Revelation 7-11 - God's Church - His Pure Bride
H. Hanegraaff provides a succinct and accurate summary of Revelation. He says, "Revelation is the unveiling of a bride. It commences with seven letters to a persecuted bride; continues with a sevenfold judgment against a prostituted bride, which was written on a seven-sealed scroll, announced by seven angels with seven trumpets, and depicted through seven plagues; and crescendos with the unveiling of a purified bride by a bridegroom described as having seven horns and seven eyes” (The Apocalypse Code, pp. 127-128). In chapters seven through eleven John sees into the spiritual realm the judgment that has come upon Israel - the prostituted bride - for rejecting the Cornerstone, Jesus Christ. It is a description of what is happening in the spiritual realm as our High Priest, Jesus Christ waits and as He humbles his enemies and shows His glory as He grows His church (Hebrews 10).
Each of us has a role to play as members of God’s family, His Body. (I’m still trying to figure mine out, but it has something to do with leading, teaching, and encouraging). Let’s pray that God makes us content and satisfied in Him alone.
Lord Jesus, please help us to be generous and kind and humble today - like you. Forgive us for our arrogance. And for our lack of understanding and desire to make disciples. We know that often rather than seeking Your will we’ve sought to be know-it-alls - puffed-up, good-for-nothing Christian elites. We are sorry Lord, for thinking more of ourselves than we should.
Lord Jesus help us to seek You earnestly today, to spread the truth of God rapidly and effectively. Help us to speak plainly. Help us to stop doing anything that has no positive spiritual significance. Help us to be like You and to say only what will build other believers up. Please give us just the right word or thing that meets the needs of our Christian family. Amen.
God brings salvation to all people (Titus 2:11). The Jewish leaders hated that Jesus loved the sinners - they hated the fact that He even sat and ate with notorious sinners (Luke 15:1-2). Jesus seeks that not even one lost sheep reject Him - there is great rejoicing in heaven when even one sinner repents and turns to God (Luke 15:7). God loves us that much. But He’s no bully - He will not force people against their will.
God’s kindness and patience are meant to show us His love and lead us to repentance (Romans 2:4). So it is essential as we read Revelation that we do not divorce it from the truth that salvation is from God alone. Don't read into Revelation some new salvation and some new Gospel that is different from the only true Gospel.
The Father requires that His gift of forgiveness and reconciliation be told and heard (Romans 10:4). God requires that sinners accept His gift of new life through faith. Grace through faith - through the living and abiding word of God. God places the responsibility on people to respond (John 3:16-17). God is Good and Just. All the time. He is never capricious. Respond to God today. If you are that lost sheep that has rejected, disobeyed, and strayed from God then repent of your sins and turn to Him today. All heaven will rejoice at your decision to accept God’s free gift of salvation. And we too rejoice with you. And if you do accept Jesus as your loving Lord and Savior then He will indwell you with the Holy Spirit and start a process in you where you are being sanctified - that is, you are becoming more and more like Christ. There will be fits and starts, ups and downs. But always more and more like Jesus as you take responsibility and live a disciplined and devout life of gratitude for God's great gift.
I’m a sinner just like you. I can say without a doubt that I know God and that I have accepted his gift of salvation. I’m a work in progress and I trust in Jesus alone for salvation. You know your wife because you spend time with her. Likewise with my wife - and I thank God for the beautiful wife He's given me for a godly wife is a treasure of God.
Similarly, I know Christ Jesus because I spend time with Him and hear from Him in His word. So many of us spend time doing everything except spending time in Scripture. Part of the problem is bad teaching. We see way too many Bible teachers bending over backward to adhere to a system of thought or a Christian leader rather than to Scripture.
For the past 2,000 years, the devil still prowls and schemes for power. There remains a lot of false teaching that claims God is wrong. They claim the Shepherd does not require the sheep to repent. They claim God is a liar when He says that people have a responsibility to fear God, worship God, and repent of their sins. These false teachers say that all prophesy is not fulfilled in Christ, that He is not the Temple (Jesus is the place where God and people meet, Jesus tabernacles amongst us now, and it was His body as the Temple that was raised from the dead after three days). False teachers claim that the old covenant is still in effect, that Jesus did not find fault with the Jews, and that the new covenant does not replace the old (Hebrews 8). In this, they call God a liar. They say it does not matter what we do after we believe in Jesus Christ and that God is wrong when He says that at the resurrection each person will be judged according to what he has done (Revelation 20:13). False teachers say that Jesus is not the Christ. We read in 1 John 2:22 that anyone who denies Jesus is not the Christ is an enemy of God. We don't gloat about what happened to those who denied Jesus in the first century. To the contrary, we mourn for we know that God loved all of those in Jerusalem. He loved them so much that He died for their sins, but they rejected Him.
Let’s remind each other of how much God loves us. And that He indeed calls every person to responsibility. Every person may respond to God’s grace when they hear and understand. Let’s be bold in proclaiming God’s truth. Never aim to please the world. It is our loving Father that we need to please. It is God the Father who disciplines us and tests our hearts as He sanctifies us. Don’t seek glory from men nor follow the world in doing wrong (Exodus 23:2).
Again, it’s worth repeating, that we are saved by believing in Christ our King (John 20:31, Romans 10:10, 2 Corinthians 3:14, 2 Corinthians 5:7, Galatians 3:22). Now we are servants of God, joined with Jesus in spirit (1 Corinthians 6:17). We belong to Jesus through faith God has made us alive with Christ (Colossians 2:13-15).
On Christ’s return, Judgment Day, through the gift of Jesus Christ, God will not pour out His anger on us like He did on Jerusalem in chapter 11. God’s plan was always to save believers through the life, death, and resurrection of His Son. Whether we are dead or alive when Jesus returns we can live with the Lamb of God forever if we trust in Him (1 Thessalonians 5:9-11).
Purity and righteousness before God on Judgment Day is always and only through Faith in the Son of God. I know it gets repetitive, but when we talk about the end time or eschatology it matters greatly that we get our soteriology squared away or we end up like the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons and others who falsely believe God has multiple pathways to heaven and that there are different people of God. The false teachers say God has plans A, B, and C of salvation.
The JWs say that the 144,000 sealed in chapter seven mean the JW elites that will live in heaven while other JWs will live on earth. Others, equally wrong with the JWs, believe the sealed people from the tribes of Israel are future Jews who will escape a future time of wrath. They create multiple pathways to heaven for multiple people. They don't believe God when He said the wrath against those who crucified Him (the parable of the evil farmers) would be in the first century. Here is where we must reinforce that people only stand righteous before God on Judgment Day by relationship with Jesus. The 144,000 are logically those that God sealed for their faith from the great wrath described in Revelation. At the time of the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, there were upwards of one million people in and around Jerusalem. I know that other Bible interpretations say this number is only a figurative number representing the great number of all believers from every tribe, nation, people, and language who stand before the Lamb - those who confess Jesus - the Bride of Christ. That interpretation makes sense perhaps, but my read of chapter 7:9 is that first you have those sealed by God and then you have a vast crowd of all those who died in the great wrath. I don’t know if the number 144,000 is purely symbolic or not, it may be - and it may have multiple meanings, figurative and literal. I’ve heard all sorts of explanations such as twelve apostles times twelve tribes times God’s holy number of 1,000.
God knows what the full number of those who ultimately believe in Christ will be. The Bride of Christ will be God’s perfectly full number of believers. I believe that God did warn and protect certain of His followers to persevere and survive the great wrath of AD 66- AD 70. But I also believe that many believers were killed by the Romans at that time; they were martyred for their faith in Jesus (7:14).
I believe that God’s wrath was poured out on the Harlet - the stubborn adulterous people who crucified the Messiah. God’s plan was fulfilled just as Jesus announced it to His servants and as God proclaimed it through the Prophets (10:7). Most of Revelation is about the near future events of the first century. In Revelation 22:10 the angel tells John, “‘Do not seal up the prophetic words in this book, for the time is near.” But as we’ll discuss later, Revelation is also about final future events and the ultimate Return of the King.
Revelation was not only relevant to its original readers, it was essential to warn them of the coming destruction of Jerusalem. It strengthened their faith in Jesus, proved Jesus was correct in His prophecy that the destruction of Jerusalem would come within the first century and Revelation also exhorts the Christians to be faithful and confident in trials and persecution. We too are to stay laser-focused on Christ and to be ever mindful of the mission to make disciples and to be careful how we live this life as we prepare for eternity.
We need to ask ourselves if by our lives we show that we truly revere and fear God. Do we love people so much that we share with them the reality of Judgment Day?
God’s character never changes. He always has been and always will be merciful. On Judgment Day there will be no doubt as to whom salvation comes from. But for those who claim eschatology doesn’t matter that we all just find out in the end, I beg to differ. The entire Bible is about the study of God’s love for us and His divine, mysterious plan, revealed in and through His Son. While Revelation was a message to the first-century persecuted Church which was about to go through even more persecution it is also a message exhorting Christians today. Christ prevails. Christ is victorious. The Alpha and Omega will return and through Him alone are we saved and through Jesus alone will we be repaid according to what we have done (Revelation 22:12).
Those who died in the great wrath and trusted in the blood of the Lamb were with God in John’s vision; their white robes had been washed clean by Jesus. Of the many who died in the great tribulation in Jerusalem (that we read about in chapter 11) some stood before God saved, justified, righteous, and serving God in gratitude for His love and grace. Sheep before their Shepherd (7:17). We will read in chapter 14 that because of what Jesus did for them on the Cross they were considered pure and righteous before God (not because of anything they did).
Revelation 8 is about God’s commanded death and destruction and judgment of the prostituted bride in God’s declared wrath. Revelation 9 shows great pain, suffering, sickness, and Jerusalem terrorized by spiritual beings that report to an angel - the Destroyer. In that time there were five months of pure hell on earth. What John saw in the spiritual realm had a corresponding reality in the earthly physical realm (Roman soldiers encircling, besieging, and then destroying Jerusalem). Believers died in that great wrath (7:14-17), but many more non-believers died as well. It’s interesting that many people who did not die in the plagues still refused to repent of their evil deeds and turn to God (9:20). They were stubborn people, refusing to repent.
Some things never change. I’m reminded today that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. You simply can’t serve God and serve the devil. Jesus put it this way, “No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money” (Matthew 6:24).
We are well beyond AD 70 now, and God’s Kingdom continues to grow. Just as John wrote in Revelation many peoples, nations, languages, and kings will hear God’s Good News of Christ the King and many have and many more will believe (10:11).
All of the spiritual realm events John saw in chapters 7-10 happened before AD 70. In chapter 11 we hear John is told to go measure the Temple (it still existed during the great wrath). And during the great wrath on the holy city, there were still worshipers of God. John was told to count the worshipers (11:1). John’s vision was one of terrible wrath on the wicked city filled with those who were known for murder, witchcraft, sexual immorality, and theft. John makes no doubt about what city he is talking about. It was figuratively called Sodom and Egypt and it was identified as the city where Jesus was crucified (11:8). We read in chapter 11 that following the terrible time of trampling of Jerusalem (again, AD 66-70) came a terrible earthquake that destroyed a tenth of Jerusalem (note just as Jesus predicted in Matthew 24). Then John the Apostle writes this, “The world has now become the Kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever” (Revelation 11:15). Jesus in heaven reigns in Heaven today. Just as Jesus told us to pray, we can have confidence that what John saw and wrote in Revelation is true.
Let us pray today that people will understand God’s word and that the word of God will spread rapidly. God is glorified as his servants make disciples and grow the Body of Christ. The body is made up of many parts (from big bones to miro cells). Each of us must persevere. We are to pray that we are delivered from perverse and evil men - they seem to abound in every generation - they certainly do in this one inside the church and out (2 The3ssalonienas 3:1-2).
God’s great wrath against Jerusalem was fulfilled just as Jesus said it would be. But in this age of the church - this time before Judgment Day - not all people have yet heard the Good News of Jesus Christ. And many who have heard refuse to believe. God is loving and patient. He’s so Sovereign that He gives each of us the freedom to choose to accept Him or reject Him. We have to go and make disciples. One man and one woman at a time. That is our mission and that is the good life of the Christian. Grace abounds through Jesus’ gift (Romans 5:15-21).
We are called to be faithful servants to work hard, to learn, to teach, and to set a good example as we encourage each other. We build and steward and take responsibility because of who we are in Jesus - saints, saved by God’s love and grace.
Our citizenship is in heaven. Our hope is in our Savor. He will return. While these bodies of ours will age, and eventually die, we shall live - and God will give each believer a new heavenly body (Philippians 3:20-21).
Dear God, thank you for your mercies this day. Thank you for your message of encouragement through the spiritual vision You gave through your beloved Apostle John. Please comfort the mourning in our Body today. Please fill us with joy and peace. And give us the confidence to build for the long haul. May we be more than a city on a hill - may we be Your church, alive and glorious in You. We know that your patience is good. May we encourage others today with hope and love through the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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