Letters to the Churches Part 10

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Sunday school lesson working through the book of Revelation

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Letters to the Churches Part 11

Letters to the Churches Part 11

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And I don't think Bruce is here. So, which means we might get to it.
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Well, if he's here, he's gonna tap me, I can just tell. All right, let's pray. Lord, as we open up your word, send your spirit, open our hearts and our minds.
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We cannot understand your word apart from your spirit. So please help us then to rightly believe, to confess and walk and do according to what you have revealed in your holy word.
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We ask in Jesus' name, amen. Okay, I will note that questions are always encouraged and never shunned.
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So this is always a learning time. We take discipleship very seriously here. And we recognize that in order to learn, you have to be able to ask clarifying questions.
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So at any time, you are able to put them in there. I can't promise that I will always get to every one though.
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And if you are persistent, like if I didn't answer a question you had last week, you could ask it the following week and we can go from there.
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But we have begun a study of the book of Revelation. And we have gotten up to Revelation chapter 11.
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Stephen Ellis says, I for one appreciate the rose stall, Roseboro. All right, thank you.
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Takes a true man to wear a rose stall. But I thought it was a salmon stall, but apparently
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I was wrong. Thank you. That'd be fishy. Guess it would be fishy to call it a salmon stall.
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All right. So today, as we open up, we remember last week, we had this graphic depiction of, not last week, but last time we were in Revelation, of the unbinding of the devil, if you would.
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And the releasing of these demonic hordes.
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So you got all the restraints that were on the devil being lifted. And now the devil and all the demons coming out of the abyss.
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And we remember that there was this picture of their leader, the devil, being called
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Abaddon. Abaddon means the destroyer. So let me see if I can find that.
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Yeah, so here we go. This picture in Revelation nine. The fifth angel blew his trumpet, saw a star fallen from heaven.
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Satan, right? Could it be Satan? Yes, it's Satan. And he was given the key to the shaft of the bottomless pit.
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He opened the shaft of the bottomless pit and from the shaft rose smoke, like the smoke of a great furnace.
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The sun, the air were darkened with the smoke from the shaft. And then from the smoke came locusts on the earth and they were given the power, like the power of scorpions on the earth.
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And they were told not to harm the grass of the earth nor any green plant, but only those people who did not have the seal of God on their foreheads.
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Now we're gonna note here that that restraint, that final restraint of not touching
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God's anointed, those who have the seal of God on their head, that's a picture of our salvation, by the way.
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And again, the picture then is that when you're baptized, there's water poured over your head and you're baptized in the name of the
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Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. God has placed his name on you. And as it says here, and this is gonna be really a vital bit of all this.
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Hang on, I'm gonna hit cancel on that. In 1 Corinthians 3, you have a clear text that says that we are the temple that God is building.
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So in 1 Corinthians 3, Paul, in correcting people who were kind of exalting human beings,
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Paul at Apollos, he knocks that whole thing down. And then here's what he says, 1
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Corinthians 3 .10, according to the grace of God given to me like a skilled master builder, I laid a foundation, somebody else is building upon it.
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So let each one of you take care then how he builds. Let each one take care how he builds upon it, for no one can lay a foundation other than the one that is laid, which is
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Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, or struggle, each one's work will become manifest.
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And then he goes on in verse 16 to say, do you not know that you are God's temple?
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Okay, this is a text I will keep coming back to because we've got to get this into our head.
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We are God's temple. God, the Holy Spirit, the
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Father, Son, and Holy Spirit dwells among us. We are each individual bricks being built into the edifice of God's holy temple.
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You sit there and go, well, I don't wanna be an inanimate object the rest of my life. That's not the point, okay? It's a picture of something here.
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And note, if anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him, for God's temple is holy, and you are that temple.
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Get that through your head here. So when people say, well, the Antichrist is gonna come and he's gonna exalt himself in the temple of God and proclaim himself to be
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God, hello, where do you think that's gonna be? You are
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God's temple. You're that temple. So where does the Antichrist arise? He's a churchman.
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He arises within the church. That's the idea. So we'll then go forward here to Revelation 11, because we did 10 the last time, and then here you've got an interesting picture.
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John says, I was given a measuring rod like a staff, and I was told, rise and measure the temple of God and the altar and those who worship there.
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Don't measure the court outside the temple. Leave that out, for it is given over to the nations, and they will trample the holy city for 42 months.
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Now, this is an interesting thing, and this is where we'll do a little bit of work here on the picture that comes up when we talk about the three and a half years, the 42 months, because 42 months is three and a half years, and here we have a very interesting number, and so what we're seeing here, if you've ever read the prophet
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Ezekiel, Ezekiel is told to measure the temple and its courts, and he describes this in great detail in his prophecy in the book of Ezekiel.
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Same thing going on here, and the measuring is for the purpose of noting and making a distinction then between those who are in the outer court and those who are in the inner court.
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The inner court are protected by God. That doesn't mean they won't suffer. The outer court, they are kind of fair game.
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They belong to the nations, and you'll note then that they're given over and that then here we've got these words, and they will trample the holy city for 42 months.
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Now, if we are the temple of God, then by extension, here's the graphical picture, then the idea is is that the holy city here being referred to is really talking about the church global.
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That's the picture of it, and so this is now turning the corner to begin to talk about the warfare of the devil against those who confess
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Christ, and so we have to see it in this regard. Now, 42 months, that is a year and a half, and it's a weird number.
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It's a weird number because what's the number for God? Seven, that's the number of completion, seven.
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All right, three and a half years is how much of seven? Half, it's an incomplete number.
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It's kind of like telling a joke and then never getting to the punchline. As a number, it stands out as odd, and you're gonna note then that this timeframe is described using multiple numerical values, three and a half years, 42 months, 1260 days.
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It's all the same thing. It's all the same thing, and this is a picture of the time from Christ's ascension until his return, but let me ask you this.
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In human history, from Christ's ascension until his return, is that the only time saints have believed in God?
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No, not at all. We've got the whole history of humanity prior to the birth, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, the
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Old Testament saints who trusted in God, so the idea here is that the three and a half years as an incomplete number is a picture of the persecution that takes place from the time of Christ's ascension until his return.
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The reason why it's three and a half years is because the other three and a half were prior. They preceded it.
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That's the idea, and this then gives way to the imagery regarding what is referred to as the two witnesses, and watch what it says.
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I will grant authority to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for how long? 1260 days, three and a half years, 42 months.
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You see it? Okay, that is a vital thing to keep in mind here.
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So then who are the two witnesses? And we're gonna note through human history and through church history, churchmen have struggled with understanding how to understand the two witnesses, and so there are some in church history who thought these are two literal guys who at the very end are going to be prophesying, and the thing is is that that interpretation doesn't really fit what's going on in the text.
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We're dealing with symbolical speech here. So there have been some who have said, well, this has got to be
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Enoch and Elijah, because Enoch and Elijah ascended up into heaven and they never died, and so the idea here is that their thinking is that immediately before the return of Christ, Enoch and Elijah come back, and they're the ones preaching and prophesying to the world and calling them to repent.
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That one falls short because the imagery here is, again, the three and a half years is talking about the timeframe of the church, and so I think a better way to look at the two and a half witnesses is to recognize them as kind of like law and gospel,
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Old Testament and New Testament, because here's the thinking behind this, and you'll note that when we look at Jesus' teaching,
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Christ makes a big to -do about the fact that one witness is insufficient.
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You need multiple witnesses to establish a fact, and so the idea here is that you'll note that the church, and as a preacher of law and gospel,
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I give you two witnesses every single Sunday, the witness of God's law, so this is the prophetic word calling us to repent as well as the apostles as that second witness, so you have two witnesses always confronting us with our sins, establishing a fact, the fact of our guilt before God and of our salvation in Christ, so think of it as Old Testament, New Testament, law and gospel, those are the two witnesses that go forth, and you'll note then that the trampling that takes place is this is a descriptor then of just how wicked that things get in the world and of the tenacity and nonstop harassment by the devil to destroy the church and her witness, and so the idea then is that every one of us are a big part, we're kind of rolled up into this picture then of the two witnesses.
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Anybody who is proclaiming law and gospel, calling sinners to repent and to believe into Jesus Christ, they are doing the work of the two witnesses, and you'll note then that God here is promising in these word pictures to protect the church in her mission, but here is where I have to give a definitive warning, and that is that you will see that when the church finishes its mission, when it has fully accomplished it, that God at that point is going to allow the church to be killed.
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That does not mean there will not be Christians on the earth, but I don't know if you guys have noticed, but it sure does seem like the church is getting the snot kicked out of it globally.
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It's hard, hard to find churches where pastors faithfully preach the gospel, who even mention the word repentance, and instead, in fact, one of the reasons why there's some of you joining us online today is because geographically, there ain't nothing near you.
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That's why you're joining us, and so I've described it in the past, and I'll continue to describe it.
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In the course of my public ministry, the time I've been doing public ministry at first as an apologist, and now as a pastor and apologist, it's been weird, this phenomenon of people who are, it's like watching lights being snuffed out as darkness continues to increase.
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Church after church after church falls, disappears, and they're given over to false doctrine, false teaching, or they close their doors and things like that, so you get the idea, all right?
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So let's keep going then. So I will grant authority to my two witnesses. They will prophesy for 1 ,260 days clothed in sackcloth.
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Sackcloth is a picture of what? Repentance, all right? We talked about ashes in the sermon today. Sackcloth is that other picture.
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So the idea then is that the church, in its witness of long gospel, prophetically proclaiming repentance and the forgiveness of sins, does so in a penitential spirit, in penitence as those who have been forgiven.
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And then these are the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth, and if anyone would harm them, fire pours from their mouth and consumes their foes.
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Now, that sounds like really cool, fire -breathing dragon kind of stuff here, but again, this is more or less a picture of how
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God protects his church, and so it's kind of invoking the fact that when
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Elijah was on Mount Carmel, the God who answers by fire, he is God, God answered by fire.
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And then you'll note Sodom and Gomorrah, they were destroyed with fire from the sky and things of this.
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This is kind of the picture. It's a picture of God's miraculous intervention to protect them from their foes, and if you know the history of the
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Reformation, I mean, nobody was expecting the Reformation at the time of the Reformation.
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Martin Luther didn't set out and say, I think I'll start a Reformation, all right? Nobody expects the
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German Reformation. Anyway, instead, what ends up happening is that Rome goes deeper and deeper into man -made apostasy, and there's this rebellion against what
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God has revealed in his word, and they've erected this monstrous edifice of a works -based religion, and what happens?
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God, in his grace, does something nobody expected. Some monk in the middle of Wittenberg, working by candlelight over the text of the
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Book of Romans, God opens his eyes and he sees the truth. Oh, wait, salvation is by grace, through faith.
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It's not by works. The light goes on. God, the Holy Spirit, flips the light switch on, and he just goes about his merry way, thinking, well, that's the right way of understanding the
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Bible, and just begins to act accordingly, and what ends up happening is the gospel breaks out and Rome is basically checked.
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The false teachings of Rome are checked, and then the gospel continues to go out throughout the whole world, and you're gonna note that I don't think historically it is an accident that Germany is the place then, centuries later, where the
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Nazis arrive. The reason being is because where the gospel breaks out, the devil and his hordes rush in to squelch it, and it was the
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German Lutheran seminaries that went apostate first, all right?
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Under the assaults of the devil, with the rise of pietism, if you've ever read Timotheus Varennus, it's an interesting book, but well worth the read.
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It talks about the rise and the doctrines and the teaching of Lutheran pietism.
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Timotheus Varennus. I think it's the Wisconsin Synod that makes that available. If you haven't read it, it's an actually very interesting document.
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And what he describes theologically is the progressive liberal monstrosity that we see today that has just gutted how many churches and taken congregations where the gospel was preached and then just rips the word of God away from them in its authority, and what it's replaced with is this feel -good religion that basically is a works -righteousness thing that basically says just do good things and God is gonna bless you and all this kind of stuff and how they define good, well, that changes from congregation to congregation.
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But all the seeds of the liberalism that we see today, those were all planted in the time of the rise of Lutheran pietism.
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And then what follows that, as soon as you stop listening to the voice of God in Scripture, and you've erected your own thing that you call
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Christianity that isn't, I think that sets the foundation then for the rise of the Nazis.
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And so if my interpretation is right, I would say buckle up, things here in the United States are not gonna get better because for a long time, the
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United States was the place where the gospel was being exported from, where missionaries were being sent proclaiming
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Christ and the forgiveness of sins. And now, I mean, it's so hard to find in the
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United States good, faithful churches. They really stand out in comparison to what's going on out there.
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And we're seeing in our day the rise of some pretty wicked political ideology, which I think is rightly married to the false religions that call themselves
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Christianity today. And I would note that that also applies to the
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Republicans, because have you guys ever noticed that the Whore of Babylon, Paula White, was the pastor of Donald Trump?
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Okay, do you think he's really standing for sound doctrine and true, sound, biblical principles?
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No way, all right? So keep all of that in mind. So all of that being said, the two olive trees and the two lampstands that I stand before the
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Lord of the Earth, and if anyone would harm them, fire pours from their mouth, consumes their foes. If anyone would harm them, this is how he is doomed to be killed.
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They have the power to shut up the sky, that no rain may fall during the days of their prophesying.
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And so you'll note, this is kind of invoking what God did for Elijah again. Elijah here is invoked in kind of this picture, because Elijah said, it's not gonna rain until I say it's gonna rain.
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This is what the Lord told him to say, and then he skedaddles and disappears for three and a half years. Notice how long
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Elijah's gone? How long does that famine last? Three and a half years. You can see, when you pull the bits from the
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Old Testament in here, you can kind of see what's going on. Well, doesn't that argue that one of these witnesses is literally
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Elijah? No. Was John the Baptist literally Elijah? No. Did he prophesy in the spirit of Elijah?
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Yeah, you betcha, right? That's the point here. So, and they have the power over the water to turn it to blood.
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This is an invocation of Moses, all right? The plagues of Moses here. And to strike the
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Earth with every kind of plague as often as they desire. And so you'll note that plagues have this very interesting ability to play into the hands of real preachers who preach law and gospel, who preach sin and grace, repentance and the forgiveness of sins.
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Whereas everybody else, you got all these people sticking their heads in the sand saying, what pandemic, what pandemic, right?
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And whereas the gospel preacher says, yeah, God is the one who sends these pestilences and plagues, and this is an extended
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Lenten season for us, so repent, you know? Otherwise you likewise will perish. And when they have finished their testimony, the beast that arises from the bottomless pit will make war on them and conquer them and kill them.
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Yeah, apparently we're not gonna have our best life now. Best life later. Yeah, best life later.
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See sermon from today for more details. Okay, so you sit there and go, wait, what?
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We're gonna lose? Yeah. Whose example are we following here?
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Christ. Okay, how did he win? By dying. Okay, so you get a note here that when the church has finished its course, the beast that arises from the bottomless pit, could it be
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Satan? Yes, it's Satan, okay. He will make war on them and he will conquer them and kill them.
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Well, that rules out post -millennialism right there. Post -millennialism, again, it's that Beatles song,
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I've got to admit it's getting better, getting better all the time, it can't get no worse. Anyway, you get the idea that that's just wrong.
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We're not gonna just get better. We're gonna get the tar beaten out of us.
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We are going to lose. So are you ready guys to hit the playing field? Let's go lose!
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Yeah, yeah! Yeah, yeah, right? So, and their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city that symbolically is called
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Sodom in Egypt where the Lord was crucified. Interesting here. And for three and a half days, some of the peoples from the tribes and languages in the nations will gaze at their dead bodies and refuse them to be placed in a tomb.
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Wow, okay. And here it gets really interesting. And those who dwell on the earth, they will rejoice over them and make merry and exchange presents because these two prophets had been a torment to those who dwell on the earth.
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And have you ever noticed that we Christians, when we preach the truth, we call up sinners to repent, non -believers and apostates are swift to swoop in and say, that's not right, that's not right.
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That's, be quiet, stop talking like that, right? And they make us suffer. I recently had somebody email me and say that they decided that they were going to challenge their pastor, their vision casting leader on some of his doctrine and his teaching.
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And they were cast out of the church. And I said, well, you're in good company.
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When you read the prophet Jeremiah, it says very clearly in Jeremiah that Jeremiah was forbidden to enter the temple.
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He was forbidden. Yet he was the true prophet of God and they wouldn't allow him in the temple anymore, okay?
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So you'll note that things get so wicked that when the church is finally defeated by the devil, people are gonna sit there and go, huzzah, finally.
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We don't have to listen to those nonsensical Christians telling us to repent all the time. You know, we finally win and what are we gonna do?
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We're gonna rejoice, we're gonna celebrate Christmas and we're gonna exchange presents at the death of the church.
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Wow, that's pretty wicked. And after the three and a half days, a breath of life from God entered them.
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They stood up on their feet and a great fear fell on those who saw them. Have a picture of the resurrection here. And then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying, come up here.
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And they went up into heaven in a cloud and their enemies watched them. And at that hour, there was a great earthquake and a 10th of the city fell.
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7 ,000 people were killed in the earthquake and the rest were terrified and gave glory to God of heaven.
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The second woe has passed. You see, you kind of get the picture here. And then the seventh angel blew his trumpet and there were loud voices in heaven saying, the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our
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Lord and of his Christ and he shall reign forever and ever. You might wanna sing that.
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And he shall reign forever and ever, right? Yeah, and women come on in to get the sopranos going.
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Anyway, and so the 24 elders who sit on their thrones before God, they fell on their faces and they worshiped
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God saying, we give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, who is and who was, for you have taken your great power and begun to reign.
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The nations raged, but your wrath came and the time for the dead to be judged. So you can note here, this is another picture of what?
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The end of the world, all right? This is the third time the world has ended in the book of Revelation here.
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How many times does the world end? Just once. So you can see what's going on here.
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This is the spiraled staircase. So this picture then of the two witnesses being raised to life and God saying, come up here.
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Remember, on the day when Jesus returns, the dead in Christ will rise first and they will meet
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Christ in the clouds in the air. You see it? So the two witnesses were part of the two witnesses now.
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All right? So this is a picture then of the fact that although the world will rejoice at the downfall and the destruction of the church once it has finished its mission,
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Christ will vindicate them, raise them from the dead and people will sit there and go, say, wait, what? Right?
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And then you've got the worship in heaven that the kingdoms of the earth have now become the kingdoms of our
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God. All right? The nations raged, but your wrath came and the time for the dead to be judged and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints.
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Look at that, prophets and saints. Somebody asked me the other day, is it wrong when a church refers to Mary as Saint Mary?
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I would note that within Lutheranism, there are congregations named like St. John's Lutheran Church.
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Is it wrong to call St. John, St. John? Nope. Is it wrong to call Mary, St. Mary? Nope, not at all.
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Rome's error is not in calling Mary a saint. It's in denying that everybody who believes in Christ is already a saint.
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That's their error. Sainthood is something to be attained by you and your works rather than something given to you by Christ.
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A saint, the Greek word is hagios, singular. The saints, plural, are the hagioi.
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And hagios means holy one. All right? So note, the prophets and the hagioi are listed together.
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God's gonna reward them all. And those who fear your name, both small and great, and for destroying the destroyers of the earth.
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And then God's temple in heaven was opened. The ark and its covenant was seen within his temple. There were flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail.
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Aha, I see some of the things here from the 10 plagues of Egypt, right?
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Picture of God's judgment. Well, now the world has ended three times.
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Next picture. Now we're getting into the parts of the book of Revelation that even pagans have read, all right?
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Because of popular movies. A great sign appeared in heaven.
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A woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of 12 stars.
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I seem to remember there was this guy in the book of Genesis, this kid, who wore this multicolored dream coat.
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At least that's how the Broadway musical describes it. But this kid, and didn't he have a,
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I remember a dream that he had, it's like a dream within a dream, of his parents bowing down before him, and they were pictured as the sun and the moon.
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That's his father's the sun, his mother's the moon, and his 11 brothers were depicted as what?
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Stars, okay? Oh, I see what's going on here. So here we've got, now work with me for a second, because I'm gonna use a phrase that seems odd.
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Here we have a picture, if you would, of the Old Testament, and I'm gonna put it in air quotes, church, all right?
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Now I'm using the word church kind of in its old, old, old way of looking at it. Ekklesia, the called out ones, the congregation, okay?
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So there is a right way in which you can talk about the Old Testament saints as the Old Testament church.
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But you gotta put it in air quotes, because there's no text that describes them in this way. But the idea then is if you read
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Romans four, every one of the Old Testament saints, they are saved by grace through faith, because Abraham is the man of faith, and all who have the faith of Abraham, they are the true children of Abraham.
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So the idea here, this next picture that comes up here in Revelation 12, we begin with a picture of the
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Old Testament saints. And the Old Testament saints, the patriarchs, it is through one of their lines, one of their clans, that the
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Messiah is born. So here, we've gotta see this, and Romans sit there and go, well, that's
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Mary, she's the queen of heaven. No, it's not, okay? This is not what this is referring to.
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So a woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet and on her head a crown of 12 stars.
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This is the Old Testament church. She was pregnant and was crying out with birth pains and the agony of giving birth, and another sign appeared in heaven.
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Behold, a great red dragon with seven heads, 10 horns on his head, seven diadems.
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His tail swept a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth. Could it be
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Satan? Yes, this is Satan, okay? And we're gonna pay attention to a few things here.
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He's a multi -headed dragon. So if you've ever seen a picture or an artistic depiction of that Greek thing called a hydra, all right?
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That's kind of a close idea of what's going on here. And so when we talk about the devil's warfare against the church, keep in mind that when you see certain things working together that don't normally seem like they would work together, then note that what you're looking at are two heads of the beast working together they're both part of the same dragon.
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That's just two different heads. So you look at like, you know, today's SJW postmodern liberals, all right?
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And you sit there and you go, how is it that you guys are the big defenders of Islam?
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Right? And you have to wonder about this because in that particular sense, you know,
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Islam doesn't seem to make sense as a religion that would be supported by people who are affirming homosexuality.
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Okay? So it's this weird thing. So you have these SJWs liberal who are gay affirming, who are all about overturning the patriarchy and upsetting everything like this.
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And they are basically out there being the big promoters of Islam.
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Well, Islam, if we were under Sharia law, those SJW liberals, they would not be permitted to operate the way they're operating or speak the way they're speaking.
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So it's weird when you have these two things working together that don't normally work together.
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You say, what's the common denominator? You see, that's how you can kind of connect things. So when we talk about conspiracies in the world, we got to stop talking about the
32:40
Bilderbergs and all this kind of stuff. The big conspiracy on planet Earth is the conspiracy of the devil.
32:47
And he's got multiple heads that he's working with that are all doing the same work, but doing it differently.
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And it doesn't seem like that group should be working with this group or this group should be working with that group. And yet it's weird, they all seem to be congealing okay with each other.
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And you sit there and go, how can that be? Like for instance, you got the charismatic movement openly talking about uniting with Roman Catholicism.
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And you sit there and go, what are you doing, okay? How can you do that, okay?
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Like the late NAR prophet, Kim Clement, he claimed that when
33:26
Francis took the papacy that God told him that he was going to unite the evangelical charismatics with the
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Roman Catholics. What do those two have in common?
33:43
Two different heads of the same dragon. That's how you connect these things.
33:48
The conspiracy is on the demonic end, not on the human end. On the human end, you got two entities working together that doesn't seem like they should be working together.
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It's not because they've sat down in a smoke -filled room with a really bad scotch and said, we really need to work on our conspiracy.
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No, the devil's the ones pulling all the strings. So multi -headed dragon, that's the idea, all right?
34:11
And so this is the one who swept a third of the stars out of heaven, referring to the angels. And so we get a picture again, the rebellion that takes place.
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The devil is the one who led the charge against God, convinced one third of the angels of heaven to rebel against God.
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How'd that go for them? Not so good, right? So they're cast out of heaven, and he cast them to the earth.
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Oh, lucky us. All right, and then the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, again, picture of the church, so that when she bore a child, he might devour it.
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Now you can think of what happens in the Gospel of Matthew where Herod tries to kill Christ shortly after his birth.
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Actually, a couple years after his birth. And she gave birth to a male child, one who was to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne.
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And so you'll note here in this picture, we don't have all the in -between stuff that Christ did. We have his birth, we have his ascension, you know, kind of as the book ends of all of this.
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And then the woman fled into the wilderness. And the woman is the what? The church. She's fled into the where?
35:19
The wilderness. Now, a little bit of a note here. If I were to ask you, how long did the children of Israel wander in the wilderness?
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Your first answer would be what? 40 years. However, when you add up the total, it's 42.
35:39
By the way, that's the answer to life, the universe, and everything. Okay, the answer is 42.
35:45
Okay, I'm sorry, Douglas Adams was right. And those of you who don't know what
35:52
I'm talking about, I feel for you. I really do. Okay. All right, 42.
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How many, 42 is how long? Three and a half years, 1260 days.
36:07
You get the picture. That's the other bit of all this. So the woman, that's the church, flees into the wilderness for how long?
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1260 days, three and a half years. Ah. Okay. So that's the time of the church.
36:32
We are part of that woman now. We're the children of the woman, per se, as you kind of get the picture here.
36:38
And you think the devil is okay with the fact that he didn't succeed in destroying
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Christ? Uh -uh, uh -uh. Okay. So here we've got this picture here.
36:51
So now, war arose in heaven. Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. All right, now,
36:57
I'm gonna note something here. I've made this before. When we talk about angels, we talk about cherubim and seraphim.
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Seraph is the Hebrew word for serpent. And you'll note that the seraphim are described in Isaiah 6 as having feet.
37:13
What do you call a serpent with feet? A dragon, okay? That's what they're called, all right?
37:22
So now you sit there and go, wait a second, are you saying the serpent in the garden was a dragon? Well, God told him to go down on his belly.
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A serpent with feet is a what? A dragon. No. All right?
37:37
Yeah, that'd be a crocodile. So war arose in heaven. Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon.
37:42
The dragon and his angels, they fought back, but he was defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. This is an important little bit here because if you consider the book of Job, Satan had access to heaven.
37:55
And so you have this picture in Job, the sons of God, the angels, are standing in the presence of God. And the devil himself joins them and God has a little conversation with the devil.
38:07
How'd you get here? You know, where have you been? I've been wandering the earth. And so he has access to heaven. And what does he do?
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He's constantly accusing the saints. Constantly trying to get it to provoke
38:19
God against us. All right? He's the accuser of the saints. And so you'll note that with the ascension of Christ, the dragon no longer has access to God.
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Christ's death, his resurrection, his ascension, it's all definitive. We are forgiven.
38:36
There is nobody to accuse us before God anymore. Christ is now interceding on our behalf and he's the one pleading for God to give us mercy and grace.
38:45
And he is the one who forgives us. So the dragon doesn't get to ascend into heaven anymore and do those things.
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And the great dragon, he was thrown down, that ancient serpent who's called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world, he was thrown down to earth and his angels were thrown down with him.
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And then I heard a loud voice in heaven saying, now the salvation and power and the kingdom of our
39:06
God and the authority of his Christ have come for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down who accuses them day and night before our
39:14
God. Ah, see, salvation has come. The accuser has been thrown down. He doesn't get to accuse us before God day and night anymore and they have conquered him.
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How? By the blood of the lamb and by the word of their testimony for they love not their lives unto death.
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Therefore rejoice, O heavens, and O you who dwell in them. But woe to you on the earth and the sea for the devil has come down in great wrath because he knows that his time is short.
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Oh, lovely. We've upset the dragon. Oh no, he's not happy, all right?
39:50
Well, that's kind of the point. So when the dragon saw that he had been thrown down to the earth, he pursued who?
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The woman, the church, who had been given, who had given birth to the male child.
40:01
But the woman was given two wings from the great eagle so that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness to the place where she is to be nourished for a time and times and half a time.
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Same idea here. Three and a half years, 42 months, 1260 days, time, time, half a time.
40:19
And the serpent poured water like a river out of his mouth after the woman to sweep her away with a flood.
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But the earth came to help, the help of the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed the river and the dragon had poured from his mouth.
40:33
Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring.
40:39
Uh -oh. I was gonna say, what? Yeah, to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus and he stood on the sand of the sea.
40:52
Does the armor of God sound like something we might wanna have on right now? We've got this really angry, multi -headed dragon after us waging war against us.
41:07
This puts spiritual warfare into a totally different perspective because you sit there and go, how am
41:15
I supposed to defeat that thing? Yeah, I've got no dragon -slaying strategies.
41:23
I've got nothing to offer you here. I've got no dragon -slaying prayers. I don't have any dragon -slaying utensils that you can use, silver bullets, wooden stakes, nothing.
41:36
Okay, so you're gonna note here, the devil is not fighting this warfare from a cool and calm disposition, okay?
41:49
He is acting in great wrath.
41:55
And here's then the most famous text in all of Revelation, Revelation 13.
42:01
This one's even quoted in the original Exorcist movie. And so, in those movies on Damien, what was the name of those movies?
42:12
The Omen. Even Hollywood has read this text. But I want you to note here, our context for this passage is what we just read at the end of 12.
42:23
And to make war, the dragon became furious with the woman, went off to make war with the rest of her offspring, that's us, and on those who keep the commandments and hold to the testimony of God.
42:33
And so he's furious and making war with us on that fury. Okay, so now comes the creation of the two mega -weapons of the devil.
42:46
And think of it this way. Every good story of a villain who's a diabolical, unstable, terrible villain, he always is in the purpose of creating some super -weapon, right?
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So you think of the Star Wars movie, the Emperor, what does he create? He creates the Death Star, right?
43:09
You think of Chief Inspector Dreyfus trying to destroy Clouseau, and what does he, he creates a death ray.
43:22
I had to go there. But the idea here is that every good villain has a super -weapon, right?
43:29
Well, here's the thing. The devil is not content to have one super -weapon, he's gonna make two.
43:36
Yeah, well, his time is short, so he wants to leave nothing to chance.
43:42
So he's gonna create two mega -weapons here that he's going to use for the purpose of waging war against the church.
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Here is mega -weapon numero uno. And then I saw the beast rising out of the sea, so the sea is the place of chaos.
43:58
So there you've got this picture of the multi -headed dragon, the sea of chaos, and you can see him taking his arms or his legs and going, like this, dramatically, and out comes, out of the sea of this chaos comes this beast, right?
44:15
10 diadems on its horns, and these diadems kind of go with the crowns of the dragon itself, so these diadems are somehow connecting.
44:24
So this beast is going to do the will of the dragon, right? And blasphemous names on its head.
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And the beast that I saw was like a leopard, its feet were like a bear's, its mouth was like a lion, oh my.
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And the dragon gave his power and his throne and his great authority.
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Now hold on one second here. Listen to these words. And the dragon gave his power and his throne and his great authority.
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I recall the devil talking like that. Hang on a second here. Matthew chapter four.
44:57
Here, let's see here. Jesus was led up by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil, and after fasting 40 days and 40 nights, he was hungry, albeit hungry after 40 minutes, and the tempter came and said to him, if you are the son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.
45:12
And he answered, his written man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. And then the devil took him to the holy city, set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, if you are the son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written,
45:24
I will command his angels concerning you. On their hands they will bear you up. And again he said, you shall not put the
45:29
Lord your God to the test. And here we go, this is the important one. So again, the devil took
45:34
Jesus to a very high mountain, showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, and he said, all these
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I will give you if you will fall down and worship me. Aha, now let's pay attention here.
45:49
So did Jesus take the devil up on the offer? Not on your life, right? Be gone, Satan, it is written, you shall worship the
45:55
Lord your God and serve him only. So here in Revelation 13, it says that this beast that the dragon has conjured up out of the sea of chaos, that he gave his power and his throne and his great authority.
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The thing that he was offering to Jesus, he gave it to the beast. And here's the thing, the beast has been here for 2 ,000 years.
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You know what it is, you know what you're looking for, you can tell, oh boy. So one of its heads seemed to have a mortal wound, and this mortal wound was healed, and the whole earth marveled as they saw the beast.
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Now this bit about the mortal wound kind of tells us about the fact that when the beast is in its operation, things are so volatile that the beast ends up kind of disappearing for a time and then coming back and disappearing.
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It's like it's died and then it keeps coming back. So it's like that song, oh the cat came back, the very next day, oh the cat came back.
46:52
Thought he was a goner, but the cat came back. Shouldn't say, but in this case it's the beast, right? So that's kind of the idea behind it.
46:58
So they worshiped the dragon, for he had given his authority to the beast. Of course they worshiped the dragon, that's what the devil wants.
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And then they worshiped the beast saying, who is like the beast, who can fight against it? Well, what is the beast, all right?
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The beast is, if you think of it this way, it is a political system, totalitarian controlling political system, and the reason it exists is not to snuff out freedom.
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The purpose that this thing exists for is the destroying of the church. This is how the beast, how the devil's waging war against the church.
47:37
So think of it this way. We are all a little bit nervous in our days about the rise in the
47:42
United States of flat out communism and fascism, all right? You got people overtly talking about overthrowing the
47:50
Constitution and replacing our freedoms with a totalitarian state.
47:56
Believe me when I tell you, this is not about, it has nothing to do with freedom. The beast exists for the purpose of waging war against the church and silencing the church.
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Where these political systems have taken root in human history, have Christians been able to operate freely?
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No, that's the point.
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And the devil is not going to be satisfied until all the kingdoms of the earth are under the control of the beast.
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And once and for all, the church is silenced. What did we just read in chapter 11?
48:41
Will the devil finally destroy the church? Yeah, yeah, okay?
48:51
So you're sitting there going, all right, Pastor Roseborough, you're giving me nightmares and I don't really feel warm fuzzies about this future that you're painting for us.
49:01
This is only the birth pains, this is nothing, yeah. I think we're returning to the first and second centuries.
49:08
Oh yeah, I think so too. Yeah, Constantine's reforms are about to be overthrown.
49:14
Okay, Christianity will again be an illegal religion. Globally, that's where we're heading.
49:22
The purpose of the beast is not about the squelching of freedom. It's where freedom exists that the gospel is able to go out.
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It's about eliminating freedom in order to stop and wage war against the saints.
49:35
So communist China exists as an example of the beast.
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The former Soviet Union, this is an example of the beast. Okay, even
49:48
Nazi Germany, an example of the beast. Today's regimes where Christianity and Christians are being oppressed severely.
49:57
These political systems are examples of the beast. And you notice the beast has how many heads?
50:05
Let's go back, let's take a look here, let's see here. All right, so 10 horns, seven heads.
50:13
So the beast is multi -headed too, and the diadems show that it's under the control of the dragon.
50:19
You know, it kind of all pairs up. So you sit there and go, oh, so we're not talking about one uniform political ideology.
50:26
We're talking about multiple variations of political ideologies where freedom is squelched and the result is
50:32
Christians are under the boot of the beast or devoured by the beast, all right?
50:41
And you'll note that in these political systems, people are expected to worship the state.
50:49
The state behaves like God, okay? Who is like the beast, who can fight it?
50:55
And the beast was given a mouth uttering haughty and blasphemous words, and it was allowed to exercise authority for 42 months.
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How long has the beast been around? The beast's been here since the beginning. Did you guys all notice that Roman Empire is the very first iteration of the beast?
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It opens its mouth to utter blasphemies against God, blaspheming his name, his dwelling, that is those who dwell in heaven.
51:24
Also, it was allowed to make war on the saints, and to what? Wait a second, but I'm the head and not the tail.
51:33
Hmm, okay. So we get to play on the losing team until the last day.
51:43
Yay, okay. And all authority was given it over every tribe and people and language and nation.
51:50
So you're gonna note here, the scope of the beast, if I'm reading Revelation properly, future of humanity, globalist totalitarian regime.
52:07
Oh beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain. Yeah, okay, so America's not gonna be, as we know it, isn't gonna be around forever.
52:19
No point in, so here's the thing. Christ has revealed all of this ahead of time.
52:24
This is the game plan. We're in the huddle right now, and Christ is saying, all right, here's the plan. I want you guys to go out, and I want you to lose.
52:31
You're gonna get conquered. You're gonna be slaughtered. You're gonna be hunted down. The beast is gonna wage war against you, and ultimately, your dead carcasses are gonna lie in the streets.
52:41
They won't even agree to bury you, and they're gonna exchange presents once you guys lose. Now go when?
52:48
Go for it. That's the, and he says, who wants to sign up for this?
52:55
The thing is is that this is how Christ is determined for the war to take place. This is why, when you look at the armor of God, the commanding orders are to stand.
53:07
The orders are not to advance. Stand. You take your stand. Well, wait a second.
53:13
If I take my stand here, I'm gonna get destroyed by this thing. You betcha. Way to go, all right?
53:18
Now you're starting to catch on, all right? So, and all who dwell on the earth will worship it. Everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the
53:28
Lamb of God who was slain. If anyone has a ear to hear, let him hear. So listen to this, you Christians. If anyone is to be taken captive, to captivity he goes.
53:36
If anyone is to be slain by the sword, with a sword he must be slain. So this calls for the endurance and faith of the saints.
53:49
Oh boy. Oh yeah.
53:57
And by the way, there's another beast. That was only the first mega weapon. Okay. Second mega weapon.
54:03
And then I saw another beast. Another one? Yeah, there's a second one. They work together. And he had two horns, like a lamb, and it spoke like a dragon.
54:12
Now this is a picture of false religion, all right? So this is a picture of apostate
54:18
Christianity. It looks just like a lamb. Oh, what a cute little lamb. But I have the voice of a dragon, okay?
54:25
So this is all the false forms of Christianity, okay? And the false forms of Christianity, their goal is to get you to worship the beast and convince you, oh, it's a good thing that you've lost all your freedoms and you can't preach the gospel.
54:40
And we're really doing humanity a favor by killing everybody who believes in Jesus, at least differently than we do.
54:47
And so you get the idea here. So it exercises all the authority of the first beast in its presence and makes the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast.
54:59
You wanna get an example from history of what this looks like since it doesn't exist anymore? During the time of the
55:05
Nazi regime in Germany, there were churches that joined the movement known as the
55:12
Deutsche Kirche movement, the German church movement. You can look this up.
55:18
And on their altars, they replaced the cross with a swastika. And all their pyramids had the black and red of the
55:25
Nazi party. And they de -Judaized the Bible by getting rid of anything that was
55:31
Jewish in it and confessed that they were a true expression of Christianity for the
55:36
German people and really all they were was an arm of the Nazi party.
55:42
And people who called themselves Christians attended Deutsche Kirche and believed that they were worshiping
55:51
Christ in the process. And what they were really doing was worshiping the
55:56
Führer and the one behind the Führer, who's who? The dragon. So, all right, now
56:07
I'm gonna take a quick look at some questions, because I'm sure there are a lot of them.
56:14
Okay, Viking colors for the altar covers. Are they playing today? I have no idea.
56:19
If they are, then it's, my apologies. It is a penitential season, and we know how that goes.
56:25
Okay, let's see here. All right, all right. So in 1
56:30
Corinthians about the temple, is that y 'all or single you? Y 'all are the temple of God.
56:36
Y 'all, it's y 'all. Okay, that's the truth. Finding a real church in Connecticut is near impossible now.
56:42
All right, like lights being snuffed out in our times. It is like that, yep. It's been frightening as I've been watching it happen.
56:49
Same here in New York City. All right, has not the church been persecuted at times very severely since the beginning?
56:55
Yes, it has. And so that's kind of the point here, is that the fact that one of the heads of the beast, it seems to have a mortal wound and then has come back, shows that there are times of respite, okay?
57:06
And we recognize that the beast that existed, in the form that it existed in the ancient church, had restraints on it, and that the beast in the end times has no restraints on it.
57:19
So we recognize when we kind of put the pieces together that that's how that's, what we have to look for.
57:26
Wow, what a time to be alive. Exactly, an exciting time or a scary time.
57:31
It's both, yes, it's both, exciting and scary. And this calls for endurance. Endurance by the saints.
57:37
All right, you know, a good one says, well then I hope I'm brave when it's my time to die.
57:44
Exactly, and you pray that the Lord gives you the strength to confess, even if it means laying down your life.
57:51
Don't worry, your life is hidden in Christ. You're gonna rise again from the dead. So, you know, our hope is not in this world anyway.
57:58
So we know who ultimately wins and whose we are exactly. So what about the scripture that tells the gates of hell will not prevail against it?
58:05
There's still gonna be faith on the earth. The idea then is that in what's being described here is such a, it's such a great tribulation, a time that Christianity will be brought down to really, really tiny remnant at the end.
58:21
There will be just a few people who will be believing and they will have no ability to meet publicly.
58:26
The ability to hold a public church service will not exist once the church is defeated, it's done.
58:33
There will be no public testimony, there will be no, we won't be meeting in this building at Kongsvinger.
58:39
If anything, we might be meeting in someone's basement, you know, somewhere off in the middle of nowhere.
58:45
But that's the idea, because Christ makes it clear that the gates of hell will not ultimately prevail against the church, and there will be faith when
58:50
Christ returns, just not a lot of Christians, all right? Tony says, it seems to me that today's official religion is denial, denial of reality, and denial of sin.
59:01
Yep, yep, exactly, it's the strong delusion stuff. Dante's Inferno is big in art schools, okay.
59:10
Okay, one of the AG churches we attended briefly used a Bible that the pastor proudly stated was approved by Rome, so you can witness to a
59:17
Catholic without offense. There are, let's just say that there are, there is a particular translation that Roman Catholics do tend to use more than others.
59:26
I forget the name of it, is it the Jerusalem translation? I forget the name of it. But there is also a version of the
59:32
RSV that Rome works from, and the idea behind it is that using somebody's preferred translation may be at times a good way to preach the gospel to them so that they don't immediately take offense, yeah.
59:45
Would that maybe also just be a version that contains the Apocrypha? It will contain the
59:51
Apocrypha, indeed. But there is, I forget the name of the translation that Rome uses, kind of like a lot of Catholics read it, but there is a particular one.
01:00:00
When I was doing countercult apologetics and reaching out to Jehovah's Witnesses, I actually learned how to preach the gospel to them using the
01:00:08
New World Translation. Because if I pulled out my Bible, that would immediately create a roadblock to the conversation, so I said, let's open up in your
01:00:17
Bible to Galatians and things like that, and so you become proficient in being able to use the scriptures, and wielding the sword of the
01:00:24
Spirit, even if it's a bad translation, you can do it sometimes very effectively. But I would note that the translation the
01:00:31
Catholics use is not really that bad of a translation. It's actually quite ironic that they even have one, considering how many
01:00:39
Protestants were put to death by Roman Catholics for daring to translate the Bible into the common vernacular of human beings.
01:00:45
That's kind of fascinating. All right, so it's like the Egyptians. Army being swallowed up, I, so I need the dungeon walkthrough, okay, let's see.
01:00:54
Are the sons of God in Genesis the same as the sons of God in the Book of Job? No. So, and this is gonna take a, this would be one
01:01:04
I want to come back to. In Genesis 6, you have the description of the sons of God, and then also in that context, you have the description of what are called the
01:01:14
Nephilim, and the issue is is that the Book of Enoch kind of interprets that as the sons of God being angels who ended up having sexual intercourse with human beings.
01:01:27
That's a different species altogether, and angels are non -corporeal, so they don't have a body.
01:01:35
So I think the proper way of understanding Genesis 6 when it talks about the sons of God is referring to people who believe in God properly, where the sons of men are like those of the line of Cain.
01:01:47
They deny, they've gone apostate, and their whole life is wrapped up in the earth, okay?
01:01:54
All right, so you're teaching that the Antichrist is not a literal person who will be possessed by Satan.
01:02:00
Elizabeth, here's the thing, it doesn't rule that out. That's where the big debate is, is whether or not at the very end, the
01:02:08
Antichrist will be one singular person. I am of the opinion that exegetically, you have to come to that conclusion, but there are little
01:02:15
Antichrists leading up to it, is the best way I can put it. And so in the end times, and the last temple built by the
01:02:23
Jewish people isn't literal as well. No, here's the thing, is that you do not need a literal temple in Jerusalem for the rise of the
01:02:31
Antichrist. The Antichrist comes up through the church, through the temple of God, which is the church, and he's gonna exalt himself within the visible body of Christ and claim to be
01:02:42
God and exalt himself over everything that claims to be God. So the idea here is that the temple is referring to the church, but the
01:02:50
Antichrist may in fact, and I actually lean in this direction, be the embodiment of Satan incarnate.
01:02:58
And I personally believe that he's gonna be the last man standing on the day of judgment when Christ returns, and that he will be destroyed by Christ by the breath of Christ's mouth, as like the anti -type of Adam, if you would.
01:03:14
Whereas God breathed into the nostrils of Adam the breath of life and he became a living soul, the last man standing,
01:03:20
Christ is gonna breathe on him and he will extinguish his life. And so the bookend of history, I think, is between those two people,
01:03:26
Adam and the Antichrist. That's my opinion. So the incarnate Satan would be Christ.
01:03:33
Correct, yeah, that's a good way of putting it. Okay, all right, so we got talk here about New York Giants fans.
01:03:40
My apologies to you, too. All right, good questions. I've always taken this literal predictions couch and word pictures, but I'm learning
01:03:47
Christian view of things, too. Okay, are there good Lutheran commentaries on civil obedience surrounding pandemics?
01:03:54
That is a good question, McDonald family, and I'm assuming Heather is asking the question.
01:04:00
I would look at the Romans commentary put out by Concordia Publishing House, specifically as it relates to Romans chapter 13 and maybe looking at that.
01:04:12
And here's the thing is that it's one thing to make a church illegal to meet in public because they're a church.
01:04:21
It's another thing when they are saying the churches cannot meet publicly in the case of a pandemic.
01:04:27
But the thing is is that you'll notice we're at like nine months into two weeks to flatten the curve now. And so the question comes up, at what point do you say enough is enough?
01:04:40
And so that's a bigger question and maybe one that I can't answer at this time, but.
01:04:49
Can I say a conspiracy theory? Sure. To meet together, to be the body of Christ, you really don't need that.
01:05:05
And it's not so much that they're not gonna get together after it is over, but I feel like it's more of the frog in the boiling pot of if you can get you to admit now that you really don't need to meet.
01:05:21
Yeah. If you can concede that line, you're gonna start conceding more lines. Yeah, so the question is is that because these lines have already been crossed, that in the future time, maybe even outside of a pandemic, that seeing the curtailing of the ability for Christians to meet publicly, we've already gotten people used to that concept.
01:05:43
That's an interesting way of putting it. I don't have the answer to it, because I'm not a prophet. And I'm not saying that there's any big wig out there saying it's gonna destroy the church.
01:05:52
There is. Is it Satan? Could it be Satan? Could it be Satan? Yeah, could it be Satan? Yeah, all right. All right, so I'm going to, yeah,
01:05:59
Dewey Rhymes. That's the one. I think that's the one. All right, so what is the mark? We're gonna get to that next week. So we will talk about the mark of the beast next week.
01:06:07
So I know I left you on a cliffhanger. Bummer. You'll just have to tune in next week. So what is that mark of the beast?
01:06:13
Okay, well, it's a barcode, and then there's an RFID chip underneath it. Chips in our brain.
01:06:19
Yeah, no, it's none of those things. We'll talk about that when we get there next week. All right, peace to you brothers and sisters.