LAKE OF FIRE: See hell

LAMB: Rev 5:12-13, 6:1, 16, 7:10-17, 12:11, 13:8-11, Rev 14:1-10, 19:7-9, 21;14-23, 22:1-3. Jesus Christ, the sacrificial lamb who died for the sins of the world.

LAMB’S WIFE, THE BRIDE OF CHRIST: Rev 19:7-9, 22:17. The totality of all believers; equivalent to the seven churches, etc. See also Eph 5:22-23, Rom7:1-4, 2 Cor 11:2.

LAMPSTAND: Rev 1:12, 13, 20, 11:4, Zech 4:2, 11: Lampstands represent the church in the Bible. (1) One lampstand: When they are presented in concert with Olive Trees we see a distinction being drawn between how God uses the Jews and gentiles. When the Jews entered the Promised Land in the Old Testament there were initially 7 gentile tribes or nations living there. In Old Testament models these 7 nations represented the totality of all gentiles on earth. Thus, there was only one lampstand representing the gentile nations. God’s plan was to eventually reach these gentile nations with his gospel and to save them. The Jews failed miserably in their own attempts to convert these gentile peoples to God (Isa 26:18). However God’s plan was to use the fruit of the Jewish people, the Lion of the tribe of Judah (Rev 5:5}, the Branch, the Stump of Jesse (Isa 11:1, 10), the root of David (Rev 5:5), all of which represent Jesus to eventually save these gentile nations. The Jewish people were key to God’s plan in that God used the fruit of the olive tree, which God uses to represent Israel and Judah (1 Kings 6:31, Jer 11:14-17, Rom 11:17-24), to save the gentiles. The fruit of the olive tree is an olive which is crushed in olive presses to make oil which is used for many purposes. One key purpose in the Old Testament was to fuel the lamps in their lampstands. Likewise, Jesus is a fruit of the olive tree in that his human lineage is in the line of the Jewish people. Israel is symbolically an olive tree and Jesus came from the olive tree so to speak. Just as the olives were crushed for oil to provide light for the world as they powered lamps, so too was Jesus crushed to produce oil to provide light for a dark world. The oil in this case was the Holy Spirit and the lampstand holding the lamp was the gentile church. As the Holy Spirit burns in the lives of believers all over the world today he is powered by a product produced by the Jewish people. That product is Jesus being crushed on a cross where he died for the sins of all men of all ages, so that their sins might be forgiven and forgotten. In the Old Testament there was only one lampstand, and it represented all gentile nations. Remember, in the model the 7 gentile nations originally in the holy land represented the totality of gentiles on the earth. (2) Seven lampstands: There were seven lampstands in Rev chapter 1. These represented the church in the first century and seem to represent the church down through the ages until the church is raptured to heaven. I suspect that there are seven because the church is basically gentile and seven is used in the Bible to represent the totality of gentile nations in both Old and New Testament models, as we saw above. Revelation chapters 2-3 concern the seven churches. Beginning in Rev 4 we jump to the time of the tribulation period, the seven year period of great wrath upon the earth. We never see seven lampstands again in Revelation. I suspect that is because the church has been raptured to heaven. The rapture takes place on the very first day of the tribulation period. The only other time lampstands are mentioned in Revelation is in describing the two witnesses in Rev 11:4 and here there are two lampstands. Why are there now only two lampstands on the earth? (3) Two lampstands: When the two witnesses are described in Rev 11:4, they are said to be two olive trees and two lampstands who stand before the Lord. The term “who stand before the Lord” is key to interpreting the identity of the two witnesses. We expect that the seven lampstands from Rev 1 have been raptured in the very first day of the tribulation period. We are now at the midpoint of the tribulation and we see only two lampstands on earth. The two lampstands seem to be priests in the order of Levi “who stand before the Lord.” Remember, each believer is his own priest and may therefore come into the presence of the Lord. It is my interpretation that one lampstand is composed of those Jews who have become believers in the first half of the tribulation period and are servants of Christ; they either are or include the 144,000. The other lampstand is composed of those gentiles who have become believers in the first half of the tribulation period. Both are obviously churches. The two olive trees are two very powerful individual leaders of the movement to convince the world of the purpose for the judgment that is taking place and to win as many as possible for the kingdom that is soon coming. These two tribulation prophets in some way operate in the spirit of the two great Old Testament prophets Elijah and Elisha (or possibly Moses), who also “stood before the Lord.” See the model presented in Zech 3:8-4:4 at the end of this dictionary for much more detail concerning olive trees and lampstands.

LAND: (1) That which produces and sustains physical life on earth, both animal and vegetable life, Gen 1:10, 11, 24. Also see Psalm 37, 60:2, 76:8. (2) Those who are under the wrath of the Lord, Mal 1:4, “They will be called a wicked land, a people always under the wrath of the Lord,” Zech 3:9, “He will remove the sins of the land in a day,” Zech 12:12, “The whole land will mourn, each clan.”

LOCUSTS: Rev 9:3-11. Symbolically represent the means of wrath in the fifth judgment. From the description in Rev 9:3-11 and Joel 2:4 they could be some future vehicle of war. They could also represent the evil angels or Nephilim who are being held in the Abyss, 2 Peter 2:4, Jude 6. They are released in the 5th trumpet judgment of Rev 9. They are like a huge plague of consuming locusts. Thus they seem to be a huge number of evil angels coming to consume the earth. They are also referred to as mounted troops and as an army. In Joel 2:11, 25 we see that this army is under the command of God. God has an army of his good angels and they return with Jesus at the Second Coming, 2 Thess 1:8, and he also seems to use the army of evil angels to do his biding as well.