The holy, the righteous, the unjust, and the filthy

“He that is unjust^G91, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy^G4510, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous^G1344, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy^G37, let him be holy still.” (Rev. 22:11).

 

G4510 rhupoō “to become dirty”

G91 adikeoō “hurt, injure, be an offender, be unjust”

G1344 dikaiō “just, righteous”

G37 hagiazō “sanctified, be holy”

 

For many years I wondered why this verse was written like it was. Why the four groups? Why the apparent repetitiveness? Was there a deeper meaning to it? Then as I looked closer at the whole book of Revelation the Lord began to show me why there are four groups.

 

I had run from the Lord for 13 years. It was a dry and thirsty land that my heart and life had become. Finally, when life was unbearable I sought the Lord with my whole heart, and He brought me to Himself.

 

“For thus saith the LORD, That after seventy years be accomplished at Babylon I will visit you, and perform my good word toward you, in causing you to return to this place.

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.

Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you.

And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.

And I will be found of you, saith the LORD: and I will turn away your captivity, and I will gather you from all the nations, and from all the places whither I have driven you, saith the LORD; and I will bring you again into the place whence I caused you to be carried away captive.” (Jer. 29:10-14).

 

I’m glad my captivity didn’t have to be 70 years. Thirteen years was bad enough living without my Shield and exceeding great Reward.

 

When I surrendered to the Lord He gave me a strong love for the Bible. I had learned the hard way that cursed is the man who trusts in man and blessed is the man who trusts in Jehovah. Now His word was my great love. Nothing else made sense. Everything else glorified man. The Bible became an oasis in my dry and thirsty land.

 

I read and read. I studied and grappled over the hardest book in the world to understand. But it was making sense, for the first time in my life. First, the major prophets, then the minor prophets, then Paul and the other apostles and gospel writers. It all fit together nicely like a beautiful puzzle. Finally, the Spirit of the Lord led me to the prophecies of Daniel, and it made sense after having read everything else. Then lastly, Revelation.

 

In Revelation the Spirit showed me a new way of looking at the book. I saw that chapters 4 through 11 were the basic storyline, chronological and brief; and the second half of the book comprised chapters that needed to be brought into the basic storyline to give it detail.

 

When the seventh seal opened (Rev. 8:1-5) there is a heavenly sanctuary scene with our High Priest Jesus as an Angel at the golden altar of incense, preparing to go into the Most Holy Place. But, instead of going in to cleanse the sanctuary, He takes His censor, with its heaping double portion of burning incense as Aaron got on the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16:12), and the Angel throws it down to the earth. The first trumpet immediately blows, and on earth the contents of the censor and His blood come falling from the heavens.

 

This first trumpet begins a trial for the people of God at that time—the post-Puritanical Protestants—in preparation for sealing a predestinated 144,000 and for desolating the apostatized of the larger group. By the end of the first four trumpets the worst among the Protestant denominations have rejected the Millerite movement (first trumpet), they have rejected the Sabbath and the whole Law (second trumpet), they have therefore received the star called wormwood, Satan with his embittering presence (third trumpet), and their light has extinguished (fourth trumpet).

 

Then, the fifth trumpet sounds and Satan is loosed upon Protestantism, especially the Protestants inhabiting “the earth” (Rev. 8:13), or Protestant America. “The earth” is the land that swallowed up the flood of persecution which the great red dragon spewed out of his mouth to carry away the church in the wilderness (Rev. 12:15,16), as America became the Protestant refuge from papal persecution. “The earth” is also the home of the second Beast of Revelation 13, which heals the deadly wound of the first beast which had blasphemed God and sought to take His place in the world (Rev. 13:11-16).

 

So, once the denominations have been cut off from God the three woes pronounced upon “the inhabiters of the earth” (Rev. 8:13) are warnings to the Puritanical Protestants, who survived the Counter-Reformation and who had been living in a paradise that Providence used to protect them from the dragon and from the beast, both of which sought to destroy obedience to God’ word.

 

Once the fifth trumpet sounds, the spirit of the dragon and millions of devouring Jesuit agents are loosed from the prison which the Reformation had interred them. By then the churches have gone spiritually dead and dark, worldly and hard-hearted toward their Reformation fathers’ God. Now, those devouring locusts are sent by God to drive the Protestants from their fence-sitting and toward a whole-hearted service to God or to Satan. The locusts devour the spiritual health of every Protestant, except for those Protestants genuinely seeking God with the whole heart.

 

“And it was commanded them [the locusts] that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads.” (Rev. 9:4).

 

The demon-driven locusts are given five prophetic months to spiritually and mentally torment (Rev. 9:5), and when that time is finished, as the sixth trumpet blows, every tree, shrub, and blade of grass has been tried, the “small and great, rich and poor, free and bond” (Rev. 13:16). Protestantism is non-existent, except for the 144,000 who have wandered 150 years through a difficult wilderness full of tormenting wrath and enemy armies, Baalpeor corruption and satanic sophistries.

 

There are four groups at this point in the unfinished storyline: 1) the 144,000 still green and alive and being sealed; 2) the Protestant Americans whose consciences have been tormented to the point that their faith is “killed” (Rev. 9:18) by the locusts; 3) “the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands” (Rev. 9:20); and 4) “the sea” (Rev. 10:3) which the 144,000 must evangelize, all “kindreds and tongues and nations” (Rev. 11:9), “every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people” (Rev. 14:6). The sea is the non-Protestants in the world, all the billions of Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Taoists, Sikhs, Catholic peoples, etc.

 

These four groups make up the four classes listed in Revelation 22:11, which in the end become fixed in their final spiritual condition. The Greek words for the “unjust” and the “righteous” show them to be opposites of the same root word, G1349 dikē, meaning that both words refer to justification or the lack thereof. The Greek root relates to their being justified, their reconciliation with God being the first step in their walk to heaven. This interpretation indicates all who are not at the extremes of the final battle for and against the vindication of God’s character. These “righteous” and “unjust”, less zealous ones situated on either side of the line of salvation help us decipher who are the “filthy” and “holy”, the ones most dedicated to the forces of good or of evil who most perfectly reveal the animosity between Christ and Satan.

The troubles of the first six trumpets our heavenly High Priest Jesus sends in the effort to make atonement for His Adventist family, as Aaron was to make atonement for his family before making atonement for everyone else. Out of the Protestant movement Christ has drawn His Advent movement, while every Protestant was being devoured by the locusts except for those who He was sealing. Even among the Adventists, the tormenting and devouring is taking place during our own end-time Baalpeor apostasy.

 

So, during the five months, Christ, before His Most Holy Father, separated out with His mighty cleaver of truth—the Spirit of Prophecy books—all among Protestant America who loved God with all their heart enough to obey Him with all their heart. They were genuine in their hearts; and the rest of the Protestants were rejected. More than enough time and torment was given for them to need the God of heaven, but they never surrendered to Him. They never fell on the Stone and were broken. They never chastised and afflicted their souls during the investigative judgment period when the world was changing rapidly for the worse. They never fasted from the good life in order to regain their bearings and to reassess their standing before God while Protestantism was departing further from the Reformation and degrading, finally returning to Mother Rome. They were “killed” (Rev. 9:18)—their faith, conscience, and salvation robbed from the churched Protestants, the Neo-Evangelicals. They join with Protestantism’s enemy to persecute the Protestant Adventists. These receive the mark of the beast in their forehead; they are the “filthy” of Rev. 22:11.

 

But, not all the non-Adventist Protestants were “killed” by the locust plagues (Rev. 9:20). The hated atheists and hedonistic marginalized unchurched Protestant Americans, who rejected the grace-only modern Ashtoreth, and whose hearts and consciences the locusts could not “kill”, were not fully alienated from the Law. But neither were they converted to God and His Law, therefore they would need their own test to judge who would serve the Lord or the devil. The standard “very small remnant” of them would find the narrow gate and be saved, but most would follow the wide road to destruction, along with those whose consciences were “killed” by Spiritual Formation. The sifting and shaking would send the majority of “the rest of the men” not killed by the locust plagues to ally with the desolated hearts among the spiritualized, churched Evangelical Protestants who determinedly calumniate and persecute the 144,000. The majority of the atheistic and hedonistic idolaters join those Evangelicals not because these idolaters are given to the religious fanaticism of the Evangelicals due to Spiritual Formation, but the idolaters join the religious group in order to keep their bank accounts, their retirements, due to the new religio-political global government and its violently enforced laws that threaten all non-compliance. They also turn a blind eye to the persecutions for fear of Gestapo-like repercussions. The idolaters never felt their need of forgiveness from heaven; they never received faith and the Spirit, because their hearts were determinedly attached to this world. They are controlled by satanic hosts, but they are not devil-possessed to the degree of the spiritualized Evangelicals. They are not converted and justified before God. These receive the mark in their right hand. They are the “unjust” of Rev. 22:11.

The 144,000 who were sifted from among the world body of Protestantism and Adventism were justified by the torment of the Jesuit locusts. “The chastisement of [their] peace” (Is. 53:5,  cf John 3:36) that came from living in an atheistic world drove them to the Saviour, who led them down into the waters of humiliation and surrender; and He blessed them there. They reconsecrated themselves to the holy Testimony of Jesus that He had given to them through Ellen White, and they finally took up the special work of purification that Jesus called for in this investigative judgment. With a new spirit, the Law written in their heart and mind, the message that the prophet bore made them holy. They will perfectly reproduce the character of Jesus. They obey the command to preach the three angel’s messages to the unchurched Protestants and the non-Protestant world. They are the “holy” of Rev. 22:11.

 

The “sea” (Rev. 10:3), all the billions of the heathen world, are tested when the 144,000, who, purified by the truth, preach the everlasting gospel of the kingdom to all the world for a witness to every nation. The opposition to the gospel by the world populations’ will sift out all of the billions of unconverted souls except the needy ones sprinkled among nations. They strongly feel their need of God’s help, and the refreshing from His presence heals their hearts. They accept the appeals from the God who they have been seeking. He justifies them and gives them His Spirit of adoption. But, because the end is so near, they have no time to get sanctified. Like the thief on the cross, if they had had the time they would have become as sanctified as their sealed evangelists, the 144,000. The sealing preparation of the sea’s remnant is not the result of their sanctification but only of their justification because that is all that they have time to accomplish. They didn’t have much time and access to truth from the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy, as the 144,000 had. But, they are faithful to all the light of which Jesus has convicted them. Therefore, God accepts their honest work to come to Him with grateful hearts and their earnest effort to imitate Him to the best of their newly endowed ability, even while suffering from the dangers of their ignorant and persecuting peoples, tongues, and nations. They do not perfectly duplicate the character of Jesus, as the 144,000 perfectly reflect Him, even for many at the cost of their lives. But the Father deems their true heart and faithfulness safe to bring to His home. They are justified, but not sanctified—not holy and purified in all respects—but safe to redeem. They are the “just” of Rev. 22:11.