(Timeless Doctrines) Revelation's Timeless Doctrines - Part 3 — Denny Kenaston

Hello, this is Brother Denny. Welcome to Charity Ministries. Our desire is that your life would be blessed and changed by this message. This message is not copyrighted and is not to be bought or sold.

You are welcome to make copies for your friends and neighbors. If you would like additional messages, please go to our website for a complete listing at www .charityministries .org. If you would like a catalog of other sermons, please call 1 -800 -227 -7902 or write to Charity Ministries, 400 West Main Street, Suite 1, AFPA, 17522.

These messages are offered to all without charge by the freewill offerings of God's people. A special thank you to all who support this ministry. Shall we stand together? Let's sing a song and then we'll have prayer together.

Come, bless the Lord.

That men would pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands without wrath and doubting.

God, thy loving kindness is better than life. My lips shall praise thee, thus will I bless thee while I live. I will lift up my hands in thy name. Lord, we bless you, we praise you this beautiful day that you've given to us.

God, we thank you for the assembly of the saints. We thank you for your great workings in our hearts through these days. Thank you, Lord, you are still the deliverer. Yes, in Mount Zion there is deliverance.

We praise you for those who were set free last night. God, we pray that you'll continue to prepare us for the end. God, we pray that you will help us in this session as we study things we need to learn in the book of Revelation.

We pray in Jesus Christ's name, amen. You may be seated. As I ponder the implications of what I have already said, and I must admit that there have been a few times as I was preparing that I stood in awe of what I was seeing, realizing what I am going to say, realizing the implications of it, realizing what it should mean and could mean to us as the people of God.

Rethinking Revelation and the Rapture

I stood in awe. I stood in awe. It seems the American church is under the delusion already. We have taken the come-up hither of Revelation chapter 4 and said, that's the rapture and so we don't need to think about the rest of the book.

And so the rest of the book is simply full of interesting facts, and possible interpretations, and thousands and thousands of people gather for prophecy conferences all over the United States in lovely hotels with golf courses and swimming pools and lots of food to look into the book of Revelation and see what for interpretations the latest prophecy man has come up with.

What a different look at the book of Revelation! So the sweet sounds of peace and safety have lulled us to sleep. Like the preacher once said, I heard him. I was in the meeting. It was a time of depression.

Finances were not going too well. Lots of men were losing their jobs. And the preacher got up and said to all the people, a lot more than what is here today. He said to them all, look, I know times are hard.

I know that some of you lost your jobs. But I'm here to tell you today, don't worry about a thing. Before things get real bad, we're going to get raptured out of here. And we'll leave the rest of the world to figure out all the problems.

I tremble at words like that. Once you take a bit of a glimpse into the book of Revelation, I tremble at words like that. It seems to me that the sweet sounds of peace and safety have lulled the American church to sleep.

On the other hand, if you would dare for a moment to cross the sacred line and say, maybe we will find ourselves in the midst of this book, you might get a different glimpse of life altogether. But you see, very few have been courageous enough to step across that sacred line and say, maybe we're wrong on this whole matter of the rapture and all the things that are going to happen to God's people or all that God's people are going to escape.

Maybe we're wrong. I want to encourage you, just step over the line. Have enough courage to step over the line with an open heart and read the book of Revelation and Daniel chapter 7 through 12 and Matthew chapter 24.

Just read them again with a different perspective. When we do that, Daniel chapter 7 through 12, Revelation chapter 6 through 19 and Matthew chapter 24 become terrifying, sanctifying chapters. In fact, some of the most sanctifying words in all the Bible.

Persecution, False Security, and the American Bible

What a different look on the book of Revelation that is. Some of the most sanctifying words in all the Bible. I'm told, I read it somewhere, I can't remember where, but I'm told that the first Chinese churches, which were established by missionaries from America and England mostly, they were taught this peace and safety rapture.

That's what they were taught. They were given the theology of the end times of the missionaries who came and established churches there. And they were taught that they don't need to worry about a thing.

That before things get real bad, we're all going to be snatched up out of the world and meet the Lord in the air and so shall we ever be with the Lord. And those dear, young Chinese Christians, they just believed their teachers just like all of us do when we're young in the faith.

But then the Boxer Rebellion came. And in the Boxer Rebellion, a wave of intense persecution began. And first of all, they drove out and martyred many of the missionaries. That was the first move. Get rid of those missionaries.

Chase them out of this country. Kill them. Starve them. Persecute them. And chase them out of this country. And once that was done, they began to massacre the Christians in mass. Well, this didn't set very well with the theology of the early Christian church in China.

It devastated them. And multitudes of them gave up the faith. Because they found themselves in delusion. How can this be? We were told this won't happen. How can it be that we're dying for our faith? How can it be that everybody is being persecuted everywhere?

This looks like the book of Revelations. And we were told we're going to miss all of that. And many of them gave up the faith. It became a real purifying between the false and the true in China. But, oh, glory!

A beautiful church emerged up out of all of that persecution. A beautiful church. A pure church. A mighty church. A powerful church emerged up out of all of that persecution. I fear that for America. I fear that.

Can I say that? Can I be that bold here this morning? I fear that same thing for America. We have lived in peace and prosperity so long that it has affected how we read our Bible. And somehow we think that we read it the right way and everybody else reads it the wrong way.

I call it reading an American Bible. Or reading the Bible with American eyes. That's not always a good way to read your Bible. We think the warnings in the New Testament to those that are rich are not for me.

That's reading an American Bible. But if you read the Bible from the third-world view, those third-world people, which is two-thirds of the world, by the way, would tell you, each and every one of you in this room, that you are the rich.

And they are the poor. And therefore the warnings to the rich are given to us. I don't know if you believe that, but I do. If you read the Bible from the third-world view, I'm the rich man who fared sumptuously.

I'm the glutton that is overweight. And I'm the rich man casting into the treasury out of my abundance. That sure makes us look a bit different, doesn't it? These practical doctrines in the book of Revelation truly are a wake-up call to all of us.

They're a wake-up call. There is a danger for us to sit in this room this weekend and apply it to the departing, confused evangelicalism of the United States, when, in fact, these truths need to grip our very hearts just as much.

So let us move on into our next point. It seems fitting to share a little that will draw one message together with the next one. So now let us move on to our next point. We're looking at the twos in the book of Revelation and skipping over the sevens.

The Two Women: The Bride and the Harlot

And this morning, I so appreciated Brother Ross's opening meditation because we're going to talk about two women in the book of Revelation this morning. Two women. A beautiful, faithful bride and a filthy whore.

We find two women in the book of Revelation. A beautiful, faithful, waiting, expectant bride and a filthy whore. Let's turn to Revelation chapter 19 for a reading here. Revelation 19 and verse 1, and we'll read through verse 10.

And after these things I heard a great voice of much people in heaven saying, Hallelujah, salvation, glory, honor and power unto the Lord our God, for true and righteous are his judgments, for he hath judged the great whore which did corrupt the earth with her fornication and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand.

I don't know if you ever realized it before, but the Hallelujah Chorus that we so often enjoy and sing, that Hallelujah Chorus in heaven is a Hallelujah Chorus because God has judged the great whore. I may put a little different perspective on the Hallelujah Chorus for you.

And again they said, Hallelujah, for her smoke rose up forever and ever, and the four and twenty elders and the four beasts fell down and worshipped God that sat on the throne saying, Amen, Hallelujah.

And a voice came out of the throne saying, Praise our God, all ye his servants, and ye that fear him, both small and great. And I heard, as it were, the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thundering, saying, Hallelujah, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth.

Let us be glad and rejoice and give honor to him, for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready. And to her his wife was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white, for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints.

And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they which are called unto the married supper of the Lamb. And he saith unto me, These things are the true sayings of God. And I fell at his feet to worship him, and he said unto me, See thou do it not, I am thy fellow servant, and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus.

Worship God, for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. In these verses we begin to get a glimpse of the beautiful, faithful bride. And here we see a wedding about to take place. The marriage supper of the Lamb.

Something that we have probably spoken about and heard about, and it has been alluded to at probably every wedding that we've had in the last twenty years. Looking ahead to another wedding. A higher wedding.

A sweeter wedding. A wedding that will outshine all the weddings. And we've had some sweet weddings around here in the last twenty years. As we look down upon a young man and a young lady, whose hearts are overflowing with love and dedication to one another.

Sweet and beautiful weddings. But we have looked past them, though their faces shine with love and radiance for one another. We have looked past them unto another wedding. And this is the wedding that we've been looking past and unto.

It is the marriage supper of the Lamb. It's when the Lamb gets His wife, and the bride gets her bridegroom. Hallelujah! Well, we're not going to keep reading, but if we kept on reading, it's very interesting how these things flow in the book of Revelation.

If we kept on reading, the scene changes immediately from that, to that of the Lord Jesus on a white horse, you know, with the sword of the Word of God coming out of His mouth, with a vesture dipped in blood, and an army going with Him to go and war against the earth.

You say, well, how do those two fit together? Well, let me read you a beautiful verse. One of my favorites. Let me just read you this beautiful verse out of the Song of Solomon. Song of Solomon, chapter six, verses nine and ten.

This is the king, the bridegroom, talking about his bride, his wife. Look what he says. My dove, my undefiled, is but one, or is the best one. She is the only one of her mother. She is the choice one of her that bear her.

The daughters saw her and blessed her. Yea, the queens and the concubines, and they praised her. Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?

She is the bride of the Lord. Bright as the moon, fair as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners. I don't know how to put all that together, but God put it together in the context of that chapter.

The beautiful, faithful brides. The Lamb's wife. Revelation chapter twenty-one and verse two. Let us read there. And I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

There we find that word again. Prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. Chapter twenty-one, again, verse nine. Now watch this shift. Just look at these shifts in scene. Yet it's very clear they are the same thing.

The Two Reapings and the Coming of the Son of Man

Turn to Matthew chapter twenty-four. Just a few verses over there that go right along with these that we just read. Matthew chapter twenty-four, verse twenty-nine. And this is in the middle of the chapter that Brother Ross was accounting to us this morning.

So, thank you for that, Brother Ross. To cover, to skim over some of the realities of this chapter before we come to verse twenty-nine. Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened and the moon shall not give her light and the stars shall fall from heaven and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken and then shall appear the sign of the son of man in heaven and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn and they shall see the son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory and he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds from one end of heaven to the other.

Matthew chapter thirteen also. Matthew chapter thirteen and verse thirty-seven. He answered and said unto them, He that soweth the good seed is the son of man. The field is the world. The good seed are the children of the kingdom.

But the tares are the children of the wicked one. Two brides. The enemy that sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the world. And the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are gathered and burned into the fire, so shall it be in the end of this world.

The son of man shall send forth his angels and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend and them that do iniquity and shall cast them into a furnace of fire. There shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth and then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their father.

Who have ears to hear, let him hear. Very interesting verses, aren't they? In light of two reapings. And one more portion of scripture I'd like to read in Thessalonians. Surely we must read that. Those verses there in Thessalonians.

First Thessalonians chapter four is where we're looking. And verse sixteen. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with a voice of the archangel, with the trump of God. And the dead in Christ shall rise first.

Then we, which are alive and remain, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.

Two reapings in the book of Revelation. Two reapings. It seems to me that one of them is the reaping of the righteous on the earth. That one of them is the reaping, or the rapture, or the deliverance of the righteous that are upon the earth.

And the other is the reaping or the meeting out of the judgment that God gives upon the wicked that are upon the earth. Well, you may say, when shall these things be? That's a good question. I don't know if I have all the answers on that.

But I'll give you my personal opinion. And I'll be glad to hear any of your thoughts on it. I'm not dogmatic. And I wouldn't divide over something like this. I think that's absurd. To divide God's people over opinions about how we think.

This mysterious book is all going to work out. That seems absurd. However, as I have pondered it, prayed about it, and studied it, I tend to feel that the rapture will come in the middle of this book, not at the beginning.

Let us search these things out. Read Daniel chapter 7 through 12, the book of Revelation, and Matthew chapter 24, and just ponder it in light of that statement that I just made. And I'm very open to change.

Two Judgments and the Rewards of the Righteous

Very open to change. Just my thoughts. Just my opinions. Two reapings. And lastly this morning, two judgments, which end in two places. And I'm just going to put those two together, because they're actually the same thing.

Two judgments, which end in two places. The judgment of the righteous, and the judgment of the wicked. You know, many times we think of the word judgment, and we think of it in a negative connotation.

We think that judgment has to do with God meeting out punishment on somebody that is evil. But that's not what the word judgment means. Many times, yes, judgment is needed when evil is being done. But the word judgment is simply discerning the issue.

The judges sit before the people and they judge the issues. Sometimes they judge for the sake of the righteous. Sometimes they judge for the other. Luckily, that's the way judgment is. God meets out two judgments, as we read in the book of Revelation.

The judgment of the righteous. What is His judgment of the righteous? Well done, thou good and faithful servant! Enter in to the joy of thy Lord! What is His judgment of the wicked? Yes, the wicked shall be turned into hell, and every nation that forgets God.

When you get a glimpse of the rewards of the righteous, which you find written in the book of Revelation, when you begin to grasp deeply in your heart the rewards of the righteous, it makes some of the other things in the book of Revelation look more like light afflictions than the scariest things I ever read.

Paul called them light afflictions because he saw Him who was invisible, and he saw beyond the now, the world that now is, under the world that is to come, and said, these are light afflictions, which produce for us a far more weighty and eternal glory.

The rewards of the righteous in the book of Revelation. Eternity of life, beautiful, eternal life, which lasts forever and ever and ever. Eternity with Christ, married to the Lamb. New heaven, new earth, new body, pure worship, pure righteousness, like we've never known.

A beautiful city, a mansion there, a river of life, the tree of life, the tabernacle of God with men. And we could just go on and on and on. And brothers and sisters, these spiritual realities, you know, sometimes I think we look at heaven way too shallow.

You know? Sometimes I think, you know, we look at it and we think, oh, someday I'm going to go to heaven. Nice green grass, beautiful mansion to live in, nice and cool, 70 degrees, Brother Manny. Everything's going to be great there.

Oh, come on! Heaven is so much more than that. Well, again, it's more than that. Heaven is the fullness. It is the sevenfold reality of the fullness, of the outpouring of the love of God in Christ Jesus, which shall be manifested unto us, and it will take us all eternity to view it all and glory in it all.

You know, the other evening, when we were glorying in the grace of God in the middle of that beautiful message, I thought, you know, someday we're going to get a taste of the glory of God like we never saw before.

We're going to gaze into the grace of God like we never imagined before, and it's going to last for all of eternity. Oh, my brother and my sister, even if they cut off my head, it will be worth it all.

The magnitude of the power and the blessings of the spiritual, eternal realities of what those rewards really mean, we can't even begin to imagine it. That makes that little cabin on glory look pretty shallow, doesn't it?

The Judgment of the Wicked and the Wrath of the Lamb

And it is, my friends. It is. Well, let's look at the judgment of the wicked here. In the book of Revelation, the judgment of the wicked. Tribulations. Unimaginable. Pains. Pain that is so bad that you wished you would die, but you can't die.

Right? Remember those locusts with a stinger like a scorpion? You know what they say in Africa? When a scorpion stings you, the pain is so great, it will make a grown man cry like a baby. That's what they say in Africa.

You ever see a scorpion? Pain that is so bad that you would beg to die to escape the pain, but you won't die. Deception. Awesome deception with eternal consequences. A world that burns up with fire. A people that are slain by the sword of His mouth.

And an eternity without Christ. An eternity without Christ. And they were all cast into the lake of fire. Revelation again. We're almost done here. Revelation 21, verse 7. Here's a nice combination verse.

He that overcometh shall inherit all things. And I will be his God. And he shall be my son. And he shall be. But the fearful, and the unbelieving, and the abominable, and the murderers, and the whoremongers, and the sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.

Do you ever consider the wrath of the Lamb? Remember we read there earlier this week the peoples of the earth cried out for the rocks and the mountains to fall on them. Why? To hide us from the wrath of the Lamb.

For the day of His judgment has come. And who shall be able to stand before Him? It's very interesting. As I was meditating and pondering in the book of Revelations, when you come to the seven last judgments, the seven vials, it's like just before these seven vials are poured out, it's like God stands up.

You know, it talks about the temple and how that nobody would even go in there. You know, it's like God stands up in all of His wrath, in all of His anger. You think about that for a minute. How big is God?

How much wrath and anger does He have? Maybe you've been in a situation where somebody was filled with wrath and anger. You know? You can sense it. You know it. You know it before they pick up anything.

You know it before they raise their hand. What about God's wrath? What about when God's cup is full and He stands up, ready to pour out His wrath, the last seven vials, upon the finish, His judgment of the earth?

And I want to be around to sense that. Where will you find yourself at the end? That is the question. God will narrow this thing down at the end. He will bring to bear on all humanity the decisive words of His Son.

The Narrow Way and the Decisive Words of Jesus

Remember His words of His Son? Remember the words? He shocked the people in His day. He turned to them and He said, No man putting his hand to the plow and looking back is worthy of Me. He that hateth not father and mother cannot be My disciple.

Boy, such decisive words. Yes! A straight gate and a narrow gate. A straight gate and a narrow way. A broad gate and a broad way. Just two ways, brothers and sisters. Just two. No more. Only two. Oh, we may have more.

We may have figured out a whole bunch more. We may have it all gray in our mind. It may even feel good to leave it gray in our mind because we couldn't bear to face the bare facts and reality, so we like to just leave it gray in our mind.

But, brothers and sisters, as we move toward the end, then God is going to narrow this thing down to two choices. Just two. And everyone will choose one or the other. There is no in between. It will be all or none.

It will be the wise man or the foolish man, brother Ross. It will be the wise virgins or the foolish virgins. I wonder how you're preparing. Shouldn't we be preparing? Shouldn't we? You ever go without eating for seven days?

You may do it someday. I would encourage you to get used to it before it comes. You know, I read somewhere, many people, when the Communists took over in Russia, they threw people in prisons everywhere.

And they weren't just looking for Christians. They looked for anybody who didn't agree with Lenin and Stalin. That was it. Do you know that many people died in prison over the fear that they would die of starvation?

They died prematurely over the fear that they were going to die of starvation. But the Christians didn't die of the fear that they were going to die of starvation. How are you preparing? You say, brother, that's kind of nuts.

Yeah, I know. We live in America, you know. There's a McDonald's on every corner and in Wendy's and all those places. And it's just food and we eat and everything is great. You know, we're all getting fat and thick and all of that stuff.

And we just go on and our little bellies whine at us if we don't get some food in them, you know. Oh, they just whine at us so much. I tell you, we're in a dangerous place. If that's the way it is with us.

Preparing for Persecution and Faithfulness

How are you preparing? How about the Word? Someday they're going to take this book away from you. Do you have any of it in your heart? Do you spend enough time in it that it won't matter if they take it away from you because they can't take it out of here?

How are you raising your children? To be soft? To get their own way? To whine and get it? Hmm? To skip the mashed potatoes and get ten cookies instead? Those aren't little things, brothers and sisters.

You might just smile at that. Oh, boys will be boys. No. It goes a bit deeper than that. It really does. We best be raising some soldiers, brothers and sisters. They may die for their faith someday. Oh, we could say many things about how to prepare, but that's not our point here today.

The point is, these little practical meditations are very important, aren't they? It's good to ponder them ahead of time. We may face more than what we thought we were going to face. And it's good to be prepared.

Two Kingdoms, Two Marks, and End-Time Christians

I'd rather be prepared and then find out I was all wrong than to not be prepared and find out I was all wrong. Well, the last lesson will be on the two kingdoms, the two marks in the book of Revelations and the two types of Christians.

The kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world. The mark of the beast and the seal of the living God in your forehead. The overcoming Christians and the ones that are overcome by the things around them.

May God help us all to be end-time Christians. Ready? Waiting. And join our dearly beloved brothers around the rest of the world who are already suffering. May God grant us to prepare. Thank you.