No more Tears

Revelation 7:13-17

Do you recall the tribulation of being a young child, the pain you inflicted on yourself, the damage you did to your body when the Jimmy, Richard, or Gary’s of your neighborhood said, I double-dog dare you to do it, Oh the pain that was caused by the double-dog dare.  It was one thing to say you are yellow if you don’t do whatever, come on, you are not chicken, are you?  But the “I double-dog dare” was bigger than even someone saying my dad can beat your dad, the “double-dog dare” was the ultimate challenge.   The ultimate challenge caused great pain in my little world, and many times it ended with one of the three musketeers or me running home to get mother to stop the blood, clean the wound and put monkey blood (iodine) to stop the spread of gangrene.  It was always great trauma in a boy’s world to run home to mother, no matter how severe the damage to ones body.  Mother would first fix the problem, and ninety percent of the time it went like this; she would pour the “monkey blood” on the wound, and in unison my little friends and I would say, “blow on it”, as if that fixed everything.  As I reflect back on those times of great distress and suffering it was not the “monkey blood” that brought such healing, it was mother’s arms, I was safe in her arms, and she would wipe away every tear from my eyes.

John is giving an account of what has not happened and we call that prophecy, it is a prediction of a future event that reveals the will of God.  John sees people clothed in white, “Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?”  I said to him, “Sir, you know.”  And he said to me, “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation.  They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”  What is this great tribulation?

My dear pastor Harlan Caton who is now with the Lord, wrote “The Second Coming of Jesus Christ,” Harlan had a passion for the Word of God and spent hours studying and searching to understand what God was saying to us from the Scriptures.  Harlan believed that the church would not go through the great tribulation, that we would be rejoicing with Jesus Christ in glory, while the earth will be experiencing a time of chaos which will be without equal.  “There is coming a dark day such as the world has never seen.  A day of darkness… a black day.  A day when there will not be one Christian on earth.  A day when there will not be one person who is in right- standing with God.  A day, when it begins, when there will not be one Bible-believing person, not one Bible preacher in all the world.”

Harlan states on page 141, that the Bible describes this time by many names:

1.     “The day of the Lord” (Isaiah 2:12, 13:6-13; Jeremiah 30:23-24)

2.     “The time of Jacob’s distress” (Jeremiah 30:5-7

3.     “The “great tribulation” (Revelation 7:14)

4.     “Daniel’s Seventieth Week” (Daniel 9:20-27)

5.     “The great day of their wrath” (Revelation 6:17)

6.     “The day of His burning anger” (Isaiah 13:13)

7.     “The time of distress” (Daniel 12:1)

8.     “The hour of testing” (Revelation 3:10)

9.     “That day” (Jeremiah 30:7)

10.  “The indignation” (Isaiah 26:20)

11.  “A day of wrath…a day of trouble and distress, a day of destruction and desolation…” (Zephaniah 1:15).

My goal is not to say when the great tribulation takes place or who will go through it, but to look at our great God and Father and His wonderful Son, Jesus Christ.  Jesus said the following in Matthew 24:21-22, “For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be.  And if those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved.  But for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short.”  Those who go through this time on earth will be the elect, and I believe that refers to the 144,000, from the twelve tribes of Israel and those they win to the Lord, during this time.  But the point is, they are standing before the throne of God saying; “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”  Verse 17 ends this chapter, “For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their Shepherd, and He will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.   No need for “monkey blood,” or mother, they will be made pure by the “blood of the Lamb” who was slain on a cross for them, and our God and Father will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice