CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Revelation 14:20. “The number here, four multiplied into itself, and then multiplied by a hundred is symbolical of a judgment complete and full, and reaching to all corners of the earth.”
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Revelation 14:17-20
The Harvest of the Earth for Crushing.—The harvest of the earth is not only the ingathering of the saints. It includes the ingathering of those whose earth-lives have been a failure: who have died in their sin; who stand on the earth, in the great reaping day, in their sin. The farmer of the yearly harvest gathers in much besides good wheat: wheat that has gone bad, weeds, and chaff even, with the good wheat. If there is a barn for the good wheat, there is a fire in the field for burning up the bad, the mock wheat, the tares, and the weeds. And this seems to have suggested to the writer his vision of the other side of the last great harvest scene. But, in accordance with the symbolic ideas of the times, he takes the yield of the vines to represent the evil side of earth’s harvest. It is a simple and natural symbol. The corn of the fields is the source of renewed life and health: it is the fitting symbol of the good results of earth’s endeavour. The fruits of the vine have been, in all ages, since Noah stepped forth upon the cleansed earth, the fruitful source of vice, and self-indulgence, and misery, to men. So the clusters of the vine are represented as cast into the winepress, and trodden under foot; crushed down; made by stern discipline to become something other than they are. The men who have come through their earth story self-indulgent, defiant of God, and refusers of His holy gospel, must be gathered in with the stern sickle of the angel, cast like grape-clusters into the great winepress of the wrath of God. What can there be for them in that great day but “indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil?”
I. They who die in their sins are kept for their judgment.—In the indulging of the larger hope that one day all men will be saved, it is forgotten that, through the long ages, men have died in their sins. There is a fact which must be taken into full account. Thousands of completed earth-lives have proved moral failures. Thousands of men now exist somewhere who resisted every good influence, lived without God and without hope in the world, and died in defiant rebellion against the God who made them and the Saviour who redeemed them; crimson-stained in their souls with all the pollutions of earth. They must be in keeping against their judgment day, as truly as the blessed dead are in keeping for their reward. Do we not needlessly confuse ourselves, by regarding the earth-trial of humanity as a perfect and final trial? We expect the results to be perfect, and then set ourselves to invent theories concerning the future, which can have no value, because they have no foundation. We want the issue to be that everybody comes out righteous at last; and Scripture gives no ground whatever for such an interpretation. Our Lord’s parable of the tares should destroy any such ideas once for all. What we need to see is that man is a limited and imperfect being, placed in limited and imperfect circumstances; subjected to a limited and imperfect trial; and the issues will bear the character of the probation, and will include both failure and success. It is not, indeed, a question of it will. It does. Men do come through the probation of the earth-life evil still—worse evil for the misused probation. There must be a judgment day which they are awaiting, when the Divine dealing with their failure must be made known to them and to all; and God must be clearly seen to stand for ever for the right and against the wrong. He must do something with the vintage, as well as with the grain, of the harvest of the earth. What He will do no man knows, or can know. If the discipline of the earth-life has failed to accomplish its due result, they must go into the great winepress of the wrath of God, which must be punishment, need not be destruction, and may be the sterner, harder discipline in new and other spheres.
II. They who stand in their sins are ready for their judgment.—The vision seems to deal with those who are “alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord”; but, by reason of their self-willedness and rebellion, have no interest in, only the dread of, that coming. They are represented by the hanging clusters of over-ripe grapes; their cup of iniquity is full. The angel is bidden, Send forth thy sharp sickle, and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth; for her grapes are fully ripe. Then the number of the wicked, the number of life-failures, will be complete, as the number of the saints—the life-successes, will be complete; and the story of the earth may be wound up. Can we find more fitting words in which to express the result of it all, so far as that result can come into human ken, than the solemn words of our Divine Lord, “And these shall go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life”? Can we do any more than wonder, with a great wondering, what can be the lot of the wicked, when that lot is figured so impressively as in this passage: “And the angel cast his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vintage of the earth, and cast it into the winepress, the great winepress of the wrath of God. And the winepress was trodden without the city, and there came out blood from the winepress, even unto the bridles of the horses, as far as a thousand and six hundred furlongs”? Whether, then, we die in our sins, or stand in our sins when God’s harvest-day dawns, there is no escaping the just and fiery indignation. That day will overtake some as a thief. “And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.”
“Then, O my Lord, prepare
My soul for that great day.
O wash me in Thy precious blood,
And take my sins away.”