Revelation details the lives and destinies of four groups of people: the raptured, resurrected, martyred, and damned, separated only by time and a choice.
READ TIME: 8-10 Minutes
Four Destinies
The Book of Revelation is more than just a prophecy; it is a guide to the end of this age. In this book, we can gather the wisdom to properly discern the signs of our times and understand our paths.
These paths lead to four destinies with very different experiences: the raptured, resurrected, martyred, and damned. Like viewing a map before a cross-country trip, some paths are straight and flat, some are mountainous and difficult, and some are complicated and can lead to confusion and a wrong turn.
The paths that lead to everlasting life involve surrender, sacrifice, and even death. These paths involve loss for gain and death for life. But the longer we wait to choose, the fewer paths will be available, leaving only one: eternal damnation.
This post is not about the Antichrist and the Beast but about us. We cannot control the mayhem that is unfolding before us. However, we can look at the map and choose our path.
The Escape Hatch
This week, someone told me that a friend of his, a Muslim, was leaving America because it has become like Sodom and Gomorrah and would suffer judgment. While he may be correct in his assessment, he is in error in believing that America is alone and that he can escape judgment on his own. He could learn something from the account of Sodom and Gomorrah, that is, how to escape God’s wrath to come.
In the Biblical account, the Lord agreed with Abraham that He would not destroy Sodom for the sake of ten good men living in the city. As it turns out, there was only one: Lot. Lot was the only righteous one. The Lord had compassion for this one man, sending His angels to gather Lot and his family and lead them to escape from God’s wrath.
During the escape, one of the angels said something critical to understanding the rapture. While heading to a small city for shelter, one of the angels said to Lot, “Run there quickly, for I cannot do anything until you arrive there.”
So we learn from this encounter three things:
- The Lord has compassion for the righteous;
- He will send angels to lead the righteous to escape His wrath; and
- The angels cannot carry out His judgment until the righteous have escaped.
And like in the days of Lot, in the days of Noah, God let Noah escape before sending the floodwaters.
If God did this twice on the account of one man, first Noah, then Lot, will He not do this for the millions of faithful followers on the Day of the Lord?
The Great Escape
Paul describes a time when the righteous will escape in 1 Thessalonians. “For we tell you this by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will surely not go ahead of those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will come down from heaven with a shout of command, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be suddenly caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.“
This event described by Paul is both the rapture and resurrection. Joel, Daniel, and Jesus all stated that upon the signs of the Day of the Lord, the righteous will escape.
You can see in the table below that God consistently sends angels to rescue His people immediately following the signs of the Day of the Lord. These scriptures all refer to what we call the rapture. Immediately after the angels gather the elect, Revelation describes a scene in heaven of a great multitude of people taken from the Great Tribulation in chapter 7.
And we see the tie-in from Lot in Genesis to the saints in Revelation. The angels who carry out God’s judgment do not do so until they have taken the righteous to safety.
The Day of the Lord and the Rapture are Consistently Tied Together
The destiny of those raptured and resurrected is a destiny for those who, like David, are after God’s heart. The raptured and resurrected saints “…are before the throne of God, and they serve him day and night in his temple, and the one seated on the throne will shelter them…“
This was the most important thing to David, who in Psalm 27 wrote, “I have asked the Lord for one thing— this is what I desire! I want to live in the Lord’s house all the days of my life, so I can gaze at the splendor of the Lord and contemplate in his temple. He will surely give me shelter in the day of danger, He will hide me in his home.“
During the “day of danger” on the earth, God will shelter the raptured and resurrected in His home.
But this does not mean that those who are raptured will have an easy time on earth. Before the gathering of the saints seen in chapter 7, we will experience the shaking of the horsemen. We will witness governments overtaken by false kings, be shaken from our comfort by bloodshed and war, experience social uprising caused by food shortages and inflation, and see millions die from disease and hunger. We will experience severe persecution for our beliefs and seek the courage to stand firm on our testimony, even in the face of death. But when the world panics in extreme fear as the sun darkens, the moon turns red, and the powers of the heavens are shaken, we will look up to our redeemer.
The Resurrected
The order of events described above may lead you to identify a conflict. In the apostle Paul’s account of the rapture in 1 Thessalonians 4, the resurrected are raised first. So if Revelation 7 shows the raptured and resurrected saints, why does Revelation 20 call the resurrection of those who denied the Beast the “First Resurrection?”
Revelation 20 states, “I also saw the souls of those who had been beheaded because of the testimony about Jesus and because of the word of God. These had not worshiped the beast or his image and had refused to receive his mark on their forehead or hand. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. (The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were finished.) This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is the one who takes part in the first resurrection. The second death has no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years.“
The statement, “this is the first resurrection” seems odd because it is not the first resurrection. Most notably, Jesus was resurrected. Also, upon Jesus’s death, the Bible states that many saints were resurrected, as seen by many.
Paul informs us that God will resurrect the “dead in Christ” immediately before He gathers the living saints. But by Revelation 20, there won’t be any living saints. Revelation 13 tells us that anyone who does not worship the image of the Beast will be killed. So, by the time of the “first resurrection” in Revelation 20, no living saints are left. This is why this resurrection is only a resurrection of the martyrs. Surely the rapture and resurrection described by Paul must occur before this.
So why does the Bible call the resurrected martyrs the “first resurrection?”
The Greek word for first does not solely mean first in chronological order. It can also mean the chief, the principal, or the most important. The “first resurrection” stands in contrast to the “second death” for those who denied Christ. God will resurrect those destined for the second death after Jesus’ thousand-year rule.
So, who are these martyred saints whom God resurrects in Revelation 20?
The Martyred
Consider the parable of the ten virgins. These virgins represent Christians waiting for the Lord to return and take them to the wedding banquet. As the parable goes, five had kept their lamps full of oil and were ready when the bridegroom (Jesus) returned. The other five had not kept enough oil in their lamps. Think of the oil as the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and a life filled with a relationship with God.
When the bridegroom returned, he took the first five virgins with him. This represents the rapture. Though the second five went out to get more oil, the bridegroom had left by the time they returned and would not let them in.
So what happened to the five virgins who now had sufficient oil?
Those Left Behind
Having been left behind from the rapture, these Christians must face a period of great tribulation. They have repented and sought Jesus but must now endure the hardships under the Beast’s reign. Revelation describes what happens to them.
For the non-believers, Revelation 13 states,
“…all those who live on the earth will worship the beast, everyone whose name has not been written since the foundation of the world in the book of life belonging to the Lamb who was killed. If anyone has an ear, he had better listen!“
This is a strong warning to the saints on the ground because the Beast will “war against the saints and conquer them.”
The Bible tells us the destiny of those saints who missed the rapture. “If anyone is meant for captivity, into captivity, he will go [the unbelievers]. If anyone is to be killed by the sword, then by the sword, he must be killed [the believers].” (see note ac in this link on variations of this text)
Those who worship the Beast will be destined for captivity (the Greek word can imply a captive multitude). Those who deny the Beast and hold to the testimony of Jesus Christ will be killed. “This requires steadfast endurance and faith from the saints.“
This is the destiny of the saints on the ground. They will need strong, unmovable endurance to stand firm in their faith. Their only path to heaven is to be killed – martyred – beheaded. For Revelation states that “…and [the False Prophet] could cause all those who did not worship the image of the beast to be killed“
But this is not the end of their story. For their steadfast endurance, God will reward them.
The Appearance of the Martyrs in Heaven
Revelation 15 describes a scene in heaven reminiscent of Revelation 7. To remind you, Revelation 7 shows the results of the resurrection and rapture. Chapter 7 describes “…an enormous crowd that no one could count, made up of persons from every nation, tribe, people, and language, standing before the throne.”
This crowd is uncountable because it is comprised of every saint, alive or dead, at the time of the rapture.
But in Revelation 15, after the Beast is in full power, Revelation describes a similar scene before the throne, comprised of “those who had conquered the beast and his image and the number of his name.“
These are the souls of all the believers who missed the rapture but were killed for denying the Beast. They lived through the reign of terror of the Beast and held to the testimony of Jesus Christ.
One difference between the martyrs in chapter 15 and the great multitude in chapter 7 is that the martyrs have not yet received glorified imperishable bodies. Those raptured and resurrected “will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed” into an imperishable body.
But the martyrs’ bodies are still on earth, under the authority of the Beast. As soon as Jesus and His angel armies defeat Satan and the Beasts in Revelation 20, God resurrects the martyrs into imperishable bodies.
And they are rewarded for their steadfast endurance by reigning with Christ on the earth over the thousand-year sabbath millennium. This appears to be a different path than the raptured and resurrected saints, who will be serving in God’s temple.
Up to this point, we have described the experiences and destinies of the raptured, the resurrected, and the martyred. But there is one last group to consider: the damned.
The Damned
It hurts to write about this group. Yes, there will be murderers and pedophiles among the damned, but some will be people we would not think of as evil. Some of our friends and family will be in this group. There will be people who were hurt, deluded, or could not see beyond what they could touch. Yet, they missed the key to eternal life because they did not seek salvation.
And by default, those who do not take Jesus’ path will have the same destiny as the murderers and pedophiles – the second death. So, what is the second death?
After all of the saints have been resurrected, Revelation 20 states that “the rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were finished.“
So God eventually resurrects the dead, and they appear before the white throne for judgment. Many books are opened, including the Book of Life. “…the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds.“
But our deeds cannot save us. “…only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life,” are saved. These are the ones who surrender their life to Christ and are washed by the blood of He who bore the penalty of their sins.
Everyone judged by their deeds “was thrown into the lake of fire.“
The Lake of Fire is the second death. We can only hope that the second death is final and that those whom we did not reach, whom we could not convince, or whom we neglected are permanently extinguished in the second death. To think that they will suffer the same fate as Satan and the Beasts in the Lake of Fire forever is tough to bear.
The Choice
So we all have a choice. God has witnessed rebellion from angels and humans and seen the devastating consequences of both. He will not bring rebellious people into His kingdom. Only those who surrender their lives to Christ, who choose His will over their own, may enter.
So, each of us has choices and a destiny tied to those choices.
- Surrender your life to Jesus Christ now and be one of those raptured or resurrected before God pours His wrath on the earth. You will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
- Choose not to surrender now. But in seeing the Day of the Lord, the rapture and resurrection, you may realize your mistake, repent, stand firm, and be killed as a martyr in defiance of the Beast. You will suffer greatly in the period of tribulation, but be saved. You will reign on the earth for a thousand years with Christ.
- Never surrender your life to Christ. You will suffer God’s wrath and face the second death in the Lake of Fire.
The choice seems obvious, yet so many resist this choice.
Lastly, we have another choice. Do we keep the good news of our salvation to ourselves or share it? Do we take every opportunity to change someone’s destiny or hope someone else will?
We have the power to change destinies with the key to everlasting life. We cannot force someone to make a choice, but we should be ready to share our testimony when God gives us the opportunity.
Remember these choices and destinies the next time you have the opportunity to share your testimony of Jesus. “…the testimony about Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”
Your testimony is a prophecy of testimony for the person with whom you share it. In sharing your testimony, they too may be saved.
Now Available: the podcast of this post at
www.westcloudsrisingpodcast.com
Also available on Apple Podcasts and Spotify
Related Posts:
Watch for this One Event to Precede the Rapture
The Rapture – Scripture Settles the Pre-Tribulation and Post-Tribulation Debate
Rapture: What Happens if We Look Back?