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Let me read to you from Revelation
14, 17 through 20, page 22. This comes from the majority
text. Then another angel came out of
the temple, the one in heaven, he too having a sharp sickle.
And another angel came out from the altar, having authority over
the fire, And he called out with a loud cry to the one having
the sharp sickle saying, thrust in your sharp sickle and gather
the grape clusters of the vine of the earth because her grapes
are ripe. So the angel swung his sickle
at the earth and gathered the vine of the earth and threw it
into the great wine press of God's fury. The winepress was
trampled outside the city and blood came out of the winepress
up to the horses bridles for a thousand six hundred stadia
Amen father we thank you for your word. We looked in the last
section at the incredible victory of your gospel and And we're
looking today at the incredible victory of your judgments. And
I pray that we would glory in who you are, glory in the fact
that you hate sin and you either redeem men from sin or you judge
them in their sin. But I thank you, Father, that
sin will one day be purged from this world. And we look forward
to that time when even our bodies will be redeemed and we will
be forever freed from every vestige of sin. Do bless the preaching
of your word. Enable me to bring it faithfully
and each one of us to worship you as we respond to it. In Jesus' name, Amen. Well this passage I just read
is pretty scary and I will admit it is kind of gross. But it is
inspired and is intended for our edification. And I want to
briefly comment on the passage as a whole because it has definitely
been used by atheists. If you go online, you will see
atheists using passages like this to show how Christianity
is so contradictory. They will say, you know, that
Christianity says God is loving, kind, generous. gracious, patient,
and yet here is a passage that shows the exact opposite. You
see, the scripture is contradictory. Well, hopefully you'll recognize
that there is no contradiction whatsoever. The Apostle John
holds all of God's attributes together as a coherent whole. You can never look at one attribute
without seeing it in relationship to all that God is. And we have
a false doctrine of love if we do so. God's love is a holy love. God's love is a patient love.
Well, the same is true of God's wrath. Wrath and patience go
together. They imply each other. Have we
seen patience in this chapter? I would say yes, absolutely yes. In fact, it is astounding at
how slow God has been to wrath when you look at the way in which
these enemies of Christ have been treating him. By the way,
the concept of patience doesn't even make sense unless you take
it in light of the attribute of God's wrath. So no contradiction.
Has He shown love? Absolutely yes. He has been saving
the very people who have been persecuting Him. In fact, the
144,000 that this chapter begins with are people who once were enemies
of Christ and yet they have become trophies of His grace, His mercy,
and His love. And we saw that during the entire
time that the Jewish nation was persecuting and killing Christians,
God was still saving them. God was still redeeming them
to himself. And he continues to do so. Verses
14 through 16 show an ongoing harvest of souls from the land
of Israel for an indefinite period of time after the war. And so
for God to continue to save this rebellious people, over the next
50 years is an astounding tribute to his patience and his mercy
and his love. Now here's the point. When Israel
persisted in rejecting the offers of the good news, when they persisted
in their fighting against Christ between the years 80, 70, and
132, God is perfectly just in dropping the hammer on them once again, and it's my conviction
that verses 17 through 20 have nothing whatsoever to do with
the war of 67 through 74. This is the Bar Kokhba Rebellion.
This was 132 to 136, and we'll go through it. Hopefully you'll
see, oh yeah, it perfectly matches. There is every detail fitting. But in any case, this chapter
shows that mercy does not ever preclude God's right to judge. And God's judgments do not ever
preclude God's right to save, even in the midst of judgment.
There would be no mercy to us if God had not poured out His
wrath upon His Son, Jesus Christ. And those who reject God's offers
of forgiveness and mercy and love have only themselves to
blame when they experience His wrath. Okay, so with that objection
out of the way, let's take a look at this passage phrase by phrase.
It really is an amazing prophecy. The first phrase highlights the
fact that this nasty death harvest was a harvest ordered by the
Father. The same Father who ordered the
harvest of souls to be saved in the previous verses. Verse
17 begins, and another angel came out of the temple, the one
in heaven, he too having a sharp sickle. So just as the previous
angel had been taking a message from the throne, giving it to
Christ, And the father, the temple was God's throne room. This angel
is now bringing a message from that same temple throne room
to order a harvest of death. Now the point is we can never
presume upon God's love and his patience. No one could deny that
God had been unbelievably patient in the 58 years after the war. In fact, the times were so good
From the Jews' perspective of that era under the Bar Kokhba
rule, he was the Prince of Israel, that many people thought God
is surely for us, but we should not confuse God's patience with
His approval. And in the same way, God has
been unbelievably patient with America, but I guarantee you,
He does not approve of America. And we need to really be convinced
of this. America has cast God's laws out
of the schools, out of the courts, basically out of the public arena.
America has been a land that is filled with bloodshed of abortion
and euthanasia and ungodly wars and other forms of murder. You
look at pornography and sexual sins, it's just pervasive everywhere. You see it in the news, you know,
people, being accused of various forms of ungodliness. It's filled
with theft. For example, Government approved
theft in the form of asset forfeiture loss, ungodly taxes, theft from
orphans and widows in the form of inheritance tax. And yes,
the inheritance tax, when a person dies, is a form of gross theft
from orphans and widows. And God has really strong things
to say about that. The point is, God's patience
with America has nothing whatsoever to do with God's approval of
America. We are ripe for judgment and
all it would take is a word from his temple and similar carnage
could happen to America as well. Now some people just question
that. How in the world could any angel ever be sent by God
to bring carnage in America? Well this phrase and there's
many other phrases in the book of Revelation indicate, no, God
God does indeed do this to all nations. Second, notice that
this judgment was carried out by angels. The angel in verse
17 carries a sickle, and he is ready to use it. And then there's
a second angel that has authority over fire. By the way, we've
seen in the past various angels have their specialties. And he
commands the first angel to begin the death toll. Just as angels
were used to kill millions of people in the Old Testament,
God was going to use angels to kill millions of Jews in this
war, and actually of Gentiles as well. We'll look at that in
a bit in this war of 132 to 136. Now how they do it, we're not
told. But I think we need to read history
in light of the invisible. That's what Revelation is doing.
It's showing us a behind-the-scenes view of why things are happening
on the earth. Because there's demons, there
are angels, there are spiritual battles that go behind the human
battles. Now when did this calamity happen?
Most preterists claim that it happened during the war of AD
66 through 70 because they are many times fixated on that small
window of time. For example, Chilton quotes Josephus
who said, Galilee was all over filled with fire and blood. But
the specific event that Josephus is talking about there happened
long before Nero died. In other words, it happened long
before chapter 13, verse 3. And so he's mixing up the order
of historical events. He's mixing up the order of these
chapters. Ralph Bass quotes numerous other
historical situations in that war that on the surface might
seem like they fit this prophecy, but they too are too early. Now
certainly I agree with Bass that the Jordan River was just chock
full of bodies. It was filled with blood from
beginning to end much earlier in the war and the Sea of Galilee
and other lakes were filled with body and with blood, but they're
too early. In AD 70, there were so many
bodies inside Jerusalem that they started stacking them up
as high as the horse's bridles. And when they ran out of room
on the roads to stack them up, they started flinging them outside
of the body. So there was a lot of gross stuff
that happened in that first war. But here's the problem. None
of those references fit the historical sequence of chapters 13 through
14. And for me, exegesis has to trump
secular history. And I'm not going to go through
every word. And that proves a sequence in chapters 13 through 14, but
just look at a couple of them here verse 8 of chapter 14 Says
of Jerusalem and another a second angel followed saying it fell
it fell Babylon the great she made all the nation's drink of
the wine of the rage of her fornication so it uses the past tense to
indicate that that the fall of Jerusalem had already happened
earlier in A.D. 70, and this angel's rubbing
it in, the unthinkable has happened. But there are also indications
of ongoing sequence of time. If you take a look at verse 13,
it uses the phrase, from now on. Okay, so that's a hint there's
gonna be some progress of time. When we look at verses 14 through
16 last time, we saw that God willed the harvest of souls to
be taken out of the land of Israel after AD 70. And of course, from
history, we know that there were many, many Jews who were saved
between those years, next 58 years, basically. Now it would
be technically possible to see verses 14 through 16 as only
occurring in the years 70 to 74. rather than the beginning of
an ongoing harvest. But hopefully, when I preached on that section,
you were convinced, okay, this is the harvest of the whole next
generation of Jews. But even if you took verses 14
through 16 as only referring to 70 through 74 AD, and verses
17 through 20, we see hints, this section has to happen after the events of
verses 14 through 16. So to me there's no way of avoiding
a post AD 74 fulfillment. For example when he says, then
another angel came, both the words then and another indicate
that the angel came after the first angel had already finished
his work, done his work. To say he also had a sharp sickle
logically implies the first one had already come with a sickle,
right? So you can't invert those two, which is what some people
do. They have these verses occurring before verses 14 through 16. The words and, and, and so also
hint at a sequence. But for me, the most obvious
hint is the nature of the two harvests in this chapter. Verses 14 through 16 are the
wheat harvest, verses 17 through 20 are the grape harvest, and
in literal history they're separated by quite a bit of time. So Kendall
Easley's commentary says in the world of the first century The
grape harvest, otherwise called the vintage, was as distinct
from the grain harvest as, say, Easter is from Thanksgiving.
They occurred at two different times of years. The grain harvest
was done by mid-June. Grapes were harvested in September
and October. Thus, the judgment scene pictured
in these verses must be distinctly later than the grain harvest. How much later? Then he says
he doesn't know. because he's putting it off into
the future. His exegesis is correct, but he's got the timing wrong.
But if verses 17 through 20 follow sequentially after verses 14
through 16, and if verses 14 through 16 follow sequentially
after verses 6 through 13, in other words, if they're sequenced
all through the chapter, then it's absolutely obvious where
this carnage of death has to occur. There's only one time
in Jewish history that it could occur, and that was in the War
of Bar Kokhba. So the historical flow of this
chapter is this, 144,000 of verses 1 through 5 came out of hiding,
and we showed this before, came out of hiding after The temple
was destroyed after Jerusalem had fallen in 8070, and they
begin this evangelism over the next years, and not only win
many Jews to Christ, but they also win many Gentiles throughout
the world to Christ. But the next generation sees
the final judgment in Israel, in which virtually every Jew
was scattered to the winds. From 136 AD and on, Jews were
forbidden to enter the city of Jerusalem. It took centuries
before they were allowed back in. And I've written in my notes
here a couple of full preterist objections, two full preterist
objections to my interpretation, and they're very easily dealt
with. I'm not gonna bore you with them this morning, but I'll
put them up on the web. But I want you to notice next
the urgency of this commanded judgment. Verse 18 says, he called
out with a loud cry. Now just as we saw that the loud
cry of verse 15 showed the urgency of missions, this loud cry shows
the urgency of judgment. Why would judgment have urgency?
I mean, we can understand the urgency of missions. We don't
want people going to hell. But why would judgment be elevated
to an equal sense of urgency? Well, I believe it's because
over and over again in the Old Testament, God prophesied that
when Jesus came and established his kingdom, one of two things
would always have to triumph. Either missions would triumph
or judgment would triumph. The integrity of Christ's new
covenant kingdom rises or falls on the advancement of either
missions or judgments. Almost as if the angels realize
there is no kingdom unless one or the other of these two things
are successful. For example, Psalm 2 says that
once Jesus ascends to the right hand of the Father, God guarantees
either missions or judgment. The way he words it is nations
either kiss the Son and enter into friendship with Jesus, or
they are broken by his rod of iron. Those are the only two
options, and God guarantees that those two will happen. Now, here
is the transition. In the Old Testament, that was
not the case. For example, Egypt went for many
centuries in rebellion against God and didn't seem to suffer
too much in the way of judgments. And in Acts 17, verse 30, God
says, it's now going to change. He says, in the past, God winked
at those things. He ignored, he overlooked those
rebellions, but now he's no longer gonna overlook any rebellion
of nations, but now commands all men to repent. So it's Christ's
kingdom that necessitates such urgency. Now why do I emphasize
such an obvious point? I emphasize it because most evangelicals
just don't seem to even think about America being qualified
for judgment. They just ignore that. They do
not plan for judgment. In fact, their long-term plans
always seem to assume that judgment is not going to happen. They
base their plans for the future on what has happened in the past,
and they're forgetting we live in a cause and effect universe
where judgment is going to bring, I mean, not judgment, rebellion
is going to bring certain effects in this universe. And apart from
repentance, I don't see how judgment is avoidable. If you think America
will continue indefinitely to experience God's patience, I
think you're ignoring the urgency of this chapter. If Christ is
king, missions is urgent. If Christ is king and people
persist in rebelling against that kingship, judgment is urgent. Psalm 2 guarantees one or the
other is going to happen. Either they kiss the sun or the
nations will perish in His ire. Now you might object, well America's
been in rebellion for a long time. We've not seen judgment
in America. That's actually not the case. There's been quite
a few judgments in America's history, followed by times of
repentance, however small those repentances might be, you know,
even as recently as the 1900s, you know. I think that the Great
Depression was a kind of judgment. The presidents, tyrannical presidents
we got was a kind of judgment from God. And it actually resulted
in a kind of revival. And coming back, in fact, Congress
produced a paper. You ought to read it sometime.
It's phenomenal. It's either in the 40s or early
50s. when they Massive paper showing we are a Christian nation.
We must return to God's law we It's a fabulous paper basically
saying that Christ is the king of this nation. By the way, that
was the time that they made the national pledge one nation under
God, and that's when they put on our money in God we trust.
So there have been judgments and repentance a number of times,
and given the moral state of our nation today, I think we
need to be preparing in some ways for judgment or start working
like crazy to bring our nation to repentance, but we cannot
ignore it. Now, of course, there's the timing issue that only God
is aware of, and that timing issue can be seen in the word
ripe. Or as the New King James translates it, fully ripe, translates
Akhmadzo. Verse 18 says, thrust in your
sharpsicle and gather the grape clusters of the vine of the earth
because her grapes are ripe, or are fully ripe. It's sort
of like, you know, when Moses wrote Deuteronomy, he told the
Israelites, by the way, you can conquer these nations, but you
cannot conquer these nations. Leave them alone because their
cup of iniquity is not full. They were not ripe for judgment. So that brings up an interesting
question. How do you tell if a nation is ripe for judgment?
What makes them so? The only God can know when we
are fully ripe for judgment, Leviticus 18 gives one fairly
surefire way that you know that it is near. And that is when
perverse sexual sins are widespread and are defended in society. When I went to Covenant College,
Dr. James Hurley gave a series of
lectures that was summarizing some of his doctoral research.
It was just fascinating. And his thesis was that based
on Leviticus 18, that the sexual decline of a nation is an infallible
barometer by which you know it is about to be annihilated or
at least hammered severely. And he went through nation after
nation, empire after empire over the last 3,000 years and demonstrated
this has been a consistent theme. Almost always the nation or empire
degenerated into sexual perversity just before it was hammered. And so it was their sexual attitudes
that showed their ripeness for judgment. So let me read from
Leviticus 18 because it almost exclusively lists sexual sins
as the immediate precursors to Canaan's bloody judgments. after listing voyeurism, which
is equivalent to pornography. So voyeurism, incest, sexual
abuse of women, pedophilia, sacrificing children to Moloch for sexual
reasons, adultery, homosexuality, lesbianism, and bestiality. God
then says this, do not defile yourselves with any of these
things, for by all these the nations are defiled, which I
am casting out before you. For the land is defiled, therefore
I visit the punishment of its iniquity upon it, and the land
vomits out its inhabitants. And he goes on to guarantee this
is the way God works with nations. Anyway, you could summarize all
of the sins that are listed in Leviticus 18 in two modern words,
abortion, and sex. Those two words. Okay? This is
what has made nations ripe for judgment. God says this is what
made Israel ripe for judgment. I won't go into all of the rabbinic
justification for gross sexual immorality that was rife, by
the way, from the fall of Jerusalem all the way up to the Bar Kokhba
rebellion, but you don't have to read very far in the unedited
Sonsino edition of the Talmud to see. It is gross. It's stuff
I cannot repeat here from the pulpit. It was there, but the
Palestinian Talmud, which tended to be a lot more conservative
of the two, much more conservative than the Babylonian one, It summarizes
why this Bar Kokhba massacre happened. Over 1,000 villages
were destroyed. It says, because of contention,
because of witchcraft, because of fornication. These rabbis
that lived in the second century, they said that fornication was
just rife. It was everywhere, and witchcraft
was rife. The sexual slide into the sewers that happened in Israel
is a pretty sure indicator that a nation is teetering on the
verge of destruction. And it wouldn't be right for
me to move on without making some applications to America.
Are we ripe for judgment in America? You be the judge. based on Leviticus
18. Every one of the perversions,
without exception, every one of the perversions in Leviticus
18 is present in America. It's not just present, it is
practiced and defended at the highest levels of government.
As I mentioned earlier, pornography and various forms of sexual sin,
rife not just in our social sphere out there, but in the church
of Jesus Christ itself, premarital sex, it is rife in our culture
as well as in the church. So is adultery, divorce, ungodly
forms of birth control that lead to abortion. These forms of lawlessness
are rife in culture, but they are unbelievably rife in the
church of Jesus Christ as well. Homosexuality and lesbianism
has started to be defended even in some evangelical pulpits. In fact, it is Christians who
preach against such things who are targeted as the heretics
who now need to be persecuted. Psalm 12 verse 8 says, the wicked
prowl on every side when vileness is exalted among the sons of
men. Has vileness been exalted in America? Absolutely. Yes,
it has. The GOBT cause is not only protected
in virtually every state, but it is exalted, it is glorified,
it is promoted. They're getting more and more
bold. I just read a couple of articles in mainstream media
news. that was talking about these
experts that are now trying to legalize a person marrying their grandmother
and other forms of perversion. I can tell you the names of congressmen
who are saying every orientation, polyamory, you name it, needs
to be legalized. And so abortion as well continues to
be a holocaust. So are we ripe for judgment?
I think if we measure by the measuring stick of Leviticus
18, we may well be. And I would say we've got to
learn to apply the scripture to our current events. Do not
act as if judgment is completely avoidable for our
future. I plead with you to Realize there is a high potential and
God could do it in any number of ways He could do it overnight
by taking down the electric grid and it would it might take years
to recover from that International war failing dollar China's bubble
blowing up There's any number of creative ways that the Lord
could use to bring the similar carnage greater than America
has ever experienced in the past So could God have mercy and continued
patience? Yes, he can. But the point of
this passage, we cannot presume upon it when we see that our
nation is ripe for judgment. Now, I'll just briefly mention
a point that I've harped on many times before. The term teis gais,
that's the Greek word for the earth, that's the way Pickering
translates it here, is a reference throughout this book to the land
of Israel. It should be translated as the land. This is not a worldwide
judgment, as many commentaries try to take it. It's for a very
specific number of miles within a certain country, Israel. It's
not universal. 1,600 stadia that it specifies. It's 184 miles. And likewise,
every other time that the city is used in this book to describe
a wicked city, it's referring to Jerusalem. Also, Israel was
symbolized by the vine in the Bible. And even in Talmudic literature,
I've been reading, wow, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of
pages in the Talmud, and over and over again, that's just the
common symbol. Israel was the vine. And so when
verse 19 says, so the angel swung his sickle at the land and gathered
the vine of the land and threw it into the great winepress of
God's fury. Any first century readers who
looked at that, they would say, okay, Israel's in trouble. That's
basically a judgment that he's talking about. Now we've already
mentioned that God had good reason to be furious with Israel. They
had persisted in persecuting Christians all the way up to
the Bar Kokhba rebellion, and actually Bar Kokhba himself,
who was the prince of Israel, He forcibly, it was on pain of
death if Christians did not renounce their Christian faith, renounce
Jesus. So he was one of the greatest persecutors according to many
of the early church fathers, including Justin Martyr. The
Jewish nation had become more and more hardened in the rebellion.
Perversity had repeatedly rejected God's offers of clemency. So
all that was left for them was wrath and fury. They had no one
but themselves to blame. Now I want you to notice that
the blood flow takes place outside of Jerusalem, not inside the
city. Now because so much of this book
is related to the destruction of Jerusalem itself, he is making
this point crystal clear. This is something new. Verse
20. The wine press was trampled outside the city. So both the
trampling of the grapes and the blood that results doesn't happen
in the city, it happens completely outside the city. And that fits
the description of the Bar Kokhba rebellion perfectly. That messianic
pretender did not possess Jerusalem. Rome did. All the killing happened
outside Jerusalem and it was widespread over the entire land
of Israel. And this is why it's amazed me
that so many preterist commentaries look inside Jerusalem for a fulfillment. It's got to be outside. Now let
me give you a brief introduction to that war. It's a war that's
very well known to Jews even to this day. You can read it
in just about any Jewish history. Very, very well known. Jews chafed under the restrictions
that the Romans had brought upon the nation. A minor rebellion
popped up in 110 AD under the leadership of Papus and Lulianus. Their headquarters was in Lod.
And so the emperor of Rome, he just went to Lod, massacred every
citizen there, hoping that that would pacify Israel. It did the
exact opposite. It made them want to fight. They
fought both Trajan and later Hadrian. Now at some point, Shimon
bar Koziba claimed to be the promised Messiah of Numbers 24,
verse 17. which says, a star will shoot
forth from Jacob. Now, all by itself, that was
a horrible blasphemy. He hated Christ. He said, no,
I am the Messiah. And the rabbis, most of them,
believed it. And so the crowds of the citizens
gathered around him, and they were very enthusiastic. The chief
rabbi, Akiva ben Joseph, in effect crowned him as Messiah, gave
him the name Kokhba. So he was Kosiba, now he's Bar
Kokhba, which means star, based on that prophecy. And the Talmud
claims that he initially had an army of 200,000 men that was
so dedicated to Bar Kokhba, their price of
admission, which was an incredible honor to be a part of his army,
the price of admission was to cut off one of their fingers.
So that was the test of loyalty. You had an army of 200,000 people
with one missing finger on each of them. His rebellion was initially
very successful. It lasted for six years. He successfully
destroyed at least one Roman legion, completely wiped them
out, and so decimated other legions of Rome that Hadrian was forced
to conscript boys to fill the ranks. There were not enough
men to go around to fill the ranks of these legions. So again,
what I'm pointing out, which many commentators miss, is that
it's not just Israel that's being judged. Rome is being judged
for the rebellion against Christ as well. God's covenant goes
over the entire earth. All nations in rebellion to Christ
will be judged. He's an equal opportunity judger,
okay? Eventually, Bar Kokhba's army
grew to 400,000 soldiers and presented an incredibly formidable
force against the Romans. Hadrian was so hard-pressed.
that he had to bring most of his legions and most of his auxiliary
armies there and he accompanied them. This was going to be all
out war. He was going to put down Israel
once and for all time. He was determined to annihilate
the resistance and he attempted to exterminate the Jews. But
it was easier said than done. For somewhere between four to
five years, Bar Kokhba had an almost unbroken series of victories. It was just phenomenal. In fact,
his successful wars became so famous that people came from
other nations who weren't even Jews and wanted to join his army. They thought he was probably
the best possibility of overthrowing the shackles of Rome. He really did seem unbeatable.
So keep that in mind when things go well in a given nation for
a period of time. Anyway, reversals eventually
started to happen and he had to retreat to Bitar. But even
at Bitar he was so well fortified and supplied he could have won
the war if he had not been betrayed. But he was betrayed. Bitar was
overrun, massacres happened throughout Israel, rabbis were tortured
publicly, reading the Torah became a crime, became a crime for any
Jew to enter Jerusalem, became a crime actually for them to
circumcise their children. This started an eight to 10 year
holocaust of suspected Jews unmatched by anything in Jewish history,
as just about any Jewish history book will tell you. It is incredible,
we'll go through a little bit of that. Now this bloody harvest
of souls took place entirely, as I mentioned, outside of Jerusalem.
Verse 20, the wine press was trampled outside the city. During the whole war, Jews did
not have access to Jerusalem. 100% of the massacres happened
outside that city. For example, the fortress of
Bitar saw hundreds of thousands of Jewish men, women, and children
slaughtered with the infuriated Romans bashing babies' brains
out on rocks. And when the rocks were completely
covered, they would go on to other rocks. It was horrific. That region of Bitar had 500
synagogues, each of which had a school that various places
in Talmud say had no less than 500 students in them. So when
he fled to Bitar, they were part of this massacre. There was a
massacre of 250,000 school children, only one surviving. Many more adults were killed
at the same fortress. Now, one historical record, just
to give you a little bit of a picture, I won't go through all of the
details, but to give you a little bit of a picture, one historical
record says that the Emperor Hadrian had a vineyard in Israel
that was 18 miles long by 18 miles wide. Now, 18 Roman miles
is only 17, approximately 17 American miles, but so you got
17 by 17 by 17 by 17 and all around
this vineyard he made a wall of bodies that stretched sideways
as far as your arms could reach and the height of a man which
if you look at archaeology the average height of of men in that
day was around 5 foot. So you got a 5 foot wall stretching
all the way around this vineyard 68 miles of bodies. That's just one, one of the fortresses,
the fortress of Bitar. And by the way it was in a literal
vineyard with literal, literal wine presses. It's very interesting
in terms of the symbology. Hadrian would not allow anyone
to take the bodies and bury them but Bitar was not the only place
where Jews were massacred in a grisly Holocaust. There were
other massacres of 49 more fortresses and according to one Roman historian
at 985 more villages. The Jewish records say it was
more villages than that but A lot of people say, OK, let's stick
with that figure, 985. The killings continued outside
of Israel for seven years. Ancient rabbinic writings claim
that the Gentiles harvested their vineyards throughout the land
of Israel. They stole all the vineyards
from the Israelis. They didn't have to put manure
on those vineyards. For the next seven years, they
used the blood of the Jews who had been killed. And you get
quite a few references to that. Almost everyone agrees that multiplied
millions of Jews were killed during that 10-year period of
time, though few think it was as high as what the Jewish authorities
of the time say that it was. Though scholars think these Jewish
histories are wildly exaggerated, I'm going to give them to you
because I think they at least give you the significance of this
event in the Jewish mind. The Palestinian Talmud in Gittin
57b claims that 80 million Jews were killed by the Romans. Now
assuming he was calculating everybody from Vespasian to the time of
Hadrian, I still doubt that there were even 80 million Jews in
existence at the time, but that's what Rabbi Yohanan claims happened. He claims that 80,000 Jews, 80
million Jews were killed. Gittin 58a claims that only one
child out of 250,000 at Bitar survived and that elsewhere Hadrian
was just as merciless with the children. According to a recent
research article in Britain, Hadrian went mad because of the
loss of his homosexual lover, and his Holocaust illustrated
his insanity. So the one thing that Jewish
writings are consistent on is that the numbers killed in the
first two centuries makes even the most inflated figures of
the modern Holocaust pale by comparison. So even if you were
to take the tribulation as only referring to Jews, I take the
great wrath is against Israel, the great tribulation was against
the saints, but even if you were to take it as the great tribulation
against the Jews, there still has been no greater one since
that time. Now verse 20 says that the killing
was so extensive that the blood came out of the winepress up
to the horse's bridles. Now, if the inspired text says
it comes up to the horses' bridles, then that's what happened. That's
the way I look at it. But most commentators believe
it's an exaggeration. They say it has to be an exaggeration,
just could not have functioned that way. Of course, they say
that the historical records that say it happened exactly in that
way, they had to be exaggerated as well. Others try to take the
text seriously by saying that the horses were merely splattered
with blood. up to their bridles, or that
the bodies were stacked as high as the horse's bridles, or that
rivers were colored by blood, and that the rivers were up to
the horse's bridles. But I find it interesting that early Jewish
sources claim that the blood was actually that deep. Now,
almost nobody believes those Jewish sources, but these sources
claim to quote rabbis who were there, claim to reflect real
history. The Jerusalem Talmud says, The
number of Jewish men, women, and children slain at Bitar was
so enormous that the Romans went on killing until their horses
were submerged in blood to their nostrils. Wow, that's almost
word for word identical to what the Apostle John prophesied would
happen. Midrash Rabbah 2 says, they slew
the inhabitants until the horses waded in blood up to the nostrils. One place simply says the Romans
went on killing Jews until a horse was sunk in blood up to its nose. Now that's a lot of blood. The
Jerusalem Talmud goes on to say the blood flowed for miles to
the Mediterranean. Another place says it stained
the waters of the Mediterranean Ocean as far as Cyprus. Cyprus
is almost 200 miles away. Now how that is possible, I don't
know. Perhaps it was raining and the rain kept the blood in
liquid form. Maybe there was blood rain like
happened in the first war and that we documented has happened
a number of times in history including modern history. But
the records of that second century period claim that the blood itself
was that deep. One modern Jewish author summarized
the ancient testimonies this way. With virtually no survivors,
rivers of Jewish blood flowed for miles to the sea, and the
Romans were able to fertilize their fields for seven years
using their victims' blood. Jewish bodies were not buried,
but were used as fences for fields in a chilling premonition of
Nazi practice. Bar Kokhba also died, either
executed by the sages for making false messianic claims or during
the final battle for Bitar. Yet another quote by another
Jewish scholar, They slaughtered the men, women, and children
until blood flowed from the doorways and sewers. Horses sank up until
their nostrils, and the rivers of blood lifted up rocks weighing
40 seah and flowed into the sea where its stain was noticeable
for a distance. Now the fact that they mention
rocks being lifted by the floods indicates to me there must have
been a flash flood that accompanied this blood flow. And it seems
to be hinted at by Rabbi Eleazar the Great who said that the two
streams near Bitar flowed in two directions and both streams
were running with one part blood to two parts water. Okay, and
that seems to contradict other rabbis who say it was pure blood
or implied that it was pure blood. But we have scanty evidence.
and they're not infallible anyway, right? But here's the point.
For people to claim that there is no historical evidence for
the fulfillment of these verses, I would say no. The only historical
evidence that we have fulfills this to the T. Now, you might
not believe the historical evidence, but the only historical evidence
that we have says it's fulfilled to a T. Now, was it all human
blood or is it possible God did a miracle of blood rain? I don't
know. But there had to be enough blood in this fluid for God to
call it blood. Maybe the Jordan and other rivers
were so full of blood that this water was all bloody, like happened
during the first war. And this is the way Alexander
Zephyr interprets the evidence. He's very skeptical. He says,
blood coagulates. There's no way that it could
flow like that. It had to have just made the water red. So he
says, when the Roman cavalry crossed the river of the sea
on horseback during the assault, their horses waded up to their
nostrils in the blood red water. Again, I'm not sure that we have
to speculate on the exact mechanics of the blood flow. Blood coagulates
pretty quickly. So God must have, in my estimation,
provided something to keep it flowing, perhaps rain. But the
point is, the identical, identical language that the Apostle John
predicted would happen The rabbis of the second century said, did
happen. And by the way, these rabbis
hated Christianity, were trying to exterminate Christianity at
the time. So they would hardly say, oh,
you know what, the book of Revelation quotes us, why don't we say that
that happened to us? No, that would be to vindicate,
a Christian prophecy would be vindicating Christianity. I don't
think they would have done that. So I think the evidence is extremely
strong for a literal interpretation. And going to the last point there,
people object and say, yeah, right, for 1,600 stadia? And my response is, hey, if God
says it would happen for 1,600 stadia, it happened that way.
I'm not sure it has to be up to the horse's bridles for the
whole distance, had to be somewhere. But if it did have to be for
the whole distance, here would be my measurements and some possible
scenarios of mechanics of it. We only have hints from the ancient
histories of the actual distances involved. We have a record of
two bloodstreams flowing in different directions from Bitar, one of
which went to the Mediterranean, one of which flowed to the Jordan
Basin. I've looked at a map, I've done the measurements, and
it'd be 30 miles one way, 19 miles for the other stream. Well,
that still brings us 124 miles short of 1600 Stadia, which is
184 miles. There's other references that
it was similar massacres over the entire land. So if every
stream and river in Israel had the same thing happen to it that
these two had happened to it, which seems very, very likely,
that would add up to 184 miles. So there you go, exactly, literally
fulfilled. Here's another possibility. I
already mentioned one ancient rabbi who claimed that the blood
stain could be seen in the ocean all the way to Cyprus. Now, if
that is even remotely correct, Cyprus is about 190 miles away
and would completely fulfill the prophecy. But personally,
I think it's the rivers, the rivers and streams. Yet another
possibility is that this prophecy is showing how many miles the
bodies stacked that deep would go. Okay. There were certainly
enough bodies stacked up around fields to constitute bloodied
bodies up to the horses' bridles for 184 miles. We've already
seen that the vineyard near Bitar had enough bodies stacked five
feet high to constitute a wall 68 miles long. But it wasn't
just one fortress. There were 50 fortresses, 1,000
villages that were massacred. And so when the other regions
where the bodies were stacked or added in, and the massive
numbers of deaths are accounted for. Oh, you have way more than
184 miles of stacked bodies possible. Now, I still favor the literal
flowing of blood, but I'm open to that as a possible interpretation
as well. Now, if you read in commentaries,
probably 90% of the commentaries are gonna take a figurative perspective. They say, since 1600 Stadia is
the length of Israel, All this means, symbolically,
is that the whole of Israel was stained with blood. And that
certainly did happen, but you know me, I tend to take the text
at face value rather than treating it too hurriedly as a case of
hyperbole. So this verse ends the central
section of the book. Remember, it was like a chiasm,
and the center of the book is really the thematic theme of
that book. And what this central section
shows is the victory of missions and the victory of Christ's judgment.
It gives us a hint as to why this world will end up becoming
a Christianized world at the end, but also why there are repeated
judgments down through history. It's because one of the two must
happen. Missions must go forth or judgment
must go forth. It's a marvelous summary of the
trajectory of the book. Now we've already made some applications
of this passage, but let me end with five more. First, I hope
this illustrates why we should not be too quick to toss verses
under the bus if we don't at first understand them. I think
there's this tendency to base what we think is possible on
our experience, right? And then to dismiss passages
as being hyperbole. Now hyperbole is a legitimate
figure of speech, But I always try to see if there is a straightforward
reading that is possible, and almost always there is. But even
there, I think it's dangerous to interpret even what is possible
based on our experience or based on science. After all, God is
a God of miracles, right? Second, I hope you're beginning
to see that my interpretation of the text of Revelation is
more literal and straightforward than that of dispensationalists.
Partial preterism does not have to explain away anything in the
text. If the text says it'll happen
soon, we say it happens soon. We don't try to say, well, in
God's mind, 2,000 years later is soon. No, it's not. If the
text distinguishes between unbelieving Jews and Gentiles, we distinguish
between Jews and Gentiles. If the text speaks of swords,
horses, and chariots, we don't try to reinterpret them as tanks
and airplanes. If the text shows the beings
coming up out of the abyss that look like demons, we treat them
as demons, not as Cobra helicopters. I mean the point is We need to be fair and straightforward
with the text. And even if you, as Bereans,
disagree with some of the things that I'm teaching, which I expect
you will probably do, nobody's infallible right in their teaching,
I hope at least that this teaching is giving you more and more appreciation
for eschatology and a confidence in the absolute inerrancy of
the scripture. Third, it is my hope that this
chapter has given you more of a sense of urgency for missions
and the imperative and the dangers of judgment. We should be prepared
for both. Fourth, while I've talked to
people who reject the God of the Bible as being unloving and
harsh, I hope you can see that the persecutors of the church
in the second century deserved this judgment. They were annihilating
the church. They deserved it. And the church
of today, when they face similar persecution, should not at all
be shy about asking God to bring judgment upon their enemies.
Either convert them, Lord, or take them out. I think it's perfectly
appropriate. It's consistent with God's nature. It's consistent with his word. God is who He is, and we need
to submit to Him as He is, rather than trying to make Him conform
to our preconceived ideas. We're the ones who need to change
our minds. And I think our response needs to be, Lord, You are who
You are, and even though I don't understand it, I know we deserve
it. and thank you for your mercy. Be appreciative of the mercy
you have rather than criticizing him for his actions. But certainly it's appropriate
to pray the imprecatory Psalms against the persecutors of the
church. Fifth, never forget that God's judgments presuppose his
mercies. Praise God. I mean, this chapter
shows both. It's not just victory of judgment,
it's victory of missions. And often one will produce the
other and vice versa. But in terms of God's mercies,
Psalm 2 doesn't guarantee judgment irrespective of a nation's repentance
or lack of repentance. If our nation will once again
kiss the sun and declare its allegiance to Christ, I think
destruction can be averted. Jeremiah 18 guarantees that the
instant a nation repents of its rebellion, God will relent of
the judgment pronounced upon it. So glory in the fact that
our God of judgment is also a God of mercy and grace, that where
sin abounds, grace abounds much more. God is sufficient to reverse
things in America if the church will have faith. So on that note,
let's pray. Father God, this is a tough passage. It's a grisly passage, and yet
we recognize that it describes what men in rebellion against
you deserve. In fact, all of us deserve your
wrath. And I pray that we would put
our faith in Jesus Christ and that across this nation there
would be a flow of your spirit in bringing revival and reformation,
that our nation would repent of its sins, that you would have
mercy, that you would even, for the glory of your name and for
the sake of your son's kingdom, that you would bring restitution
from Satan's kingdom. And Satan has robbed this kingdom
from Satan. This nation, Satan has robbed
this nation from Christ and I pray that you would restore it to
Christ and that it would be restored to a far higher and greater degree
than it had ever been before. We pray this in Jesus name, Amen.
Blood up to the Horses' Bridles
Series Revelation
The sermon shows how this amazing prophesied judgment was fulfilled very literally in the Bar Kochba rebellion of AD 132-136
| Sermon ID | 1241883337 |
| Duration | 53:56 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Revelation 14:17-20 |
| Language | English |
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