18 Harvesting the Grapes

Painting by by G. Roland Smith

Read Revelation 14:14-20 here

18 Harvesting the Grapes

John sees seated on a cloud one ‘like a son of man’ with a crown on his head and a sharp sickle in his hand.  He is called on by an angel to reap the harvest of the earth because the earth is dried up.  Another sickle-bearing angel appears who gathers the clusters of grapes from the earth’s vine because they are ripe, and throws them into the ‘great winepress of the wrath of God’ where they are trampled. 

Like Jesus’ striking parable of the Wheat and the Tares, this is a symbolic vision of the final ‘reaping what we have sown’ – a full disclosure of the underlying nature we have allowed to develop within us.  Here, it is a revelatory vision of the eventual ‘fruits’ of the self-centred side within every human being, which must eventually be thrown out to prevent them affecting the quality of one’s life.

“Then another angel came out of the temple and called in a loud voice to him who was sitting on the cloud, ‘Take your sickle and reap, because the time to reap has come, for the harvest of the earth is ripe.'”

(chapter 14 verse 15)

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