135. Revelation (An Olivet Introduction)

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Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the broadcast where we prod the sheep and beat the wolf. This is episode 136, a new series on Revelation.

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The end of one thing. Well, hello, everyone, and welcome back to the broadcast.

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Over the last several weeks, we've pilfered deep into the dank and dirty diapers of the

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Democratic Party in our series called 10 Reasons Why Voting for the Democrats is a

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Sin. Now, we've covered some extraordinary and very damning evidence against them.

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We've peered into the dark recesses of critical race theory and Marxism. We've exposed the roots of all of that.

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We've uncovered how the Democrats have actively and intentionally promoted the sexualization of our children through education, through entertainment, through experiments that they conducted on our children by pedophiles like Alfred Kenzie, who, by the way, is heralded as a hero by the modern left, which is gross.

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We saw how the Democrats have weaponized climate hysteria and turned it into a financial windfall.

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Kind of like in the words of Bernie Sanders, for the millionaires and billionaires. But perhaps the most damning revelation of all was the company that the modern day

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Democrats keep. They surround themselves with a parade of perverts and predators, men like Anthony Weiner, the

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Podestas, women like Marina Abramovich, you can look her up yourself, or kinky kingpins like Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, and Puff Daddy.

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Their disgusting roots have sunk down so deep into the septic tank of human depravity that it implicates them as being just as corrupt and just as perverse as the company that they're associating themselves with.

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With that, I'm proud of the work that we've done. The evidence that I've shared has been irrefutable.

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And frankly, I am shocked after doing this that the Democratic Party still exists as a major player in modern

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American politics. From their inception as an organization founded to promote slavery and the perpetual nature of that institution, to the party of Jim Crow, to the party of just on and on and on,

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I am proud of the work that we did to expose them. In fact, I only wish that they were behind bars or that we lived in a just society when people who perpetrate evil actually would suffer the consequences like it used to be when we had public hangings.

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But with that, I am satisfied that the case has been made against these moral monsters.

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And I'm satisfied that I don't think anybody walking away from the first six reasons that we gave would say that voting for the

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Democratic Party is anything other than a sin against God. It betrays where your allegiances are.

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It says that you're calling what God calls evil, you're calling that good. And I'm proud that we have done a thorough, unequivocal job that I believe has been very helpful.

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But in the first six episodes, I think we've done enough.

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And actually the final four episodes that we were going to cover, which is religious liberty, transgenderism, the LGBTQ disaster, and abortion, we've already addressed all of those already in this very series.

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In the six episodes, I went back and looked, every one of these were addressed. We've referenced them.

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We've traced their history that's undergirded them. We've shown how the modern day Democratic Party has become the chief architect and the greatest peddler of death.

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So with that, I'm satisfied that what we've done is enough. And I'm satisfied that anybody who watches those six episodes has more than enough ammunition to have a conversation with your friend, to convince someone else of the evils of the modern

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Democratic Party, and also if you were on the fence about it, to be able to go to the polls this

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November and vote against this demonic party. So with that, I'm very proud.

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Now let's go to the next section, the beginning of another. So with that today,

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I am officially closing out the 10 reasons that voting Democrat is a sin series. We're closing that out.

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We've accomplished what we set forward or what we set out to do. And now it's time for us to move forward.

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And as you know, we've been gearing up for our next series. I've been announcing it now for months, which is a deep dive into the book of Revelation, which

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I've said is going to begin at some point in the new year because I was planning on doing this series and, you know, maybe something else before that.

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But given that we just finished out our current series on the Democrats and given how thoroughly excited

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I am for this series, I don't see any reason whatsoever to wait. So I'm announcing today that we're going to begin this new series next week on the book of Revelation, which is going to be awesome because we're going to walk through every single verse in the book of Revelation, and we're going to show how every single line of it has already been fulfilled in the past.

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Now there's several different interpretations of the book of Revelation. There's the futurist interpretation. There's the preterist interpretation.

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There's the idealist interpretation. There's the hysterist interpretation. There's amillennialism, postmillennialism, premillennialism, dispensationalism, which is the wrong millennialism.

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But what I'm going to do is I'm going to strip away all of those difficult terms and we're going to approach

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Revelation, not from a deluded posture of the futurist, but we're going to see how the book is not just, it's not a psychedelic vision of our 21st century present moment with Apache helicopters and all of that.

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What we're going to see is how this is a vision that was given by God to John depicting things that were going to happen in his lifetime and in the lifetime of the first century audience.

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We're going to see how this is about the end of the old covenant world that occurred 2000 years ago in Jerusalem's past.

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I'm going to be arguing that every image, every symbol, every prophecy that exists in the book of Revelation has already been fulfilled in the destruction of that great city,

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Jerusalem in the year 70 AD. That means that I take that the entire book of Revelation has already occurred in the past.

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Every possible bit of it. Now maybe you're disagreeing and you're like, that's not what Revelation talks about.

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Trust me. Just watch. Argue with me in the comment section, but learn because I'm going to be given a perspective that maybe you've never thought about before and I think is very compelling and I think is also very biblical from the locust to the mark of the beast to Armageddon to everything in between.

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I'm going to show you in this series how it all took place during that very first tumultuous generation of the church and how this is precisely what

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God intended to do when he unleashed his kingdom upon the world. The series, like I said, is going to challenge what many of you have been taught to believe for most of your life.

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This is going to, in fact, give you an entirely new and very optimistic perspective on what the book of Revelation is all about and why

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I think that this is a biblical view and why it's good news for Christians and not some doom and gloom thing that is supposed to depress you and make you anxious.

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Again, I'm not going to ask you to just take my word for that. I'm going to prove it and I'm going to prove it line by line by line in the book of Revelation and it is going to be glorious.

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I've actually been waiting for 10 years to do this series because I didn't feel like that I was ready.

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Let's go. A bit of a prequel. Now, before we dive into Revelation chapter one, verse one, in this series, we're going to do something a little different.

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We are going to lay a foundation that's going to get us to Revelation. It's going to make this series even better.

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Now, I believe that the foundation for the book of Revelation doesn't occur in Revelation. The foundation for this book actually occurs in the book of Matthew in chapter 24, which is where we're going to kick things off for the first couple of weeks in the series, and it's going to serve as a bit of a prequel for where we're heading.

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Now, normally you would give a prequel after you release the original movie and you would expect that the audience would tie it all together.

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But if you're like me and you go back and you watch the prequel before the movie, it actually makes so much more sense and it actually helps you put the story together in a better and more robust way.

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Because Revelation is such a difficult book and because Matthew 24 is a much more straightforward book or chapter, it's much simpler and it gives a clearer blueprint for what

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Revelation is all about. I believe that this is going to be an incredible introduction to this series and it's going to help us understand

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Revelation so much better. In a sense, it's kind of like putting on your night vision goggles.

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Sure, you can go fight the enemy in the dark if, let's say, you're deployed to Iraq. You can go fight the enemy in the dark while you want, but if you have night vision goggles, you can see the lay of the land.

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Matthew 24 is going to be our night vision goggles that helps us get there. Now, in case you've never thought about the fact that Matthew 24 is the prequel to the book of Revelation, I'm going to sum up that argument very briefly today.

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And then next week, we're going to jump into Matthew 24 and we're going to get into it.

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So Matthew 24 is what scholars call the Olivet Discourse, and the reason they call it that is because it's a discussion that Jesus had with his disciples on the

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Mount of Olives. And he's discussing with his disciples about the future and what's going to happen after his arrest, after his death, and what was going to happen to Jerusalem.

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Because the city of God, Jerusalem, just rejected God in the flesh when he came.

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They turned on him, they killed him, and they were going to persecute his followers to the death.

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So God is going to bring that entire old covenant system that was stewarded by the

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Jews to a grand climactic finale. This means that all of its trappings, like the temple, the sacrificial system, the priesthood the festivals, all of it was going to be coming to a turbulent and very permanent end.

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In the Olivet Discourse, which shows up in Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21,

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Jesus answers the disciples' questions about when these things are going to happen by giving the greatest prophetic announcement that Jesus ever gave.

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It's explicit, it's detailed, and once you've seen it, it is undeniable what

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Jesus was intending to say. It's in this passage where Jesus foretells the destruction of the

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Jerusalem temple, the persecution of first century believers, the rise and fall of messiahs, wars and rumors of wars that happened in the first century, famines and earthquakes that happened in the first century, the abomination of desolation and the great tribulation.

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And yes, Jesus uses that word. That's not only going to bring an end to the

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Jewish age, but was going to begin an unrivaled rule of Christ on earth that's going to eventually purge the entire world of all of its curse and rebellion.

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This prophetic discourse, again, we're going to be looking at it in Matthew 24, is key to understanding the book of Revelation because it covers the same timeline.

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It talks about the same events, and it even uses the same kind of language and imagery to make its point.

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Think about it this way. Revelation describes the end of the old covenant world with wild visions,

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Old Testament illusions and apocalyptic symbols. Matthew 24 talks about these exact same events, but in a more straightforward, in a more conversational way.

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Both passengers are looking at the same events, but through drastically different lenses.

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Take this for example, events that have happened not too far in the distant past before you and I were born, of course, but they're in the 19th century.

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If you want to read about the rise of Bolshevism, for instance, and the Russian communist revolution, there's plenty of books on that topic and lectures, college lectures on that topic that can satisfy your curiosity and your inquiring mind.

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You can read about it in history books. You can watch a documentary about it on YouTube. And you can also do it in a different way where you can pick up George Orwell's Animal Farm, which presents the material in an allegorical way.

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And it details the real events that happened in the rise of the communist party in Russia, but through symbolic and highly metaphorical language.

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In this way, a master's level history lecture on this, a documentary that was made for high schoolers and the book

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Animal Farm are all talking about the same event, the rise of Bolshevism. And yet they're doing it from a variety of different genres, which is why studying both and making sure that you understand the rules of language that apply to both genres is so important.

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Well, in the same way, Revelation and Matthew 24 are speaking about the same events.

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They're talking about the end of the old covenant world as given to us by Jesus and the other as given to us by the dreams of John.

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One is talking about this through conversational language between Jesus and his disciples. And the other is through the visionary apocalyptic language that John the apostle received while he was on the island of Patmos.

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So in order to understand John's vision even better, I'm arguing that we need to first look at Jesus is very straightforward conversation about this topic and use it as an answer key for unlocking the meaning that's going to be coming throughout the book of Revelation.

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Also interestingly, every single gospel has an Olivet discourse except for John.

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Matthew does this in Matthew 24, Mark and Mark 13, and Luke does it in chapter 21.

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But John doesn't. And I believe that this is highly intentional. I don't believe that John just somehow left out the

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Olivet discourse, the most incredible and unbelievable prophecy that Jesus ever gave.

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I don't believe that he just somehow forgot to do this. I believe that John's gospel is not about eschatology.

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He says in chapter 20, verse 31, these things have been written so that you will believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that by believing in him, you'll have life in his name.

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So he didn't add it into his gospel, but he didn't want to forget it either. So he didn't just write a single chapter about it.

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He wrote an entire book about it because it's too important for John to skip over.

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So he wrote an entire book, which means that every gospel writer talks about the

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Olivet discourse. Matthew does it in Matthew 24, Mark and Mark 13, Luke and Luke 21, and John does it in Revelation chapter one through Revelation chapter 22.

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Now in order to make this connection even clearer so that I can prove to you that the book of Revelation is

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John's Olivet discourse, I'm going to give you six examples that are going to tie up this connection.

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Now there's many more that I could give them that, but I'm just going to give you six. So number one, the timeframe references of judgment.

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Immediately before the Olivet discourse begins, Jesus has excoriated the Jews and called down seven covenantal woes on top of them.

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And at the end of that section in Matthew 23, he says that Jerusalem and the temple is going to be left desolate and that that generation of Jews is going to come under the mighty and terrifying wrath of God, Matthew 23 verses 36 through 38.

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Now the starkness of this covenantal curse language and these seven woes and, and the fact that Jerusalem is going to be, is going to be toppled by God.

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All of this language started startling his disciples who were trembling probably as they walked out of the city of Jerusalem and they even asked him as they were going up the

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Mount of Olives, Jesus, how can these things be? That's Matthew 24 three. And then

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Jesus sits down and then gives them one proof after another, after another, that everything that he spoke in, in Jerusalem before and in Matthew 24 on the

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Mount of Olives was going to happen to Jerusalem within a single generation.

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That's Matthew 24 34. He said this generation will not pass away until all these things take place, which means that everything he just said must happen within a single generation, which is 40 years in the

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Bible. So what we have in Matthew 24 is a near term prophecy about near term events that are going to have a near term fulfillment when the city of Jerusalem is destroyed.

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That is what Matthew 24 is about and we're going to prove that to you. Now the book of Revelation in the same way begins with near term timeframe references.

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For instance, the book of Revelation begins in chapter one verse one with the things which must soon take place.

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Now I don't know if you're operating or I'm operating under a different definition of what soon means, but when dispensationalists and premillennialists say that the book of Revelation is going to happen in the year 2050 or 21, how can we talk about something that's going to happen soon if it doesn't even happen for 2000 plus years?

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That doesn't make any sense. And that actually makes a mockery of language. Verse three says that that the time is near.

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And trust me, God doesn't operate on a broken clock. When it says that time is near, it actually means that it's near to the proximity of the time which the writing was given.

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When Jesus gave this revelation to John, he meant that the events were near to John, not to you and I.

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Again, that would make nothing of the language. That'd make the language into Plato that we can form it into whatever we want.

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Chapter three verse 11 says, behold, I am coming quickly. So if Jesus is coming quickly and he told that to John, John would assume that that Jesus is going to come back in my lifetime.

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He's not going to assume that Jesus is going to come back in our lifetime. That wouldn't make any sense.

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Now you can argue, say, okay, the book of Revelation begins that way, but that's not how it ends. Au contraire, mon frere.

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The book of Revelation also ends with Jesus saying in chapter 22 verse 21 of the final verses in the book that I am coming quickly.

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He even says, yes, I'm coming quickly as if to remind you that no, everything in this book from chapter one to chapter 22 exist in the, in the, in the situation or the environment of my soon and near term return.

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In Revelation 22, six even says that all these things must soon take place. That includes

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Revelation 22. So chapter one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, all the way to 22 are connected by these timeframe references where Jesus says they must soon take place, which means that this book is not a book about our future, but it's a book about the near term fulfillment and future that was going to experience going to be experienced by John and the first century church, which tells us that the book of Revelation and the

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Olivet discourse are talking about the same events in the same timeframe and talking about the same near term fulfillment.

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That's the first example. Here's another one, false messiahs and false prophets in Matthew 24, five through 11,

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Jesus warns that false messiahs and false prophets are coming and they're going to deceive many people in the early church.

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Well, that same theme appears in the book of Revelation where false teachers like Jezebel in Revelation two 20 and the infamous beast and the false prophet in Revelation 13, 11 through 18 are performing many signs and wonders in order to deceive the people and to lead them astray.

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This repetition of the theme shows how revelation is describing the exact same events that are happening in the

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Olivet discourse, which means that these two things are connected, but we're not going to stop there.

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There's plenty of other examples we could get. For instance, the persecution of the saints. Jesus tells his disciples in Matthew 24 that they're going to be delivered to tribulation.

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He actually uses the word great tribulation there, and he says that you're going to be hated by all the nations for the sake of my name,

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Matthew 24, nine, which paints a pretty terrifying picture for the first century church that they're going to be walking through crazy painful and difficult times in the first 40 years that they exist and that they're to be on the lookout and be ready and to not and to not give up because better days are coming.

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Well, that prophecy was fulfilled. The early church went through the greatest season of persecution that the church of Jesus Christ has ever went through.

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There's never been a generation persecuted like them. So that was that was fulfilled in the first century.

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But Revelation also mirrors that and describes how the saints of God are going to go through persecutions as well.

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It says that that they were under the altar, those who'd been slain because of the word of God, Revelation six, nine, which is what happened in the book of Acts.

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Men and women like Stephen slain because of the word of God. Revelation says that there was a great multitude who came out of the great tribulation.

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That's the same word that Jesus uses in Matthew. So Matthew or Jesus says in Matthew that the saints are going to go through a great tribulation.

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Revelation says that they actually went through a great tribulation. These things are connected. Matthew and Revelation are telling the same story so that both books are forecasting a period of terrible suffering that was going to fall on the first century church that they were going to have to walk through in their immediate future and not in ours.

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Revelation is not talking about events that are going to happen to us. It was talking about events that happened to the first century church.

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Number four, the abomination of desolation. Jesus points to this, this strange event called the abomination of desolation is going to be standing in the holy place and that we're to look back to Daniel for clarity on that event.

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That's Matthew 24, 15. Now Luke, who's writing to a Gentile audience, gives us a little bit of a clearer picture that this event happens when the

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Roman armies stomp into the city of Jerusalem and profane the temple. Luke 21, 20.

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Now that is exactly what the book of Revelation is talking about in Revelation chapter 11, verse two, where the holy city of God is trampled underfoot by the

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Gentiles for 42 months, which just so happens to be the precise amount of time that Rome was besieging

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Jerusalem. I mean, do we think that there's a coincidence here? I think not.

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Number five, the cosmic catastrophe in the end of the age. Matthew begins talking about the signs of the end of the age.

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Then you get to Matthew 24, 29, where it talks about the sun being dark and the stars falling and the heavens shaken and all of this.

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And all of that points to the events that are described in the book of Revelation. The language is the same in both books.

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The sun is dark and the stars fall. The heavens are shaken and it's language, apocalyptic literature that's used throughout the

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Bible to describe the end of a political authority or the end of a nation.

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In this sense, it's describing the end of Judah and the old covenant order.

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It's describing the political and spiritual upheaval that was going to be unleashed upon the world at the coming of Christ, where the old way of knowing

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God through a temple and through a sacrifice and through a priesthood and through a festive calendar, all of that was going to be put away by Jesus, who now is the only way, the only truth and the only life and the only possible way by which you will know the father.

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You see, when Jesus came, he is the way, the truth and the life, but the temple still stood there saying, no, you need to know

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God through here. Sacrificial systems said that you need to know God through the sacrifices of a priest by the blood of bulls and goats.

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So Jesus came and completed the sacrificial system, becoming the once and for all perfect sacrifice.

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He completed the temple system, becoming the perfect temple that rose again on the third day, just like he said he would do in John chapter two.

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He's the perfect and true high priest from the order of Melchizedek. He is the one who completed the festal calendar by giving us every week when we come to the communion so that we no longer feast on the

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Passover, but we feast on him. Every aspect of the old covenant world was being put away so that Jesus could reign in unrivaled glory.

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And so that eventually all of the world would bow their knee to him to magnify his supremacy.

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Every rival, every rival kingdom and every rival religion was going to be put under his royal feet.

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This began with old covenant Judaism, but it's not going to be finished until Christ has put down every counterfeit gospel that is trying to persuade the world away from Christ.

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And he's going to continue to do that work until every tribe, every tongue, every nation has heard every disciple or every nation has been discipled and where his peace, his government, his kingdom has spread till there is no more area for it to spread.

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Both Matthew 24 and revelation describe how Jesus is putting away the old covenant system and he's establishing the way, the truth and the life and the only path by which anyone on earth can come to God.

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And that kingdom has been going now for 2000 years and it will continue to feed the nations until the end has come.

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So that's what both the Olivet discourse in the book of revelation is about. Number six, our last example, the coming of the son of man and Matthew 2430,

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Jesus speaks of the sign of the son of man that appeared in the clouds and how he's going to come on the clouds of heaven, which is not a literal second coming.

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This is a judgment coming. This is the same judgment coming that God talks about in the old Testament, where he comes on the clouds in judgment of Egypt.

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This is a kind of coming where Jesus is going to pour out the wrath of God on the rebel city,

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Jerusalem, who revelation calls Babylon, and he's going to end her reign of terror once and for all.

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And revelation uses the exact same language in chapter one, verse seven, he says, behold, Jesus is coming on the clouds and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him.

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You're not going to understand what that means if you don't understand that Jesus in Matthew 24 promised that he's going to come in the clouds as an act of judgment on the

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Jews. So that in revelation, when it says that every eye who saw or that every eye is going to see him, even those who pierced him, it's not talking about you and I, we didn't pierce

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Christ. We didn't stab his hands and his feet with nails, and we didn't pierce his side with the spear.

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This is a clear reference by Jesus, the resurrected Lord to John, that he was coming against the

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Jewish aristocracy who gave him over to be crucified. And that second coming would happen in the first century when he destroyed their city.

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Both passages, Matthew 24 and the book of revelation are talking about the same thing.

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The vindication of Christ over the generation that rejected him and that persecuted his bride.

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And while they're using slightly different language to accomplish their goal, they're saying the exact same thing.

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Now, more examples than this could be given, but I think that the point has been made.

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I think it's clear in both passages, Matthew 24 and revelation, the same event is happening.

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The same timeline is in view, and they're both applying to things that happened in the first century, which were in their future, but they're in our past.

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So if we want to understand revelation, which is fundamentally the hardest book in the Bible, then we need to begin with an easier chapter like Matthew 24, which is going to make our journey easier.

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You can go on a great journey without a map, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to do that.

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You can drive through downtown Boston without a GPS, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to do that. It'll be like turning to the answer key in the back of the calculus text.

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Sure, we can figure out the problem without the answer key, but with it, you can actually be assured that you have understood the problem correctly, and that's what

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Matthew 24 is going to do for us. It's going to make sure that when we get to the book of revelation, we understand it correctly, which is going to be great.

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Now, with that, we're going to end for, we're going to come back next week and we're going to begin our series on the book of revelation by jumping into its

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Olivet introduction. We're going to examine Matthew 24 verse by verse, and we're going to uncover exactly what it means, what its context is, and how its fulfillment is going to help us understand revelation.

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So buckle your seatbelt, brothers and sisters. I have been waiting for this series for a very long time.

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I think it's going to be great. I think it's going to challenge assumptions. It's going to bring clarity to a confusing book, and it's going to help us have hope in a world where there's not a whole lot of hope.

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So until then, God richly bless you. And thank you so much for making this show a success.

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Thank you for the members who have joined with the prod squad and the defenders. Thank you so much for that.

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And until next time, God richly bless you. And we'll see you again next time on the podcast.