THE SONG OF THE LAMB - REVELATION 15:1-4

Many hymns and songs have been composed from passages of Scripture. Some have even been made popular within our culture today. For example, the Christmas carol Angels We Have Heard on High employs a refrain based upon the angels’ announcement of Christ’s birth to the shepherds watching their flock (Luke 2:8–14), Gloria in Excelsis Deo—Glory to God in the highest. Also, in the early 19^th Century, Thomas O. Chisholm (1866–1960) penned the now famous hymn Great is Thy Faithfulness drawing heavily from Lamentations 3:22–23.

There are many other examples, but let us examine what may be considered an obscure song recorded in Revelation 15: the Song of the Lamb.

Verse 1: Then I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvelous, seven angels who had seven plagues, which are the last, because in them the wrath of God is finished.

This chapter is the prelude to the 7 Bowl judgment of chapter 16, having been preceded by the 7 Seal judgment (6–8) and the 6 Trumpet judgments (8–9). The end of the great tribulation (7:14) is nearing and the finality of God’s wrath will be poured out, to be followed then by the 2^nd Coming of Jesus Christ in chapter 19.

Verse 2: And I saw something like a sea of glass mixed with fire, and those who had been victorious over the beast and his image and the number of his name, standing on the sea of glass, holding harps of God.

John is now given a vision of something like a sea of glass mixed with fire. Note that he says like, meaning that it wasn’t an actual sea of water, for there is no water in heaven, so what he is trying to describe is something he had never seen before—yet something like or similar to that which he could relate to his readers. John saw the same thing in 4:6 before the throne of the 24 elders adding that this sea of glass was like crystal.

So what exactly did John see? It is only a speculation, but since John did not live in the 20^th or 21^st Century he never witnesses a dramatic Super Bowl halftime spectacle. And that is what it seems what he saw: a stage or expanse that consisted of crystal clear glass or some translucent substance with fire or flames shooting upwards. 

What he sees next helps to support the possibility that this is a stage, for standing on it are those who have been victorious over the beast, Satan’s Antichrist. These are the martyrs described in 6:9 and 12:11, who “did not love their life even when faced with death.” Their victory was based upon the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony. These victors are standing on this stage holding harps of God.

The word harp comes from the Greek word kithára (κιθάρα) from which we get our English word for guitar. These harps were triangular shaped hand-held stringed musical instruments, unlike the one Harpo Marx famously played in the Marx Brothers movies and recordings. The strings were strummed or plucked with the fingers or an object similar to a guitar pick. In the Bible the harp is almost always associated with happiness, and here is no exception. It is noted that these ancient stringed instruments not only accompanied the songs of God’s people (1 Chron. 25:6; Ps. 33:2), but also accompanied prophecy (cf. 1 Sam. 10:5).1

Verses 3-4: And they sang the song of Moses, the bond-servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying,

The Scripture refers to 2 songs of Moses, both are different. In Exodus 15 is the praising of God for the deliverance of Israel from Egypt through Moses, while Deuteronomy 32 praises God upon reaching the promised land. Which one they sang is not specified, but quite possibly both.

They also sang the Song of the Lamb. This may well be a continuation of the song the 24 elders sang before the Lamb (5:8-14), there also each one was holding a harp.

John provides the lyrics of their song:

“Great and marvelous are Your works,

O Lord God, the Almighty;

Righteous and true are Your ways,

King of the nations!

Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify Your name?

For You alone are holy;

For all the nations will come and worship before You,

For Your righteous acts have been revealed.”

 It is worth noting that what they highlight in this Song of the Lamb is the Lord God. They are careful not to place emphasis upon themselves, in spite of the fact they had been martyred. Instead they draw attention to His attributes: His great and marvelous works; that He is almighty, having power over everything; His righteous and perfect character; the sovereign King over all; His holiness, defining His integrity; and His acts, specifically the judgements He has dispensed are openly declared to be righteous and just.

Something to Consider

Both the song of Moses and the song of the Lamb are about God’s deliverance and provision to His people. And even at the conclusion of their fiery ordeal these martyrs are able to follow the Psalmist instructions:

Sing for joy in the Lord, O you righteous ones; 

Praise is becoming to the upright.

Give thanks to the Lord with the lyre;

Sing praises to Him with a harp of ten strings.

Sing to Him a new song;

Play skillfully with a shout of joy. (Ps. 33:1–3)

 

The apostle Paul also expresses the manner in which the righteous ones ought to sing:

And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation [self-indulgence], but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father. (Eph. 5:18–19)

Concluding Thought

The message of our hymns and songs should take precedence in our thinking over and above the emotion derived from the instruments and music’s tempo. Since Jesus Christ is supposed to be the center of our lives, He should also be at the center of our songs of praise and worship. Therefore, we should place the greater emphasis on His eternal character and His provision of eternal blessings.

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[1] MacArthur, John F., Jr. 2010. The MacArthur Study Bible: English Standard Version. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, p. 1948 note.

 © 2025 David M. Rossi

OUR SPIRITUAL ORIGIN IS FROM GOD - 1 JOHN 4:6

Verse 6: We are from God; he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

This verse concludes John’s analysis of the first six verses of chapter 4. John declares our position, restates the spiritual battle lines, emphasizing the participants’ origins, and finishing with the benefit of our attentiveness to his teaching.

We Are From God

We refers to John’s readers as well as to himself. Make no mistake, John is not writing to unbelievers in order to advise them on how to live the Christian life. That would be absurd, since the unbeliever “does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him” (1 Corinthians 2:14). The purpose of Scripture is entirely for the “man of God” as the apostle Paul stated:

All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16–17)

The only statements that apply to the unbeliever are regarding their need for salvation. For example: “You must be born again” (John 3:7b) and “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31).

In this opening statement, John reaffirms the eternal reality that our spiritual origin is from God, having been born of Him (2:29; cf. John 3:6–7). Thus, we have the assurance that nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38–39).

Spiritual Divisions

It is important to understand the demarcation which John is setting up here: he who truly knows the God of the universe, who believes in the One who has been revealed by His creation (Romans 1:20) and by His Son (Hebrews 1:2); in contrast to “he who is not from God.” The character of these two groups is distinct: one of them consists of those whom John stated know the father...who has been from the beginning (2:13-14), the other is identified with the world (4:1, 5).1 However, the missing word know is the determining factor that they are not from God—they are unbelievers. And not being spiritually born of Him they have no factual knowledge of God and may possess an erroneous understanding of even His existence.

By John’s use of the word know, he returns to the core issue that was confronting the Church in the 1^st Century: the Gnostic heresy. The adherents of Gnosticism implied that they possessed a superior knowledge of God which was hidden from others. “It makes a distinction between the select few who have this higher gift, and the vulgar many who are without it.”2

Today, the 21^st Century Church is confronted with a similar heresy, the divergent belief that a person can know God by subjective thinking or feelings as opposed to the objective revelation of God through His Word. Many fail to embrace the Christian way of life, which entails being thoroughly engaged in Jesus Christ and the reliance upon the empowerment of the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 3:16–19). They may consider being a Christian as merely a Sunday activity, or worse, a dress-up day for Easter and/or Christmas—instead of Christ being the center of their daily moment-by-moment life.

The Missing Element

John states that these two groups which he has presented have obvious differences: one listens to us; while the other does not listen to us. The word listen incorporates the idea of hearing attentively and as a result to follow and obey what is said. For some, hearing has the tendency to ineffectively go into one ear and out the other. Specifically, the latter group do not listen to is the gospel of salvation—the appeal for them to believe in Jesus Christ as Savior. The cause of this missing element is their unwillingness to listen to us who possess the objective truth of God’s Word. Their reluctance to listen may be the result of their own wrong thinking as the apostle Paul observed:

For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (1 Corinthians 1:18)

And if this were the case, then they left themselves open to the wiles of the evil one, Satan, the god of this world (John 12:31; 17:15; 1 John 5:19). Again, the apostle Paul explains:

And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. (2 Corinthians 4:3–4)

R.C.H. Lenski concludes:

In order to know and thus to hear with blessed results one must “be from God,” born of him, must have “the eyes of your understanding enlightened,” Ephesians 1:18. Only thus are the speakers appreciated.3

Our Resulting Benefit

By this refers to the aforementioned fact, that there are two groups that inhabit the world: those who listen to our message of the gospel and those who refuse and/or reject our plea that they hear and believe in Jesus Christ. So, by this we are now able to distinguish (know) the difference between truth and error. The use of the word spirit here does not refer to something supernatural. Instead it refers to one of its more basic meanings: a frame of mind, disposition, influence,4 with the implication of the essence, substance or evidence of the idea presented. This usage is not uncommon in Scripture (cf. Luke 1:17; Romans 8:15; 1 Corinthians 4:21; Galatians 6:1; Ephesians 2:2; 2 Timothy 1:7).

What we can know, on the one hand, is the spirit of truth, the very essence of the absolute standard of truth contained in Scripture. Our Lord affirmed this when He declared to the Father that “Your Word is truth” (John 17:17), and that the Holy Spirit “will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13)—God’s absolute truth. This is “true truth” as distinguished by Dr. Francis Schaeffer, reasoning that “People today live in a generation that no longer believes in the hope of truth as truth.”5 For indeed, our culture rejects God’s truth; instead they are obsessed with arbitrary “truth,” embracing whatever appeals to their personal desires and objectives. God’s Word contains His absolute truth—His Divine viewpoint which is universal, unilaterally superseding and overruling any and all opposing human viewpoint.

While on the other hand, we can also know the spirit of error; it permeates everywhere in our culture, even sometimes right within our churches. It is evidenced by anything that is contrary to His absolute truth. Christians can discern the difference between truth and error, but only if they avail themselves to an intense study of God’s Word. Therefore, believers without a biblical frame of reference and fail to accept and implement His truth are at a disadvantage, being unable to identify the errors communicated by false teachers.

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[1] Alford, Henry (1877). The Greek Testament, Boston, MA: Lee and Shepard Publishers, 4.487.

[2] Lightfoot, Joseph B. (1999). St. Paul’s Epistle to the Colossians and Philemon. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, p. 77.

[3] Lenski, R.C.H. (2001). Commentary on the New Testament, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 11.491-492.

[4] Abbott-Smith, G. (n/d). A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament. New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, p. 367

[5] Schaeffer, Francis A. (1985). The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer, Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1.312-313.

 

© 2025 David M. Rossi 

 

BATTLE LINES BEING DRAWN - 1 JOHN 4:4-5

Verse 4-5: You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. They are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them.

 

John begins verse 4 with you, as if to emphasize but you in contrast to those who represent the spirit of the antichrist. He is setting up the battleground configuration of the world we live in. The sides are: you—we the members of the Body of Christ; versus them—the legion of false prophets/teachers instigated by the spirit of the antichrist. The good thing for us is that on our side is the God of the universe, an absolute fact that our source is from Him eternally; while on the opposing side they have he who is in the world—the evil one (2:13).

This word overcome is derived from the Greek word níkē, from which we get the English word for the commercial brand name, Nike. Overcome appears 28 times in the New Testament and holds a special significance to John since it is used only 4 times outside of his writings. It means to conquer or to vanquish1 an enemy. The Greek tense here relays the fact that our victory is as complete now as it was the moment the battle was won, for this had previously been confirmed by John (2:13, 14).

Our Power Source

John underscores the reason for our having overcome the evil one, that it is not of our own doing. We cannot claim credit for single-handedly defeating our supernatural foe. We must give credit where credit is due; the power for victory comes from the God the Holy Spirit, Who is greater and mightier than any who oppose God’s plan for our lives. John asserts that His Holy Spirit is in you as an irrefutable fact. On this note we should be careful; for many believers today want evidence of this fact, believing that in some way they should feel and sense or even hear the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is our counselor, who assists us in our trials and confrontations of this world. He is the One, as Dr. Marvin Vincent states,

Who suggests true reasonings to our minds, and true courses of action for our lives, who convicts our adversary, the world, of wrong, and pleads our cause before God our Father.2

And Dr. L.S. Chafer weighs in on this matter, quoting William Kelley that the Holy Spirit is,

“One who is identified with our interests, one who undertakes all our cause, one who engages to see us through our difficulties, one who in every way becomes both our representative and the great personal agent that transacts all our business for us.”3

The Apostle Paul maintains that the minds of mankind have been veiled by Satan from understanding spiritual phenomenon (2 Corinthians 4:3-4; cf. 1 Corinthians 2:14). It is therefore the role of the Holy Spirit to guide believers into “all truth” and make known to them “what is to come” in the future (John 16:13).

This special ministry to believers is designed so that all believers will be able to comprehend the doctrines of the Christian faith (Ephesians 3:18). Dr. Chafer points out that regarding the believer:

The divine Teacher [the Holy Spirit] is within his heart and he therefore does not hear a voice speaking…but the mind and heart are supernaturally awakened from within to apprehend what otherwise would be unknown.4

Our Lord Himself stated this to be the established ministry of the Holy Spirit to the believer in this present Church Age:

“But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you.” (John 14:26)

It thus implies that for the Holy Spirit to perform His work, believers must possess a substantial knowledge of God’s Word stored up in their souls for the Spirit to bring to their remembrance the pertinent doctrines needed to sustain them during any and all trials and temptations from the evil one. This requires that we have sufficient doctrines that will refute the false teachers who are energized by the spirit of the antichrist. How else will we be able to successfully test the spirits (4:1)?

Enduring Victory?

 John praises his readers for they have overcome them, the false teachers, having done so by their reliance upon the work of the Holy Spirit, Who is greater than he who is in the world. The Apostle Peter tells us that he is our adversary, the devil “who prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). We must always be vigilant to the fact that the world is his battleground and we are ever in his crosshairs

These false teachers are indeed having their source from the world that the evil one controls. It therefore stands to reason that what they speak is from the world. Specifically, the content of what they speak is based upon human viewpoint and not of divine viewpoint that originates from Scripture, the mind of God (2 Timothy 3:14-17; cf. 1 Corinthians 2:16).

And what they persistently speak, the world at large attentively listens to them, because what the world hears appeals to their emotions, freeing them from their inner guilt that they are responsible to their Creator, “Who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4).  

The distressing fact is that within the Church today there are many believers who have listened and responded to false teaching. The Apostle Paul foretold of this day:

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. (2 Timothy 4:3–4)

This is manifest by the acceptance of sexual abnormalities and the breakdown of the local and universal mission of the church of Jesus Christ. The local church was designed for the edification of the believers by a pastor/teacher for a specific purpose as described by Paul:

For the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. (Ephesians 4:12–13)

 Is the instruction of God’s Word the primary objective of your local church? Are other activities or endeavors given greater priority? There must be a proper balance; teaching should be the highest priority along with missions. After that, the music ministry and fellowship are important but should never be the primary focus of the local church or the design for church growth. Allow the strategy to be directed by the Holy Spirit and the power of God’s Word.

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[1] Arndt, W., Gingrich, F. W., Danker, F. W., & Bauer, W. (1979). In A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 539.

[2] Vincent, Marvin R. (n/d). Word Studies in the New Testament. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2.244.

[3] Chafer, Lewis Sperry (1976). Systematic Theology, Dallas, TX: Dallas Seminary Press, 6.39.

[4] Chafer, 1.109.

 

© 2025 David M. Rossi 

 

THE SPIRIT OF THE ANTICHRIST - 1 JOHN 4:3

Verse 3: And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.

 

 

False Teachers Identified

John continues with his warning against false teachers, referring to them as every spirit. This is not implying they are ghosts or supernatural beings, but instead spirit refers to an individual and that aspect of their personality “by which he perceives, reflects, feels, desires.”1 He then describes their most disreputable and despicable characteristic: they are those who do not confess Jesus. Since John merely states Jesus, this is regarding their continuous refusal to acknowledge the humanity of Our Lord in His hypostatic union, as delineated in the discussion of the previous verse. They considered Jesus Christ to be just a ghostly apparition and not the eternal God-Man. This was the heresy propagated by the Gnostic false teachers in John’s day. The false teaching today is the denial of Christ’s deity by claiming that He was simply a good man or a wonderful teacher.

John emphatically assures us regarding these false teachers and their teachings that they do not have their origin from the ultimate source of God; and without a doubt they represent the spirit of the antichrist. This word is found only 5 times in the New Testament, and only in John’s epistles (but not in Revelation). The word antichrist means “one who claims to be Christ or is opposed to Christ.”2 Here it expresses the definite identity3 and intent of the false teachings about the hypostatic union of Jesus Christ.

It should be noted that this is not, as some have supposed, a reference to the Beast of Revelation (11:7; 13:1, etc.; cf. 2 Thessalonians 2:3), the person that theologians have named the Antichrist, who will wreak havoc during the Tribulation period prior to Christ’s Second Coming (Revelation 19). This is borne out by the phrase spirit of the antichrist. Even though the word spirit is not in the original Greek, yet all translations include the word based on the rules of Greek grammar that it is “clearly implied.”4 Accordingly, Dr. Ryrie states that this phrase “refers to demonic forces behind anti-Christian teaching and activity.”5

Heard it is Coming

Of which (the spirit of the antichrist) you have heard it is coming. This phrase is almost as if John is refreshing their memory of something they had already known about. What could he be referring to? For this was discussed in 1 John 2:18, that John’s readers were aware of the writings of the early church and had heard the warning the Apostle Paul gave to the Ephesian elders:

Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.”(Acts 20:28–30)

Since Paul wrote to Timothy in Ephesus, John’s readers would have been familiar with them and his continued warnings:

As I urged you upon my departure for Macedonia, remain on at Ephesus so that you may instruct certain men not to teach strange doctrines, nor to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies, which give rise to mere speculation rather than furthering the administration of God which is by faith. (1 Timothy 1:3–4)

Paul further revealed what to expect in the future:

But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron. (1 Timothy 4:1–2)

And now, 30 years after Paul had written to Timothy, John is reminding them of what they had heard and were taught, most likely by John himself, given that “strong tradition says that John spent his old age in Ephesus.”6

John uses two different Greek tenses for the word heard in 2:18 and here in 4:3. In 2:18 he is simply stating the fact of the occasion upon their hearing of this truth. 7 Whereas in our passage, the Greek tense describes the existing results of what they have heard, as explained by Dana & Mantey: “This is the emphatic method in Greek of presenting a fact or condition.”8 The existing result of what they have heard is that it (the spirit of the antichrist) is persistently coming and they now know the specific false teachings: the denial of the humanity of Jesus Christ.

Already Present

The following phrase should be disturbing to all believers in Jesus Christ. These false teachers, these savage wolves, these antichrists are already in the world. They are present among us today. They have come “from among our own selves” (Acts 20:30) and they have entered into our churches. Jude informed us of this:

For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ. (Jude 4)

The Jews in the 1^st Century denied the deity of Christ (John 5:18; 10:33; 19:7); while the Gnostics rejected His humanity, believing that God could not be associated with inherently evil matter, namely the flesh of humanity.9 Today, false teachers reject the authority of Jesus Christ, made evident by their rejection of the authority of His Word—Scripture. Their errant interpretation of Scripture mingles doctrinal truth with cultural dictates, eager to become friends with the world. It is difficult to determine what exactly motivates them and blinds them from the truth. But the Apostle James aptly describes them and reprimands them of their error:

 You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. (James 4:4)

Let us be alert to this insidious trend and instead remain loyal to the authoritative and infallible Word of God.

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[1] Vine, W. E., Unger, M. F., & White, W., Jr. (1996). In Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words. Nashville, TN: T. Nelson, 2.593.

[2] Newman, B. M., Jr. (1993). In A Concise Greek-English Dictionary of the New Testament. Stuttgart, Germany: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft; United Bible Societies, p. 17.

[3] Dana, H.E. & Mantey, Julius R. (1957). A Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament, Toronto, Ontario: Macmillan Co., p. 137.

[4] Robertson, A. T. (1933). Word Pictures in the New Testament, Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1 John 4:3.

[5] Ryrie, C. C. (1995). Ryrie Study Bible: New American Standard Bible, Chicago: Moody Press, p. 1994 note.

 [6] Ryrie, p. 1900.

 [7] Dana, H.E. & Mantey, Julius R. (1957). A Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament, Toronto, Ontario: Macmillan Co., p. 196.

[8] Dana & Mantey, p. 202.

[9] Kurian, G. T. (2001). Docetism, In Nelson’s New Christian Dictionary: the Authoritative Resource on the Christian World. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers.

 

© 2025 David M. Rossi