"And I looked, and lo, a Lamb stood on Mount Zion, and with Him 144,000, having his Father's name written in their foreheads, {2} And I heard a sound from heaven, as the sound of many waters, and the sound of a great thunder, and I heard the sound of Harper's playing with their harps, {3} And they sung, they sung as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four creatures, and the elders, and no man could learn that song but the 144,000, which were redeemed from the earth."

This is the 14th chapter of Revelation, and there are some curious things in this chapter we need to understand before we continue.

Now John is in vision, and he is writing down the things which he sees. Don't bother trying to conjure up a mental image of this, for what John saw is pure imagery.

I think I saw a painting somewhere, a drawing someone did, once upon a time of this particular chapter, and what they drew was a mountain and they had a sheep on it, a small sheep or lamb, and they had a whole hoard of people and every one of them having some kind of Hebrew letters scrawled on their foreheads.

Well, that sort of thing is basically useless. John's is a verbal description intended to be conveyed verbally, but what he's talking about is not lambs and scratchings on people's foreheads, it is something else. It symbolized something else.

The lamb is easy. The lamb symbolizes the Christ, and it symbolizes Christ not so much as the one sitting on a white horse with a great sword in his hand, conquering and cutting people down right and left, no No NO! It symbolizes Christ who is the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world. It is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, which John saw earlier in a vision. It's the redeeming Christ, it is the sacrificial Christ, that is visualized here, because it is that Christ, which has redeemed the 144,000 who are with Him, because of His sacrifice, and of course the 144,000 is a symbolic number and should not be taken literally.

That's a mistake, some strange ideas have come down through time, from people trying to explain how 12,000 being converted out of each of the 12 tribes of Israel could work out in real numbers among real people on the ground. But if someone told you something and said the number was 10,000 times 10,000, you would probably understand that they were simply using a figure of speech to say, it's a whole lot, not necessarily trying to convey with some precision the number 100 million, rather 144,000 is a very large, but indeterminate number and the numbers symbolize wholeness or completeness as we have explained earlier.

The number three is generally a number of wholeness because it's the minimum number of sides that can enclose a figure, in this case a triangle. Four is a mystical number of completeness because four equal sides make a square and enclose that figure. 3 plus 4 makes seven, and seven is a number of totality and 3 times 4 makes 12 another kind of wholeness again.

These numbers crop up again and again and again in the Bible and they are derived from antiquity, and they symbolize certain things and carry certain general meanings along with them, and in this case, we are dealing with 144,000, which is a multiple again of 12 times 12,0000. So when we get it all together, we understand that it is symbolic.

Now the name written in their foreheads, we've already discussed in an earlier broadcast that the forehead is symbolic of the will, that is the character of God is written into the will, the mind and the consciousness of those people who are saved and who are with the Lamb on Mount Zion.

These little background things is just to get ourselves back into perspective. John is in vision. It's like a dream. He's telling us what he dreamed but we must ourselves, try to understand, what the dream is pointing at, not so much to try to visualize the symbols of the dream themselves.

John then goes on to make another interesting statement. He says this in verse four, "These, (that is the 144,000), are they which were not defiled with women, for they are virgins. These are they which follow the Lamb wherever he goes. They are redeemed from among men, being the firstfruits unto God and to the Lamb, {6} And in their mouth was found no guile, for they are without fault before the throne of God."

Now at first blush, this sounds like 144,000 men who never had sex. Now it says, "These are they which were not defiled with women, for they are virgins." But the thing is, the defilement that this is talking about, plainly has to be spiritual and not literal, because the only way a human being can ever be without fault before the throne of God, as these people are said to be, is by the blood of the Lamb, to be forgiven.

Paul, at great pains, in Romans 3:23, to explain to us that "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God," and we are told elsewhere in the Bible that man is in his best state is altogether vanity and that all of our righteousness, and all of our accomplishments are like filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6) before God. So don't ever assume from what you read right here, that somehow or other, there is going to be a 144,000 people on this earth who never sinned. That's not what this is about.

For example, if you look back at what he said in Revelation 14:4, he said this, "These were redeemed from among men." Now, if you recall, we talked about redemption in the sense that, in the law of God, in the Old Testament, if you stole a sheep, you had to restore it. Well you didn't have to restore just a sheep, you had to restore a multiple number of that sheep to pay back, not only the owner of it but also for his inconvenience, and whatever else was involved. And if you had killed and eaten the sheep and you didn't have anything to pay back, they put you up on the auction block and they sold you off to somebody as a slave, in other words, you went and worked off your debt.

Now, during a certain period of time after you were sold, any person who was your kinsman could redeem you, just like you redeemed green stamps, they could come down and redeem you out of the slavery that you had gotten yourself sold into by your stupidity and by the things you did.

So redemption in the Bible is a common theme, it recurs again and again and again and what it is talking about is, you and I have sold ourselves into sin. As a result of the things that we've done, we brought death upon ourselves and we need help somehow, some Savior, or someone to bring us back and to save us and so when it speaks of these being 'redeemed', if they had never sinned, there would have been no redemption necessary.

So when he says in verse 5, "For they, the 144,000, are without fault before the throne of God." They are undefiled, they are like virgins, he's talking in spiritual terms of people who have been forgiven, and who have had their sins wiped out and blotted out and taken away from the presence of God, and who could actually come before, as though they never had sinned in their lives, because of the intercession of Christ at the right hand of God. One would never know that you had ever made a mistake in your life. What a wonderful thought.

Think about that for a moment.

"These are they which follow the Lamb wherever He goes. These were redeemed from among men, being the firstfruits unto God and to the Lamb" (Revelation 14:4).

Now that's another funny expression, "The firstfruits to God and to the Lamb." Now if they are the firstfruits, then there must be more fruits to follow. What might that mean? Well, if you're a Bible reader then the word 'Pentecost' probably means something to you. You may be one who thinks of the Pentecostal church down on the corner, but the word Pentecost is actually a festival, a festival commonly mentioned in the Bible. You will find it commonly in the Old Testament, although there it is generally called, the feast of firstfruits, or the feast of weeks, rather than the feast of Pentecost.

In the New Testament, in Acts 2, the church had gathered together to observe this festival. The Holy Spirit was poured out upon them that day and they baptized 3,000 people in one day.

But in the Old Testament, this is the feast of firstfruits. I'll have to explain. You will find some of this in the 23rd chapter of Leviticus, but there's a ceremony that is described there, that at the time of the second Temple was done something like this, along about sun down toward the end of the weekly Sabbath, during the Days of Unleavened Bread, there would be a little group of people winding their way down from the Temple mount to a field that had been specially prepared and selected ahead of time. This is spring mind you, in the time of green ears and the barley harvest is just now coming ripe.

In fact, the Hebrews adjusted their calendar to be sure that the barley harvest would be ripe in this month, at this time. So this little group of people go down to this field that has been prepared for them and there are certain sheafs of barley that have been already selected by the priests and tied off. I think there were seven of them in memory serves. So you have this little field with this noisy little band of people. They are noisy because this is a harvest festival and you know what people are doing at a harvest festival, they drink wine and they eat food, they are happy, they're excited about what's going on. So you have this noisy little gang that follows this man down there to this place. He steps up to one of these sheafs and it's right at sundown, and he had a series of questions that he called out to the waiting crowd around him, and he asks, "In this field." "Yes," they would answer him, and then he would cry out to them, "This sheaf," and they would shout, "Yes," and then he would look up to the sky and say, "Has the sun set?" And the crowd would all shout, "Yes," back at him, and finally he would say, "Shall I reap?" And they would say, "Yes," and his arm came down and he would cut this sheaf from the ground.

It was just after sunset at the end of the weekly Sabbath during the Days of Unleavened Bread. Now this may well have been the moment when Jesus, inside the tomb, for three days and three nights (Matthew 12:40), opened his eyes, laid aside the cloth that was over his face, and sat up and walked out of the tomb.

For over the night, they took that sheaf of barley, and the others that they cut, and took them up to the temple mount and they prepared them. They were beaten out, threshed if you will, and the grain was collected and parched and toasted in what was called an omer, that is a little basket, what shall we say a peck or so, this grain was prepared and at a certain hour in the morning, it was taken by the priests in before God and it was lifted up, swayed back and forth and it was presented before God as the firstfruits from the ground.

That is what the ground had produced for them and the spring grain harvest was actually presented before God.

Now in the morning that this was going to be presented by the priests to God, only much earlier, Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene after Jesus' resurrection. She comes to the garden looking for him and is all broken up by it and she finds a man there who she thought was the gardener and she speaks to him, this is John 20 verse 15, and says, "Sir where have you laid his body, it's gone. We will go and pick Him up and bury him somewhere else." He said to her, "Mary," and she suddenly realized it was Jesus, and she fell down to grasp Him by the feet and He said, "Don't touch me, for I have not yet ascended to My Father; but go to My brethren and say to them, 'I am ascending to My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God.'"

Later that same day, Jesus allowed them to touch Him, and the presumption is that sometime between the time that Mary tried to grab his feet, and when He appeared to the disciples later, that Jesus had been presented before the Father.

Now do you see the connection between this first sheaf of grain being cut from the ground, it being prepared during the night and the next morning, you go in and you present the firstfruits before God. The very firstfruits of the ground and that only when that is done can you continue the harvest and only when that is done can the remaining work be done to get this harvest in, only when that is done can you eat anything of the grain that is grown, so no harvest was possible, nothing could be taken from the ground of this year's crop until after that one had been harvested, that one had been prepared and presented before God.

Jesus is taken and presented before the Father, like that sheaf of grain was taken and presented in the Temple. To many people, I think, don't realize that the Temple was like a stage, upon which the drama was played out of the plan of salvation, that all the rigmarole that priests went through, all of the words they said, all of the things in the sprinkling of the blood, the killing of the animals, all of this was the playing out of the gospel, throughout all the days of the Old Testament when it was done, so that people had the image of a redemptive God, a God who would save them, a God who would blot out their sins.

And while the blood of bulls and goats could never take away their sins, the blood of the Lamb of God could and did. And Jesus, Himself, had to die and be resurrected and become the firstfruits from the dead.

Paul makes reference to this in the great resurrection chapter in first Corinthians 15 verse 20, when he says, "But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept."

Not the only fruit, not the one thing that is harvested, but the first and because he's the first, there are more to come.

Paul continues to say, {21} "For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead, {22} For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. {23} But every man in his own order. Christ the firstfruits, afterward they that are Christ's at his coming."

The hope of new life. The hope to live again is the hope of the firstfruits but the firstfruits are harvested, not now, but at His coming.

James says something very similar. He says in chapter 1 verse 17, "Every good and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. {18} Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, and we should be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures."

And so Christ is the first of the firstfruits from the dead, but there are many more who are also called firstfruits, and if they are first, what is yet to come?

You know the Holy Day Festivals of the Bible are truly fascinating, and they are agricultural festivals in case you hadn't focused in on that. They go around the barley harvest in the spring, of the grain harvest really, because barley was only the first of a whole series of greens. and all were basically in, within that seven week period leading up to Pentecost.

Then in the autumn, coming up is the feast of Tabernacles and all those autumn holy days. This is the fruit harvest. This is the time they get in the figs and the raisins and so forth and the time when we start thinking about mashing up the grapes and making wine.

And so the festivals are oriented this way, are symbolically connected also with God's harvesting people from the earth. Jesus himself uses expressions like this, when He says, "Boy look, the fields are white unto harvest and the harvest is plenteous, but the laborers are few." He's talking to His disciples about getting out there and preaching the gospel among all these people, whom God will harvest from the grave, from the dead. So where are we in all this.

Well the last trumpet has been sounded, it is the time of the resurrection of the dead who are in Christ and it's time for the judgment of God.

Now Revelation 14 and verse six, "I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach to them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people."

The gospel apparently has got to go everywhere.

This angel said with a loud voice, {7} "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 fountain of waters."

The word worship, I'll remind you means, to do obeisance, bow yourself before Him, fear God, give glory to Him, bow down before Him that made the heavens, because the hour and the day of His judgment has come. It's the day of His wrath, the day of His anger, and the day when God is going to finally put a stop to the ravaging of the earth by those who seem hell-bent on destroying it.

Let's continue in Revelation 14 and verse 8, "And there followed another angel, saying "Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine and of the wrath of her fornication."

Now Babylon had fallen generations before John, and so here we sit, let's imagine ourselves sitting in Smyrna or Ephesus, and hearing John's letter read for the first time and we are thinking about this from a historical perspective.

Babylon is a Ruin. So when John says, "Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen," we look around ourselves and say, "I wonder who that could be? What could that possibly mean? And our thoughts would turn inexorably to the great city of Rome, which was, as history will tell us, thought of as Babylon the great, the harlot of the earth, by the early church. So they looked around and they saw Rome, with all that it stood for. So not much difficulty, I think in understanding that.

"Then the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, Revelation 14 verse 9, "If a man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, {10} The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation, and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb."

Preachers get eloquent about fire and brimstone, and the stories about hell and the graphic illustrations of preachers and sermons and tent camp revivals and what have you about hell, are legendary, like the one, who one night at the climax of his sermon, leaned forward with his face already red and perspiring from the efforts of the sermon, lifted up the imaginary lid of hell and looked down into it from his pulpit and then screamed and fell backwards! He had a lot of people come down the aisle that night to the altar.

But this scripture, really, excuse me, is not really about hell! It's about what's about to take place on the earth at the time John is speaking, and there is going to be a lot of fire and a lot of brimstone, and all hell, Pardon The Expression, is going to be breaking loose on the earth.

Notice it continues in verse 11, to say, "The smoke of their torment ascends up forever and ever, and they have no rest day or night, who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name."

Now be real careful about this, this is not describing the traditional hell. Read it this way, "And the smoke of their torment ascends up continually, and they have no rest, day or night."

Who doesn't? Those people who are worshiping the beast and his image, and who have received the mark of his name. What this is basically saying is, that for this duration of what is about to take place, none of these people are going to find a moment's rest. It is going to be absolutely continuous from the beginning of it to the end of it, but there is an end of it, for it is the torment of the seven last plagues that are going to be poured out before God in the next step of this prophecy that he's talking about.

It is God's judgment upon all those people, who have worshiped the beast, in fact, present tense, are worshiping the beast and his image.

There is a curious little statement that is found here, he says in verse 12 of Revelation 14, "Here is the patience of the saints, here are they that keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus."

All right, patience, what does Jesus mean 'patience of the saints?' Well, there was a voice that follows on the heels of it, and I have to assume this voice is the one who is telling us what the patience of the saints is based on.

Verse 13 says, "The voice said this, "Write, Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from henceforth, "Yea," saith the spirit, "that they may rest from their labors, and their works do follow them."

Now, one would really think that the statement "blessed are the dead who die in the Lord," would be true of saints that died any time in history, that someone who died a hundred years ago, someone who died before John ever came along, but was in the faith and was faithful to God and his servants, that you would think that this person would be blessed who died in the Lord. But think about this, he said, "blessed are the dead which die in the Lord."

What's blessed about being dead? Wouldn't you rather be alive than dead?

It was Solomon who said, "A living dog is better than a dead lion!" (Ecclesiastes 9:4). You know, the living know they shall die. That's too bad. That's the bad news, but the dead don't know anything. So would you rather be dead? Or would you rather be alive? Well then why, "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord and why from henceforth?" That is another good question? What is it from henceforth and when is hense, from which we go forth, in this particular pattern?

I think the way we need to understand this is, that there's going to be a terrible time descending upon the earth immediately, and the dead, who have died in the Lord are extremely blessed, from this time forward, not to have to go through this.

Here is the patience of the saints. Our friends and our loved ones who are in the Lord have died, they have been laid in their graves and none of the hell that's going to break loose on this planet can touch those people, They are safe! We will worry about them. We cry about them. We pray for them. We lie awake in the night and think about them, but really, we who are alive are the ones who are in danger, not them.

"Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, henceforth, yea saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors."

Oh, I see, in other words, their work is finished, and they're free from the turmoil, and the trouble and the tribulation that is about to fall upon the planet below here. They rest from their labors, and their works do follow them. Their reputation, what they have done, their faith in God, their trust in Him is written in heaven, and will never be lost. They are absolutely secure in Him.

You know this harkens back to a prophecy in Isaiah 57 and Isaiah seems almost mystified by the attitude of people. He said in verse 1, "The righteous perishes and no man lays it to heart. Merciful men are taken away and no one even thinks, that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come. {2} He shall enter into peace. They shall rest on their beds, each one will walk in his uprightness. "And so, "Blessed are the dead who die before this hell comes to pass."

Back to Revelation 14 and verse 14 John said, "And I looked, and behold a white cloud, and upon the cloud one sat like the Son of Man, having on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle. {15} And another angel came out of the Temple, crying with a loud voice to him that sat on the cloud, "Thrust in your sickle, and reap, for the time has come for you to reap, for the harvest of the earth is ripe. {16} And he that sat upon the cloud thrust in his sickle on the earth, and the earth was reaped."

It must be! But there are two kinds of harvest going on here.

Listen to the words about the next one, {17} "And another angel came out of the Temple which is in heaven. He also having a sharp sickle. {18} Another angel came out from the altar, which had power over fire, and he cried with a loud voice to him that had the sharp sickle sayings, "Thrust in your sickle and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth, for her grapes are fully ripe. {19} 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, {20} And the winepress was trodden outside the city, and blood came out of the winepress, even to the horses bridles, by the space of 1,600 hundred furlongs,"

What does that mean? You will have to wait for the next broadcast.

Until then, this is Ronald Dart reminding you, "You were Born to Win!"

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This article was transcribed with

minor editing from a Born to Win Radio Program by: Ronald L. Dart

Titled: The Book of Revelation -Program #20

Transcribed by: bb 9-1-24

You can contact Ronald L. Dart Ministries at P.O. Box 560

Whitehouse, TX 75791

1-888-Bible- 44