Lev. 23 & Rev. 14

Helpful Collateral References for This Parable of the Tares: Revelation 14 and Leviticus 23

Revelation 14 may be divided into four parts:

vv. 1-4, the firstfruits—the first rapture;

vv.6-13, the situation during the Great Tribulation;

vv.14-16, the reaping of the wheat—the rapture after the Great Tribulation;

vv.17-20, the vintage of the earth—also the battle of Har-Mageddon or the great slaughter by the One mentioned in Revelation 19 who rides a white horse.

Leviticus 23 has eight set feasts:

Sabbath (which is also considered to be a set feast)—Redemption gives God and men rest.

Passover—The month of the Passover is reckoned as the first month, for redemption commences all spiritual experiences.

Unleavened Bread—It follows Passover and typifies repentance and abhorrence of sin accompanied by a desire to get rid of it.

Firstfruits—Three days after Passover. Christ is the firstfruits (see 1 Cor. 15.20,23). The sheaf of firstfruits points to the saints in Jerusalem who were raised from the dead with Christ as His companion firstfruits. This set feast speaks of the resurrection of the Lord three days after He was crucified.

Pentecost—It signifies the coming of the Holy Spirit after the Lord has ascended to heaven.

Blowing of Trumpets—This denotes a gathering together. In the future there will be a great ingathering to the Lord of both the Jews and the Gentiles.

The Day of Atonement—This refers also to the future. Even so, today we enjoy it beforehand (see Heb. 6.5).

Tabernacles—This leaving of houses and dwelling in booths with great rejoicing points to the millennium; it nonetheless is still temporary, not eternal.

Leviticus shows four stages with regard to wheat:

(1) Firstfruits—which typifies the resurrection of the Lord. (Although in the Bible many are raised from the dead, the Lord is reckoned as the Firstborn from among the dead.) Firstfruits ripen before the rest and are therefore reaped the first.

(2) Pentecost—the two wave loaves signify the first rapture, occurring before the Great Tribulation.

(3) The harvest—that rapture occurring after the Great Tribulation.

(4) The gleaning—whatever is left behind after the harvest has been reaped is to be gleaned individually. This refers to fragmentary raptures.

Matthew 13 compares wheat with tares and shows their diverse destinies. Both Revelation 14 and Leviticus 23 compare wheat with wheat and record their different consequences. Though they are all wheat, they are not all reaped at the same time; for if all will be raptured before the Great Tribulation, the Lord would surely have said something like: Blessed are you, for you are wheat. Also, there would be no need for watchfulness nor for patience. Let us see that the condition for rapture is more than simply having life, or else all the warnings of Scripture are meaningless.

Wheat needs to be dried (it is different from grapes, which need water). It therefore needs sunlight. The yardstick for being reaped is the percentage of moisture remaining. The stalk and root must be completely dried before reaping. Now we are all wheat, yet we all need to be dried, that is to say, to cease seeking the pleasure of the world. “Wheat dries towards earth but ripens towards heaven,” D. M. Panton keenly observed. Now sunlight, which in its severity helps wheat to grow and to ripen, represents in a spiritual way the tribulation needed to dry us out from loving the world. (Let us understand that through tribulation sunlight stands for grace, whereas rain and dew stand for grace in blessing.)

Wheat is an annual not a perennial grain, signifying that the earth is not an eternal home. We are here only temporarily. Wheat is also not self-protective: it is neither thorny like a rose nor sturdy like a fig tree nor widespread like a vine: it is most tender, shaken easily by the wind.

How wise is our God in using wheat to represent the saints, the sons of the kingdom. He waits to see if we are ripened before He reaps. The time for the rapture of a believer is in a sense determined by his ripeness.

Before the coming of the Lord in the air there will occur the first rapture of relatively few saints (represented by the 144,000 mentioned in Revelation 14). Those who are raptured will take their place in heaven before the throne.

Revelation 14.6-13 Here we find the gospel of judgment and the warning is to be proclaimed during the Great Tribulation.

Revelation 14.14-16 The reaper—the Son of man—is in the cloud, which coincides with the scene set forth in 1 Thessalonians 4. “For the harvest of the earth is ripe” or “is become dry” (14.15 mg.): if the sunlight of tribulation is ineffective, then the Lord will have to use much stronger persecution and tribulation than sunlight to dry up the remaining wheat. Believers will eventually forsake the world, they will finally be dried; if not by sunlight, then by the fire of persecution and tribulation: for one day the world which believers love will turn against them. The chief difference in the five foolish and the five wise virgins lies in this matter of time, namely, which believers ripen first? The “sickle” is symbolic of the harvesting angels (cf. Matt. 13.39).

Revelation 14.17-20 The word “grapes” denotes the wicked (and is not a type of Israel, for today Israel is typified by the fig tree). These “grapes” are the slain mentioned in chapter 19 who fall at the battle of Har-Mageddon (Armageddon). What follows afterwards is the Feast of the Tabernacles (see Deut. 16.13-15).

And the gleaning occurs after the reaping, and hence represents various fragmentary raptures.

The coming of the Lord is imminent. Believers in the last days must pay attention to three essentials: (1) eternal life, (2) rapture, and (3) reward. Thank God, He has already provided us with the first essential. He has chosen us before the foundation of the world that through the death of Christ we should receive eternal life. The other two essentials are something required of us. Rapture is related to our manner of life as to whether we are watchful, patient, holy, and so forth. Reward is linked to our work. And these two are interrelated, such as is seen in the case of Philip the evangelist who was raptured while at work (a type).

Two passages of Scripture mention the conditions for rapture directly:

(1) Revelation 3.10 “Because thou didst keep the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of trial, that hour which is to come upon the whole world, to try them that dwell upon the earth”—It says “the word of my [i.e., the Lord’s] patience” and not “my word of patience”: today in this age people curse the Lord, yet the Lord does not strike them to death with lightning (in the millennial kingdom, however, such conduct will not be tolerated). Christians stand with the Lord on the same ground and refuse glory from men because the Lord is now rejected and has not received glory yet.

(2) Luke 21.36 “But watch ye at every season, making supplication, that ye may prevail to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man”—“that ye may prevail”: We need to watch at all seasons, not just be watchful for five minutes. We should not go to sleep, but instead discern the light of the Lord and the darkness of the world. And always praying that we may be counted worthy to be in the first rapture. If we do not resist the blessing of the world we cannot escape the woe of the Great Tribulation.

vv.30,39-42 The reapers are the angels, and so is the sickle. Otherwise, people may use this passage to justify the religious inquisitions of the Roman Catholic Church. “To burn them” is to be cast into the lake of fire (see Rev. 20.10, Is. 66.23-24) typified in the Scriptures by the Valley of Hinnom (which lies south and west of Jerusalem; please note, too, that the original New Testament word Gehenna—hell—is a corruption of Ge-Hinnom). “All things that cause stumbling” point directly to Satan and modernists, or broadly speaking, to those things which can serve as tools in Satan’s hands to cause stumbling, such as idol temples, gambling, dancing halls, theaters, and so forth. During the millennium, none of these and other things which cause stumbling will exist anywhere.

v.43 “The kingdom of their Father”—Three different terminologies are used; namely, (1) the kingdom of heaven, which delineates the sphere or domain; (2) the kingdom of the Son of man (v.41), which means His millennial kingship over the Jews as well as the Gentiles; and (3) the kingdom of the Father (v.43), which points to the heavenly portion of the millennial kingdom where the believers or the righteous ones shall shine as stars even as the Lord who shines as the Sun of righteousness. “He that hath ears, let him hear,” says the Scripture.