015 Dr. Tommy Ice on Revelation, Part 15

i have does anybody know what kind of tie this is it's a rush limbaugh tie and i'm wearing it in honor of him since he went home to be with the lord and i i've read some you know his brother has written all kinds of excellent christian books and uh they say at least three years ago rush became a believer if he wasn't one already but started really impacting his life about three years ago you all know what state he was from don't you missouri yes cape girardeau so that's why i have this tie on yes he did three or four years when he he'd gotten fired eight times i think from radio stations and things uh but he's probably the most influential politically person in the united states i don't know anybody you know that's had a greater influence politically unless it's karl marx [Music] well we're going to be dealing with salvation the tribulation and just to refresh your memory our outline of the book of revelation is divided into three sections the chapter 1 where christ presents himself in his glorified state which they had never seen the disciples ever seen that and of course john was the only disciple alive at this time all other disciples the apostles died before the destruction of jerusalem probably around by a.d 68 and so he lived many years after that then you have the seven churches in chapters two and three and there's no other book in the entire bible or even what's called apocalyptic in other words whether literature where they try to imitate biblical books that has the construction and layout that the book of revelation has because of the chapters two and three there's nothing like it even as a imitation or as an apocryphal book that has that kind of stuff in it and then you have the futurist perspective from chapters 4 and following and we saw in chapter 4 1 where he says come up here and so john who's receiving the revelation because he's dealing beyond the church age with the rapture and the position of the church is reflected in where he is located when he's giving this revelation so that's in heaven and uh so we also have seen it can be divided in a different three sections uh chapters one through five um and then the tribulation the tribulation there starts in chapter six as we have gone over last time we met which was a while back wasn't it two or three weeks or something like that and then you have this the third section 19 20 21-22 which covers the second coming then revelation 20 covers the millennial thousand-year reign of christ and then the new heavens and new earth and we've noted that at least i believe that everything mentioned in the new heavens and new earth is only found here in chapters 20 1-2 i don't believe any of the old testament prophecies relate to the eternal state they all relate to the millennium with israel so here is one that didn't show up the picture for some reason and here's the earth we have to start this chapter with the last verse of the previous chapter because it ends with a question and so this is the first series of judgments that take place the seal judgments and it in this section ends for the great day of his wrath has come and who is able to stand and so that sets the stage for the chapter that we're now going to be looking at chapter seven who is able to stand and we see that the phrase here consists of two separate visions each of which responds in some way to the uh plaintiff question of 6 17 that we saw who was able to stand and chapter 7 answers that because you have the two witness i mean the 144 000 witnesses jewish witnesses and you also have believers as a whole and so further calamities are delayed as far as the the reporting on those calamities in the book of revelation uh they'll all come in due time until a large company of god's servants from all of israel is marked for protection and ministry from the coming judgments on earth while an innumerable multitude from every nation joins in the heavenly worship of god so israel has not fulfilled fully her destiny of being a light to the nations and the 144 thousand jewish believers will fulfill that as we'll see in this chapter as they become like 144 000 apostle paul's people have compared it and that's probably what is meant in the uh one of paul's epistles where he said he was one who was born out of due time and it was like he was going to be one of the like someone who's going to be 144 thousand and god took him as the one of the major founding apostles that wrote much of the new testament for us epistle wise and so that could be what that's referring to now so who is able to stand and only believers in christ the lamb whether jew or gentile is is the focus here only a believer in jesus is a messiah and we see here in 7 1 it says after this aft so that refers back to the previous chapter right i saw standing at the four corners of the earth i saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth holding back the four winds of the earth so that no wind should blow on the earth or on the sea or on any tree and you can imagine how eerie this is going to be because there's wind wind is the biggest factor i'm told by a meteorologist friend of mine that creates or doesn't create weather and you know the the larger the upper winds the lower winds all of this kind of stuff is related to uh the changes of seasons and all this other things so you can imagine how eerie that will be when there's no wind at all just stillness and it's almost as if they're beginning to prepare for a very trying time which of course is what's happening of course one fourth of the earth's populations already been killed not to mention the fact that however many christians however many hundreds of thousands of or or rather millions of christians hundreds of millions of christians were vacated via the rapture and uh so this is some kind of somber description here that's uh you know about to take place and so he he uses angels to uh stop that in some way now if you go to the middle ages theologians like thomas aquinas uh reasoned that angels were responsible for gravity angels are responsible for pushing the blood through your blood system angels are responsible for all of those kinds of things rather than a process of doing that now we don't buy that today but i'm just saying he theorized a lot of that kind of stuff in the middle ages now i saw another angel ascending in verse two from the rising of the sun having the seal of the living god and he cried out with a loud voice to the four angels to whom it was granted to harm the earth and the sea so apparently he's giving some kind of command to those four angels here but he's got a seal he is sealing believers here and as you look through the book of revelation this ceiling appears to be invisible as opposed and it's going to be contrasted with does anybody know the mark i heard it the mark of the beast that is going to be visible something that you see is going to that unbelievers are all going to take and so we'll see that in chapter 13 with and that's at the beginning of the second half of the tribulation that the mark is issued for those people and so it shows you god is the one creating or directly involved in causing these supernatural things to occur to happen and he's using the agency of an angel here and verse 3 says saying this is what he says do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees now i mentioned in the previous chapter about how greenpeace is going to be real upset over all of the stuff that's going to be happening in many parts of the tribulation but here god's making it up to him it it's only going to hurt people and not trees or green things isn't that great the bond servants of our god on their foreheads and so i know this picture has women in there but i'm sorry girls there's no women in the 144 000 jewish witnesses they're all men uh but uh it's the best picture that's a good picture though otherwise and and this particular artist his series of pictures has a lot of women in like which shouldn't be and things because god's using men at this point and i don't think i finished but the 144 000 are going to finally fulfill israel's destiny and calling to be the instrument that god uses to spread the gospel you see and so he's been using the the church the church even though it was founded with 100 jewish people early on it's been mainly gentiles us as the hebrew would say we don't have any jewish people here do we of jewish descent or anything well they're they're going to have their day here i probably know at least three to four dozen jewish believers currently so obviously god's saving the remnant but this is going to look the tribulation is going to lead to two-thirds of the jews being wiped out during the seven-year period and they're the non-elect and all that will be left by the time of the second coming will be believing jews one-third according to zechariah and so they're sealing them and the ceiling is for a special work as we're going to see later because it talks about this in chapter 14 again as well the 140 so they're going to be evangelist i believe at the beginning it has to be at the beginning of the first half of the tribulation now some bible teachers like john macarthur puts them in the second half of the tribulation the only problem and the two witnesses and all of this the problem with that is you have their ministries ending at the second coming the two witnesses who are killed and their bodies landed for three and a half days are going to be right there at the second coming it doesn't make sense with the flow of things so i'm just saying that this has to be the first half of the tribulation and i believe that there will be an interval and this is just speculation of at least three and a half to four years between the rapture that ends the church age and the start of the seven year tribulation because there are all kinds of thing people places and events that have to be put into position which are now being restrained you see and uh the any cr when you read the book of daniel especially the antichrist comes up after the 10 nation confederacy is made and then it says the little horn comes up from one of those 10 nations so there's got to be some geopolitical things happening to have the 10 nation confederacy and it says you know you have seven and then three are taken over militarily you see and then you have the rise of the little horn the antichrist and stuff so there has to be some kind of sequence of events now fricken bomb thinks that it's going to be at least three and a half years because they israel is going to uh cleanse the land in ezekiel 38 39 for seven years and so since they leave the land at the midpoint of the tribulation and go to petra we'll get into all this stuff before if you don't know what i'm talking about yet at some point in the future and they go to petra so he believes that it has to happen during the first three and a half years where they have peace so three and a half years before that to make seven years would be after the rapture but before the tribulation starts and so it could be a period of multiple years between the rapture and start the tribulation some people think i remember robert thomas you've heard of him he was a great christian scholar and he believed that the tribulation would start on the very day of the rapture but i don't know anybody else other than him and he has he has the best two volume commentary on the book of revelation that you can get overall but so you're going to see people who for example attend church but they're not believers who are going to know what happened and god's going to open their heart i believe and they're going to accept christ but they'll then have to go through the tribulation so i think you're by the time tribulation even starts you're going to have millions and millions of christians ready to go and that's why you have so many being martyred during the tribulation well and i heard the number of those who were sealed 144 000 sealed from every tribe of the sons of israel and this this picture is more accurate because it's got all men and we're going to see here in a moment they're all from the 12 different tribes and so they are going to fulfill this aspect of their calling which they haven't yet to be a light to the nation a witness to the nation and everything during this time and the church is gone but now god is going to use these jewish believers uh and even today even though i think 52 53 of the world's jews are now in israel there's still many who aren't plus i'm sure many who are become believers in israel are going to go out of israel and spread the gospel because that's their calling during that time not all the jews but just 144 000 and you're familiar with all the cults and everything jehovah's witnesses when they first started out you know if you became a jehovah's wits you were one of the 144 000 until they had millions of people you know that were part of the cult and so they started dishing that out to very special people of course uh within the they call it the organization i believe that the term they use i think it is the organization uh to to talk about those kinds of things so that obviously is not what going to fulfill this particular prophecy and so now he goes through very laboriously and talks about from the tribe of judah judas first isn't he the oldest no reuben thank you uh judah though is the very tribe from which someone came which of course is jesus he's from the tribe of judah 12 000 were sealed now people say we we don't have the records anymore they were destroyed uh you know in ad 70 or maybe it was uh 132 when at when the temple was destroyed again people don't know this but you had a revolt in 132 to 135 uh where over half a million jews or more had returned to jerusalem and they were in the process of trying to rebuild the temple and hadrian who was a roman emperor came and he said i have to keep seven times more roman soldiers in judea and in jerusalem than anywhere in the empire i'm tired of these folks so he came in and totally leveled it again and that was in ad-135 it's called the vorkopta was a jewish guy by the way that's the first person other than jesus that we know of who claim to be a jewish messiah and why is that important well it's important because our preterist friends who believe it all happened by 80 70. uh you know there's not a record of anybody claiming to be the messiah other than jesus was that a false claim no and so berkopta is famously i have a whole book on this famously is the first jewish guy to claim to be messiah other than jesus so he's a false messiah and he led to those three years of temporarily taking control of jerusalem and building a makeshift temple not a real you know and they started up the sacrifice again all this most people aren't aware of that everybody is aware of ad70 you know but that's when hadrian totally leveled the entire city and he salted it nerds he spread salt all over it so nothing would grow there and everything and uh it wasn't until israel in fact for 300 years after that uh well 200 200 years they the roman empire said that if you even looked in the direction if you were jewish you couldn't get within a mile of the temple mount and you couldn't even look in the direction of the temple mount or you could be killed and for 250 years or so they piled human refuse and animals dung on it in order to i would say that make it unclean even in a gentile way of thinking and they did that for a number of centuries there until um who who was helena the mother of constantine she went in 325 and started re-identifying all the holy places so if you ever go to israel jerusalem most of the holy places were identified by her she was there for like four or five years i think doing that and that's when they begin to re occupy jerusalem well so much for that little bunny path or maybe that was a elephant path i don't know so from the tribe of judah and then from the tribe of reuben he's the oldest right 12 000 from the tribe of god uh do you think judah might have been listed because that's the messianic tribe probably and from the tribe of gad 12 000 from the tribe of asher 12 000 from the tribe of nafta uh i would say next to yahoo and the current government there's gotten that in israel but came to the united states and became a a multi-millionaire came back and now he's in the politics you know and stuff and he's a real conservative guy in fact i would probably even like him to be the prime minister more than netanyahu and i've always loved netanyahu but he's been in so long well that's another story but naphtali is where that name comes from that tribe twelve thousand from the tribe of manasseh 12 000 and from the tribe of simeon 12 000 and then from the tribe of levi 12 000 from the tribe of issachar 12 000 from the tribe of zubulin twelve thousand from the tribe of joseph twelve thousand and from the tribe of benjamin twelve thousand what famous new testament writer was from the tribe of benjamin yes apostle paul was from the tribe of benjamin now usually when they do the 12 tribes they split they take joseph's two sons what what are they called ephraim and manasseh and they dropped someone else out but here he's going with solid uh guy joseph who obviously was one of the 12 tribe guys and he's going to have descendants from his and god's going to keep track of this how many of you think god's capable of keeping track of which tribe the jews are from even though we don't have records today i mean it's no big deal for him i mean yeah i was thinking on the way over here look at look at the creation that he has there you know they're they're in the kids who are watching these stories on creation and it's just amazing how each animal is fitted for for what they are you know i think uh my wife was saying they watched on the beaver last they have uh like goggles that come over their eyes when they go under you know and they have all these things that you know how can you say oh isn't evolution wonderful you know and yet they get excited because we landed that thing on mars and they might have water wow water on mars and they think that could be part of well well i'm off on another bunny and i better leave so these are the 12 tribes that are going to be identified by the lord and they are going to be called to be these special witnesses and god's going to keep them from being killed at least in the first half of the tribulation when i think is when they do most of their damage you know most of their evangelism and stuff so in verse 9 it says after these things so after what the ceiling of the 144 thousand i looked and behold she's looking in a vision here he's seeing history unfold before it actually happens i don't know if it was a television or what but he's seeing these events and i'm sure god's capable of transporting someone into the actual future and showing him these things and apparently that's what happened or something along those lines or a really good movie you know one one of the others uh so after these things i looked and behold you see that that's a term it's supposed to get your attention it's kind of like after these sayings wow look at that behold a great multitude which no one could count now keep in mind they can count hundreds of millions later on in the book of revelation and so this multitude i think must be in the billions or a couple billion or what you know at least more than one billion which no one could count from every nation and all tribes and people and tongues and that's the four terms that are used seven times in the book of revelation to mean everybody so it's the smallest it includes the largest as well as the smallest people group that one can be divided into and there's going to be at least one person i'm sure more than one in most cases from these people groups and what does that mean it means that the whole world is being evangelized the entire world is being evangelized and i've observed over the years that when you look at the biblical history each age or dispensation you know before the flood there's only what eight people and there there had to be over a billion people on the planet back then because they lived an average of 930 years at least the ones in the line do let's say they only lived an average of 800 years but there had to be at least a billion or more people some people say as many as three billion and there's only eight saved people think of that and then as history goes on it gets a little bigger you see each phase of history you see a greater and greater amount of people being saved and so the here you see among god's chosen people they're finally israel's finally going to get saved as a large group and they're standing before the throne and before the lamb and i don't know if they're standing there because they're dead or if they're just standing there because indicating they're being called or set apart for this now what you have in the progress of the book of revelation is you have spurts of chronological sequence like chapter 6 and then you have pauses that deal topically with issues so this is probably a summary of the entire seven year tribulation that he's talking about here but he's seeing uh that the result of the 144 000 evangelism during the tribulation is converts from every tribe uh nation people and tongues so that is going to have have a tremendous impact uh standing before the throne before the lamb the throne would be god the father and the lamb would be jesus the son and then the rest of the verse and here are the different uses throughout the text of revelation of tribe kindred tongue and nation and so here we saw i've already seen 5 9 it says they sang a new song and this is in the getting ready to do the tribulation and the all these people are saying worthy or thou to take the book and to break the sills for thou was slain and dis-purchase us from god with thy blood from every tribe and tongue and people and nation each phrase is just a little different but it's the same basic statement so then we see the one we just looked at here in 7 9 and then we say in 10 11 and they said to me you must prophesy again concerning many peoples and nations and tongues and kings and so this this is what we call in biblical studies a technical term becomes a technical term in its seven uses here to refer to almost everybody uh are all the representatives of of the people groups and those from the in verse 11 9 those from the peoples and the tribes and tongues and nations will look at their dead bodies for three and a half days and who is that that's the two witnesses and will not permit their dead bodies to a lot be laid in tomb you know in the jewish world the day somebody dies is when they bury them you got to be ready to go to a funeral even in israel today uh very quick i just i don't know what they do that people that die in the evening or at night but nevertheless and then in verse 13 chapter 13 verse 7 and it was given to him to make war with the saints and to overcome them and that's talking about the beast the antichrist and authority over every tribe and people and tongue and nation was given him who's giving him this authority god is exactly and he's letting him play out his role in history and 14 6 says and i saw another angel flying in mid heaven now mid heaven is where birds and airplanes fly it's the sky that we see you know above us having an eternal gospel to preach to those who live on the earth so here is one of those events i was already talking about is an angel is going to preach the gospel to who every nation tribe tongue and people everyone's in the second half of the tribulation at least by then is going to hear the gospel from an angel i don't know how it's going to happen but this is what it says so i believe it it's go it's going to happen and then in 1715 and he said to me the waters which you have uh you saw where the harlot sits uh are peoples multitudes nations and tongues and so here it they're being referred to as part of antichrist kingdom here uh they're also going to have non-elect people who are apart from every tribe kendrick nation see so no grouping of humans is excluded during the tribulation every society culture populous and tradition conceivable will be part of god's redeemed community and we saw in the last reference part of the unbelieving community as well so that is amazing and if you've been around long enough a lot of times people will take passages like matthew 24 14 which i think refers to the tribulation this gospel a kingdom shall be preached to the entire world and then then shall come and so many missionaries believe that the gospel has to be preached all around the world before christ has come no that's not it's the context is in the tribulation and so that would be a parallel passage to what's happening here in revelation 7. you see what i'm saying because in the flow of matthew 24 which verses 3 through 32 or around in there is the tribulation period so it's you can parallel it with the tribulation and we saw already that there's the same exact sequence in the seal trumpet and bold judgments or at least the seal judgments as there is in revelation chapter 6. so those are you can coordinate those and see that jesus is talking about the tribulation not the church age but i don't want to dampen anybody's zeal for preaching the gospel today but i'm just saying that's not a proper passage to use the great commission should be enough for us because that's given directly to us as a church during our time but you see in 79c the second half of that verse standing and these are the people from every tribe came to tungera nation standing before the throne and before the lamb clothed in white robes so what does right robe white robes mean righteousness and this is a term that relates to the the imputed righteousness of god that we have known as justification given to a believer and so their status now is with white robes showing that they are in good standing not and uh some of us meant all of us need a white robe to cover our unrighteousness so to speak and uh palm branches were in their hands and a palm branch uh relates to victory they're they're they're viewed as victorious what have they overcome satan the world the distortion of the gospel et cetera so prom branches were a symbol of joyful celebration more broadly and also represents communal celebration of victory of over enemies that they would break in the ancient world they would break those out for those reasons and things so they're the fact that they have palm branches means they're victors and that what when do we see that in christ's career when right before he's killed on the they welcomed him and they put prom branches down and so that would be a way of saying at that point in history i believe he's the messiah you see and i don't know if the people change their minds or if it was a different crowd crucify him crucify him the next day or two but uh i don't know if they changed their mind or whatever probably it was a different crowd wouldn't you you think i would so palm branches first show up in the old testament associated with the festival of booths which by the way just this afternoon i had somebody over and i was showing them how you can go to the coattail cam and watch the western wall live and in fact that was the only one of the f you know i worked for tim lahaye for 25 years and that was the the only recommendation for his novel series that he took me up on i told him about the coattail cam and he's got a little thing in there where the antichrist is looking at the hotel cam and getting real upset with the two witnesses that he's seeing right in front of the temple mount you know and so i just thought i'd throw that out there but right now if you go look at it they're they're got all these booths set up there in uh the area in front of the whaling wall and that i think that is because they're celebrating the feast of booths the festival of the booth are they yeah i think that has started is going on right now and uh we see in leviticus 23 40 it says now on the first day you shall take for yourselves the foliage of beautiful trees palm branches and boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook and you shall rejoice before the lord your god for seven days and i guess it's kind of like carrying a banner or something like that it's just a physical show of rejoicing and thanking god for the blessings he's given israel so we see that it says also in verse 9 that these are people from every nation and all tribes and people and tongues so they're going to be uh apparently in heaven at some point and this is why i'm saying this could be a summary for the entire what's happening during the entire seven year tribulation we don't know it but i'm pretty sure it's not sql you know it's not sequential here it's a summary topically here where he's left the chronological progress to deal topically with something and so we see in genesis 12 3 it says and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed so we're seeing what god told abraham 4 000 years ago being worked out that's two-thirds of history ago uh if these things happen somewhere in our lifetime or a little after our lifetime the tribulation starts during that time and so this is the ultimate fulfillment of that or it's one of the fulfillments of the abrahamic covenant by the way that abrahamic covenant is repeated 20 times in the book of genesis alone in some form or the other 20 times yes oh okay i know i did a study on that i haven't marked in my body back of my bible yeah 20 times the abrahamic covenant and there's something like 63 references in deuteronomy i mean it and these for these replacement theologians that are out there all millennialists post millennials that say that that that is not a lasting covenant you see it's already been fulfilled and all of this it's ridiculous it's just not that way and then we see in in the next verse verse 10 and they cry out with a loud voice saying and who are these the redeemed of the ages yes saying salvation to our god who sits on the throne into the lamb so they're praising god and once again he's presented in chapter four as sitting on the throne what does that mean he's reigning and ruling and obviously he's not exerting his power today in the way that we wish he was he's letting he is letting uh you know in fact we see that in acts 17 where paul and maurice hill said in times past he winked you know he let people go their own way but now he is calling all men to repent you know so so the gospel era that we're living in is is an expansion where the gospel is being taken to everybody and so the tribulation is even more so that salvation to our god who sits on the throne he's in charge and to the lamb because in the book of revelation it's very clear things happen because he does something and i showed you in the earlier lesson how 13 times in the book of revelation it cycles starting in chapter 4 between heaven and earth all the way through 19 13 times it starts with something god's decreeing or saying in heaven and then it goes down to earth and shows the fulfillment back to heaven for the next command where it's stated and then you see it taking place in heaven i mean on earth and so it's showing that god is in control of all of this stuff that's happening he's the one that causes it to happen and he's and it's being fulfilled and in a sense it's kind of like genesis let us make this and it says that that was made let us make man in our image and man is made in his image and then he fashioned out of the side the woman and adam goes wow she's flushing my flesh and bone my well okay i got off on these things you know but then we see in verse 11 and all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures remember we saw the four living creatures back in chapter four and five and they show up throughout the book of revelation and as we said these are representatives of god's creation i think uh because you know they have different looks each creature has a little different look so there's and around the el uh the elders and the four living creatures and they fell on their faces before the throne and worship god so what you see happening here in heaven is people are submissive to the lord they're happy they're not rebellious can you imagine certain groups of people here in america if they heard this kind of stuff they would curse the lord their their rebel their rebels unless they get saved down the road a little bit later but here god's people are happy they're they're finally seeing uh justice being done and justice is defined by god and related to his character not to some warped view of justice that we have going on today and they worship god because he's the source so this is showing that all representatives of all creation including the angels humanity perhaps even the animal kingdom and it says saying this is what they say amen or amen which one is it what well it's hebrew as you know i think it depends on what part of the country you're from [Laughter] uh and this is a hebrew word that everybody knows and you all heard about that prayer that that guy said in in congress a shows you the guy had no idea what this word means amen isn't men isn't a reference to males it is the hebrew word pronounced amen amen and it's a form of uh it means it's right right on bro you know that would right on brother it means that's true truly and so it's carried over in the new testament with the same hebrew word amen and it's carried over into our english language today same hebrew word that you see in the old testament amen so you can't say something for men and something for ladies like that guy who's a ordained minister of some kind i don't know what he studied you know to become that what canada wow he should know better than if he was here in the heartland right he is our congress i thought he was just a chaplain oh oh wow i'm enlightened makes it even worse he's from the heartland you know oh wow what's that oh they probably don't even study god at that one i mean the methodists have gotten so bad well so now that we've worked over amen here amen we can it says blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our god forever and ever amen notice their praise is isn't just thank you jesus thank you jesus or praise god praise god hallelujah etc uh it's for specific things look at what they're saying talking about god first is his glory and they're talking here about a physical thing that you can see that like the shekinah glory actually the word shekinah is not in the hebrew bible but the jews about half of the time the hebrew word uh i i know the what's what's the hebrew word uh kabode right is the word for glory uh half of the time from reading the context it refers to the glory of god and oftentimes represented by his glory cloud you know that that came the other time it's used as an abstract term and so the jews in order to distinguish would put the word shekinah which refers to a physical thing if they thought that particular passage was referring to a physical display of god's glory and so glory is number one and then wisdom he knows what he's doing and the hebrew word hakma is in the new testament though sophia wisdom sophia uh has to do with skill wisdom in the book of proverbs for example has to do not with intellectual acumen it may involve that but it's how a person skillfully does or doesn't do something you know for example somebody could be a wise or skillful seamstress someone could be a skillful farmer you see it's these different areas where they have mastered their thing and that's the idea that god really knows what he's doing here and they're praising him for it for all of creation and then we see thanksgiving and so they're thanking him for what he has done in history as opposed to so far most of history has been what a rebellion against god it's just the opposite of these things but in heaven where you have believers and who are seeing god for the fir you know seeing god the way he is or where he presents himself they're realizing reality as it really is and honor the rich honor means to give somebody credit for what they've done and power that's number five on the lip power and might are two terms that talk about his strength his omnipotence his glory you know i wouldn't want to arm wrestle the lord if if he's doing it in his jesus if he's doing it his deity you know uh maybe even just regular i don't know uh to to to our god forever and ever amen so it starts with amen and ends with amen and what does amen mean truly or is that that's right it's true sorry to this enlightened former missourian uh on his etymology of the word and then we see in verse 13 and one of the elders answered saying to me see who do we say the elders were they represented redeemed humanity and much of heaven hasn't experienced it well if they're in heaven in these contexts that's the angelic realm they have not experienced salvation and in that interesting that aspect of god's creation they didn't get a quote second chance did they they fell that was it and part of the reason is is because each angel was created individually where god created adam and then took eve from his side so that there's a genealogical solidarity to the human race why did he do it that way because later he starts a whole new race where christ's atonement is sufficient for everyone because he is the start of a new humanity you follow what i'm saying here and therefore he's he set up humanity with the fall and all of this because he made us that way to be redeemable whereas the angels were not redeemable and they were created individually and so one of the elders answered saying to me so this is an angelic question and the human representative is answering it these who are clothed in white robes who are they and from where do they come and i said to him my lord you know and he said to me these are the ones who come out of the great tribulation now great i don't think here in this context term great tribulation only used two or three times in the new testament matthew 24 and here and i think that's it but some people say well great tribulation refers only the second half well i'm not so sure here this is talking about tribulation as a whole the seven in my opinion because of the context seven year thing and in matthew 24 it says and then he delivers them over to great tribulation that's referring to the second half which is in that context greater than the first half but lord you know these are the ones who have come out of the great tribulation so they're being collected here and we see at one point where there uh being they have prayers or requests when god when are you gonna intervene and judge these folks our patience has ended and he says sit down take a number or get to you folks later you know they're under the what's what's that the uh table uh the sh table of holiness or something i forget you can tell i'm way off here but what no not show bread but well but they're under underneath that and later on in the book of revelation he gets around to him where the prayers of the saints are dumped in see and that he begins answering those prayers but early on in the tribulation we're not there yet he says so here's one of those missing the picture and they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of lamb boy does that not make sense right but it does in god's economy here he they have washed their robes and what do robes represent yeah well yes those it it represents the work you know a policeman wears a police uniform a fireman wears a fireman uniform cetera it represents who or what you are and so those white robes cover it represents the righteousness of christ that's given to us imputed to us through justification and so we we have these in heaven these white robes because what we are presented as clean before the lord as righteous see so but they washed it in the blood not in tide or anything like that i'd have to go back and look i just if it does it's would be you could figure it out from the flow of the context which i can't remember don't i just have these pieces here as you can see so and this is the um we i pointed out i think already that lamb is mentioned 28 times in the book of revelation and the beast is mentioned 36 times and one theme you can make from the book of revelation is the lamb versus the beast so who wins the lamb and it shows you how different god's economy is from fallen humanity's economy the way that we we think you see and so washing robes and making them white and blood is because is a metaphor obviously of you know having your sins cleansed by the blood of the lamb by what christ has done it gives us a white pure standing before the lord so that's the point here of this and for this reason they are before the throne of god and they serve him day and night in his temple and he who sits on the throne shall spread his tabernacle over them so it's talk it's talking about believers here that he's referring to in this context and the throne of god you know that's obviously where god you know it's being depicted as a place where god rules from and so these are his constituents here you see these are members of the kingdom that are there and they're happy to be there now it may sound boring to us to think we've got to be sitting there you know praising god all the time thank you jesus thank you jesus thank you jesus you know actually it's god the father that's being talked about here but it ain't going to be that way for a number we'll have a whole new nature and when you realize in light of eternity what he has done for us how could you how could we ever quit praising him and thanking him you see and both day and night we don't have to sleep anymore so i guess you could do a movie sleepless in heaven instead of sleepless in seattle but uh and and this is a temple so he has a heavenly temple and it's believed and it seems to indicate this in the book of hebrews that the temple on earth is some kind of pattern after the heavenly temple that makes sense and he who sits on the throne shall spread his tabernacle over them tabernacle what do you think of when you think of that what well yes but historically the tabernacle yeah that that they had and here it has the uh i would argue the the context is that a protection tabernacle a place a tent from the wilderness where you have your home so to speak i guess something along that lines you see uh and it pictures him taking care of us providing for us and probably he used the word tabernacle because it has meaning in the old testament you know because his original holy of uh holies was at a tabernacle right in fact if you go to israel about 15 miles north of elat which is a southern tip there is uh some germans that made a full-size replica of the tabernacle and one of my he's one of my good friends he comes to our conference every year from germany um and they donated it after like 20 years of taking it all around germany showing them a tabernacle you see and so it sits there in israel and you can go and see because it's made just like the bible describes there and you can see that tent or tabernacle there if you want to go to israel and they shall hunger no more neither thirst any more neither shall the sun beat down on them nor any heat now this must be referring to texans get out of the heat and all that stuff down you know of course they had a little more than that lately but so you know we're not going to need to eat apparently we can eat just like jesus after his resurrection didn't have to eat but he could uh and the weather and and hard cond you know the curse is gone we're not going to have difficulties and i know this one preacher uh that preached into his 90s used to say that he they said when are you going to retire he says when i get to heaven he never retired and but this this is what awaits us and we know that the marriage of the of the lamb which is the corporate church takes place in heaven the marriage supper of the lamb takes place at the beginning of the millennium a lot of people think the marriage supper takes place in heaven no it does not it's very clear when you look at the right passages that it take the marriage supper which is a celebration of the bride who invites all the guests that's the redeemed from the ages and he's taking a bride so he marries her in heaven we return with him at the second coming corporately and then once the millennium begins there's a i'm sure it'll be a long party many days and probably even months at the beginning of the millennium starts with the marriage supper of the lamb now for the lamb in the center of the throne shall be their shepherd and shall guide them to springs of the water of life in other words he is going to take control of us we will follow him and you know in in israel and places uh the shepherd gets out in front and the sheep follow him over here in america uh they get they drive them they get behind them like cattle you know and they drive them and you know he has in john's gospel my sheep here know my voice and it used to be that they would come to a grazing field and there'd be three or four different flocks there and they would co-mingle and the shepherd would give some kind of a sound a whistle or something and those that were his would would come out and so that's a picture there in john 10 my sheep know my voice and they follow me and just like i would apply that to election and things like that because it's when god calls and you're the elect he's going to open your heart and give you faith to believe uh and stuff so and shall guide them to springs of water of life so that a spring of water was very necessary for sheep as part of their grazing and so he's going to provide that refreshment for us for eternity and then we see in the second part of that verse and god shall wipe away every tear from their eyes so what does that mean i don't know how you know people say are we gonna some people think it means we're gonna lose our memory of the past i don't think so i think in our redeemed state we'll be able to handle everything in a way that doesn't cause us sorrow does that make sense i just can't imagine god erasing our memories that otherwise there's no point in history if he erases our memory because i would say it's like a form of maturity yes where yeah that's right um and all of the bad things that happened when we were living under the curse and bad things we have done even uh he's gonna remove that and it'll it'll only be bliss he'll wipe away every tear from their eyes and my four sisters won't re remember in a bad way all the things that i did to them growing up exactly because they're all believers and well so that's chapter seven any questions or comments or testimonies prayer requests yes what song did we sing in our closing hymn today when we've been there ten thousand years bright shining as the sun we've no less days to sing god's praise than when we first began exactly no pills and no sickness and no grades and this and that you know i said we can only imagine i can't even imagine life without the sin right exactly i'll fight the synopsis i could that we can be in a place where we no longer have to fight them anybody else have a piece to say go ahead of kindness yeah and ephesians and colossians teach were already seated with him right now in the heavens and that's our position in christ and so we're supposed to apply that logic to the present and how we behave and act yeah because we're saying that's our destiny and we already are positionally seated with christ and you know we've got nothing but a great future ahead in spite of some of the problems we might face here in this fallen world in the interim but tremendous hope in christ and you know no other religion in the world our system of philosophy or thought is anything like christianity or the bible they're they're come on uh they're just not anything like it it's all some moral code or you know this or that or don't worry everything you know you're gonna or you're gonna go back from matter into nothingness isn't that a great future if you're a hindu actually they're gonna go to hell but we know that's their teaching that you're the whole goal of most of these eastern religions is to get to a place of where you're not conscious of the pain that's going on in this world that's what chanting and what other stuff is all about and stuff well let's close quickly in a word of prayer father we thank you for the wonderful destiny that we have by simply being right really related to you and we just pray that we would think more and more about that so it will impact our life and the nasty now and now in christ's name we pray amen

Channel: Lean-into-God

Views: 0

Rating: 0 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: Ts0GNgrEhZo

Length: 74min 6sec (4446 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 09 2021