John tells us what he saw: “Look! a white cloud, and upon the cloud someone seated like a son of man, with a golden crown on his head and a sharp sickle in his hand.” (Revelation 14:14) Similar to Daniel’s vision, Jesus is here seen on a cloud and is identified as “someone . . . like a son of man.” He wears the crown of kingship, but in his hand he has not a scepter but a harvester’s sickle. Why?

6. What work does Jehovah command the newly crowned Jesus to engage in?

⁶ John continues: “And another angel emerged from the temple sanctuary, crying with a loud voice to the one seated on the cloud: ‘Put your sickle in and reap, because the hour has come to reap, for the harvest of the earth is thoroughly ripe.’” Jesus, although a King, still obeys instructions transmitted from Jehovah in “the temple sanctuary.” So when Jehovah instructs him to engage in a harvest work during the last days, he obeys. Jesus “thrust in his sickle on the earth, and the earth was reaped.”​—Revelation 14:15, 16; Hebrews 9:24; 1 Corinthians 11:3.

7. (a) What is “the harvest of the earth”? (b) What was the beginning of this “harvest”?

⁷ What is “the harvest of the earth”? It is people who come out of this satanic system of things to serve Jehovah and His appointed King.

But then, John reports, he sees “a great crowd, which no man was able to number, out of all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.” (Revelation 7:9-17) So the harvest work continues as many more from “the peoples, national groups and languages” start to serve Jesus as King.

9. Who are these newcomers, and what other prophecies mention their appearance during “the final part of the days”?

⁹ These newcomers look forward to enjoying life in a paradise earth under Jehovah’s appointed King. (Psalm 37:11, 29; 72:7-9) Their gathering was foretold in a number of other prophecies. Isaiah, for example, foretold that in “the final part of the days” the nations would stream to Jehovah’s house. (Isaiah 2:2, 3) Haggai prophesied a shaking of the nations during which “the desirable things of all the nations must come in.” (Haggai 2:7) Zechariah spoke of “ten men out of all the languages of the nations” who would join themselves to God’s people. (Zechariah 8:23)