuted and slain His saints.  (See Commentary “Mystery Babylon” at 17:1).

            The word “Babel,” from which “Babylon” derives, means ‘confuse, or confound’ from the root bâlal, as defined in Genesis 11:9: “Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth.”  The root of this word is the source also of the idol god Baal, meaning ‘nothing,’ ‘vanity’ (BDB).

            This “Babylon” of Revelation 14:8 had corrupted “all nations“.  This fits as a description of Jerusalem in that day and time for she had also corrupted all nations through her teachings in the synagogues throughout the dispersion of the Jews into the Roman world and through her international merchants who were powerful in the Roman political system.  Through the Temple tax, levied upon all of the Jews in the dispersion, she had become rich and powerful.

 

Code Names for Jerusalem:

            Jeremiah 25:26 uses a cipher, shêshach for the name Babylon.  In Jeremiah 51:1 another cryptic name is used for Chaldea, i.e. Babylon, by using the term lebqamai.  This latter term employs a method of encoding called ethbash wherein the last letter of the alphabet is used instead of the first, the next to last instead of the second, etc.  These examples furnish a precedent in the Scriptures for the symbolic or encoded use of the name Babylon.  Apocalyptic writing is notable for cryptic use of words and the alphabet.[1]

            Israel was intended to be God’s pleasant vineyard, the source of pleasant wine, (Psalms 80: 8-15; Isaiah 5:1-7; 27:2; Jeremiah 2:21; 6:9; 12:10-11; Ezekiel 17:1-21; Hosea 10:1; John 15:1-4.)  But now she has brought forth the wine of God’s wrath and has become drunken with the wine cup of the blood of the saints and martyrs.  Revelation 16:19 says that God’s fierce wrath is to be poured out upon this “Babylon.”  The wrath that is described in chapters 17 and 18 shows that it was the wicked city Jerusalem that suffered this wrath as we will show in our commentary on those chapters.

 

‘Babylon’ as Rome?

            Since this is the first mention of ‘Babylon’ in the book, it will be well here to deal with the alternate interpretation of this symbol as Rome.

            In the contemporary Jewish culture, the Rabbis and others taught that Jerusalem was “the Great City“, not Rome.  In fact, the hubris of the Jews of that era has never had its equal.  They considered themselves and their nation as the reason for creation and all that followed from it.  Isaiah‘s words in 40:15-17 were taken to mean that “All nations” of the Gentiles were worthless in God’s sight!

Behold, the nations [are] as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing. 16 And Lebanon [is] not sufficient to burn, nor the beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt offering. 17 All nations before him [are] as nothing; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity. (Isaiah 40)

They applied the term “Zion” and “Jerusalem” to themselves and appropriated for their sole enjoyment the good promises and pleasures thereof.  Of the “Gentiles” they write:

Thou hast said that they are nothing and that they are like unto spittle and Thou hast likened the abundance of them to a drop in a bucket (4 Ezra 5, 23-7; 13.37).

 

            I ask, “Would the writer of the book that was to end the entire canon of Scripture have selected so insignificant a subject as Rome?  A city of the Gentiles that was no more than ‘dust and spittle, a drop in the bucket, as less than nothing and vanity?”  I think not.

            There are some serious consequences of misinterpreting the identity of “Babylon the Great” as Rome:

1. It leaves Scripturally unresolved the prophecy of Daniel 7:15-28; 8:9-27; 9:24-27; 12:1-13, and Jesus‘ prophecy in Matthew 23:35-24:35 of the final end of the fleshly nation, Israel and its sacred city, Jerusalem.

2.  It skews the “Seventy Weeks” of Daniel 9:24 and accuses God of “stopping the clock”, an act of deceit which would be totally inconsistent with God’s character.

3. It causes the message to the Churches to lose its impact.  The example of the fallen fleshly Israel, God’s beloved wife, the earthly Jerusalem, the city where He chose to place His Name, are powerful examples of the fact that the Churches, too, though dearly beloved, might fall after the same example of unbelief. 

                        If the figure of Rome is inserted into this picture by misinterpretation, the effect of the example is completely lost, since Rome was never the pure, beloved wife of God and so could not fall from that position.

4. The practical consequence for our daily lives is that the misinterpretation of “Babylon” as Rome seems to legitimize the claims of those of our day “who say they are Jews but are not” to the detriment of the Church as well as political conditions throughout the world, especially in the Middle East.

            IT MAKES A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE!