When reading of the winepress of God’s wrath, three images immediately come to mind. A song, a book, and a video.

The song, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, begins with this line: Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord, He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored...

John Steinbeck wrote a book we all read in high school, The Grapes of Wrath, focusing on the plight of families forced off their land in Oklahoma during the Great Depression. You can’t help but feel their pain: How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can’t scare him – he has known a fear beyond every other (chapter 19).

And the video? A VeggieTales classic: We Are The Grapes of Wrath. I love the line, We are the grapes of wrath—so stay out of our path!

The promised judgement of the Lord inspired artists and writers for years. Wine of such horrific provenance swallows bitter and fouls the stomach. In my mind, the horrors of the American Civil War remain especially poignant, when God poured out his wrath on battlefield after battlefield across the nation.

Wonderfully, and most graciously, judgement is not the end. The Battle Hymn of the Republic finishes with this stanza:

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me.
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.

For those who embrace that death and transfiguration, we can truly join in and sing—Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Revelation 14 in week fifty-one of reading the Bible cover to cover

Picture is the first edition cover of The Grapes of Wrath, published in 1939