Revelation 14 Study Notes

14:12-13 Blessed marks the second beatitude in Revelation (see notes at 1:3; 16:15; 19:9; 20:4-6; 22:6-7; 22:14-15,17). Believers (the saints) who persevere in keeping God’s commands and faith in Jesus will be blessed with the reward of their godly works (20:12; 2Co 5:10).

14:14-20 Some believe that the one like the Son of Man in this section must be an angel because of the unlikelihood of Christ receiving the command from another angel to reap . . . the harvest. But the Son of Man associated with a cloud is a clear allusion to Dn 7:13, where the Messiah is definitely in view. This section visualizes the “harvest . . . at the end of the age” (Mt 13:38-43), when the “good seed” and the “weeds” are separated to their eternal destinies. The wheat harvest apparently gleans those responding positively to the climactic preaching of the gospel (see notes at Rv 14:6-7; 15:2-4). A recent view holds that 14:14-16 is the point at which the church is raptured. This is highly unlikely. The harvest of grapes leads to the judgment pictured here as the great winepress of God’s wrath. Since the winepress imagery related to divine wrath is seen in connection with the second coming of Christ (19:15), the events of 14:17-20 must occur at that point. If taken literally, when the “grapes of wrath” are trampled in Christ’s winepress (19:15) outside the city (Jerusalem, apparently), the blood (from the climactic battle at his second coming in 19:19,21) rises to the height of horses’ bridles for some 180 miles. This is roughly the length of Israel from north to south. Some view this horrific description as symbolic of God’s righteous judgment resulting in the deaths of many of the unrepentant.