Welcome to a revelation of Jesus. In this video I want to continue our study of the messages of the three angels in Revelation 14. In the previous video we looked at verse seven, “fear God and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment has come” (Revelation 14:7). We established that this doesn’t refer to the “Day of Judgment” which takes place after the millennium when the dead will rise from their graves and stand before the great white throne and “each one will be judged according to what they have done.” (Revelation 20:11-15).
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The hour of His judgment is different. It refers to the invisible judgment that is taking place right now, in which the angels evaluate the lives of those whose names have been written in the Book of Life, both those who have died and those who are still living just before Jesus returns. The angels will have the opportunity to examine the lives of the people who, at one time or another, have responded to the Holy Spirit, and to agree with God as to which of them should be granted eternal life. The hour of His judgment is over when Jesus returns and takes those who have been faithful, both the living and those who will rise in the first resurrection, to be with Him in heaven for the 1000 year millennium.
There is one aspect of this judgment that we have not considered. Did you notice that it is called “the hour of His judgment?” It is indeed God’s judgment in the sense that He is the ultimate judge. But is it possible that it is His judgment because He is being judged?
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Notice what the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4. “We have been made a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men” (1Corinthians 4:9). Paul is talking here about believers, and he is saying that both humans and angels are looking at the lives of people who believe in God, and making decisions about both the believers and about the God they believe in. For example, people decide if they want to have anything to do with God based on the lives of the people who say they believe in Him. And angels are looking at the lives of believers and deciding whether they think God made a mistake in creating them, and would make an even bigger mistake in letting them live forever.
This idea is supported by Paul’s statement in Ephesians 3:10. “[God’s] intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 3:10).
This amazing verse tells us that church is not just a place where we go to hear some Christian music and listen to an inspiring sermon. The church, in other words, the body of believers all over the world, is, or at least should be, acting in such a way that the angel authorities in the heavenly realm are able to see that God has been wise in what He has done in relation to humans.
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The fact that the intelligent universe has to be convinced of God’s wisdom brings up a crucial point: God, more than anyone else, has been accused and slandered. How often do we hear people say, “Why did God let that happen?” “Where was God when I needed Him?” “If God is good, why doesn’t He stop all of the atrocities that we read about in the news day after day?” And we can imagine that the angels look down at the mess that is this world and ask, “Why did God ever create these kind of beings? And why does He put up with them? Why doesn’t he just destroy them all and start over with a new design?”
So in a sense, the investigative phase of the judgment is also a time in which God Himself is judged—“The hour of His judgment has come.” This incredible thought is captured in Romans 3:4, “Indeed, let God be true, but every man a liar. As it is written: ‘That You [God] may be justified in Your words, and may overcome when You are judged.” Amazing as it may seem, God has submitted Himself to the judgment of His creation! Satan, symbolized by a serpent in the garden of Eden, maliciously accused God of being selfish, unloving, and a liar, with restrictive laws that limit the happiness of His creatures. Disasters are called “acts of God.” Even people who believe in Him respond to tragedies and atrocities, saying, “God has a plan, He is in control,” as if God wants tragedies to occur for some inscrutable purpose.
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Rather than defending Himself, God answers these charges with exhibit A—“those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus” (Revelation 14:12). When believers are kind, generous, patient, and self-sacrificing, in contrast to unbelievers who are selfish, manipulative, and cruel, this says more about God than it does about the people themselves. On the other hand, when those who claim to be believers turn out to be just as selfish as unbelievers, the investigative judgment shows from the details of their lives that their so-called belief was a farce; that God did everything He could to change their lives, but they refused Him, while still claiming to be his followers.
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The book of Job is one of the few parts of the scriptures that pulls back the curtain to reveal what is happening in the heavenly realm. I will include a link to an article about Satan’s challenge and God’s response through His servant Job. In the first two chapters, Satan shows up at a heavenly council meeting and claims that he has the right to rule the world. The unspoken implication was that the humans that God created to “Have dominion over… the earth” (Genesis 1:28) had, by their actions, chosen him to be earth’s ruler. “But the Lord said to Satan, ‘have you considered My servant Job… a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil?” (Job 1:8). In response, Satan did everything he could to overthrow Job’s faith, ruining his health, family, and possessions. But even though Job could not understand why God would allow these things to happen, he clung to his faith, saying, “I know that my redeemer lives… Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him” (Job 13:15, 19:25).
As the Bible says in many places, “We are [God’s] witnesses” (Isaiah 43:10,12, 44:8, Acts 5:32). This does not just mean witnessing to our friends and acquaintances; We have the privilege of being God’s witnesses to the whole universe that is looking on in the judgment. Like Job, our lives of faith are a rebuke to Satan, refuting his accusations against God and demonstrating that He is good and His ways are right. As His witnesses, we help to vindicate God’s decision to create humans in His image, and His wisdom in providing salvation and eternal life to still-imperfect believers through the sacrifice of Jesus.
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Let’s take a look at the whole message of the first angel, because there is one more mandate that we haven’t examined yet. “Fear God, and give glory to Him, for the hour of His judgment has come; and worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea, and springs of water” (Revelation 14:7). “Worship Him” is grammatically in the imperative mood. This means that worshiping God is not an optional suggestion; it is a commandment from the God who created all things.
Let’s put the commandment to worship God into the context of the Cosmic Conflict. We learned earlier in this series that Revelation 14 and the messages of the three angels are the chiastic pair or counterpoint of Revelation 13, which reveals Satan’s ultimate plans to overthrow God’s followers and take control of the whole world. In other words, Revelation 14 and the messages of the three angels are the way God defeats Satan’s evil plans that are revealed in Revelation 13.
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We saw in videos 44-47 that one of Satan’s strategies in Revelation 13 is to impose worship, but it is the wrong kind of worship. “All the world marveled and followed the beast. So they worshiped the dragon who gave authority to the beast; and they worshiped the beast, saying, ‘Who is like the beast? Who is able to make war with him?” (Revelation 13:3,4). We saw in video 44 that the dragon is Satan who seeks worship through his earthly agent, the beast from the sea. The context is the apostate Christian church of the Dark Ages. During those long centuries, Satan instilled ungodly doctrines, rituals, and practices into the church and forced all who lived in her sphere to submit to them. The scope of this satanic strategy is emphasized in verse 8: “And all the people who belong to this world worshiped the beast. They are the ones whose names were not written in the Book of Life” (Revelation 13:8). This verse shows that false, ungodly worship is the default for people who have not responded to the Holy Spirit.
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Chapter 13 continues. “Then John saw another beast coming up out of the earth… He causes the earth and those who dwell in it to worship the first beast” (Revelation 13:11,12). We saw in video 45 that the context is the last days when the United States of America will use deception and coercion to enforce submission to apostate Christianity. In Satan’s final offensive American Christianity will set up the image to the beast, a last-day union of church and state. “And as many as would not worship the image of the beast would be killed” (Revelation 12:15). This is Satan’s final effort to force the whole world to worship him, using coercion even to the point of executing those who refuse.
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Jesus counters Satan’s campaign with “the everlasting gospel… saying to those who dwell upon the earth… ‘worship Him who created the heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water”. When we think of worship, we usually think of going to church, singing, reading the Bible, listening to sermons, giving our offerings, etc. While these are all a part of how we express our joy and gratitude to God, the Greek as well as the Hebrew word translated worship has a more specific meaning. The Greek word Proskuneo, translated worship, means “kneeling or prostration to do homage or make obeisance, whether in order to express respect or to make supplication…. to kiss the hand, in token of reverence” (Thayer’s Greek Lexicon).
Likewise, the Hebrew word for worship, Shawkhaw, means to bow before God as an expression of submission. Psalm 95 describes worship using language that, like Revelation 14:7, invites us to bow before Him because He is our Creator: “Come, let us worship and bow down; let us kneel before the Lord our Maker” (Psalm 95:4). The Psalms also admonish us to sing and make music to the Lord, to come before Him with thanksgiving, to bring an offering to Him, and to declare His good news and glory. These are all an integral part of what Christians commonly refer to as worship. But when the Bible uses the Greek and Hebrew words translated “worship,” it refers to the specific act of bowing before God, the One who created us, whether by literally kneeling before Him or by spiritually submitting to Him in our heart and soul through our prayers and deeds.
And this is why worship is such a central issue in the last days: Satan will demand worship, persecuting those who refuse to submit to Him and ultimately threatening them with the punishment of death. God, in contrast, commands us to worship Him, warning us in the messages of the next two angels of the danger we place ourselves in when we submit to the enemy of our souls.
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If it were a simple choice between worshiping God or Satan, few people would choose Satan. For this reason he uses deception. “With all the miracles he is allowed to perform… he deceives all the people who belong to this world” (Revelation 13:14). In videos 44 and 45 we saw that these deceptions are not to trick the world into worshiping Buddha, Shiva, or some strange foreign god. The beasts of Revelation 13 symbolize Christian religions that claim to be the body of Christ. Their founders may have been godly and sincere, but Satan played the long game and, through the centuries, instilled doctrines and practices that misrepresent God. With the stress and pressure of the last days these will congeal into a worldwide religious movement that will demand worship in an attempt to mollify the God that they believe is punishing them by bringing disasters upon the world.
One of the most basic characteristics of God is that He doesn’t force people to serve Him. He says to each one of us, “choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve” (Joshua 24:15). But in order to make the right choice we need to know who God is. The message of the first angel enables us to discern the true God from the false gods that clamor for our worship. “Worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water” (Revelation 14:7)
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Satan, in His war against Go,d has particularly focused his attacks on God as Creator. Science currently teaches that a big bang brought everything into existence, and life evolved from non-living elements. I am not going to use this video to argue with science; scientists can always say things that non-scientists do not understand, but that doesn’t mean they are right. Science develops theories based on data and experimentation, and the theories change with new experiments and more data. But God is outside of the realm of experiments. There are no instruments we can use to develop a database on God. The existence and activity of God cannot be proven, but the evidence is overwhelming. Believing scientists have argued persuasively that it takes more faith to believe that infinitely complex self-replicating proteins, cells, and organisms can arise from inanimate molecules. And His providential interventions are obvious to those who are looking for them. By faith, Christians believe that He created us, sustains us, and is worthy of our worship.
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But the issue in the final crisis is more than creation vs. evolution. Let’s look again at Revelation 14:7. “Worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water” (Revelation 14:7). This is an almost word-for-word quotation from the fourth commandment in Exodus 20:8-11, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy… for In six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day.
Again, I want to encourage you to review videos 46 and 47 where we saw that the Sabbath will be a point of contention in the final crisis. We saw that the symbols and scriptural links show clearly that the mark of the beast, the name of the beast, and the number of the beast all point to a last-day controversy over the Sabbath. The issue is not about worshiping on the right or the wrong day. Satan seeks to prove that His authority is greater than that of God. One way he can do this is by instigating changes in God’s law. Most of the law, such as prohibitions against lying and stealing and a mandate to honor our parents are logical, and a part of almost all religions and legal systems. But the Sabbath commandment is unique in that the only reason to keep it is because God said to. Thus, it is a symbol of our willingness to obey God, even when it is inconvenient or doesn’t make sense.
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The Sabbath is also a symbol of resting in God’s finished work. All false religions are based on human performance, seeking favor with God by obeying religious laws and regulations. But the Sabbath is the law right in the heart of the Ten Commandments that shows that our righteousness is based on resting rather than on working. “Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God; in it you shall do no work” (Exodus 20:9,10). By resting on the Sabbath, we enter into God’s rest: “God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made” (Genesis 2:3) The Sabbath reflects an attitude of trusting in the work that God has already accomplished for us through Christ’s perfect life, atoning death on the Cross, and resurrection and victory over death.
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Satan had other reasons for choosing the Sabbath as his target of special attack. For one thing, it is the one commandment that tells us who God is. The Sabbath commandment identifies “the Lord [who] made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day” (Exodus 20:11). This shows that we worship the Creator God, and not just the God of any creation story, but the God revealed in Genesis, who ends His creation work with the Sabbath rest. Most religions claim to worship God, and some, like Islam, claim to worship the “God of Abraham”. But by rejecting the Sabbath they have severed the connecting link to the Creator of the heavens and the earth, cast doubt on the relevance of the Bible, starting in the very first chapter, and put into question the validity of the Ten Commandments, thus paving the way for the appearance of “the lawless one.” (2Thessalonians 5-12)
This is why God includes in the universal message of the first angel the commandment to “worship Him who made heaven and earth, the sea and springs of water” (Revelation 14:7), with a direct reference to the seventh-day Sabbath. In our modern secular society it seems incredible that the Sabbath could become an international point of contention, especially considering that it has not been an issue in the Christian Church for 1,800 years. But the underlying meaning of the Sabbath was one of the most important points of controversy during the ministry of Jesus, and Revelation 13 and 14 indicate that it will be a life-and-death issue again.
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We have devoted the last three videos to the study of the message of the first angel, as presented in Revelation 14: 6,7. To review very briefly, the message begins with an angel, symbolizing God’s faithful messengers, who have “the everlasting gospel to preach… to every nation, tribe, tongue, and people” (Revelation 14:6). In the midst of the trials and deceptions of the last days God begins His most important messages with the gospel, which tells us about all that Jesus has done, is doing, and will do to save us from ourselves and from this corrupt world. The first angel’s message continues with the mandate to fear God and give glory to Him, focusing on the attitude of humility, gratitude, and faith that we will need to have in order to stand for Him during the hour of His judgment. And finally, God, through His first-angel messenger,s commands us to worship Him by bowing and submitting ourselves to our Creator and honoring Him on the day that memorializes His creation and redemption.
Surprisingly, the phrase “the hour of His judgment” in the book of Revelation refers to the judgment of God
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