Revelation 14:2 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Revelation 14:2

Comments

‘I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters.’ We read that in chapter 1 – the vision of Christ. It is the Lord’s voice, a voice of many waters, full of power, mixed somehow with incredible beauty and wonder. It describes a sound so awesome and majestic that it is like a great waterfall cascading to the depths below. What a sound: to hear the voice of many waters! That’s the only way in this symbolic language it can be described. ‘And as the voice of a great thunder.’ It is also a voice of judgement: something beautiful to the people of God and so powerful, but something terrifying to the lost speaking of judgement. ‘And I heard the voice of harper’s harping with their harps.’ It is all the end: the symbolism of praise on the one hand, and judgement on the other. ‘And they sung as it were a new song before the throne, and before the four beasts, and the elders’, the living creatures, that is, the cherubim of justice. The 144,000 worship God in the presence of the four living beasts and the twenty-four elders. The living creatures themselves worship God, as do the elders and so are also created beings. In chapter 5 the twenty-four elders sing this new song. When verse 3 goes on to say that only the 144,000 can sing this song, this certainly does not exclude the twenty-four elders: they both represent the church but from different perspectives. The church worships in the presence of the angels of God. Angels and men do not have the same experience, but each according to their own nature worships the same attributes in God. The great privilege of the church is that it has a unique experience of its own. Perhaps we would like to avoid the tribulation of this world, but the fact that we have passed through it will give us an experience which even the angels, who see God face to face, can never know.

Application

The adoration of God’s attributes can never be a theoretical exercise for believers, for every attribute is vital. God employed each of them in the work of redemption and we give thanks to him for them all. Without God’s mercy, we would have been abandoned immediately after the fall; without his foreknowledge, no way of salvation would have been prepared for us; without his grace, Christ would not have come and shed his blood for sinners; without his justice, the way of salvation would not have satisfied the law of God and assured believers that righteousness had truly been imputed to them. If the 144,000 alone can learn this song, then the learning of this song is a metaphor for the experience that only one who has been redeemed out of the earth can have. Their worship is based on personal appropriation of immeasurable mercy.

Questions

The hundred and forty-four thousand don’t represent just some believers. There are those who have taught that they are special believers, the superior ones, and the ordinary believers are in addition to them. No, this is all believers. There are not two parties, only one.

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Revelation 14:2 Commentary and Bible Study