Derek Prince - Should We Still Preach God's Judgment?
This is an excerpt from: The Two Harvests
I want to go on with the picture of harvest. I want to point out to you something that I haven’t yet touched on. There’s going to be more than one harvest. There’s going to be a harvest of mercy and there’s going to be a harvest of judgment. And they’re going to follow one another very quickly. They’re both depicted in the 14th chapter of Revelation.
I realize there are things about Revelation that we don’t understand, I don’t understand. But I never let what I don’t understand keep me from acting on what I do understand. I don’t hang around wondering what’s the answer to a question that I don’t know the answer to, and failing to do what I know I ought to do. Remember what I said about the secret things and the things that are revealed? There are some secret things. I think there are some secrets about the exact interpretation of Revelation that none of us know. But, there are a lot of things that are revealed. I believe this truth of the two harvests is a clear revelation. Let’s look at them. It begins in Revelation 14:14. And first of all, we have the harvest of grain. You remember the order, the three harvests: the grain, the grapes and the olives. That order follows all through right here into the book of Revelation.
And here we see, first of all, a picture of the harvest of grain. Which is the harvestof mercy, the ingathering of souls into the kingdom of God. John the Revelator says: I looked and, behold, a white cloud. And on the cloud sat one like the Son of man, having on His head a golden crown, and in His hand a sharp sickle. I believe that must be Jesus. No one else could be described that way. It’s Jesus as the Lord of the harvest. You remember He said pray the Lord of the harvest? And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to Him who sat on the cloud: 'Thrust in your sickle and reap, for the time has come for you to reap, for the harvest of the earth is ripe.'
And the Greek says the harvest of the earth is dry, it’s overripe. It’s in danger of being lost. And it says: He who sat on the cloud thrust in His sickle on the earth, and the earth was reaped. I picture, and this may not be exactly the way it will be, but I picture the Lord swinging the sickle right over the whole globe. and I picture something very rapid so that the whole harvest, who knows, could be reaped in five years. Maybe less, maybe more. It’s not going to be a long time. One of the things that’s conspicuous in the world today is everything is accelerating. Have you noticed that? Things that used to take a hundred years take ten years. Things that used to take ten years take one year. That’s true of the work of Satan, but it’s also true of the Lord. He’s in a hurry. There’s a sense of urgency.
So, the harvest of grain, the harvest of mercy, is reaped. What follows? Then another angel came out of the temple which is in heaven, he also having a sharp sickle; and another angel came out from the altar who had power over fire, and he cried with a loud voice to him who had the sharp sickle, saying, 'Thrust in your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth, for her grapes are fully ripe.' I don’t believe the one who does the reaping here is the Lord; it’s some other angelic being. And now it’s not the harvest of grain. It’s the harvest of grapes. And you know, in Israel, it’s no longer this way, but traditionally the way they dealt with the grape harvest is they had two cisterns, as it were, two cavities in a rock.
One higher than the other and there was a little channel cut out from the higher to the lower. They would put all the harvested grapes in the upper chamber and then they would jump on it up and down with their feet with loud shouts of joy. There are several pictures in the Bible of people joyfully trampling the grape harvest. And there’s a picture of Jesus in Isaiah 63 coming from Bozrah. And Bozrah is a Hebrew word for the grape harvest. His garment is stained with blood and the prophet says, 'Where have you come from?' And He says, 'I’ve come from treading the winepress of the judgment of God.' His garment was splattered with blood as the garments of those who trample the grapes would be splattered with the juice of the grapes. This is the picture.
So, the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth and gathered the vine of the earth and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. Gethsemane, you know the word? Get is the winepress, the place where either the olives or the grapes were pressed out. And the winepress was trampled. You see why it was trampled, they were pressing the grapes, outside the city, and blood came out of the winepress up to the horses’ bridles for 1,600 furlongs. Which is 184 miles. A lot of people think that the interpretation of Revelation is allegorical. I don’t find much allegorical application of prophecy in the Bible.
There’s none of it in the New Testament. All the prophecies of Jesus in the New Testament from the Old Testament were literally fulfilled. You can’t fine one that was allegorical. And, you can find at least thirty that were not. There is no pattern in the Bible for the allegorization of prophecy, something that was invented after the Bible closed. But I’ll just ask you a question. Do you think this blood was allegorical blood? Is there such a thing as allegorical blood? Is your mind prepared to accept the fact that God is going to judge the wicked?
You see, the influence of humanism, which is very prevalent in the church, has almost put us in the place where you think that God would have to apologize for judging anybody. God’s problem is not judging the wicked. God’s problem is finding a way to spare the wicked. And only God could solve that problem through the cross. But be under no misapprehension whatever, God is still the judge. And He is going to judge all the wicked of the earth. It’s important, you know, because it affects the way you relate to people. I don’t think I could preach the way I preach, however good or bad it may be, if I didn’t believe in the judgment of God.
What would really be the purpose of the Gospel message if there was no judgment? What did John the Baptist say? 'Who has warned you to flee from the wrath to come?' It says of Jesus He’s the one who saved us from the wrath of God. God’s problem is not judging the wicked. God’s problem is forgiving the sinner. We absolutely upended the issue.