“Not guilty by reason of insanity.” This was the unbelievable sentence recited by Judge Barrington Parker following each of the thirteen charges leveled against John Warnock Hinckley, Jr., for the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan. The trial is said to have cost $2.5 million. As would be expected, reactions to the verdict varied from clever maneuvering of language to a travesty of justice. Arthur Eads, district attorney of Bell County, Texas, declared: “Only in the U. S. can a man try to assassinate the leader of the country in front of 125 million people and be found not guilty.” Many echoed the sentiments of Eads that the verdict was symptomatic of a runaway leniency in the justice system.

Supreme Court Justice Horace Gray once informed a man who had appeared before him in a lower court and had escaped conviction on a technicality,

“I know that you are guilty and you know it, and I wish you to remember that one day you will stand before a better and wiser Judge, and that there you will be dealt with according to justice and not according to law.”

The Heralds of the End (Rev. 14:6–13)

In verse 6 the first angel summons all humankind to fear God and worship him.

9 And another, a third angel, followed them and spoke with a loud voice: “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, 10 he will also drink the wine of God’s wrath, which is poured full strength into the cup of his anger. He will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the sight of the holy angels and in the sight of the Lamb, 11 and the smoke of their torment will go up forever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and its image, or anyone who receives the mark of its name. 12 This calls for endurance from the saints, who keep God’s commands and their faith in Jesus.”

13 Then I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Write: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.” “Yes,” says the Spirit, “so they will rest from their labors, since their works follow them.”

14 Then I looked, and there was a white cloud, and one like the Son of Man was seated on the cloud, with a golden crown on his head and a sharp sickle in his hand. 15 Another angel came out of the temple, crying out in a loud voice to the one who was seated on the cloud, “Use your sickle and reap, for the time to reap has come, since the harvest of the earth is ripe.” 16 So the one seated on the cloud swung his sickle over the earth, and the earth was harvested.

17 Then another angel who also had a sharp sickle came out of the temple in heaven. 18 Yet another angel, who had authority over fire, came from the altar, and he called with a loud voice to the one who had the sharp sickle, “Use your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of grapes

from the vineyard of the earth, because its grapes have ripened.” 19 So the angel swung his sickle at the earth and gathered the grapes from the vineyard of the earth, and he threw them into the great winepress of God’s wrath.af 20 Then the press was trampled outside the city, and blood flowed out of the press up to the horses’ bridles for about 180 miles.

In verse 6 the first angel summons all humankind to fear God and worship him.

V8 The second angel announces the impending downfall of paganism.

Babylon, became synonymous with the spirit of godlessness that in every age lives in those who worship themselves, their successes, and their possessions, anything but the Creator.

In the context of Matthew 24 the preaching is not to result in the conversion of masses throughout the world. The majority of the world will remain antagonistic (24:9). False prophets will arise, and apostasy even will increase within the believing community itself (24:10–12, 15, 23–26), as in the context of Rev. 14:6–7.

The third angel vividly portrays the torments awaiting those who worship the beast

Revelation 12:9 pictures the devil himself, referred to as “that ancient serpent,” which again calls to mind Genesis 3.

14:9 If anyone worships the beast, Satan’s own emissary,  and its image and receives its mark on their forehead or on their hand, 10 they, too, will drink of the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. They will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. 11 And the smoke of their torment will rise for ever and ever. There will be no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and its image, or for anyone who receives the mark of its name.

God’s wrath poured out in full strength. What does that mean?

The image is drawn from wine-drinking practices in the ancient world.

When you produce wine, it comes out about 30 proof, that is, about 15 percent alcohol. It can go up or down a bit, but it is not a distilled product where you can control the amount of alcohol. It is a fermented process, so it depends on the sugar content, the temperature, the kind of berry, and so on, but commonly wine is about 30 proof. In the ancient world, however, it was very common to “cut” the wine with water, somewhere between one part in ten (one part of wine to ten parts of water) and one part in three. Most table wines that people drank in the ancient world were cut.

This image is a way of saying that in the past, God’s wrath has been diluted. It is as if the text were saying, “This is now the wine of God’s wrath poured out full strength. Any manifestation of God’s wrath that you have seen so far, the exile, for example, plagues in the Old Testament,

disease, war, any of these things that you have seen as horrible manifestations of God’s wrath, they were the diluted form. Now God’s wrath is poured out full strength.”

Various images are used to get the point across: “burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb” (14:10) does not mean that the angels and the Lamb are sitting there laughing and saying, “I told you so.” It means that there is enough awareness in these people of the angels and the Lamb to whom they no longer can have access, that that is part of their torment. There is no way out. “And the smoke of their torment will rise for ever and ever” (14:11).

The Harvest

The arrival of God’s judgment is depicted in two agricultural portraits.

1. The Grain Harvest

The point of these three verses is very simple: a set time is coming when the harvest will take place, and there is no escaping it.

Life does not go on and on endlessly. This is not Hinduism where there are cycles of existence. History in the Bible is teleological, that means it is heading somewhere, it has a goal, an end. It begins somewhere, and it ends somewhere; it heads toward the end God has appointed.

2. The treading of the winepress

This final vision emphasizes the violent thoroughness of God’s wrath when it is finally poured out. In the ancient world, vine keepers would take the grapes they gathered and put them into a great stone vat. At the bottom of the vat were little holes, and when the grapes were squashed the juice would run out through those holes and along stone channels into collecting pots. So you would put the grapes into this vat and the servant girls would kick off their sandals, pick up their skirts, jump in, and stamp down the grapes. That would make the juice flow. Then the juice would be collected, and from it would come the fermentation and the wine that marked the vineyard’s prosperity.

This imagery is used to portray people being thrown into the great winepress of God’s wrath, people who are being trampled underfoot so thoroughly and in such numbers that their blood flows out from the channels to a height of a horse’s bridle for a distance of almost two hundred miles.

This is imagery, as sulfur, darkness and chains,  but they are not imagery of nothing. In each case they are meant to tell us something important about the awfulness of the final judgment on those who have spurned the “eternal gospel.” Here the point of the imagery is the violent thoroughness of God’s wrath when it is finally poured out.

This does not say that their existence will be abolished forever but that they will suffer torment forever (see on 20:10).

The ungodly suffer the same fate as their three Satanic leaders, who represent them. This identification of the fate of the wicked and their Satanic representatives is also supported by the concept of corporate representation in the OT and NT. There is no justification in not identifying the fate of those in 14:10–11 with that of their Satanic representatives in 19:20 and 20:10. That the ungodly are thrown into the same “lake of fire” as their Satanic leaders further confirms this ( 20:15; on the “second death” 20:6, 14; 21:8).  22:14–15 implies that the existence of the wicked is equal with the eternal blessedness of the righteous.

The word torment in Rev. 14:10–11 is used nowhere in Revelation or biblical literature in the sense of annihilation of personal existence. Without exception, Revelation uses it of conscious suffering on the part of people (9:5; 11:10; 12:2; 18:7, 10, 15; 20:10).

Only once in biblical literature is the word used of something other than human experience (Matt. 14:24), but even this may be a parallel with the use in Mark 6:48.

3. Those in Hell Can No Longer Repent

Hell is not going to be filled with people who say, All right, all right, you win. I’m so sorry. I repent. I really would like another chance. I would like to trust Jesus. I would like to go to heaven.

The last chapter of the Bible says, “Let those who do wrong continue to do wrong; let those who are vile continue to be vile; let those who do right continue to do right; and let those who are holy continue to be holy” (Rev. 22:11).

When this comes to an end, you move into the new heaven and the new earth, or you move into hell itself, and you remain in principle what you are already.

If as a Christian you are already seen as righteous in Christ, if you have already been increasingly conformed to the likeness of Christ, you move into a new heaven and a new earth, and righteousness becomes yours without footnotes or exceptions or tendencies to fall away or the influences of the old nature. “Let those who do right continue to do right.” Righteousness is consummated.

Or you move into hell, and you do not suddenly turn over a new leaf and become spotless: “Let those who do wrong continue to do wrong; let those who are vile continue to be vile.” Evil is consummated.

Hell is full of people who do not want to be there but who still do not want to bend the knee. For all eternity they still hate God. They still despise the cross. They still nurture sin; they still

hate others in this endless cycle of self-chosen sin, iniquity, thanklessness, idolatry, and their consequences. The prospect is horrendous. This ongoing sin is so much a part of their stamp and makeup that if they were suddenly transported to heaven, they would hate it.

In exactly the same way as we saw in John 3 in the passage on God’s love, when the light comes, people love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. That is the horrible awfulness of it: ongoing punishment and still, God help us, no repentance. Not ever. That’s why the Bible tells us to “flee from the coming wrath” (Matt. 3:7).

Biblically faithful Christianity does not present itself as a nice religious structure that makes happier parents and well-ordered children and good taxpaying citizens. It may produce better parents and taxpaying citizens, but the issues at stake in biblical Christianity have to do with eternity: heaven and hell.

It deals with matters of the utmost significance, your relationship to your Maker, what God has provided in Christ, what the cross is about, the resurrection.

At the end of the day, what hell measures is how much Christ paid for those who escape hell. The measure of his torment (in ways we do not pretend to begin to understand) as the God-man is the measure of torment that we deserve and he bore. And if you see that and believe it, you will find it difficult to contemplate the cross for very long without tears.

Open our eyes, Lord God, so that we can see the eternal significance of the glorious gospel of Christ. Help us to see that the terrors found in this world, the threats and torments displayed often enough across the history of the world, are nothing compared to the wrath of the Lamb. We face a choice: either we will live our lives frightened of people and what they think, people who at most can do a little damage to us in this world, or we will live our lives in submissive fear of him who can destroy body and soul in hell—and justly so. O Lord God, help us to turn to our only escape, to him who bore our sin with its guilt and penalty in his own body on the tree that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. Help us to sing with that old converted slave trader, John Newton,

I saw One hanging on a tree In agony and blood;

He fixed His loving eyes on me,

As near His cross I stood.My conscience felt and owned the guilt

And plunged me in despair;I saw my sins His blood had spilt

And helped to nail Him there.

A second look He gave, which said,“I freely all forgive:

This blood is for thy ransom paid,I die that thou may’st live.”

Thus, while His death my sin displays In all its blackest hue,

Such is the mystery of grace,It seals my pardon, too.

O can it be, upon a tree,The Savior died for me?My soul is thrilled, my heart is filled,

To think He died for me!

Lord God, be merciful to me, a sinner. For Jesus’ sake, Amen.