26. THE KINGDOM PARABLES – THE SEVENTH - THE PARABLE OF THE DRAGNET - PART 2 of 6
Last time we were part way through verse 49 of the Parable of the Dragnet and this we will continue. We looked at what “the end of the age” means in the New Testament and this time we look at the reaping of the angels. The END OF THE AGE is so important because it fixes much of the teaching in the proper perspective. We must understand what that term means.
(CONTINUED) [D]. Verse 49 – THE SEPARATION AT THE END OF THE AGE
{{Matthew 13:49 “So it will be at the end of the age. THE ANGELS SHALL COME FORTH AND TAKE OUT THE WICKED FROM AMONG THE RIGHTEOUS,”}}
Angels have a very special ministry. One aspect of this is towards the righteous – {{Hebrews 1:14 “Are they not all MINISTERING SPIRITS sent out to render service for the sake of those who will inherit salvation?”}} They minister to us, for we believers will inherit salvation.
{{Psalm 91:11-12 “He will give His angels charge concerning you TO GUARD YOU IN ALL YOUR WAYS. They will bear you up in their hands lest you strike your foot against a stone.”}} Angels are our protectors and I can testify to that for the number of times an axe just swiped past my legs as if it had been pushed away, when I was doing wood chopping. It was like a miracle.
What angels did for the Lord they can do for us – {{Matthew 4:11 “Then the devil left Him, and behold, ANGELS CAME AND BEGAN TO MINISTER TO HIM.”}} Of course we also have the Holy Spirit. We are indeed blessed. Angels are the ministers of God to the saints.
HOWEVER, they have another side to their ministry. They are agents of judgement and destruction against the enemies of the Lord. Just consider this episode where the men are angels – {{Genesis 19:1 “Now the TWO ANGELS came to Sodom in the evening as Lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom. When Lot saw them, he rose to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground,”}}. The angels came to Sodom for a distinct purpose. It was to destroy the stronghold of the homosexuals, but before that, they had to deliver Lot for the sake of Abraham, because I think Lot was reluctant to leave of his own accord. He was a very poor testimony.
{{Genesis 19:11 “They struck the men who were at the doorway of the house with blindness, both small and great, so that they wearied themselves trying to find the doorway.”}}. Angels are capable of great destruction, but in that case at that time, all they did was cause blindness to fall on the evil men.
{{Genesis 19:13 “for we are about to destroy this place because their outcry has become so great before the LORD that the LORD has sent us to destroy it.”}}. The filthiness of Sodom rose to heaven and it was to be destroyed along with the towns of the plain. It took only two angels to destroy all that. Angels are powerful.
Having established angels’ ministry, and that they are powerful, we need to know that they are agents of destruction and judgement in our Matthew verse – they come forth and take the wicked away. Look at what Paul called them – {{Hebrews 1:7 and of the angels He says, “Who makes His angels winds, and His ministers A FLAME OF FIRE,”}}. Fire is a biblical symbol of judgement, consistently so. It can also have a purifying effect as it judges away the rubbish.
When the Lord Messiah returns at the end of the Tribulation/the time of His Second Coming, all the angels come with Him as well as His Bride who is forever with the Lord. He returns to Israel but on the way He must destroy all the nations gathered against Israel in an attempt to annihilate the Jewish nation. {{Zechariah 14:2-3 “For I will gather ALL THE NATIONS against Jerusalem to battle, and the city will be captured, the houses plundered, the women ravished, and half of the city exiled, but the rest of the people will not be cut off from the city. Then the LORD will go forth and fight against those nations, as when He fights on a day of battle.”}}. That will be the Battle of Armageddon. See how this gathering of the nations happens - Revelation 16:12-14.
Regarding the Armageddon Battle, it is covered by Jude (who actually quotes the Book of Enoch) – {{Jude 1:14-15 About these also, Enoch in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied saying, “Behold, the Lord came with MANY THOUSANDS OF HIS HOLY ONES TO EXECUTE JUDGMENT UPON ALL, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.”}}
At the Second Coming when the Lord comes to Armageddon, John has written this – {{Revelation 19:14 “THE ARMIES WHICH ARE IN HEAVEN, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, were following Him on white horses.”}} These armies of heaven are the angels.
Looking again at our verse –
{{Matthew 13:49 “So it will be at the end of the age. THE ANGELS SHALL COME FORTH AND TAKE OUT THE WICKED FROM AMONG THE RIGHTEOUS,”}}
We have been seeing how the angels will deal with the ungodly when the Lord returns, but let us be a bit more specific. We saw in verse 48, “and they sat down and gathered the good fish into containers but the bad they threw away.” That is taking out (separating) the wicked from the righteous. The Dragnet has gathered all earth’s people and then judgement comes. The angels do the gathering and sorting.
A VERY MISUNDERSTOOD PASSAGE
Look at these verses – {{Matthew 24:39-42 “and they did not understand UNTIL THE FLOOD CAME AND TOOK THEM ALL AWAY - so shall the coming of the Son of Man be. Then there shall be two men in the field - ONE WILL BE TAKEN and one will be left. Two women will be grinding at the mill - ONE WILL BE TAKEN, and one will be left. Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming,”}}
Many of the Rapture people apply this passage to the Rapture but that is very wrong. It speaks of the flood. Who did the flood take away? Answer – the wicked. Who was left to inherit a new beginning. Answer – Noah and his family. The flood is the context. In the Matthew verses here, the ones taken away (at the mill and in the field) are the wicked ones (the bad is thrown away). The ones who are left behind – we shall talk about that shortly.
It is very bad but the fate of those who are taken away in judgement is what is described here – {{Matthew 25:30 “CAST OUT the worthless slave into the outer darkness. In that place there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”}}
THE FULFILMENT OF MATTHEW 13:49
We have the exact time Matthew 13:49 will happen. It is described here –
{{Matthew 25:31-33 “When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and ALL THE ANGELS WITH HIM, then He will sit on His glorious throne and all the nations will be gathered before Him, and HE WILL SEPARATE THEM from one another as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and He will put THE SHEEP on His right and THE GOATS on the left.”}}
Just after the Second Coming the Lord judges what the Dragnet has caught. I think this judgement is in the hands of the angels but the Lord is there. The good wheat, the righteous are the SHEEP but the tares and the wicked are the goats. The sheep are kept but the goats are banished, and described here – {{Matthew 25:46 “These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”}}
[E]. WHAT HAPPENS TO THOSE WHO WERE TAKEN AWAY – THE GOATS?
Well the verse just mentioned answers that. They go into eternal punishment. The last verse of our Dragnet Parable also answers the question. I will quote it but not speak on it right now. {{Matthew 13:50 “and will cast them into the furnace of fire. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”}}
It will be a terrible thing when souls are banished to hell and the lake of fire. This is not what God wants for we are clearly told God has no delight in the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 33:11; Ezekiel 18:32; 2 Peter 3:9) but His desire is that men and women might come to Him in repentance. People refuse that. The rebellious spirit in man just will not allow him and her to come to God in confession and admittance of sin.
“NO!” “I will NOT!” “I do NOT want this religious stuff!” When men are presented with the gospel and the fact that hell awaits them, you would expect people would rush from their sin and to God but they don’t. Why don’t they? I think the reason they don’t come in repentance is tis verse – {{Romans 3:18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”}}
What if God gave signs and demonstrations of His power? Surely that would convince man to come in obedience and repentance? Yes, you would think so, but what did Pharaoh do in Moses’ time? Well, he hardened his heart over and over in the face of God’s signs and power.
What if God gave extraordinary signs and such fearful ones; demonstrations of divine power and torment, would that convince man to turn to God? Sadly the answer to that is another, “NO!”.
In the Tribulation great judgements of wrath from God fall in Revelation chapters 6 to 9 including a great mountain of burning fire thrown into the sea and turning it to blood, and untold numbers of demonic beings, and just after that, another 200 million demons with stings in their tails released from the pit. Is that enough to make men repent?
This is the divine record of what will happen in those days – {{Revelation 9:20-21 “The rest of mankind who were not killed by these plagues, DID NOT REPENT of the works of their hands, so as not to worship demons, and the idols of gold and of silver and of brass and of stone and of wood which can neither see nor hear nor walk, and they did not repent of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their immorality, nor of their thefts.”}}. (“Sorceries” is mistranslated. It is drugs).
WHAT MORE CAN GOD DO?
The Tribulation runs its course for 7 years and then the Lord returns at the Second Coming and all these unrepentant people are the ones who are gathered by the Dragnet. They are sent to hell to await the judgement at the great white throne and then, to end eternally in the Lake of fire. Revelation 20:11-15.
[F]. WHAT HAPPENS TO THOSE WHO ARE LEFT BEHIND – THE SHEEP?
The sheep are in two categories. In the Tribulation, God appoints and seals 144 000 special Jewish evangelists who will preach the gospel of the Kingdom {{Matthew 24:14 “This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a witness to all the nations, and then THE END shall come.”}}. (“the end” there answers the question at the start of the chapter 24, “What will be the sign of Your coming and the end of the age?”). Also the whole of Revelation 7.
People from the Gentile nations will be saved in that time but it is very hard for them because they will have to refuse to receive the mark of the beast, and to do so will have consequences and many will die – Revelation 13:15-18. Those who are saved in the Tribulation will be the sheep.
There is a second group, a larger and a most important one. They will be the Jews who God will bring to repentance so all the world’s Jews return to God. Romans 11:26-27. Zechariah 12:10-11. Hosea 3:5. Joel 2:26-27. Joel 3:1). These also are the sheep.
Now to conclude Matthew 13:49, there is much this verse contains, and the separation of the sheep and goats has finished, so we move to the next verse, the last verse of the Dragnet parable.
[G]. THE DESTINY OF THE WICKED
{{Matthew 13:50 “and will cast them into THE FURNACE OF FIRE. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”}}
The verse speaks of the fate of the wicked who are gathered/caught in the universal dragnet, and have been separated by the angels. They are then thrown into the furnace of fire, which is hell. These passages of scripture we have looked at already, and I won’t do them again.
IS THIS DISTURBING?
Yes, this is disturbing. Some think it is wrong of God to have HELL where there is suffering. At the same time do they think it is wrong to have heaven where there is blessing and joy?
What we must understand is the holiness and righteousness of God, and we as sinners can not comprehend something so great. We look at it through very cloudy glasses. God’s holiness can NOT permit sin or any imperfection to remain and it must be cleansed away. His righteousness demands that.
For that reason a sinner can not enter heaven. God is not unfair about that. It would be unfair if God judged man without any recourse to repentance and acceptance, but God has given every opportunity for men and women to repent and come to God, to become the righteousness of God through Jesus Christ.
Man therefore is without excuse. The great fairness of God could not be made clearer when He gave His only Son to be the Substitute for sinners; who died on the cross to make an everlasting path to God in reconciliation. When that is rejected, in other words, man despises what God has done, then sadly man is on his own, and proceeds towards the inevitable end of his sin which is death in the lake of fire,
The DRAGNET is part of that procedure.
The Kingdom Parables began with the Sower preaching the gospel and ends with the Dragnet gathering it all up. What a remarkable set of parables we have, not only showing this progression but also outlining Church History from the Apostolic times until our present generation.
In the remaining areas of the Dragnet Parable, we firstly look at the matching church of Revelation 2 and 3, for each parable matches a church; then we look at where this parable sits in Church History in the world, and I feel confident you know the answer to that.
Let us move to the next Part in this informative parable.
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