Revelation 14:6 “And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people,”
If you recall, there were many angels throughout the previous chapters so if there was another angel and there were previous angels from Revelation 6 and onward, if you give more time to the tribulation rather than limiting it to 3.5 years, this is going to make a lot more sense that there were other angels present at that time.
So there’s another angel here flying in the middle of heaven.
There’s a gospel that’s everlasting, eternal, and it’s for everybody; every nation, every tribe (different groups of people from different kindreds), different language and people.
Revelation 14:7 “Saying with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.”
Notice the everlasting gospel is not the death, burial, resurrection of Jesus Christ.
You got to fear Him, glory and honor Him.
God’s about to send His judgment again.
You got to worship God because He created everything.
Notice that this gospel is for everybody around the world, it’s not limited to tribulation saints only. The everlasting gospel is not the same as Paul’s gospel. As a matter of fact, if you look at the book of Galatians, Paul calls it ‘my gospel’. Why would he call it ‘my gospel’ if this gospel was preached before? Undoubtedly there is a different timeline, there were other gospels and they’re different.
Matthew 24:13-14 But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.
Some people claim that this is referring to the physical salvation of the fleshly body but this is not just a fleshly rescuing, look at verse 14, this is the gospel of the kingdom. Notice that this gospel is going to be preached all around the world.
In verse 3, that’s the end of the world. In verse 6 when Christ comes out at the end of the world, He says the end is not yet because Christ recognizes that the timeline of the tribulation is not yet the end and the actual ending of that whole tribulation period is not there yet, it’s the beginning of sorrows at verse 8. That’s the tribulation timeline.
You can see that this matches with Revelation 14 where they preach the gospel everywhere so we know that this has to have a Jewish nuance.
The gospel of the kingdom is for the Jews
Now the gospel of the kingdom was preached before Paul’s gospel, which was based on Matthew 4, which is called the gospel of the kingdom.
Matthew 4:23 “And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people.”
This gospel of the kingdom is based on healing.
Look at Matthew 5, this is based on Jesus setting up a kingdom on the earth but the Jews rejected their king so at Acts 2, when Peter was preaching the gospel, he was giving the Jews another chance.
What did the Jews do? They reject him. That’s why eventually God had to raise up Paul, He’s done with the Jews, He’s going to the Gentiles and that’s proven from the past 2000 years of church history.
Notice the Jewish flavor that matches Matthew 4 and Matthew 24. They call this the gospel of the kingdom whereas Revelation 14 calls it everlasting gospel.
So the gospel of the kingdom was preached to Israel to receive their king, but they rejected Him. Notice that the everlasting gospel is out of the latter timeline whereas the gospel of the kingdom is at an earlier timeline (the end is not yet).
Once the Jews receive their king, Moses and Elijah start baptizing people. Notice that this matches with Acts 2. Revelation 7 they come from all over and then you see Revelation 14 that they’re preaching everywhere. So while they’re preaching the gospel of the kingdom everywhere, they’re also preaching the everlasting gospel everywhere too. This proves that even with different gospels, you cannot escape the fact that they all share a Jewish flavor.
In the everlasting gospel, you’re supposed to fear God, rejecting and not worshipping the current king at that time. The gospel of the kingdom is simply talking about the coming king over here.
Mark 16 is repeating Matthew 28: preach the gospel to all the world. In Matthew 28, the gospel that Jesus was referring to was Matthew 24, and that’s why it makes sense that the apostles were preaching about a coming kingdom and later Paul came to give the Christian gospel. This is all Jewish.
A word of caution about hyper-dispensationalists
Hyper dispensationalism takes away every promise from a Christian and applies it to a Jew. Just like Revelation 2 and 3, there’s another application here in Mark 16 where this applies to the church. In Mark 16 when it says to preach the gospel to all the world, it mentions baptizing them.
Hyper dispensationalist does not believe Christians should be water baptized. That is heresy, it is obedience to the command at Mark 16 and Matthew 28.
You might say that’s Jewish. Here’s the simple answer, when Jesus was talking about the gospel if it’s the gospel of the kingdom, is there only one kingdom or is there two?
The kingdom of heaven AND the kingdom of God
The kingdom of heaven is a physical earthly kingdom for Jews. There’s another kingdom and that’s the kingdom of God, it is spiritual, not physical.
Look at Romans 14 and Ephesians 1, there are so many references where Christians are in the kingdom of God or in some form of kingdom. So how are you going to explain that? Did Christians jump into a Jewish gospel?
No, because the gospel of the kingdom consists of two kingdoms: the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God. The Christian church came from the kingdom of God. Look up every word that pops out about the kingdom of God in the Pauline epistles, it all applies to Christians.
When God speaks, especially in prophecy or doctrinal, if you think that God is only thinking about one person in one timeline when He gives something out of His inspired words, you’re guaranteed to teach heresy.
That’s the key problem with hyper dispensationalists, revised dispensationalists and anti-dispensationalists. They only look at one application, but you know that it’s impossible.
For example in the book of 1 Kings, God was talking about Solomon and that he’s going to be my son but in the book of Hebrews, that shows that it was Jesus Christ. But you can’t think that it’s only Jesus Christ because God says that he’s going to be my son and I’m going to chastise him. That’s not chastising Jesus on the cross. He says when he sins and messes up, God is going to get him back on the right track. Jesus cannot be called a sinner. When God speaks His words, you better look for not just one but could there be two applications.
How we know that this has to refer to Christians at Mark 16 and Matthew 28 is because when God gave Paul the command to baptize, Peter took that not to the Jews but to Gentiles when you look at latter chapter of Acts.
Those people were saved by faith first, not by baptism or works, they didn’t receive the Holy Ghost through baptism. All of that came up later. Why? God was showing Peter that the time of the Gentiles is going to be different from that moment onwards. Paul came from the apostles and he continued water baptism.
When you look at Acts 16, he says believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved but what did he do after that? He baptized them straightaway.