An Original Song, Part 1

During the Great Tribulation, God will establish evangelists to proclaim the gospel, but will it do any good? Will these evangelists survive? Will God's power be stronger than the enemy who would seek to kill them? Will God be able to protect them over the course of seven years of earthquakes and plagues? Will they be protected from the rage of the dragon who will make war? Chapter 12 verse 17 says, against all who hold to the testimony of Jesus Christ.

Charles Dickens began his novel, A Tale of Two Cities, with this famous line, It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. While the coming time known as the tribulation will mostly be the worst of times, there is something great that God does, and we'll see that today. God will establish 144,000 evangelists who will know him and love him. This group will proclaim the gospel truth.

It'll be a difficult time for them, but God will seal them and protect them. We're going to learn about this group today. This is Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey. Today we begin a series from Revelation 14 called A Preview of Things to Come. Stephen's calling this lesson an original song.

A.W. Tozer once wrote about music, I say without qualification, after the sacred scriptures, the next best companion for the soul is sacred music. Sometimes our hearts are strangely stubborn and will not soften or grow tender, no matter how much praying we do. It is often found that the reading or singing of a good hymn will melt the ice jam and start the inward affections flowing again.

Isn't that true? The power of music, frankly, there isn't anybody that would doubt, I don't believe, believer and unbeliever, the power and motivation and influence of music. In fact, an ancient poet once wrote it this way, I do not care who writes a nation's laws if you will let me write its songs.

This is the power of music. Perhaps you remember enough of your church history to remember that German monk by the name of Martin Luther who introduced congregational singing and harmony in the 16th century to replace the morose and monotone chanting of the priests. In fact, the German reformation of the 16th century would eventually produce a hymnal and it was said that one of the most powerful missionaries of these biblical doctrines was the hymnal. It's no surprise that a Jesuit priest in the 16th century complained about the lingering effects of that German monk who effectively began the reformation. This church leader said Luther has damned more people with his hymns than with all of his sermons. Of course, we would say liberated, right? 500 years later, we're still thrilled and motivated as we sing A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never what? Never failing. William Carey and his associates as I'm reading through some of their journals and their biography in the 1800s were in India and after several years they had not one convert.

The labor was difficult. Over time, they began to realize the power and the hold of Hindu music over the hearts of these teeming millions who they were trying to reach with the gospel. The missionaries had discovered that Hindu gurus were constantly writing instructive songs that they would teach to their disciples to sing.

Songs to the moon, songs to the river or whatever. And as an aside, I'll tell you after visiting India on one occasion, I remember when I was there in fact hearing hundreds of people singing over and over and over again this one phrase, of course I didn't know the language, but I could tell they were repeating themselves and it was actually beautiful. And I asked the Indian believer who was with me whether they were singing and he said, oh, they're with their guru and they're up there repeating in song over and over again the name of their God. Well, after seven years of work, hard work where Carey wrote the preaching was like trying to plow through solid rock, a young Indian carpenter began to do work on their mission home and they decided to teach him some of their own lyrics that they composed in the form of a little song in the Bengali language into a tune they knew. In English, the lyrics aren't really all that poetic to us, but they go something like this.

Sin confessing, sin forsaking, Christ's righteousness embracing the soul is free. And he seemed to catch on. William Carey and his associates began writing more and more of their own songs instructing those who heard them with biblical truths. They would often go out in public. In fact, they talked about the one time the three of them, Carey, Marshman, and Ward went out and decided to just sing.

They didn't say they could carry a tune in a bucket. They just went out and began to sing their sermon and gathered a massive crowd. Crowd often though, they would come home with their faces bleeding because of rocks that had been thrown at them while they sang the truth of the gospel. The work of missions literally had become a battle of musicians.

The music of Carey and Marshman and Ward was making headway in this unique way. Their 35-year-old carpenter named Krishna in honor of his God made the statement eventually to these missionaries that after years of singing the music of his guru, his spirit still had no peace and his guilt was un-remedied. And then after seven years, seven years without any spiritual fruit, he gave his heart and life to Christ. And in spite of death threats, in spite of people surrounding his house singing to his former God, you can imagine this, he made his way on that Lord's day to the river and was baptized publicly becoming the first of millions, millions of believers who to this day trace their way back, their heritage back to Carey and to lyrics, to songs alike, Christ's righteousness embracing the soul is free. There isn't any doubt to the significance of music in the life of the church and in the life of the individual believer. In fact, in the Old Testament, the saints are singing. In the New Testament, they're singing. In the coming kingdom, they're singing. In the new heaven and earth, they're singing. Mankind, by the way, knows how to sing and resonates with music because he was created by a musical God.

It's interesting to track through the triune God's appearance or relationship to music. God the Father loves to sing. In fact, the prophet said, the Lord your God is in your midst. The mighty one will rejoice over you with singing. It was Epheaniah 317. God the Father sings over his beloved.

I'd like to know how that sounds, wouldn't you? God the Son, we're told, while he ministered here on earth sang. He sang with his disciples, Matthew 26 records for us when he met with him in the upper room and of course instituted. Well, as they ate the Passover together, instituted what we call the Lord's table with significance in connection to the past redemption of the people of Israel, certainly the redemption of those who had become the church, and he's providing instruction.

Matthew records that at the end of their meal, they sang a hymn and departed. Wouldn't you like to know how Jesus Christ sounded when he sang? Well, I would imagine that because he was an ordinary Jewish man, Isaiah tells us so ordinary, nobody ever esteemed him, thought he was anything significant, that his voice probably sounds a lot like yours and mine.

Just ordinary. He sounds more like me than David, I can assure you. So God the Son sings.

What about God the Spirit? We're told that his very presence produces in the assembly a desire to sing. They sang in the early church, and we 2,000 years later are doing it, not because, well, you're just supposed to.

There is a litany of hymns and choruses to sing, no. The Spirit of God so reforms our hearts, it leads us to desiring together to sing. In fact, Paul wrote to the Ephesians that being dominated by the Spirit, being filled with the Spirit will lead a congregation to communicate with one another through psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. Ephesians 5 18. So God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit create, compose, compel sacred music. It should come as no surprise to discover singing then throughout the book of Revelation.

We've already observed it on several occasions. In chapter five, the church is raptured and they're singing. Praise to God with lyrics. Worthy is the Lamb who was slain. We've also observed in Revelation the hosts of heaven numbering in the hundreds of millions singing to the glory of God, his attributes of power and might. Having just finished revealing to us in chapters 12 and 13, the faces of evil, the forces of evil at work in the tribulation, the terror of Satan, the dragon, the deception of the false prophet, the hatred and the murderous agenda of the antichrist, you might be inclined to wonder if anybody will ever sing on planet earth again.

Especially the believer. At this point in the Revelation, the apostle John would know the question asked by his readers would probably be, is anybody even gonna make it? For those who've come to faith in Christ after the rapture of the church, they're living in these days of awful terror as God's wrath is unleashed on the planet. Add to that the vengeful fury of Satan and his false Messiah. We've already seen the martyred tribulation believers asking God, how long, oh God, before you avenge our blood on the earth.

Revelation 6 10, the question would be, will there ever be any strain or song or sound of the redeemed on earth again? So God in his grace stops the revelation and hands John as it were a telescope. And he looks down the corridor of time and he's taken to the end of the tribulation period.

He's in fact given what's gonna happen over the next few years. And the first thing that John sees that will happen will happen at the end of the tribulation and wouldn't you know it, it happens to involve music once again. Let's begin in Revelation chapter 14 verse one.

Let me just read a phrase and then there are some things I'll need to say. Then I looked and behold the lamb was standing on Mount Zion and with him 144,000. Having his name and the name of his father written on their foreheads. Now before we begin to listen to them sing, let's get reacquainted with this remarkable group of men.

It will have a lot to do with why they are singing. They were first introduced to us, you remember back in chapter seven if you were with us, where we saw God redeem 12,000 Jewish men from the tribes of Israel. Every tribe was affected except the tribe of Dan.

Perhaps many believe because the tribe of Dan was uniquely responsible for leading Israel into idolatry. However there will be redeemed from Dan the tribe, later we'll see them appear in the record of Revelation. There's no such thing ladies and gentlemen as the lost tribes of Israel, no such thing at all.

They are not lost. In fact they're all gonna be accounted for as God redeems thousands from these tribes during the opening months of the tribulation as they respond to the gospel. So these 144,000 are redeemed Jews. They're not seventh day Adventists who believe that worshiping God on Sunday is the mark of the beast. And only those who worship on Saturday are truly redeemed. These 144,000 are not Jehovah's Witnesses either.

They're redeemed men who will deliver, preach and teach the gospel around the world. And furthermore, they're not chosen ones by aliens. There are religious groups today that believe the 144,000 are chosen by extraterrestrials to continue the human race following the end of the world.

Now that's really not that odd to say anymore, is it? More and more you're hearing that extraterrestrials will have something to do with our future and they've had something to do with our past. In fact, it's interesting, as I listened to one evolutionist, best-selling atheist who made the suggestion, which he later tried to explain it away, but it was on tape, that perhaps the earth was seeded with life from aliens. You know, the idea that the world could explain away the rapture as some kind of alien abduction is not so strange an idea anymore, is it?

In fact, I've often wondered if that would be what would happen. I won't be here to find out, but I wouldn't be surprised. The theory that millions of people have disappeared because of some kind of extraterrestrial involvement is now plausible to most people in our world today. In one Roper poll that I did as I just did a little research on this subject taken as far back as 2002, 67% of the Americans poll believed in some form of intelligent life somewhere in the universe. And 45% of them believed intelligent life from other worlds are monitoring life on earth. Listen, you abandoned the record of God's creation, that he created the universe and on this planet created mankind.

You get rid of that record and you are open to just about anything. You get rid of the record of God as creator and anything is plausible. In fact, any explanation other than God is desirable, even if it's an alien. Paul wrote to the Romans who by the way were surrounded by their own theories of origins. Apart from a creator sovereign God and he said, they've become futile in their speculations and their foolish heart is darkened, professing to be wise, that is professing to be erudite scholars. They became morons is the Greek word, fools who exchange the glory of God for an image of man. Though according to this plain revelation of God, these 144,000 are not chosen by aliens to repopulate the earth after some cataclysmic event.

They are human beings of Jewish kin who will prepare the path not only for a global revival, but especially the regathering of the nation Israel who will enter the kingdom in a matter of years after they've been marked and chosen. Now when these men were introduced back in chapter seven and here again in chapter 14, we're told that they're not only sealed selected by God, but they're marked. You'll notice in chapter 14 verse one, we're told the seal was the name of the lamb and the lamb's father.

This was a visible sign. This was a visible mark mimicked of course, by the antichrist who marked all of his followers with a number of his name which we learned totaled the sum of 666 or 666. His seal will not be able to protect his followers.

It will be so to speak washable ink. But God's seal to protect these 144,000 marked at the beginning of the tribulation was a mark of divine possession and divine protection. Now when they were marked back in the beginning of the tribulation, millions of Christians have already been martyred. Revelation tells us, informs us in chapter seven that they're gonna be martyred believers who come to faith after the rapture and they're gonna represent every nation and tribe and people and language. But these men marked, protected will be unstoppable and their ministry will be global. John Phillips, a commentary wrote of these men, no other age has produced a veritable army of believers like this, marching unscathed through every form of danger. It has been theirs to defy the dragon, to bait the beast. Their calling has been to preach the gospel from the housetops when even to name the name of Christ called for the most dreadful penalties. They've been able to laugh to scorn all the grand inquisitors of hell. They've walked the streets in broad daylight, careless of the teeth gnashing rage of their would-be assassins, true witnesses in the most terrible era in the history of mankind.

The devil knows about this coming band of conquerors and writhes already in an agony of anticipation. They're not only selected by God and sealed by God, they are sexually pure for the glory of God. These men were known for their purity. In fact, you notice in chapter 14, verse four, it informs us these are the ones who have not been defiled with women. They've kept themselves chaste, he uses, I believe, a figurative word, parthenoi, a virgin, in the same way that Paul references the church that he will present as a pure virgin. Now, the misunderstanding of this particular verse has led to a tragic theology. This twisted interpretation that some have come up with in the early church, especially the third and fourth century, developed the belief that a perpetual state of virginity exalted a Christian to higher levels than those who married. With that, of course, came the belief then that Mary, who must have the highest exalted state, would have been a perpetual virgin.

Although the gospel accounts plainly give the names of her sons, born to her after Jesus was born, Matthew 13. But the church so glorified celibacy that they believed marriage and the marriage bed was a defiling thing. The Gnostics in the early centuries, who always reversed the truth, held that marriage was actually from Satan.

Not sure if some Gnostics had bad experiences or what, but they believed it was from the devil. Marcion, a church leader as far back as the second century, who was eventually kicked out for heresy, fortunately, taught that marriage was corruption. He even set up a church only for those who were unmarried while all others were barred. If you could volunteer to work in the nursery in that church and not risk any time away from worship. Thank you, sir, I'm glad you enjoyed that.

I'm glad you enjoyed it. In fact, they believed then, and they still believe to this day, that priests, bishops, cardinals, and popes must remain undefiled by women. You study church history and first of all, you'll find priests, bishops, cardinals, and popes who sired many children, and then absolved one another from the guilt of that particular sin. Celibacy did not create greater purity. It created greater potential for immorality of all kinds.

In our own generation, it's discovered all over again. It's fascinating to discover in church history that one of the things that Martin Luther, that German monk, did when he left the Catholic church, effectively leading what would become a reformed church, was find wives for all of his brother priests. They emptied the nunnery and they married.

In fact, Martin Luther married a former nun, which you can imagine didn't make Rome very happy at all with him. Listen, the teaching of the New Testament reveals that marriage is honorable. In fact, Hebrews 13, four says, the marriage bed is undefiled.

It is undefiling, how clear can that be? In fact, the apostle Paul, who encouraged singleness at one point and in one letter due to the persecution and uncertainty facing the church, he likened the union of a man and a woman, a husband and wife, as an illustration, in fact, the highest illustration of all, of that of Christ and his church, the mystery of the union of Christ with his bride. So these 144,000 are not kept from marriage. They're pure from the defiling immorality of their culture. A culture, much like ours, where sexual immorality and promiscuity is approved of.

It is applauded and under the leadership of the antichrist and the rise of cult worship, at the departure of the church, sexual sin will become unhinged. These men will remain faithful to their wives if they're married, virgin if they're not. John writes, further of them in verse four, these are the ones who follow the lamb wherever he goes. These have been purchased from among men as first fruits to God. They're an offering to God and to the lamb and no lie was found in their mouths, they are blameless. The question remains for us today after showing the depths of Satan's hatred and murder in chapter 12. After showing us the rage and murderous agenda of the antichrist, after showing us the deception of the false prophet in chapter 13, will these specially marked evangelists survive? Will God's power be stronger than the enemy who would seek to kill them? Will God be able to protect them over the course of seven years of earthquakes and plagues and pestilence? Will they be protected from the rage of the dragon who will make war, chapter 12 verse 17 says, against all who hold to the testimony of Jesus Christ? How could any believer survive? Especially these boldly testifying, unapologetically preaching, gospel delivering Christ, exalting evangelists who are in double trouble, right? They're Jews, which makes them a mark, hated by the antichrist and they are Jews who've converted to Christ.

Even more so hated, will they survive? Anticipating this question that believers will have as to the sovereign power and control of God, the question John is about to answer is how many of the 144,000 sealed servants of God make it to the end of the tribulation alive? Now go back and read verse one. Then I looked, chapter 14, and behold, the Lamb was standing on Mount Zion and with him, 135,000, oh, excuse me, 144,000, how many survived? All of them, and I love the way John puts it, then I looked, okay, he's already told us he's saying, and behold, it's like, wow, would you look at that? All of them have survived the tribulation. As Christ's feet touch Mount Zion, John is looking ahead to the establishment of the kingdom of Christ on earth.

The number is not 143,999. Every parent, every spouse wonders if their loved one will return from some war zone alive and they cling to news of their wellbeing, right? Can you imagine how every wife, every parent, every child related to these evangelists will wonder if daddy's gonna survive, if he's still alive? And they're gonna cling to this verse during the tribulation like we can't imagine. Look, here it says, here it shows us that when Christ returns gathering there, waiting with him here, are every one of them alive.

They all survived. The reason every one of those 144,000 survive is because God is always faithful to his word. God has made them a promise and we can rest assured that his promise will be kept.

It's the same with us. God keeps every one of his promises to us as well. Well, we have more to learn about this group, but we're gonna have to carry the second half of this lesson over until tomorrow. You're listening to Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey. Our wisdom partners will be receiving the December issue of Heart to Heart very soon. I wanna invite you, if you haven't seen it yet, to get the next three issues of Heart to Heart just by asking for it. You can do that right from our website or you can call us today at 866-48-Bible and we can help you over the phone. That's 866-482-4253. Join us tomorrow for part two of this lesson here on Wisdom for the Heart. ["Pomp and Circumstance"] ["Pomp and Circumstance"]