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KINGDOM BIBLE STUDIES
"Teaching the things concerning the kingdom of
God..."
FROM THE CANDLESTICK TO THE THRONE
Part 188
THE
BATTLE AT
ARMAGEDDON
(continued)
“And the seventh angel
poured out his bowl into the air; and there came a great voice out of the
temple of heaven, saying,
It is done” (Rev. 16:17).
A great voice as of a multitude comes out of the temple of His body
in the heavens of the Spirit, saying,
“It is done!”
While the words “it is done” are translated from a different
Greek word, the meaning is essentially the same as
that triumphant cry of the Christ upon the cross at the moment of His
spirit’s departure — the conqueror’s cry,
“Tetelesti,” — “It is finished!”
More exactly, “It is
accomplished.” The idea is
not merely that a thing is ended, but that it is rounded out perfectly.
That piece of work, that heavenly purpose, was Divinely Finished.
Nothing can be added to it.
Nothing can be taken from it.
The word of the preacher in Ecclesiastes, comes with wonderful power
in this connection.
“I know that, whatsoever God doeth,
it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it:
and God doeth it, that men should reverence before Him” (Eccl. 3:14).
It is that sense of completeness, of unchangeable fulfillment and
consummation, which is wholly divine.
Jonathan Mitchell has given some alternate renderings of the Greek:
“It has come to be.” “It has
been birthed.” “It has come
into existence.” “It has
occurred!”
When men say, “It is
finished,” the world laughs at them.
The ink is not dry upon the page of a Constitution before many people
are clamoring for an Amendment.
The law is not printed, oftentimes not signed by the proper authority,
before defects are found. What
a cry of triumph there was when the work on the formation of a Constitution
for the
United
States was
completed! But tell me how many
amendments we now have.
Twenty-seven! And it needs
twenty-seven more! The moment a
church organization says, “Now we have finished our creed,” and says of it,
“We have the purest doctrine on earth,” that very moment the organization
ceases to progress. Let anyone
dare to interfere with the truth as they perceive it, which they have set in
concrete, thus making it a static
creed. “This is the creed,”
they say, “it is the whole truth and
nothing but the truth. If
you do not agree with this thing which we have finished, Anathema; to the
faggot, to the stake, to the cross, to the gallows, to the prison, to death
with the man who dares to contradict this finished creed of ours!
Throw him out!”
Through the years various
ones have written asking us for a copy of our “Doctrinal
Statement.”
We have never written one, and
never will.
Do you realize how many revisions we would have had to make just
during my brief lifetime? The
moment you write your creed you cannot go any
further with God nor have any more truth shed upon
your pathway, for you have crystallized truth into a restricted form.
How wonderful the knowledge that the Holy Spirit is
still leading us into all truth!
How blessed the realization that we are still progressing
from glory to glory, from experience to experience, from faith to faith, and
from one level of truth to another!
You have probably seen cars on the road that have a primer coat of
paint on them. They are on the
way to becoming great-looking cars, but they’re not there yet.
They are “in progress.”
People are like that. God’s
elect are like that! If you
look around you today at those whom the Lord has called to sonship, you will
see people who are unfinished products.
I’m sure you have seen the button some people wear that says, “Please
be patient, God isn’t finished with me yet.”
Sometimes we forget that our brethren are people “in progress.”
We are offended when they manifest some imperfection.
Sometimes we also expect ourselves to be perfect, and we become
discouraged or distressed if we fail
to measure up to our own expectations.
The great news we can focus on today is that God will bring His work
in us to completion! Oh, yes,
He will! That is the great
revelation and comfort shining brightly through the words of our text.
God has appointed a day — there will come a great voice out of the
heavenly realm, out from the throne-room, proclaiming,
“It is done!”
Oh, yes, we will be God’s
finished product! HE is the
one who started the work. He
planned it in eternity. He
revealed it and has carried it out in history through the progression of the
ages. He is GOD and He will
finish His work in His apprehended ones!
The seventh bowl brings
the end of God’s perfecting work in all His people.
The work has been carried forth through the opening of the seven
seals, through the sounding of the seven trumpets, and now we have come to
the pouring out of the final bowl of the
seven last plagues.
We stand at the end, the finish, the termination of the
limitations and weakness of the flesh, the turmoil of the carnal mind, the
pressures of the world, the testings of the devil, the deception and bondage
of religious Babylon — the end of all that has hindered and
defeated God’s people.
“It is done!”
What a word that is!
Meditate upon the words
of the preacher in Ecclesiastes, and realize the completeness of the divine.
What the Christ did was a complete, finished work.
Nothing can be added to or taken from it.
He accomplished the work the Father gave Him to do, and all that His
death meant and effected was carried forth successfully to its divine
conclusion. Yet it was only
laying a finished foundation for that building that was to be built up
throughout the ages. Christ did
not finish everything in the divine plan, nor even everything included in
our redemption, when He yielded up His spirit on the cross.
But the specific work He was accomplishing by His
death was wrought out and brought
to its divine conclusion. The
foundation was complete. He
finished the work, and upon the altar of His own completed work which He had
Himself erected, He laid Himself down to be the propitiation for the sins of
the whole world.
It is finished!
It is significant to note that
“It is finished” are the very words the priest would say when the Passover
sacrifice was completed!
Christ
our Passover is slain for us, and having died once…he dieth no more!
Hence it never needs to be repeated.
IT IS DONE!
“Nor yet that He should offer Himself
often…but now once in the
consummation of the ages hath He been manifested to put away sin by the
sacrifice of Himself.”
While all men everywhere were
reconciled to God by the death of His Son, they were not
perfected, nor were they
conformed to His image, nor were they matured unto the measure of the
stature of the fullness of Christ.
Right there is where many brethren misunderstand the “finished work”
of Christ on the cross. If
every saint of God would diligently and prayerfully study all the New
Testament says about what was accomplished by the wonderful
cross of Christ they would see
clearly just what all is included in that “finished work.”
And if every member of God’s elect would then carefully consider all
the “shall” and “shall be” statements in God’s Word they would also be
enlightened and instructed concerning those great and glorious things that
are
not included in that
“finished work,” and therefore remaining to be accomplished in each of our
lives by the mighty on-going
processings of the Spirit of God. Time
and space do not permit us to go into the many passages touching on this
great truth, but in one precious verse we have an
indication of just what was “finished” at the cross
and of that which was not finished at the cross, yet to be wrought out in
our lives by a very different
process of God.
“For if, when we were enemies, we
were reconciled to God by the
death of His Son, much more,
being reconciled, we
SHALL BE SAVED by His
LIFE” (Rom. 5:10).
And now, in our text, there is a great
voice out of the temple
in heaven, from the throne, and
who can deny that it is the voice of the One who sits upon the throne, who
also said:
“To him that overcometh will I grant
to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with
my Father in His throne”
(Rev. 3:21). Observe, then, how
it is the Lord Jesus Himself, not Jesus on the cross on
Calvary’s hill, but the resurrected, ascended, and
glorified Christ who now again proclaims a
finished work —
“It is done!”
This obviously cannot be the
same finished work He announced
on the cross! Ah, now
that all His redeemed people have had visited on them the passion of God
through the seven last plagues, to bring them out of captivity in spiritual
Egypt, to deliver them
from the tyranny of religious Babylon, to purge, refine,
purify, perfect, and mature them into the image of Christ, there comes a
voice, not from the cross, this time, but out of the heavens of the Spirit,
out from the throne of power; THAT was
atonement, reconciliation, redemption
— THIS is deliverance,
purification, perfection: “It is
finished! It is done!
It is accomplished!”
ALL DONE!
All the fleshiness, all the carnality, all the foolishness of
religion, all the immaturity and childishness, all the sin and lack, all the
misunderstanding, all the doctrinal delusions, all the unbelief, and all the
worldly ways — the day of deliverance has come and now,
“Let us be glad and rejoice, and give
honor to Him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His wife hath
made herself ready.
And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen,
clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints.
And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are called unto
the marriage supper of the Lamb” (Rev.
17:7-9).
Paul Mueller commented on our
text, “When the seventh angel poured out his vial
into the air, which is the same
‘air’ that once was the devil’s realm, a great voice out of the temple of
heaven, from the throne, said,
‘IT IS DONE.’
Something has been concluded, finished, and terminated.
It is the continuing conflict between flesh and spirit, and between
sin and death and the Life of God that has been terminated.
For us, all that pertained to the past death-life will then be over.
The attacks of Satan will then be over.
Our bondages also will be over, and ultimately those of all mankind
and of the whole creation. When
God says,
‘IT IS DONE,’ we may be sure
that it is done! The proof of
this will be our transformation and the final
fall of the evil powers
of Babylon.
The old creation, that was created by the old, carnal man,
Adam, as ‘he’ was inspired by Satan, shall pass away.
And the new creation, created by Christ and His brother-sons, shall
then come forth to the glory of the Father.”
Just as the “it is finished” of Calvary refers to a
different work than the “it is done” of our text,
so there is one more “it is
done” in the book of Revelation
which also signifies a different work than either of the two preceding.
“And he that sat upon the
throne said, Behold, I make
ALL THINGS new…and He said unto me,
IT IS DONE.
I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end” (Rev. 21:5-6).
No longer just the body of Christ, but now the Lord moves to renew
and restore ALL
THINGS, the entire creation of God.
All things which John had seen up to now were for the church, the
people of God. But now the
vision allows us to peer through the glory and to the very end, to an end
which includes all things everywhere.
Who would not longingly look toward that blessed consummation?
And so certain is the Christ of the throne that all will be made new,
that He declares
“IT IS DONE!”
And the glorious result is revealed in the words which
immediately follow: “I will give unto
him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.”
Even the rich man in
hell will hear those words!
Think of it!
VOICES, THUNDERS, LIGHTNINGS, AND A GREAT EARTHQUAKE
“And there were voices, and
thunders, and lightnings; and there was a
great earthquake, such as
was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so
great” (Rev. 16:18).
Let us look a bit more at what John sees when the seventh angel pours
his bowl into the air. Out of
the atmosphere are seen proceeding voices, and thunders, and lightnings;
then there is a great earthquake, the greatest ever recorded in human
history. Three other times in
the Revelation it speaks of voices, thunders, and lightnings.
These things, of course, are the familiar accompaniments of a storm.
It is significant that each time they are named in the book it is in
connection with some direct action taken by the Lord out of the heavens of
the Spirit which produces a reaction and has an effect in the earth realm.
And each time there is some added action intensifying the scene!
A physical storm is caused by two areas of unequal
temperature coming together.
The storm is the process of the coming together and equalizing of the
atmospheric conditions. The
inference here would seem to be that the storm is created when the two
“atmospheres” of heaven and earth meet, that is, when the atmosphere of the
spirit realm touches the atmosphere of the earthy, carnal, soulical realm,
and a storm results which equalizes the atmosphere, bringing clear weather,
or true clarity in both the atmosphere of the
spiritual and the soulical.
It suggests that the Lord is taking the next step in bringing forth
the revelation of Jesus Christ in all
His people! He has risen up
from His secret place, spoken from His heavenly temple, and come forth to
bring judgment in the lives of all who name His name!
And my, what a storm that creates within God’s people and throughout
the church world! And what
commotions of voices, thunders, and lightnings this produces in the midst!
The “storms” of the book of Revelation are interesting.
In chapter eight a storm is created when something symbolically
represented as “fire of the altar” is cast into the earth and becomes a
disturbing element in the atmosphere of the earth causing great disturbance
there. When the Lord comes in
His Holy Ghost fire it always changes the
temperature and creates a disturbance!
The fire of God heats up
the atmosphere of Adam’s world, quickening
the spirit within man, and the heated atmosphere of the spirit meets the
cold atmosphere of man’s soulical
life, and a great storm is generated!
God speaks out of the
storm, and there are heard voices proclaiming heavenly things!
In the storm God manifests His
power in the thunderings!
He gives brilliant flashes
of illumination and
revelation by the lightnings!
By this storm He shakes
(symbolized by the earthquake) everything of the old carnal understanding,
the old natural life, the old worldly system of things, purifies the
atmosphere, pours down the rain of His Spirit and Life, and MAKES ALL THINGS
NEW! The vision reveals the
great truth that in the outworking of God’s kingdom purposes,
first something happens in
heaven, and then as a
consequence, certain
events take place
in our earth.
And the outcome is glorious indeed!
Throughout the scriptures the earthquake was a regular feature of
divine visitation. When God
descended upon mount Sinai,
“the whole mountain quaked greatly” (Ex. 19:18).
Isaiah prophesied that men would hide in caves from the terror of the
Lord, “when He ariseth to shake mightily the earth” (Isa. 2:19).
“Once again, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the
earth,” writes Haggai (Hag. 2:6).
Earthquake denotes a sudden, powerful, and violent disruption of the
normal state of things. No
human power can control or bring about earthquakes.
Many times we have seen
on the news cities that were shaken by temblors, and have seen the wreck of
some of the finest dwelling places and commercial buildings the ingenuity of
man can devise. In a few
seconds, while the hearts of men stood still with terror, while no human
hand could possibly aid them, the great concrete structures crashed and
shattered to ruins in the street below.
Men and women grabbed their babies and fled blindly for shelter —
they knew not where. No human
power can stay an earthquake, or even definitively warn of its coming.
Since Armageddon is the final battle in the saint’s perfection into
Christ, it is fitting that the earthquake accompanying this battle is
described as “a great earthquake,
such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and
so great.” Now if that were
a literal earthquake it would be
horrendous indeed,
for there have been historically some catastrophically devastating
earthquakes. Pompeii was destroyed by an earthquake in A.D.
63. In 1556 there was an
earthquake in the Shensi Province of China which took 800,000
lives. In 1693 an earthquake on
the island of Sicily
took 60,000 lives. Early in the
eighteenth century the Japanese
city of Edo (now Tokyo) was destroyed with the loss of 200,000
lives. In 1755 the city of Lisbon,
Portugal lost 60,000 persons
to an earthquake, the shocks of which were felt as far away as southern France and North Africa.
In 1797 40,000 people were killed in an earthquake at
Quito, Ecuador.
In 1819 an earthquake caused 2,000 square miles to sink and become
the bed of a lake in the state of Kutch in India.
In 1883 a violent eruption at Krakatan in Sunda
Strait
caused the deaths of 36,000 people.
In 1896 an earthquake in
Japan
took 26,000 lives.
So there have been some mighty
literal earthquakes which serve as faint shadows of the powerful
spiritual shakings to come to
God’s people in the battle at Armageddon!
On the physical level, an earthquake occurs where the cooling of the
earth has caused two layers of earth to overlap rather than to come together
flush. As they try to settle
into a more natural position, great pressure and stress is created and
suddenly they release energy, there is a mighty movement, and an earthquake
takes place. Spiritually, this
is fulfilled within each of us in those areas of our life where the flesh
and the spirit, the carnal mind and the spiritual mind, truth and error, or
our will and God’s will overlap
within ourselves, causing intense pressures to be formed, evoking
instability in our lives.
We have these places deep within us where things do not fit together
properly, where there are flaws in our thinking or defects
in our character, and pressure builds up, for soul and body have not
been synchronized with the spirit, so that they do not “mesh” together.
When we meet a situation that begins to trigger these pressures and
conflicts, a mighty rumbling and movement is set off!
The flesh wars against the
spirit, and the spirit wars
against the flesh! When both
the spirit and the flesh want to dominate great pressures are created deep
within. When God sets His
hand to finally and ultimately deal with every aspect of our flesh-life He
gathers us straight to that place called Armageddon!
As the Spirit of God moves sovereignly in our life, exerting a force
beyond the capacity of the natural man, the great “earthquake” then ensues!
The earthquake touches the fault-lines of our life, not just the
surface things, but the very depths of being where the foundation is
defective, imperfect, and unsound.
It should not be difficult to understand that
no man can be conformed to the
image of God apart from spiritually devastating and destructive earthquakes!
In order for creation to be delivered and restored into God
everything of the natural constitution, the human mentality, the Adamic
consciousness, the carnal mind, the flesh life, our own will and ways, yes,
and even all our former heavens of spiritual experience must be shaken,
utterly removed, and demolished!
And when He has finished His great work, in the most powerful
earthquake we have ever experienced or any man has ever experienced, the
carnal mind, the human nature, the flesh, and religious Babylon will lie in ruins
and eternal desolation! But the
Christ-life will be exalted on high in our lives!
When the earthquake comes there are great commotions within and we
react and feel in a spiritual way exactly like those people experience
naturally who are victims of physical earthquakes.
Cars in the streets roll back and forth, trees thresh about, broken
like toothpicks; buildings collapse, the terrain moves violently, bridges
buckle, hospitals are devastated, water supplies are broken, communications
are cut off, highways and railways are split asunder, our whole equilibrium
is thrown off balance, and there is great suffering and death.
Oh, yes! When the
spiritual earthquake occurs within us, the old world of our carnal
understanding, the powerful citadels of the flesh, and all the entrenched
spirit of man-made religion are wiped away!
This is the awesome work of the earthquake that strikes when the word
of our Father comes in power and shakes us out of heaven!
Some years ago Rosemary Garzon wrote, “We have recently heard of a
prophecy given concerning a terrible earthquake this summer in this country.
Through the years we have heard of similar prophecies being given,
which most of you have also heard.
Be that as it may. We do
know that the hour of the manifestation of the sons of God must surely be
nigh at hand. There is enough
proof in His word that when we have a breakthrough of great intensity from
the natural earth realm into the realm of His Spirit, an earthquake is
assured! We might liken this
reaction to the ‘sonic boom’ we are all familiar with when a jet plane
breaks through the sound barrier.
This reaction is one of God’s laws in His vast universe.
When Jesus Christ broke through His flesh body and ‘yielded up the
ghost’ we read of what took
place.
‘And, behold, the veil of the temple
was rent in twain from the top to the bottom:
and the earth did quake, and the
rocks rent: and the graves were opened: and many bodies of the saints which
slept arose, and came out of the graves after His resurrection, and went
into the holy city, and appeared unto many’ (Mat. 27:51-53).
But there is a truth beyond just the personal application.
It is significant to note that in chapter eleven of the Revelation we
see a token fall of the great
city Babylon, which is the fall of
Babylon
within God’s chosen and separated elect, while in chapters sixteen through
eighteen we are shown Babylon’s total
collapse and destruction, which is the fall of Babylon within the
lives of ALL God’s people! “And
the same hour there was an earthquake, and
the tenth part of the city (Babylon) fell…” (Rev.
11:13). What is a tenth?
It’s a tithe, a firstfruit, an earnest — that which is uniquely God’s
and guarantees the balance! All
of Babylon,
the “great city,” will fall, but here it is a partial fall.
The manchild company, the sons of God themselves, are the “tenth”
part of Babylon
that is now falling. As the
Spirit of the Lord has destroyed the strongholds of
Babylon
within us, we are all aware that not all
of this symbolic city has fallen!
The other nine-tenths, the structure of the carnal church systems,
has continued till today, but it has suffered some loss from the earthquake
that has freed God’s elect from its clutches.
What it has lost and is losing from itself is here called “a tenth.”
This reminds us that, when the prophet Isaiah was told about the
destruction coming upon Jerusalem
and its kingdom
of Judah,
he was told “there will still be within it a tenth, and it must again
become…like a massive tree in
which, when there is a cutting
down of them, there is a stump; a holy seed will be the stump of it” (Isa.
6:13). The “stump” or “holy
seed” proved to be the faithful remnant that survived the exile in
Babylon
and returned home to rebuild the holy temple
at Jerusalem and restore the kingdom of Israel.
Though the application is a little different, the principle is the
same — the “tenth part” is the promise that the whole kingdom of Babylon
will come down! Only after the
blessed sons of God are manifest and the glorious bride of Christ has “made
herself ready” will the entire city of
Mystery
Babylon
be eternally desolated, burned with fire, and reduced to ashes!
“See that ye refuse not Him
that speaketh. For if they
escaped not who refused Him that spake on earth, much more shall not we
escape, if we turn away from Him that speaketh from heaven: whose voice then
shook the earth: but now He hath
promised, saying, Yet once more I
shake not the earth only, but also heaven.
And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the
removing of those things that are
shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which
cannot be shaken may remain.
Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us
have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably” (Heb. 12:25-28).
Reference to the shaking of
the earth and heaven comes closer home than just the upheaval and doing
away with man’s earthly orders, governments, institutions, cultures, and
religious systems. Certainly
all of that, too, shall pass away!
It also speaks of God’s dealings with all who aspire to become sons
of God in the here and now. Not
only the earth in us — our
humanity with its faults, weaknesses, limitations, emotions, ways, powers,
and attributes — but also the heaven
in us must be shaken! The
heaven in us embraces all our spiritual blessings and experiences of the
past. The purpose of this
shaking is not to destroy but to replace what has been of God in our
spiritual journey but only intended for a specific time and purpose in our
growth and development in Christ.
The removal of those things is to reveal something far greater!
Never does the Lord take
something away unless it is to give us something better!
He removes the natural to give us the spiritual.
He replaces the good with His best.
He takes away the “in part” to reveal in us His fullness.
When the transitory (shadow, letter of the word) has fulfilled its
purpose, He then introduces us to what is real, heavenly, and eternal
(divine substance). Therefore
let us be grateful for the shaking of even our heavens and for receiving a
kingdom that cannot be shaken!
This wonderful
kingdom
of our Father is
earthquake proof — it will never pass away, and of the increase of His government and
peace there shall be NO END!
THE SHAKING OF BABYLON
“And there was a great earthquake…and
the great city was divided into three
parts, and the cities of the nations fell:
and great
Babylon
came in remembrance before God, to give unto her the cup of the wine of the
fierceness of His wrath” (Rev. 16:18-19).
What dreadful thoughts and feelings are awakened in the soul by the
very sound of the words Mystery
Babylon!
They are terrible words.
They bring before us at once, that vast mass of professed Christians who
call themselves “the church,” but are not.
Mystery Babylon
is a dark and dreadful anomaly.
It is neither one thing nor the other.
It is not “Israel,
nor the Gentiles, nor the
church
of
God.”
The “great city” spoken of is neither natural
Jerusalem nor is it the heavenly Jerusalem from above, the
mother of us all. It is a
corrupt mysterious mixture, a spiritual malformation, a hideous mutation,
the masterpiece of Satan, the corrupter of the truth of God, the distorter
of the character of God, the perverter of the ways of God, the destroyer of
the souls of men, a trap, a snare, a stumbling block by which men are made
two-fold more the children of hell than before.
It is the corruption of the very best thing — the body of Christ —
and therefore the most vile of corruptions.
It is that thing which Satan has made of professing Christianity.
It is worse by far than Judaism; worse by far than the darkest of
pagan religions; because it has higher light and richer privileges, makes
the very highest profession, and occupies
the very loftiest seat.
It is without doubt that awful apostasy for which is reserved the very
heaviest judgments of God — the most bitter dregs in the cup of His
righteous wrath. If the words
penned by John on Patmos do not say this,
then I have no understanding or comprehension of language.
I doubt if one Christian in one hundred thousand has anything like an
adequate sense of the true character and inevitable doom of that system
together with all the teachings, rituals, traditions, holy days, programs,
organization, promotions, and religious exercises which surround them.
If they had it would solemnize their minds and hearts, and cause them
to sense the urgent need to flee at once out
of Babylon’s clutches, and stand apart in
holy separation
from Babylon’s
ways, that they might escape such awful judgment as is about to be executed,
for “strong is the Lord that judgeth her.”
In our text, as a result of the “great earthquake,” the “great city”
was divided into three parts.
Elwin Roach gave the following commentary on this thought, which I
think is excellent. “‘Divided
into three parts’ indicates a division of a whole unit.
In God we have one unit with three parts, but not divided: Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit. In man we
also have a tripartite being: spirit, soul, and body.
To be complete, whether it be God or man, there can be no division.
It is the same with a natural city which consists of man.
If it is divided in its common interest then it will surely fall.
Not only that, all the other cities in her dominion will also be
desolated.
‘And the cities of the nations fell.’
This is what we see happening to this “great city” — a division
before the fall. This division
also happened in seed form with Eve.
She was tempted, seduced, divided herself from her husband, conceived
sin, died spiritually, and was judged of God.
We should be able to see the parallel here.
The city is divided, but this time it is by the hand of God — an
earthquake! But before the
shakings could cause the
division she would have had to already have separated herself from God.
Otherwise the earthquake could not have moved her, for that which is
founded in God cannot be moved!”
— end quote.
In another sense the great city, Babylon, is split into
three parts by the shaking of God, that is, it is brought to a
complete break-up,
to complete ruin — for three
is the number of completeness.
The two statements — “the great city was divided into three parts” and “the
cities of the nations fell” — indicate that the whole city and every
structure in it fell in a heap in utter ruin.
Every structure collapsed, one wall falling to the right, another to
the left, the roof and the floors falling down between them.
It is total disintegration!
There is, of course, an individual
and personal application as the
Babylon
within each of us is judged.
The mighty earthquakes come to each individual
as the Lord shakes each believer from the death-hold of the spirit of Babylon, to be loosed unto
the complete control and Lordship of Jesus Christ through the
indwelling Spirit.
All the cities (the religious strongholds, dominating hierarchies,
denominational headquarters) of the nations fall.
They fall within the affections of each of us!
They all fall before the greater revelation of Jesus Christ!
Every island of religious
gatherings flees away.
Every mountain of religious achievement, fame, and power crumbles and
are no more. The ultimate
truth of God’s great hail falls unrelentingly upon every thought, concept,
doctrine, and tradition of man, crushing it into the earth.
The spirit of Babylon
is marked “finished” because the Lord, by His Spirit and His Word, puts down
all rule, authority, and power!
Isn’t it wonderful!
EVERY ISLAND FLED
“And every island fled away”
(Rev. 16:20).
This also is the result of the “great earthquake” as God shakes the
kingdom
of Babylon
within us. Islands signify that
separate, individualized,
independent
gathering and
effort of man to do his own thing, build his own kingdom, gain a following,
and make a name for himself.
This is one of the roots of the
Babylonian religious system which separates, divides,
and exalts itself into a domineering, cultish form — “WE are the true
church, WE are the body of Christ, WE are the repository of all truth, WE,
and WE ALONE, are God’s anointed instrument in the earth!”
How many times have you heard that!
Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox, Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses,
certain “sonship” groups, and the list goes on and on.
But all spiritual egotism, self-centeredness, self-exaltation, and
sectarian spirit will be dealt with by the Lord!
All this is the “way of Cain” who “went out from the presence of the
Lord…and he builded a city” (Gen.
4:16). He sought to exalt his
own name, gain a following, and build a kingdom around himself.
The final result of that spirit became Babylon
— first ancient Babylon and now
Mystery
Babylon.
But all the efforts of man will fail, for God sends His great
earthquake and the “great city” is divided and demolished and
every island flees away!
Oh, yes!
THE MOUNTAINS ARE NOT FOUND
“…and the mountains were not
found” (Rev. 16:20).
Mountains always occupy a dominant position in relation to the
surrounding terrain and are imposing and strong, consisting primarily of
rock. From this standpoint they
fittingly picture kingdoms, governments, organizations, and strong
dominating powers which impose themselves over men.
Thus mountains signify great and strong kingdoms of man, either
within ourselves or that which is built up outwardly.
The kingdom of God
itself is symbolized by the stone cut out without hands which smites the
image in its feet, grinds it to powder, and then grows to become a “great
mountain” that fills the whole earth!
The prophet Micah saw that “in
the last days it shall come to pass, that the
mountain (kingdom) of the house
of the Lord shall be established in the
top of the mountains (above and over
all other strong kingdoms), and it shall be exalted
above the hills (above and over the
smaller kingdoms), and people shall flow unto it.
And many nations shall come, and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain
of the
Lord…and He will teach us His ways, and we will walk in His paths…”
(Mic. 4:1-2). As the prophet
Daniel reveals, the end result shall be that all these earthly “mountains”
shall be swallowed up by THE MOUNTAIN OF THE LORD!
“…and the mountains were not
found.” All the
kingdom-building of man shall cease.
The empires — religious, economic, or political — which were
monuments to the abilities of the flesh will be brought low.
HAIL
“And there fell upon men a
great hail out of heaven, every stone about the weight of a talent: and
men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail; for
the plague thereof was exceeding
great” (Rev. 16:21).
The plague of hail is also reminiscent of the seventh plague that God
sent upon Egypt at the hand of Moses.
It was this plague that
brought total devastation to the land of Egypt.
Men, animals, and plants were violently killed by the hail and
lightning that rained down from heaven upon Egypt.
This plague was somewhat unique because Yahweh constantly reiterated
the fact that this plague was intended to prove to all the
Egyptians that He was the one, true God who
was to be reverenced and worshipped (Ex. 9:14, 16, 27, 29).
This plague brought “very grievous hail, such as hath not been seen
in Egypt
since the foundation thereof” (Ex. 9:18).
Many gods of the
Egyptians were humiliated by the events
that came to pass as a result of the plague
of hail. Because many
cattle were killed, the bull and cow gods were again proven to be powerless.
Because the trees, plants, and crops were destroyed by the hail,
Renenutet — the harvest goddess
was shown to be impotent.
Seth, the god of storms and
protector of crops was ineffectual.
As cattle and men died in great numbers, Isis,
the goddess of life was
humiliated by this plague, as was
Shu, the god of the air, Tefnut,
the goddess of moisture, and
Osiris, a god of vegetation.
And there were others!
The plague of hail was undoubtedly a direct affront on more
Egyptian gods than any other plague that
had come before! And without
doubt, the plague of hail in the Revelation is a powerful and devastating
judgment against the many “false gods” of the religious systems of man!
The size and weight of this hail is designated to be “about a
talent.” A talent is estimated
at various weight figures, and
this need not surprise us when we
consider that the modern concept of having a standard gram or
kilogram had not pervaded the ancient world.
Suffice it to say that it was probably in the vicinity of 95 pounds.
Hail of such magnitude, weighing almost as much as a 100 pound bomb,
would indeed be an unquestionably lethal weapon!
To be struck on an arm or foot would mean certain severe damage, and
a strike landing directly on the head would bring instant death.
The property damage to buildings, cars, planes, and infrastructure
would be incalculable. Here in Texas I have
heard of hailstones as big as baseballs.
A lady in Iowa
said she could top that — she had seen hail fall in great chunks.
Yet most of us have seen how hailstones no bigger than the end of
your thumb can devastate a cornfield, a cotton field, an automobile, or a
house roof. The destruction of
hailstones of a talent weight can hardly be imagined.
The Roman catapults threw stones this size into
Jerusalem, according to the historian Josephus.
This, of course, is all
symbolism, emphasizing the power and effectiveness of God’s judgment
upon spiritual Babylon!
Job 38:22 asks the piercing question,
“Hast thou entered into the treasures
of the snow? or hast thou seen the
treasures of the hail.”
The sweet singer of Israel
spake unto the Lord the words of a song in the day that the Lord delivered
him from the hands of his enemies, and from the hand of Saul; in one place
in that song David says concerning the intervention of the Lord on his
behalf, “The Lord also thundered in
the heavens, and the Highest gave His voice;
hailstones and coals of fire”
(Ps. 18:13).
Notice now the sublime message in the words of the prophet Isaiah
wherein he says, “Behold, I lay in
Zion
for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure
foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste.
Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the
plummet: and the hail shall sweep
away the refuge of lies…and your covenant with death shall be
disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand” (Isa.
28:16-18). I think that’s a
marvelous passage because what the inspired prophet is declaring is that the
hail which He sends as judgment will REMOVE THE REFUGE OF LIES which is a
covenant with death and an agreement with hell — and it will do it through
the tried stone, the precious
corner stone — the mighty Christ within our spirit!
Christ is the word of God and He is the truth.
The “great hail” is another symbol for the word of God and the truth.
It is not the truth of God as the gentle rain of blessing, but the
“hard word” of correction and judgment!
If you pause to think, you will become fully aware that only HE can
remove the refuge of lies beneath which
the whole church world has been enshrouded!
Who can deny that a vast amount of what the church systems teach
about the nature of God, His purposes, the church, heaven, hell, eternity,
sacraments, baptisms, the end-time, the great tribulation, the rapture, the
millennium, the antichrist, free will, the judgment, and a hundred other
things is just that — a refuge of
lies!
The elect of the Lord should be aware that water, especially rain
falling from heaven, is used in the scriptures as a type of God’s word and
God’s spirit combined, that is, the
living word of God! Usually
it indicates that He is sending a blessing in
the time of drought. When God
sends the rain that refreshes, sometimes it has come to us as a prophetic
word. The Spirit speaks words
like these, “Yea, my son, thou art mine, thou art precious in my eyes; I
have called thee, I have chosen thee before the foundation of the world unto
a high and holy calling. Yea,
thou shalt be a great one, a mighty one in my kingdom!
My goodly spices shall flow out from thee and thy fragrance shall
fill the earth in the day of my moving!
I will never leave thee nor
forsake thee, I will be with thee in all of thy ways, yea, my hand shall
bring thee unto thy appointed place, saith the Lord!”
Oh, yes, we all love a word like that, and in days past the Lord has
spoken in just such endearing, encouraging, and faith-inspiring promises to
many of us! But not so when He
sends His word that comes as hail!
Water flows, and also it becomes sometimes hard as ice and hail.
When it falls as hail it is not a blessing, as we think of blessing.
When it falls as hail it always brings destruction, depending on its
size, quantity, and duration.
Hail is water, but it is frozen water, thus it bespeaks a
hard word from the Lord!
It is the word of God that strikes us and knocks the
carnal-mindedness out of us! It
is the word that rebukes, chastises, and corrects us!
It gives us an attitude adjustment!
It is not an easy word, not a flowery word, not a sweet, soothing
word, but a word that devastates our field and beats down the carnal
mindset, ways, and works that grow out of our earthly nature.
What large hailstones of a “hard word” fall from the heavens of God’s
Spirit into our land as He smashes our religious idols and all the things we
treasure more than His will and way!
The “refuge of lies” speaks of all the false ideas, false concepts,
false doctrines, and false ways of the Lord’s people!
You can be a good
Christian and embrace these false teachings and practices, but you’ll
never be a
son! The dealing hand of
God must come into our lives to thoroughly correct, purge and purify us from
all the defilements of religion!
Multitudes of believers want only the
rain of God’s word and God’s
spirit, only the blessings from above.
To these the Lord says, “Ye
have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto
sons, My son, despise not thou the
chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of Him: for whom
the Lord loveth He chasteneth,
and scourgeth every SON whom He
receiveth. And if ye
endure chastening, God dealeth
with you as with sons; for what
son is he whom the father
chasteneth not?
But if ye be without
chastisement…then are ye
bastards, and not sons”
(Heb. 12:5-8). Oh, yes, the
Father will give us His glory, His nature, His
wisdom, authority, and power, and raise us up to
judge the world and rule the nations with a rod of iron.
But before He entrusts into our hands such awesome responsibilities
He will put His finger on every aspect of our lives, He will bring training,
discipline, order, and judgment to our house.
He will send the
hailstorms into our lives to
beat down and destroy all the refuge of lies, all the
falsehoods of the doctrines of
men, all the foolishness of the religious systems, in which men take refuge,
in which they trust for their blessing and eternal salvation.
In the statement above I substituted the word
falsehoods for
lies because lies infer a deliberate, intentional, malicious deception.
Very few preachers, teachers, and church systems
deliberately intend to deceive God’s people. They
themselves are deceived and the
message they proclaim is laced with falsehoods.
The hail is a strong, hard, corrective word from the Lord which He
sends into our lives with such SOLID IMPACT that it sweeps away our refuge
of falsehoods. I have
experienced the hail, and I tell you that in just a very brief period of
time the word of God can come to us in such power that it completely lays to
ruin all our strongholds of carnal thinking and religious error!
The ultimate result of this wonderful
deliverance is that He will abolish our covenant
with death and destroy our league with hell!
(Isa. 28:17-18). It is a
complete salvation, yet it cannot be wrought apart from the hailstorm of
God’s strong and powerful word which sweeps away the falsehoods that have
kept us from laying hold upon life and immortality.
He is doing this now in the life of
each member of His called and chosen elect, but before it can be said that
“the bride has made herself ready” He will also accomplish this same work in
ALL OF HIS REDEEMED PEOPLE! Aren’t
you glad!
This certainly edifies me more than to think
Russia is going to invade
Israel or that there will be some kind of nuclear
holocaust over on the plains near Megiddo, somehow causing giant hailstones
to fall upon the people. If any
of this is literal, we have some
glaring inconsistencies. Notice
— if the great earthquake has shaken everything apart, the great city split
into three parts, the cities of the nations fell, great Babylon was judged,
every island fled away, none of the mountains could be found — who or what
could even be
left for the hail to fall
upon! We have all kinds of
carnal-minded prophets of doom and gloom in the land today talking about
hailstones as big around as beach-balls, Godzilla monsters walking down
Main
Street, giant insects
invading the homes, hideous demons riding horses, scorpions as big as bulls
crawling up out of the earth, and other foolishness too ridiculous to
enumerate — all of which they imagine is revealed in the book of Revelation!
I often wonder how people who have received the Holy Spirit of God
can fail to see that all these things are symbolic, they are metaphors
representing great spiritual realities within our lives and in the
experience of mankind. I really
have to question whether a man has truly been filled with the Holy Spirit of
Truth if he can listen to such literalistic trash, such carnal drivel, and never say, “Wait a minute
— there’s something about this that doesn’t add up — how can that be
the revelation of Jesus Christ!”
I’m sure there are some who read these lines who have attended
seminars where the literalistic doom and gloom were taught, and when you
left there you thought, “You know, that really doesn’t bear witness with my
spirit,” but for lack of a better answer you thought, “This brother
must know what he’s talking
about!” Yet, a voice way down
in your inner being whispered to you even then that it wasn’t true.
There was a sudden flash of lightning, a momentary burst of
illumination, that suggested to you that there was a truth deeper and higher
in God! And today prophets of
God are openly proclaiming that truth which you knew in the very depths of
your life but which you were unable to clearly focus or articulate.
The truth does not speak from outside of you.
Truth speaks from inside of you, out of the inner sanctum of your
spirit. If it is the voice of
our Beloved it will make our inner-son leap!
That is what is happening within God’s elect in this hour as the
message of Christ in the Revelation is quickened within our hearts!
THE BLASPHEMY OF MEN
“…and men blasphemed God
because of the plague of the hail; for the plague thereof was exceeding
great” (Rev. 16:21).
For a time men will blaspheme God “because of the plague of the
hail,” for it will be devastating in its working.
This verse, however, it is not placed at the
end of the judgment upon
Babylon
and the final deliverance of God’s people.
This work continues on through chapters seventeen and eighteen.
Only then does the seventh
plague complete its grand purpose!
Therefore, the “blasphemy” of men is a response along the way in the
process of judgment. When the
work is finished Great Babylon will fall to rise no more, the church — the bride —
will have been purified and made herself ready, the city of God
will be adorned with the glory of God descending out of the heavens, and the
nations will walk in the light
of that city which
is the bride of the Lamb.
The whole of creation will be subdued before Him, joyfully to live in
His sight, all things will be
made new, and all will be gathered into Him — for HE
is the beginning and the end!
It is the Truth that is to fall on men and cause them to blaspheme.
The carnal mind and the old
Adamic reasoning always resist the mind of the Lord,
for they are enmity against God and cannot receive the things of the spirit
of God, because they are spiritually
discerned. The truth
hurts carnal-minded men and
causes them to resist it in resentful blasphemy.
This is the natural man crying out because his death-knell has
arrived, his day has ended, his time has come, and he will now sink into
oblivion to be reckoned with no more!
The Lord employs nothing with which to defeat error and correct men
except the Truth. The adversary
attempted in the beginning of human history to defeat the purposes of God
and destroy the life of man by and through
deception and
falsehood,
and not through the employment of physical or any form of super-human
power. God will likewise send a
hard word with such
devastating power that it will
prevail and sweep away the refuge of
lies. Falsehood swept away, Babylon is disarmed and
helpless, and her armies must perish by
the sword of the Spirit!
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Updated
by Sharon Eby 07/26/2017 10:00:09 PM