Revelation 1 // The Introduction

Fuko revelation last book in the Bible let's pray before we get started God again we love you we thank you Lord for your word thank you God that you're the God who knows the end from the beginning and Lord is we're entering into this book I know that that I hear a lot of people are reticent to to get into it because they they think it's unknowable it's it's not understandable and and I've even heard people say that it's a sealed book but Lord we know that that's not the case that that's not what you want the reason that you write things down is so that we can be blessed by them and specifically with this book that's what you want to happen you want us to be blessed by the reading of the book and so Lord as we're doing that is we're reading it and going through and looking at what it has to say we just pray that you bring it alive to us and that you'd help me to just do a decent job of bringing it across the truths in this book to your people we love you Lord and love your word and we pray that you bless our study of it in Jesus name Amen okay let's uh let's go through and read some of this actually yeah let's go through and read some of it and then we'll get into the introduction it says the revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave him to show his servants things which must shortly take place and he sent and signified it by his angel to his servant John who bore witness to the Word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ to all things that he saw blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy and keep those things which are written in it for the time is near John to the seven churches which are in Asia grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come and from the seven spirits who are before his throne and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness the firstborn from the dead and the ruler of the kings of the earth to him who loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood and has made us kings and priests to his to his God and Father to him be glory and Dominion forever and ever amen behold he's coming with clouds and every eye will see him even they who pierced him and all the tribes of the earth will learn because of him even so amen I am the Alpha and the Omega the beginning in the end says the Lord who is and who was and who is to come the Almighty let's let's stop right there let me do a an intro here and I don't know how far we're gonna get but I don't think we're gonna get any further than that that's this first study first off one of the things that you need to know about the the book of Revelation if you've gone through it with us before how many of you have gone through Revelation with us before raise your hands okay so most of you have those of you who haven't one of the reasons that people think that the book of Revelation is kind of a sealed book is because there's a bunch of imagery in there there's a bunch of symbolism in there but it's an Old Testament book that's that's the problem that people have with it when John is writing in the book of Revelation he's referring to the Old Testament over and over and over again all the images all the symbols are something that comes out of the Old Testament itself and so it's regarded as a mysterious book it's regarded as a book that's hard to understand and many times new believers are told to stay away from the book of Revelation yeah you just stay away to the book of Revelation that's way too weird and you know what actually it is kind of weird for a new believer I remember being a new believer and I started in the book of Genesis you know I've told you that story before I don't often tell you about doing the book of Revelation at the same time I'm going through the book of Genesis I'm sneaking into the book of Revelation and reading it and you know how that goes it gets weird there's one place where it looks like Godzilla's coming out of the ocean and you know there's all kinds of really wild stuff in the book of Revelation and so I'm going through it I'm like I have no idea what's being talked about in this book and again it's because it's got all these references to other parts of the Bible Church as a whole you know there there are a lot of churches that just stay away from the book of Revelation actually most churches most Christian churches at least in our town this is anecdotal but in our town most churches stay away from the beginning and the end they all do and we find this out when for example when we hire people over at the school and so we hire we arty hire teachers and not all our teachers come from our fellowship I like it when our teachers come from our fellowship but we'll hire other teachers and so we have forms that they go through and fill out and one of them is a form that talks about what they believe about certain things and they don't know anything about the beginning and they don't know anything about the end there whenever they fill these things out when we talk about creation and and that kind of stuff what do you believe about this stuff there you know most times their answers are ambiguous they don't know anything about it because nobody deals with it because you have I assume ibly it's because pastors don't want to deal with the whole creation/evolution debate and then with the with the book of Revelation with the end times events again they don't know a whole lot about end times events and so you're talking about talk to them about whether or not they're premillennial or pre-tribulation 'el and when the rapture takes place and and those kinds of things again they don't know about those things and and the reason is because obviously their churches aren't teaching on those things and I don't think that that's acceptable I think that we know need to know about the beginning I think that we need to know about the end if you don't know about the beginning you don't know why Jesus had to come though the whole you know we were just talking I was just talking with Caban about the book of Genesis and Genesis 15 in the the covenant with Abram and that covenant again is the basis of every covenant that you have throughout the rest of the New Testament if you don't know about the Abrahamic covenant you don't have a handle on what the rest of the Bible has to say about our relationship with God and how we come into a relationship with God it's where you get people saying that we replace Israel all kinds of goofiness comes from not knowing what the Bible actually has to say about these things and so that's one of the things that happens with people you know they stay away from the book of Revelation they stay away from anything that has to do with prophetic Scripture and and so you have that and again because there's lots of symbolism in the book of Revelation it's really easy to get a multitude of different interpretations of the book and so I've got a commentary after commentary on the book of Revelation where guys just go through and they basically just make things up they go okay this mountain falling from heaven is the government's and it's probably the Roman government falling to the earth and you know and then and then the see that it falls into is the sea of humanity and they you know they try to tie it in with some other passages in Revelation and sometimes in in in the Book of Isaiah they try to do those things but you know then then they get to the part where all the ships are destroyed and they have nothing to say about the ships being destroyed because if it's the sea of humanity where are the ships on the sea of humanity and it's like well we don't know so we won't mention that move on and off of we off we go or it could be something burning like a mountain falls from the heavens into the ocean and when it hits the ocean all the ships that are on the ocean Kip wiped out maybe it's that you know we've seen that disaster movies and so I kind of think it's the second I think it and that's that's what it's talking about but you have lots of symbolism in the book of Revelation and so you can get lots of different interpretations one of the things that you're going to see me doing is as we're going through I'm not going to just be throwing out interpretations I'm gonna be giving you references and in the Old Testament to where those where those symbols and and and where those those pictures come from so you can get a handle on what the Bible actually has to has to say about the book of Revelation basically you put all these things together and again one of the reasons that the book of Revelation is difficult to understand is because of its references to the Old Testament there are 404 verses in the book three hundred and sixty out of the four hundred and four are quotes or references to the Old Testament so guess what if you want to understand the book of Revelation you're going to have to understand the Old Testament and I think that's part of the reason for the blessing look at verse three again blessed is he who and those who hear the words of this prophecy and keep those things which are written in it for the time is near for me to hear the words of this prophecy that's the idea of hearing it and understanding it for me to hear and understand the words of this prophecy I'm gonna have to be going through the whole Bible and that's you know that's obviously a blessing you're gonna you know we're gonna we're gonna learn things if you haven't done this before that you've never seen before there are 57 references to the law 23 from the historical books 45 from the poetical books a hundred ninety-seven references from the major prophets and thirty-eight from the Minor Prophets so this this this book references the Old Testament alot revelation again is not a sealed book in revelation 22 10 it says and he said to me do not seal the words of the prophecy of this book for the time is at hand this is the only book in the Bible that promises a blessing for the reader and those who keep the prophecy and again you have that in verse 3 blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy and keep those things which are written in it and in revelation 22 7 you have another reference to that behold I am coming quickly blessed is he who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book and so it's designed to be read it's designed to be understood it's designed to be a blessing to the reader when you when you go through and you you look at the book of Revelation you you pick up commentaries on this there are four common methods of interpretation we we talked about this on Sunday morning when you're going through most of the the passages in the Bible that are historical for example so we're going through the Gospels or or you're going through the book of Acts or you're going through even the epistles those those are narratives those are historical stories that kind of thing and there's a method of interpretation of those things it's called grammatical the historical grammatical method of interpretation it's the idea that words mean things when these guys wrote these these words down they we're writing them down in the context of their culture you have to understand what the words mean in Greek and what it meant to those guys it's kind of like with us if I if I say to you my wife is a babe I'm not telling you that she's three months old right that's called an idiom and so the Bible uses idiom right and if I tell you that I had lunch today and it was a huge lunch it you know it overflowed my belly to the point where it was bursting I'm not letting you know that something flowed out of my mouth after I eat my lunch my belly burst what I'm using is hyperbole in that instance and the Bible uses hyperbole you see what I mean and so if you took me literally in either one of those instances thinking that my wife is a three-month-old or thinking that my belly actually bursts you would not be taking me literally because that's not what I mean and so when you go through the Bible you need to read the Bible as the writer wrote it okay and most commentators when they are in a narrative portion of the Bible or they're in a historical portion of the Bible they have no problem doing that they it's called exegesis they're taking out of the text what it says but you know what when they get to prophecy all of a sudden all the rules are off and they just start making stuff up and they and they they just make one thing mean one thing and another thing mean another thing and sometimes they're consistent throughout the book and sometimes they're not and so you get all these different methods of interpretation and that's why it happens because when you get to Biblical prophecy all of a sudden all bets are off all the rules are gone okay and that's called the allegorical method of interpretation everything's an allegory it doesn't mean what it actually says when it says the saint of things that it says and if people would just keep the rules of interpretation that they have when they're doing a narrative portion then they wouldn't have a problem when you get to prophetic portions of the Bible sorry to get you know technical with you and you know in these things but this these are excuses that people give for what I believe are improper interpretations of passages so you get to a prophetic portion of Scripture and they will say things like well this is not a normal portion of Scripture this is apocalyptic and they get that from the book of Revelation and the book of Revelation is apocalyptic you know what the word of apocalypse this means actually that's the that's a term that's used in Greek for Revelation you what apocalypse this means it means the unveiling and so when you're reading the book of Revelation you're reading an unveiling it's something that's supposed to expose something it's supposed to supposed to show something and it says in this passage that the book of Revelation is the unveiling the revelation of Jesus Christ and so as we go through the book of Revelation there's an unveiling of Christ you can see him as he is and a lot of times in ways that you never considered before and so that's a cool thing in any case apocalyptic literature isn't meant to be foggy apocalyptic literature in the case of John referencing the Old Testament it is written in code but the codes easily understood if you know the Book of Daniel the codes easily understood if you know the book of Joel the because because all the all the symbols are are written about in the Bible and they're explained in other places and so it's not a hard thing to understand as long as you know what's going on okay so having said that four methods of interpretation the first method of interpretation is symbolic and that's the idea that the book of Revelation is not prophecy that the book is seen as a symbolic portrait of cosmic conflict of spiritual principles so this has nothing to do with prophecy has nothing to do with the end times has nothing to do with Christ's coming back has nothing to do with that you got a problem with that already just from what we read in the first chapter we got a problem with that it's a it's it says in verse 1 the revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave him to show his servants things which must shortly take place and it goes on and talks about Jesus being the faithful witness and that he's coming back verse 7 behold he's coming with clouds and every eye will see him we're talking about endtime stuff and so the symbolic interpretation is probably going to have a problem and you have what's called the preterist interpretation that comes from latin for past and that's the idea that the book of Revelation is seen as a symbolic description of the Roman persecution of the church under Nero specifically and that it was written for comfort for Christians and so in the book of Revelation under this interpretation Nero would be the Antichrist and so the whole book of Revelation would deal with Emperor worship and the judgment on Rome and have to do with the idea not of the second coming of Christ that you have in Revelation 19 but the idea that the church overthrows Rome and so they go through and they interpret all the symbols and all the all the all the language in the book of Revelation as being something that was finished in the past with the church becoming the state religion in Rome and finally overthrowing the Roman Empire if that's what the book of Revelation would be about and again you have those things where they go through and they just reinterpret things then you have what's called the historicist interpretation and the historicist interpretation is that the book of Revelation is an allegorical picture of church history and so you go through this if you've ever have you guys ever every once in a while you will see in the papers and sometimes on the radio people will talk about a study through the book of Revelation and they kinda know they they kind of don't tell you where you're gonna go they kind of don't tell you who it's gonna be they just give you an address and you show up for this study on the book of Revelation and then somewhere in it you know in the study about four or five studies in you find out that you're dealing with the seventh-day Adventists right and the seventh-day Adventists have a historicist interpretation of the book of Revelation so for example when in under this interpretation I don't know that the admin is through this but under this interpretation when you get the two witnesses in Revelation chapter 11 there's these two prophets that the Bible talks about there they'll say that the that one of the prophets is the Old Testament the other prophet is the New Testament and these prophets were killed and they laden the streets of the city for three and a half days and one interpretation of that is one prophet again was the Old Testament the other prophets the New Testament at the time when it was killed was under in the French Revolution and old New Testament were you know the Bible was thrown out and for a period of time you know nobody nobody wanted to deal with the Bible but then they revived and so you have the prophets rising up again and that whole thing of in France became once again a Christian nation and so historic sist you know interpretation and again when you start doing that stuff you can make anything in the book mean anything that you want to and so you know it's kind of a dangerous thing and then finally you have what's called the futurist interpretation and in this view the major portion of the book has not occurred specifically chapters 4 through 22 so when we get to chapter 4 all of a sudden we're in the future and the rest of it is going to be further in the future and that these chapters are a description of what's called Daniels 70th week in Daniel chapter 9 verses 20 through 27 Daniel talked about a period of time when God was going to be at work in the in the nation of Israel again and he was going to bring them back into the Covenant and he was going he was going to do all this cool stuff and so that's Daniel 9 23 27 it's in that passage that the abomination of desolation is spoken about that Jesus talked about it's a in Matt in Matthew 24 not too long ago we were going through Matthew chapter 24 and I spent some time there talking about that and so obviously you know which interpretation I take it's the futurist interpretation I think that all these things when we get to chapter 4 all these things that you're going to be seeing there are things are going to be taking place in the future one of the reasons and I need to mention this because I kind of picked on people about these different interpretations you know just the allegorical interpretation of the book of Revelation one of the people reasons that people got into that is because the things stated in the book of Revelation were so far beyond their experience thing things that did not look like they could happen and so for example when you get to Revelation chapter 7 you have this this whole thing where God picks out a hundred and forty four thousand Jews and so they're you know they're males and and there it looks like they're used by God to be a witness to the world and and that kind of thing well you know during during the time that a lot of these interpretations were being put down the Jews were dispersed all over the planet when you're looking in in one passage in the book of Revelation it talks about the temple and the fact that the temple is being measured and that one part of it is given over to the Gentiles but the other part was given over to the Jewish people well at the time that the book of Revelation was written the temple didn't exist the temple disse been destroyed 20 years before and so why are we talking about the temple and then you're talking about a battle that takes place and I always I always emphasize these things what I'm talking about in times but in Revelation six it starts off with this conflagration man it starts off with a bang and 1/4 of the earth is killed in a battle well that can't happen during the time of the Roman Empire it can't happen during the Middle Ages it can't happen even during modern warfare in the sense before the 20th century could not happen you can't have them you know you can you can go through the earth with an army and start destroying people and by the time that you get around the earth the population is going to be you know the earth is going to be repopulated again you know killing 1/4 of the earth of the Earth's population is a big fat deal since the time of Cain at the time of Cain Adam Eve Cain Abel Cain kills Abel quarter the population of the earth and I don't think that that's what was real going on but you know what I mean and so from you know after that point this becomes a big deal to do and so that can't be literal is what guys would do when they would go to their Bibles and see those passages and then another third of the earth is destroyed the humanity now the third of humanity is destroyed during during the the book of Revelation so that's half half of the world is killed in two battles half the world is killed couldn't happen before the 20th century but we get to the 20th century we have nuclear and biological and chemical weapons nuclear specifically and we can easily kill half the population on the earth right and so you have a book that's written 2,000 years ago there that's predicting things that could only have happened in our lifetimes for the most part for the most part it's only been within our lifetimes that these things could take place and so that that would be some of the reason that they would go there in any case I think that the book of Revelation is something that's futurists there's a when the city of Babylon is destroyed it's destroyed in a moment at a time it says in one hour but the that the idiom that's that's behind that it's the idea that it was instantly wiped out and all these people are standing off from the city of Babylon they see the smoke of its torment going up and they're afraid to approach it what does that sound like you know and and they you know in ancient times they didn't have any reference point for that kind of thing you you had a city go up in flames it took days for a city to go up in flames it couldn't happen in a moment of time and now we're in times where that can easily happen and and again I think that when you're looking at those passages many of those things promote the idea that this is these are things that take place in the future you know I was talking earlier about the two witnesses it says that when the two witnesses are killed that all the people on the earth see their dead bodies laying in the streets of Jerusalem and again all the people of the earth see their dead bodies laying and how did they do that you can't do it during Roman times you can't do it during the Middle Ages you can't do it during the 1940s you can't do it during the 50s you can't do it during the 60s til you get to the end of the 60s and you say you have satellite communication and at the end of the 60s and you know then you can you can you can beam these things over a satellite you can see it on the news but you still got a problem because not everybody has a TV right nice once you've gone to this last summer you know what everybody and Uganda ask everybody and Uganda has one of these everyone's got one and it's amazing they might be living in a hut and I visited people who lived in a hut who had one of these had a cell phone and we can we can see things on our cell phones instantaneously and they have plans over there or they you know they purchase these things and they've got Wi-Fi and it's amazing so the whole world could literally see the event that was taking place in one place on the planet and everybody would see it and again that's not something that could have happened 30 years ago even probably 20 years ago it couldn't have happened but it's a it's something that can easily happen in our day see what I mean and so I I think that the Futurist system of interpretation and the the grammatical historical method of interpretation something that's valid for the book of Revelation it's something that will bring things out that are just cool okay so date for the book of Revelation the book of Revelation was written by John and actually this is one of the reasons that we're going to revelation is because we just did first John we did second John we did third John and this is the actually the fifth let the the fifth book that John wrote he wrote the Gospel of John but it just kind of falls in order so actually I picked revelation before I thought about that but it's just a natural thing to go through John's writings and end up with the book of Revelation so john died about 96 ad 96 to 90 he died after 96 ad because this was written during the reign of Domitian and Domitian persecuting the church at the time and if you look down in verse nine it says I John both your brother and companion in the tribulation and kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ was on the island that is called Patmos for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ and church history lets us know that John had been sentenced to death for being a believer and specifically he was in charge of the of the churches in Asia Minor he was living in Ephesus at the time that this was written or that he went into exile and he was sentenced to death by boiling in oil for being a Christian and the problem was that he wouldn't boil because God protected him there's a passage from Tertullian that talks about this I actually pulled it out of one of my books so you could read it and this is what he said since moreover you are close upon Italy this is a quote from Tertullian since moreover you are close upon Italy you have Rome from which there comes even into our own hands the very authority of apostles themselves how happy is its Church on which apostles poured forth all their doctrine along with their blood where Peter endures a passion like as Lord Peter was crucified and actually was crucified upside down where Paul wins his crown in a death like John's and he's talking about John the Baptist how did John the Baptist die he was beheaded that's how that's how Paul died - Paul was beheaded where the Apostle John was first plunged unhurt into boiling oil and fence remitted to his island exile and so they tried to kill John by boiling him in oil and he wouldn't boil and so they pulled him up out of the pot nothing's happening and so they went you know off to Pappas with you and so Patmos was an island where John was exiled Irenaeus was a disciple of a guy named Polycarp who was a disciple of John so it's like that we're in the second century when I'm talking about Irenaeus and so John is cycling a dude this is this is this is like you know me and me and Matt so I've met became part of my ministry I've been as Matt's been a disciple of mine and then I croak off I die at some point and then Matt has another kid that comes from one of our high school groups and he disciples that kid Irenaeus would be like that kid and so Matt would be like Polycarp and then I would be like John so Irenaeus knew Polycarp who knew John that's that's a good tight chain right there and what Irenaeus had to say about the timing of this is that John died that John wrote the book of Revelation during the time of Domitian and that John died during the reign of Trajan who was the next Emperor so John died about 98 AD and he wrote the book of Revelation some time before 96 ad so this is at the end of the of the first century there's some cool things that happen because of that because he's writing in the 90s when we get into chapters 2 & 3 he's gonna be talking about the churches in Ephesus and you're gonna see what the churches are like at the end of the 1st century so that all the churches started after the death of Jesus and in 32 ad right and so the church can't start before that most of the churches that you read about in your Bible were started right around 50 ad 50 to 60 AD and now it's been over 30 years since that point we're at 90 AD and you're gonna see what the church looks like after only 30 years and so that's that's kind of a cool thing again I already told you that the book of Revelation literally means the the term it means itself means the unveiling and so in Revelation we see behind the veil and so it's the unveiling of Jesus it's the unveiling of heaven and the unveiling of Hell and angels and demons and the flow of time and one of the things that that again is cool about God is that he's outside of time and so when you see references to the Lord in the book of Revelation you'll see things like in verse a time the fund the Omega at the beginning in the end who is and who was and who is to come that's the idea that Jesus is timeless he has no past he has no future it's just a God is just now all the time he sees everything is now and so that's a that's a cool thing you know there are a lot of people who are interested in the future and so they go to psychics or they'll go to astrology or they'll go to financial consultants because they're interested in the future right but God's Word is something that tells us the future and it tells us the future accurately when you read it in the way that it's written Christianity is the only religion on this planet the majors on prophecy one of the reasons that we are convinced specifically that I'm convinced that the Bible is the is the Word of God is because of predictive prophecy and we we talked about this on Sunday morning when we're doing the biblical worldview thing the stoner model do you guys remember that there are just eight prophecies that were used in the statistical model of the the chances of these things being fulfilled by chance and they're just basic prophecies like Jesus came into Jerusalem riding on a donkey that he was born in Bethlehem that he was betrayed by a friend that he was betrayed for 30 pieces of silver just basic prophecies and they went through and they looked at the chances of those happening and it's 1 in 10 to the 17th one in 1 in in in 10 to the 17th is is one chance in one with 1701 umber that you can't even comprehend it so the way that they help to help you to comprehend it is that you take the state of Texas that's where this comes from fill it up two feet with silver dollars mark a silver dollar stir it all up and then have a dude go through the state of Texas blindfold it he has to go through the whole state of Texas so that each silver dollar has an equal chance of being picked and he reaches down blindfolded picks the Silver Dollar first time that's the chance of eight prophecies being fulfilled there's over 400 prophecies about the first coming of Jesus and when you start when you start tacking on more prophecies the chances just get astronomical of the of the idea that these things could could happen by chance the whole idea that when somebody says that the Bible is just a book written by men yes it's written by men but it's written in such a way that men couldn't have written it there's something happening there and that's what we have with the Bible the Old Testament predicted certain events including the life and Ministry of Jesus do you know that the Old Testament predicts where Jesus was going to minister there's a whole passage in in Isaiah chapter 6 that talks about where the major portion at portion of Jesus's ministry was going to be in what the effects were gonna be on the people who were around there and it's written over 700 years before the coming of Christ it's just amazing stuff and so the Old Testament predicts these events of Jesus he was born he was raised they've predicted his teachings they were predict his life they predict his death and you know when you get to the New Testament Jesus made a few prophecies himself and so remember he prophesied Jesus but Jesus is betrayal he prophesied Judas's betrayal he prophesied his own death he prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem things that were fulfilled at the forty about forty years after the death of Jesus and the effects that took place because of those things for the next 2,000 years and the fact that the Jews were going to be returning to this the the State of Israel and the fact that they were going to be back in control of Jerusalem those are all things that Jesus predicted and we went through Matthew 24 like I said not too long ago and in Matthew 24 what you have is an overview of the end times Jesus was asked some questions what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age and so Jesus goes through it in Matthew 24 he gives an overview of the events that are going to take place right before he comes back and that overview corresponds to the book of Revelation in various places in fact there's various places where the one place where you see the the whole overview all exactly the same kind of detail that Jesus gave in Matthew 24 is revelation 6 and then you have another number of other passages that take off from that and there are specific events that are happening during that period of time and they all end with a second coming of Christ it so it's really an interesting book so when I look at the book of Revelation Jesus gives an overview of Matthew chapter 24 this is the detail this is the detail where do you where Jesus goes through and gives you interesting things that he didn't mention in Matthew chapter 24 one of the things that that's cool about studying prophecy and specifically studying the book of Revelation is because of the predictive prophecy that speak about the first coming of Jesus and we're going to be talking about some of this stuff because Christmas is coming up right so every year I point out the fact that Messiah was coming and some of the coolest verses that we have in the Bible about Christmas come from the Old Testament and there there's been the whole you know operettas basically made about these things Mendel's Messiah right and so you you go to the Old Testament you look at these things and you have all these prophecies that speak about the first coming of Christ and then you go back and you look at the prophecies speaking about the second coming you have anywhere from 300 to 400 Old Testament prophecies about the first coming and it's 1500 and more about the second coming of Christ and events that are going to take place there so if you got it right on the 400 there's a really good chance he's gonna get it right on the 1500 and better and so you know again it's one of those things that I can bank on it so I can bank on this book we got reasons for for doing prophecy and the number one reason that I'm listening here is the prophecy strengthens our faith when you when you look at what the Bible says about the the prophecies of the coming of Christ the first time in now we're going to be talking about his coming the second time it strengthens our faith John John 13 18 through 19 Jesus said this I do not speak concerning all of you I know who my show but that the scripture may be fulfilled fulfilled he who eats bread with me is lifted up his heel against me now I tell you before it comes that I wind up when it does come to pass you may believe that I am he and so Jesus gave the the apostles a specific prophecy about some of the things that were gonna take place and in his betrayal so that when it came to pass they would believe that he's the guy and when you're looking at prophecy again this is one of those things that just blows me away when you when you look at the prophecy that you have in the Bible the fact that that God can lay these things out before they take place and they're they're written down and you could see these things coming to pass increases your faith I know I believe that he's the one because of these things actually you know I've told the story before the the first time that I really had an in-depth study on prophecy that blew my doors off was when a guy was going through the Book of Daniel and his name was Fred Farley and he was an assistant pastor at Calvary and Reber cycle so Greg was a head pastor he was one of the assistants and he was just doing a Bible study on the Book of Daniel and Fred Farley spoke in a monotone and never kind of you know he was one of those guys when Fred would teach on a Sunday morning the the sanctuary would be half empty because if anybody found out that fred was teaching it's like he was just one of those guys that was just like uh and I always showed up because I you know I needed to learn anything I could and so I went to a Bible study by Fred Farley where he's going through Daniel he got to Daniel chapter 11 there's a section in there where it talks about these relations between different kings the kings of Syria and the kings of Egypt and the thing had to be written down hundreds of years before the things took place and these prophecies are talking about the attitudes that these guys have towards each other the actions that they take towards each other what happens with their husbands what happens with wives what happens with battles what happened would have what's happening in bedrooms in this passage and he's going through and he's teaching it in Fred's monotone voice and I'm sitting there in my chair going are you me and he's just reading the history and then reading you know reading the prophecy and then reading the history reading the prophecy and then reading the history I have never been so blown away as when I sat and listened to Fred Farley doing that because it was just amazing and that's what you have strengthens your faith and that's what that did with me it strengthened my faith I was like okay you know we're dealing with something that goes way beyond man that cannot happen secondly communication of prophecy to others brings a response there's a verse in half Habakkuk 2 2 that says then the Lord answered me and said write the vision and make it plain on tablets that he may run who reads it as we're going through and talking about these things in the book of Revelation it's gonna make you excited it's gonna make you excited about the fact that the Bible is true it's gonna make you excited about the fact that Jesus is coming back and hopefully it's gonna make you excited enough actually scared enough that you're gonna talk to friends and family about who Jesus is because if they don't change if they don't come into a relationship with Christ the things that were reading about they're gonna experience firsthand and that gets pretty scary it also makes people well we'll talk about that later but it makes people who aren't right with or get right with the Lord that's actually the next part the third thing that dealing with prophecy does is it promotes purity promotes purity there's a passage in Titus 2:12 through 13 that says teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts we should live soberly righteously and godly in the present age looking for the Blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ so one of the things that's supposed to be in the forefront of my mind all the time is the fact that Jesus could appear at any moment I need to be ready for him and because of the fact that Jesus could appear at any moment I am Subbiah guy who denies ungodliness who denies worldly lusts who live soberly who lives like a righteous guy who lives like a godly man in the present age and I'm to be looking for the Blessed hope and the appearing of Christ and that again is one of the reasons that we do prophecy I think that Jesus can come at any moment I think that he can get he can get here before I finish this sentence before I finish this sentence before I finish this one just be an old fault but in any case Jesus can come at any moment and you know what I've been a Christian a long time so when I started out I had hair you know and Here I am yeah so I've been a Christian a long time that hope hasn't changed I haven't allowed it to there are things that I've been cynical about in my life but this is not one of them I know that Jesus is coming back he's got a timing he's he's waiting as long as he can so he can get as many people as possible the Lord's not delaying is coming because he's not coming Lord's delaying is coming because he's not willing that any should perish but that all should come to eternal life and so Jesus you know there's people who haven't come yet but there's going to come that time when that last guy when that last last lady finally says to Jesus yes I want you and that's gonna be in and we're gonna be out of here and so hopefully that's that's going to be soon there's another passage that you guys are familiar with because I quoted all the time first John three two and three it says beloved now we are children of God and it's not yet been revealed what we shall be but we know that when he is revealed we'll be like him for we shall see him as he is and everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself just as he is pure look at that verse that's a cool verse you know what I don't know what I'm gonna be like you know I was I was joking around this morning about you know being glorified and having 22 inch biceps and you know inherit and all of that stuff and you know I I goof around about about that but one of the we don't know exactly what we're gonna be like so when you get to heaven or you you know I've seen pictures of guys in heaven and they're old and bald you know I don't think so I used to believe that I i will not confess that it's a-you know I I don't think that that's it but I don't know what we look like I don't know how that whole thing works I just know that it's gonna be better than what we've got here heaven is never worse than what we have here it's always something to keep in mind okay and and so I don't know exactly what I'm gonna gonna look like I do know that I'm gonna be greater than an angel and when angels appeared to people this is kind of where I get the 22 inch bicep thing when angels appeared to people like in most of the references in the Bible when an angel appears what do people do yeah they're fallen down they're hitting the ground and what is it what is usually the first thing that comes out of the Angels mouth yeah fear not don't be afraid do not be afraid which means they're afraid right so don't be afraid so angels are pretty you know they must be pretty spectacular and admittedly you know somebody disappears in the middle of the room you're gonna go oh but if you know if Mitch appeared in the middle of a room I go oh and then I go oh it's Mitch you know the Fuhrer would not continue at that point so there's got to be something you know that grabs you about angels and we're gonna be higher than angels and so that's that's a cool part of that passage we know that when he's revealed we'll be like him so I'm not gonna be like an angel I'm gonna be higher than an angel and I'm gonna be like Jesus and so when you go through and you look at what Jesus was like after the resurrection that's what the Bible says that we're gonna be like it so he did things and I'm always goofing around about this stuff but the guy folded himself through six dimensions of space actually well I can't say six dimensions of space but he's folding himself through six dimensions that's how you appear in the middle of a room doesn't say you walk through a wall doesn't say that that he walked through a closed door he just appears in the middle of a room and so that's pretty wild that he can do that when he when he left he took off his lifts off and goes flying into the air and he disappears into a cloud so picture that you know yeah I love the tri-cities because the sky is so big and you get those big puffy clouds you know not anymore or in November and it'll just be gray for a period of time did you know that you know the big puffy clouds every time I see it you can see those kinds of clouds I think of Jesus disappearing into one of those and then I think of Jesus coming back through one of those and the the fact that I'm gonna be like him and I'm gonna be able to do the same things that he can do and you know you you can go through and look at that it's stuff to to ponder when you're going through and reading your Gospels and they're reading about the resurrection of Christ you're gonna be just like that and again I don't know what all the implications of that are but here's another thing we're gonna be like him kids we're gonna see him as he is we're gonna see the Lord as he is the father remember with Moses mother says I want to see your glory I want to see everything that there is about you Lord and God says you can't because it would destroy you if we if we stood in the presence of God right now and got in in all his fullness we would just be wiped out the Bible says that God is a consuming fire and so we would just be wiped out there you know no flesh can stand in his presence of Iowa says you know flesh and blood has to be changed and and it's one of the reasons for the resurrection and for the rapture of the church but we're going to be able to stand in the presence of God and see God as he is and then finally it says and everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself just as he is pure and it's talking about Jesus so I have this hope in me that Christ is coming back and I'm going to be purifying myself just as Jesus as pure and it's one of those things that keeps your walk with Christ alive knowing that and at any moment he could he could appear he could be here it could be done and I could be with the Lord forever and you know the the relationship that I started when I first gave my heart to Jesus is going to be something that's consummated I'm gonna be with the Lord for the rest of eternity and it's just gonna be an awesome thing and it's it's something that makes you wanna be pure and so there's there's a difference between looking good and being pure obviously if you look good that refers to the outside and lots of people can look good on the outside but purity is something that takes place not only on the outside it takes place on the inside too and I think that's something that obviously we as Christians need it's not it's not an optional thing we need it I need to be pure I need my heart to be right with the Lord and he didn't I need to have a right relationship with as many people as I can have a right relationship with but the most important relationship that I have is with Christ himself and it's got to be something that's pure he sees my heart he knows my mind he knows what I'm like and I can't fake him out and so there has to be a purity that takes place and this is one of those things that drives that I want when when Jesus appears I want to be unashamed when Christ appears okay and so that's the intro yeah we've gotten into a couple of verses but let me do one thing before before we go on because I've already read the verse and I don't want to leave you questioning what the passage has to say for the rest of the week but Revelation chapter 1 verse 1 it says the revelation of Jesus Christ and again actually the the book of Revelation is not called revelations it's not revelations anytime you hear somebody go I'm reading the Book of Revelations or you you hear some newscaster talk about revelations you know that they're not actually reading the book because it's not revelations it's revelation so it's one revelation and it's a revelation of Jesus Christ and like I was saying before it's the unveiling of Jesus we're gonna see things about Jesus that you never noticed before so generally speaking you know some of that some of the attitudes that I have towards Christ I got from this book and then I transferred them over into the Gospels I started seeing things in the Gospels that I wasn't seeing before Jesus is a rowdy guy he's a rowdy guy he loves you he cares about you he's got your back he's a good guy to be around he's accepting he wants you the way that you are but he doesn't want you to stay that way and he's gonna be rather insistent about these things you know and it's the same thing with the world he loves the world but it's not gonna stay that way it's not gonna stay the way that it is and he's rather insistent about this whole thing and so Jesus is gonna be revealed which he gave him to show his servants things which must shortly take place see that words shortly that word shortly doesn't necessarily mean something that that's going to be happening quickly in the in the sense of it's gonna it's gonna be happening in the in the not-too-distant future because obviously this was written 2,000 years ago and so things that must shortly take place they did not take place 2,000 years ago in fact a lot of the things like we were talking about before we're just starting to see the you know some of the some of the precursors to those things right now the words shortly in this passage doesn't necessarily mean something that's gonna happen in the next five years or so it's a word that that means quickly or swiftly that they're swiftly going to take place that they're quickly going to take place literally it's used of a chain of events contained in a period of time it's kind of like when you know it's kind of like a domino effect when this starts happening you flip over a domino you know you have the whole string of dominoes you flip it over and one domino hits the next hits the next it's the next Nullah sudden everything's changed and that's one of the things that that you have with this whole thing it talks about the fact that he's signified it by his angel and so revelation the the book of Revelation is going to be using symbols all the way through it but like I said the symbols are gonna be something that you find in the Old Testament so it's going to happen shortly or quickly or swiftly and he lets you know that there are symbols in here and so what I want to leave you with is as you're going you know you you might as well go through go ahead and read through get ahead of the the study in Revelation and be reading a couple of chapters ahead but one of the things that you need to keep in mind is that when these things begin to tap it when they begin to take place they're gonna happen quickly there are wild things are gonna happen in a seven-year period and actually most of the stuff that you have in the book of Revelation are not about the seven-year period most of the stuff you have in the book of Revelation or about the last three and a half years there's very little written about necessarily the first three and a half years most of it is about the last three and a half years and there are there are earth changing events that take place you know we've talked about this in other contexts it's like one disaster movie after another disaster movie after another disaster movie if anybody ever did a real movie on the events of the book of Revelation it would be overwhelming it's like Armageddon tied in with you know what what was that movie where the you know they they blasted the coast with a comet you know all this stuff what it yep deep in Armageddon and deep impact and you know every nuclear war movie that you ever watched and all of this stuff all combined in one thing just amazing stuff and it all happens really quickly and you know that's that's one of the you know kind of the the signs of the times that we live in I never would have thought in the 90s that we would have the racial tensions that we have right now I never would have thought it you know I never would have thought it in the 70s in the 70s everything was looking up but you know it's like all my buddies you know I was a white guy but the school that I that I went to was white guys and brown guys and black guys and and we all played ball together and we were all friends and and that kind of thing and there was none of this nonsense that was going on where people were hating each other like this we were all you know some of these guys are like my brothers and you know the the fact that we're living in times where America is so divided that were living in times where America is on an economic downturn in this I'm not saying that the economy is bad but what I am saying is that there's a danger out there because we own so much debt you realize anybody calls the debt were done the United States has done if the world calls the debt they don't want to do that because it's gonna wreck their their economies too but we're in really dangerous situations getting a triple-a rating as far as the economy goes during the Obama administration when that happened I was like you know and I know that most people aren't thinking in these terms but when that happened I was like what you know what is going on that that can happen to the United States of America and you know you've got all these different kind of harbingers of events that are they're taking place on this planet that that are you know they're just blowing me away when one thing after another and so back in the 90s Ross Perot was running and he was having a fit over the fact that we had three trillion dollars in debt having a fit over it you get to the early 2000s and it's six trillion right and people are having a fit over that and then during the last administration it got up to 16 to 19 trillion and now it's a 20 trillion and it's gonna go up to 22 and then you have you know and so there are a lot of things that are they're taking place that I never thought would happen you had the downfall of the of the Soviet empire you know as it just blew me away just you know in a matter of a few weeks all of a sudden sudden the Soviet Union is gone that you know this this this juggernaut that was over in in Asia that was liable to wipe out the United States and all of a sudden it's just God and again things that can transpire quickly and turn things around and you know I've had all kinds of ideas of what could lead into these events as far as the United States goes and sometimes I thought it was an economic collapse and sometimes I thought that it was just a a slow turn away from the rest of the world now it looks like it might be a civil war that takes place in the United States it gets us out of the way and so things can happen quickly things can happen quickly they've been happening quickly in my lifetime and the things that happen in the book of Revelation are gonna happen radically quickly when it starts it's just it's just gonna snowball so that's what I'll leave you with let's let's pray and get you out of here sweet dreams sleep well tonight Jesus again we thank you Lord that you're the God who's in control you're the God who knows all the Lord you've you've been talking about the period of time that we're going to be talking to be talking about as we go through Revelation for a long time you've always known these things were gonna take place and you've you've always known what your plan was you know what's gonna happen with us you know what's gonna happen with our nation and you've got it all in control and we trust you Lord God as we get into the book of Revelation we just want to claim the blessing that you put there that every one of us who reads it and who understand it who hears the words of the prophecy who understands it and who keeps it receives a blessing from you we want to be those people who keep it thank you Jesus for your love for us thank you for the fact that you've made us all one in you thank you for the fact that we're going home in the not-too-distant future and lord thank you for the fact that that we're gonna be with you forever we love you and just give you the rest of the evening in Jesus name Amen god bless you guys we'll get into it next week

Channel: Calvary Chapel Tri-Cities

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Keywords: The End of the World in the bible, Truth, Jesus' Return, The rapture, the second coming, The book of Revelation, The Revelation Of Jesus Christ, The last book in the bible, The Bible, Calvary Chapel Tri-Cities, Steve Whinery, Gosphel, Jesus, God, Biblical Prophecy, The End Times, End Of The World, The Millennial Kingdom, Revelation's meaning

Id: xgTKs-L0I9k

Length: 58min 50sec (3530 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 20 2018