John's astonishment

Revelation 14:1-5

Have you experienced a day that is so dark, so fearful, you feel that God has abandoned you and out of that darkness, you find new strength, new hope, and are able to experience many blessings that God has prepared in advance for you?  The apostle John is teaching and sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ in Ephesus, having a great time, and the next moment the king has banished him as an old man to hard labor on the island of Patmos.  We are not told what John is thinking but if I were John, it would have been one of those dark days, wondering how could this action bring glory to God.  We do not know how long it was before God began to show the Apocalypse to John, but this we know that John was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day when God opened the doors of heaven and the mysteries of what is to come.

I can only imagine the joy and astonishment, surprise, shock, speechlessness, awe that was John’s as Jesus began to open his eyes to what was to come.  Chapter 14 begins. “Then I looked, and behold, on Mount Zion stood the Lamb, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads.”  We know the Lamb is Jesus, and in Hebrews 12:22, we are given insights into Mount Zion, “But you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God.  You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly.”  Much that is seen on earth is a duplication of what is in heaven, like the temple, Mount Zion and the heavenly Jerusalem.  If we look back to Revelation 7:4-10, it becomes clear that the 144,000 are from the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel, and in verse 14 we have this account; “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.”

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice