Note: J. Preston Eby, in order to continue to devote his full energy to writing no longer works in the office and does not receive this email. He does, however, respond to any urgent correspondence via snailmail. |
|
To be added to the mailing list to receive the current issue of Kingdom Bible Studies each month: |
"Teaching the things concerning the kingdom of
God..."
FROM THE CANDLESTICK TO THE THRONE
Part 168
THE THREE ANGELS’ MESSAGES
(continued)
“And
the third angel followed them, saying
with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his
mark in his forehead, or in his hand, 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” (Rev. 14:9-10).
Have
you ever had the nagging suspicion that God might actually enjoy seeing the
people who dwell in religious
Does
God feel the same way? No, He does
not! God loves all His people no matter
how deceived or wayward they may be. He
loves them no matter what they do. And
even though He cannot excuse their sin, He does not vindictively punish any of
them, though He does have precise measures of judgment unto correction by which
to deliver their souls. That’s why He
showed the apostle John a vision of three angels flying through the sky
announcing His appeal and warning to all the
The
third angel’s message is directed toward those in
“If
any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead,
or in his hand, 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 shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the
presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: and the smoke of
their torment ascendeth up…and they have no rest day
nor night, who worship the beast and his image…” (Rev. 14:9-11).
May I
remind the reader that this beast is the second
beast John saw in chapter thirteen of the Revelation, the beast out of the earth, or out of the soulical religious realm of man, for that is the beast
which commanded the people to make and pay homage to the image of the first beast. That
identifies it as religious
Let
us notice, in
the first place, that this torment is primarily internal. Every one that at
this point in time worships the beast, so the text reads, and receives a mark
in his forehead or in his hand, he shall also drink of the wine of the wrath of
God which is prepared unmixed in the cup of His anger. It is my deep conviction that these words
refer to the spiritual and internal suffering of those who remain in
Just
as in verse eight where we read of “the wrath of her fornication,” the Greek word for “wrath” here is thumos meaning, according to Strong’s
Concordance, “breathing hard,
passion.” Anyone knows that wine
inflames the passions. The word does not denote wrath in the conventional
sense of rage, violence, vengeance, or judgment, but rather of fever heat or
strong passion. It is associated with God’s anger, and men of passion can certainly be
angry, but anger is not the same as rage, for even in a punitive way passion may
be expressed in terms of love, as
when a parent is moved with passion and stirred to action to sternly discipline a misbehaving
child. So it is clear that God’s
“wrath,” as revealed in the book of Revelation, has to do with passion, or
feeling very strongly about something.
Thus God’s disobedient children, who ignore or resist the wooing of His
Spirit, are made to drink of the “wine of
the passion of God.” God’s wrath or passion is not that which
is vindictive and vengeful, but rather that which is impassioned, fervent,
zealous, enlivened, glowing, vigorous, intense, burning, and dynamic.
God
has a passion to make right what is wrong, to cleanse and restore His people
and creation, like any Father who wants his son to grow straight and strong. He has a passion, therefore He will spare
nothing, not even the rod, to accomplish His great purpose. The wrath of God is the wrath of a Father and
in His wrath He remembers mercy! His
purpose in wrath is always corrective and redemptive! Multitudes of religious people are full of
anger, bitterness, self-righteousness, condemnation, censure, denunciation,
vindictiveness, judgment, anathemas, and damnation — the wrath of man — but now God’s wrath comes! It is the wrath of our Father and our
Redeemer! What a revelation that
is! Oh, the wonder of it! How sublime the very
thought! How awesome the
implication! How divine and glorious the
outcome!
However,
as the love of God does not cancel out His wrath, so His wrath does not cancel
out His love! Every parent who has ever
disciplined a child understands this!
Wrath and love work together to correct what is wrong and make it
right. Strictly speaking, the wrath of
God and His love are not equally eternal
attributes of God. God IS love, the
scripture testifies, but nowhere does it infer that God IS wrath! You do not see in any listing of God’s
attributes that wrath is included.
Neither is wrath listed as one of the fruits of the Spirit. When
sin and error are finished in God’s universe His wrath will end, but His love
will abide eternally upon all His creatures and upon all the works of His
hands. God reacts to sin by wrath — stern measures of discipline and
correction. The wrath really is the love of God in
reverse! According to the Word of God His
wrath is but for a moment — but His
love is unending! In wrath God remembers mercy — because
GOD IS LOVE!
Men
have been given a wrong view, a mistaken image of God! Religion preaches and serves a God who is a
monster, who is exacting, mean, cruel, and vicious. They say that God is love, but in their
hearts they believe that God is vindictive, implacable, harsh, and ultimately
unmerciful, because they believe that God’s judgment against sin and error is
eternal torture in the fires
of hell without one degree
of mercy. They have a distorted,
deranged notion of God’s justice, too, for He will send to this eternal hell
men who never had a chance, who never heard the name of Jesus, who were
ignorant and undiscerning, who were careless and unconcerned, who were guilty
at most of merely fleshly, temporal sins, although they did not hate God or
deliberately walk in rebellion against Him — they merely had the misfortune of
not knowing Him. But then, the way the churches tell it,
the vilest man who ever lived, who hated and blasphemed and abused and
murdered, if on his deathbed, at the last gasping breath of his life, he simply
says, “Father, forgive me; Lord Jesus, save me,” this one gets a one-way ticket
to heaven! Now that, my beloved, is
classical fickleness — not justice!
THE CUP OF HIS INDIGNATION
“The
same shall drink of the wine of the passion of God, which is poured out without
mixture into the cup of His indignation…”
(Rev. 14:10).
The
Psalmist Asaph wrote by inspiration, “For
in the hand of the Lord is a cup, and
the wine is red…the dregs thereof, all the wicked of the earth (realm)
shall…drink them” (Ps. 75:8). John
the Revelator has recorded more concerning this “cup”
of God, “And the great city was divided
into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell:
and great
It
is significant to note that in the whole book of Revelation the term “cup” in
every instance refers either to the “cup” of Babylon’s abominations and
filthiness of her fornication (Rev. 17:4), or, to the “cup” in the hand of the
Lord from which HE gives Babylon to drink of the wine of His passion, even the
“cup” of His indignation. Nowhere is
this cup of His wrath and indignation given to the wicked sinners of the world
to drink or to the nations of earth!
Nearly all the Bible teachers get this one wrong! The cup of God’s wrath is poured out without
mixture (nothing added, it’s all HIM) upon the RELIGIOUS KINGDOM OF MYSTERY
BABYLON THE GREAT, the great whore that sits upon many waters, with whom the
kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth
have been made drunk with her defiled wine (supposedly spiritual life). And while “
Women
in prophecy are churches. In Revelation
12:1 we find the true
The
Roman church is the mother of all, because all are modeled after her false
system. And not only are these
Protestant daughters modeled after their mother as to elementary form and
nature, but all, from the Lutheran Church, the Reformed Churches, the Church of
England, etc., right down to the youngest Charismatic organization, are
propagating, in varying degrees, the false doctrines of their mother while, like their mother,
they profess to dispense the Word of God, pure and unadulterated. They baptize like their mother, they take
“Communion” as the members of the Roman church receive the “Eucharist,” they
proclaim eternal damnation in hell for the lost, eternal life in a physical
place called heaven with literal golden streets, trees, river of life, and
mansions for the saved; they celebrate the pagan holidays of Easter and
Christmas, and keep other religious holidays as does their mother. Time and space forbid a detailed discourse on
all the harlot ways in which the harlot daughters follow their harlot
mother. And we are not unmindful that a
merciful and compassionate God has used all these things, even the mother, in
the salvation of souls and in bringing blessings to humanity, for, after all,
there is a “little light” and the
“voice of harpers ” in Babylon, and even the “voice of
the bridegroom and the bride” have faintly been heard in Her! (Rev. 18:20-24).
But
there is a higher walk, an undefiled way, the way of personal union with Christ
in the power and glory of the living Spirit, apart from all the outward
trappings and traditions of religion.
All who find this blessed place have obeyed the command, “Come out of her, my people, that ye be not
partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues” (Rev.
18:4). Those who have come unto Him without the camp no longer
worship the “beast” of man’s carnality and ego, nor the “image” of the beast,
the Babylon systems of this world; nor do they any longer feed upon the
pronouncements of the “false prophet,” the erroneous and distorted message
flowing from the religious systems, nor do they bear that “mark,” that way of
thinking, upon their foreheads or in their hands (their service and
actions). These have been “beheaded” for
the witness of Jesus, severed from their own head, or the carnal mind, and
severed from the earthly headships (head-quarters) of the religious systems of
man, taking upon them the mind of Christ in and by the anointing within.
Our
text says that all the beast worshippers will drink of the wine of the passion of
God, and they will drink it out of the cup
of His indignation or anger. This,
as we know, is symbolic language, for no one will literally have to drink wine
out of a cup in God’s hand! The language
employed here is drawn from Jeremiah’s prophecies concerning the literal city
of
Jeremiah
did not literally take a cup out of God’s hand and make all the peoples of the nations drink of that wine. What a “communion service” that would have
been! Perhaps he symbolically poured out
a cup of wine upon the ground, but I rather think this was all accomplished in
a spiritual way. But the result of this
“wine” was to confuse the understanding of the nations that God was
judging. “They shall…go mad,” the
Lord said. Ah,
Let
us not think of God’s “anger” as an emotional response, as if God has a hot,
uncontrollable temper as men do, and rashly retaliates against those who
dishonor Him. God says to men today as
He did of old, “You thought that I was
altogether such an one as you are.” But God is not like a man! “For my
thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord” (Isa. 55:8). God is all-wise and sovereign and does not
suffer from temper tantrums or fits of frustration or rage. His “anger” is His sovereign will expressed
through His passion to bring correction and make things right, even as His
judgments are the essential corrections which bring men into alignment with His
holiness. It is all executed by His hot,
burning, passionate love nature, and all is positively designed for man’s good,
and unto His own praise and glory.
Aren’t you glad!
TORMENTED IN THE PRESENCE OF THE LAMB
“And
they shall drink of the wine of the passion 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” (Rev. 14:10).
We
now recognize that in this chapter we have spiritual realities set forth in
symbol, just as the writer sets forth spiritual realities throughout the entire
book of his visions on
We test wood, steel, and stone in order to find
out what they are capable of supporting.
We test our ability to read, to run, to think, to drive a car, but no
one therefore calls them evil. We find
out something about ourselves, even if that something is not always
complimentary. Everything in life is
tested in some manner! How important the
truth, generally overlooked by Bible teachers, that this testing takes place,
not in some far-away torture-chamber, but “in the presence of the holy
messengers (ministers of God), and in the presence of the Lamb.” God will certainly not torture sinners up in
heaven before the throne of God! Yet, if
we took it literally, and interpreted
it with the carnal mind,
that is what would be
implied. This again points to the
fact that it is not the sinners of the world that are being “tested” here,
rather, it is the Lord’s own people who are being tried and tested in the
consuming Holy Ghost fire of God, and in the presence of Him who comes as a refiner’s fire, and as a purifier of
gold and silver! “In the presence of the
Lamb” indicates that it is a spiritual work of testing within God’s people who
dwell in the mixture of
Jesus,
then, is our “touchstone,” and the Word of God, which He personifies. All the Lord’s people must measure up to Him
— HE is our standard, gauge, yardstick,
criterion, “…till we all come to the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a
perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,” and HE is our Judge and our
judgment-seat before which we stand!
Gold is what was tested on the touchstone, and gold signifies the divine
nature. As we rub our “touchstone,” what
mark is being left thereon? Is the
genuineness of our “gold,” or divine
nature being revealed in us? Do we
leave the mark of sonship thereon? Or do we still, in some measure, reveal the
character of the
Some
argue that because we believe God’s judgments are not unto condemnation, but
are corrective and redemptive; and because we teach that the fire and brimstone
are not the flames of an eternal hell of torture and damnation, but are Holy
Ghost fire for man’s purification, we teach a “hell redemption.” We are accused of believing that the lake of
fire can accomplish in a man what the mercy, gospel, and blood of Jesus could
not accomplish. Many years ago Charles
G. Finney opposed the ultimate salvation of all, and the work of purifying
fire, by ridicule. Finney was an
accomplished attorney and a master of the invective. He said that those who
were saved after this “age of grace” ends would unceasingly sing, “Thanks be to
the hell that saved us by our own suffering!”
Just how much weight is there to that criticism? It is a marvelous truth that CHRIST ALONE can
save, and ONLY THE BLOOD OF JESUS can take away man’s sin. There is no other way! How we rejoice that it is so! Yet, without an understanding of the
relationship between the cleansing power of the blood of Jesus and the
all-consuming, purifying fire of God, we can
Throughout
history God manifested Himself in various forms of fire on many different
occasions. We find some of these
manifestations in the making of His covenant with Abraham (Gen. 15:17), the
burning bush (Ex. 3:2-4), the pillar of fire (Ex. 13:21), on
The
scriptures affirm that “our God is a consuming fire” (Deut. 4:24; Heb.
12:29). Fire in the scriptures is often
used symbolically and typically to signify the glory, power, and holiness of
God. Make a mental note here of the fact
that on mount Sinai the glory of God appeared as “a devouring fire” (Ex.
24:16-17). As we search the scriptures,
you’re going to see that fire again and again.
The prophet Habakkuk, for instance, says: “God came from Teman, and the Holy One from
Again
and again God is revealed expressing His glory, power, and holiness in the form
of fire. For instance, in the case of
Perhaps
one of the most outstanding illustrations of the principles we are trying to
make clear is found in Isaiah 6:1-8. The
prophet is standing in the temple area at the hour of the evening sacrifice,
when in spirit he sees the Lord high and lifted up. He at once falls to his face and cries, “Woe is me! for I
am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips.”
Whereupon a seraphim takes a coal from off the altar, draws it
across Isaiah’s lips, and says, “Thine
iniquity is taken away, thy sin is purged.”
It is significant to note
that this coal came from the brazen altar, the place of sacrifice and sin
offering. In Leviticus 9:24 we read that
the fire on this altar was kindled directly from God. In other words, God’s glory, power, and
holiness expressed itself in the kindling of the fire on the brazen altar where
sin was to be dealt with. O that I possessed the tongue of an angel
that I might articulate the wonder of this scene! I do know that the connection is drawn here
between the sacrifice of the altar and the fire of the altar. Like a horse and carriage, the two go
together. They are two aspects of a
whole. In Leviticus 6:12-13 we read that
this fire of the altar was
Behold
the sin of man! Behold the fire of
God! For these two to come together
without sacrificial blood to intervene leaves man lost and undone. For those two to come together with the
presence of sacrificial blood means mighty
In
the Old Testament type we enter the most sacred spot on earth. The “Holiest”
was a square apartment of ten cubits (15 feet) in
In
that
Fire
is God and God is fire. If you’re going
to have a relationship with God, sooner or later you will have a relationship
with fire! Tradition would say that the
fire and brimstone in the book of Revelation bespeaks God punishing and
torturing men with fire. That’s not what
this is talking about! Such talk only
reveals men’s ignorance of the things of God, the ways of God, and the word of
God. The traditional idea is that God is
torturing the wicked with fire and then sitting back and watching the whole
thing, as Nero sat and watched the Christians burn at the stake. To the Romans it was just great sport! But that’s crazy — would you really want to
serve a God like that? Think about
it!
Every
man’s state of being and every man’s work will eventually be tested by
fire. The fire will try every man to
determine what is in him, and the fire will try every man’s work of what sort
it is. If you and I build into our
spiritual life and activities wood, hay, and stubble, the fire will find it
out, and the wall will come tumbling down.
Every child of God is building his spiritual life upon the foundation
that is Jesus Christ. There is no other
foundation that can be laid, or is laid.
Either we are building the quality of gold, silver, or precious stones
or the weak and unprofitable things of wood, hay, and stubble that are soulish
self-efforts and carnal. If the works
that I do are gold, then surely it must mean that I am building out of the
spirit! Am I led by the Spirit of
God? Or am I fulfilling my own ambitions,
satisfying my own ego? There is a vast
difference!
The
heart of man, even of the believing man, is often found to be desperately
wicked in this regard. It is not
difficult to find men who glibly make great claims of being led by the Spirit
of God to go here or there, to do this or that, but many, alas, are involved in
gaining a following and building their own kingdom, though they imagine they
are building for God. Beware the man who tells you that he alone has the truth, that he is God’s prophet, God’s man of faith
and power, that he is the one sent to seal the saints, that he alone bears the
message of the hour, that you will not hear the deep secrets of the Lord from
any other source, and his words alone hold the key to life and immortality, to sonship
and the fullness of God. These people
still move in the wicked spirit of the
God
has not made me a ruler or a judge of my neighbor’s motives, but it does not
require an exceptional gift of discernment to conclude that much of the work
done in God’s name is in reality the wood of a deceitful heart, the hay of
spurious revelation, and the stubble of carnality. All work, whether carnal or spiritual, will
be subjected to the testing fire of God!
If it is gold, silver, or precious stones it will stand the test. If it is the wood, hay, or stubble of
self-effort or self-promotion it will be burned up and destroyed. If any man’s work can abide the fiery testing
of God’s fire and brimstone, then that man will receive a reward for the
profitable work he has accomplished. But
if any man’s work abide not the fire, but rather is consumed by it, then that
man will suffer humiliating loss. All
that he has done through a life-time of supposed service to God will all go up
in smoke before his eyes, and he will suffer dreadful loss. “He
himself shall be saved,” the scripture says, “yet so as by fire” (I Cor. 3:15).
These words are worthy of deep meditation and prayer. Their deep and powerful meaning can
More
than three centuries ago when the
It
is interesting
to note that the Greek word for fire is pur, a derivative
of which is the Latin word pyra (pure) and
the English word pyre — the place for
the burning of a corpse. PYREX also
comes from the same root, pyr or pur, meaning a fire, and rex, meaning a king — that which is
king, thus ruling over the fire, hence a “heat-resistant” glassware. All our English words having to do with that
which is pure are related to the Greek word pur,
OUR
GOD IS A CONSUMING FIRE, the scriptures affirm.
I understand not why fire has been represented to us as something so
terrible, so frightening, so hideous that we should
try to avoid it. If our approach back to
God is through fire, as revealed by the
The
crude idea that the loving and righteous Creator would decree endless torment
in undying
Fire
appears terrible only to the man who is unprepared to pass through it. When of old God came down on Sinai, its upper
peaks were veiled with impenetrable folds of smoke, like the smoke of a
furnace. And in the heart of the smoke
there was the appearance of devouring fire.
There is dread here! Bounds had
been set to keep the people back; but a special message must be sent to warn
them against
WHAT A BURNING
What
a burning, what a burning
As
all goes up in smoke and
Everything
in
Bows
the knee to Jesus’ name.
Burn,
O earth; consume within me
All
that’s there unlike to God;
That
the new earth may be planted
As
the
Let
God’s fire-like word consume
These
religious heavens too,
Till
no longer they receive
Refreshing
drops of heaven’s dew.
Lord,
send forth Thy fiery judgments,
Great
hail stones of talent weight;
Let
them fall as truth descending
On
man’s wicked, sinful state.
That
on whom so e’re they fall,
Thy
will the vile to powder grind.
Not
one atom of the old
In
our new earth will we find.
— Reba McMurry
To be continued… J. PRESTON EBY
Links to other ministry websites
Not finding what you need? SEARCH HERE
Search this site or the web powered by FreeFind |