“Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication....If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of His indignation, and shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb: and the smoke of their torment ascends up…and they have no rest day nor night, who worship the beast and his image…” Revelation 14:8-11
This second beast John saw in chapter thirteen of the Revelation is worshiping God in a beastly image identified as “Babylon”. Nevertheless it is in the presence of the Lamb and His holy messengers! The worshipers of this beastly (man-dominated) image receive a MARKING of the church where they are taught elementary understandings about God.
This ‘marks’ their thinking, so indelibly impressing in their minds until they can only think and understand according to their church teachings. They are limited to the commonly held views about certain doctrines, holding to their established traditions that promote their particular viewpoint.
Most of the Lamb’s people receive this “mark of the beast” in the right hand, signifying their Christian fellowship and work of service on behalf of the churches’ programs. Many of the Lord’s people are so captivated by Babylon in their elementary servitude to Christ that they need to be dislodged from former church fellowships and concepts. They can only hear from those who share their beliefs unless and until God gives them, as Revelations says “an ear to hear” what the spirit is saying.
We are ripe for reaping when our ears are open to hear. The passionate correction God called “coming judgments” are characterized in scripture as being the “wrath of God”. What terrifying words have been preached to multitudes of worldly minded people who have trembled before them, wondering and wanting only to know how they can hope to escape from so terrible a thing as the wrath of God!
Yet, it is the HOUSE OF THE LORD that is passionately judged first. So what is the judgment of God, the wrath of God? Let us notice His judgment is CLEANSING, primarily dispensed INTERNALLY for every Christian to find God’s rest at this point in time. Those who still worship God in a beastly (carnal) manner shall DRINK of the wine of the wrath (passion) of God and this is a GOOD thing!
The cup of the wine of His wrath is prepared unmixed. It is not watered down with man’s ideas. It is a CUP OF REJECTION flowing from His indignation about any teachings or understandings from Babylon that are contaminated by man. The word indignation is interpreted from the Greek word ‘orge’, and the word “wrath” is interpreted from the Greek word meaning ‘breathing hard’, or ‘passion’.
The truth of this matter is that God’s wrath is a divine passionate orgy poured out from God, our Father, upon the spiritual lives of Christians. His wrath is to deliver them from suffering further consequences of worshiping any false image created in and by the beastly minds of man. As God’s sons, we have been called out as a firstfruits from every Babylonian influence.
The “wine of the wrath of God” is without doubt a symbol of a type of spiritual operation that stops worshipers from using a beastly understanding of God’s intentions. When we have successfully drunk His wine, we are freed to passionately receive the wine of a new day. This is a drink that will work like alcoholic contents do in order into reach the spirit in a man. The Greek word interpreted wrath, therefore, should more correctly be interpreted “BREATHE HARD AS IN PASSION”.
Thus these great passages signify a passionate, corrective dealing of God, NOT a ferocious punishment by Him. Remember it is our FATHER who gives this wine of wrath (passion) to drink to those of us coming up short of the mark. As natural wine affects the spirit of a man, so shall this wine of God passionately breathe hard upon every false image made by man about God and His precepts.
Every child of God should now understand that the Lord is coming after His people. By drinking this NEW WINE of rejecting man’s teachings that remain on the elementary plane, the Father delivers — REAPS — the worshipers of lesser understandings. They receive an ‘orge’ of burning fire and brimstone right in the presence of the Lamb!
The abiding truth of God burns WITHIN His people. Spiritual minds are released from every lie that troubles man, leaving us sorry with no REST day nor night. Spiritual insight into seeing the Lord by the spirit is the cup now being given to His people to drink. Remember, the book of Revelation was not written to the world but to His SLAVES — His own dearly loved people!
The Spirit of Christ causes us to know clearly the MARK of His leadership in providing true understandings of God’s Word. God is passionate about removing man’s standard in the religious houses of bondage called seminaries, and in educated ministries that hold the Lord's people to old heavens (old orders of church):
"Thus shall it be in the conclusion of the eon. The messengers will be coming out and they will be severing the wicked from the midst of the just. And they shall be casting them into a furnace of fire. There shall be lamentation and gnashing of teeth. Do you understand all these things?" Matthew 13:49:-51 concordant
The greatest joy and the most profound peace springs from union with God in the spirit. So shall the most terrible anguish of spirit result from man’s realizing his rejection and error for resisting further drawings of God’s love and truth. There lies the lamentation and gnashing of teeth! The passion of God is coming to burn up resistance to His will.
“Wherefore, accepting an unshakable kingdom, we may have grace through which we may be offering divine service in a way well pleasing to God, with piety and dread [godly fear], for our God is also a consuming fire.” Hebrews 12: 28-29 Concordant
This consuming fire burns the dross from maturing ones, for we all need correction from His loving hand. This burning is correction, drawing us to abide (stay) in a higher state and developing the spirit of the kingdom within our spirit so we are in a free state and of the New Jerusalem order:
“Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.” Revelation 14:8
We read here of “the wrath of [Babylon’s] fornication.” The Greek word for “wrath” here is again ‘thumos,’ meaning according to Strong’s Concordance, ‘breathing hard, passion.’ Everyone knows that wine inflames the passions. The Greek word does not denote wrath in the conventional sense of ‘rage, violence, vengeance, or judgment’ like what has been preached, but rather of ‘fever heat or strong passion’.
Men of passion can certainly be angry, but even God's anger is not the same as rage. Even His punitive ways are PASSIONATE EXPRESSIONS OF LOVE, as when a parent is moved with stirring action to sternly discipline a precious, misbehaving child. So it is clear that God’s WRATH, as revealed in the book of Revelation, has to do with His PASSION, His feeling very strongly about something.
Sadly it is God’s immature children in the church realms who ignore and resist the wooing of His Spirit. They must be MADE TO DRINK the correcting cup of His passion in the presence of the Lamb. God’s passion is not vindictive and vengeful, damning and destroying, but rather it is IMPASSIONED, FERVENT, ZEALOUS, ENLIVENED, GLOWING, and VIGOROUS, an intense burning with dynamic divine purpose.
God has a passion to make right His people under His chosen Head. He has a passion to make right what is wrong, to supply the needed cleansing and restoration concerning His people. He, like any good Father, wants to provide access to His intended purposes. Every parent who disciplined his or her child understands that love works passionately to correct a child from foolishness.
Our Father states that we are to be righteous and PERFECT AS HE IS PERFECT. He has a passion for inworking His righteousness in us. Therefore He spares nothing! No rod of correction will be withheld that accomplishes His great purposes in us. The wrath of God really reveals the passion of our loving Father enthroned in a MERCY that always corrects and is redemptive.
Multitudes of religious Christian people are bitten by bitter anger, self-righteousness, condemnation, censure, unforgiving vindictiveness, and judgment that brings the damnation of most people into a wrathful burning hell. That is the idea and nature of man!
God’s passion is coming into us now with mercy to redeem us with deliverance from every old state of mind and relationship. We are to join a bright revelation! Oh, the wonder of it works deep in order to search the thoughts and intents of our heart. Brethren, how sublime is the very thought of God's passion delivering light to all those of His children who need more of it. How awesome the implication! How divine and glorious His planned outcome!
Strictly speaking, the wrath of God and the love of God are not equally lasting attributes. God IS love, but scripture nowhere testifies that God IS wrath. Neither is wrath listed as one of the fruits of the Spirit. When death and error are finished in a man's life, GOD’S WRATH (PASSION) WILL END, but His LOVE WILL ABIDE ETERNALLY within all His creatures and upon all the works of His hands. God reacts to sin passionately! Where stern measures of discipline and correction are needed, the love of God puts it into effect, and His corrective process is what all heaven is waiting for:
"We give thee thanks, O Lord God Almighty, which art, and wast, and art to come: because thou hast taken to thee thy great power and hast reigned." Revelation 11:17
God’s power must reign over some in order for them to do what no one else can. According to the scriptures, GOD’S WRATH IS BUT FOR A MOMENT, BUT HIS LOVE IS UNENDING. In wrath God remembers mercy because GOD IS LOVE! Well-meaning religious preachers have taught erroneous but successful viewpoints from scripture, serving up an image of God as an exacting, demanding, mean, cruel Being with a vicious of attitude toward unbelievers.
These ministers say that God is love to those who receive Him now, while at the same time, teaching that God is implacably harsh and ultimately unmerciful to those who don't. They teach that God’s judgment is against all resistance, and the stubborn will be tormented in the fires of hell forever without one degree of release or comfort.
Teaching that God will send to eternal hell those who never had a chance, who were ignorant, careless, and not concerned with Jesus is a LIE. These great hosts of people were guilty at most of living merely natural lives. They did not hate God or deliberately walk in rebellion against Him. They merely had the misfortune of not knowing about Christ.
God makes ALL men and women for His pleasure. But then, the way Babylon tells it, the vilest man who ever lived, who hated, and blasphemed, and abused, and murdered, if on his deathbed, at the last gasping breath of his life, will simply say, “Father, forgive me; Lord Jesus, save me,” this one gets a one-way ticket to heaven. Now that to me sounds more like the cunning craftiness of a deception than the truth of God!
We test wood, steel, and stone in order to find out what they are capable of supporting. We test our ability to read, to run, to think, to drive a car, therefore testing is not evil. In testing, we find out something about ourselves, even if that something is not always complimentary. Everything in life is being tested in some manner. How important the truth, generally overlooked by Bible teachers, that God's WRATH is a TESTING and a PURGE that takes place, not in some far-away torture-chamber, but “in the presence of the holy messengers [ministers of God], and in the presence of the Lamb!”
God certainly does abide in heavenly people within the throne realm. This is not sinners of the world that are being tested here. Rather, it is the LORD’S OWN PEOPLE who are being tried and purged as gold is refined in the consuming Holy Ghost fire of God and in the presence of Him who comes as a refiner’s fire, and as a purifier of gold and silver.
“Behold Me sending My messenger, and he will surface the way before Me. And suddenly, the Lord Whom you are seeking shall come to His Temple, and the Messenger of the covenant, in Whom you are delighting. Behold, He comes! says Yahweh of hosts. Yet who will endure the day of His coming? And who will stand| when He appears? For He is like a refiner’s fire, and like the soap of launderers. And He will sit like a refiner and a cleanser of silver. And He will cleanse the sons of Levi, and refine them like gold and like silver…” Malachi 3:2-4
That all of this happens in the presence of the Lamb indicates that this is a spiritual work of purging going on within GOD’S PEOPLE (not the world) to enlighten them, to reap them from the mixture of Babylon. They are the Lord’s people, they belong to Him!
Jesus, then, is our touchstone, the Word of God, which He personifies — the fullness of the Godhead bodily. All we people of the Lord must measure up to Him. HE only is our standard gauge, the measure for criterion:
“…till we all come to the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,” Ephesians 4:13
Gold of divine nature is what is tested on the touchstone, and refined gold signifies the purest of divine characteristics. As we touch our touchstone, a mark of perfection is being left thereon! Has the genuineness of our gold been judged and sealed to be reigning in the power of ONE who stamps His mark of liberty within us? Have we received the Father's mark there on our heart?
Or do we still form in some measure the doctrines and character of Babylon dwellers, with mixture (heavy with alloy of metal) representing the mixed carnal teachings and traditions of the doctrines of man taught in the church realms?
In understanding the Old Testament type about the tabernacle, we can learn about entering the most sacred spiritual spot possible. The Holiest was a square apartment of ten cubits (15 feet) in breadth, length, and height — a figure of the spiritual dimensions of the fullness of God. The Holy of Holies must be entered with bowed head and unsaddled feet for Yahweh Himself is upon His throne there. How awesome the presence chamber of the Lord of Glory?!
Here no human voice is heard, only the voice of God. Here no seat for man is found, for in the western end stood the ARK, THE THRONE OF YAHWEH. Yahweh alone sits on that throne of glory, a MERCY SEAT of righteousness between the cherubim. Upon the throne, flaming out in awful brightness, rests the holy Shekinah glory.
There is no created light, as from the sun, nor artificial light from a candle, for the seven-fold lamp in the Holy Place illumines that compartment. It is full of light brighter than any other, brighter far than the noon-day sun. The fiery glory of God fills the Holiest with His own divine RADIANCE, flooding the room with light too dazzling for human eye to behold and impossible for man’s lips to explain.
In the Most Holy Place the divine attributes are displayed in perfect reconciliation. Mercy and truth met together, righteousness and peace kiss each other. Into that secret place Israel’s priestly representative entered once a year to sprinkle the blood of atonement upon the mercy seat.
Yes, UPON THE THRONE OF YAHWEH the blood was sprinkled to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. It was upon that mercy seat that God was to be found. His presence was manifest in FLAMING FIRE to consume what was offered as sacrificial blood. It was there according to Yahweh’s promise:
“There will I meet with thee, and I will commune with thee from off the mercy-seat,” Exodus 25:22
The all powerful God, the one covenant-keeping God, took appointment for that year at His seat of grace if the acceptable blood of atonement had been offered for the sins of all the people of Israel. This divine fire is dwelling upon the mercy seat NOW, between the cherubim, receiving that blood of atonement. Now, the process for cleansing all Israel continues its appointments. Surely there are perceptions in the holiest of all that are only here beheld:
"Having then, brethren, boldness for the entrance of the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by a recently slain and living way which He dedicates for us, through the curtain, that is, His flesh, and a great Priest over the house of God, we may be approaching with a true heart, in the assurance of faith, with hearts sprinkled from a wicked conscience, and a body bathed in clean water. We may be retaining the avowal of the expectation without wavering, for faithful is He Who promises." Hebrews 10:19-23 concordant
"...He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself." Hebrews 9:26
Oh, the wonder of the truth that our life is in the same pattern. We are a type of the tabernacle in the wilderness, with an outer court (body), a holy place (soul), and holiest of Holies (the spirit within us). Attaining insight through the true pattern of God, our faith goes through a refining process of qualification on every level until we are sealed with the characteristics of an enthroned SON.
God’s passion for perfection will burn within our spirit now to attain the appointed union through the holy, consuming, purifying fires of God’s Spirit. We thrive on His passionate dealings to burn up the old things in us, trusting the cleansing atonement of Jesus’ blood sacrifice. The smell of fire and burning are not to be on us. We have never forgotten that the blood of ACCEPTANCE has merged into our designated appointments wrought out by God in the Holiest Place, our spirit.
That cleansing fire joins us deep within our own spirit to make way for the holiest of holy. God has sealed the fitness of all those looking ahead to the New Jerusalem order where He is making His priests. God has a passion to draw all Christian believers to presently worship God in spirit and truth.
To recognize Mount Zion spiritually in the New Jerusalem order, the beastly ways of man must be dealt with or man will not grasp this full measure of wisdom in Christ. He uses His body of believers to accomplish this purpose, to be His voice, to see as He sees. If we willingly yield to our Father, allowing Him to consume all of our dross, our days may still be taken up with mundane affairs but INSIDE, our spiritual man is arising to dwell above, at the right hand of the real Holy of Holies. There we know we can be found abiding in the throne of Jesus, abiding with Him. Now, many have assembled to the KING:
"But you have come to mount Zion, and the city of the living God, celestial Jerusalem, and to ten thousand messengers, to a universal convocation, and to the ecclesia of the firstborn, ‘registered’ in the heavens, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the just perfected, and to Jesus, the Mediator of a fresh covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling which is speaking better than Abel.
Beware! You should not be refusing Him Who is speaking! For if those escaped not, refusing the One apprising on earth, much rather we, who are turning from the One from the heavens, Whose voice then shakes the earth. Yet now He has promised, saying, Still once more shall I be quaking, not only the earth, but heaven also,
Now the ‘Still once more’ is making evident the transference of that which is being shaken, as of that having been made, that what is not being shaken should be remaining. Wherefore, accepting an unshakable kingdom, we may have grace through which we may be offering divine service in a way well pleasing to God, with piety and dread, for our God is also a consuming fire." Hebrews 12:22-29 concordant
Now the heavenly universal convocation is accepting the ecclesia of the firstborn, those registered in the spirit who are coming to perfection according to the judge of all. His Spirit passionately burns within our hearts to correct and consume all our deception and fraud. He burns up the lies, removes any dross of earthly mixtures holding our own heart from ascending, approaching, and abiding together in that Holiest Place of ALL.
“BEHOLD THE TABERNACLE OF GOD IS WITH MEN.”