VERSE 2 continued “And I heard a voice from heaven, like the voice of many waters, and like the voice of loud thunder. And I heard the sound of harpists playing their harps.”
Some question:
Since the harp represents the Word of God in Scripture, wouldn’t the “voice” of Verse 2 represent the Church singing on this side of the veil?
And how can the saints be pictured as possessing harps in heaven?
But it is replied,
Do not the Scriptures portray the risen Lord as possessing a chain (Rev. 20:1), a sword (Psa. 45:3), a sharp sickle (Rev. 14:14), a measuring rod (Rev. 21:15), a censer (Rev. 8:3, 5), and a book (Rev. 5:7) in his hand?
In the present life the Lord’s saints study the music of the Word (the Divine Plan), attempting to learn how to sing the song of Moses (of restitution blessings) and the Lamb (of life and immortality, i.e., The Two Salvations), and proclaiming publicly and privately the gospel or good news of God’s redeeming grace (the ransom for all). The endeavor is to sing sufficiently well now so that in the future the individual will meet with the Father’s approval and thus be recognized as one of the sweet singers of Israel.
As was stated in our first look at Verse 2 and 3 from The New Albany class there are many difficulties in the interpretation of these verses and as you can see different brethren interpret them differently. The wise student of the Word however will not allow any personal bias or preference toward one class or the other one teacher or another to impede a thoughtful consideration of the views of all. Remember we are dealing with prophecy here much of which has not yet been fulfilled, and prophecy is never certain until its fulfillment.
Now before we move on to Verse 3, we should like to present the thoughts of the Southern Wisconsin Bible Students on these verses.
“The new song that is being sung here is the same song that we saw the 24 elders sing in Chapter 5. There we saw that the original song of the Old Testament had been changed into a new song, which represents the message of the New Covenant. This was the plan that had been hidden from the foundations of the world and hinted at in the Old Testament. After the crucifixion it was then revealed through the apostles and this good news has been preached ever since.
What we see different here than in Chapter 5, is that the 144000 are seen singing this new song instead of the 24 elders or scriptures. That they sing the new song here signifies that the church is complete, and its now time to put the New Covenant into place for the world. So, the difference is that we saw in Chapter 5 the New Covenant revealed, here we see that it is time to implement it for the world. Rev will show us the results and workings of that covenant in a more detail in Chapters 21-22.
The few verses that describe this scene are actually looking forward to that completion and is only a parenthesis showing those who were able to be faithful, in contrast to those who had just been described in Chapter 13 (Those who bare the mark of the Beast or his image). As we will see, starting with the three warnings given by the angels that follow this insert of information, that after having shown us the full development of the false church state system, we are shortly going to be shown the harvest and the false churches final destruction.
That these are the only ones who were able to sing that song shows that the honor of being of the 144000 is not an easy thing to accomplish. That only they are able to sing the song here shows that they will be the instruments used to bring the New Covenant to the world, as symbolized by the singing. The Lord has been developing an elite church class that are to be ministers of the New Covenant in the next age, and this is showing us the completion of that group.
That only they are able to sing that song likewise shows that they have and hold dearly in their hearts the message of the Divine Plan (the Truth). Besides the letter of this plan, they also have the same spirit as Jehovah and our Lord Jesus. In other words, they were willing to make personal sacrifices for others (as sharers in the sin-offering, filling up “that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ”, Col 1:24), especially when needed to save the entire world.
Only the 144,000 have God’s spirit and they intend to save all who are willing. Those who have fallen into error do not have God’s spirit and their message is very different, in that they have the spirit of the evil one and they blaspheme God by saying that he intends to send all unbelievers to hell.”
We continue with Brother Shallieu’s study and Verse 3 in our next post.
