Julia Ward Howe was one of the most famous American women of the nineteenth century. She campaigned tirelessly for women’s rights, particularly the right to vote, served as the first President of the New England Woman’s Suffrage Association, and was the innovator of the idea of Mother’s Day. She was also the author of one of America’s most beloved patriotic hymns “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

Her famous song was set to the tune of “John Brown’s Body”, which was composed by Vermonter Thomas Bishop after he joined the Massachusetts militia and his battalion was dispatched to the Civil War.

Upon hearing the tune, Howe’s friend, the Rev. James Freeman Clark, suggested that she write new words for the song. Staying at the Willard Hotel in Washington on the night of November 18, 1861, Howe awoke in the middle of the night with the words of the song in her mind and in near darkness wrote the verses to the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”. Of the writing of the lyrics, Howe remembered:

I went to bed that night as usual, and slept quite soundly. I awoke in the gray of the morning twilight; and as I lay waiting for the dawn, the long lines of the desired poem began to twine themselves in my mind. Having thought out all the stanzas, I said to myself, ‘I must get up and write these verses down, lest I fall asleep again and forget them.’ So, with a sudden effort, I sprang out of bed, and found in the dimness an old stump of a pen which I remembered to have used the day before. I scrawled the verses almost without looking at the paper.

Mrs. Howe was familiar with Revelation 14. She saw in the events of her day the fulfillment of the gruesome prophecy of a horrible bloodbath between the forces of righteousness and the powers of darkness. While the American Civil War may have been a preliminary shadow of what John saw in Revelation 14, it certainly did not fulfill the prophecy. Likewise, in our day we see preliminary shadows of fulfillment of this prophecy. But one day, however, our eyes will see the glory of the coming of the Lord trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored!

In Revelation 12 and 13, we saw Satan appear as a sinister red dragon and the two beasts that form a false trinity and make war against God’s people. Revelation 14 depicts the actions of God and his people in response. This vision has two parts: the glory of the saints who resist the false trinity and the judgment of sinners who succumb to the false trinity. Let’s take a look at these two groups!

The Glory of the Saints in Heaven (1-5)

Revelation 14 opens with the apostle John seeing a vision of the Lamb, Jesus Christ, standing on Mount Zion, and the 144,000 who had his father’s name written on their foreheads. Zion was the name of the hill in Jerusalem in which the temple sat. In the Old Testament, Zion came to signify the place where the Messiah would deliver his people and gather them to himself. Here, as in many other places, Zion is symbolic of heaven.

The 144,000 with God’s name written on their foreheads is the church, God’s faithful people from the past and present, who persevered to the end. They bear God’s mark instead of the mark of the beast. They are the ones who truly follow the Lamb wherever he goes. They are the ones who are purchased by the blood of the Lamb and are offered as first-fruits to God. They are the ones who have been so radically transformed that they resist the temptations of sexual immorality and use their mouths to tell the truth and who live blameless lives.

As John beheld the glory of Jesus Christ and his saints in heaven, he heard a loud noise. It was as loud as the roaring waves and pealing thunder, and it sounded like a band of harpists strumming their harps. As the music played, the whole multitude formed one massive choir and began to sing a new praise song to God. The lyrics of the song remain hidden. Only God’s true people who are redeemed from their sins will know the words and could sing the song.

This vision of heaven gives us great hope. It tells us that if we put our faith in Jesus Christ and remain faithful to him throughout our lives, we will see Christ in all of his glory in heaven. If we trust in Jesus’ death and resurrection, we will be purchased and pardoned from our sins and become blameless before God. If our faith perseveres through trials and temptations, we will one day be promoted the heavenly choir and learn the new praise song that is only revealed to true believers. If you want to go to heaven tomorrow, you have to give your life to Jesus Christ today! Won’t you do it now?

The Judgment of Sinners in Hell (6-20)

Whereas the first part of this vision shows the glory of the saints in heaven, the second part depicts the judgment of sinners in hell. This contrasting scene begins with three angels progressively announcing a last opportunity to repent. The first angel proclaims the eternal gospel to every person on the earth. He commands the people to fear God and worship him in glory because the time of judgment has come. The second angel predicts destruction of the physical world. And the third angel pronounces judgment on those who follow the beast, the demonic agent of Satan.

This third judgment describes hell in horrendous detail. Just listen to the metaphors—“drink the wine of God’s fury”, “cup of his wrath”, tormented with burning sulfur”, “the smoke of their torment rises forever, and “no rest day or night.” This is what it will be like for those who do not obey God’s commandments, remain faithful to Jesus, and die in the Lord. They will suffer in hell forever!

Verses 14-20 spell out the judgment in even greater detail by using the ancient agricultural images of grain harvest and grape vintage. When John looked up, he saw Jesus seated on a white cloud with a crown on his head and a sickle in his hand. The white cloud signifies the glory of Christ; the gold crown represents the kingship of Christ; and the sickle is a symbol of the judgment of Christ. Just as the time for harvest comes and the farmer wields his sickle to cut down the grain, Jesus cuts down everyone who has resists his call to repentance.

Likewise, the great judgment is compared to the grape vintage—Jesus takes his sharp sickle and cuts down all of the clusters of grapes and throws them into the winepress of God’s wrath. Just as grapes were trampled by foot to get juice to make wine, unbelievers will be cut down, collected, and trampled in the judgment. Those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord will be crushed by God’s wrath. The image of their blood flowing into the streets as high as a horse’s bridle for 180 miles is a hyperbolic metaphor for the severity and finality of God’s judgment.

This depiction of God’s wrath in the final judgment is severe. The image of Jesus taking his sickle and cutting down unbelievers and throwing them into a winepress to be trampled by God’s wrath is difficult for many people. For some, the idea of God’s wrath is so troubling that they reject it all together.

Miroslav Volf, professor of theology at Yale University, used to reject the concept of God’s wrath. He thought that the idea of an angry God was barbaric, completely unworthy of a God of love. But then, his native country Croatia experienced a brutal war. People committed terrible atrocities against their neighbors and countrymen. The following reflections, from Volf’s book Free of Charge, reveal his new understanding of the necessity of God’s wrath:

My last resistance to the idea of God’s wrath was a casualty of the war in the former Yugoslavia, the region from which I come. According to some estimates, 200,000 people were killed and over 3,000,000 were displaced. My villages and cities were destroyed, my people shelled day in and day out, some of them brutalized beyond imagination, and I could not imagine God not being angry.

Or think of Rwanda in the last decade of the past century, where 800,000 people were hacked to death in one hundred days! How did God react to the carnage? By doting on the perpetrators in a grandfatherly fashion? By refusing to condemn the bloodbath but instead affirming the perpetrators’ basic goodness? Wasn’t God fiercely angry with them?

Though I used to complain about the indecency of the idea of God’s wrath, I came to think that I would have to rebel against a God who wasn’t wrathful at the sight of the world’s evil. God isn’t wrathful in spite of being love. God is wrathful because God is love.

Indeed, God’s wrath is an essential aspect of his love! There is great comfort in knowing that when Jesus returns he will restore justice and bring an end to all evil. This image of the grapes of wrath should make all of us stop in our tracks and reflect on the condition of our souls.

Revelation 14 presents two possible eternities: we can either sing in the choir in heaven or be trampled in the winepress of God’s wrath in hell. Which do you choose?