Revelation 14:15 speaks of the harvest: “Another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to Him who sat on the cloud, Send forth Your sickle and reap, for the hour to reap has come, because the harvest of the earth is ripe.” The harvest of the earth is God’s people on earth, the believers in Christ (1 Cor. 3:9). At His first coming to the earth, the Lord Jesus sowed Himself into His believers (Matt. 13:3-8, 24). All the believers since that time who have received Him as the seed of life have become the crop of God on earth. The first ripe ones will be raptured as the firstfruit to God before the great tribulation. The majority will ripen with the help of the sufferings in the great tribulation and will be reaped near the end of the great tribulation.
Literally the Greek word translated “ripe” in verse 15 means dried. To be ripe is to be dried of all earthly water. The suffering of the great tribulation will be like the parching sun, drying the earthly waters from the believers who will be left on earth in the great tribulation so that they may ripen.
The harvest will be reaped by Christ as the Reaper toward the end of the great tribulation, which will take place in Revelation 14:6-13, at His coming back sitting on a white cloud. Revelation 14:14 says, “I saw, and behold, a white cloud, and on the cloud One sitting like the Son of Man, having a golden crown on His head and a sharp sickle in His hand.” The harvest will be reaped by Christ as the Son of Man. He came as the Son of Man to sow the seed, and He will come again as the Son of Man to reap what He has sown. The golden crown on the Lord’s head indicates that He is the One crowned with glory (Heb. 2:9). The sharp sickle in His hand indicates that He is the One who reaps God’s field.
Revelation 14:16 says of Christ’s reaping of the harvest: “He who sat on the cloud thrust His sickle over the earth, and the earth was reaped.” The reaping here will be the rapture of the majority of the believers who will be left on the earth to pass through the greater part of the great tribulation.
Revelation 14 covers two kinds of raptures: the rapture of the firstfruit and the rapture of the harvest. The picture in typology portrays this vividly. According to the type in the Old Testament, the early wheat, the firstfruit, was reaped first, and the harvest, the majority of the crop, was reaped later. Moreover, the firstfruit was brought into the temple of God for God’s enjoyment (Exo. 23:19), but the harvest was taken into the barn, between the field and the farmhouse. From this we see that the firstfruit will be taken to God’s house-to mount Zion in the heavens-and the harvest will be taken to the air. A period of time after the firstfruit is taken to the Lord Jesus in the third heaven, He will leave the heavens and descend to the air, where He will remain for a shorter period of time. According to the prophecy in 1 Thessalonians 4, the harvest will be raptured to the air.
Home | First | Prev | Next