And I saw a white cloud, and upon the cloud one sitting like a son of man, having a golden crown upon his head, and in his hand a sharp sickle. And another angel came out of the temple crying with a loud voice to the one sitting on the cloud: “Send forth your sickle and reap, for the hour to reap has come, because the harvest of the earth is ripe.” And the one sitting on the cloud cast his sickle upon the earth, and the earth was reaped.

And another angel came out of the temple…he himself also having a sharp sickle. And another angel came out from the altar, the one having authority over fire, and he called with a loud voice to the one who had the sharp sickle, saying: “Send forth your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of the vineyard of the earth, because her grapes are ripe.” And the angel cast his sickle upon the earth, and gathered the vintage of the earth and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God.

And the winepress was trodden outside the city, and the blood came out from the winepress up to the bridles of the horses, from 1,600 stadia. Revelation 14: 14-20

These verses are symbolic scenes of the 2nd coming of Christ, which immediately follow the the 3 Angels’ messages of verses 6-12.

God’s end-time proclamation of the everlasting gospel – the three angels’ message – will divide people around the world into two groups. One group will be those who respond positively to the gospel and who worship the true God. The other group consists of those who have rejected the gospel and who worship Satan through the beast. No in-betweens.

The gospel proclamation, along with God’s warnings, concludes that at that time, everyone will have made up their minds. Sin in the world will have reached its full measure. Those on God’s side will be sealed, and probation will be over for those on the side of the beast. Grace is no longer available. That is when the earth will be ripe for harvesting.

The harvesting figuratively begins with Christ sitting upon a cloud, sharp harvesting sickle in hand, prior to His Second Coming. Jesus receives the message from the Father, through an angel, that it is time to send forth His sickle. The sickle, though, actually represents angels. We see that in Matthew 13: 39-43, which says the reapers are angels sent by the Son of Man to gather the harvest of the earth.

This first harvesting, called the grain harvesting, is the gathering of God’s people into the kingdom. “When the grain is ripe, he immediately sends the sickle, because the harvest has come” (Mark 4: 29). John the Baptist says Christ “will gather his wheat into the barn” (Matthew 3: 12). In other words, God’s sealed ones will be protected from God’s wrath about to be poured out upon the wicked.

God’s wrath follows the grain harvest with what’s called the grape harvest; so called because of the imagery of treading grapes in the winepress. John’s contemporary readers knew that image depicted the execution of God’s divine wrath against the enemies of His people (Isaiah 63: 1-6).

The grape harvest commences with the command from one angel to another to swing his sickle and gather the grapes, casting them into the winepress of the Lord’s wrath (the seven last plagues). This is the act of God that fulfills His promise to the saints underneath the altar (Rev. 6: 11). The opponents of the gospel and oppressors of the faithful are now going to be dealt with.

The winepress, filled with the vintage, is trodden outside of the city. That imagery is John’s allusion to Joel’s prophecy in 3: 12, 13. In that passage, the nations are gathered and judged in the valley of Jehoshaphat, which was outside of Jerusalem. John takes that scenario to explain the world-wide scenario that he sees for the end-times. John is saying that God’s wrath will fall upon His people’s end-time enemies who, of course, are not a part of His kingdom; which for all intents and purposes is the city called New Jerusalem.

In the vision, the blood of the vintage flows from the winepress. To portray the level of blood, John uses a hyperbolic expression that was used in Jewish writings of his time. For instance, in the non-canonical 1 Enoch, it states that in the final judgment “The horse shall walk through the blood of sinners up to his chest; and the chariot will sink down up to its top…”

No one has come up with a satisfactory interpretation as to why John picked 1,600 stadia as the number to describe the breadth of the blood. So it appears that the number also is hyperbole. 1,600 stadia is about 184 miles, which simply could be John’s way of symbolically describing the entire earth covered in blood; a way to convey that God and His people’s enemies are completely overthrown.