In John’s vision, after God’s call for endurance of the saints, that is, those who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus (Rev 14:12), it was time to separate the wheat from the chaff and the sour grapes from the vine:
“Then I looked, and behold, a white cloud, and seated on the cloud one like a son of man, with a golden crown on his head, and a sharp sickle in his hand. And another angel came out of the temple, calling with a loud voice to him who sat on the cloud, ‘Put in your sickle, and reap, for the hour to reap has come, for the harvest of the earth is fully ripe.’ So he who sat on the cloud swung his sickle across the earth, and the earth was reaped” (Rev 14:14-16).
Throughout Jesus’ ministry on earth, he made it clear metaphorically that perfect unity with him is like the harvest of wheat, where the valuable kernels (You and I) are threshed out of the dead wheat chaff and become part of the bread of life. He also made it clear that the wheat chaff left after threshing was like disunity from him and was to be slashed down to the ground, gathered up, and burned.
In God’s revelation to John some 60 years after Jesus’ death, however, we are reminded of the prophets Joel (3:13) and Isaiah (63:3-6), hundreds of years before Jesus’ birth, using the metaphor of grape harvesting to illustrate the wrath and judgment of God:
“Then another angel came out of the temple in heaven, and he too had a sharp sickle. And another angel came out from the altar, the angel who has authority over the fire, and he called with a loud voice to the one who had the sharp sickle, ‘Put in your sickle and gather the clusters from the vine of the earth, for its grapes are ripe.’ So the angel swung his sickle across the earth and gathered the grape harvest of the earth and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. And the winepress was trodden outside the city, and blood flowed from the winepress, as high as a horse’s bridle, for 1,600 stadia (Rev 14:17-20).
Imagine blood flowing like a river, five feet deep, for almost two hundred miles!
In this vision, it is very good to be a kernel of wheat, symbolic of perfect unity with Jesus, harvested for eternal life in heaven. It is not so good to be a grape of disunity from God, condemned to an eternity of torture by fire in a very deep, dark, and terrible place.
It is clear from this passage that the harvest of the wheat, after threshing, represents the rapture of the church of Jesus, safe and secure in the arms of the first angel, for all eternity. And the second harvest of the grapes is to be made up of all those who rejected Jesus as Lord and Savior.
Which harvest will you be in?
Are you a kernel of wheat, able to nurture and feed others, in perfect unity with Jesus?
Or are you symbolized by a squishy grape, shriveling in the heat of hell, ready to have life squashed out of you by the devil Satan, in total disunity from God?
I pray that you are King Kernel, having chosen the good fork in the road to perfect unity with God, not the grape, having chosen the bad fork in the road that leads to disunity and eternal torment.