Revelation 19:15 says, “Out of His mouth proceeds a sharp sword, that with it He might smite the nations; and He will shepherd them with an iron rod; and He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty.” The fighting of Christ in the war at Armageddon will be the treading of the great winepress. That will be the judgment on all the evil forces of the world, the deathblow to all of them. Through Christ’s treading, the wrath of God the Almighty will be exhausted. All the grapes, the Gentile military forces, will be gathered into the winepress and will be trodden by the Lord Jesus.
In keeping with this, Revelation 14:19 says, “The angel thrust his sickle into the earth and gathered the vine of the earth and cast it into the great winepress of the fury of God.” The great winepress of the fury of God is the war at Armageddon (16:12-16), which is in the valley of Jehoshaphat (Joel 3:9-16). All the Gentile evil worldly forces will be gathered there, and the Lord with His overcoming saints will fight against and destroy them there (Rev. 19:11-21; Joel 3:9-13; Isa. 63:1-6). Revelation 14:20 goes on to say, “The winepress was trodden outside the city, and blood came out of the winepress up to the bridles of the horses for a thousand six hundred stadia.” (A stadion, the singular of stadia, was equal to about six hundred feet.) When Christ comes back to earth and destroys these evil fighters, treading the winepress of the fury of God, the result will be a river of blood as high as a horse’s bridle and approximately two hundred miles long.
In 2 Thessalonians 2:8 Paul says, “The lawless one will be revealed (whom the Lord Jesus will slay by the breath of His mouth and bring to nothing by the manifestation of His coming).” The breath of the Lord’s mouth signifies the word. Revelation 19:15 speaks of a sharp sword with which He might smite the nations. This sharp sword, a two-edged sword (1:16), is the Lord’s killing word. He will send out His word as the breath to slay Antichrist and to consume him. The Lord will also destroy Antichrist with the brightness of His coming. This brightness will be an intensified burning and a killing light. Christ will come with such a mouth and such light to deal with this man of sin. As a result, Antichrist will become the son of perdition and be the first to perish in the lake of fire, and along with the false prophet, he will perish in the lake of fire before Satan will (19:20; 20:10).
The sword, which proceeds out of the mouth of Christ, who is the Word of God, is the word that will judge the rebellious (John 12:48). When the Lord Jesus comes to fight against Antichrist, He will not need modern weapons. The Lord’s word is more powerful than any weapon. When the Lord says, “Antichrist, go to the lake of fire,” we will say Amen, and Antichrist will immediately be cast into the lake of fire. This is the Lord’s way of fighting. Undoubtedly, Antichrist will use the most modern weapons, but Christ will defeat him with the sharp sword, the almighty word that proceeds out of His mouth.
The Lord will not only smite the nations but also shepherd them with an iron rod (Rev. 19:15). This is the fulfillment of Psalm 2:8-9, which tells us that Christ will rule the nations with an iron rod. In Psalm 2:9 God gave Christ authority to rule over the nations. In the millennial kingdom the ruler is a shepherd. To shepherd here means to rule, and the iron rod signifies strong power. Christ will first smite the nations with His judging word; then with His strong power He will shepherd those who remain. His ruling with strong power is His shepherding. He will rule over the nations by shepherding them. Today the elders shepherd the church with love, not with a rod of iron. However, because the nations will still have the rebellious human nature, the Lord will shepherd them during the millennium with an iron rod. That the nations will still have a rebellious nature is proved by the fact that they will follow Satan to make war against Christ at the end of the millennium (Rev. 20:7-9).
Revelation 19 corresponds with Daniel 2, in which we see that the nations devastate Israel consecutively in four empires, from Nebuchadnezzar, the first king of Babylon, to Antichrist, the last Caesar of Rome. These four empires that devastate Israel are the Babylonian Empire, the Medo-Persian Empire, the Macedonian-Grecian Empire, and the Roman Empire. These four empires are signified by the four parts of the great human image in Daniel 2. The head of gold (vv. 36-38) signifies Nebuchadnezzar, the founder and the king of Babylon. The breast and the arms of silver (v. 39a) signify Medo-Persia, and the abdomen and thighs of bronze (v. 39b) signify Greece, including Macedonia. The legs of iron and the feet partly of iron and partly of clay (v. 33) signify the Roman Empire with its last ten kings (vv. 40-44a; 7:7-11, 19-26; Rev. 17:7-13). At the beginning of the great tribulation (Matt. 24:21) the form and appearance of the Roman Empire will be restored under Antichrist. According to the books of Daniel and Revelation, the last Caesar of the Roman Empire will be Antichrist, who will be supported by ten kings (Rev. 17:10-12).
The four empires will, however, be overcome and terminated by Christ. Daniel 2:34 says that “a stone...cut out without hands” struck “the image at its feet” and “crushed them.” Verse 35 continues, “Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were crushed all at once, and they became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away so that no trace of them was found.” Here the great human image signifies the aggregate of human government, and the smiting stone signifies not merely the individual Christ but also the corporate Christ. Apparently, the parts that were of gold, silver, bronze, and iron were not a problem to God. But with the ten toes there is a great problem, for when human government reaches the stage of the ten toes—the stage of Antichrist and his ten kings—it will fight against God directly. Thus, human government not only rebels against God, exalts man, and worships idols but also fights against God directly. However, Christ, the embodiment of God, will come with His bride to crush the human government.
When Christ comes as the smiting stone, He will not come alone. Rather, He will come with His bride. This is because when Christ comes to fight against Antichrist and his army, He will come as the Son of Man. As the Son of Man, He will need a counterpart to match Him and complete Him. This counterpart will be His bride. After gaining and marrying the church as His bride, Christ will come as the smiting stone. If Christ did not have a bride, He would have to fight alone against Antichrist and his army. However, Christ will have an army, and this army will be His bride. On the day of His wedding, Christ will marry the one who has been fighting the battle against God’s enemy for years. This means that Christ will marry the overcomers, who have already overcome the evil one, the devil (Rev. 12:11). As the God-cut stone, Christ with His overcomers—the corporate Christ—will strike the ten kings with Antichrist (19:11-21), signified by the ten toes of the great human image. In so doing, the corporate Christ will crush the great image from the toes to the head (Dan. 2:35); that is, the corporate Christ—Christ with His newly-married bride composed of the overcomers—will come as a stone cut without hands and smite the human government into pieces. In this way, Christ with His bride will annihilate human government.