The Three Angels' Messages

I. Introduction
A. Fifth of seven visions which set the stage for the rest of the book.
B. This fifth vision is a vision of three angels, each with a message.
C. Revelation 14:6–13 Then I saw another angel flying in midair, and he had the eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth—to every nation, tribe, language and people. 7 He said in a loud voice, “Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come. Worship him who made the heavens, the earth, the sea and the springs of water.” 8 A second angel followed and said, “Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great, which made all the nations drink the maddening wine of her adulteries.” 9 A third angel followed them and said in a loud voice: “If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, 10 he, too, will drink of the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. He will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. 11 And the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and his image, or for anyone who receives the mark of his name.” 12 This calls for patient endurance on the part of the saints who obey God’s commandments and remain faithful to Jesus. 13 Then I heard a voice from heaven say, “Write: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.” “Yes,” says the Spirit, “they will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them.”
II. Let’s look more deeply at these three angels and their messages.
A. Revelation 14:6-7 Then I saw another angel flying in midair, and he had the eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth—to every nation, tribe, language and people. 7 He said in a loud voice, “Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come. Worship him who made the heavens, the earth, the sea and the springs of water.”
1. Angels have been regular characters in the visions of Revelation. Now we have another.
2. Like the two witnesses in Rev.11, this angel might represent the church in its witnessing work.
3. This section would then represent Christians down through history proclaiming the gospel to every nation, tribe, language and people, warning them of the judgment day to come, calling all men to worship God.
4. The loud voice shows that the message is urgent and must go to the farthest corners of the earth.
B. Revelation 14:8 A second angel followed and said, “Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great, which made all the nations drink the maddening wine of her adulteries.”
1. First, what is Babylon the Great?
a. This is the first reference to Babylon the Great in the book, though there are two more to come (Rev.6:19 & especially in Rev.18), both of which also refer to its falling.
b. How are we supposed to know what it means?
c. Well, one of the things we have seen already in the book of Revelation is that it says a lot of things which are meant to send us back to passages in the OT for understanding.
d. And this is another one of those times. Babylon the Great take us back to the story of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon in Daniel 4:30, when he said, “Is not this Babylon the great, which I have built by my mighty power ...for the glory of my majesty?”
e. And as soon as that story is over, the story of the fall of Babylon begins (Daniel 5).
2. But Babylon here is more than a proud nation brought down by God. It is also dangerously seductive. It makes “all the nations drink the maddening wine of her adulteries.” (an aspect of Babylon further developed in Rev.17).
3. Let’s remember what Babylon was for the OT Jews. Babylon conquered the land of the Jews around 600BC and exiled almost all the Jews to Babylon.
4. But before we ponder what that meant, let’s first trace the struggle Israel had conforming to the nations around her throughout her history.
a. After the Israelites passed through the Dead Sea and came to Mt. Sinai, God spoke to them there. “You shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” Exodus 19:6
b. God was calling them to a holy people, set apart from the other peoples, to march to a different drummer. They were not to do what the other nations did, but what He told them to do.
c. And when God gave them the law at Mt. Sinai, many of the laws were about not conforming to the pagan, idolatrous patterns of the Canaanites in the land to which they were going: not worshiping their idols, not marrying their women, not following their practices. And in Deuteronomy, God tells them of the dire consequences should they turn away from Him and worship the gods of the peoples around them.
d. But even before they got to the promised land, they began to struggle with conforming to others. They longed to return to Egypt, with all its securities and pleasures. In their hearts, they were still attached to Egypt.
e. Then, when they sent the 12 spies into Canaan, they were so impressed & intimidated with their size and their cities and their affluence.
f. When they finally moved into Canaan, they kept falling under the influence of the peoples who lived there and had constant problems avoiding the influence of the Canaanites.
g. You can see this tendency to lust after the treasures of the Canaanites right from the start, when Achan took forbidden treasures from Jericho and hid them under his tent.
h. As time went on it got worse and worse till worshiping the gods of the Canaanites became commonplace. In fact, this is the main reason God ripped them out of the promised land and send them to exile in Babylon, in fulfilment of His threats in Deuteronomy.
5. Now, let’s talk about what it was like for the people of God to move to Babylon after they were conquered and exiled there.
a. In Babylon they were exposed for the first time to one of the great centers of world culture.
b. Compared to small, insignificant Jerusalem, Babylon was a place of unimagined wealth and splendor, with magnificent pagan temples on every side, temples which made God’s temple in Jerusalem look meager and backward.
c. It put their monotheism to the test. They began to wonder if the God of Israel really was the only supreme God over all the world. After the destruction of their homeland, and after their humiliation before their pagan enemies, it was easy to be enamored with their new opportunities in Babylon. Some caved in and gave up their faith in God. They “drank the maddening wine of [Babylon’s] adulteries.”
d. But others did not. They listened to the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel who declared that all this suffering was the Lord’s discipline for their idolatry. They refused to buy in to the ways and culture of Babylon. With tenacity and courage, they fought to carve out a new life of faith in this new land and waited for the Lord to fulfill His promise to return them home after 70 years.
e. They gave renewed attention to obeying the law of Moses, especially circumcision and the sabbath. They also began meeting on the sabbath in regional groupings, which came to be called synagogues. So, the Jewish people set themselves apart from their Babylonian neighbors.
f. Unlike their faithless fellow Jews, these Jews were very unpopular in Babylon. They were ridiculed and laughed at. They were unable to prosper like their neighbors because of their commitment to make choices consistent with the law of God.
g. Each Jew had to decide which way he was going to go. Was he going to give up his earthly dreams of success/comfort/security and seek to be faithful to God, or was he going to let that go in order to pursue prosperity and pleasure in Babylon?
h. And the faithful Jews watched this struggle play out in the lives of their relatives, friends and neighbors. Imagine all the arguments it spawned, all the strife between them.
6. Of course, in spite of the fact that He used Babylon to punish His people, God later punished Babylon for what they’d done and Babylon fell to the Persian empire.
7. Well, here in Revelation, it seems that God has chosen this Babylonian dynamic, well-known to all the Jews of the day, to illustrate the reality of life during the church age. Christians live in the context of a world system which is contrary and even hostile to the ways of God. And they must resist the temptation to buy-in and cooperate with the ungodly world system, they must resist the temptation to become intoxicated with the world’s pleasures, or they would wind up being eternally ruined like those who “worship the beast and his image and receive his mark on the forehead or hand,” (Rev.14:9). And they must do this despite the fact that it may well bar them from worldly success.
8. God gives us these visions because He wants us to see what’s going on. The devil and his agents are using the world economic system to ensnare people through their love of money and material pleasures. And they don’t even realize it because they are so intoxicated with it that it’s like they’ve lost their minds – they’ve gone mad. And so the second angel declares the end of the world system so we see where all this is going: that the world, with all its seductive allure, is going to be dismantled and burned, and that the one who shares its life will also share its destiny.
C. Revelation 14:9-11 A third angel followed them and said in a loud voice: “If anyone worships the beast and his image and receives his mark on the forehead or on the hand, 10 he, too, will drink of the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. He will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. 11 And the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and his image, or for anyone who receives the mark of his name.”
1. Here is stated the consequences of worshiping the beast. V.8 said that the nations drank from Babylon’s wine. And now v.9-11 say that anyone who drinks the wine of Babylon will later drink the wine of God’s wrath.
2. While the intoxicating effect of Babylon’s wine seemed strong, it is nothing in comparison to the power of God’s wrathful wine. Babylon’s wine has only temporary effects; the effects of God’s wine stand forever.
3. This is a stern warning for those who go along with the world, who go along with the crowd, who go along with what everyone else is doing.
4. God wants to be our influencer. He does not want us being influenced by the world around us.
III. After the description of the three angels and their messages, there are conclusions drawn and applications made in v.12-13:
A. Revelation 14:12 This calls for patient endurance on the part of the saints who obey God’s commandments and remain faithful to Jesus.
1. It’s not easy to continually resist. It’s a burden! But this knowledge of what their end will be helps keep the faithful going in the face of persecution at the hands of beastly men.
2. Verses like this help us to interpret the book of Revelation rightly. It helps us to see that this book is written to help Christians patiently endure in the face of this world’s persecution and trouble.
a. I wrote a handout a few weeks ago talking about how we should interpret the book of Revelation. It’s now on our website: gpcweb.org.
b. But here – and elsewhere – we have a confirmation of this approach. For after the vision, we’re told, “This calls for patient endurance on the part of the saints who obey God’s commandments and remain faithful to Jesus.”
c. Rev.13:10 said basically the same thing: “Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints.”
d. Ultimately that’s the point of all these visions. They’re to help God’s people down through the ages to stand firm in their faith even in the face of ugly and wicked opposition.
e. That’s how the book begins, in Revelation 1:9 “I, John, your brother and partner in the tribulation and the kingdom and the patient endurance that are in Jesus...”
f. That’s why each of the letters to the seven churches in Rev.2-3 makes glorious promises to those who overcome.
g. And that’s why this is inserted again and again into the midst of these visions: “This calls for patient endurance on the part of the saints who obey God’s commandments and remain faithful to Jesus.” – Revelation 14:12
h. This is what the book of Revelation is all about! It’s to help us stand firm in the face of pressure, because when people refuse to compromise with the world, they suffer the consequences. And this suffering requires patient endurance.
B. Revelation 14:13 Then I heard a voice from heaven say, “Write: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.” “Yes,” says the Spirit, “they will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them.”
1. Just as the one who shares the life of the beast will also share in his destiny, so also the one who shares the life of the Lamb will also share in HIS destiny (i.e. His glorification).
2. If Christians remain loyal to Jesus, they will suffer in the present, but afterward they will gain the blessing of eternal rest.
3. For the believer, death represents the finishing of a race and the winning of the reward. As Paul said, "For me to die is gain." (Phil.1:21)
4. And so to help us persevere, God has given us not only the warning of judgment (v.8-11) if we don’t persevere, but also the promise of reward if we do.
5. “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, for they will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them.”
IV. So, let’s rise up and look at this vision from a bird’s eye view.
A. We see that in the midst of this corrupt world, there is good news, there is a gospel.
1. There is a God to know, a God to fear, a God to worship, a God to glorify, who has made Himself known in the person of Jesus Christ, the Lamb who was slain and ransomed people by His blood.
2. This is why we were created. This is why we’re alive. This is what we were made for.
B. We also see that the good news has bad news attached to it. There are severe consequences if it’s not embraced.
1. 10 he will drink of the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. He will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. (So much for the notion that hell is merely the absence of Christ. Here it says they are tormented in the presence of the Lamb!) 11 And the smoke of their torment rises for ever and ever – with no rest.
2. Maybe, like me, you’re uncomfortable with this concept of eternal torment. Most people are. But saying, “Well, I really don’t like this! It doesn’t make any sense to me!” doesn’t make it untrue.
3. This is God’s word, whether we like it or not. Only fools refuse to listen to God because they don’t like what He says.
C. One of the main ways we’re being targeted by the evil one is through seduction and intoxication, the same tactic he used with Adam&Eve in the garden of Eden.
1. Satan wants to replace our worship of God with worship of the things of the world. Instead of having awe toward the creator God, he wants us to have awe toward people and things and movies and songs and video games and technologies – toward things which are created.
2. And he makes the forbidden fruit look so desirable! He makes the benefits of buying into the world look so safe and so secure and so enjoyable and so positive.
3. We can all feel the pull. And if we can’t, we’re in real trouble. If we don’t feel the pull, it’s probably because we’re giving in to it without even being completely conscious of it.
4. The first petition of the Lord’s Prayer is “Hallowed be Thy Name!” This is not just a lofty religious expression. It is a cry of desperation. In a world which dazzles and allures, this is a cry for God’s help to work in our hearts in such a way that He is the thing which grips us and melts us and captivates us – because it’s so tempting to be gripped, melted & captivated by other things.
5. “Our Father in heaven, make your name holy in me – and in us!”
D. At the very end of v.13, the Spirit says that those who die in the Lord “will rest from their labor.”
1. This is in contrast with what is said of those who worship the beast in v.11: “There is no rest day or night for” them.
2. The promise of eternal rest implies that life is toilsome and laborious.
3. According to what the Bible says, you can’t glide into the kingdom of God. You don’t drift into it. You aren’t carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease.
4. It’s got to be sought. It’s got to be fought for.
5. It’s a race which must be run, a fight which must be won! You’ve got to strive! (1Cor.9:24-27)
6. And you’ll find that the resistance you meet will be too much for you - unless your roots go deep.
7. It requires determination which only God can give.
E. And if the world can’t seduce us, at least they want to get us to shut up.
1. They scoff at the notion of divine judgment. They ridicule those who identify themselves with Christ. They express disgust over those who refuse to buy into the world’s system.
2. They claim that the most loving thing you can ever tell someone is actually hate-speech.
3. So we feel a constant pressure to remain silent – & hide our light under a basket (Matt.6:14-16).