When you look at the promises to the Christians and the Jews, you can notice how they relate to the promises and judgments of Revelation 7, 14, and 20/21. It should be of no surprise that God encoded the passages of promise into a 3/7 pattern. Revelation 7 is pretty clear that two groups are mentioned: 144,000 Jewish people (12,000 from the 12 different tribes) (verses 1-8) and a great multitude in white robes (verses 9-17). In Revelation 14, there are also three groups mentioned: the 144,000 firstfruits in verses 1-5 (same as Revelation 7), those who take the mark of the beast and are damned for eternity (verses 9-12), and a great winepress harvest (verses) 14-20. Given the follow the Lamb reference in verse 4, it would appear the 144,000 are the living Jewish remnant for Christ; given the blood reference of 1,600 stadia in verse 20, it would represent those in death (it is not as specific if it was for dead in Christ or not since verse 13 implies blessed are those who die in the Lord from that point on). Revelation 20 comes about with some more nuance:
- Verse 4 specifies thrones and those with authority to judge, followed by a detached And sentence mentioning those who were beheaded for their testimony about Jesus and because of the word of God. It would seem that the resurrection was not intended for those beheaded believers who share in the first resurrection, who are blessed and reign with Christ in the millennium.
- Verses 7-10 talks about Satan being loosed for a season. It would seem unnecessary unless people in the resurrection still had a propensity for evil and for God to destroy them in verse 9. The only logic for this is if people who survive the Great Tribulation were still capable of deception following Christ’s 1,000 year reign.
- Verses 11-15 speak about the Great White Throne judgment, when God sorts the sheep and the goats in the same procession of Matthew 24 and 25.
Revelation 21 then proceeds to the new order of life, returning to God’s ordained order from the beginning of creation. How then does Revelation proceed according to the procession?
The most controversial aspect of Revelation is the Rapture. It is a logical impossibility, but a Biblical necessity. If people live according to the Sermon on the Mount, it would be impossible for sheep not to take the mark. Their loving and harmonious nature requires a need to be removed from the testing of those who still have a personal form of pride to be rid of in the Great Tribulation. Tribulation Saints are blessed, but still somehow damned, as they have to endure the judgments and lose their lives in order to gain it. These would be people who can only understand conditional salvation or works based ideologies and lead sheep to some sort of pride based religious ideology. Sadly, this carries many Christian denominations (and popular YouTube channels) today. Sheep follow a shepherd, goats fight against an oppressive system due to a prideful nature or a desire to hold onto their own merit in the understanding of salvation.
The Rapture doctrine is not new by any means. Why else would Paul tell the Thessalonians do not be concerned that the Day of the Lord has come until the Man of Sin (lawlessness) is revealed and there be a great falling away (rapture/apostasy, most likely a dual fulfillment)? It would be contradictory for Paul to assert peace if these believers were intended to be potentially slaughtered and tested for their faith with a mark in their forehead or right hand. As such, the Revelation 7 promise of when the sixth seal is opened (end of Revelation 6), the period of Christian grace is over and fulfilled in verses 14-19, and the 144,000 and Jewish promises begin.
Then the time of Jacob’s Trouble really gets kicking in as the Trumpets start going, testing lukewarm Christians and the Jews outside of the 144,000. We know the 144,000 aren’t going to have a great time, the verses in Ezekiel and Jeremiah were fairly tough. We know from Joel 3, there will be a splitting of a valley where Jews will have to make a choice.
Since the beasts represent empires or groups of people, there are technically two systems at play here (iron and clay via Daniel 2). The first beast system is likely Islam, which is a religious political system that believes in abrogation (new teachings supersede older). It is based on the belief in Abraham, but cedes authority to Ishmael over Isaac. It technically reigns over all people with the control of oil, and the spoils of the Middle East are close to those in Revelation 18. They do not like the people of the Book (Bible), which are Jews and Christians, and are commanded to deceive us and kill us. See: https://www.wired.com/images_blogs/dangerroom/2012/05/guandolo_jihad_islamic_law.pdf. The second beast with the horns of a lamb and speaks like a dragon is likely the United Nations. Post World War II, the theosophical system for world peace was established creating neutral zones for all disputed political territories. It was created by England and the US, two historically Christian nations (lambs). It’s not really challenging to see that we no longer speak like a Christian nation, and the UN is literally backwards (genocidal nations oversee human rights policies). More generally speaking, absolute authority countries (iron) like Russia, China, and the Middle East are representative of the first beast, while democratic countries (clay) like the US and Europe are more like the second. There are many similarities for a broader appeal into the Daniel 2 prophecy, but what is happening now seems to support that we are being pushed into a world controlled by iron (non democratic countries). They control the UN for the most part, and after global lockdowns, it seems like all democracies are bowing the knee to totalitarian practices.
For un-raptured Christians, the testing is worse. There really is no law to save Christians who do not have ritual purity or Jewish lineage. It really becomes a run for survival (and many will die) or get beheaded for the testimony of Christ. Hopefully, you follow through to the winepress or die for the testimony of Jesus. Odds are not really in your favor as peer pressure, fear of death, and global catastrophe are going to be quite present. What is known is nation will rise against nation and families will be torn apart, so it will likely be pretty rough. Just like every other dialectic (news/fake news; minority/majority; conspirators/conspiracy theorists, etc.), whatever your idol (ideology) of worship will be confronted (hint: none are universal).
Jews have a different battle. Chances are Antichrist will be a Jewish/Palestinian person, who declares a Mahdi like message (Christ didn’t die and was not God’s Son). Since Abraham’s child with Hagar (Ishmael the first born) was representative of sin (and representative of angels who left their first estate), there will likely be some ties here to the history of Israel and Abraham that will lead Jews astray. Peace loving Jews, who like material gains, are likely to follow this group, which will likely seem peaceful when the two witnesses come representing the law and the prophets (Elijah and Moses) either in actual form, or in a spiritual presence (like John the Baptist). When the two witnesses are killed (the world will praise that the law and prophets are dead, hence the same order of life is true (live/die/reincarnation/whatever ideology you worship)), the 144,000 go one way to the Lamb with some following and others taking the mark referred to in Revelation. The world won’t like when the two witnesses get pulled to heaven… (that could be the three days of darkness and silence with Saturnalia like festivals).
This is when the bowls of wrath come. From all the references, it doesn’t seem like many (if any) come to repentance. The spirit of “why did you do this to me, I’m a good person” will likely fill the air as people idolize their view of life as the ideal for everyone as they perish. The only ideology that truly works is humble/loving as exemplified by Christ’s words in Matthew 22:36-40 (love God/others), otherwise each ideology of perfection will be mired in duality with those in favor and those against (the same which plagues us today). This is why none of the pride based ideologies and the warring factions surprise me at this time (e.g., BLM, pro-Trump, ethnic and sexual identity pride, pro-vaccine, anti-vaccine). I tend not to give any energy to the warring factions anymore, recognizing when God said his spirit would pour out on all people (Acts 2:17, Joel 2:28) also had the connotation that those who worship other ideologies would also consider those to be “the be all/end all” forms of living. After this, the end of all nations is completed as the procession of judgments come.
The first resurrection (Jews/beheaded Christians) and the millennium trace back to Ezekiel. Christians were not mentioned in the Old Testament, but if they believe, they are logically in alignment for the Jeremiah 31:33 covenant which would be the future Jewish fulfillment of Christ during the Second Coming. It looks like the massive war in Revelation 14-19 results in a feast for the animals (Ezekiel 39:4; Revelation 19:17-21), and the Jews have to clean up the Valley of Hamongog (Ezekiel 39:11) after the First Resurrection as the Valley of Dry Bones (Ezekiel 37) prophecy of Ezekiel is fulfilled in Revelation 20:4. Then comes the Third Temple of Ezekiel 40-End where Christ will reign until Satan is loosed and everything is fulfilled to the conclusion of Revelation.
Many miss the two tiers of prophetic completion usually due to supercessation (God changed his covenants after Christ) or misdirection (Illuminati, alien conspiracy, occult ideas). I like to use the analogy of building a lego house. What good is the roof, if you destroy the foundation or the walls? Similarly, how can the message of Christ stand or the promises of God’s covenants stand if they change? They never could, because Christ showed us the way (love God/others), split the knowledge of duality (good/evil) into a good only path attained only through salvation in him, and Paul showed that faith was the binding glue of Old Testament times (Hebrews 11). Those never changed in the course of the history of God, regardless of the interpretations that people question (creation time theories, conditional faith, etc.).
In a future section, I will start dividing the principles of God that defy logic (love, faith, grace, salvation, humility) and the principles of universality (if everyone did it) to help others understand different doctrines, why certain people hold to certain values, and what it shows about their character (hint: they are not universal). Most times, people fight about doctrines, not realizing it really just shows the nature of their character and faith (oftentimes hypocrisy) rather than a universal truth, which is what God’s absolute logic defying principles do. It only took me 36 years of practicing Christianity to pull away from doctrine and study the Word for actual interpretation. I now try to walk as Christ commanded and the apostolic teachings make more sense.
