Revelation 14:14-20

Last week we heard the three angels' messages and saw God's mercy even in these last days — yet another opportunity to repent. He spares two-thirds of the earth, sends two witnesses for 3.5 years, protects the 144,000, and sends angels to proclaim an everlasting gospel: Fear God. When we fear God alone, we fear nothing else.¶

Then I looked, and behold, a white cloud, and seated on the cloud one like a son of man, with a golden crown on his head, and a sharp sickle in his hand... So he who sat on the cloud swung his sickle across the earth, and the earth was reaped.

Revelation 14:14-16 (ESV)¶

One like the son of man reaps¶

Verse 14 gives imagery that shows this is most likely Jesus — it does not say "angel" (as the next verses clearly do), but "one like the son of man with a golden crown" (compare Luke 21:25-28; Daniel 7:13-14). So Jesus comes on a cloud with a sickle to cut down the harvest of the earth — which he prophesied in the parable of the wheat and the weeds (Matthew 13:24-30): "Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, 'Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.'"¶

A harvest has phases: plant, water and feed, then reap, bind, and gather. Jesus is doing the reaping at this moment — the people of the earth, rooted and grown and standing tall, are now being cut down. This is where Jesus removes all power and authority from the earth; over the next four chapters we see the fruit of this reaping. The rest of Revelation is the tearing down of everything the wicked have built against the knowledge of God.¶

Two harvests¶

So the angel swung his sickle across the earth and gathered the grape harvest of the earth and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. And the winepress was trodden outside the city...

Revelation 14:19-20 (ESV)¶

There seem to be two harvests: the first (the grain, reaped by Jesus) and the second (the grapes, gathered by an angel and thrown into the winepress of God's wrath). Why two, and who are they? On one hand, the first harvest could be believers — Jesus reaping his own and gathering what's his — and the grape harvest those who have not put their faith in Jesus (the fruit of the earth, not the fruit of God). This makes sense and goes against nothing we've seen.¶

But another meaning: the first harvest could be the non-Jews, and the second the Jews. Throughout Revelation there has been a theme distinguishing the Jews, and they are notorious for presuming a standing before God simply because they are Jews — which is exactly how John the Baptist confronted their leaders (Matthew 3:7-12): "do not presume to say, 'We have Abraham as our father'... His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn." The 144,000 are called "firstfruits" (verse 4) — a harvest term — and Hosea 9:10 speaks of Israel as the firstfruit on the fig tree. And verse 20's "outside the city" always refers to Israel in Scripture. So maybe these are not separate harvests but the same one, making sure to include the prideful, unbelieving Jews — they will not be spared simply for being Jews by birth.¶

Either interpretation can make sense. Either way, what is shown to John is that all the earth is being cut down and prepared for judgment and wrath. For the rest of Revelation, we will see that wrath, as the world is shown the full power and authority of God.¶