“And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud
voice to him that sat on the cloud, Thrust in thy sickle and reap: for the
time is come for thee to reap; for the harvest of the earth is ripe.
And he that sat on the cloud thrust in his sickle on the earth; and the
earth was reaped” (Rev. 14:15-16).
The fall of the year is harvest time, when the fruits of the
summer’s labors are reaped, and the husbandman enjoys the fruits of his
labors. The harvest time of this present age, the church age, is upon us,
and the harvest of the earth is moving speedily toward ripeness, and the
time of reaping. The harvest time is the time of ingathering of the
precious fruit of the earth. “Ingathering” does not speak of a rapture of
the elect away to some far-off heaven somewhere; rather it signifies the
gathering of the grain (the Lord’s people) into the great Husbandman’s
garner — the kingdom of God. God’s people have been long growing in
the “field” of the church-world, but they have not yet been matured, reaped,
and gathered into the kingdom!
Harvest is also a time of discarding that which has fulfilled
its purpose. In our Lord’s wonderful parable of the wheat and the tares,
both the wheat and the tares were to grow together in the same field, but at
the time of maturity the tares would be separated from the wheat and burned,
and the wheat gathered into the garner. There are also two other items,
which actually belong to the wheat plant, that are discarded at this time,
and these are the straw and the chaff. Only the fruit of the plant is what
the husbandman keeps and gathers into his garner. The straw and the chaff
were necessary in order to bring the wheat to its fullness, but when the
fruit is fully matured the life settles in the fruit or kernels, and
the straw and the chaff having fulfilled their purpose, are separated and
discarded.
Before the wheat can be garnered there has to be a threshing
time by which the kernels of wheat are separated from the straw of the
plant. First the wheat was cut, or reaped, and tied into bundles or
sheaves, but that was not the end of the harvest; it was, in fact, only the
beginning! The wheat is cut off from its roots which are buried in the
earth, and then the wheat is beaten out of the straw, and this is the real
rough part, but it is all necessary for the husbandman to get the fruits of
his year’s labor. The work of harvest was not completed until the threshing
was done, the wheat separated from the straw, and brought into the
storehouse. There was a jointed stick wherewith the wheat was beaten until
the kernels were separated from the straw. Sometimes they spread the wheat
on the ground in the area called the threshing floor, and caused the
oxen to walk over it until the same results were achieved. Isaiah spoke of
this saying, “O my threshing, and the corn of my floor: that which I
have heard of the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, have I declared unto
you” (Isa. 21:10). There is always something good to be gleaned
from the threshings of the Lord! It results in “the corn of my floor,”
and when the Lord “threshes” us, as every son of God is experiencing,
the husk or the outer shell of our earth-man is removed, leaving the pure
“grain” of our redeemed spirit, which is to be clothed upon with our new
heavenly body that is like unto His glorious body of Life and Immortality!
So, I pray, “Lord, continue to thresh us until there is nothing left of us
but the pure ‘grain’ of Thy divine life, from which a pure son of God in
your glorious image and likeness shall shine forth!”
John the Baptist, speaking of Jesus, said this: “Whose fan is in His
hand, and He will thoroughly purge His floor, and gather His wheat into His
garner; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire” (Mat.
3:12). This is a spiritual work which the Lord Jesus carries forth in and
upon His people in the time of harvest. In some measure the firstfruits of
the harvest have already begun to experience the process. This is the
harvest of the “earth,” and though the wheat is the Lord’s and is the growth
and development of His very own life, for He is Himself the seed that
has been planted, yet who can deny that as the Lord’s people we all had our
roots sunk deep in the earth, in earthly things; in worldly methods and
means; in the ways and systems of men. We were well rooted deeply in
denominationalism, in the programs and promotions of carnally minded men,
and then the Lord of the harvest began to cut us off from our earthly
roots. Of these firstfruits John bears witness: “These were redeemed
from among men” (Rev. 14:4). The sickle is being used and the
reaping has begun! It is sometimes hard, and many have had a real struggle
in leaving their old friends, and the comfort and security of the system
they have so long depended upon; but the Lord is seeing to it that all of
His firstfruits are reaped, and if any cannot make up their minds to leave
the old earthly field and follow the Lamb to mount Zion, He sees to it that
they are thrown out by the lords of the old systems, and there is no way to
return! Then the hand of the Lord is laid heavily upon them and they are
conscripted by the power of the Holy Spirit for the army of God, and truly
“resistance is futile!”
No one has commented with deeper spiritual insight on this subject than dear
sister Dora Van Assen. Many years ago she wrote, “What is the chaff
to the wheat? ‘Whose fan is in His hand, and He
will thoroughly purge His floor, and gather His wheat into the garner; but
He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire’ (Mat. 3:12).
‘Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I
will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind
them in bundles to burn them; but gather the wheat into my barn’
(Mat. 13:30).
“For years I read eternal torment into the foregoing
scriptures. I had the wheat as all the saved people taken to heaven, the
chaff and tares as all the unsaved people put in hell to be burned with a
literal unquenchable fire; until God spoke to my heart saying: ‘You cannot
have wheat without chaff, for it takes the chaff to hold the wheat until it
is fully matured, and only then can it be threshed, removing the chaff
without damaging the seed of life. So this is done at the end of the
harvest when the seed is fully grown.’ Thus God gradually began to open my
eyes to see that the chaff and the wheat were both in my own self; that my
natural Adam nature or human identity was the chaff encasing the wheat, the
very life-seed of Christ; that I was being born of an incorruptible
seed, and that seed is Christ in me, the hope of glory. These scriptural
concepts began to take on new meaning in a most wonderful way!
“I then began to see that it is first the natural and then the spiritual (I
Cor. 15:44-46); that without the natural we could not contain the
spiritual. We are an earthen vessel holding a ‘treasure’ which is the very
excellency of God (II Cor. 4:7). Be glad, therefore, for this natural
creation because out of it God brings forth a NEW CREATION! If the chaff is
removed before the wheat is mature, it will do damage to the wheat. It is
needed to hold the wheat as it passes from the milk stage into the fully
hardened and mature stage, where it can be removed from the chaff without
harming the wheat in any way. Then the wheat is placed in the barn and the
chaff is burned. Today in this enlightened age, even the chaff has many
useful purposes, but in ancient times it was simply disposed of by fire.
There is absolutely no waste in the economy of God! The prophet inquired, ‘What
is the chaff to the wheat?’ (Jer. 23:28). Praise God, it is the
super-structure, scaffolding, or encasement which covers and holds the wheat
intact as it grows into the very likeness of the One who planted it within.
All seed brings forth after its own kind. So, Christ shall see His seed and
be satisfied when it comes into His own image and likeness!
“Looking again at Matthew 3:11-12. ‘He that cometh after me is mightier
than I…He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire: whose fan
is in His hand, and He will thoroughly purge His floor, and
gather His wheat into the garner; but He will burn up the chaff with
unquenchable fire.’ We find that this baptism with the Holy Ghost
and with fire is accomplished AT THE END OF THE HARVEST. The phrase,
‘and He will thoroughly purge His floor,’ speaks of the threshing floor
where the chaff is removed from the wheat. Furthermore, it should be clear
to all that the ‘unquenchable fire’ is not the fire of hell, for nothing is
said here about hell, but it is the baptism of fire which attends the
baptism with the Holy Spirit. The fire is the Holy Ghost fire! This
represents the fullness of the Spirit for which Paul prayed (Eph. 3:19), not
just the firstfruits of the Spirit, at our initial filling with the Spirit,
spoken of as Pentecostal, but the full measure of the Spirit which brings
the full redemption of our spirit, soul, and body (Rom. 8:23) into the
sonship dimension of full responsibility. This is the redemption for which
all creation is groaning, called by Paul ‘the manifestation of the
sons of God.’
“The Holy Spirit baptism of fire is burning away all our natural Adamic
nature. Our God is a consuming fire (Heb. 12:29), consuming the sin but not
the sinner; cleansing and purging away the tin and the dross (Isa. 1:25).
Thank God! This fiery cleansing will not be quenched until all our
carnality is completely removed. The Father will not spare the scourging of
any son whom He receiveth until they also be partakers of His divine nature
and holiness (Heb. 12). Jesus came to purify a peculiar people unto Himself
(Tit. 2:14). So we hear Him saying, ‘I am come to send fire in the
earth (not in hell!); and how I wish it were already kindled’
(Lk. 12:49). He was looking forward to the time when He would return in the
form of the Spirit to do a great purifying work within His own sons and
within His people, transforming them into His own image. ‘Everyone shall
be salted with fire’ (Mk. 9:49). Salt has a preservative and purifying
quality, while fire purifies and transforms into other elements and gases.
So we see every living sacrifice presented to Him being purified and changed
into a ‘sweet smelling savor unto God.’ So we hear Jeremiah say
concerning the chaff and the wheat, ‘He that hath a dream, let him tell a
dream; and he that hath my word, let him speak my word
faithfully. Is not my word like a fire? saith the Lord, and like a
hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces.’ Much of our dreams and
visions are a mixture of ourselves, as they pass through our own mind and
personality. But His word is as a fire burning the chaff in
the right measure and time, exposing the pure wheat of the word!
“Let us also consider the wheat and the tares. Their true meaning is found
in the parable Jesus recorded in Matthew 13:24-30. Because the chaff had
taken on such a totally different meaning as I was taught by the Holy
Spirit, I was sure my first understanding of the tares could be wrong also.
And as I was thinking on these things, suddenly it stood out so plainly: THE
WHEAT AND THE TARES DID NOT CONVERT ONE ANOTHER! Wheat was wheat, the tares
were tares, both growing up together just like the wheat and the chaff,
until the time of harvest.
“In that moment I saw that this was not a parable on soul-saving, nor was it
an exhortation to scare the heathen or sinning Christians in the church into
a conversion, but it was a parable dealing with the inner thought life
of the believer himself. In the context around this parable we find
that Jesus was uttering ‘things which have been kept secret from the
foundation of the world’ (Mat. 13:35). In other words, by this parable,
He was explaining in parabolic form something which had taken place from
the beginning! I believe He was referring to what had happened in the
garden of Eden when sin entered into the plan of God. There we find God
fellowshipping with Adam in the cool of the day. Certainly God was not
standing there in bodily form any more than He comes in bodily form when we
commune with Him and hear His voice. By the Spirit God was planting His
good thoughts and spiritual understanding in the mind of Adam.
But while Adam was not aware of it, the adversary also came into the garden
and whispered and planted evil thoughts and carnal understanding,
causing a duality within, which led him to fall into a carnal mind. This
dual mind of both good and evil was as a split personality within man, each
capable of bringing forth a harvest of a certain kind of man (Rom,. 8:6).
The battlefield is in the mind!
“Some may object to this interpretation of the tares, because Jesus in His
explanation of the parable used the words, ‘the good seed are the
children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the
wicked one’ (Mat. 13:38). That does sound as if they are two different
kinds of people. And indeed they are! If we will just stop for a
moment and think this through, we must admit that God is an invisible
spirit, and Satan is likewise invisible spirit. Neither of these produce
flesh and blood children of their own! The new creation is
formed in a people who are ‘renewed in the spirit of their
mind.’ So the term ‘children’ must be taken as a metaphor. The
Holy Spirit deals with men in their minds and thoughts, and Satan can only
attack man in his mind, giving false ideas and imaginations. These
thought-pictures are often called ‘brain children.’ And these
determine what manner of man a man is!
“These thought-pictures can be either good or bad, spiritual or
carnal. Paul exhorts us to ‘cast down imaginations and every high thing
that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity
every thought to the obedience of Christ’ (II Cor. 10:5).
Bringing this parable down to us personally, we find that our own mind is
the field in which are planted both good and evil. The children or
offspring of the kingdom, and the children or offspring of the wicked one,
are a mixture of both good and evil, flesh and spirit, growing up together
within us until the harvest, which is the time of separation. The tares are
somewhat different from the chaff in that the chaff is part of the wheat;
however the tares are not part of the wheat, but a foreign implantation
made to appear as wheat. The harvest reveals what sort of seed was planted
in our earth, and how they have matured in areas of our lives. Only the
mature know the difference! And only by harvest conditions can the Lord
bring the separation!” — end quote.
When the Son of man as the crowned Reaper sends His sickle into the earth,
all things will have come to full maturity. The age has witnessed the
sowing and growth and development of the Son of man, and also the sowing of
the adversary, and there has been no conclusive divine dealing on earth to
make manifest the judgment of God as to what has resulted. But the harvest
is the end of the age! It does not take place individually or collectively
until all things have fully developed and ripened even to the point of being
“dried.” Then the age closes by the gathering out of the kingdom of the Son
of man “all offences and those that practice lawlessness,” while the wheat
will be brought together into the granary of His kingdom. Everything that
is worthless to God will be baptized in His all-consuming fire, whereas all
that is of value to Him will be anointed with the seven-fold intensified
Spirit of the Lord to bring blessing to creation in the age and the ages to
come! “He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with
fire!” The harvest is the time when everything will be perfectly
discriminated, and dealt with according to its true character. The harvest
will finally close the present order of things. All the religiousness of
man will go up in smoke and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day!
The “binding into bundles” seems to speak of companies and combinations. It
is not a literal binding as grain is bound, but like water finding its own
level. Truly the Lord is bringing separation after separation in our lives,
within and without. How careful we should be not to be tied up in any
bundle that is going to be burned! It does not appear to me strange to
suppose that the work of the harvest is an unseen work at times, and those
conscious of its working become so by the dealing and revelation of the
Lord.
THE THREE ANGELS
“And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a
loud voice to him that sat on the cloud…and 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, which had power over fire; and
cried with a loud cry to him that had the sharp sickle, saying, Thrust in
thy sharp sickle, and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth; for her
grapes are fully ripe” (Rev. 14:15-18).
The scene opens with John announcing that “another angel came
out of the temple.” The Greek word for temple is naos indicating
the inner sanctuary or most holy place. Throughout the book
of Revelation there are seven angels out of the temple and there are the
seven spirits of God, or the seven-fold intensified spirit of the Lord, or
the fullness of the Holy Spirit. At various times one or more of these
seven angels out of the temple move into action upon the stage of God’s
unfolding revelation to accomplish some aspect of His purposes. Each of
these angels signifies a message, an activity, or a
ministry out of the fullness of God’s Spirit.
Before this, in the same chapter, John saw three angels. The
first had the everlasting gospel, or the gospel of the ages to proclaim to
the rulers and leaders of the earth-dwellers; the second proclaimed the
sober message that Babylon was in a fallen condition; and the third angel
revealed the fiery processes of divine judgment upon all who persist in
worshipping the beast and his image, or bearing his mark. Now John again
sees three angels, which exactly match the first three angels. As the first
of the previous three angels called with a loud voice to the rulers of the
earth-realm to “fear God, and give glory to Him; for the hour of His
judgment is come: and worship Him,” even so this angel calls with a loud
voice. However, his voice is directed to the One who sits on the cloud, and
his voice is crying for the great purpose of God in His people to be
consummated, for the grain harvest of the earth to be reaped. The
second angel comes out of the temple in heaven bearing a sharp sickle,
signifying the moving of the Spirit and the activity of God’s Christ to reap
the harvest of the vine of the earth.
The third angel is described as coming from the altar, and he has power and
authority over fire. To understand these mysteries is of eternal
importance, for until we do understand them we will be ineffectual in our
ministry as the priesthood of God. I would draw your attention to three
specific items in connection with this third scene. There is an altar, an
angel, and fire. We must be very certain about the identity of these three
items! The setting is the “holy place,” the location of the golden altar
within the typical tabernacle of Moses, or later the temple in Jerusalem.
It was stationed just before the veil of entrance into the “most holy place”
of the throne of God over the ark of the covenant from whence proceeded
God’s mercy — the throne of the mercy seat.
The golden altar of incense was made of wood, overlaid with pure
gold. It was three feet high and one and one-half feet square. It was the
tallest piece of furniture in the holy place and speaks of the highest act
of worship possible, that of praise and prayer and priestly intercession.
On the top of it rests a pan-shaped vessel, called the golden censer, on
which coals (pieces of burning wood taken from the brazen altar in the outer
court) are burning. There is no chimney for the smoke to escape by, so the
room is full of it; but the smoke is so pleasant that every priest of God
ministering in that holy place would not like to be without it; the
fragrance is sweeter than anything ever smelt before! But it is not the
wood which gives forth such a sweet odor when under the action of fire; it
is the incense which the high priest has put on those burning coals that
smells so pleasant, and which feels so refreshing to the spirits of those
who minister there. The incense was made of four sweet spices, which gave
forth their fragrance by burning. Their sweetness is not known till they
are submitted to the action of fire, when the odor is sent forth in the
smoke.
The high priest would fill his censer with fresh coals, and put
on incense every morning and every evening, so that day and night there
would be the sweet odor going up to God. It was called “a perpetual incense
before the Lord” (Ex. 30:8), because night and day it was ever burning, and
the smoke was ever ascending before the veil, and penetrating through the
veil, and passing under it, and wafting its way by the sides of it, into the
Holy of holies before the Lord, who dwelt there on the mercy seat. And on
the tenth day of the seventh month, when the high priest went into the Holy
of holies to make atonement for all the people of Israel, he carried the
golden censer in his hand, and placed it on the floor of the Holiest of all;
and as he stood in the presence of God and before the majesty of His power,
and sprinkled the blood seven times on the mercy seat, and before the mercy
seat, he would be enveloped in smoke; his garments would smell of sweet
incense, and every part of the room would be filled with it, and the glory
of the Lord would be softened by it (Lev. 16:11-14).
Obviously this angel from out of the altar signifies the
priestly ministry of the sons of God on behalf of the “vine” and the
“vintage” of the earth. He had power over fire, and care of the fire was
part of the priest’s duties under the Old Covenant. ‘And the sons of
Aaron the priest shall put fire upon the altar, and lay the wood in order
upon the fire” (Lev. 1:7). “And the fire upon the altar shall be
burning in it; it shall not be put out; and the priest shall burn wood on
it every morning…” (Lev. 6:12). Remember, the fire upon the golden
altar is the same fire as the fire of the brazen altar, for it is taken from
thence. And it is carried into the holy place by the priesthood that has
the authority over fire. But there is evidence throughout the book of
Revelation that “the altar” refers to the golden altar in the holy place,
not the brazen altar of the outer court.
The fire upon the altar, over which the angel has authority,
is the energizing, quickening, transforming presence, word, and power of God
Himself who “is a consuming fire.” The purpose of the fire was to consume
and transform every sacrifice placed upon the brazen altar, and to change
the incense upon the golden altar from a solid, hard, material substance
into a spiritual fragrance empowered to waft its way through the veil into
the presence of the majesty of God in the Holiest of all. The fire was the
energizing of God Himself by the Spirit! This fire is the fire burning the
incense upon the golden altar, the sweet-smelling smoke of which goes up
before God with the prayers of the saints. This signifies a powerful
ministry, an efficacious moving of God on behalf of His people who have been
dwelling in the “earth-realm” and are called “the vine of the earth.” The
two angels, then, who act together in the matter of the vintage, are of one
spirit; both are charged with a kind of reaping or gathering. The angel of
the altar calls with loud voice to his companion. And the burden of their
mission is that the clusters of the vine of the earth be gathered, for her
grapes are fully ripe.
The fire of the altar which the high priest carried in the censer was put
there to reveal the great truth that it is the fire of God that brings
change in any realm. The fire of God brings the spirit of purification and
transformation into the lives of men. This is not an action of judgment, as
we normally think of it, but rather an action of purification! It recalls
the action of the seraphim in Isaiah’s inaugural vision, taking burning coal
from the altar and touching Isaiah’s lips (Isa. 6:6-7). Beholding the
manifest glory of the Lord the prophet cried, “Woe is me! For I am undone;
because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of
unclean lips.” But the coal placed on Isaiah’s lips does not mean Isaiah’s
judgment or destruction; instead it is good news, for the messenger says,
“Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away,
and thy sin purged.” Purification does not come easy! Hot coal
burns, as does the cauterization of an infected wound. Surgery might
take away part of us in order to make us well; we may not want to lose
anything, but pain and loss may be necessary in order for us to experience
actual healing. The fire of the altar is the fire of God’s love,
holiness, glory, and majesty! It is the fire that purifies,
transforms, and glorifies God! What fire is in the natural
world, the Holy Ghost fire of God is in the spiritual world of men. Fire
warms, beautifies, protects, glorifies, refines, purifies, and consumes,
effecting change. Purification is neither punishment nor destruction —
purification brings deliverance, salvation, and transformation! Ah, when
the Lord sends a ministry to deal with His people dwelling in the
earth-realm, to gather them out of the earth and into the garner of His
kingdom, He sends the messenger from the altar who has authority over
fire! Do you, for one minute, doubt God’s ability to deliver His entire
church out of Babylon, establish in them His great and eternal truth, and
conform them into the image of His Son? If you doubt it then you just don’t
know the power of this messenger from the altar with authority over fire!
THE HARVEST AND THE VINTAGE
Harvest and vintage are variations on a single
theme; and, since the Son of man sends out His harvester messengers to
gather the harvest of the earth, it follows that the vintager messengers
must have the same function. This is precisely the truth presented when we
understand the scene in the light of the “firstfruits.” For Israel was
required to offer firstfruits of wine as well as of
grain (Ex. 22:29). The harvest season which opened with the
offering of the firstfruits of the barley harvest at Passover ended not with
the wheat harvest at Pentecost, but with the grape harvest at Tabernacles.
Can we not see by this that the gathering of the vintage is associated with
the feast of Tabernacles; in fact, the vintage must be gathered before
the great feast of Tabernacles can begin! Many today believe that they
have already entered into the feast of Tabernacles, and the Holy Spirit has
indeed been revealing to the saints great and wonderful truths concerning
this glorious feast, and some may have experienced a foretaste, yet the
feast cannot be experienced in its fullness until all the
firstfruits, all the harvest, and all the vintage have been
gathered into the kingdom realm of God! The fullness thus entered
into by the masses of the Lord’s people is exactly what makes
this such an exceptional and glorious feast — THE FEAST OF THE INGATHERING!
“Be glad then, ye children of Zion, and rejoice in the Lord your God: for
He hath given you the former rain moderately, and He will cause to come down
for you the rain, the former rain, and the latter rain in the first month.
And the floors shall be full of wheat, and the vats shall overflow with
wine and oil…and ye shall eat in plenty, and be satisfied, and praise
the name of the Lord your God, and none else: and my people shall never be
ashamed” (Joel 2:23-26).
THE VINTAGE AND THE WINEPRESS
“And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and
gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the
passion of God. And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood
came out of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a
thousand and six hundred furlongs” (Rev. 14:18-19).
Those who look for the literal fulfillment of this portion of
the prophetic vision are most certainly in error. That a river or lake of
actual blood, two hundred miles in extent, deep as the bridle of a horse,
all coming from a literal winepress in which grapes are being trodden by
human feet is incompatible with either natural law or spiritual sense, and
not in accord with the purpose and teaching of this part of
the vision. The record tells us in the first verse of the first chapter
that the things that were to come to pass were “signified,” or communicated
in sign language or symbols.
Now in vision John sees the process of fruitage begin. Clusters
of grapes from the vine are gathered. In the eastern countries even today,
and more so in ancient times, where grapes are grown, the rich clusters are
thrown into a huge winepress outside the city walls. There the juice is
released by the men who trample the grapes in bare feet to the rhythm of the
vintage songs (see Psalm 81) sung by the women. Each winepress has a spout,
and the grape juice, or life of the fruitage, flows out into jars, as
a stream of water might flow. In verse twenty we read that as a result of
the harvest and its exceeding bountifulness, the mighty stream of the
life of the fruitage is as blood. In other words, the life is
released from the clusters in the same way the grain is separated from the
chaff — the juice by treading, and the grain by threshing. It all bespeaks
the heavy and powerful dealing of God in the lives of His people in the time
of harvest!
The great purpose of the harvest now under consideration is so
that the husbandman may gather that final harvest of the age, for the
harvest is the end of the age, not specifically to plant more seed
and extend his fields, but for the purpose of gathering the wheat
into the garner, and creating a new kind of bread for the new order
to come forth. Thus the bread is a word and a people created
to satisfy the hunger of the groaning creation! In like manner, the grapes
are for the purpose of yielding wine, and wine is the life-blood
of the grape. As the grain is made into bread, that is, a word and a
people, so the husbandman oversees the treading of the grapes that there
might be also a new and abundant out-flow of the spirit of life
unto creation. The winepress is not evil but good. The Son of man did
not come to destroy grapes, but to obtain grape juice. He did not come to
squash men and destroy them in a winepress so that their blood will be
squeezed out of them in some horrible judgment and execution. He came
instead to bring forth a life-flow from them so that the new wine of
the kingdom can be poured out as a drink offering and a transforming,
life-giving power to all men everywhere!
As we mentioned previously, in the Mediterranean countries it is
still a common sight in some places, at the time of the grape harvest, to
see the grapes cast into a large vat in order that the juice should be
pressed by the naked feet of the vintners. Macaulay, in his famous poem,
“Horatius at the Bridge,” describes the countryside from which all the men
have departed as soldiers so that the work has to be done by the women.
This year the
must shall foam
Round the white
feet of laughing girls
Whose sires have
marched to Rome.
This
poem reveals the fact that the time of harvest, and treading of the
winepress, was a time of JOY! There was great merriment, rejoicing, and
satisfaction with the gathering of the vintage and the flowing of the
juice! Most commentators see only wrath and vindictive savagery in the
mention of the winepress and the blood flowing to the horse bridles — but
when understood by the spirit we see a positive picture of joy and
blessing upon all! It is the time of the feast of Tabernacles, the feast of
Ingathering, and the feast of Joy! It is indeed incongruous how the carnal
mind insists on seeing judgment and viciousness where there is only blessing
and abundance! In fact, it is the absence of the treading of grapes
that is the sign of judgment and cause for concern and consternation! Isaiah
points out that the time of treading the winepresses is a time of shouting.
Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Hosea all, speaking of Israel say that because of
Israel’s sin, “Israel is an empty vine” (Hosea 10:1). “I have
caused the wine to fail from the winepresses: none shall tread with
shouting” (Jer. 48:33). “In the vineyards there shall be no
singing, neither shall there be shouting: the treaders shall
tread out no wine in their presses; I have made their vintage shouting to
cease” (Isa. 16:10).
The overcomers are the firstfruits of the bread and the wine — the
communion of the new age of the kingdom! They are the first ones coming
forth from God’s winepress in the living power and fullness of the
seven-fold spirit of God, just as they also are the first ones appearing
with the new, living word of God for the new age. They have submitted to
His disciplines upon the threshing floor and in the winepress, and their
flesh has been trodden under His feet, separated, and overcome. The flesh
of the grape stays in the winepress, but the life of the grape flows out!
When God finishes His harvest work — testing, processing, judging His people
— His life will be brought forth in them and their flesh separated from
them! The overcomers are the first company to be poured upon the earth, not
in condemnation, judgment, and curse, but as blessing, empowerment, and
life!
Wine is a biblical symbol of joy, revelation, and life. Wine
represents the inner essence of the fruit from which it comes. Grapes
are the principle fruit which produces wine, but grapes are not wine
themselves. There are grapes that never fulfill their true destiny! Grapes
that remain on the vine harden, and after a time they are pulpy and dry.
They will keep for months, dry all the time, and will still be nourishing,
but the wine is gone, and the raisins excite a thirst for the juice that is
not there. Such grapes are better than nothing, but they are not
substitutes for wine! Today we know that both grape juice and wine contain
healthy, life-giving properties above almost any fruit on earth. The fact
is, the only way to preserve the essence of the grapes is to extract it from
them in the form of wine!
Are you satisfied with grapes? Then you understand not the
principle of the winepress! Be sure the grapes will dry up in your
storehouse and will never flow out to quicken, nourish, and bless humanity!
Wine brings lasting joy and strength and life, not grapes. And surely you
can see that it is not possible to have wine unless the grapes are crushed!
Oh, may God help all who read these lines to truly understand!
Then you will comprehend the vision John gives us, and you will thank God
for the winepress, and you will rejoice at the sight of the blood up to the
horses’ bridles! Even the finest fruit will not yield its essence without
this process. Indeed, the finer the fruit the firmer the skin, and the
heavier the pressure must be upon it to burst its surface that the juices
may flow!
To have wine you must have grapes. The natural man cannot bring
forth the life of Christ or the ministry of sonship, because he has no fruit
from which they can be produced. The world is filled with all kinds of
vegetation and growth, but the harvest of the Lord is wheat and
grapes. All the other “good” things represent something other than the
Lord’s crop! Religion is the product of the natural man, but religion has
no life! Only the new creation man of the spirit has within him the life of
God. If you are walking after the fleshly mind you can bring forth no
quickening life because you have nothing but thorns and thistles. Crush
them and you get thorn juice and thistle milk which never made the heart of
any man rejoice! The natural man can observe rituals and ceremonies, obey
rules and regulations, and do many good religious works, but he can never be
conformed to the image of Christ and he can never reveal out of himself the
life of God that sets creation free. Imagine, if you can, should God cast
some of these spiritually dead, dried up, thorny, sour old religious people
into His winepress — imagine what would flow out! The true life-flow comes
only from God’s wine; and this, in turn, is pressed from God’s grapes!
Most believers today are content with the knowledge that they
have grapes in the garden of their life. They take a certain pride in the
fact that the Lord has visited them and has digged the earth and pruned the
vines; He has also sent seasons of refreshing and watered them with care and
even gathered a little fruit. They consider themselves a fruitful vine in a
fertile garden. And the fruit of their lives certainly does become a
blessing on some level to many! But when the harvest-call comes to a man he
is then made aware that God is after something more than that. He is after
grain that has been reaped and threshed and garnered, and grapes that have
been gathered and crushed and made into wine! He is after the inner kernel,
and the wine where the essence and power of the inner life is brought
forth. The presence of fruit alone does not satisfy the heart of the
Father. Nor can it be preserved to meet the need of creation! God has
caused a people in these days to become dissatisfied with the mere
appearance of grapes. If you are satisfied with grain in the head, or with
grapes in the vineyard of your life, you will never flow out to creation in
grace, love, and power!
The grapes must be crushed! There must be a journey to the
winepress! “We must through much tribulation (pressure) enter
into the kingdom of God.” For this the Lord has many different processes.
In all vintage countries proprietors of great vineyards have their own
secrets for making wines. Connoisseurs tell the difference between the
products of one vineyard and another by their tastes. Soil, sun, method of
preparation, all enter into the final product. So the Lord works in each of
us to bring forth a particular brand, expression, or dimension of His life
that we may impart. The Lord knows just who He will send us to and what
their specific need will be. To that end the Lord is now working in the
lives of all His elect sons, first growing grapes (fruit of the spirit) in
the vineyard of our life, and then pressing them out so that there may be
wine to bless creation. We cannot know the quality of the work of God in us
except when the pressure comes! What flows out of our lives when we are
pressured? Ah, have there not been those times when there was nothing but
the thorns and thistles of anger, bitterness, complaining, unbelief, and
ungodliness flowing out when we were crushed. But what a mighty work the
Lord has been doing in us! Yet — we can never know the true quality of the
Christ-life formed within us until the pressures come and the essence is
literally squeezed, beat, or stomped out of us!
Yes, my beloved, the Lord is cultivating His grapes in the
vineyards of our lives, and He will press out His wine! He will give us
such an expression of the out-flowing of the nature, love, wisdom, glory,
and power of Christ that nothing else in the world will charm us like the
knowledge that we are the sons of HIS LIFE. It is evident that this kind of
living is miraculous, for it is not in the capacity of the natural man or
even the religious man to give forth wine. He doesn’t want to go to the
winepress! It is natural to whine and sigh and cry in adversity! The
worldling often lives such a life of failure, and, alas, many Christians
settle down to the same low level. But our Father has called His
firstfruits for better things and higher realities! And the wonder of it
all is that God has a marvelous plan to bring His whole church to
maturity! And they will all come to the harvest! They will everyone feel
the thrust of the sickle and they will everyone be cast into the great
winepress of God — and what a FLOWING THERE WILL BE! Isn’t it wonderful!
And isn’t that better than a gory war in the Middle East?
John also tells us that “the winepress was trodden without
the city.” That is a significant picture, and it is interesting that
the ancient winepresses were generally located in the vineyards outside the
walls of the cities. It was there, without the city, that Jesus,
physically, passed through His “winepress” experience when by crucifixion
the life was squeezed out of Him, His blood flowing forth for the redemption
and life of all mankind. And thus we read, “Wherefore, Jesus also, that
He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the
gate. Let us go forth therefore unto Him without the camp,
bearing His reproach” (Heb. 13:12-13). John, in his Gospel, tells us,
“Now in the place where He was crucified there was a garden; and in the
garden a new sepulcher, wherein was never man yet laid” (Jn. 19:41).
When one visits present day Jerusalem, it is possible to go to that Garden
Tomb which is right by mount Calvary, the “place of a skull.” This is the
place where Jesus died, was buried, and rose again. Not many feet from
the tomb is a winepress. Nearly thirty years ago Lorain and I stood by
that winepress meditating upon the scene, and the Lord spoke a word to
Lorain. That is another subject, but the presence of that winepress by the
place of the cross and the tomb shows the association with the truth the
Holy Spirit is speaking in the vision John saw on Patmos and within our own
hearts today.
When John identifies the “winepress of the passion of God” as
being trodden “without the city,” he can only mean “the great city, which
is figuratively called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified”
(Rev. 11:8). This is the city which is also given the name “Babylon the
Great” in more than one place in the book of Revelation. But if this were a
scene of judgment, as so many Bible teachers proclaim, it would make
no sense at all to say that the inhabitants of this city are subjected to a
final divine judgment outside the city. For in chapter
eighteen we read of this great city of religious Babylon, “And I heard
another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be
not partakers of her sins, and that ye RECEIVE NOT OF HER PLAGUES”
(Rev. 18:4). The divine judgment is on the city and the
safety from the judgment is outside the city! Those who
remain within the city share its sins and its doom. To come outside the
city is to escape to that place of security provided by the Lord for those
who come unto Christ “without the camp.” A vintage of judgment would
be celebrated in the very heart of the city. At the winepress outside
the city is where Jesus is and where we encounter Him in
identification with His death and the out-flowing of His life! Therefore,
the crude notion that our text is portraying a scene of divine judgment on
sin and sinners is far afield from the truth!
The following words by Ray Prinzing are so meaningful here.
“God said to Moses, ‘Let them make me a sanctuary: that I may dwell among
them’ (Ex. 125:8). But there was so much controversy in Israel, so much
carnality of man, that God finally said, ‘I will not go up in the midst
of thee; for thou art a stiff-necked people: lest I consume thee in the
way. So Moses took the tabernacle, and pitched it without the camp…and
it came to pass that everyone that sought the Lord went out unto the
tabernacle of the congregation, which was without the camp’
(Ex. 33:3,7).
“God’s presence was there, but not in closeness to the people,
because they were too stiff-necked and rebellious, and HE who is a CONSUMING
FIRE would have moved to purge and purify, and consumed them in the way. So
they had to prepare a little plot of ground for Him — afar off from the
camp. All this prefigured the greater, spoken of in Hebrews, where Jesus
also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without
the gate, and we are admonished to go forth unto Him without the camp.
Afar off from the camp, on a little plot of ground SET APART FOR HIM, He
met with those who came out and sought after Him. Then Jesus came, that He
might sanctify the people — and every one that GOES FORTH UNTO HIM without
the camp, when sanctified by Him, ultimately is destined to become one in
whom He shall dwell in fullness” — end quote.
Christ, the Spirit, is completely without the camp! He is
outside the camp of the systems of this world, including the political,
economic, and religious systems of man; He is outside the camp of the
denominations, churches, and fellowships; He is outside the camp of those
who continue in the old ways of the dead, church order of the past; He is
also outside the camp of anything that is of man, or that man’s works have
created. No longer is He dealing with the apostate systems of man, but is
calling all men to come forth unto Him without the camp.
Without the camp is where you will experience the true dealings of God,
where the crop grows, matures, is harvested, and where the grain is gathered
into the garner and the grapes are cast into the winepress. It is without
the city that the winepress is trodden and the life of God pours forth for
every man! THE GREAT HARVEST WORK IS WITHOUT THE CITY! And that is why
Babylon will fall and be burned with fire — God will by a sovereign work of
His grace and power call all His people out of Babylon — NOT JUST THE
FIRSTFRUITS! ONLY THAT IS HARVEST! Aren’t you glad!
